Pubdate: Wed, 30 May 2007
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Page: A7
Copyright: 2007 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.wsj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487
Author: John Lyons and Jose De Cordoba
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Mexico (Mexico)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Felipe+Calderon
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MEXICO'S CALDERON TAKES ON KINGPINS

President Mobilizes Military to Stem Rising Drug Violence; an Appeal 
for U.S. Assistance

MEXICO CITY -- President Felipe Calderon escalated Mexico's bloody 
clash with narcotics gangs this month by dispatching troops to the 
Gulf Coast state of Veracruz. They got a grisly greeting: A severed 
human head at the barracks with a note scoffing at the president's efforts.

Mr. Calderon is taking on heavily armed drug gangs on a scale that is 
unprecedented in Mexico. Since taking office Dec. 1, he has ordered 
24,000 soldiers and federal police to states where drug lords hold 
sway. This year he has extradited to the U.S. at least 15 drug 
kingpins who were running their gangs from Mexican jails; in 2006, 
Mexico extradited a major drug lord to the U.S. for the first time.

The success or failure of Mr. Calderon's assault on drug crime has 
important implications for the U.S. Mexico is by far the biggest U.S. 
supplier of cocaine -- most of it originating in Colombia -- and a 
major supplier of marijuana, heroin and methamphetamines. Mr. 
Calderon's government has begun talks for increased aid from the U.S. 
to ramp up its drug fight, Mexican government officials said. He also 
is pressing the U.S. to stanch the flow of arms smuggled from the 
U.S. into Mexico.

U.S. officials said the administration applauds what Mr. Calderon has 
been doing and hopes to assist him. So far, discussions between the 
two sides remain preliminary. "Nothing is being proposed yet from 
either side," said a State Department official. "There is a real 
desire to help, but we have not yet put any request forward to get 
money from Congress."

The U.S. and Mexico have a long history of cooperation on drug 
investigations, though U.S. financial assistance is relatively small, 
owing in part to Mexico's reluctance to accept outside aid on 
law-enforcement matters. Possible areas of increased U.S. aid could 
include technological support in monitoring Mexican airspace as well as money.

Mr. Calderon's bold strokes have boosted his popularity in Mexico 
after he eked out a narrow victory at the polls. But he may be 
betting his presidency on an issue that has long proved intractable. 
His predecessors shied away from confronting drug gangs out of fear 
it could thrust the government into a fight reminiscent of Colombia 
in recent decades, when politicians were routinely gunned down and 
car bombings terrorized ordinary citizens against the backdrop of a 
drug-fueled guerrilla war.

Mexico has a long way to go before it resembles Colombia's bloody 
past, but there are reasons why some here are making the comparison. 
This year, more than 1,000 people have died from drug-related 
violence -- putting the country on a path to exceed last year's 
unprecedented toll of 2,000 dead. Colombia averaged 1,850 
combat-related deaths a year from 1998-2002, according to a recent 
University of London study.

"The difference with Colombia is that here, we are trying to catch it 
at an earlier stage," said Mexican Public Security Minister Genaro 
Garcia. [Combo]

Mr. Calderon may not have had much choice. Drug violence that once 
seemed out of the way in rural Mexico spilled into cities over the 
past several years as the government of Vicente Fox failed to curb 
violence between drug gangs. Monterrey, a hub for business and one of 
the country's richest cities, is now the scene of regular 
assassinations of police officials. The police chief of the posh 
Monterrey suburb of San Nicolas was slain this month. Acapulco, the 
Pacific Coast playground of the Mexico City elite, is becoming known 
more for severed heads than for coconut-rum drinks.

Mexicans were stunned last year when a gang dumped five severed heads 
on the stage at a nightclub in the state of Michoacan as a warning to 
a rival gang. Gangs send videos of police or rival traffickers being 
tortured to newspapers. Police in Acapulco have been terrorized by 
the sight of the bleeding heads of officers impaled on stakes outside 
police stations.

The prospect of fighting Mexico's drug organizations, which employ 
paramilitary fighters with sophisticated weapons, has provoked 
unnerving questions among senior officials and policy analysts: Does 
the Mexican state have the equipment, manpower and nerve to displace 
narcotics gangs? What happens if the government loses?

"In play are...liberty, the rule of law, justice, the state itself," 
political analyst Federico Reyes Heroles wrote recently in the 
Reforma newspaper. "It's that simple and dramatic."

Mr. Calderon's stance has attracted doubters. Opposition lawmakers 
passed a nonbinding resolution calling on the president to return the 
military to its barracks. The nation's human-rights commission, an 
autonomous government body, has criticized the use of the military as 
risking civil-rights abuses. A small-town mayor on the front lines of 
the drug fight in Guerrero state has called on Mr. Calderon to cut a 
deal with traffickers as the best way to quell violence. One 
explanation for the violence is that it is an unintended result of 
law enforcement's strategy of targeting drug lords. Mexicans are 
learning that the death or jailing of a kingpin begets more violence 
as lesser barons battle for the spoils.

Another explanation is drug gangs are fighting over lucrative Mexican 
markets for retail drug sales that didn't exist a few years ago. 
Mexican authorities have estimated that drug use has risen 20% in the 
past 10 years.

Mr. Calderon is relying heavily on the military, an alliance he 
sealed shortly after taking office by granting a near-50% pay raise 
to servicemen. Mr. Calderon needs the military because many local 
police forces are perceived to be corrupt, senior government 
officials said. The army is the only organized force in Mexico 
equipped to deal with the outbreaks of violence and the loss of state 
control in many towns and cities.

But attempts to rely on the army in the past have backfired. A 
general tapped as Mexico's antidrug czar in the 1990s was later 
convicted of being on the payroll of a cartel, and critics of Mr. 
Calderon's approach said dispersing the military in drug zones could 
lead to corruption in the ranks.

While the military may be able to match the firepower of drug gangs, 
it hasn't proved capable of the detective work needed to dismantle 
the organizations. Soldiers this month fired grenades into a house in 
Michoacan, where suspected gang leaders were hiding, killing everyone 
instead of arresting them. Mr. Calderon has announced the creation of 
a new military division that will support federal police work, as 
well as an overhaul of the federal police, which has been undermined 
by links with organized crime. But attempts to create an elite 
drug-fighting corps have failed in the past when security forces came 
under the suspicion of corruption.

To learn more, Mr. Calderon and his top security officials plan to 
fly to Italy Saturday to meet officials with experience battling the Mafia. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake