NAS MONTHLY REPORT, NOVEMBER 2006

UNCLAS LIMA 004566 SIPDIS SENSITIVE SIPDIS STATE FOR INL/LP STATE FOR WHA/PPC ONDCP FOR LT COL RONALD GARNER E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: SNAR KCRM ASEC PREL PE SUBJECT: NAS MONTHLY REPORT, NOVEMBER 2006 REF: LIMA 3995 -------------- SUMMARY -------------- ¶1. (U) The key developments in November 2006: ** As of November 30, CORAH surpasses annual goal by eradicating 10,006 hectares of coca leaf. ** The GOP's 2007 Eradication Plan awaiting final approval--probably in December. ** Institute for Tropical Crops (ICT) has five-year plan for self-sufficiency. ** GOP's Minister of Interior visits Santa Lucia police base and sees eradication; speaks with police cadets and CORAH. ** Second police "pre-academy" starts in Mazamari. ** Narcotrafficking ignites economic boom in cities of Ayacucho and Huanta. ** NAS Aviation coping with airlift gaps left by poor maintenance of GOP aircraft. ** The last 4 of 23 UH-2s arrive in Peru. ** The Minister of Justice declared her support for non-penal asset forfeiture law. END SUMMARY -------------- --- YEARLY GOAL REACHED: 10,000 HECTARES ERADICATED -------------- --- ¶2. (U) As of November 30, CORAH surpassed its annual goal by eradicating 10,006 hectares of coca leaf. CORAH's success comes despite another delay in operations from November 14 to 27 due to the GOP's need for police support for the regional and municipal elections on November 19. CORAH resumed operations on November 28 with 120 eradicators and 62 police in the field. The full police contingent has yet to return to Santa Lucia. Reaching the 10,000-hectare goal is all the more notable because over the past year, CORAH has been delayed 4 times for over 2 weeks when the police have been taken away to support 3 national elections and a Presidential inauguration. ¶3. (U) The GOP's CY 2007 Eradication Plan was recently reviewed by NAS, USAID, and PAS. It is expected to be approved in early December. As in past years, DEVIDA has included a contingency plan to enter the Monzon if the GOP provides sufficient resources and exhibits the political will. In addition, DEA and DEVIDA have approved for publication the results of the "Cocaine Production Averted" (CPA) formula, which makes a coca plant/cocaine-produced equivalent. This will be reported along with hectares eradicated at the end of the year. Although we will continue refining the CPA, its current 97-percent accuracy rate provides an acceptable set of data. The Embassy's Public Affairs Section chairs a weekly communications meeting on CN and AD, attended by USAID, NAS, and POL. The press secretaries for the Minister of Interior and DEVIDA and the SIPDIS CORAH Executive Director have been invited to participate in order to coordinate communications strategies such as the release of the new Eradication Plan. ¶4. (U) An eradication-alternative development conference is being planned in Lima on December 5-6. Joint NAS-USAID delegations are coming from Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Afghanistan as well as representatives of INL/LP, USAID-Washington, and ONDCP. The conferees will discuss best practices in coordinating programmd eradication with alternative development efforts. -------------- ICT PLANS FOR SELF-SUFFICIENCY -------------- ¶5. (U) NAS has been working with the Institute for Tropical Crops (ICT) to prepare a five-year plan that includes the development of a cooperative to allow farmers to more effectively market their crops and attain self-sufficiency. Both the cooperative and marketing components will be part of ICT's FY 2007 budget. -------------- -------------- MINISTER OF INTERIOR VIEWS ERADICATION OPERATIONS -------------- -------------- ¶6. (U) After several attempts to get Minister of Interior Pilar Mazzetti to visit field operations, she finally went to Santa Lucia on November 8 with several generals and Vice Minister Dardo Lopez-Dolz. The group did an overview of the eradication operations via a MI-17 helicopter, and Mazzetti gave inspirational speeches to the current class of 250 police cadets, affirming the presence of 50 women and indigenous representatives, to the students in the pre-Academy that started in October, and to the CORAH workers in camp. It was difficult to adhere to the schedule with the competing priorities of the generals. The scheduled trip to Juanjui to visit AD sites, highlighting the successful nexus between eradication and AD, was postponed. However, the Minister promised to return in the coming month to review AD programs in the company of several other Ministers--a promise she set about arranging as soon as she returned to Lima. -------------- INTERDICTION OPS SLOWED; PRE-ACADEMIES START -------------- ¶7. (U) In November, the DIRANDRO Special Operations Team destroyed 27 cocaine-base laboratories in the Apurimac/Ene River Valleys (VRAE) and in the Upper Huallaga. Based on data from DIRANDRO, so far this year 698 cocaine-base laboratories, 11 cocaine-HCl laboratories, 2 metric tons of chemical precursors, and 1.39 metric tons of coca leaf were destroyed. Also, according to DIRANDRO, it seized 4,469 kg of cocaine base and 14,340 kg of cocaine HCl. DIRANDRO pulled the interdiction team from the field to provide security for the November 19 elections as they did with the police providing security for eradication. ¶8. (U) NAS and DIRANDRO started its second "pre-academy" in Mazamari. The one in Santa Lucia started in October and the Ayacucho pre-academy is slated to open in December. So far, the schools have attracted 600 applicants from the local area, of which 154 qualified for Mazamari and 167 for Santa Lucia (a total of 321 students). The schooling lasts six months. The goal of the pre-academy is to prepare local students, who have received substandard, secondary-school educations, to compete for placement in the police academies. -------------- -------------- NARCO-ECONOMY, NARCO-CULTURE THRIVING IN AYACUCHO -------------- -------------- ¶9. (SBU) During a pre-election visit to the Ayacucho region on Nov. 8-10, poloff interviewed a range of local people who claimed that narcotrafficking from the VRAE sustains