Pubdate: Wed, 31 Dec 2008
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Page: Front Page
Copyright: 2008 Los Angeles Times
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/bc7El3Yo
Website: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Josh Meyer, Reporting from Washington
Bookmark: Mexico Under Siege (Series) http://mapinc.org/find?255
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Merida+Initiative
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Felipe+Calderon
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Obama

Mexico Under Siege

MISTRUST BEDEVILS WAR ON CARTELS

The U.S. has begun pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into 
Mexico to help stanch the expansion of drug-fueled violence and 
corruption that has claimed more than 5,000 lives south of the border 
this year.

The bloodshed has spread to American cities, even to the heartland, 
and U.S. officials are realizing that their fight against powerful 
drug cartels responsible for the carnage has come down to this: 
Either walk away or support Mexican President Felipe Calderon's 
strategy, even with the risk that counter-narcotics intelligence, 
equipment and training could end up in the hands of cartel bosses.

Both nations agree that the cartels have morphed into transnational 
crime syndicates that pose an urgent threat to their security and 
that of the region. Law enforcement agencies from the border to Maine 
acknowledge that the traffickers have brought a war once dismissed as 
a foreign affair to the doorstep of local communities. The trail of 
slayings, kidnappings and other crimes stretches through at least 195 
U.S. cities.

The rapidly escalating problem will probably present the Obama 
administration with hard choices on how to work with Mexico to combat 
the cartels and the gun-running, money-laundering and other illicit 
businesses that nourish them.

So far, the fight has largely been waged by the Calderon 
administration, which deployed thousands of federal troops and police 
to 18 states to take on the cartels, some of which have paramilitary 
forces protecting them and many police officers and politicians in 
their pockets.

"They know they have a monumental undertaking, but you have to start 
somewhere," Michael A. Braun, former assistant director and chief of 
operations at the Drug Enforcement Administration, said of the 
Mexican government. "If you don't, in another five years the cartels 
will be running Mexico."

The U.S. answer for fighting the cartels is contained in a package 
known as the Merida Initiative, named for the Mexican city where it 
was unveiled by Presidents Calderon and Bush in October 2007. When 
Congress passed the first installment of the three-year aid package 
in June, it contained at least 33 programs, giving about $400 million 
to Mexico for this fiscal year and $65 million for drug-fighting 
efforts in various Central American and Caribbean countries.

The first tranche of money was delayed until this month, and 
squabbling and other problems have held up delivery of most direct 
assistance. A senior State Department official confirmed that Mexico 
would have to wait more than a year for at least two U.S. transport 
helicopters and a reconnaissance plane that it says it desperately needs.

Starting From Scratch

Some senior U.S. counter-narcotics officials and lawmakers say the 
U.S.-Mexico relationship has been so polluted for decades by 
mistrust, neglect and failure to collaborate that the countries must 
build much of their anti-drug strategy from scratch, even at a time 
when beheadings and other brutal slayings have become commonplace in Mexico.

They fear the cartels are so strong and well-funded that Mexican 
government forces will continue to be undertrained, under-equipped 
and outgunned for years, even with U.S. aid. And they say it could 
take decades and billions of dollars more to establish the 
corruption-resistant criminal justice institutions needed to 
eliminate the cartels and their government benefactors.

"You need a robust internal capacity to identify the cancer, cut it 
out and move on while checking the margins to make sure it hasn't 
spread," said Braun, who is now managing partner at Spectre Group 
International, a security consulting firm. "And they have never done 
that. They never institutionalized law enforcement at any level."

U.S. authorities remain deeply troubled that corruption in the top 
echelons of Calderon's administration could undermine the Merida 
effort. Some said the recent arrest of Mexico's former drug czar, Noe 
Ramirez Mandujano, on suspicion of taking a $450,000 bribe from the 
cartels showed that Calderon's effort to root out corruption was working.

Some U.S. officials say they share more information than ever with 
Mexico. Others are conducting damage assessments after Ramirez's 
arrest, and after Mexico revealed that cartel operatives had 
infiltrated Interpol, the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City and even DEA operations.

Calderon will probably discover more corruption within his government 
and his administration, but he deserves credit for requesting 
assistance and battling the cartels since his election two years ago, 
Braun and other current and former U.S. officials said.

Since it was first unveiled in Merida, the drug plan has been 
criticized as a confusing patchwork of questionable programs, 
including military and law enforcement training, high-tech 
drug-detection scanners and gang-prevention programs.

Then Congress set about making it even more complicated.

Some lawmakers got more money for U.S. counter-narcotics efforts, and 
others focused on more funding for Central American regional security 
programs. Many have complained that no one is coordinating the 
initiative, and that turf battles and confusion reign among the many 
agencies that have a piece of it.

"You've got so many different agencies involved -- who would you even 
put in charge of it?" said an official with the State Department's 
Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, who 
spoke on condition of anonymity.

Hard Feelings

Privately, Mexican officials are furious with Bush for not doing more 
to investigate and stop the flood of assault weapons coming in from 
U.S. gun shops and gun shows. One senior Mexican official said the 
weapons made up about 90% of the cartels' arsenals.

And Mexico continues to accuse Washington of doing far too little to 
diminish the southbound flow of billions of dollars in laundered drug 
proceeds and drug precursor chemicals, even though both are addressed 
in the initiative.

Washington, particularly the DEA, is so distrustful of Mexican 
authorities that they share sensitive counter-narcotics intelligence 
and evidence with only a small group of Mexican officials.

These include a handful of recently installed top aides to Calderon 
and about 225 Mexican law enforcement officials who have been 
thoroughly investigated and trained, and who can be continually 
monitored by the U.S.

They say they have no choice.

"It is very troubling from the standpoint that in order for us to 
help the government of Mexico help themselves, we've got to have the 
confidence to share very sensitive information without the fear that 
that information is going to be leaked to the traffickers or to 
others in a way that could compromise operations and ultimately get 
people killed," said Anthony Placido, the DEA's director of intelligence.

"It would be easy to take the path of least resistance and say 
they're all corrupt and we can't work with them," Placido said. "But 
the reality is it is simply much too important not to. They have 
taken on these traffickers, and now they have to win. And they 
deserve and need our support."

The contentiousness surrounding the Merida plan is no surprise to 
veteran counter-narcotics officials and policymakers. They say it is 
emblematic of a turbulent relationship between the two countries that 
has often been defined by bickering, public finger-pointing and an 
overall atmosphere of mistrust.

For more than two decades, U.S. officials have accused Mexico of 
ignoring hard evidence that violent homegrown crime syndicates were 
gaining power and corrupting its police, army and government in a 
lucrative campaign to flood American streets with cocaine, heroin and 
other drugs.

Mexican officials said Washington had done little to diminish 
Americans' voracious demand for illicit drugs, and had made Mexico 
vulnerable by cracking down on the Colombian cartels, which then 
turned to Mexican organizations to move their drugs to the U.S.

And after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. turned away from 
the drug fight, some Mexican officials say.

As the two countries watched and often feuded, the drug groups grew 
into sophisticated and deadly organized-crime cartels with a global 
reach, a strong U.S. presence and a stranglehold over many of the 
Mexican governmental institutions responsible for stopping them.

DEA intelligence now estimates that the cartels are paying hundreds 
of millions in bribes a year and that they have expanded their 
operations to Africa, Europe and elsewhere.

Arturo Sarukhan, Mexico's ambassador to the U.S. and a former 
counter-narcotics official, cautioned that Merida was only a first step.

He said it wouldn't be easy to improve cross-border interdiction, 
intelligence-sharing and an integration of both countries' 
counter-narcotics efforts after so much neglect.

"Obviously, the longer you take to address a challenge or disease, 
the harder it is to root out," Sarukhan said. "And whoever thinks 
that the Merida Initiative or the type of cooperation that we have 
implemented since President Calderon arrived is a silver bullet that 
will eliminate a decades-old challenge in Mexico is wrong." 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake