DebateGate

Fleeing Cubans Reach U.S. Through Mexico

By WILL WEISSERT
The Associated Press
Wednesday, August 1, 2007

HAVANA -- The vast majority of Cubans sneaking off the island now enter the United States through Mexico after U.S. relatives pay thousands of dollars to organized crime networks that scoop them off Cuba's westernmost tip in souped-up speedboats.

The Mexico route is more dangerous than a direct, 90-mile voyage from Cuba to Florida, but there is less chance the U.S. Coast Guard will intervene. Nearly 90 percent of all undocumented Cubans who make it to America now come overland rather than reaching U.S. shores by boat, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Quintana Roo's state justice public prosecutor Vello Rodriguez holds a sheet with pictures of Luis Lara Morejon's body, in Cancun, Mexico, Tuesday, July 31, 2007. The body of Morejon, a Cuban-American who was under investigation in a migrant smuggling case, was found riddled with bullets along a road outside this Caribbean resort, authorities said Tuesday.
 
From the Mexican coast, Cubans then travel up to the U.S. border, where unlike other undocumented migrants, they are welcomed in under U.S. law.

Mexico, already struggling against organized crime, is paying the price for the migration shift, especially in Cancun, the nation's glittering Caribbean getaway. On Monday, investigators there found the body of a Cuban-American from Miami, Luis Lazaro Lara Morejon, handcuffed and with duct tape over his eyes. He had been shot 10 times, obliterating his face.

Days earlier, authorities had arrested at least eight people on suspicion of smuggling Cubans to Mexico, including six Cubans with U.S. residency or citizenship who had just been interviewed by U.S. authorities. Lara had connections to the suspects, Mexican investigators say.

"These gangs are well-organized, well-financed and very powerful," said Sen. Carlos Navarrete, who was among a group of Mexican lawmakers who came to Havana to discuss the issue with Cuban lawmakers in June. "They are a very serious problem for both governments _ Cuba and Mexico."

Some 9,296 Cubans arrived in the United States from Mexico between Oct. 1 and July 22, more than double the 4,589 who crossed or were picked up by the Coast Guard in the Florida Straits during the same period.

The Mexico route is now so popular that U.S. immigration officials call those who follow it "dusty foot" Cubans, a play on Washington's "wet-foot/dry foot" policy that lets Cuban migrants captured on U.S. soil stay in America, but sends those picked up at sea back to the island.

"That route, it has taken over," said a U.S. official interviewed at a Havana hotel on condition of anonymity because publishing his name would violate State Department protocol.

Mexican officials blame increased security along the U.S. coast, but the U.S. official said richer and more-powerful smuggling gangs are responsible.

A speedboat smuggler making the 120-mile dash from Cuba to Mexico's Yucatan peninsula can earn $30,000 per haul of 30 or more Cubans. They often rendezvous with yachts that can ferry large groups to shore undetected.

The money usually comes from relatives in the U.S. who pay smugglers up to $10,000 per person to get loved ones off the island. As the recent arrests suggest, most gangs employ U.S. residents of Cuban origin operating in Cancun and other locales along Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.

The smugglers use satellite phones and GPS technology to coordinate late-night pickups in Cuba's western-most Pinar del Rio province. Their "go-fast" boats have up to three 275-horsepower motors, reducing the trip to 6 hours if they don't have to change course to escape detection.

Some Cubans try to reach the Yucatan on their own using makeshift rafts and boats, but it is easy to get lost in the Gulf of Mexico. One homemade vessel floated in the Gulf for 25 days before all but one of 19 Cubans on board were found dead in June.

Quintana Roo's state justice public prosecutor Vello Rodriguez holds a sheet with pictures of Luis Lara Morejon's body, in Cancun, Mexico, Tuesday, July 31, 2007. The body of Morejon, a Cuban-American who was under investigation in a migrant smuggling case, was found riddled with bullets along a road outside this Caribbean resort, authorities said Tuesday.
 
Cuban authorities are barred from using force to stop the boats, except in self-defense. Instead, they contact the U.S. Coast Guard with the fleeing vessel's coordinates _ even if it is clearly headed to Mexico. And since combatting people-smuggling between Cuba and Mexico is not a top Coast Guard priority, U.S. officials generally just notify the Mexican navy.

Detentions of undocumented Cubans in Mexico have skyrocketed, from 254 in 2002 to 2,205 last year, according to Mexico's National Immigration Institute. But most are released after 90 days at immigration centers. Only 722 Cubans _ one third of all those arrested last year _ were repatriated to Cuba.

The rest make their way to the U.S. border, where entering Cubans rose from 6,130 in fiscal 2004 to 7,281 in 2005 and 8,677 last fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30.

Unlike other migrants, the Cubans have no need to run from the Border Patrol. They simply announce their nationality and ask to stay. As long as they don't have criminal records or dangerous health problems, they are allowed to remain in America and seek permanent residency after a year.

Mexican officials privately complain the U.S. accepts Cuban migrants too easily, but publicly acknowledge that their own authorities aren't doing enough to stop smugglers.

"We have to be very clear that there is a flow of people from Cuba to Mexico and that it is increasing," said Rosario Green, president of the Mexican Senate's foreign affairs committee, who was in Havana for the inter-parliamentary meeting. "Mexico shouldn't be a trampoline for the United States."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/01/AR2007080101617_2.html

Defeatism Defeated?
Cracks on the homefront.
By Thomas Sowell - August 1, 2007

If victory in Iraq was oversold at the outset, there are now signs that defeat is likewise being oversold today.

One of the earliest signs of this was that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said that he could not wait for General David Petraeus?s September report on conditions in Iraq but tried to get an immediate congressional mandate to pull the troops out.

Having waited for years, why could he not wait until September for the report by the general who is actually on the ground in Iraq every day? Why was it necessary for politicians in Washington to declare the troop surge a failure from 8,000 miles away?

The most obvious answer is that Senator Reid feared that the surge would turn out not to be a failure ? and the Democrats had bet everything, including their chances in the 2008 elections, on an American defeat in Iraq.

Senator Reid had to preempt defeat before General Petraeus could report progress. The Majority Leader?s failure to get the Senate to do that suggests that not enough others were convinced that declaring failure now was the right political strategy.

An optimist might even hope that some of the senators thought it was wrong for the country.

Another revealing sign is that the solid front of the mainstream media in filtering out any positive news from Iraq and focusing only on American casualties ? in the name of ?honoring the troops? ? is now starting to show cracks.

One of the most revealing cracks has appeared in, of all places, the New York Times, which has throughout the war used its news columns as well as its editorial pages to undermine the war in Iraq and paint the situation as hopeless.

But an op-ed piece in the July 30 New York Times by two scholars at the liberal Brookings Institution ? Michael E. O?Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack ? now paints a very different picture, based on their actual investigation on the ground in Iraq after the American troop surge under General Petraeus.

It is not a rosy scenario by any means. There are few rosy scenarios in any war. But O?Hanlon and Pollack report some serious progress.

?Today,? they report, ?morale is high? among American troops and ?civilian fatality rates are down roughly a third since the surge began.?

In two cities they visited in northern Iraq ?American troop levels in both cities now number only in the hundreds because the Iraqis have stepped up to the plate? in providing their own security.

?Today,? they say, ?in only a few places did we find American commanders complaining that their Iraqi formations were useless ? something that was the rule, not the exception, on a previous trip to Iraq in late 2005.?

In the last six months, O?Hanlon and Pollack report, ?Iraqis have begun to turn on the extremists.?

In Ramadi, where American Marines ?were fighting for every yard? of territory just a few months ago, ?last week we strolled down the streets without body armor.?

Victory is not inevitable, any more than victory was inevitable when American and British troops landed at Normandy in 1945. General Eisenhower even kept in his pocket a written statement taking full responsibility in the event of failure.

But victory is not even defined the same way in Iraq as it was in World War II. American troops do not need to stay in Iraq until the last vestige of terrorism has been wiped out.

