Betting on Mexican Army in Drug War

At a time when the U.S. government is seeking more cooperation with the Mexican armed forces, Mexicans are becoming increasingly disillusioned. The Mexican army has long been regarded as one of Mexico’s most highly regarded institutions, generally ranking second in public polls following the Catholic Church. However, its high-profile role in President Felipe Calderón’s drug war has highlighted its gross incompetence, corruption, and disregard for human rights. As a result, public confidence in the armed forces is plummeting. After three months of the Mexican army’s Joint Operation Chihuahua, two out of three people recently polled in Ciudad Juárez said that the army’s anti-drug operation has had little or no impact. At the outset of the army’s anti-narcotics campaign in Chihuahua, the army ranked first in public confidence among thirteen institutions. Today, only 34% of those polled in the border city of Juárez had confidence in the army – a drop from 77% in early April. It’s no wonder. The drug violence that sparked state and local government officials to request an expanded army presence has continued unabated. In public displays attended by school children, the army periodically burns stacks of marijuana that it has “decommissioned” and display the rangy “delinquents” it has arrested. But there have been no arrests of drug lords or major raids on the highly lucrative drug trafficking networks that run through the border state. At the start of Joint Operation Chihuahua, the army engaged in an aggressive public relations campaign to win public support and explain its mission. General Jorge Juárez, commander of the Chihuahua operation, explained away the drug violence, asserting it was the result of the “efecto cucaracha” or cockroach effect whereby the army presence set off increased feuding among the country’s main drug organizations. This explanation is the official line of the Calderón government, which insists that the escalating drug-related violence since December 2006, when the current drug war began with the army in the lead, is actually a sign of success. More sober assessments, however, attribute the new violence to the internal dynamics of the illegal drug business in Mexico rather than a reaction to government progress. The various drug cartels are competing among one another for increased control, and in the process they are eliminating police who aren’t loyal to the new regional drug bosses. It’s the “plata ó plomo” (silver or lead—bribes or death) system gone wild. The United States is betting that the army, with its help, can bring stability to Mexico. It praises the Calderón administration for “using the military to reestablish authority and counter the cartels’ firepower.” (see International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, March 2008). In its ever-hopeful vision of the drug war, the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy declares that the Mexican institutions leading the drug war “are making a tremendous amount of progress” – without detailing what that progress is. Reacting to congressional concerns about gross human rights abuses by the army, ONCCP Chief John Walters says, “The use of the military against the cartels is a temporary necessity; President Calderón is reforming Mexican police institutions to enable them to confront cartels that use the income from our addicted citizens to arm themselves and kill and corrupt security forces.” Few Mexicans, who detest the police, would bet on that scenario. And few close observers of the drug war in Mexico would bet that the military’s role in the drug war is temporary.

Photo: Bush and Calderon shake on drug war cooperation

Merida Initiative and Failed Drug War Paradigm

“The Government of Mexico is fighting a deadly battle to protect human rights and stop those who seek to rule by violence and terror.” John Walters, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy at the White House, made that assessment in the ONDCP’s blog, Pushing Back.

Drug Chief Walters asks us to believe the Mexican government is fighting a life-or-death battle to protect human rights. “Pushing back,” ONDCP took Congress to task for adding strong human rights conditionality to the proposed Merida Initiative to aid Mexico is its drug war.

According to ONDCP, “Insisting on such conditions would reduce the possibility of implementing our strategic partnership and compromise relations with a vital partner in the fight against crime and illegal drugs.” What’s more, the strong human rights conditionality included in the original Senate version of the bill raise serious sovereignty concerns.”

Echoing the complaints of the Mexican Congress and President Felipe Calderón, the title of the ONDCP blog posting asks, “Is it fair to ask Mexico to change its constitution?” It surely was an odd turn in U.S. politics when the Bush administration, eager to increase its drug war involvement in Mexico, stood behind nationalist sentiment in Mexico against U.S. meddling in its internal affairs.

The Mexican political elite stood largely united behind the Calderón administration’s position that human rights conditionality violated national sovereignty and undermined the cooperative character of the Merida Initiative – a binational anti-narcotics, border security, and anti-terrorism accord that was publicly unveiled by President Bush in October 2007 and named after the March 2007 meeting of Bush and Calderón in Merida as part of the trinational Security and Prosperity Partnership.

Expressing the political opposition’s view, Ruth Zavaleta, a leading deputy of the Party of the Democratic Revolution, told the Dallas Times: "We are the first ones to defend the idea that Mexico needs these reforms, along with advances in human rights," she said. "But the United States cannot make unilateral demands."

Human Rights Demands Not Unilateral

Human rights demands weren’t exactly unilateral. Mexico’s human rights community called for human rights conditionality. According to Victor Serrato Lozano, the president of Michoacán's state commission for human rights, the Mexican army’s drug war has come with a “high cost to human rights.”

"There should be conditions on the aid package. This is not a violation of our sovereignty if what the US is seeking is to strengthen human rights organizations." Which of course it does not do. It gives the state department—a dubious authority on human rights-- the task of rubber stamping Mexican government actions.

A May 29 letter from directors of Amnesty International Mexico and the Miguel Augustín Pro-Juárez Human Rights Center to the leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives, which was signed by 25 other Mexican human rights and civil society organizations, stated: “The strengthening of efficient mechanisms that guarantee full respect for human rights should be at its center if it truly intends on being an act of collaboration between countries with common concerns.”

Opposition by the Mexican government and Congress, together with the “push back” strategy of the Bush administration, persuaded U.S. congressional representatives to withdraw the controversial human rights conditionality. As a result, Mexico is set to receive $400 million in anti-drug and security aid this year, with $116.5 million allocated to the Mexican armed forces for training and equipment.

The House of Representatives has already authorized the president’s $1.4 billion three-package, but additional funds for the next two years will still need to go through the appropriations process. According to the original Merida Initiative presented to Congress by President Bush, another $450 million appropriation is proposed for the initiative’s second year.

Increased U.S.-Mexico cooperation on illegal drug flows and other transborder crime is clearly needed. But cooperation in a failed drug war won’t solve drug violence and drug abuse as the history of the U.S. government’s drug war – launched by President Richard Nixon in 1972.

New Paradigm—Legalization of Marijuana, Cocaine, Heroin

Bush and Calderón should have taken advantage of their alliance and meeting in Merida to call for a new cooperative campaign that treats the transborder drug problem as a public health issue rather than as a threat to national security. Rather than helicopters and weapons, what’s needed is a combination of a shared intelligence, public education, treatment, and the regularization and legalization of marijuana, cocaine, and heroin. Instead, the failed drug war is being extended and pumped up by more foreign aid.

Concern for human rights should be part of all U.S. foreign aid agreements – with the exception of humanitarian and disaster assistance. Congress was right to consider adding human rights conditions to its aid package to Mexico. U.S. taxpayers should be able to rest assured that our foreign aid isn’t given to recipients with patterns of human rights abuses – like the Mexican army and police.

But the main failure of Congress was neither adding the human rights conditions nor withdrawing them. Rather, Congress should have outright rejected Bush’s Merida Initiative as a waste of taxpayer money – throwing scarce dollars into yet another war that is misguided and counterproductive.

Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), one of the Senate’s leading voices on Latin America policy, may have expressed it best when he called the Bush administration’s Merida Initiative part of the “old war on drugs paradigm.” Unfortunately, even critics of the drug war model in Congress have been reluctant to cast their votes against funding the drug war – just as they continue to vote to fund the Iraq war. And so the drug war continues from decade to decade, country to country.

A new paradigm is badly needed.

For more information:Resource Page on Plan Mexico: http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5118