Pubdate: Mon, 22 Jan 2007
Source: Christian Science Monitor (US)
Copyright: 2007 The Christian Science Publishing Society
Contact: http://www.csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/contactus.pl
Website: http://www.csmonitor.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/83
Author: Sara Miller Llana
Note: Ms. Llana is Latin America correspondent for the Monitor and USA Today.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/raids.htm (Drug Raids)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)

WITH CALDERON IN, A NEW WAR ON MEXICO'S MIGHTY DRUG CARTELS

Mexico's New President Is Tackling Some Of The Country's Toughest 
Problems, But What Will It Take To Succeed Part 1 Of Three.

LAZARO CARDENAS, MEXICO - They leapt off the helicopters in seconds: 
35 Mexican soldiers, touching down softly on the soil and fanning out 
across a marijuana field.

As the men yanked out tidy rows of plants perched on a mountainside 
in the western state of Michoacan, other military choppers circled 
like hawks, ready to battle hiding snipers. Two hours later, the only 
hint of a narcotrafficking base was a smoldering fire.

It's a scene familiar in Colombia, but new here in Mexico. This small 
victory is part of President Felipe Calderon's massive military 
effort to crack down on one of Mexico's most entrenched problems: 
drug trafficking and organized crime. But as most of the helicopters 
pulled away, the sight of soldiers pulling up remaining plants one by 
one in this tiny field - one of 38 in this isolated region alone - 
underscored the enormity of targeting Mexico's vast illicit drug 
trade, which includes poppy fields, meth labs, and cash-flush 
criminals who control entire communities.

An Escalating Scourge

The number of drug cartel-related murders topped 2,100 last year, 
nearly double the average over the previous five years, and the 
problem is spilling over the border with the US, which asserts that 
90 percent of drugs coming from Latin America enter through Mexico.

The more than 17,000 federal troops and police Calderon has deployed 
to the drug war's front lines so far are the stars of his mission to 
show that he's in control of the escalating scourge. He's lavished 
praise on soldiers - at one point even donning military fatigues to 
thank them. But it's not Calderon's willingness to deploy so many 
troops in a country wary of the military playing too prominent a 
public role that will determine success, say analysts. Real results, 
they say, depend on whether he can maintain a focus on the tougher, 
less visible fight to simultaneously root out corruption in local 
police forces and improve the court system.

"He is making decisions. But if you don't make reforms at all levels 
at the same time, it won't work," says Jorge Chabat, a drugs expert 
at Mexico City's Center for Economic Research and Teaching. "You can 
be very efficient capturing one criminal, and then he goes free 
because some judge was given some money. Or maybe you can capture the 
criminal, the judiciary works well, and then a drug lord escapes from 
a high security prison."

While the number of cartel-related murders across Mexico has 
increased from about 1,000 in 2001 to more than 2,100 last year, 
according to government figures, so, too, has the ferocity of the 
killings. Human heads were propped on a fence outside a government 
building in Acapulco. A mass grave was found. In the most gruesome 
incident, gunmen in September stormed a nightclub and hurled five 
heads onto a dance club in Uruapan, Michoacan.

Most of the bloodshed has been restricted to cartels, but police and 
journalists have also been targeted, and feuds have migrated from 
Mexico's northern border with the US to the entire Pacific corridor, 
as the dominating Gulf and Sinaloa cartels - as well as their 
subsidiaries - battle for billion-dollar routes and territory.

Time To Send In The Troops

Days after taking office Dec. 1, Calderon announced Operation 
Michoacan by sending 7,000 military and federal officers into his 
home state. "This is a very difficult battle,"said Army Gen. Manuel 
Garcia Ruiz, who heads Operation Michoacan, at the airfield of the 
Lazaro Cardenas Airport before a recent drug raid. "It will last as 
long as it is necessary."

Last month, a small group of journalists was invited to witness the 
raid in Michoacan, where choppers flew over mountains, cut with rocky 
ravines snaking through sparsely populated valleys. The marijuana 
field on which they landed was ringed with an irrigation system fed 
by a rushing creek and thousands of yards of tubing. Footpaths led to 
at least two other such fields and a recently abandoned shack, with 
half-eaten tamales littering wooden benches.

Authorities in Operation Michoacan have arrested dozens of people, 
including suspected drug lords. They have seized firearms, 
bulletproof vests, antennas, and telephones, and destroyed more than 
a thousand acres of marijuana fields. The goal, says General Garcia 
Ruiz, is to disrupt both the cartels' economic means and modes of 
communication.

This past weekend, Calderon was praised by US officials for taking 
key steps toward that goal with his decision to extradite four major 
drug traffickers - including the alleged head of the notorious Gulf 
cartel, Osiel Cardenas - to the US. Mexican and US officials say this 
will end Mr. Cardenas's ability to conduct turf wars against rivals 
from his cell in a maximum-security prison near Mexico City.

Calderon has also opened new fronts in the border city of Tijuana and 
the Pacific resort town of Acapulco. He sent 3,300 soldiers and 
federal police to Tijuana and 7,600 troops and police to Acapulco this month.

The US has, thus far, voiced optimism. "We certainly are supporting 
[Calderon's] moves to try to do something about the issues of drug 
trafficking; not only does it affect his country but it affects the 
US as well," says Christy McCampbell, the deputy assistant secretary 
in the US State Department's Bureau for International Narcotics and 
Law Enforcement Affairs.

In a besieged country, many Mexicans also support Calderon's 
deployment of troops. "Calderon came in as a law-and-order president 
and wants to show he is capable of reasserting state authority to 
convince the Mexican people, as well as the US, that he is, in fact, 
in charge," says Bruce Bagley, a drug-war specialist at the 
University of Miami.

