Anti-drug patrols shifting
into the Caribbean sea


The campaign against illegal drug traffickers is shifting to the Caribbean.

The Servicio Nacional de Guardacostas has put into service a restored 65-foot patrol boat with the help of the U.S. Southern Command. The boat soon will leave Puntarenas for the Caribbean via the Panamá Canal.

The Caribbean has had much less obvious anti-drug activity than the Pacific, in part because the smuggling routes are much further to the east than Costa Rican national waters. But that is changing.

Intelligence reports say that the major Colombian cartels are entrenching themselves into the relatively unprotected east coast of Nicaragua immediately north of Costa Rica.

In the past, the Costa Rican Caribbean coast has been a landing area for smugglers, who would then put their illegal cargo into trucks for the rest of the trip north.

Last week U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates told leaders from the eastern Caribbean that the United States is prepared to do more to help them fight the drug trade and tackle other regional security challenges.

Gates stopped in Bridgetown, Barbados, Friday for a meeting of the seven-nation Regional Security System, an organization that tries to coordinate the security efforts of the region's small island-states, particularly in fighting illegal drug trafficking.

Gates acknowledged that the region is under more pressure from traffickers, in part due to Mexico's counter-narcotics effort, being made with U.S. assistance.

One effort to train for drug interdiction is going on now. Tradewinds is a U.S. Southern Command-sponsored annual exercise conducted in the region designed to improve responses to regional security threats. This year’s joint, combined interagency exercise is being held in Belize and Jamaica through Monday, and the exercise includes more than 400 military and security personnel from 15 Caribbean Basin nations, the United Kingdom and the United States, said the Southern Command.

The Costa Rican coast guard presence in the Caribbean is several times greater than the single boat that Nicaragua has patrolling the Mosquito Coast. The restored patrol boat, the "Punta Burica," will be the largest vessel the coast guard has in the Caribbean.

The boat was designed in 1978 in Mississippi and was allowed to fall into disrepair. The boat was headed to become one of those artificial reefs where old sea craft are laid to rest. But after six months of work and a $460,000 investment, the boat is ready for action.

It has two Cummings 800-horsepower engines and can reach 37 kph, according to the Ministerio de Gobernación, Policía y Seguridad Pública. A new boat of the same type would cost $5 million, the ministry said.

In the area the boat will patrol smugglers use a variety of craft. Not all the drugs are carried on the go-fast open boats with four outboard motors as in the Pacific. Stealth and disguise also is used in the Caribbean.

But there also are the air routes. Honduras to the north is a frequent destination for drug flights. One or two abandoned aircraft are found there each month. And the entire coast from Costa Rica north into Honduras is not patrolled intensively.

The extent of the drug smugglers operations in eastern Nicaragua is not known. Locals are not very communicative with the national authorities, and police presence is scant. This is the same area that the force of southern Contras dominated during the Nicaraguan civil war.

There are some reports of new construction in the hills overlooking the Caribbean as well as docks for unloading boats. Typically smugglers will accumulate drugs in a storage area for future shipment. That has been the case in the southern and central pacific of Costa Rica.

However, Costa Rican and U.S. Navy and Coast Guard activity is intense in the Pacific, and there are radar bases to detect low-flying planes. These are the reasons the Caribbean is becoming more attractive for smugglers.