War on Drugs: Shifting Focus to Guatemala and Honduras

By Jeralyn, Section Crime Policy
Posted on Fri Apr 22, 2011 at 02:38:55 PM EST
Tags: Guatemala (all tags)

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Via McClatchy:

Washington has spent billions of dollars to help push drug cartels out of Colombia, and to confront them in Mexico. Now they've muscled their way into Central America, opening a new chapter in the drug war that almost certainly will exact further cost on U.S. taxpayers as American authorities confront drug gangs on a new frontier.

The Zetas are teaming up with Guatamela's Kaibiles to train the gang members, military style. And the U.S. military, including the Navy and Green Berets, is training the Guatamalan military. Background here. This is hardly new. The reports on the Kaibiles teaming up with the Zetas have been around since at least 2005. [More...]

By some accounts, the Kaibiles could be considered more dangerous than the Zetas, whose training in the Mexican armed forces was primarily for anti-drug operations. "Their preparation is different," Ibarrola said of the Kaibiles. "Their intentions are different: simply to kill."

Other analysts agreed. "The Kaibiles were always an elite force whose primary mission was to conduct massacres," said analyst Carmen Aida Ibarra of Guatemala's Fundacion Myrna Mack. "But this is the first clear confirmation that they are being co-opted by the drug traffickers."

More here, here and here

The U.S. embassy in Guatemala released a statement last year:

“The presence of U.S. officers forms part of a training commitment in response to an invitation from the Guatemalan Army, which training is carried out continuously, in associati