The Panamanian National Air and Naval Service (SENAN) carries out naval and air operations to provide protection, surveillance, security, and defense of the country’s air and maritime jurisdictional areas. The SENAN has some 2,500 agents, 45 vessels, and some 40 aircraft.
Commissioner Rafael Jurado, SENAN’s national director of Air and Naval Operations, spoke with Diálogo about institutional priorities.
Diálogo: What is SENAN’s priority?
Commissioner Rafael Jurado, national director of Air and Naval Operations of the Panamanian National Air and Naval Service: Our priority is to be that entity that contributes from the maritime, air, and land point of view to the fight against organized crime and against common crime and delinquency. SENAN is an institution of Panama, of the Panamanians and serves the world because we have the duty to take care of the Panama Canal and our seas. It is a unique responsibility for a small institution in which its men and women have multiple functions and responsibilities. The main institutional strength is neither in the ships nor in the aircraft, but in the SENAN personnel for their desire to serve and to contribute to the institutional mission.
Diálogo: What is your biggest challenge?
Commissioner Jurado: SENAN is an institution that has air, naval, and maritime functions; it has police functions and a relationship with the judiciary. Therefore, the greatest challenge for an operations director is to combine all these strengths in order to be able to provide a service to the community, to Panamanian citizens, and to those who visit us, a quality service, to provide an effective response and, above all, an effective response with security.
Diálogo: How does SENAN work in coordination with the Regional Center for Aeronaval Operations (CROAN) to combat narcotrafficking at sea?
Commissioner Jurado: The CROAN is part of the structure of SENAN’s Operations Division with an international vision, and basically what it does is to merge all of Panama’s maritime resources through the Joint Task Force. It is a center that works with the vision of generating a better use of the means, a greater effectiveness, and to delimit the actions that can affect the security of our personnel. CROAN is normally coordinating maritime, air, and land operations and reaching places that are basically difficult to access.
Diálogo: What does Operation Beta consist of? What results has it yielded to date?
Commissioner Jurado: Operation Beta is a national operation that has different components, such as organized crime and public security. Operation Beta’s mission is to improve the general security of Panamanians and to generate conditions for foreigners to visit us because we are a safe country. The results are great and normally there are seizures of weapons, drugs, money, just to give you an example. As of July of this year, some 12,000 people have been apprehended for different crimes. There have been around 3,500 raids. Nine vessels have been detained and around 500 weapons and a plural number of rounds of ammunition have been seized. More than 100 aeromedical evacuations have been carried out, money and illicit substances have been seized, vehicles have been recovered, and there are even implications for traffic security, which is a matter for the National Police, and the aim is to maintain that security within the country.
Diálogo: SENAN has a liaison officer within U.S. Joint Interagency Task Force South (JIATF South). How does this assignment help Panama’s national effort to combat the threat of narcotrafficking?
Commissioner Jurado: Panama’s participation in JIATF South was born a few years ago and Panama’s investment in having a liaison officer there is quite important. Having a liaison officer generates great confidence in the handling of information and allows us to be at the forefront and to have accurate results by being able to link more people to our own operation.
Diálogo: One of SENAN’s tasks is to carry out humanitarian aid missions with aeromedical evacuations. How important are these tasks for the public?
Commissioner Jurado: We have everything that is social and humanitarian aid in remote communities. SENAN contributes in several ways, directly to make the authorities that have competence, such as the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Social Development, etc., to reach those places and even with nongovernmental organizations. SENAN’s aerial resources, which are expensive to operate, are used to reach places where no one else in Panama can reach and to carry out medical evacuations; in other words, SENAN is the difference between life and death for communities that are difficult to reach.
Diálogo: What does the Vigilant Fishermen (Pescadores Vigilantes) program consist of?
Commissioner Jurado: Vigilant Fishermen is an initiative of SENAN to be a preventive security program in which artisanal fishermen joined together to have the necessary tools to allow them to stop being victims of crime and to become an entity that in some way provides us with early warning of people who want to break the law. The program includes education on preventive safety, communication, best practices in fishing and protection of marine resources, among others. Vigilant fishermen is a model for other countries. Other achievements are the permanent and effective actions taken against IUU [illegal, unreported, and unregulated] fishing and improving coordination in operations with the authorities.
Diálogo: How is SENAN working to counter IUU fishing?
Commissioner Jurado: The national government has a zero-tolerance policy for IUU fishing, which relies on national bodies and is coordinated with international agencies. We work together with the Aquatic Resources Authority of Panama (ARAP) and the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office on these crimes and we patrol jurisdictional waters to monitor and mitigate the effects of illegal fishing with different vessels such as the P-230 and the BPC-2805. Some operations are linked to the United States Coast Guard with whom we collaborate directly and with allied countries such as Colombia and Costa Rica.
