VZCZCXYZ0012
RR RUEHWEB

DE RUEHGT #0904/01 2611833
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 181832Z SEP 09
FM AMEMBASSY GUATEMALA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 0034
INFO WHA CENTRAL AMERICAN COLLECTIVE

UNCLAS GUATEMALA 000904 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
DEPARTMENT FOR INL (MAYRA AHEARN) AND H (BARBARA FLECK) 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: OREP PHUM PREL PGOV PINS ASEC EAID MARR MCAP MOPS GT
SUBJECT: STAFFDEL JACOBSTEIN STRUCK BY GUATEMALA'S SECURITY 
CHALLENGES 
 
REF: A) SECSTATE 85132 B) GUATEMALA 776 C) GUATEMALA 497 
 
¶1. (SBU) Summary:  Human rights and UN officials told Staffdel 
Jacobstein September 1-4 that weak institutions, vulnerability to 
narco-traffickers, and corruption were all serious problems facing 
the Colom government.  These points were reiterated by the Country 
Team, and driven home during the Staffdel's site visit to an 
exhumation of victims of an extrajudicial execution in the 
Department of Chimaltenango.  End Summary. 
 
¶2.  (SBU) Staffdel Jacobstein - consisting of professional staff 
members Eric Jacobstein and Fred Ratliff from the House 
Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, and Robyn Wapner from the 
House Foreign Affairs Committee - visited Guatemala from September 
1-4.  The purpose of their visit was to explore increased violence 
and drug cartel activity in Guatemala and the impact of the Merida 
Initiative and other U.S. foreign assistance programs in the 
country.  The Staffdel also examined the work the Embassy is doing 
to promote good governance and rule of law and to fight 
institutionalized corruption.  Highlights of their visit included 
meetings with the Attorney General, the Director of the UN-led 
International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), and 
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  Outside of the capital, the 
Staffdel met with members of a rural indigenous community in the 
Department of Chimaltenango, and visited an Embassy-sponsored model 
police station and a youth-gang outreach center in Villanueva. 
 
¶3. (SBU) Guatemala's weak institutions and the country's 
vulnerability to narco-trafficking cartels figured prominently in a 
roundtable discussion the Staffdel had with a dozen Guatemalan 
human rights activists.  While these HR representatives in general 
agreed that Guatemala's police and judicial systems are broken, 
they were similarly unified in their opposition to giving the Army 
a greater role in combating narco-trafficking.  The solution to 
these security challenges, they argued, must be to reform the 
police and judicial institutions, while providing jobs and 
education to a people who have too little of either.  All of them 
supported the work CICIG has done to date, but warned that the 
international organization could not solve the country's problems. 
Eventually, CICIG will leave Guatemala, and strong institutions 
must be in place to fill the void that will be felt by the 
organization's departure.  At the end of the day, political will 
and leadership are the most important ingredients necessary for 
Guatemala to reverse the culture of corruption and impunity that 
plagues the country. 
 
¶4. (SBU) The theme of institutional weakness and corruption 
continued when the Staffdel met with CICIG Commissioner Carlos 
Castresana.  Castresana explained that the grand strategy of his 
organization is to establish some legal precedents through 
successful prosecution of six to eight important cases which CICIG 
is currently investigating.  Castresana said that he is generally 
satisfied with the work CICIG has done in training a small group of 
Guatemalan public prosecutors and judges, and that this effort to 
create a trustworthy judicial "micro-system" would continue to be a 
major focus of his organization over the course of its second 
two-year mandate.  This effort, he acknowledged, is being impeded 
by the absence of sufficient funds to provide for their physical 
protection and the protection of witnesses in the key cases CICIG 
is investigating. 
 
¶5. (SBU) In the Staffdel's subsequent meeting, Attorney General 
Amilcar Velasquez lauded the constructive relationship his office 
enjoys with CICIG, noting the first-class training some of his 
prosecutors are receiving there.  Velasquez pointed to the success 
his staff has had in recent months in a couple of high-profile 
narco-trafficking cases, and brought attention to the growing 
capacity of the Attorney General's Office (Public Ministry) to 
prosecute money-laundering cases.  Like Castresana, Velasquez 
expressed dismay about the lack of resources at his disposal to 
protect his prosecutors, and appealed to Congress for help and 
resources in this regard. 
 
¶6. (SBU) At the Foreign Ministry, the Staffdel met with Carlos 
Morales and Julio Martini, Directors General respectively for 
Bilateral and Multilateral Affairs.  They and other MFA staff 
members present emphasized the extremely close nature of relations 
with the United States, and thanked the Staffdel for Congress's 
support of the Merida Initiative.  They also emphasized Guatemala's 
centrist political character, claiming that, under President Colom, 
the country would never be a member of ALBA.  With respect to 
President Zelaya's ouster in Honduras, they expressed the 
importance of a united message that coups would not be tolerated in 
the hemisphere and felt that the situation in Honduras demonstrated 
a failure of the OAS.  Failure to reverse the coup in Honduras, 
they argued, would only encourage further coups in the region.  In 
a subsequent meeting with the Staffdel, a number of leading 
 
 
Guatemalan business leaders revealed that they had no enthusiasm 
for the return of Zelaya, whom they view as a potential threat to 
investment in the region and as a stooge of Venezuelan President 
Hugo Chavez. 
 
¶7. (SBU) Before leaving Guatemala City to tour USAID-funded 
projects in Chimaltenango and Villanueva, the Staffdel visited the 
international airport to learn about Guatemala's Counter-Narcotics 
Quick Reaction Force.  The Staffdel was able to review the use of 
four U.S.-donated Huey helicopters and Merida funding to train a 
joint task force of pilots, mechanics, police, and Army Special 
Forces (Kaibiles) to react to drug-smuggling flights that violate 
Guatemala airspace and land here. 
 
¶8. (SBU)  In the small, indigenous town of Paraje Xesiguan in the 
Department of Chimaltenango, the Staffdel and the new Deputy Chief 
of Mission witnessed an exhumation of victims of an extrajudicial 
execution that took place during the internal conflict.  According 
to some estimates, over 45,000 Guatemalans were forcibly 
disappeared between 1960 and 1996.  USAID sponsors a program 
throughout the country to recover and indentify their remains.  The 
Staffdel and DCM met with a number of the victims' family members, 
who noted how important this effort is in terms of giving them 
closure, and expressed their deep appreciation for U.S. support for 
this program. 
 
¶9. (SBU)  In Villanueva, a poor, sprawling suburb just outside of 
Guatemala City, the Staffdel visited a model police station, which, 
with NAS support and training, has markedly increased arrest and 
conviction rates within its precinct over national averages.  The 
model station has been so successful that it is being replicated in 
Mixco, another high-crime area in the greater Guatemala City 
metropolitan area.  The Staffdel also visited a youth outreach 
center in Villanueva, which, with USAID seed money, has been 
extremely successful in steering away at-risk youth in Villanueva 
from joining local gangs.  The Embassy is also supporting the 
replication of other such centers throughout Guatemala. 
 
¶10. (SBU) In the country team briefing with the Staffdel, the 
Ambassador noted that bilateral relations between the United States 
and the Government of Guatemala (GoG) are excellent.  The GoG's 
support of a U.S.-funded and trained wire-tapping unit, the 
Ambassador observed, had resulted in the headline-grabbing arrest 
on August 7 of the national police chief and three of his top 
lieutenants while they were stealing cocaine (Ref B). 
 
¶11. (SBU) The Ambassador also praised the GoG for the greater 
commitment it had recently demonstrated to judicial reform.  As 
examples, the Ambassador cited the GoG's support of legislation 
passed this May that was designed to make the selection of Supreme 
Court and appellate judges more transparent (REF C), and its 
openness to the idea of possibly extending the U.S.-backed 
polygraph program to vet high-level government officials.  The 
Ambassador also lauded CICIG's performance, noting that the 
UN-sponsored organization was making progress in a number of 
high-profile cases, including the May murder of attorney Rodrigo 
Rosenberg, and the investigation of former President Portillo on 
embezzlement and corruption charges.  Notwithstanding these 
advances, impunity, corruption and poor leadership continue to 
challenge GoG progress. 
 
