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Source: ONE News -
Related
The number of airplanes smuggling cocaine through Honduras has
surged since the United States suspended drug co-operation in the
wake of an army coup, the Central American country's drugs chief
said.
Honduras has been internationally isolated since soldiers exiled
President Manuel Zelaya at gunpoint on June 28, and it lost $US16.5
million of US military aid after the putsch.
Drugs chief Julian Aristides said Honduras' de facto government,
engulfed in a serious political crisis, had no clear anti-drugs
strategy, although he added that Zelaya's government had also not
fought trafficking well.
In the last month alone, authorities have found 10 planes abandoned
on runways and remote highways.
Aristides, a former army general, said there were just four such
cases last year.
"These are the facts, the flights have intensified," he said in his
modest office in the Honduran capital.
The increase could undermine the anti-drugs fight in Mexico, where
President Felipe Calderon has sent thousands of troops to try to
weaken powerful drug cartels and quell turf wars that have killed
more than 14,000 people since late 2006.
Sparsely populated Honduras has little radar coverage and
traffickers with night vision goggles fly small planes under the
cover of darkness to load the drugs into trucks or boats.
US agencies are still sharing intelligence with Honduran officials,
but can no longer participate in operations.
Before the coup, the United States loaned helicopters to Honduras'
under-equipped air force and provided the navy with fuel and
logistics for advanced interception boats.
"Since the substitution of the president this has been suspended,
we don't have the support that was so important given our lack of
technology," Aristides said.
Headed to US addicts
Central America is a major trafficking route for cocaine taken by
Colombian and Mexican traffickers to the United States, and
regional governments are struggling to fight the smugglers.
Guatemala is facing a budget squeeze because of the global economic
slowdown, leaving it less money for its anti-drugs plans.
While some Latin American leaders want US President Barack Obama to
take tougher measures against Honduras' de facto government,
critics at home complain he has already done too much to support
the leftist Zelaya and that the cut in aid threatens US security
interests by easing the pressure on drug gangs.
Almost all the planes found in Honduras recently were painted with
Venezuelan registrations, and the pilots are usually Colombian,
Aristides said.
"It is the population of the United States that will suffer,
because the more drugs that arrive in Honduras, the more drugs can
arrive in the United States," he said.
The United Nations says the Venezuelan coast is being used by drug
cartels to traffic cocaine via Honduras, and anti-narcotics experts
say Mexican and Colombian cartels are training Central American
traffickers.
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