As our newspaper reported to you in our midweek edition, there are international reports being widely circulated that teams from an elite detachment of military-trained special agents of the United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) have been “quietly” deployed to Belize and other countries in Central America, in support of the US’s drug control strategy in the region.
When we spoke with Belize Police Minister Doug Singh about this on Monday, he told our newspaper that he was unaware that such deployments from the DEA’s Foreign-Deployed Advisory and Support Teams (FAST) had been made to Belize.
Today, Wednesday, Singh told Amandala that he has since spoken with Daktor Holguin, the attaché for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), who is among the US Embassy officials in Belize, and he said that there are no FAST agents in Belize, although other DEA agents do work in the country.
Singh said that Daktor told him that if there are any FAST agents in Belize, he would know because they would have to come through the Embassy in Belize.
Singh also told us that he has checked with personnel of the Anti-Drug Unit of the Police Department, as well as the Belize Defence Force, and they have said that they have not been involved in any FAST operations in Belize.
The claim that Daktor has made to Singh contrasts sharply with a formal statement made by the US DEA’s Chief of Operations, Thomas M. Harrigan, who is also the DEA’s Assistant Administrator. Harrigan testified before the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control United States Senate at a hearing entitled “U.S. – Central America Security Cooperation” on May 25, 2011.
In his testimony Harrigan said: “Due to the success of FAST [Foreign-Deployed Advisory and Support Teams] in Afghanistan and the unique capabilities of the FAST teams, they have been deployed for mission support in Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, and Panama in support of DFAS” — the Drug Flow Attack Strategy, the United States Government’s present strategy in Central America.
As for the disparity between the claims made by Daktor and Harrigan, Singh told us that he could not speak on that.
“As DEA Chief of Operations, Special Agent Thomas M. Harrigan is responsible for leading the worldwide drug enforcement operations of the agency’s 227 domestic and 87 foreign offices, as well as the Special Operations Division, the Aviation Division, and the Office of Diversion Control. He was appointed to this position in 2008 and is a principal advisor to the DEA Administrator on all enforcement-related matters,” said the US Department of Justice in a detailed bio of the agent.
In his article first publicizing the FAST presence in Central America, The New York Times’ Charlie Savage notes: “Because the presence of armed Americans on their soil raises sensitivities about sovereignty, some countries that have sought the assistance of the United States will not acknowledge it, and the DEA is reluctant to disclose the details of the commando teams’ deployments.”
For its part, the New York Times broadly cited “documents and interviews with law enforcement officials” and did not specifically identify the source of their information; but during our searches, Amandala was able to access the key official source that had made the same assertion, that FAST agents have been deployed to Belize.
We sourced Harrigan’s statement on the US Department of Justice’s website at this link: http://www.justice.gov/dea/speeches/110525_ca_security_cooperation.pdf, which also lists Belize among the nations to which FAST teams have been deployed.
Savage’s November 6, 2011 article titled, “D.E.A. Squads Extend Reach of Drug War,” said that support for a Honduran anti-drug operation this March, which left one Honduran officer injured and two alleged drug traffickers dead, allegedly consisted of FAST commandos, “…who joined in the shootout, according to a person familiar with the episode.”
An article published by Honduras Weekly on Monday points out that Savage quotes former Honduran Minister of Security Oscar Álvarez, as saying, “I don’t want to say it was Vietnam-style, but it was typical of war action.”
Singh has confirmed that US DEA agents had also been in connection with Belizean security forces to inform them the drug plane that was busted last November on the Southern Highway had landed in Belize. That landing yielded a historic bust valued at over $100 million. Singh has claimed, however, that whereas the DEA info was passed to the Belize Defence Force, it was Stann Creek police, tipped off by people living in the area, who got to the scene first.