Drug War Continues

Central America, where political warfare left well over 100,000 dead in the 1980s, is once again on fire. This time, instead of facing Soviet- and Cuban-backed adversaries, the weak governments of the isthmus are up against ruthless and immensely powerful narcotics gangsters determined to carve a bloody path through the region to bring their illicit goods into the United States.

So far, the gangsters are not only winning, they’re on a tear.

Central America’s people are paying a huge price to satisfy their northern neighbor’s insatiable demand for cocaine. As Air Force Gen. Douglas Fraser, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, told a Pentagon briefing recently, the northern triangle formed by El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala has become possibly the most violent place in the world.

Grim statistics back him up. “If you look at Iraq in 2010, the violent deaths per 100,000, according to U.N. numbers, was 14 per 100,000,” Gen. Fraser said. “In Honduras, it was 77 per 100,000. In El Salvador, it was 71 per 100,000.”

Continue new article from: Miami Herald.


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