Calderon Breaks From The Past

Yet outgoing President Vicente Fox also declared the "mother of all 
battles" against drug cartels, and made high-profile arrests of 
suspected gang leaders. In 2005, he launched Secure Mexico, in which 
federal police fanned into border cities and later hot spots like 
Acapulco. But violence escalated under his watch.

Unlike Mr. Fox, who used the military only in support roles, Calderon 
has made them the centerpiece of the effort - in part to control 
organized crime that has tainted many local police forces. "There is 
no question that the military is, relatively speaking, the most 
professional institution when it comes to law-enforcement agencies," 
says Armand Peschard-Sverdrup, director of the Mexico Project at the 
Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Calderon has transferred 10,000 military personnel to the federal 
police, and promised raises to the lowest paid members of the armed 
forces. His plans are much larger in scope than Fox's, with a more 
coordinated effort between institutions such as the attorney 
general's office, the military, and the federal police, says Garcia Ruiz.

Other leaders have, in general, been loath to use the military, which 
many attribute to the fallout from a 1968 student protest in 
Tlatelolco, Mexico City, in which the Army was sent to quell dissent 
and then fired on the crowd. "Mexican society is still in the midst 
of transitioning from looking at the use of force as political 
oppression versus seeing it as enforcement of the rule of law," says 
Mr. Peschard-Sverdrup. "I think Calderon sees that ... using force 
for the sake of enforcing the rule of law can actually strengthen 
Mexican democracy."

Unprecedented Role

But many caution against embracing the military's new role. "This is 
really unprecedented.... What distinguishes Mexico from other Latin 
American countries is precisely the limited political role of the 
military. We have never had a coup in Mexico because of this," says 
John Ackerman, a legal expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Others are concerned that the highly regarded military will become 
corrupt - just as the police force and local governments have - while 
combating drug cartels. "I agree that the Army may be corrupted in 
the fight against drug trafficking ... but what option do you have?" 
says Chabat.

Tackling Corruption Is Key

Mr. Ackerman says that displays of force are less important than 
combating the corruption that pervades so many levels of society. He 
just worked on the Mexico evaluation for the 2006 Global Integrity 
Report, which gave judicial accountability, law enforcement, and rule 
of law the lowest rankings.

Calderon has promised to root out corruption, particularly among the 
local police. In Tijuana, for example, the 2,300-strong local police 
was made to relinquish their arms when the military moved in to 
patrol streets and set up checkpoints.

"Without a doubt, one of his greatest challenges is corruption in the 
government," says Ms. McCampbell. I think it's going to take time. 
But the president is committed to making it happen."

One of the reforms Calderon has floated is to unite police forces 
under one federal unit, says Ana Maria Salazar, a national security 
expert in Mexico City who was the former deputy assistant secretary 
of defense for drug enforcement policy and support in the Clinton 
administration. Another reform being discussed, she says, is to give 
police more responsibility in exercising investigative power.

Calderon has also voiced support of an overhaul to the legal and 
penal systems, cleaning up legal codes and stiffening criminal 
sentences, and moving toward oral trials to bring more transparency 
to the judiciary, says Ackerman. Currently, almost all trials are 
written, making them more secretive and vulnerable to corruption.

Jose Antonio Ortega, the head of the Citizen's Council for Public 
Security and Criminal Justice in Mexico City, says he has faith that 
Calderon will be more adept at tackling organized crime than Fox. 
"President Fox did not recognize the magnitude of the problem," he 
says. Instead, Mr. Ortega says, he touted arrests made but denied 
that the problem had spiraled out of control. Calderon, on the other 
hand, has told troops to prepare for a long fight.

The magnitude of the problem will also force Calderon to act. In 
September, US Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza warned that violence 
would hurt both business and tourism.

"[Calderon] understands that if he doesn't tackle security, 
everything else becomes moot," says Andres Rozental, Mexico's former 
deputy foreign minister from 1988-94.

Last week, Calderon told the Financial Times newspaper that the US 
must do more to help Mexico achieve success. "The [US] is jointly 
responsible for what is happening to us ... in that joint 
responsibility the US government has a lot of work to do."

Michael Shifter, vice president of policy at the Inter-American 
Dialogue, points out parallels between Calderon's efforts and those 
of Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe, who has received more than $7 
billion from the US in recent years for his country's war on drug 
trafficking. "Uribe tapped into a real sentiment that was widely held 
in Colombia, where insecurity had just become intolerable for 
people," Mr. Shifter says. "Somebody had to take charge. Calderon 
senses the same thing in Mexico in 2007."

Calderon has already started trumpeting security improvements. "Today 
Mexico has more peace and certainty than at the beginning of my term, 
and that fills me with satisfaction," he said recently at a press conference.

Long Fight Ahead

In Michoacan, where drug-related violence has disrupted residents' 
lives, many accept a heavy military presence if their sense of safety 
is returned. "When you leave your house anything could happen," says 
Rosalba Sanchez, who lives in Patzcuaro, west of the state capital, 
Morelia. She described a shootout last month in which a local store 
owner was caught in the crossfire and died. "Hopefully with more 
security [drug cartels] will be more afraid."

But Mr. Bagley from the University of Miami says that the scale of 
the problem is among Calderon's biggest obstacles. "His problem 
doesn't only lie in Michoacan. Nuevo Laredo is a slaughterhouse. 
Tijuana, all across the northern tier, is suffering massive 
drug-related violence," he says. "[The troop deployment] is a stopgap 
measure ... that's unlikely to have enduring impact. Within a few 
months I fully expect a renewal of the struggle."

Abraham Alvarez, a security officer at a department store in Morelia, 
remains skeptical that this administration will prevail. "It's going 
to take a long time; it's not going to be just solved by Calderon," 
he says. "The presidents that follow him will have to carry on the fight."
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