On Monday, the Government will order
the sending of 150 vehicles, helicopters and communications equipment from the Armed Forces
to support the “saturation operation” of the Gendarmerie, other federal security forces and the Santa Fe police that will be deployed in front of
the new drug offensive that includes murdering taxi and bus drivers in Rosario and attacking police stations.
As gendarmes will be removed from the border area, Defense will send soldiers to
“also intervene in border security areas”
providing support to the police forces but without intervening in any police task, a high official source revealed to
Clarín.
Meanwhile, the Minister of Defense, Luis Petri, has “
ready to modify the regulatory decree to the Defense Law”
by Nilda Garré that will allow greater military support for the fight against drug trafficking and organized crime.
Now it must be approved and signed by President Javier Milei.
The Minister of Defense, Patricia Bullrich, will announce on Monday
a package of measures against the new episodes of violence this week linked to the decision of the governor of Santa Fe Maxi Pullaro
to distribute photos with the tightening of the detention conditions of drug traffickers
in the “Bukele style” by the president of El Salvador.
“We are going to collaborate with logistics, transportation and communications within the framework of the Internal Security law and we are also going to intervene in the border security zone,” a senior source from the Ministry of Defense informed
Clarín
.
Patricia Bullrich chaired the Internal Security Committee this week.
The Internal Security Laws 24,059) and Defense Laws (23,554) were sanctioned by former President Raúl Alfonsín as a reaction to the involvement of the Armed Forces.
in the illegal repression during the dictatorship.
But in 2006, former president Néstor Kirchner, at the request of his Minister of Defense, Nilda Garré, made the use of the military even more restrictive in the face of so-called “new threats,” such as drug trafficking, international terrorism and organized crime.
For example, article 1 of that Garré regulation says that the Armed Forces.
They will only “be used in the face of external aggression
perpetrated by armed forces belonging to other States
.”
That is, if hypothetically the Brazilian drug group First Capital Command attacked in Argentina as it did in 2017 against Prosegur in Ciudad del Este with AK-47 assault rifles, anti-aircraft machine guns, grenades, explosives, bulletproof vests, laser sights and night vision equipment, PCC), the Armed Forces.
Argentina could not intervene.
The same
would happen if Lebanon's Hezbollah did it – which already blew up the Israeli embassy (1992) and the AMIA (1994) – because it is a political party and not a State.
At the end of January, in a speech given in El Palomar when saying goodbye to a contingent of blue helmets, Petri ratified that objective and clarified that it is
not
for them to directly combat drug traffickers, as happens in Colombia or Mexico.
“The Armed Forces have to recover the full capacity to act.
Because in the world we live in, they have to be prepared
not only to combat any external aggression from a State
,” expressed the radical minister in the El Palomar Air Brigade, together with the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Brigadier General, Xavier Julián Isaac.
The legal change is key because the military resists greater involvement in this issue without having legal coverage to support them.
Security Minister Patricia Bullrich and Santa Fe Governor Maximiliano Pullaro created a joint command in Rosario against drug traffickers.
The Milei administration could also develop, in this sense,
a new National Defense Policy Directive (DPDN)
, so that the military replaces the gendarmes in, for example, the custody of nuclear power plants.
In the background there is also
an ideological debate
.
Kirchnerism maintains that the discussion about new threats is encouraged in Latin America by the US Southern Command.
In a statement he addressed to the population of Rosario, Bullrich gave
more clues
about these changes this Saturday.
“We also plan to request the support of the Armed Forces,
always within the terms of the Internal Security Law
.”
The Minister of Security already speaks of
“narcoterrorism”
and it is not by chance.
And he warned that "any act of violence perpetrated on public roads or inside public places will initially be considered
an attempt to terrorize the population or condition the authorities
and, therefore, will be reported as an act of terrorism."
Thus, the perpetrators of the attacks on civilians in Rosario, in addition to murder and other crimes,
will be asked for double the penalty
provided for the act committed.
Article 41 quinques of the Penal Code will apply, which literally says: “When any of the crimes provided for in this Code have been committed with the purpose of terrorizing the population or forcing national public authorities or foreign governments or agents of a international organization to carry out an act or refrain from doing so,
the scale will be increased by twice the minimum and maximum
.
