THE HIGH SEAS

'Narco-Subs' Are The Latest Trend In Drug Smuggling

Packed with cocaine and grimly christened "coffins," sleek submarines
are steaming their way north from Colombia through Pacific waters to
deliver tonnes of illegal drugs headed for the U. S. market.

Skimming just below the water line, with only a glimpse of a
glass-enclosed cockpit or metal tubes visible from above, the
semi-submersibles are the latest shipment method used by trafficking
cartels to try to elude detection by authorities.

A pilot and three or four crewmen squeeze into the cramped hulls of
the craft on voyages from Colombia's Pacific Coast up to Central
America or Mexico, where their cargo is offloaded for shipment to the
United States, according to the U. S. Coast Guard.

There is no bathroom or galley and the heat can be searing in the
narrow space the smugglers share in the stern of the craft, just a
few feet away from the throbbing diesel engines.

"They call it either the coffin or the tomb," said Rear Admiral
Joseph Nimmich, the officer who commands the U. S. Coast Guard's
Joint Interagency Task Force South.

"The intent is to be as low profile, and to make it as difficult for
us to find, as possible."

His task force is an umbrella group that includes the U. S. military,
Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI and Central Intelligence
Agency, which focuses on monitoring and detecting drug trafficking.

It estimates that some 60 to 75 of the fibreglass vessels, also known
as "narco-subs" and capable of carrying upward of seven metric tonnes
of cocaine when fully loaded, are built in clandestine jungle
shipyards in northwest Colombia every year.

That makes the fleet big enough to handle almost all of Colombia's
annual exports of cocaine, estimated by United Nations monitors to
total about 600 metric tonnes a year.

The "coffin" nickname for the vessels stems from the fact that some
suffered catastrophic hull failures in the early stages of their development.

However, Rear-Admiral Nimmich, speaking at a navy dock in Key West,
Fla., where one of the vessels was on display, said the boats,
originally designed by Russian, Pakistani and Sri Lankan engineers,
had since become increasingly sophisticated in their seaworthiness,
propulsion systems and other features.

The one on display -- 17-metres long and about 3.5-metres wide -- was
caught last September in the Pacific Ocean with its four-man crew and
a payload of about seven tonnes of cocaine worth about US$250-million.

The smuggling runs from Colombia to Mexico or Guatemala, where the
cocaine is off-loaded for shipment to the United States, can take up
to two weeks. But that is only because the boats slow their powerful
engines to a crawl during the day, to avoid detection of their wakes.

Among other new features, the vessel lashed to the dock at the Key
West Naval Air Station had an underwater exhaust cooling system to
help the boat avoid producing a heat trace that could be spotted by
infrared radar systems

Until now, the vessels appear to have been used almost exclusively to
run cocaine from the Pacific side of Colombia. But at least one, with
a very large cargo capacity and a twin-engine power plant, had been
found on the eastern side of Colombia on the Guajira Peninsula,
Rear-Admiral Nimmich said.

Recent reports of building activity in the Caribbean region have not
been confirmed, Rear-Admiral Nimmich added. He said intelligence
pointing to construction of at least one semi-submersible, to run
cocaine to Europe out of Brazil's Amazon River basin, could also not
be confirmed, but that this would not be a surprise.

"We clearly think that there's going to be an expansion of this
technology," the admiral said.

Some of his colleagues have voiced fears that drug smugglers could
soon begin making submarines capable of diving deep and navigating
even more quietly than the current generation.

But Rear-Admiral Nimmich said such production was unlikely any time
soon, even though a Russian-designed sub, capable of carrying about
152 metric tonnes of cocaine and diving to substantial depths, was
found by Colombian police in a warehouse outside the nation's
high-elevation capital in 2000.

For every seizure of a semi-submersible vessel -- which are scuttled
when they reach their final destinations -- Rear-Admiral Nimmich said
four others were likely out ploughing the seas northward with impunity.

"At a very good pace this year, we are probably only about 20%
effective in interdicting semi-submersibles at this point in time," he said.

'CAPTAIN NEMO'

Enrique Portocarrero, who was arrested last December by authorities
in Colombia, is believed to have built 20 of the self-propelled,
semi-submersibles. - According to the Los Angeles Times he had a
hidden shipyard in a mangrove swamp; learned his trade in a dry dock
in Buenaventura; was dubbed "Captain Nemo," after the character in
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea; paid US$1-million per vessel and used
the money to buy five shrimp boats. - Among Mr. Portocarrero's
innovations were a bow that produced little wake and a valve system
that allowed the crew to scuttle the sub in 10 minutes if they were
caught, sending the "evidence" to the bottom of the sea, according to
the paper. Subs were powered by 350-horsepower diesel engines, and
equipped with GPS and satellite phones.