TERRORISM FIGHT HURTS DRUG WAR

With U.S. Resources Elsewhere, Mexican Cartels Step Up Cocaine Shipments

CHACAHUA, Mexico -- They found the 21-foot speedboat abandoned on a remote
beach in this faraway stretch of Mexico's Pacific coast. Beneath it,
smugglers had hastily buried one ton of plastic-wrapped cocaine in the white
sand.

Nobody knows exactly why they walked away from a $20 million cache of drugs.
But authorities say its discovery offers a small glimpse at how a busy
Pacific drug smuggling route has exploded into a cocaine superhighway.

The reason is that law enforcement has shifted focus since the Sept. 11
terror attacks. A large amount of U.S. resources are now being devoted to
the fight against terrorism, and much less to the war on drugs, according to
experts and officials on both sides of the border.

"We have had to move our vessels back to defend the goal line," said Cmdr.
Jim McPherson, chief spokesman for the U.S. Coast Guard, explaining that as
much as 75 percent of the ships and other assets once dedicated to the U.S.
counter-drug effort have been moved to focus on homeland defense and
counterterrorism patrols. As a result, he said, "We are not seizing anywhere
near what we were. . . . Our counter-drug intelligence support has dropped
to zero."

"Fighting narcotics is mostly about information and intelligence. We can
have all the boats in the sea and they can be in the wrong place." said
Mexican Navy spokesman Salvador Gomez Meillon, noting that before Sept. 11,
the U.S. Coast Guard and Mexican Navy had unprecedented levels of
cooperation and intelligence sharing. But now, he said, "the cooperation has
decreased; there hasn't been one combined operation since Sept. 11."

With the FBI and other agencies focusing almost singularly on guarding
against terrorism, some drug trafficking experts estimate that as little as
10 percent of the manpower once devoted to interdicting drugs remains in
place. Special agents formerly working on the drug war are now serving as
sky marshals aboard domestic U.S. flights. And many money-laundering
investigators formerly tracking billion-dollar drug trafficking enterprises
are now on the money trail of Osama bin Laden.

As a result, Coast Guard drug seizures, which had been running at all-time
highs earlier this year, are down dramatically. From Sept. 11 to Nov. 30,
the Coast Guard seized about 10,000 pounds of cocaine, down 66 percent from
the 30,000 pounds it seized during the same period last year. Seizures of
marijuana during that period dropped far more, from 7,000 pounds during
those weeks last year to only 480 this year.

Mexican Navy drug seizures have also nosedived since September.

Although immediately after Sept. 11 tighter security on the U.S-Mexico
border appeared to be squeezing the drug trade, three months later the
opposite appears to be true; drug traffickers haven't had it this easy in
years.

Drug trafficking specialists also see signs of a resurgence of coca
production in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, in part because of the global
crash in coffee prices. So as more drugs are available to ship, there is a
new ease in moving them to U.S. consumers through these Pacific waters,
known as the cocaine corridor.

"Fifty thousand people die every year in the U.S. because of drug abuse,"
said one U.S. law enforcement official, questioning the singular focus on
terrorism.

In recent weeks there has been a flurry of large and small drug seizures at
the U.S.-Mexico border, and three bold drug flights over the border on a
recent weekend, another indication the traffickers have resumed their trade
with gusto. "Activity has picked up big-time," said one U.S. border agent.

Smugglers have spotted the new holes in U.S. defenses and are taking
advantage, according to interviews with officials at several U.S. and
Mexican law enforcement agencies who declined to be named.

Law enforcement officials say that the Pacific waters of Mexico and Central
America are now dotted with large numbers of smugglers' speed boats, often
called "go fast" or cigarette" boats.

These boats spend days on the ocean, idle under sea-blue tarps that make
them harder to spot from the air. By night, planes from Colombia swoop in
low and drop a ton or two of plastic-encased cocaine into the sea. The
speed-boat crews, usually two or three men in wet suits who can earn as much
as $250,000 for a successful voyage, fish the drugs out of the water and
rush them to shore in the darkness.

Once ashore, the cocaine is split up and eventually handed over to dozens of
people who carry relatively small amounts of cocaine over the border into
the United States. A few members of this "ant patrol" are invariably caught,
but the vast majority make it through successfully.

Until recently, such operations were more difficult because of U.S.
surveillance and intelligence concentrating on major busts at sea before the
cocaine loads reached land. The Coast Guard, often firing on the smuggling
boats from armed helicopters, had seized a record 138,000 pounds of cocaine
last year -- more than 90 percent of it in these Pacific waters.

But with U.S. ships now drawn back to ports from San Diego to Charleston,
S.C., the smugglers have only to contend with the overworked and
under-funded Mexican Navy, which has an annual budget of about $800 million
- -- the cost of a single U.S. Navy Aegis destroyer.

Mexican officials say they are so short of cash that they cannot follow up
on many tips about drug movements at sea because they can't afford the fuel.

The shift in U.S. priorities comes at a time when the U.S. and Mexican
cooperation had never been closer. Last year's election of President Vicente
Fox has resulted in increased trust and intelligence sharing after long
years of distrust.

But now the frequent radio contact between the U.S. Coast Guard drug patrols
and the Mexican Navy has again gone silent, and the Mexican Navy is largely
trying to fight the battle alone.

It is an unfair fight. Seven of the world's 11 biggest drug trafficking
organizations are Mexican. Since smuggling arrests often lead to new
information on drug cartel operations, a slowdown in seizures is expected to
curb the ability to dismantle them. The Drug Enforcement Administration has
been particularly eager to arrest the leaders of the Tijuana-based Arellano
Felix cartel which last year killed three Mexican anti-drug agents who had
been working with the DEA.

One of them, special prosecutor Jose Patino, was kidnapped as he crossed
back into Mexico after returned from a meeting with U.S. officials in San
Diego. His torturers put Patino's head in a vice and killed him by cracking
his head open. They then ran his body over with a car.

People in this remote part of southern Oaxaca state, 30 miles west of Puerto
Escondido, worry that such violence might follow the increased drug trade
here. In recent weeks, soldiers with machine guns have been patrolling this
wilderness beach, where fisherman are usually accompanied only by the
snapper and bass they catch.

Soldiers camping under tall coconut trees near the sandy spot where $20
million of cocaine was found Nov. 13 said they could not talk about their
mission. But everyone is talking about them. "The traffickers unload here,"
said Luis Narvaez, who runs a boat ferry across the lagoon. "but they are
being closely watched now."