¶12. (SBU) In addition, Guatemala continues to face grave security 
challenges, none more serious than the threat posed by the 
extremely lucrative narcotics trade flowing up from South America 
to markets in the United States and Canada.  The Political and 
Economic Counselor noted that the NYC street value of cocaine 
transiting Guatemala exceeds the country's entire national budget. 
In addition to funding increasingly sophisticated and professional 
gangs of narco-traffickers, the money generated by this trade 
continues to have an extremely corrosive effect on already-weak 
government institutions.  The National Civilian Police (PNC) and 
judicial system are riddled with corruption, and largely 
ineffective and unprofessional.  The murder rate in Guatemala is 
among the highest in Latin America, with only two percent of all 
murder cases resulting in conviction.  The government has lost 
control of entire swaths of the country to narco-trafficking gangs, 
particularly in the border areas with Mexico. 
 
¶13. (SBU) Given the weakness and unreliability of the PNC, the 
Staffdel asked if it would make sense for the Guatemalan Armed 
Forces to play a greater role in counter-narcotics operations.  The 
Ambassador noted that the military is well-regarded by the 
Guatemalan general public but is seriously understaffed and is 
lacking in resources:  we believe the GoG should put more resources 
into the military so it can carry out its constitutional mandate to 
protect the borders.  That said, the military needs to be more 
forthcoming about conflict-era abuses its former members committed. 
 
 
The Defense Attach???? added that the United States has a restricted 
military-to-military relationship with the Guatemalan Armed Forces. 
Current legislation excludes the United States from giving the 
Guatemalan Army, except for military engineers, any FMF or IMET 
funding, despite the fact that the Army has not been credibly 
implicated in any gross human rights violations since the end of 
the internal conflict in 1996.  The Army makes up 85 percent of the 
armed forces in Guatemala.  The Ambassador noted that the Army is 
already playing a critical supporting role in the fight against 
narcotics trafficking.  Reforming and professionalizing the police, 
however, has to remain a key part of the solution to Guatemala's 
security challenges, the Ambassador added. 
 
¶14. (SBU) In response to the Staffdel's question on how the Merida 
Initiative could be made more effective, the country-team suggested 
that Congress consider giving the program a greater regional focus 
and building in more programmatic flexibility, particularly in the 
out-years.  Because the narco-trafficking cartels have proved to be 
so highly adaptable, the United States needs a counter-narcotics 
funding source that is similarly agile.  Having such flexibility, 
for example, might have allowed the Embassy to move in a more 
expeditious manner to help "harden" rural communities in the 
central Department of Alta Verapaz against the encroachment of 
Mexican drug cartels moving south from the Peten and Mexico.  The 
Country-Team also suggested that the delivery of Merida funding 
between U.S. agencies be better coordinated and integrated, noting 
that the various sections in the Embassy, including NAS, DEA, ICE, 
and USAID, had received their respective tranches at different 
times or were still waiting to receive them. 
 
¶15. (SBU) The Ambassador concluded the Country Team briefing with 
an appeal to support such institutions as CICIG and the judiciary, 
and to engage the Guatemalan general public and build up their 
confidence in the country's institutions.  The United States should 
also reinforce and leverage those areas where the Guatemalan 
government demonstrates political will with additional resources. 
The Embassy's success in getting the GoG to buy into the 
wire-tapping and polygraph programs are two examples of programs 
that have succeeded because of GoG political will buttressed by 
steady Embassy persuasion. 
 
¶16. (SBU) Comment:  The three members of the Staffdel indicated 
that were struck by the enormity of the challenges facing the 
country, particularly with respect to reforming the police and the 
judiciary.  Nonetheless, they had also seen some positive signs. 
They were particularly impressed with contributions that CICIG is 
making to the rule and law and with the Attorney General's 
commitment to build a corps of trustworthy and professional 
prosecutors.  They took onboard the Country-Team's suggestions to 
give the Merida Initiative more of a regional focus and greater 
programmatic flexibility, but wondered about the capacity of the 
GoG to absorb significant levels of additional aid.  With respect 
to the possibility of giving the Guatemalan military greater 
counter-narcotics assistance, the Staffdel acknowledged that there 
is significant interest, as well as resistance, to this idea in 
Congress.  Finally, the Staffdel expressed their support for the 
USAID and NAS-sponsored projects that they had visited, noting in 
particular that the briefings they had received on these programs 
had been done largely by Guatemalans, which helped to convey a 
strong sense of ownership.  End comment. 
 
¶17.  (U) Staffdel Jacobstein has cleared this cable. 
MCFARLAND