Fewer US Warships in Costa Rica Waters in 2011 – The war on drugs remains a farce.

This week the Costa Rican government is calling for a six month extension of the permission to allow 46 US Coast Guard ships and 27 US Navy vessels in Costa Rican waters. The Costa Rican Minister of Security José María Tijerina said that the request is part of ongoing operations against drug trafficking.

The Government asked the deputies to extend permission for U.S. artillery boats to dock at ports in Costa Rica for another six months, from 1st January to 30th June 2011. The boats would be authorized to dock on the Pacific coast and the Caribbean, to refuel or escort anti-drug boats, but crews can not enter Costa Rica with weapons.

According to the Costa Rica Constitution, only Congress can approve foreign military vessels docking in Costa Rica.

“It’s a routine request. Costa Rica does not have to discontinue monitoring the seas. Costa Rica has the right and nobody should feel alarmed,” said Tijerina. “It is to patrol the sea, not Calero Island (Caribbean end of the border recently invaded by the Nicaraguan military). We do not care how the Nicaraguan authorities interpret this.” He states that: “We do not adjust our foreign policy to please the likes of Ortega (President of Nicaragua),” and also added that: “If they are annoyed or they don’t like it, that’s their problem.”

On this occasion, the U.S. government sent their list which included fewer boats and also excluded the large helicopter carriers. During the most recent period, 53 Coast Guard ships and 46 Navy vessels had permission to dock in Costa Rica, in the next six months the figures will drop to 46 and 27 respectively. For example, in the case of Coast Guard crew numbers would fall from about 4,700 to 4,300 while the number of helicopters would rise another 34 to 43.

The Costa Rican Minister of Security stressed that not all boats will come at once, but each is authorized to do so if needed and, members Juan Carlos Mendoza (PAC) and Walter Cespedes (PUSC) announced their opposition to the arrival of US Navy’s ships.

In my first article in July 2010 46 US Warships Plus 7,000 US Marines On Route To Costa Rica? I asked “With this kind of nation destroying firepower, it gives real meaning to the expression “war on drugs”, but if this a real six month “war on drugs” we should expect to see some fantastic results, right?”

While I wholeheartedly agree with genuinely serious efforts made to stop drug trafficking, the one glaringly obvious question that nobody appears to be asking is how successful has this “war on drugs” been against the traffickers?

After 40 years, the United States’ war on drugs has cost $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what?

Even U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske concedes the strategy hasn’t worked. “In the grand scheme, it has not been successful,” Kerlikowske told The Associated Press. “Forty years later, the concern about drugs and drug problems is, if anything, magnified, intensified.”

Across the pond in the UK on the 16th December 2010 a former British defense secretary and drugs minister Bob Ainsworth said that his position in the British defense office, where he monitored his country’s interests in Afghanistan, “showed… that the war on drugs creates the very conditions that perpetuate the illegal trade, while undermining international development and security.”

He added that: “It is time to replace our failed war on drugs with a strict system of legal regulation, to make the world a safer, healthier place, especially for our children. We must take the trade away from organised criminals and hand it to the control of doctors and pharmacists.”

Ainsworth is calling for “an independent, evidence-based review, exploring all policy options, including further resourcing the war on drugs, decriminalising the possession of drugs, and legally regulating their production and supply.”

On 17th September 2010 in an article in La Nacion the Costa Rican Minister of Security José María Tijerina declared that since 2006 Costa Rica had dismantled 381 organizations (48 of them international) and captured 102 tons of cocaine which is a very impressive haul for a tiny little Central American country with limited resources.

Tijerina has always insisted that “we need better support” but even though Mexico receives more than US$800 million from the US as part of the Merida Initiative to help with the “war on drugs”, Costa Rica receives a tiny fraction of that – only US$5.3 million.




The US claims to have accurate intelligence on illegal drug trafficking – one can only assume from satellites – which one would hope would guarantee a lot of big drug busts… The US Southern Command says that 970 tons of cocaine will pass through the isthmus this year and, in 2009 US authorities detected 552 “suspicious” maritime voyages on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica and 489 on the Caribbean.




Yet even though the US authorities were able to detect all these “suspicious” maritime voyages, nothing whatsoever seems to have been achieved by the US forces in 2010.

But with all these high-tech warships around, could they not investigate a few of those “suspicious” maritime voyages?

Isn’t that exactly what they say they are supposed to be doing? If we’re talking about 489 of these on the Caribbean in 2009 then that would be about 9 per week, right? So let’s assume that we’ve seen about the same amount in 2010 which means that in six months there were approximately 244 of these “suspicious” boats racing up the coast?