the economies of the cities of Ayacucho and Huanta. Narcotrafficking and coca-growing in the VRAE was cited as a key source of jobs, particularly for area youth who migrate to the area during school vacations. The extent of narco-penetration in Ayacucho is surprising, and suggests a tough fight ahead for licit alternatives. To the person, contacts alleged that the drug trade is financing a mini-economic boom in the city and region. This includes: new houses in Huanta, new businesses in Ayacucho (opened by people with no visible source of financing) and, above all, a surge in youth spending, in the form of packed discotheques on weekends, high levels of alcohol consumption, and abundant cell phones (see reftel). -------------- -- NAS AVIATION SUPPORTS A VARIETY OF CN MISSIONS -------------- -- ¶10. (SBU) NAS Aviation is continuing its support of CN operations east of the Andes using USG and Peruvian National Police (PNP) helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. The PNP aviation support has not been dependable, mostly due to a lack of GOP financial support, resulting in delayed maintenance, lack of spare parts, and no fuel. NAS does provide limited financial support for CN missions. Since many of the aircraft in the Peruvian armed forces and the PNP are not in flyable condition, the aircraft supporting the CN mission are requested by the GOP on short notice to handle other missions, e.g., perceived CT threats, medevacs, and flights for GOP leaders. The FAP Counternarcotics Joint C-26 Air Squadron continued to support counternarcotics missions. The aircraft have verified the condition of 37 clandestine runways with 3 being detected active and discovered 3 new runways. -------------- FINAL FOUR HUEY-2 HELICOPTERS ARRIVE IN PERU -------------- ¶11. (SBU) On November 7, the Ambassador and the Peruvian Minister of Interior participated in a ceremony at the PNP airbase in Lima to mark the arrival of the last four UH-2 helicopters to arrive in Peru. NAS now has a fleet of 23 UH-2s. These four UH-2s are the culmination of a three-year plan and $60 million to replace 16 UH-1s with 24 UH-2 "Super Hueys". (Per INL/A, the final UH-2 will not go to Peru, so we have 23 UH-2s.) The additional airlift capability was needed to transport the increase in CN police east of the Andes from 200 to a force of 3,000 in 2008. -------------- -------------- MOVING TOWARD NATIONALIZATION OF FLIGHT TRAINING -------------- -------------- ¶12. (SBU) In Pucallpa, nine Peruvian air police pilots are completing the UH-2 qualification course in Pucallpa, which is the first one being jointly taught by HAI from Titusville, Florida and Peruvian Instructor Pilots (IP). In January and February 2007, HAI will qualify additional Peruvian pilots as IPs, and the March qualification course will be conducted entirely by Peruvian IPs. This is another step toward nationalization of the Air Police. The program will be monitored by Air Wing standardization instructor pilots to ensure DOS requirements are met. -------------- -------------- PORT SEIZURES INCREASE AS TECHNOLOGY AND TRAINING TAKE EFFECT -------------- -------------- ¶13. (SBU) In November, the Peruvian Customs/Police Manifest Review Unit (MRU) at the port of Callao sent out 16 domestic alerts and 3 international alerts, one of which proved positive so far. The MRU received a DEA tip that a container destined for Spain contained cocaine HCL packed in asparagus. An international alert was sent to DEA Bahamas where 318 kg were seized at the container's first transshipment point. ¶14. (SBU) From November 1-27, interdiction operations at Jorge International Airport (Lima) resulted in 52 arrests and the seizure of 178.64 kg of cocaine HCL. Included in the total were 23 passengers ("mules") carrying drugs. We expect an increase in seizures and arrests with the acquisition of a new body x-ray scanner, which will arrive by March 2007. One trafficking trend noted this month is the use of the Internet for buying tickets that provide boarding passes (normally only for domestic flights) where the "mule" does not carry checked baggage and attempts to go straight to the gate, by-passing or slipping past security checkpoints. On one occasion, six mules, attempted to take a flight to Tacna in southern Peru and transfer to a flight to Brazil. In addition, the Peruvian Post Office (SERPOST) counter-drug program seized a total of 63 kg of cocaine HCL from 17 packages. ¶15. (SBU) On November 27-30, over 300 Peruvian Airport Customs, Police, Immigration, and airline officials were trained to identify, report, and/or arrest individuals traveling with fraudulent documents (e.g., visas, passports, resident alien cards). Two U.S. Customs and Border Protection (USCBP) officers conducted the training. On November 21-24, NAS Ports Program sponsored technician training on ion scanners for Peruvian Customs and Counterdrug Police at the Smith-Heiman Detection Systems training center in Toronto, Canada. This course will ensure that the ion-scanners can be maintained by Peruvian technicians, which will greatly increase Peru's self sufficiency with ion-scanners. The five Peruvian Customs/Police officials who received the training will also train others. -------------- -------------- GOP MINISTER SUPPORTS NON-PENAL ASSET FORFEITURE LAW -------------- -------------- ¶16. (SBU) Money laundering issues are gaining a higher profile in Peru with the help of NAS programs. The NAS Anti-Money Laundering Program joined efforts with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Peru to fund the work of a Colombian expert to work with the Peruvian Ministry of Justice to draft a non-penal asset forfeiture law that will strengthen Peru's anti-money laundering and asset forfeiture legal framework. The Minister of Justice met with a Peruvian congressional group on December 1 and declared her intent to present this new law, which would enable the government to confiscate illicit assets through non-penal jurisdictional procedures to the Peruvian Congress in December. The new law would be a very important tool in the war against organized crime and the laundering of illegal assets. STRUBLE