Email

Print

And, with Belize's vast un-occupied land mass, there are plenty of places that fall in that nowhere zone. Today, we left out at 5:00 am for one of them, with the BDF. Our team of Jules Vasquez and Victor Noble just came back an hour and a half ago - and here's the story of their day's adventure:…

Jules Vasquez Reporting
Shipstern is in extreme northeastern Belize, that line to the left is the northern highway - to the right that blue area is the sea between the mainland and Ambergris caye and the yellow line in the north is the Belize Mexico border.

It is remote, barely accessible by road and probably the only way to get there is in these BDF super duty Ford Trucks which took us from the old northern highway to a group of fairly well kept - but still very rough - trails in the Shipstern Nature Reserve.

It is a reserve - covering an area of more than 27'000 acres but we found logs without the forestry departments stamp on them on the way - meaning they had been illegally extracted.

But that was just a passing curiosity - our interest was a clandestine airstrip in the heart of Shipstern.

But this felled tree made sure we couldn't get all the way there by vehicle because it was positioned to block the road.

But even with 400 pounds of explosives to haul in, the team soldiered on - carting it all into the area.

And what a sight it is. In the middle of the jungle, a vast clearing - giving way to a landing strip over a kilometer long.

The BDF immediately started deploying the 8 explosive charges at 100 meter intervals.

Leftenant Cornel David Jones, Demolition Expert
"We came out here today to actually destroy this airstrip in the Shipstern area. We brought the troops out here prior to reconnaissance that occurs last week. Last week the guys came here to look at the airstrip because we had an aerial reconnaissance of this airstrip which confirms that an airstrip was here. We check with civil aviation, we check with our ministry as well as national Security Council and we got the feedback that this airstrip was illegal. This is crown land and no one owns it. Subsequently we were task to destroy it. The guys came in last week and did the rec'y on the reconnaissance they drove all the way up on this airstrip. Today when we got here we had an obstacle about 500 meters prior to the airstrip intentionally put across the road so that we could not drive in. So it delayed our task somewhat. We still were able to achieve our mission."

"When we came in here we notice these leaves here on the actual airstrip. It is probably to camouflage it from the air so we may not be able to notice. Its a clear indication that this airstrip was going to be used shortly. Fortunately we are here now, we did the destruction. Initially starting with the structured for each of these craters, we used a cratering charge which has a pilot hole and a main charge. We use the pilot hole to create a main little hole that is about 2 meters in the ground and about 1 foot wide. Then we out the main charge in. When the main charge goes in that is about 18 kilograms of granular explosives which goes into the earth and when we detonate that the effect of the crater is what you see behind me."

And what an effect - it is1 We were treated to eight major blasts - spectacular, propulsive, and scary as the air expanded and debris came soaring at us from 250 feet away.

The soldiers went into the crater to show the scale of the damage to the runaway.

And there are 7 more like that. Serious, but maybe not irreparable damage:

Jules Vasquez
"This area has been flattened. Obviously there is a great deal of heavy equipment at their disposal and man power. What should stop them from just coming back here with equipment and filling back these holes?"

Leftenant Cornel David Jones, Demolition Expert
"There is very little that we can do to really stop these guys from come back and fill these holes. Obviously with heavy equipment they can come in again and fill it as has happen in the past. But what happens now is that we continue aerial reconnaissance to confirm that this airstrip is not being upgraded. So whenever we do a cratering like this we come in with aerial reconnaissance and confirm that it's not being upgraded. If it is being upgraded we come in and we set up a covert OP or we come in and try and challenge anyone to land here and then take them out."

Patrick Jones, Love FM News
"Last week when you came here obviously that obstruction was not here. Do you have any intelligence that tells you who is using this airstrip?"

Leftenant Cornel David Jones, Demolition Expert
"No we have absolutely no idea who may be using it. Anyone's guess is as good as mine."

Jules Vasquez
"But it is being used for the transshipment of drugs."

Leftenant Cornel David Jones, Demolition Expert
"Yes we strongly believe so. This is an airstrip, it's not declared by anyone, it's not really own by anyone, its government property. No one really own this property around here. We had reports of low flying aircrafts last week, previous weeks before. This is why we came in here. We strongly believe this one is being used for illegal transshipment of drugs."

Jules Vasquez
"A lot of people might think that 'wow Clandestine airstrip' but you told me on our way in that you've been blowing these up for fifteen years. These are all over the country."

Leftenant Cornel David Jones, Demolition Expert
"I personally have been doing this for over fifteen years."

Jules Vasquez
"More than one a year?"

Leftenant Cornel David Jones, Demolition Expert
"Sometimes up to four airstrips I destroy in one year. Sometimes two, sometimes three, sometimes only one. But this is the season, when its very dry like this. This is when we clamp down a lot of illegal airstrip."

And looking at the panorama of destruction, not the bdf craters, the flattened trees, the literally hundreds of shards of smashed, centuries old Mayan pottery - mulched to bits in the bulldozer's path, the litter - extending to even contraband cigarettes - all in a nature reserve - don't even register when compared to the lawless but massive imprint of the drug trade:

Jules Vasquez
"Obviously these people are working in tandem with licit people. People who have license their bulldozers or whatever is required. Obviously there are people nearby perhaps who are involved in this preparation of a clandestine airstrip illegal aerodrome."

Leftenant Cornel David Jones, Demolition Expert
"I am quite sure of that. Having such an operation requires detail coordination. It requires someone with good organizational skills and it requires a lot of money because those heavy duty equipment is expensive. It's expensive to get them here, fuel is expensive; they need to pay man power and probably over 50-60 guys were employed n working on this airstrip. Because first they had to clear the land and if you can see it's a big area to clear because all this area was trees. After they clear the trees, they had to grade this area so that an aircraft could actually land, so it's quite expensive and I surely believe they had local assistance and there is also foreign assistance I believe that is involved in the illicit business of drug transshipment here."

The explosives used cost a total of 16 thousand dollars. Jones says the BDF has intelligence that there are other airstrips in the area. They chose to destroy this one most urgently because on a recent trip, a BDF unit saw tracks form the plane's wheels on the runway.

The nearest settlement to the airstrip is the Mennonite community of Little Belize.