Drug gangs off limits for Argentine armed forces, despite opposition’s claims

Drug gangs off limits for Argentine armed forces, despite opposition’s claims

After a mafia-style attack on Thursday against a supermarket in Rosario owned by relatives of Lionel Messi’s wife, many opposition leaders in Argentina suggested the Armed Forces be deployed against the drug-trafficking gangs operating in the country’s third-largest city.

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However, Defense Minister Jorge Taiana explained from Brazil where he is on an official visit that such a measure is not permitted: “The laws of Internal Security and Defense are clear about the areas of competence” of the Armed Forces, which “are not trained to fight organized crime but to protect [national] sovereignty and repel any foreign state military aggression,” Taiana explained while flatly ruling out the feasibility of the suggestions made by Horacio Rodríguez Larreta and Patricia Bullrich.

Defense Ministry sources quoted by Buenos Aires media added that “today there is not a single military member in the Armed Forces who is thinking of getting involved in the fight against drug trafficking.”

Hence, the issue was not even raised among the top brass, who concur with President Alberto Fernández’s administration’s policy of avoiding any military interference in internal security.

Strictly speaking, military involvement in internal security would risk an encore of how the armed forces handled the guerrillas in the 1970s. It also requires a Congressional amendment to the applicable law, and the subsequent changes to troop training to deal with street and gang fights, which is a normal occurrence for the armed forces of other countries in the region, such as Brazil and Colombia.

“Security is a problem of the Ministry of Security and its force, the law clearly establishes that although we have some degree of participation, this is fundamentally of logistical support to the Security Forces,” explained General Juan Martín Paleo, the joint Chief of Staff of the three armed forces.