Government sources told
Clarín
that the attacks on civilians in Rosario could be for several reasons.
On the one hand, they could
be part of the power struggle of the criminal organizations “Los Monos”, “Los Alvarado” and “Los Funes”.
These groups “acting through nearby police elements, which provide them with collaboration, continue to dispute territorial spaces,” they added.
For the sources, “this type of event must be interpreted, on the other hand,
in light of the public commotion they generate (shooting a public building, a school, a bus, or murdering a taxi driver)
.”
For the sources, “the measures adopted regarding prison conditions historically
generated extramural reprisals
.”
As “many members of the main organizations are detained, the changes applied to the provincial prison policy to prevent them from continuing to lead their criminal groups from their place of detention will
provoke a reaction from the members of the different organizations who are free
” such as, for example, attacking civilians, they added.
At the beginning of the year, Bullrich
set up isolation places against high-risk drug bosses detained in federal prisons
to try to prevent them from continuing to run their gangs from their place of detention.
On Friday, Bullrich created
a Crisis Committee together with the governor of Santa Fe, Maxi Pullaro,
and the heads of the Gendarmerie, the Prefecture, the Federal Police, the Airport Security Police and the Santa Fe police. The committee, says the resolution, “will request the Minister of Defense for the support of the Armed Forces in internal security operations in Rosario under the terms of article 27 of the Internal Security Law No. 24,059.”
The committee will operate until July 9, 2024 and may be extended.
For his part, the Secretary of the Fight against Drug Trafficking of the Nation, Martín Verrier explained that “what Bullrich is leading, at the request of the President, is the design of
a support plan for the Province of Santa Fe
.”
“Rosario has the particularity of being today a hub for drug trafficking, in relation to the connection it has through the routes with the NOA, with the NEA and the waterway,” Verrier told Dato on Radio Milenium's Dato.
Now "we are designing
an expansion of the
joint command program where one of the axes is the increase in deployed personnel of the federal forces and also the media."
For Verrier, the joint command installed in Rosario at the beginning of the year
“achieved a significant reduction in homicides
, despite these tragic events of recent days.”
In February of this year there were 6 compared to 33 in the same month of the previous administration.
Furthermore, “in the first month we have increased the seizure of cocaine
by 300%
, which in the last four years had fallen by 30%,” he added in reference to the management of former Security Minister K Aníbal Fernández.
“Drugs that are not seized end up fueling the logistics and financial power of drug trafficking sectors,” Verrier explained.
Drug trafficking organizations, he highlighted, “
grow
to the extent that the State is not present.
That is configured and stabilized to the extent that it is in the neighborhood through the security forces and with the support of the other State agencies: Social Development, Transportation, lighting… “
However, he clarified that “when we think about it looking at the strategic image, they are not large gangs,
but rather small gangs entrenched in mainly vulnerable sectors of Greater Rosario
.”
One problem is the financial leg.
During the government of Mauricio Macri “we had an agreement with the UIF (the anti-money laundering organization) to form joint investigative teams.
That
was dismantled
in the administration of the Frente de Todos.
We are working on reactivating that mechanism,” concluded Verrier.
This week, Bullrich
had convened the Internal Security Committee that includes representatives of each of the 23 Argentine provinces and the Minister of Security of the City of Buenos Aires, Waldo Wolff
.
At the meeting, the “Federal Digital Ring” was presented, and a criminal analysis work table was formed. In addition, the strategy for the application of the Federal Forces and their territorial deployment was disseminated, providing details about the Federal Action Plan. Training on Drug Trafficking and the Federal Plan for Chemical Precursors Inspections.
Meanwhile, in terms of criminal investigation, the progress and results of the Federal Federal Communications System (SIFCOP) and the Unified Federal Command for the Recapture of Evacuees (CUFRE) were reported, as well as the work of the Scientific Police.
And most importantly from a political point of view,
it was agreed to sign an agreement with the provinces of Río Negro, Chubut and Neuquén to secure point 1 of the “May Pact.”
That is, defend private property.
It is to face another front of security conflict that Bullrich expects: the violent Mapuches.
The agreement will allow the current federal forces
“to face possible seizures, usurpations and cuts and requests for tolls as Mapuche groups usually do” especially in Vaca Muerta and other oil areas.