United States Urged to Curb Militarization Throughout Latin America Jim Lobe - Inter Press Service
go to original September 23, 2013

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The United States needs to phase down its drug war and tighten the reins on its cooperation with local militaries and police in Latin America, according to a new report released in Washington by three influential think tanks.

Of particular interest is the increase in training deployments to Latin American and the Caribbean by the Special Operations Forces (SOF) – elite units like the Army’s Green Berets and Navy SEALS – due in part to the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and drawdown from Afghanistan.

Over the past decade, SOF ranks have more than doubled to about 65,000, and their commander, Adm. William McRaven, has been particularly aggressive in seeking new missions for his troops in new theatres, including Latin America and the Caribbean where they are training thousands of local counterparts.

“You can train a lot of people for the cost of one helicopter,” Adam Isacson, an analyst with the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), told IPS.

He noted that the increased investment in SOF was part of a much larger Pentagon strategy of maintaining a “light (military) footprint” in countries around the globe while bolstering its influence with local military institutions.

The Pentagon, however, is much less transparent than the State Department, and its programmes are often not subject to the same human-rights conditions and do not get the same degree of Congressional oversight.

Read the rest at Inter Press Service

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