Pubdate: Fri, 10 Sep 2010
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Page: 18 of the Main section
Copyright: 2010 Guardian News and Media Limited
Contact:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Author: Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent
Video: Hillary Clinton on the drugs war in Mexico 
http://drugsense.org/url/vrg7F8N0
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Mexico

Hillary Clinton:

MEXICAN DRUGS WAR IS COLOMBIA-STYLE INSURGENCY

US Secretary of State Angers Mexican Politicians and Raises 
Indignation With Idea of Sending in American Military

Hillary Clinton has sparked anger in Mexico by comparing its 
drug-related violence to an insurgency and hinting that US troops may 
need to intervene.

The US secretary of state said Mexico's level of car bombings, 
kidnappings and mayhem resembled Colombia a generation ago. She 
floated the prospect of US military advisers being sent to Mexico and 
central America.

"It's looking more and more like Colombia looked 20 years ago, where 
the narco-traffickers controlled certain parts of the country," 
Clinton said at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. 
"These drug cartels are showing more and more indices of insurgencies."

Signalling growing concern at events south of the Rio Grande, with 
28,000 dead in Mexico from drug-related violence in four years, 
Clinton said the Obama administration was considering a type of "Plan 
Colombia" for Mexico and central America where Guatemala, El Salvador 
and Honduras are also plagued by drug-related violence.

The Colombia plan, introduced by Clinton's husband, Bill, bolstered 
Colombia's security forces with US military personnel, equipment and 
training. A decade and $7.3bn later Colombia's once-mighty guerrillas 
are reeling but drug trafficking continues almost unabated.

"There were problems and there were mistakes but it worked," said the 
secretary of state. The administration needed to figure out "the 
equivalents" of Plan Colombia for Mexico and Central America, she said.

Mexico's government rebutted the insurgency analogy. "We do not share 
these findings, as there is a big difference between what Colombia 
faced and what Mexico is facing today," said Alejandro Poire, a 
national security adviser to the country's president, Felipe Calderon.

Mexico had not, for instance, elected a drug lord such as Pablo 
Escobar to congress, and Mexico's aggressive military-led 
confrontation of drug cartels showed the country was acting "in time" 
to spare itself Colombia's fate, said Poire. One valid comparison was 
that "enormous, gigantic demand for drugs in the United States" 
continued to nourish narco-traffickers.

The Obama administration has admitted US drug consumption and lax gun 
laws contribute to Mexico's problems.

The idea that the US military could return to Mexico - a 
nationalistic country sore at losing 525,000 square miles to the US 
in 1848 - provoked indignation.

"Starting right now we have to say this clearly. We are not going to 
permit any version of a Plan Colombia," said Santiago Creel, a 
senator and member of Calderon's National Action party. "We cannot 
permit a Plan Colombia in Mexico."

Ricardo Monreal, a senator with the leftist Labor party, challenged 
Clinton's claim that Plan Colombia was a success. "Whoever thinks 
Colombia is a cure-all, and if the United States thinks it is 
necessary to apply the same model to us they applied to Colombia, 
they are mistaken."

Adam Isacscon, a Colombia expert at a thinktank called the Washington 
Office on Latin America, recently published a study titled Don't Call 
it a Model. It recognised successes but faulted US optimism about 
Plan Colombia. "Colombia's security gains are partial, possibly 
reversible and weighed down by 'collateral damage'. They have carried 
a great cost in lives and resources. Scandals show that the 
government carrying out these security policies has harmed human 
rights and democratic institutions. Progress against illegal drug 
supplies has been disappointing."

Despite trade and aid glitches, relations are good between Washington 
and Calderon, a conservative, pro-free trade technocrat. Both sides 
recently pledged deeper cooperation.

The diplomatic spat came amid the discovery of more corpses and the 
third killing of a mayor in a month. Four hooded gunmen burst into 
Alexander Lopez Garcia's office in El Naranjo in the the northern 
state of San Luis Potosi and shot him dead. Federal police found four 
bodies in a clandestine grave they linked to an arrested drug lord, 
Edgar Valdez Villarreal, nickanmed La Barbie.

Authorities have also announced finding the bodies of a prosecutor 
and police chief who had been investigating the massacre of 72 
migrants last month. 
- ---
MAP posted-by: Richard Lake