The United States continues to monitor the innovation of methods that could also be used to introduce terrorist cells or even weapons of mass destruction.

In the last ten years, the proliferation of submersible and semi-submersible vessels, which are difficult to detect, has accounted for a third of drug shipments from South America to the United States. The incorporation of GPS systems by the cartels also hampers the global counter-narcotics fight. A possible use of these new methods for terrorist purposes keeps the United States on its toes.

▲ Narco-submarine found in the jungle of Ecuador in 2010 [DEA].

article / Marcelina Kropiwnicka [English version].

Drug trafficking to the major consumer markets, especially the United States and Europe, is particularly innovative: the magnitude of the business leads to attempts to overcome any barriers put up by the States to prevent its penetration and distribution. In the case of the United States, where the illicit arrival of narcotics dates back to the 19th century - from opium to marijuana and cocaine - continued efforts by the authorities have succeeded in intercepting many drug shipments, but traffickers are finding new ways and methods to bring a significant Issue of narcotics into the country.

The most disturbing method in the last ten years has been the use of submersible and semi-submersible vessels, commonly referred to as narco-submarines, which make it possible to transport several tons of drugs - five times more than a fishing boat - while evading coast guard surveillance [1]. Satellite technology has also led traffickers to leave drug loads at sea, which are then picked up by pleasure boats without arousing suspicion. These methods are reference letter in recent reports by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the US anti-narcotics agency.

Through the waters of Central America

For many years, the usual way to transport drugs leaving South America for the United States has been by fishing boats, speedboats and light aircraft. Advances in airborne detection and tracking techniques have pushed drug traffickers to look for new ways to get their loads north. Hence the development of narco-submarines, whose issue, since a first interception in 2006 by US authorities, has seen a rapid progression.

This means of transport is one of the reasons why, since 2013, trafficking along the drug route from Colombia (the country that produces 93% of the cocaine consumed in the US) to Central America and Mexico, from where the shipments are smuggled into the US, has increased by 10%. According to the DEA, this corridor now accounts for an estimated 93% of the movement of cocaine from South America to North America, compared to 7% of the route that seeks the Caribbean islands (mainly the Dominican Republic) to reach Florida or other parts of the US coast.

For some time, a rumor spread among the US Coast Guard that drug cartels were using narco-submarines. Without having seen one so far, the agents gave it the name of 'Bigfoot' (as an alleged ape-like animal known to inhabit the forests of the U.S. Pacific).

The first sighting occurred in November 2006, when a U.S. Coast Guard patrol boat spotted a blurred shape in the ocean about 100 miles off the coast of Costa Rica. When the agents approached, they discovered three plastic tubes emerging from the water, which came from a submersible vessel making its way six feet below the surface. Inside they found three tons of cocaine and four men armed with an AK-47 rifle. The Coast Guard christened it 'Bigfoot I'.

Two years later there would be a 'Bigfoot II'. In September 2008, a U.S. Navy frigate on coast guard duty apprehended a similar craft 350 miles from the Mexico-Guatemala border. The crew consisted of four men and the cargo was 6.4 tons of cocaine.

By then, US authorities estimated that more than 100 submersibles or semi-submersibles had been manufactured. In 2009 they estimated that they were only being able to stop 14% of shipments and that this mode of transport supplied at least a third of the cocaine reaching the US market. The navies of Colombia, Mexico and Guatemala have also seized some of these narco-submarines, which in addition to being located in the Pacific have also been detected in the Caribbean and the Atlantic. Manufactured by hand in the jungle, perhaps the most striking episode was that one of them was found in the interior of Ecuador, in the waters of a river. 

Their technical innovation has often surprised counter-narcotics officials. Many of these self-propelled narco-submarines are as long as fifteen meters, are made of synthetic materials and fiberglass, and have been designed to reduce radar or infrared detection. Some models have also been fitted with GPS navigation systems so that fuel can be refueled and food can be delivered to rendezvous along the route.

GPS Location

The development and generalization of GPS has also served drug traffickers to introduce further innovations. One procedure, for example, has been to fill a torpedo-shaped container with drugs - like a submersible, but this time unmanned - attached to a buoy and a signal transmitter. The container can hold up to seven tons of cocaine and is attached to the bottom of a ship by a cable. If the ship is intercepted, it can simply drop the container deeper, only to be retrieved by another vessel thanks to the satellite locator. This makes it extremely difficult for the authorities to capture the drugs and arrest the traffickers.

The GPS navigation system is also used to deposit drug loads at points in U.S. territorial waters, where they can be picked up by pleasure boats or a small group of people without arousing suspicion. The package containing the cocaine is coated with several layers of material and then the whole thing is waterproofed with a foam subject . The package is placed inside a canvas bag which is deposited at the bottom of the sea to be later retrieved by other people.

As the DEA notes in its 2017 report , "this demonstrates how drug trafficking organizations have evolved their methods for conducting cocaine transactions using technology." And it quotation the example of organizations that "transport kilos of cocaine in waterproof packages to a predetermined location and attach it to the ocean floor for later removal by other members of the organization who have GPS tracking," which "allows members of drug trafficking organizations to compartmentalize their work, separating those who do the maritime transport from the onshore distributors."

Terrorist risk

The possibility that these very difficult to detect methods could be used to smuggle weapons or could be part of terrorist operations is of concern to U.S. authorities. Retired Vice Admiral James Stravidis, former head of the U.S. Southern Command, has warned of the potential use of submersibles especially "to transport more than just narcotics: the movement of cash, weapons, violent extremists or, at the worst end of the spectrum, weapons of mass destruction."

Rear Admiral Joseph Nimmich also referred to this risk when, as commander of the Joint Interagency work South, he was confronted with the emergence of submersibles. "If you can carry ten tons of cocaine, you can carry ten tons of anything," he told The New York Times.

According to this newspaper, the stealthy development of homemade submarines was first developed in Sri Lanka, where the Tamil Tiger rebel group used them in their confrontation with government forces. "The Tamils will go down in history as the first terrorist organization to develop underwater weapons," the Sri Lankan Ministry of Defense claimed. In 2006, as the NYT states, "a Pakistani and a Sri Lankan provided the Colombians with plans to build semi-submersibles that were fast, quiet and made of cheap, commonly available materials.

Despite this origin, ultimately written request related to Tamil rebels, and the terrorist potential of submersibles used by drug cartels, Washington has reported no evidence that the new drug transportation methods developed by organized crime groups are being used by extremist actors of a different stripe. Nonetheless, the U.S. is keeping its guard up given the high rate of shipments arriving undetected.

[1] REICH, S., & Dombrowski, P (2017). The End of Grand Strategy. US Maritime Pperations in the 21st Century. Cornell Univesity Press. Ithaca, NY. Pp. 143-145.

July 1 presidential election does not open a serious discussion on the fight against drug trafficking

The 'iron fist' that Felipe Calderón (PAN) began in 2006, with the deployment of the Armed Forces in the fight against drugs, was extended in 2012 by Enrique Peña Nieto (PRI). In these twelve years the status has not improved, but rather violence has increased. In the 2018 elections, none of the main candidates presents a radical change of model; the populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador (Morena) proposes some striking measures, but continues to count on the work of the Army.

▲The Mexican president on Flag Day, February 2018 [Presidency of the Republic].

article / Valeria Nadal [English version] [English version].

Mexico faces a change of sexenio after closing 2017 as the most violent year in the country's history, with more than 25,000 homicides. How has this status been reached? Can it begin to be resolved in the coming years?

There are various theories about the beginning of drug trafficking in Mexico, but the most widely accepted argues that Mexican drug trafficking was born when Franklin Delano Roosevelt, president of the United States between 1933 and 1945, promoted the cultivation of poppy in Mexican territory with the veiled intention of promoting the production of large quantities of morphine to relieve the pain of U.S. soldiers during World War II. However, drug trafficking was not a serious national problem until the 1980s; since then, cartels have multiplied, violence has increased and crime has spread throughout Mexico.

The new phase of Felipe Calderón

In the fight against drug trafficking in Mexico, the presidency of Felipe Calderon marked a new stage. candidate of the conservative National Action Party (PAN), Calderon was elected for the six-year term 2006-2012. His program included declaring war on the cartels, with a "mano dura" (iron fist) plan that translated into sending the Army into the streets of Mexico. Although Calderon's speech was forceful and had a clear goal , to exterminate insecurity and violence caused by drug trafficking, the result was the opposite because his strategy was based exclusively on the action of police and military. This militarization of the streets was carried out through joint operations combining government forces: National Defense, Public Security, the Navy and the Attorney General's Office (PGR). However, despite the large deployment and the 50% increase in security expense , the strategy did not work; homicides not only did not decrease, but increased: in 2007, Calderón's first full presidential year, 10,253 homicides were registered and in 2011, the last full year of his presidency, a record 22,409 homicides were registered.

agreement to the Institute for Legal Research (IIJ) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), in that record year of 2011 almost a quarter of the total Mexican population over 18 years of age (24%) was assaulted in the street, suffered a robbery in public transportation or was a victim of extortion, fraud, threats or injuries. The fees of violence were so high that they surpassed those of countries at war: in Iraq between 2003 and 2011 there was an average of 12 murders per day per 100,000 inhabitants, while in Mexico that average reached 18 murders per day. Finally, it is worth mentioning that the number of complaints about this indiscriminate wave of violence was quite leave: only 12% of the victims of drug-related violence filed a complaint. This figure is probably related to the high rate of impunity (70%) that also marked Calderón's mandate.

