Pubdate: Mon, 27 Oct 2003 Source: Valley Morning Star (TX) Copyright: 2003 Valley Morning Star Contact: http://www.valleystar.com/letters.php Website: http://www.valleystar.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/584 DRUG WAR TRAINS ZETA TRAFFICKERS America's war on drugs is doing more harm than good. Take yet another example that affects the Rio Grande Valley: Our ongoing attempt at prohibition has collided with the government's Latin America policy, resulting in members of a Mexican drug gang who received military training in the United States. "The Zetas, hired assassins for the Gulf Cartel, feature 31 ex-soldiers once part of an elite division of the Mexican army - the Special Air Mobile Force Group. At least one-third of this battalion's deserters was trained at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Ga., according to documents from the Mexican secretary of defense," states a story published last week in the Star. If the School of the Americas sounds familiar, that's because it's the site of an annual protest over its curriculum. The school, now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, teaches soldiers from Central and South American countries techniques in military intelligence, counterinsurgency, psychological warfare and interrogation. Protesters say the school teaches human rights violations, oppression and torture. Graduates of the School of the Americas have been implicated in human rights abuses throughout Latin America, including the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and civilian massacres. Whatever the school teaches, some of its former students are now applying those skills in a war to take over the drug trade. The Zetas, who take their name from a radio code word referring to a police commander, are led by former members of the Mexican army battalion, which was stationed in Tamaulipas in 1995 as part of that country's war on drug traffickers. Thirty-one members of the 350-man unit deserted and began working for the cartel. "They have high-powered weapons, training and intelligence capabilities," said Francisco Castillo Zaragoza, brigadier general at the 8th Military Zone in Reynosa. The Zetas are suspected in many shootouts and execution-style killings in Nuevo Laredo and elsewhere along the border, as well as murders of Mexican police officers and federal prosecutors. And they might be operating on this side of the Rio Grande as well. Some Mexican authorities think a Zeta was behind the Feb. 5 shooting of former high-ranking Mexican federal antidrug officer Guillermo Gonzalez Calderoni, who had close ties to drug kingpins. That killing occurred at 11 a.m. outside a lawyer's office on North 10th Street, one of the busiest roads in McAllen. It's scary enough worrying about assassins on our streets. To learn that these killers might have been trained by our own U.S. military - a military that is supposed to protect us - is even more disturbing. And don't forget the federal government's foolish drug policy, which has done nothing but make illegal substances more expensive than they would otherwise be. That artificial scarcity creates high profits for drug dealers - and enables them to enlist former soldiers as mercenaries in their turf battles. When Rio Grande Valley residents travel to Fort Benning this year to join the annual demonstration against the School of the Americas on Nov. 21-23, they'll have one more thing to protest: Drug wars and foreign policies that combine to form a new menace that threatens Mexican and American citizens. Should the United States continue its international military training at the School of the Americas in Georgia? - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom