Why is Sen. Patrick J. Leahy threatening to kill vital U.S. anti-narcotics support in a key smuggling corridor when his home state of Vermont is awash in illegal drugs? He must have a heck of a reason, right? You be the judge. Despite months of investigation by various authorities, Mr. Leahy, a Democrat, continues to second-guess the Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) eyewitness accounts of a firefight that took place on a river in the middle of the Honduran jungle in the dead of night....

Central America constitutes an important strategic area for the United States. As discussed in my recent book “Latin America in the Post-Chavez Era: The Threat to U.S. Security”, legal and institutional collapse in Central America could have very serious consequences for regional and U.S security. Central America has been victim to increasing drug cartel activity as the situation in Colombia and Mexico has turned more complicated for the drug lords. In addition, Central America is...

To secure a lasting peace, talks between Colombia’s government and FARC rebels need to include a clear, credible and coherent plan for reckoning with decades of human rights abuses. In its latest report, , the International Crisis Group proposes a model for transitional justice in the context of the promising negotiations between the administration of President Juan Manuel Santos and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to end decades of civil conflict. This requires that...

Four members of the Bolivarian Alliance, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua have offered asylum to the National Security Agency (NSA) leaker, Edward Snowden. Snowden is believed to be in Russia where he has repeatedly asked for asylum that has not been conceded by the Russian authorities. Meanwhile, Snowden has not responded to the offer by the four Latin American countries. At the same time that the United States was applying pressure on them not to provide the requested asylum, the...

But another significant, and so far less widely discussed, issue is coming to the fore - if and when peace is achieved, what role can or should the Colombian military play? Much of the focus to date has seemingly been around the possible demobilisation of the several thousand Farc (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) rebels who have been fighting the Colombian state for almost five decades. "People are talking about the demobilisation of the Farc," retired Col Hugo Bahamon...

After decades of failed negotiations and attempts to defeat the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas and the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN) militarily, a political solution to the Western Hemisphere’s oldest conflict may be in sight. Following a year of secret contacts, formal peace talks with FARC are to open in Oslo in October 2012 and continue in Havana. They may be extended to the ELN. There seems a firmer willingness to reach an agreement, as the...

Early in October, peace negotiations will take place between the Colombian Government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in Oslo, Norway. If successful, the talks will continue in Havana, Cuba. These talks are taking place against the backdrop of major military victories by the Colombian army against the FARC, the elimination of key FARC leaders in the last four years, and, confirmed connections between the FARC and the governments of Venezuela and Ecuador. The upcoming...

Following a two-year investigation, federal prosecutors have submitted a mindboggling 30,000 pages of documentation and 2,000 recorded phone calls that paint an extensive picture of how one of Mexico's most powerful drug-trafficking organizations raises, moves and eventually washes its illicit funds. The indictment, issued by the Northern District of Texas, charges fifteen people with laundering millions of dollars in drug profits on a sleepy Oklahoma ranch on behalf of the Los Zetas cartel,...

A police report reveals the meeting of a Brazilian drug lord and the Bolivian government’s second-in-command. Bolivia’s President Evo Morales is proud to encourage the cultivation of coca, the raw material for more than half of the cocaine and crack consumed in Brazil, arguing that its leaves are used to produce tea and traditional medicines. However, the United Nations (UN) estimates that only one-third of the coca planted in the country is necessary to meet this demand. The...

Known as El Chapo for his short, stocky frame, Guzmán is 55, which in narco-years is about 150. He is a quasi-mythical figure in Mexico, the subject of countless ballads, who has outlived enemies and accomplices alike, defying the implicit bargain of a life in the drug trade: that careers are glittering but brief and always terminate in prison or the grave. When Pablo Escobar was Chapo’s age, he had been dead for more than a decade. In fact, according to the Drug Enforcement...