Peña Nieto's new approach

After the failure of the PAN in the fight against drug trafficking, in 2012 Enrique Peña Nieto, candidate the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), was elected president. With this, this party, which had governed uninterruptedly for decades, returned to power after two consecutive six-year periods of absence (presidencies of Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón, both from the PAN). Peña Nieto assumed the position promising a new approach , contrary to the "open war" proposed by his predecessor. He mainly focused his security policy on the division of the national territory into five regions to increase the efficiency and coordination of operations, on the reorganization of the Federal Police and on the strengthening of the legal framework . However, the new president maintained the employment the Army in the streets.

Peña Nieto's results in his fight against drug trafficking have been worse than those of his predecessor: during his term, intentional homicides have increased by 12,476 cases compared to the same period in Calderón's administration and 2017 closed with the regrettable news of being the most violent year in Mexico to date. With just months to go before the end of his six-year term, and in a last-ditch effort to right the wrongs that have marked it, Peña Nieto brought about the approval of the Internal Security Law, which was voted by Mexico's congress and enacted in December of last year. This law does not remove the military from the streets, but rather seeks to legally guarantee the Armed Forces' capacity for policing, something that previously had only a provisional nature. According to the law, military participation in daily anti-narcotics operations is not to supplant the police, but to reinforce them in those areas where they are unable to deal with drug trafficking. The initiative was criticized by critics who, while recognizing the problem of the scarcity of police resources, warned of the risk of an unlimited military deployment over time. Thus, although Peña Nieto began his term in office trying to distance himself from Calderón's policies, he has concluded it by consolidating them.

What to expect from the 2018 candidates

Given the obvious ineffectiveness of the measures adopted by both presidents, the question in this election year is what anti-drug policy the next president will adopt, in a country where there is no re-election and therefore every six-year presidential term means a change of face. The three main candidates are, in the order of the polls: Andrés Manuel López Obrador, of the Movimiento Regeneración Nacional (Morena); Ricardo Anaya, of the PAN coalition with the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD), and José Antonio Meade, of the PRI. López Obrador came close to reaching the presidency in 2006 and 2012, both times as candidate of the PRD (he had previously been leader of the PRI); then he created his own party.

Meade, who represents a certain continuity with respect to Peña Nieto, although in the electoral campaign he has adopted a more anti-corruption tone, has pronounced himself in favor of the Internal Security Law: "It is an important law, it is a law that gives us framework, that gives us certainty, it is a law that allows the participation of the Armed Forces to be well regulated and regulated". Anaya has also positioned himself in favor of this law, since he considers that a withdrawal of the Army from the streets would be "leaving the citizens to their fate". However, he is in favor of the need for the Police to recover its functions and strongly criticizes the lack of responsibility of the Government in subject of public security, alleging that Mexico has entered a "vicious circle that has become very comfortable for governors and mayors". In any case, neither Meade nor Anaya have specified what turn they could take that would be truly effective in reducing violence.

Lopez Obrador, from a left-wing populist stance, is a major change from previous policies, although it is unclear how effective his measures could be. Moreover, some of them, such as granting amnesty to the main drug cartel leaders, seem clearly counterproductive. In recent months, the Morena candidate has changed the focus of his speech, which was first centered on the eradication of corruption and then focused on security issues. Thus, he has said that if he wins the presidency he will assume full responsibility for the country's security by integrating the Army, the Navy and the Police into a single command, to which a newly created National Guard would be added. He has also announced that he would be the only one to assume the single command: "I am going to assume this responsibility directly". López Obrador pledges to end the war against drugs in the first three years of his mandate, assuring that, together with measures of force, his management will achieve economic growth that will translate into employment creation and improvement of welfare, which will reduce violence.

In conclusion, the decade against drug trafficking that began almost twelve years ago has result be a failure that can be measured in numbers: since Calderon became president of Mexico in 2006 with the slogan "Things can change for the better," 28,000 people have disappeared and more than 150,000 have died as a result of the drug war. Despite small victories for Mexican authorities, such as the arrest of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman during the Peña Nieto presidency, the reality in Mexico is one of intense criminal activity by drug cartels. From the electoral proposals of the presidential candidates, no rapid improvement can be expected in the next six years.