Did the drug traffickers perhaps turn off their engines and row their way around these US warships with tons of cocaine on board to avoid detection?

Why can’t the same type of “unmanned aerial vehicles” technology (UAV) or “remotely piloted aircraft” be used to destroy drug carrying boats that are currently being used to kill “terrorists” in Pakistan?

Unfortunately there are unintended consequences because “For each Al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorist killed by US drones, 140 innocent Pakistanis also had to die. Over 90 per cent of those killed in the deadly missile strikes were civilians, claim authorities…”

This doesn’t make us any friends, it makes us many more enemies and we shouldn’t forget that the people of Pakistan are considered “allies of the United States in the war against terror”. In fact, “drones are currently killing people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. It should be noted that the United States is not at war with any of those countries, which should mean that in a sane world the killing is illegal under both international law and the U.S. Constitution,” states Philip Girald, a former CIA officer.

Here’s why we should consider using “drones for drugs” off the coast of Costa Rica:

1. Far Cheaper: A Predator UAV system costs only $20 million and a Reaper system costs $53 million which would save the taxpayer gazillions of dollars a day.
2. More “Fun”: Blowing a few, fast moving drug boats into smithereens every day off the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica would also be a lot more fun and challenging for the “remote warriors” sitting comfortably at their computers in Creech Air Force Base in Nevada than killing one “terrorist” for every 140 civilians in Pakistan, surely? And job satisfaction has to be important.
3. Zero Collateral Damage: In Costa Rica waters, there would be no collateral damage because the drug traffickers – wherever they are from – aren’t sailing up the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica with their grandmothers, wives, children and picnic baskets!

But that would mean that our politicians would be serious about the war on drugs which of course would be a extraordinarily silly and very unprofitable idea for them because as we all know the “war on drugs” is a total farce because “the global drug trade has long been used by empires for fuelling and financing conflict with the aim of facilitating imperial domination.” We only need to look at the pitiful results the “war on drugs” has achieved in Mexico to know this…

But, we – the little people – aren’t supposed to know that…

“Without opium, there would not have been a British empire“, opium “constituted one of the main pillars on which Hong Kong was built” and today, the revenues generated from the CIA sponsored Afghan drug trade are sizeable”.

In 1980 White House drug advisor David Musto told the White House Strategy Council (1) on Drug Abuse that “we were going into Afghanistan to support the opium growers in their rebellion against the Soviets” and as heroin from Afghanistan poured into the the US, the number of drug related deaths in New York that year rose by 77%.

A Senate staff report Senator Levin summarizes the record: has estimated “that $500 billion to $1 trillion in criminal proceeds are laundered through banks worldwide each year, with about half of that amount moved through United States banks.” James Petras concludes that “the U.S. economy has become a narco-capitalist one, dependent on the hot or dirty money, much of it from the drug traffic”.

There were and there still are wars for drugs. In fact, the Western world has repeatedly gone to war to guarantee the flow of deadly, illegal but extremely profitable drugs and, with American special forces troops now operating in 75 countries it should be crystal clear even to Lady Gaga fans who exactly is causing the most terror across the globe.

The same twisted logic that applies to the “war on drugs” applies to the “war on terror” and Robin Cook, a former British MP and Minister of Foreign Affairs summed it up best when he said that:

“The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaida. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the ‘devil’ only in order to drive the ‘TV watcher’ to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the US and the lobbyists for the US war on terrorism are only interested in making money.”

Four weeks after saying this, Robin Cook who “was a keen walker and cyclist” died at aged 59 “after collapsing while hill walking in north-west Scotland.”

In watching the news about Costa Rica very, very carefully, as far as I know, we have seen no announcements of any kind about any successful drug busts thanks to the efforts of this enormous armada of US warships and Coast Guard vessels off the coast of Costa Rica but I’m still hoping…

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Written by Scott Oliver, author of 1. Costa Rica Real Estate Scams & How To Avoid Them, 2. How To Buy Costa Rica Real Estate Without Losing Your Camisa, and 3. Costa Rica’s Guide To Making Money Offshore.

(1) ‘The Politics of Heroin. CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade’ by Alfred W. McCoy.

Andrew Makarik

to@welovecostarica.com

Andrew Makarik is the main editor of WeLoveCostaRica, a fan of this sunny country. He is also a loving husband and a has a lovely daughter. By being a devoted family man and the biggest Costa Rica fan, he wants to make more people feel at home there. WeLoveCostaRica unites people and helps them find new home or a new travel destination. This website is a friendly community where everyone can find not only information, but also new friends and travel pals. Andrew is also passionate about IT and programming, so he himself maintains a friendly atmosphere in this cozy environment of WeLoveCostaRica.com.