Adam Isacson's Latin America Blog

The U.S. Says It Doesn’t Aid FUSINA, a Honduran Security Force Facing Human Rights Allegations. But It Aids Large Components of FUSINA.

On March 3 indigenous activist and Goldman Environmental Prize winner Berta Cáceres was killed at her home in La Esperanza, Honduras. Two months later, five men, including an active-duty military officer, were arrested and charged with the crime. Then, on June 21, The Guardian reported–based on testimony from a sergeant who deserted the Honduran Army–that Cáceres’s name had appeared on a military “hitlist.”

Lists featuring the names and photographs of dozens of social and environmental activists were given to two elite units, with orders to eliminate each target, according to First Sergeant Rodrigo Cruz, 20.

The “two elite units” cited in the Guardian piece are multi-agency, civil-military forces set up during the presidency of Juan Orlando Hernández (2014-present): the Xatruch task force and the National Inter-Institutional Security Force, or FUSINA.

The U.S. State Department says it is reviewing the Guardian allegations. It also told the Guardian that neither the Xatruch task force nor FUSINA receives U.S. assistance.

This latter statement–that these joint, elite units receive no U.S. aid–is surprising. The U.S. military has promoted the model of vetted, joint military-police-judicial units in neighboring Guatemala, where Inter-Agency Task Forces operate in border zones. Nonetheless, U.S. officials told The Guardian that “[T]he US had provided no funding or training to Fusina or to the military police for public order (PMOP) [a newly created branch of the Honduran armed forces, which acts as a ‘super-police’] under a policy to avoid supporting units that blurred the line between policing and military functions.”

None of these units (Xatruch, FUSINA, PMOP) appears in a recent State Department list of recipient units in Central America’s Northern Triangle region. A scouring of our records about U.S. cooperation with Honduras’s security forces found no mention of the Xatruch task force, which mainly operates along the Caribbean coast and in the troubled Bajo Aguán region, where attacks on human rights defenders are frequent.

It’s clear, though, that at least the U.S. military maintains a close cooperative relationship with some FUSINA components, despite concerns about FUSINA’s human rights record.

In a June 14 monograph from the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, author Evan Ellis states, “With U.S. assistance, FUSINA and the Honduran government dismantled the leadership of the nation’s two principal family-based drug smuggling organizations.”

Ellis’s monograph notes that the National Police’s Inter-Agency Special Security Response Unit (TIGRES) is "under the operational command of FUSINA.” The Tigres are listed as a U.S. aid recipient unit. Some members received three weeks of U.S. Army training in April. The elite police unit’s very close operational collaboration with U.S. Special Operations Forces was the subject of a lengthy February profile in the Wall Street Journal.

The State Department’s March 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report notes that FUSINA “has soldiers in the Maya Chorti Task Force operating along the border with Guatemala. FUSINA has participated actively in counternarcotic operations along the Caribbean coast.” Ellis’s monograph also mentions this unit as part of FUSINA. The Maya Chortí Task Force, which has Guatemalan and Honduran components, receives U.S. assistance with the goal–according to a U.S. military official’s congressional testimony–of “getting them together in what we call IATFs—Interagency Task Force—on either side of that border to get them to cooperate more closely on intel sharing, procedures.”

The Guardian discusses a May 2015 crisis-response exercise, reported by local media at the time, which involved 300 U.S. personnel alongside Honduran units including FUSINA members. “U.S. officials denied that the exercise involved training,” the article reports.

Diálogo, the “digital magazine” of U.S. Southern Command (the military component responsible for U.S. defense activity in most of Latin America), has published at least three articles since September 2015 featuring FUSINA. While none mentions U.S. assistance, each effusively praises FUSINA: “FUSINA Reinforces Border Security against Gangs” (June 10, 2016); “Elite FUSINA Force Credited For Drop in Honduras Homicides” (February 11, 2016); and “Honduras Records Significant Decrease in Violence as Armed Forces and Police Remain Vigilant” (September 21, 2015).

The new Honduran Military Public Order Police (PMOP) makes up much of FUSINA’s membership, and it does not receive U.S. assistance. Other units operating within FUSINA do, however, and it is likely that U.S. personnel and PMOP personnel routinely rub shoulders within the FUSINA structure.

How, then, can the State Department truthfully say that FUSINA gets no U.S. assistance? A few possible explanations exist.

• Because FUSINA is a coordinating body more than a unit. Its components occasionally operate under the FUSINA umbrella, but can also operate on their own. “As a stand-alone law enforcement agency, it [FUSINA] does not exist,” Sarah Kinosian, writing for the Latin America Working Group, noted last year. It may be technically possible, then, for the State Department to say “the Tigres get assistance,” but that “FUSINA does not” even though the Tigres are assigned to FUSINA.

• Because the State Department denial may cover only funds that the State Department manages. State’s programs may not aid FUSINA components, but other assistance, totaling somewhere between US$10-20 million per year, is delivered through the Defense Department’s budget. While the U.S. ambassador in Honduras should have full visibility on Defense-budget assistance, it may not show up in State’s usual reporting because the money doesn’t pass through State’s channels.

• Because FUSINA may get assistance in forms that aren’t “traditional,” like direct equipment transfers, or training through formal courses with established curricula. Instead, its personnel may benefit from on-the-job advising and mentoring from U.S. personnel, participation in a joint exercise whose “primary purpose” is to train the U.S. personnel involved, or having U.S. personnel accompany them on operations, just as U.S. Special Operations Forces do with the Tigres. These activities may not formally count as “assistance.”

Despite the denials, then, a relationship exists between FUSINA and U.S. forces operating in Honduras. This makes it all the more imperative that U.S. and Honduran officials clarify these horrifying “military hitlist” allegations.