The hyperlink between terrorism and drug trafficking organizations, or DTOs, is now on the forefront of public debate because of President Donald Trump’s current designation of cartels as international terrorist organizations.
His suggestion to deploy U.S. Particular Forces to dismantle cartels has met with hypothesis. The truth is, U.S. Particular Forces and federal regulation enforcement brokers have cooperated efficiently towards worldwide DTOs up to now — and their sacrifices are sadly being forgotten.
The 9/11 terrorist assaults introduced consideration to one thing neglected for a few years — the connection between terrorist actions and worldwide drug trafficking. Because the International Battle on Terror developed, it turned clear that Afghanistan-based drug traffickers have been supporting the Islamic terrorist organizations by the opium and cannabis commerce.
With Afghanistan producing greater than 80% of the world’s illicit opium, Islamic terrorists relied on drug trafficking to fund weapons, provides and recruit fighters. The robust connection between medicine and terror prompted a 2010 report from the Senate Caucus on Worldwide Narcotics Management to state that “the Taliban operates as a drug cartel and … the drug commerce in Afghanistan should be addressed with the identical degree of resolve because the insurgency.”
A partnership between DOD and regulation enforcement
The U.S. navy confronted a really complicated downside. Transnational legal DTOs are well-armed, well-funded and sometimes obtain assist from state actors, and function with group and command constructions that may mirror navy forces.
Some drug lords, comparable to Burma’s Khun Sa, have wielded non-public militia teams. Nonetheless, the legal nature of DTOs makes them completely different from navy forces. Dismantling them efficiently requires not solely military-level power however regulation enforcement experience. This turned evident in Afghanistan as navy forces encountered clandestine drug processing labs all through the nation.
This led to an in depth and profitable partnership between the Pentagon and the Drug Enforcement Administration. Though newer and smaller than different three-letter businesses, the DEA is second to none within the experience it instructions in detecting and dismantling drug cartels and thwarting complicated unlawful drug-related operations.
As a single mission company, the DEA’s core focus is to determine and eradicate essentially the most nefarious legal networks. The extent of legal violence and deceit that that DEA brokers deal with frequently would appall members of the general public, but lots of their successes will eternally be unknown.
Within the wake of 9/11, the U.S. authorities invited all federal businesses to take part within the International Battle on Terror by allocating assets and growing a technique to help with eradicating international threats. This resulted within the creation of DEA’s Kabul Nation Workplace, which at its top consisted of fifty particular brokers and intelligence analysts who got down to determine and goal essentially the most infamous drug traffickers within the area.
These efforts revealed that almost all of those traffickers have been linked to the identical terrorist teams that the Protection Division was anxiously focusing on.
In 2004, the U.S. navy and the DEA expanded their cooperation with the profitable creation of the DEA’s Overseas-deployed Advisory Help Staff, or FAST. This noticed elite SOCOM models paired with a extremely educated and choose group of top-notch legal investigators from DEA with very good tactical acumen.
Profitable missions
This three way partnership was aimed toward dismantling narco-terrorist teams in distant areas the place deeply rooted legal exercise and associated excessive violence existed — together with not solely in Afghanistan however in different areas comparable to Central and South America.
SOCOM models together with the U.S. Military Inexperienced Berets, the U.S. Navy SEALs, the U.S. Marine Forces Particular Operations Command (MARSOC), the a hundred and sixtieth Particular Operations Aviation Unit (SOAR) — higher often known as the Night time Stalkers — and worldwide coalition forces labored intently and efficiently with FAST brokers to thwart transnational legal teams.
Whereas SOCOM models targeted on conducting navy goals and took on violent narco-terrorists, regulation enforcement brokers educated and mentored native counterparts on proof assortment, processing of proof, informant dealing with, arrests and decoding intelligence to uncover further legal exercise.
This mutual assist completed a lot. In Afghanistan in 2008, U.S. Particular Forces and FAST brokers seized over 262 metric tons of cannabis in Operation Albatross from a Taliban “superlab.”
From Could to June 2011, Particular Forces models and FAST brokers coordinated Operation Khafa Kardan, a 30-day mission by which 90 regulation enforcement operations passed off alongside U.S. navy missions, ensuing within the seizure of 12,766 kilograms of opium, 127 kilograms of heroin, 25,666 precursor chemical substances along with an estimated 50 kilos of selfmade explosives plus IEDs and weapons. These examples barely scratch the floor of what was achieved.
Fallen heroes
Nice sacrifices have been made to perform these missions. On Oct. 26, 2009, seven U.S. navy service members have been killed alongside three DEA brokers in a helicopter crash in western Afghanistan. Maj. Gen. Charles Cleveland of SOCOM designated the incident as a combat-related loss.
The U.S. troopers included Chief Warrant Officer Michael P. Montgomery, Chief Warrant Officer Niall Lyons, Employees Sgt. Shawn McNabb, Sgt. Josue Hernandez-Chavez and Sgt. Nikolas Mueller of SOAR, and Employees Sgt. Keith R. Bishop and Sgt. 1st Class David E. Metzger of the seventh Particular Forces Group (Airborne).
The three DEA brokers who misplaced their lives have been Particular Brokers Chad Michael, Forrest Leamon and Michael Weston. SA Michael had beforehand labored with the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Workplace, whereas SA Weston and SA Leamon have been U.S. navy veterans. SA Weston had served in each the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps, and SA Leamon had served within the U.S. Navy.
Relics of the fallen DEA brokers’ private results, together with a charred uniform patch and melted firearm fragments, have been recovered from the smoldering 2009 helicopter crash at nice private danger. These hallowed objects have been mounted in a shadowbox at FAST headquarters to honor the reminiscence of the fallen.
The names of all 10 males who misplaced their lives collectively in devotion to a typical trigger are inscribed on a single headstone at Arlington Nationwide Cemetery.
To not be forgotten
Regardless of its far-reaching successes, the FAST program was disbanded in March 2017 beneath the tenure of DEA’s Performing Administrator Chuck Rosenberg, appointed by President Barack Obama in 2015.
The shadowbox containing the Afghanistan crash relics from the fallen—displayed reverently in FAST headquarters as a memorial—was unceremoniously faraway from show and warehoused by DEA after this system ended with brutal disregard.
The sacrifices made by US Particular Forces and regulation enforcement brokers in combating narco-terrorists are undimmed in what they achieved collectively and within the reminiscence they left within the hearts of their comrades, who nonetheless recall them vividly and honor them.
Though its achievements have light from view lately, the FAST program created a profitable blueprint for the way the US navy can efficiently deal with violent threats posed by transnational legal organizations alongside federal regulation enforcement—a blueprint that’s extremely related at the moment.
Zita Ballinger Fletcher beforehand served as editor of Navy Historical past Quarterly and Vietnam magazines and because the historian of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. She holds an M.A. with distinction in navy historical past.
