Cablegate: Nas Monthly Report, November 2006

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DE RUEHPE #4566/01 3382025
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R 042025Z DEC 06
FM AMEMBASSY LIMA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 3193
INFO RUEHBO/AMEMBASSY BOGOTA 4148
RUEHBR/AMEMBASSY BRASILIA 7112
RUEHLP/AMEMBASSY LA PAZ DEC QUITO 0863
RHMFIUU/DEPT OF STATE AIR WING PATRICK AFB FL
RHEHOND/DIRONDCP WASHDC
RHMFIUU/COGARD INTELCOORDCEN WASHINGTON DC
RULSJGA/COMDT COGARD WASHINGTON DC//G-CI/G-M/G-OLE//
RUCOWCA/COMLANTAREA COGARD PORTSMOUTH VA
RUWDQAA/COMPACAREA COGARD ALAMEDA CA

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

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SUMMARY
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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

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