Honduras - Innovation in the fight against gangs and narcotrafficking

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POLICYMAKING

Honduras Innovation
in the fight against
gangs and
narcotrafficking
By Evan Ellis / September 24, 2015

When Guatemalan President Otto Prez Molina was

forced to step down and arrested on corruption charges
at the beginning of September 2015, few felt the
political reverberations more than Juan Orlando
Hernndez, president of neighboring Honduras. As in
Guatemala, President Hernndez and some of his closest
allies in the Honduran government are implicated in serious charges of
malfeasance. A group of torch-bearing protesters, calling themselves
the indignant, has maintained a weekly vigil since May 2015, calling
for the Presidents ouster.

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While not denying the importance of the corruption allegations against

President Hernndez, since taking office he and his government have
initiated creative policies that have made real progress against
insecurity and narcotrafficking in Honduras. The northern tier country
in Central America, is one of the most violent countries in the region,
suffering from its geography as a natural transit corridor for drugs
flowing from South America to the United States. Whatever President
Hernndez may have done, and whatever his ultimate fate, the
initiatives of his team in the fight against gangs and drugs merit
consideration by other countries in the region as a model, from which
they could benefit.
In less than two years, murders in Honduras have fallen by 25 percent
to 66.3 per 100,000, according to official figures, and the use of
Honduras as a stopping point by narcotics flights has fallen
dramatically. The head of U.S. Southern Command, General John
Kelly, has praised Honduras for its progress in reducing violence,
combatting corruption, and cooperating with the U.S. in areas such as
extradition.
Possibly inspired in part by his formative years in a conservative
military school in San Pedro Sula, and in part by a close relationship
with his brother Amilcar, an accomplished military officer whose
career was cut short by a debilitating parachute accident, President
Hernndez has given the military the leadership role in the fight against
insecurity and narcotrafficking in Honduras. This includes a special
role for newly created military police units in reasserting control over
urban neighborhoods of San Pedro Sula, Tegucigalpa, and sister city
Comayagela, taking them back from the gangs including Barrio-18,
Mara Salvatrucha, and emerging splinter groups such as Los Chirizos.

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President Hernndez has also given the military a lead role in

interdicting drug flows and going after the leadership of family-based
smuggling groups such as the Valle Valles and Cachiros. These groups
move drugs through Honduran territory, generally at the behest of, and
with funding from, Mexican cartels such as Sinaloa and Colombian
criminal bands.
The cornerstone of the Hernndez administrations approach is the
national-level inter-agency task force Fuerza Nacional de Seguridad
Interinstitucional (National Interagency Task Force-FUSINA), brought
into being by the president shortly after being sworn in. FUSINA
brings together elements of the Honduran military, national police,
investigators, judges, intelligence, and other relevant offices across the
Honduran government to better coordinate the whole-of-government
operations against organized crime and insecurity in the country.
Although a fundamentally military structure with day-to-day activities
managed by a colonel-level military officer, FUSINA operates under
the oversight of Honduras National Security Council (NSC), which
includes the elected President, the head of Congress, and the Ministers
of Defense and Public Security, among others. The NSC is consulted
when FUSINA executes operations against high-impact personalities
such as major narcotraffickers or political figures.
Consistent with the presidents Inter-Agency National Security Plan,
FUSINAs primary mission is Operacin Morazn, a four-phased
plan that contemplates task force operations across the national
territory and a return of security operations to civilian control.

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Below its leadership, FUSINA is organized into 18 interagency task

forces, each of which integrate elements of the military and police and
that have direct access to on-call prosecutors, judges, and other
resources as necessary. These task forces generally correspond to the
nations departments (states), with special additional task forces such
as Maya-Chorti, whose mission is to control illicit flows along the
border with Guatemala.
To date, FUSINA has effectively focused on two types of operations
corresponding to the major challenges faced by the country:
counternarcotics and urban security.
With respect to counternarcotics, FUSINA has supported the
Hernndez administration emphasis on interdicting the movement of
narcotics through Honduran territory. This it does through a concept
involving three interrelated shields: (1) an Air Shield, that focuses
on controlling Honduran airspace, particularly in the remote and
sparsely populated eastern part of the country; (2) a Maritime Shield,
to protect the Honduran coast and inland waterways against the import
of drugs, and their associated transfer to overland traffic via vehicles
and persons (generally toward Guatemala); and (3) a Land Shield,
associated with the control of the Honduran-Guatemala border, but also
including the deployment of military forces throughout the country to
impede the movement drugs from clandestine airstrips and coastal and
river disembarkation points.
Critical to the Air Shield is a law, passed in January 2014,
authorizing the Honduran military to shoot down aircraft making
unauthorized incursions into the national airspace. The acquisition of
three radars from Israel in late 2013 has helped troops keep an eye on

