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<h1><small>Marines vs. Zetas: U.S. Hunts Drug Cartels in Guatemala</small></h1>
<div class="entry-header">
<ul>
<li class="author">By <a
href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/author/robertbeckhusen/">Robert
Beckhusen</a></li>
<li class="authorEmail"><a href="mailto:robertbeckhusen@gmail.com"
title="Email the Author">http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/08/marinesvszetas/</a></li>
<li class="entryDate"> August 29, 2012<br>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<p>The war on drugs just got a whole lot more warlike. Two hundred U.S.
Marines have entered Guatemala, on a mission to chase local operatives
of the murderous Zeta drug cartel.</p>
<p>The Marines are now encamped after having deployed to Guatemala
earlier this month, and have just “kicked off” their share of Operation
Martillo, or Hammer. That operation began earlier in January, and is
much larger than just the Marine contingent and involves the Navy,
Coast Guard, and federal agents working with the Guatemalans to block
drug shipment routes.</p>
<p>It’s a big shift for U.S. forces in the region. For years, the
Pentagon has sent troops to Guatemala, but these missions have been
pretty limited to exercising “soft power” — training local soldiers,
building roads and schools. Operation Martillo is something quite
different.</p>
<p>The news comes as two U.S. agents wounded in an attack in Mexico
last week were discovered to be likely working for the CIA. The attack
appears to be a case of mistaken identity after the agents fled from a
Federal Police checkpoint, thinking the plain-clothed Mexican cops were
cartel members. Police, seeing the agents’ bulletproof SUV flee their
checkpoint, presumably thought the same thing, followed them and shot
up their car. The agents have now been discovered as likely working for
the CIA, as one of the wounded agents’ false identity was linked to a
post office box in Virginia <a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/calderon-apologizes-for-attack-that-wounded-2-us-officials/2012/08/28/a6ed005a-f146-11e1-892d-bc92fee603a7_story.html">previously
tied to CIA rendition flights</a>.</p>
<p>The Marines’ share of the operation involves chasing drug
traffickers with UH-1N Huey helicopters. The Marine contingent has four
of the choppers, and the Marines are carrying weapons. “It’s not every
day that you have 200-some Marines going to a country in Central and
South America aside from conducting training exercises,” Staff Sgt.
Earnest Barnes, the public affairs chief for Marine Corps Forces South,
tells Danger Room. Prior to the Marines’ deployment, there were only a
“handful” of Marines in the country, Barnes says.</p>
<p>However, the Marines can’t technically use their guns except in
self-defense, and Barnes wouldn’t say whether they’re authorized to
pursue drug traffickers on the ground. The description of what they’re
doing, however, suggests that they probably can’t. Instead, they’ll be
looking out for suspicious boats — including <a
href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/09/drug-runners-st/">crude
narco-submarines</a> — and then radio the Guatemalans, who do the work
seizing their drugs and arresting cartel members. That could be on
rivers, or <a
href="http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/prime/2012/08/PRIMEmarine-busting-drug-traffickers-in-guatemala-082712/">along
Guatemala’s two coastlines</a>, reports the <em>Marine Corps Times</em>.</p>
<p><span id="more-90137"></span></p>
<p>“Overall the Marines are there to provide aerial detection and
monitoring, and aerial surveillance, and so the appropriate authorities
can do their job, whether it being Guatemalan military or some other
form of law enforcement agency or authority to perform their duties,”
Barnes says. Among the force are pilots and communication teams, as
well as combat engineers to build landing sites.</p>
<p>On the other hand, just because the Marines may not be officially
authorized to stop drug traffickers — instead only spot them — doesn’t
mean they won’t be drawn into a conflict. The drug war is messy and
involves going after criminal groups that don’t for the most part wear
uniforms or identify themselves as cartel members. Nor is it true to
say the U.S. isn’t already involved in a shooting war in Guatemala,
with potentially ill consequences.</p>
<p>On the night of May 11, Honduran troops along with Drug Enforcement
Administration agents allegedly killed two civilians — possibly four
according to local accounts — including a pregnant woman. According to
a report released this month by the Center for Economic Policy and
Research, Guatemalan troops and U.S. agents seized a boat on a river
containing cocaine near the town of Ahuas, when another boat —
containing civilians — rammed into the first boat in the darkness. DEA
agents and Guatemalan troops circling in a helicopter <a
href="http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/collateral-damage-of-a-drug-war">then
fired on the second boat</a> (.pdf). <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/18/world/americas/united-states-says-no-dea-agents-took-part-in-honduras-shootout.html">The
U.S. has denied</a> that any of its agents took part.</p>
<p>The DEA isn’t a military organization, but what the Ahuas shootings
represented was a military approach to the drug war gone bad. A case of
mistaken identity, sure, as the mayor of Ahuas <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/18/world/americas/united-states-says-no-dea-agents-took-part-in-honduras-shootout.html">said
following the shootings</a>. But it also reflects a danger of stopping
drugs at the point of a gun.</p>
<p>The Ahuas shooting “demonstrates the risks of flooding foreign
countries with armed representatives of the U.S. government, to fight
an enemy that is <a
href="http://www.insightcrime.org/insight-latest-news/item/3061-dea-honduras-ahuas-gunfight">largely
indistinguishable from the civilian population</a> on unknown terrain,”
wrote Patrick Corcoran of InSight, a Latin America crime monitor. ”The
Ahuas shooting may not have been inevitable, but as Americans take a
more hands-on role, such scandals are likely to be repeated,” he wrote.</p>
<p>On the other hand, as Mexico’s drug violence worsened, cartels like
the Zetas began <a
href="http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2012/04/los-zetas-recruit-las-maras-in.html">spilling
over Mexico’s southern border</a>. Guatemala is now a base for the
Zetas, who use the country’s remote northern region shipment route for
narcotics and weapons. In February, Guatemalan President Otto Pérez
Molina said his country is “not doing what the United States says, <a
href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/02/big-sis-cant-quit-the-drug-war/">we
are doing what we have to do</a>” — in other words, decriminalize
drugs. But Molina has also emphasized cracking down on the cartels in a
mano dura, or “iron fist,” approach to crime.</p>
<p>Now, on the contrary, the U.S. hasn’t gone anywhere close to
suggesting drugs be decriminalized. Gen. Douglas Fraser, the head of
U.S. forces in South and Central America, said last year to the House
Armed Sevices Committee that “the violence continues to increase in
Central America, and that’s where and why we are focusing there.”</p>
<p>That’s where the Marines come in. And as far as the Zetas go, the
U.S. hasn’t directly confronted them with troops. Mexico City will <a
href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/08/el-chapo/">absolutely
not allow it</a>. Guatemala is different, which means the distance
between the gun barrels of a militarized cartel, and that of the U.S.
military, could start to get much shorter.</p>
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