Pubdate: Sun, 24 Jun 2012
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2012 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Authors: Tracy Wilkinson and Ken Ellingwood

MEXICO LACKS A PLAN TO END ITS DRUG WAR

The Country Chooses a President Next Week, but Candidates Aim Only to 
Limit Violence.

MEXICO CITY - Six years into a ghastly drug war, none of the top 
candidates in next Sunday's presidential election has offered a 
significant new strategy to win a conflict that has claimed more than 
50,000 lives and terrorized Mexican society.

Instead, the politicians emphasize reducing the increasingly brutal 
violence, as they seek to address the concern that weighs heavily on 
the minds of outraged Mexican voters.

The goal of dismantling the cartels was the hallmark of outgoing 
President Felipe Calderon's administration, and the candidates' 
cautious approach to the drug war suggests a tacit acknowledgment 
that, at this point at least, it remains an unrealistic one.

A close examination of the candidates' proposals offers little sign 
that the drug-war dynamic will change significantly in the short term.

"There is nothing that they are talking about that would dramatically 
change the current situation," said Ana Maria Salazar, a security 
analyst in Mexico and former official in the Pentagon. "There are 
some small differences, but the reality is everything they are 
putting on the table is mid-or longterm."

Like Calderon, the candidates advocate sending the army that has 
waged the war back to its barracks, but only after regions of the 
country have been pacified and a competent policing force has been 
put in place - neither likely to happen soon.

Like Calderon, the candidates stress the need to focus on 
money-laundering by drug traffickers; to bolster the judiciary; and 
to create more jobs, social programs and drug-use prevention schemes 
to discourage youths from joining cartels. Although these all formed 
part of Calderon's strategy, he made little progress, and any effort 
to accomplish them by the next president would require considerable 
time to produce results.

The candidate whom polls show most likely to win the election, 
Enrique Pena Nieto, comes under special scrutiny in his security 
platform because of his party's past ties with the cartels. The 
Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which was ousted from the 
presidency in 2000 after seven decades of uninterrupted rule, is 
known to have made deals with major drug traffickers in the past in 
exchange for peace and payoffs.

Pena Nieto has repeatedly had to reassure Mexican and international 
audiences that his government would not revive those tactics - even 
as several former governors and other officials from his party are 
under investigation for allegedly working with drug cartels. Several 
states that have always been run by the PRI, such as Tamaulipas and 
Veracruz, are also fiefdoms of unabashed cartel control.

"We will not have a truce with those who attack the life, liberty and 
property of our citizens," said Pena Nieto, former governor of the 
state of Mexico, the country's most populous. "The new focus will be 
to protect the citizens."

In interviews, stump speeches and news conferences, Pena Nieto said 
he would concentrate on reducing homicides, kidnappings and extortion 
but also would continue to attack the cartels' top and mid-level 
command structures.

"We should combat violence by centering our attention on fighting 
homicides, kidnapping and extortion, which seem to me the crimes that 
generate the greatest insecurity among the population," Pena Nieto 
said. But, he added, "the army, the armed forces, will remain on the 
street as long as there aren't optimal conditions for them to return 
gradually to the barracks."

Pena Nieto, 45, also proposes creating a gendarmerie of 40,000 
soldiers under civilian command that would gradually replace the army 
in patrolling violent parts of Mexico and supplement a federal police 
force that he would also expand. Except for its use of soldiers, the 
proposed unit sounds very similar, in terms of training and duties, 
to the national police agency that Calderon has been trying to mold.

Part of the reticence to take a dramatically different tack is the 
sheer complexity of a vicious tangle of traffickers who have 
proliferated in number and grown in brutality, with an ever-deepening 
ability to corrupt authorities.

Differences among the candidates' proposals are of emphasis rather 
than substance.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, representing a coalition of leftist 
parties, stresses social root causes of the drug business. He says 
military force should not be the "central axis" of restoring peace, 
but he has no plans to quickly withdraw the estimated 45,000 army and 
navy troops deployed countrywide.

Lopez Obrador trails Pena Nieto by a wide margin but has been inching 
up in polls.

Josefina Vazquez Mota, of Calderon's conservative National Action 
Party, would go bigger than her rivals by expanding the federal 
police force to 150,000 agents, nearly four times its current size. 
Although her proposals hew most closely to the current government's, 
Vazquez Mota also speaks emphatically of reducing violence and 
"making Mexican families safe."

The first female candidate from a major party, Vazquez Mota is vying 
with Lopez Obrador for second place in polls.

Pena Nieto bristles when asked whether a new PRI government would 
pactar, or make deals, with drug traffickers. His advisors, however, 
have acknowledged the wariness in Mexico and, especially, in Washington.

With that in mind, Pena Nieto announced this month he was recruiting 
the former commander of the Colombian national police as his special 
advisor for attacking organized crime. Gen. Oscar Naranjo, a favorite 
of the Washington drugfighting establishment, is credited with 
bringing down top cartel figures in Colombia, where U.S. military 
advisors had a more prominent role than they do in Mexico.

Naranjo's appointment, which would take effect only if Pena Nieto 
won, was meant to signal continuity in Mexico's close working 
relationship with U.S. officials in the war on drugs and related 
measures such as rebuilding the police and court system. Naranjo is 
reported to be very close to Calderon's security czar, Genaro Garcia 
Luna, and is said to follow a similar playbook.

To counter suspicions that Pena Nieto might favor a less violent 
cartel over more vicious ones as a way to quell the bloodletting, 
Naranjo said there was no such thing as good criminals and bad criminals.

"A criminal is a criminal," he said, sitting next to a 
serious-looking Pena Nieto.

While praising Calderon's strategy, Naranjo added: "There will always 
be ways to perfect, deepen, correct and improve strategies and policies."

Pena Nieto said he wanted to follow the "Colombia model" of fighting 
cartels. U.S.-financed efforts there did succeed in lowering 
violence, but at a high cost, with the emergence of abusive 
right-wing paramilitary squads. Drug gangs still operate in Colombia 
and control pieces of territory, but the bombing of cars and downing 
of airliners - a level of violence still not seen in Mexico - have ceased.

Since the early days of the Calderon administration, the United 
States has allotted more than $1 billion to Mexico under the socalled 
Merida plan aimed at arming Mexican security forces in the drug war, 
giving them helicopters and supporting the police and court reforms. 
Pena Nieto has said he wants to continue and expand Merida.

Beyond Merida, Washington has worked hand-inglove with the Calderon 
administration in the drug war, providing intelligence and training 
as well as expanding its presence in Mexico, greatly multiplying the 
number of personnel from all agencies, from the CIA and Drug 
Enforcement Administration to the Treasury Department. Some of those 
officials are concerned about having to strike up new relationships 
with the personnel that a President Pena Nieto would appoint.

Some experts think that even if a new PRI government wanted to make 
deals with drug traffickers, it would be much more difficult today to 
do so. The drug war has devolved into a noholds-barred fight between 
two large cartels, the Sinaloa network of fugitive billionaire 
kingpin Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman and the Zetas paramilitary force. But 
there are also numerous small, but often extremely violent, groups 
provoking mayhem in parts of Mexico and unlikely to be deterred by any deal.

"With the proliferation of gangs, the corrupt arrangements become 
more complicated," observed Alejandro Hope, a former senior 
intelligence official. "The bribing of one gang will be considered 
aggression by many of the rivals.... To return to that system would 
be notoriously undesirable, even if it were possible."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom