By Radha Barooah and Ana Paula Oliveira Siria Gastélum Félix

This brief aims to bring specific local perspectives to the broader global policymaking agenda, and is intended to inform government officials and policymakers, as well as civil society groups working in this field.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY People from all walks of life have disappeared during Mexico’s so-called ‘war on drugs’; many others become victims of the growing global human trafficking industry; migrants go missing as they travel to seek a better life elsewhere, often displaced by criminal groups. Vulnerable youth, particularly young boys, are co-opted by criminal interests and then ‘disappeared’ to forcibly join gangs, often groomed to provide gang ‘muscle’ or traffic drugs.1 Women and children are often trafficked for sexual exploitation and forced labour.2 Many activists, journalists, politicians and whistle-blowers who campaign against organized crime or corruption have disappeared. Disappearances – as we define the phenomenon in this paper – are deployed for various reasons: to silence the voices of social and political leaders, activists and journalists; to assert violent control over criminal territories and illicit markets; or to monetize vulnerable people as a tradeable commodity. In all these cases, criminal groups have a hand, and although organized crime-related disappearances vary in motive and scope, they disproportionately affect the most marginalized communities. Criminal groups therefore instrumentalize disappearances for different objectives. But a fundamental challenge of dealing with this widespread problem is that cases are rarely differentiated and often assumed by law enforcement authorities to be one-off isolated incidents. However, when examining this issue closely, there is a more menacing pattern behind them, namely that they are often perpetrated by organized criminal groups operating in a particular community or controlling a market territory. By not discerning this broader picture of underlying criminal intent, by focusing on the what and ignoring the why, the phenomenon tends to receive limited attention in public policy agendas. There is also inadequate institutional support and investigative work, which has the effect of impeding victims’ access to justice. The international framework designed to address enforced disappearances – the International Convention for Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances (ICPPED)3 – requires that state involvement in the act (in the form of collusion, authorization or acquiescence) is proven in order to trigger its obligations. Compounding this, the conditions of state involvement and the role of organized crime actors are not clearly set out in the wording of the convention, so cases of disappearances linked to illicit economies tend to be confined to the margins of national and international agendas. Meanwhile, the international human rights discourse on disappearances perpetrated by non-state actors (e.g. criminal groups or networks) has progressed to a certain degree, but it, too, remains ill-equipped to determine the conditions and factors of collusion between organized crime and state actors that would amount to authorization, acquiescence or omission. These imprecisions and gaps in the legal framework result in a general lack of institutional support for victims and their families. Despite this, individuals and communities affected by this crime have developed mechanisms to respond. Since 2019, the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC), through its Resilience Fund, has supported over 50 community-based initiatives and activists searching for people who have disappeared, including relatives seeking justice and journalists investigating disappearances related to organized crime around the world.4 The Resilience Fund has documented first-hand experiences through interviews and dialogues and provided financial and capacity-building support.5 This brief draws from the work and perspectives of such civil society and community members who live in environments that are exposed to disappearances. It assesses this form of organized crime as a serious human rights violation. While informed by the global dynamics of this criminal market, it focuses on contexts in which disappearances occur in Latin America, analyzing in particular the cases of Mexico and Venezuela. The first setting examines how criminal groups strategically deploy disappearances to fulfill various objectives; the other considers how disappearances occur in the mining sector, which experiences a high prevalence of criminality. This policy brief therefore aims to bring these specific local perspectives to the broader global policymaking agenda, and is intended to inform government officials and policymakers, as well as civil society groups working in this field. While some of the evidence in the brief is anecdotal, the authors have corroborated it with open-source data and a literature review. The analysis is exploratory and is designed to add to a small yet growing body of literature on disappearances among vulnerable communities exposed to organized crime and amplify understanding of the pressing nature of the problem in policy circles.

Geneva, SWIT: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. 2024. 28p.

By Harm Reduction International

This report follows development aid being spent on narcotics control around the world. It calls on governments and donors to divest from punitive and prohibitionist drug control regimes which undermine their other health and human rights commitments, and invest in programmes which prioritise community, health and justice.

Mass incarceration and overpopulated prisons. Death sentences. Civilians killed during counter-narcotics operations by specialised police units. Poor farmers’ livelihoods destroyed by aerial spraying and other ‘forced eradication’ of crops they keep. Rights violated by forced treatment programmes, discrimination, and barriers to health care. These are among the consequences of the global war on drugs that has particularly impacted poor, marginalised, and racialised communities around the world.

The evidence base for such negative impacts is now vast and widely recognised internationally, including by United Nations (UN) agencies and in reports published by the World Bank and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Also well-documented internationally are the benefits of alternative approaches to drug policy – including harm reduction initiatives that advance, rather than undermine, public health and human rights – and the lack of evidence that punitive and prohibitionist approaches to drugs have actually curbed drug use. Despite this, vast amounts of international funding continue to flow to punitive drug control activities, while harm reduction remains vastly underfunded.

There is a long history of drug policy being used by world powers to strengthen and enforce their control over other populations, and to target specific communities. Racist and colonial dynamics continue to this day, with wealthier governments, led by the US, spending billions of taxpayer dollars around the world to bolster or expand punitive drug control regimes and related law enforcement. These funding flows are out of pace with existing evidence, as well as international development, health, and human rights commitments, including the goal to end AIDS by 2030. They rely on and reinforce systems that disproportionately harm Black, Brown and Indigenous people worldwide.

In order to decolonise drug policy and advance health- and human rights-based approaches, the material and financial bases of punitive drug control must be revealed and redirected. This report contributes to these goals by synthesising existing research on international financial flows for punitive drug control, and adding new analysis of data on official development assistance (ODA) spent by aid donors and institutions on “narcotics control”. These specific, public budgets are supposed to support international development, including health goals and global poverty reduction. This spending is more commonly associated with initiatives to vaccinate and educate children, for instance – but project-level data included in this report shows that some of it has also gone to supporting things like undercover policing, “intelligence-led profiling”, and efforts to increase arrests and prosecutions for drug-related offences.

LACK OF TRANSPARENCY

Each year, aid donors report their spending to the OECD which maintains what is called its Creditor Reporting System (CRS). According to the most recent update of the data in this system (from mid-December 2022, covering spending through the end of 2021), more than USD 930 million of aid money was spent on “narcotics control” projects in countries around the world in the ten years from 2012-2021. This includes spending by dozens of donors – led by the US, EU, Japan, and the UK. Tens of millions of dollars of this total (at least USD 68 million over the period studied) were spent in countries that have the death penalty for drug-related offences. This raises particularly serious concerns about whether and how aid budgets have bolstered regimes that execute people, building upon previous HRI research in this area. While some donors, such as the UK, have spent less aid this way in recent years, others have increased it – most notably the US, where such spending rose significantly in 2021, in the first year of President Joe Biden’s administration.

Though data availability and transparency vary across projects and donors, this analysis reveals how aid money has supported approaches that undermine global development goals and “do no harm” principles. Put simply: aid funding is supposed to help poor and marginalised communities, while punitive drug control regimes have been shown to disproportionately negatively affect them. This makes such regimes a poor fit for such important yet limited development budgets. This research also shows how these donors have numerous opportunities – as well as obligations – to change how they invest in global drug policy by funding under-resourced, evidence-based, and health- and human rights-centred harm reduction efforts instead, worldwide.

London: HRI, 2023. 38p.

By Michael Vitiello   

The War on Drugs profoundly eroded the Fourth Amendment.1 D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Harry T. Edwards summed it up in the midst of the War when he expressed his “growing concern about the degree to which individual rights and liberties appear to be falling victim to the Government’s ‘War on Drugs.’”2 Scholars have identified many areas where the Supreme Court cut back Fourth Amendment protections as part of the War on Drugs. For instance, the Court has treated the drug-detection dog sniff as “sui generis” and correspondingly refused to recognize such a sniff as a search at all, despite its clear purpose to detect evidence of criminal activity.3 Additionally, the Court has found that police do not engage in Fourth Amendment activity when they fly over a suspect’s property, even when that overflight allows officers to peer into areas within a home’s curtilage that the homeownersought to exclude from the public’s view.4 The Court has also upheld consent searches under circumstances that defy credibility, for example, where a defendant would be able to drive away without more than a traffic ticket, but consents to a search leading to evidence that puts him away for years in prison.5 At the height of the War on Drugs, the Court extended the scope of a vehicle search-incident-to-a-lawful arrest to the entire passenger compartment, including closed containers within the vehicle.6 While, for a time, the Court seemed ready to declare some traffic offenses so trivial that the Fourth Amendment prohibited a custodial arrest,7 the Court rejected such a rule.8 Oddly enough, the Court has held that the Fourth Amendment does not outlaw a custodial arrest even when an officer erroneously believes that he has authority to make that arrest.9 The Court’s unwillingness to allow a defendant to inquire into whether a traffic stop was pretextual at a suppression hearing also contributes to the erosion of Fourth Amendment protections.

73 OKLA. L. REV. 285 (2021)  

By Alabama Appleseed

Report Highlights: Police in Alabama made 2,351 arrests for marijuana possession in 2016. This study analyzed demographic data about the people arrested, along with arrest locations, in addition to examining broader impacts. The report also includes an economic analysis of the cost of marijuana prohibition, conducted by two economists at Western Carolina University. The study found that: • Alabama and its municipalities spent an estimated $22 million to enforce the prohibition against marijuana possession in 2016. • Despite studies showing black and white people use marijuana at the same rates, black people were approximately four times as likely to be arrested for either misdemeanor or felony marijuana possession. • The enforcement of marijuana possession laws has created a crippling backlog at the state agency tasked with analyzing forensic evidence in all criminal cases, including violent crimes.  

Montgomery: Alabama Appleseed & Southern Poverty Law Center, 2018,   

By John Coleman

The drug trade is a very profitable business of enormous proportions, stretching across the world from producer countries to consumer countries, of which the United States of America is the leader. The cost of the product is negligible, with profits far exceeding those of some of the greatest companies in modern times. The drug trade is a war being waged principally against the United States , where innovative methods and ever-shifting pitched battles are fought. Thus far, nothing has been able to put an end to this cancer upon the United States and other western countries.

This book tells, in alarming detail, the story of how the drug trade was started in earnest with the arrival of a mop-haired group of musicians known as the Beatles. The band was brought to the U.S. to go on concert tours, which acted as a magnet for teenagers and provided cover for the distribution of drugs that got a generation of young Americans hooked.

• More....

  Most Americans have only been exposed to the street pusher and know very little about the insidious, illicit trade being carried out in their country; a trade that has cost time and billions in health care and anti-drug police expenditures. This timely book by Dr. Coleman rips the lid off the drug trade, from the opium growing poppy fields of Afghanistan to the desolate coast line at Maccra, Pakistan, to the British Bank of the Middle East in Dubai and beyond to the cocoa bush processing plants in Bolivia and Colombia, where the murderous M19 FARC guerillas, better armed than the Colombian military, run the country.

  This account is no soap opera, but real life in which the drug trade is playing an increasingly ugly and costly role of our treasure and finances. It is a book which should be read by every thinking person concerned about the welfare of his country.Description text goes here

Carson City, NV: World In Review, 2009. 203p.

By Matthew B. Robinson and Renee G. Scherlen

First published in 2007, Lies, Damned Lies, and Drug War Statistics critically analyzed claims made by the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), the White House agency of accountability in the nation's drug war since 1989, as found in the six editions of the annual National Drug Control Strategy between 2000 and 2005. In this revised and updated second edition of their critically acclaimed work, Matthew B. Robinson and Renee G. Scherlen examine seven more recent editions (2006–2012) to once again determine if ONDCP accurately and honestly presents information or intentionally distorts evidence to justify continuing the drug war. They uncover the many ways in which ONDCP manipulates statistics and visually presents that information to the public. Their analysis demonstrates a drug war that consistently fails to reduce drug use, drug fatalities, or illnesses associated with drug use; fails to provide treatment for drug-dependent users; and drives up the prices of drugs. They conclude with policy recommendations for reforming ONDCP's use of statistics, as well as how the nation fights the war on drugs.

Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2014. 310p.

By The Global Commission on Drug Policy

The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world. Fifty years after the initiation of the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, and 40 years after President Nixon launched the US government’s war on drugs, fundamental reforms in national and global drug control policies are urgently needed. Vast expenditures on criminalization and repressive measures directed at producers, traffickers and consumers of illegal drugs have clearly failed to effectively curtail supply or consumption. Apparent victories in eliminating one source or trafficking organization are negated almost instantly by the emergence of other sources and traffickers. Repressive efforts directed at consumers impede public health measures to reduce HIV/AIDS, overdose fatalities and other harmful consequences of drug use. Government expenditures on futile supply reduction strategies and incarceration displace more cost-effective and evidence-based investments in demand and harm reduction.

Global Commission on Drug Policy, 2011. 24p.

By David A. Shirk

The drug war in Mexico has caused some U.S. analysts to view Mexico as a failed or failing state. While these fears are exaggerated, the problems of widespread crime and violence, government corruption, and inadequate access to justice pose grave challenges for the Mexican state. The Obama administration has therefore affirmed its commitment to assist Mexico through continued bilateral collaboration, funding for judicial and security sector reform, and building “resilient communities.”

David A. Shirk analyzes the drug war in Mexico, explores Mexico’s capacities and limitations, examines the factors that have undermined effective state performance, assesses the prospects for U.S. support to strengthen critical state institutions, and offers recommendations for reducing the potential of state failure. He argues that the United States should help Mexico address its pressing crime and corruption problems by going beyond traditional programs to strengthen the country’s judicial and security sector capacity and help it build stronger political institutions, a more robust economy, and a thriving civil society.

Washington, DC; Council on Foireign Relations Press, 2011, 56p.

By Marc Mauer

For more than a quarter century the “war on drugs” has exerted a profound impact on the structure and scale of the criminal justice system. The inception of the “war” in the 1980s has been a major contributing factor to the historic rise in the prison population during this period. From a figure of about 40,000 people incarcerated in prison or jail for a drug offense in 1980, there has since been an 1100% increase to a total of 500,000 today. To place some perspective on that change, the number of people incarcerated for a drug offense is now greater than the number incarcerated for all offenses in 1980. The increase in incarceration for drug offenses has been fueled by sharply escalated law enforcement targeting of drug law violations, often accompanied by enhanced penalties for such offenses. Many of the mandatory sentencing provisions adopted in both state and federal law have been focused on drug offenses. At the federal level, the most notorious of these are the penalties for crack cocaine violations, whereby crack offenses are punished far more severely than powder cocaine offenses, even though the two substances are pharmacologically identical. Despite changes in federal sentencing guidelines, the mandatory provisions still in place require that anyone convicted of possessing as little as five grams of crack cocaine (the weight of two sugar packets) receive a five-year prison term for a first-time offense

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2009. 23p.

By Nazgol Ghandnoosh and Casey Anderson

More people died from opioid-related deaths in 2015 than in any previous year. This record number quadrupled the level of such deaths in 1999. Unlike the heroin and crack crises of the past, the current opioid emergency has disproportionately affected white Americans—poor and rural, but also middle class or affluent and suburban. This association has boosted support for preventative and treatment-based policy solutions. But the pace of the response has been slow, critical components of the solution—such as health insurance coverage expansion and improved access to medication assisted treatment—face resistance, and there are growing efforts to revamp the failed and costly War on Drugs.

This report examines the sources of the opioid crisis, surveys health and justice policy responses at the federal and state levels, and draws on lessons from past drug crises to provide guidance on how to proceed.

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2017. 35p.