The point when it is safe to begin pulling out is the point when the Iraqi military and police forces are strong enough to continue the fight against the terrorists on their own.

That point depends on how much and how long the current progress continues, not on how much the Democrats or their media allies need an American defeat before the 2008 election.

O?Hanlon and Pollack warn that ?the situation in Iraq remains grave? but conclude that ?there is enough good happening in Iraq that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008.?

But 2008 may have an entirely different significance for politicians than for these Brookings scholars.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OGQ4MTgyNGQ2N2I3ZWM0ZTkzYTEzMjlhYzQ2ZGZiYjY=

 

Chairman of Afghanistan's Taliban military council killed
By Bill Roggio on July 29, 2007

Qari Faiz Mohammad killed in a raid in Helmand province

Coalition forces struck another blow to the senior Taliban leadership in Afghanistan. On July 23, Afghan and International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops killed Qari Faiz Mohammad, the chairman of the Taliban Military Shura, or council, during a targeted raid in Helmand province. Mohammad was also a close associate of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, and a chief financier for the Taliban.

Afghan and ISAF have been conducting major offensives up and down the Helmand River Valley in the northern portion of the province over the past several months. Major ground and air strikes have been ongoing in the Musa Qala, Kajaki, Nari Saraj, and Sangin districts in Helmand province, as well as in the Ghorak district in Kandahar and in southwestern Uruzgan. Coalition forces have been attempted to clear the Taliban stronghold and reopen the vital Kajaki Dam. The Taliban openly control the Musa Qala district. Upwards of 150 Taliban fighters have been killed in strikes in the region during the past week.

Afghan and ISAF forces clearly have good intelligence on the movement and locations of several senior Taliban leaders, including two members of the Taliban's Shura Majlis, or executive council. Mohammad's death follows the death or captured of several senior Taliban leaders since December 2006. Numerous regional and district-level Taliban commanders have been killed or captured during the same time period.

U.S. forces killed Mullah Akhtar Usmani, a member of the Taliban Shura Majlis, or executive council in December 2006. Mullah Omar's former deputy, a former foreign minister, and the operational commander in Uruzgan, Nimroz, Kandahar, Farah, Herat and Helmand provinces in souther Afghanistan.

Afghan forces captured Taliban spokesman Dr. Muhammad Hanif on January 16, 2007. Hanif has given numerous interviews with the media, and issued press releases and rebuttals to NATO and Afghan statements. He was said to have been in instant satellite phone and email contact with the press. Hanif claimed that Mullah Omar is operating out of Quetta.

In late February, Pakistani security forces arrested Mullah Obaidullah, the Taliban Defense Minister under during the reign of the Taliban from 1996 until the United States toppled the government in the fall of 2001. Obaidullah ?is considered by American intelligence officials to have been one of the Taliban leaders closest to Osama bin Laden, ? as well as part of the "inner core of the Taliban leadership around the Mullah Muhammad Omar who are believed to operate from the relative safety of Quetta." Obaidullah was a member of the Shura Majlis, and was thought to be the Taliban's third in command.

The Afghan military confirmed Mullah Dadullah Akhund, the brutal, charismatic, and respected Taliban military commander and leader of the forces in southern Afghanistan, was killed during an air strike on May 13. Mullah Dadullah sat on the Taliban Shura Majlis He was the Taliban's most senior military commander and reported to have been one of Mullah Omar's most trusted advisers. Dadullah joined forces with the Taliban at its formation in 1994. After the fall of Afghanistan in 2001, Dadullah fled to South Waziristan in Pakistan, where he reconstituted his forces and continued to fight NATO and Afghan forces. Dadullah orchestrated and promoted the Taliban's suicide campaign in Afghanistan.

On June 12, ISAF forces killed Mullah Mahmud Baluch, a senior Taliban commander in the Helmand and Nimruz provinces.

http://billroggio.com/archives/2007/07/chairman_of_afghanis.php

I always knew it

America we can do better, pray that we do