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the skies. The government also conducts an ongoing operation to

identify and destroy clandestine airstrips which narcotraffickers race to
rebuild.
Maritime Shield efforts have focused on conducting sustained
detection and interception operations, principally along the Atlantic
coast. In recent years, the Honduran navy has boosted its presence
there from one operating base to seven, as well as expanding its control
over inland rivers. The Maritime Shield is the domain where the U.S.
has most extensively supported its Honduran counterparts, although the
Honduran navy continues to be impaired by a relatively limited number
of aging vessels.
With respect to the Land Shield, FUSINA has sought to cut off the
numerous informal crossings along the Honduran-Guatemalan border
(pasos ciegos), with attention to people who own adjoining territory
on both sides of the border, as well as combatting the overland
movement of illicit substances across Honduran territory in general.
Nonetheless, traffickers continue to evolve their routes in response to
government enforcement efforts. At the same time the difficult terrain
and the number of people inspired to collaborate with the narcos
because of the money involved continue to hamper effective control
over this critical territory.
With respect to combatting urban insecurity, the key tool of FUSINA
has been the Policia Militar del Orden Publico (Military Police for
Public Order-PMOP), although the force has also been used, to some
degree, in a counternarcotics role, as well as for security for important
public events and escorting high-profile criminals to the airport for
extradition.

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The enabling law for the PMOP was designed and passed through the
Honduran Congress in August 2013 by President Hernndez himself,
who, prior to being elected President, was head of that body. PMOP is
intended to be a force free of the corruption that by passes the National
Police, and that can legally and practically conduct difficult law
enforcement operations, such as imposing order in urban
neighborhoods dominated by the gangs and acting against
narcotraffickers.
As of August 2015, PMOP had six battalions, each with 524 persons,
as well as a canine unit, and is eventually anticipated to have ten
battalions totaling 5,976 persons. Its enlisted ranks are selected from
among volunteers of the Honduran Armed Forces, though officers are
assigned to the unit, and persons with certain special skills relevant to
police work are invited to join the armed forces specifically to be a part
of PMOP.
Contrary to representation of the PMOP by its opponents as
unqualified soldiers performing police duties, those accepted into the
organization receive special training, including a two-month long
Military Police Operations Course for officers and noncommissioned officers (NCOs), and a four month Basic Course for
enlisted, taught at the armored cavalry post in Choluteca. Only upon
graduating are course attendees officially accepted as members of the
military police. Some may also receive additional training in specialties
such as forensic graphology, customs, crime scene investigations, the
chain of custody, combat medicine, and human rights, taught by
outside experts through the Training School for the Public Ministry.

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To avoid the corruption that permeates the national police, the PMOP
has a program of monitoring and confidence tests, including
psychological evaluation and other screening upon entry, as well as
polygraphs approximately every six months for those in the field. In
contrast to the regular police, the military structure of PMOP also
places its members under greater supervision, albeit at the cost of less
intimate contact with the local people in the zones in which they
operate. To date, FUSINA has deployed PMOP units to major urban
areas such as Tegucigalpa, Comayagela, and San Pedro Sula,
patrolling public areas with notable successes, including restoration of
security to the long-troubled Flor de Campo neighborhood in
Tegucigalpa.
To avoid the corrupting influences of prolonged contact with the local
population, FUSINA has adopted a policy of frequent rotations of
personnel in PMOP and other forces under its control, although at the
cost of imposing a significant logistical burdens on the organization
and supporting units.
Obscured by the ongoing political crisis, the security policies of the
Hernndez government have achieved important successes in the fight
against gangs and insecurity. The Honduras model, or at least selective
aspects of it, merits greater consideration for selective adoption by
other countries whose law enforcement institutions are overwhelmed
by gangs and transnational criminal groups and paralyzed by
corruption.
Yet in doing so, the risks of the approach must also be acknowledged.
The coordinated deployment of police, prosecutors, and judges into
the field in the name of efficiency raises questions and concerns

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regarding citizen rights and the separation of powers. Furthermore, the

creation of a new military police to circumvent the existing, broken and
unpopular national police, increases the possibility that the PMOP will
become a permanent fixture of the Honduran system, coexisting
alongside its gutted, marginalized civilian counterpart.
Finally, a comprehensive solution to the array of interconnected
maladies confronting Honduras also requires confronting poverty,
inequality and families broken by migration, drugs and violence, and
an array of other issues. The Honduran government acknowledges, and
has taken steps to address such issues, but to date, progress has been
much more limited than in the security domain.
The U.S. has supported Honduras struggle against narcotrafficking
and insecurity, and has promised to expand such aid in President
Obamas 2016 budget. Yet the U.S. has also been counterproductively
selective in how it supports the country. It has avoided direct support to
the PMOP, and has maintained distance from FUSINA, focusing
instead on capacity building in civilian institutions, police reform, and
the equipping and training of elite police units such as the Tigres.
While all such support is valuable, the United States should consider
aligning its engagement in a manner more consistent with how
Honduras presently elected government has chosen to confront its
challenges, insofar as such activities are consistent with democracy and
respect for human rights.
The approach represented by FUSINA and Operacion Morazn is not
perfect. Yet despite its military character and the unrelated, but
distracting, political crisis currently faced by the Hernndez regime, the

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Honduran approach to the nations overwhelming security challenges is

creative, credible, and home-grown; the U.S. has an opportunity to
keep faith with a key ally in the region by supporting these initiatives.
The author is Latin America Research Professor with the Strategic Studies
Institute of the U.S. Army War College. The views in this article are strictly his own.
The author thanks the Honduran and U.S. officials, and other experts who gave
their time in support of this article, and a more extensive forthcoming study on
organized crime and insecurity in Honduras.

Filed Under: Policymaking

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