MEXICO CITY -- When anti-narcotics agents first heard that drug cartels were building an armada of submarines to transport cocaine, they thought it was a joke. Now U.S. law enforcement officials say that more than a third of the cocaine smuggled into the United States from Colombia travels in submersibles.
An experimental oddity just two years ago, these strange semi-submarines are the cutting edge of drug trafficking today. They ferry hundreds of tons of cocaine for powerful Mexican cartels that are taking over the Pacific Ocean route for most northbound shipments, according to the Colombian navy.
The sub-builders are even trying to develop a remote-controlled model, officials say.
"That means no crew. That means just cocaine, or whatever, inside the boat," said Michael Braun, a former chief of operations at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
The subs are powered by ordinary diesel engines and built of simple fiberglass in clandestine shipyards in the Colombian jungle. U.S. officials expect 70 or more to be launched this year with a potential cargo capacity of 380 tons of cocaine, worth billions of dollars in the United States.
"This is definitely the next generation of smuggling conveyance," said Joseph Ruddy, an assistant U.S. attorney in Tampa who prosecutes narco-mariners.
The submersibles are equipped with technologies that make them difficult to intercept, even though U.S. forces use state-of-the-art submarine warfare strategies against them. Authorities say most slip through their net.
"You try finding a floating log in the middle of the Pacific," one DEA agent said.
U.S. officials and their Colombian counterparts have detected evidence of more than 115 submersible voyages since 2006. They have apprehended the crews of more than 22 submersibles at sea since 2007. Six crews have been arrested this year. The Colombian navy has intercepted or discovered 33 subs since 1993.
U.S. officials fear that the rogue vessels could be used by terrorists intent on reaching the United States with deadly cargos.
The vessels do not fully submerge but skim the sea surface. They move quickly at night, then drift like sleeping whales during the day. Under cover of darkness, they slither out of Colombia's shallow rivers and 10 days later rendezvous offshore along the Central American coast, usually near Guatemala, where cocaine is offloaded and the subs are sunk.
1 comment:
In “Plying The Pacific, Subs Surface As Key Tool Of Drug Cartels” William Booth and Juan Forero allude to the fact that submersible vessels such as those discussed in the article could serve as vehicles for a future terrorist attack against the United States. I would like to expand on this issue.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is a staunch ally of Iran (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5354812.stm), the nation considered the single-largest state sponsor of terror (http://www.cfr.org/publication/9362/). Western intelligence experts believe that Venezuela has become an operating base for Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite Muslim terrorist organization (http://articles.latimes.com/2008/aug/27/world/fg-venezterror27). Venezuela’s lackadaisical border controls and easily counterfeited passports make it increasingly difficult to track movement of radical Islamic terrorists into Venezuela (see the report titled Venezuela: Terrorism Hub of South America? From the House Subcommittee on International Terrorism and Nonproliferation of The Committee on International Relations hearing, July 13, 2006, http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/intlrel/hfa28638.000/hfa28638_0.htm). President Chavez is “an explicit supporter and possible financier” of “the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a group specializing in drug trafficking, abductions and massacres of civilians that has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States and Europe” (see Allies of Terrorism, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/04/AR2008030403068.html). Venezuela’s western border region serves as a safe haven for the FARC (and the lesser known ELN), with Chavez continually rattling his saber to discourage Colombian military forces from pursuing FARC/ELN paramilitary elements escaping across the border.
While it stands as less than likely that Chavez would knowingly support or sponsor a terrorist attack against the U.S., his policies and alliances make Venezuela a likely jump-off point for a future attack. Venezuela’s lackadaisical border controls, the proliferation of false Venezuelan identification documents and Venezuela’s alliance with Iran (and Syria, one of only four other countries currently on the USDOS list of state terrorism sponsors) indicate that Venezuela could easily serve as terrorists’ back door into the United States. By granting the FARC unimpeded safe haven in Venezuela, Chavez has allowed terrorist networks operating in Venezuela access to the people with the technology (the submersibles) and the knowledge (sea routes, etc.) to deliver a weapon of mass effect into a U.S. port or a major U.S. city accessible from the sea (take your pick – Miami, Washington, Philadelphia, New York, Boston). Chavez’s ties with Iran and indicators that Iran is attempting to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons (http://www.cfr.org/publication/16811/) make this prospect even scarier.
James Sink
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