By The UK Drug Policy Commission

Over the past ten years, UK drug strategies have increasingly focused on providing treatment and support services for drug-dependent offenders – who commit a disproportionate number of acquisitive crimes (e.g. shoplifting and burglary) – as a way of reducing overall crime levels. This criminal justice focus has been reinforced in the recent 2008 UK drug strategy (new Welsh and Scottish drug strategies are also being developed). The UK Drug Policy Commission (UKDPC) has analysed the evidence for the effectiveness of these initiatives for reducing drug use and reoffending and of the wider impact of this more prominent criminal justice approach. To inform our analysis we commissioned an independent review of the published evidence from leading researchers at the Institute for Criminal Policy Research (ICPR), King’s College London. We also listened to policy experts, local commissioners, drug workers and current and ex-drug users.

London: The UK Drug Policy Commission (UKDPC), 2008. 80p.

By Daniel Mejía and Pascual Restrepo

This paper provides a thorough economic evaluation of the anti-drug policies implemented in Colombia between 2000 and 2006 under the so-called Plan Colombia. The paper develops a game theory model of the war against illegal drugs in producer countries. We explicitly model illegal drug markets, which allows us to account for the feedback effects between policies and market outcomes that are potentially important when evaluating large scale policy interventions such as Plan Colombia. We use available data for the war on cocaine production and trafficking as well as outcomes from the cocaine markets to calibrate the parameters of the model. Using the results from the calibration we estimate important measures of the costs, effectiveness, and efficiency of the war on drugs in Colombia. Finally we carry out simulations in order to assess the impact of increases in the U.S. budget allocated to Plan Colombia, and find that a three-fold increase in the U.S. budget allocated to the war on drugs in Colombia would decrease the amount of cocaine that successfully reaches consumer countries by about 17%.

Bogotá, Colombia: Universidad de los Andes–Facultad de Economía–CEDE, 2008. 60p.

By Marcel Boyer and Rachidi Kotchoni

Connor and Lande (2006) conducted a survey of cartel overcharge estimates and found an average in the range of 31% to 49%. By examining more sources, Connor (2010b) finds a median of 23.3% for all type of cartels and a mean of 50.4% for successful cartels. However, the data used in these studies are estimates rather than true observations, since the true illegal profits of cartels are rarely observable. Therefore, these data are subject to model error, estimation error and publication bias. A quick glance at the Connor database reveals that the universe of overcharge estimates is asymmetric, heterogenous and contains a number of influential observations. Beside the fact that overcharge estimates are potentially biased, fitting a linear OLS model to the data without providing a careful treatment of the problems raised by the publication bias, outliers, asymmetry, and heterogeneity will necessarily produce distorted results. We conduct a meta-analysis of cartel overcharge estimates in the spirit of Connor and Bolotova (2006), but providing a sound treatment of the matters raised above. We find for cartels with initial overcharge estimates lying between 0% and 50%.a bias-corrected mean overcharge estimate of 13.6% with a median of 13.6% and for all cartels of all types a bias-corrected mean of 17.5% with a median of 14.1%

Paris: Institut de Polytechnic Paris, Département d'Économie de l'École Polytechnique, 2011. 60p.

Edited by Eric L. Olson, Andrew Selee, and David A. Shirk

The clichés describing United States-Mexico relations are well known and well worn. Given the enormity of the geographic, historical, cultural, and economic ties between both countries it’s now a commonplace to say Mexico is the United States’ most important bilateral relationship, and vice-versa. The nature of this critical binational relationship has been dissected and probed from every conceivable angle. Yet as we began to research the security relationship between both countries we realized that there is still much that is not generally known amongst the public and policy communities about how Mexico and the United States are working together to deal with the threats posed by organized crime. For example, the unique nature of money laundering operations taking place across the U.S.-Mexico border; the extent to which high-powered firearms are finding their way from U.S. gun shops into the hands of organized crime and street gangs in Mexico; and the surprisingly limited information about the amount of illegal drugs consumed in the United States are not widely understood. Likewise, the deployment of Mexico’s armed forces is only one aspect of the country’s anti-drug strategy. Police agencies are being reorganized and efforts at professionalization are underway. A major reform of Mexico’s justice system was adopted in 2008 that, if fully implemented, should help greatly strengthen the rule of law and reduce the relative power and impunity of organized crime. Yet, while significant progress has already been made in some of Mexico’s 31 states, many questions remain about the efficacy and sustainability of these reforms. But despite these developments, the extreme violence brought on by conflicts amongst and between organized crime groups still garners the most attention. The horrifying and gruesome details of drug violence are plastered on the front pages of daily newspapers and videos of narco-violence are easily available on public websites and YouTube. In some cases, the criminals themselves are publicizing their actions for their own aggrandizement and to terrorize the public. While understanding the nature and extent of the violence afflicting Mexico in recent times is important, we also recognized that the violence itself is more symptom than cause of the underlying problem. For this reason, we thought it important to focus this project’s research on a series of key issues that are feeding the growth of organized crime and related violence in Mexico. We also found it important to examine several policy areas where reform and action by one or both governments could contribute to a long term sustainable approach to weakening the grip of organized crime and illegal drugs on both countries

Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center and San Diego: University of San Diego, Trans-Border Institute, 2011. 388p.

By Daniel Mejía

No one can deny that Colombia has worked tirelessly to fight illegal drug production, trafficking, and organized crime groups linked to these activities. Since 1994, more than two million hectares of coca have been sprayed with glyphosate, 1,890 metric tons of cocaine have been seized, and 28,344 coca leaf processing laboratories have been destroyed. The costs that Colombia has paid in this “war” are very high. Since 2000, the country—with partial funding from the U.S. government—has invested more than US$1.2 billion, or about 1 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), per year into the military component of Plan Colombia.1 However, the costs have not solely been public financial resources. More than 57,000 Colombians are estimated to have been killed between 1994 and 2008 as a consequence of growing illegal drug markets and resulting confrontations between drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) and the Colombian government during the war on drugs.2 This translates into approximately 3,800 additional homicides (or about 25 percent of total homicides) per year from drug-related violence alone. Yet despite such enormous investments and costs, Colombia continues to be a key producer and trafficker of illicit drugs, and in particular of cocaine.

Washington DC: Brookings Institute, 2016. 17p.

By Phil Williams and Vanda Felbab-Brown.

“Drug Trafficking, Violence, and Instability,” will serve to: (1) introduce the series by providing general conceptions of the global security challenges posed by violent armed groups; (2) identify the issues of greatest import to scholars studying the phenomenon; and, (3) emphasize the need for the U.S. Government to understand variations in the challenges it faces from a wide range of potential enemies. In this first report, Dr. Phil Williams and Dr. Vanda Felbab-Brown provide the strategic context for the series and highlight many of the issues that will be addressed in more detail by authors of subsequent monographs in the series. SSI is pleased to offer this report in fulfillment of its mission to assist U.S. Army and Department of Defense senior leaders and strategic thinkers in understanding the key issues of the day.

Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army Wall College Press, 2021. 88p.

By David E. Brown.

International criminal networks mainly from Latin America and Africa—some with links to terrorism—are turning West Africa into a key global hub for the distribution, wholesaling, and production of illicit drugs. These groups represent an existential threat to democratic governance of already fragile states in the subregion because they are using narco-corruption to stage coups d’état, hijack elections, and co-opt or buy political power. Besides a spike in drug-related crime, narcotics trafficking is also fraying West Africa’s traditional social fabric and creating a public health crisis, with hundreds of thousands of new drug addicts. While the inflow of drug money may seem economically beneficial to West Africa in the short-term, investors will be less inclined to do business in the long-term if the subregion is unstable. On net, drug trafficking and other illicit trade represent the most serious challenge to human security in the region since resource conflicts rocked several West African countries in the early 1990s. International aid to West Africa’s “war on drugs” is only in an initial stage; progress will be have to be measured in decades or even generations, not years and also unfold in parallel with creating alternative sustainable livelihoods and addressing the longer-term challenges of human insecurity, poverty, and underdevelopment.

Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College Press, 2013. 104p.

By R. Evan Ellis.

Since his election in 2013, Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez has made significant changes in the strategy and institutions of the country in combating the interrelated scourges of organized crime and violent gangs, which have prejudiced Honduras as well as its neighbors. Principal among these are the creation of a new inter-agency structure, de la Fuerza de Seguridad Interinstitucional Nacional (the National Inter-Agency Security Force [FUSINA]), integrating the military, police, prosecutors, special judges, and other state resources to combat organized crime and delinquency in the country. More controversially, he has created a new police force within the military, the Policía Militar del Orden Público (Military Police of Public Order [PMOP]), which has been deployed both to provide security to the nation’s principal urban areas, Tegucigalpa, Comayagüela and San Pedro Sula, and to participate in operations against organized crime groups. In the fight against narcotrafficking, he has advanced a concept of three interdependent “shields”:

1). An air shield to better control Honduran airspace, enabled by January 2014 enabling the shoot-down of suspected drug flights and the acquisition of three radars from Israel to support intercepts by the Honduran air force;

2). A maritime shield, with new naval bases on the country’s eastern coast, and new shallow-water and riverine assets for intercepting smugglers; and,

3). A land shield, including enhanced control of the border with Guatemala through the Task Force “Maya Chorti.”

Beyond FUSINA, the Hernandez administration has also sought to reform the nation’s national police, albeit with slow progress. It is also reforming the penitentiary system, dominated by the criminal gangs MS-13 and B-18.

The new security policies of the Hernandez administration against transnational organized crime and the gang threat, set forth in its Inter-Agency Security Plan and “OPERATION MORAZÁN,” have produced notable successes. With U.S. assistance, FUSINA and the Honduran government dismantled the leadership of the nation’s two principal family-based drug smuggling organizations, the Cachiros and the Los Valles, and significantly reduced the use of the national territory as a drug transit zone, particularly narco flights. Murders in the country have fallen from 86.5 per 100,000 in 2011, to 64 per 100,000 in 2014.

This monograph focuses on the evolution of the transnational organized crime and gang challenges in Honduras, the strategy and structures of the Hernandez administration in combating them, associated challenges, and provides recommendations for the U.S. military and policymakers to support the country in such efforts.

Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College Press, 2016. 104p.

By Shima D. Keene.

The U.S. Army increasingly faces adversaries that are difficult to define. The threat landscape is further complicated by the silent partnership between criminal organizations, irregular groups, and nation-states. This collaboration, whatever its exact nature, is problematic, because it confounds understanding of the adversary, making existing countermeasures less effective, and thus directly challenging U.S. national security interests. Military action taken without full appreciation of the dynamics of the nature of these relationships is likely to be ineffective at best or suffer unintended consequences. This monograph provides a comprehensive assessment of the threat to U.S. national security interests posed by the silent partners, as well as how the vulnerabilities of the relationships could be exploited to the advantage of the U.S. Army.

Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College Press, 2018. 72p.

By Hal Brands.

In late 2007, the U.S. and Mexican governments unveiled the Merida Initiative. A 3-year, $1.4 billion counternarcotics assistance program, the Merida Initiative is designed to combat the drug-fueled violence that has ravaged Mexico of late. The initiative aims to strengthen the Mexican police and military, permitting them to take the offensive in the fight against Mexico’s powerful cartels. As currently designed, however, the Merida Initiative is unlikely to have a meaningful, long-term impact in restraining the drug trade and drug-related violence. Focussing largely on security, enforcement, and interdiction issues, it pays comparatively little attention to the deeper structural problems that fuel these destructive phenomena. These problems, ranging from official corruption to U.S. domestic drug consumption, have so far frustrated Mexican attempts to rein in the cartels, and will likely hinder the effectiveness of the Merida Initiative as well. To make U.S. counternarcotics policy fully effective, it will be imperative to forge a more holistic, better-integrated approach to the “war on drugs.”

Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College Press, 2008. 68p.