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Guatemalan Troop Deployment
The Guatemalan government announced June 7 that it will send approximately 500 troops, an unknown number of elite presidential guards and other counternarcotics law enforcement agents to the Guatemalan-Mexican border to tackle increasing violence related to drug trafficking. The troops will be deployed within the next 90 days, according to the Guatemalan Interior Ministry. While the effectiveness of this show of force remains to be seen, Guatemalan counternarcotics operations have a poor track record, with corruption widespread in the country’s law enforcement agencies. The Guatemalan government created the Department of Anti-Narcotics Operations (DOAN) in 1994. The body received U.S. funding and training as an elite counter-narcotics force. After eight DOAN agents were arrested for stealing 1 ton of cocaine and several hundred other agents were dismissed, DOAN was dissolved in late 2002 for gross corruption.
The Guatemalan-Mexican border is a strategically significant point in transit routes for drug trafficking operations that bring narcotics from South America north into the United States; the new deployment highlights its strategic importance. Narcotics are transported by air and sea from South America to points in Guatemala, and then proceed northward to the Mexican border via truck. The large shipments of narcotics seized in this region have long been attributed to the Mexican cartels. Most recently, a $15 million shipment of cocaine confiscated in early April was attributed to the Gulf cartel.
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