Pubdate: Mon, 09 Jul 2007
Source: Press Democrat, The (Santa Rosa, CA)
Copyright: 2007 The Washington Post Company
Contact:  http://www.pressdemo.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/348
Author: Manuel Roig-Franzia, Washington Post
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Mexico (Mexico)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Felipe+Calderon
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/raids.htm (Drug Raids)

CALDERON'S WAR

MEXICO CITY -- Every Monday morning, President Felipe Calderon 
settles in at the head of the table in the presidential library at 
Los Pinos, Mexico's fortresslike chief executive's compound.

Calderon presides over strategy sessions with the leaders of Mexico's 
army and navy, key players in the centerpiece initiative of his 
7-month-old presidency: a military assault against drug cartels. No 
Mexican president in recent history has convened his security council 
with such regularity, but few of his modern-day predecessors have 
faced such a daunting security crisis.

Calderon is betting his presidency on a surge of Mexican troops -- 
one of the country's largest deployments of the military in a 
crime-fighting role -- to wage street-by-street battles with drug 
cartels that are blamed for more than 3,000 execution-style killings 
in the past year and a half. Sending more than 20,000 federal troops 
and police officers to nine Mexican states has made Calderon 
extremely popular; his latest approval ratings hit 65 percent.

Military Use Opposed

But as the campaign drags into its eighth month and the death toll 
mounts, Calderon is facing a growing cadre of critics, including the 
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights representative in Mexico, who 
opposes the use of the military in policing. Calderon is also 
contending with enemies in Mexico's Congress who want to strip him of 
the authority to dispatch troops without congressional approval. The 
Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights organization, has 
faulted him as quick to use the military but slow to change Mexico's 
corrupt police.

All this is familiar territory for Calderon, a former congressman and 
energy secretary who appears comfortable in the role of political scrapper.

Pundits predicted he would struggle in office after collecting barely 
more than a third of the vote in last July's election and being 
forced into a three-month legal battle -- three times as long as the 
Bush-Gore electoral crisis in 2000 -- before being declared president 
by Mexico's Supreme Electoral Tribunal.

Calderon inherited Mexico's drug problem, which was beginning to 
rival in scope and savagery the 1980s drug wars in Colombia. Drug 
lords, who make their riches trafficking in cocaine but also 
methamphetamine and marijuana, were beheading rivals and killing 
police officers, municipal officials and journalists who got in their 
way. Some municipal governments and police forces were so infiltrated 
by organized crime that they essentially ceased to function as public 
service entities and became virtual arms of the cartels.

As far back as mid-July 2006, with the election outcome still in 
doubt, Calderon began laying the groundwork for the military 
campaign, said Mexico's attorney general, Eduardo Medina Mora.

'Police Not Enough'

With corruption raging throughout local governments and only 27,000 
federal police officers available, Medina Mora said, the military 
seemed to be the only viable option.

"The size of the problem was large enough to understand that using 
the full federal deployment of police was not enough," Medina Mora said.

By the time Calderon took office in December, Mexico's two most 
powerful drug organizations -- the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels -- were 
deep into a war over "plaza," as Mexicans call drug territory. 
Carnage led the news almost every night. It was then that Calderon, a 
careful, wonkish public speaker not known for soaring rhetoric, 
started hitting verbal home runs.

"My hand won't tremble" in acting firmly to stop the crime that is 
holding Mexicans hostage, Calderon said repeatedly.

On Dec. 11, 10 days after taking office, Calderon launched the first 
of six military operations, sending more than 6,000 federal troops 
and police officers to his home state of Michoacan. The next day, a 
cousin of first lady Margarita Zavala was found murdered in the trunk 
of a car outside Mexico City -- a killing that some suspect was 
retribution by drug gangs. Undaunted, Calderon sent a force of 3,000 
to Tijuana three weeks later.

The day after the Tijuana raid became a signal moment in Calderon's 
drug war. He donned a khaki hat and military uniform to review his 
troops in the city of Apatzingan, purportedly the first time in a 
century that a Mexican president had dressed in military attire.

Columnists fretted that he would turn Mexico into a military state.

Others mocked the hang of a baggy uniform on the diminutive, 
unathletic Calderon.

"He looked pathetic," Sen. Graco Ramirez -- a Calderon nemesis who is 
the son, grandson and brother of Mexican army generals -- sniffed 
during a recent interview at Mexico's legislative palace.

Ramirez is more than a fashion critic; he and other members of the 
Democratic Revolutionary Party are among the leaders of a push to 
declare the use of the military in drug raids unconstitutional. 
Medina Mora counters that under the Mexican constitution, the armed 
forces "have not only the power but the duty to preserve internal order."

Calderon dismissed the criticisms. In February, he announced a 45 
percent pay increase for the Mexican army, a move that contrasted 
neatly with a decision to lower his own salary by 10 percent and 
abolish pensions for Mexican presidents.

Searches, gunbattles

In the months since he first appeared in a military uniform, Calderon 
has sent thousands of troops to the infamous drug zones of Sinaloa, 
Durango and Chihuahua, known as the Golden Triangle, and to Acapulco, 
Veracruz and the states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon, home to 
Mexico's industrial capital, Monterrey. The soldiers operate 
roadblocks, cordon off urban areas for house-to-house searches and 
frequently engage heavily armed drug dealers in gunbattles.

The troops have arrested more than 580 people, according to the 
government, though only one would qualify as a major figure. Since 
the military campaign began, 19 troops and 168 police officers have 
been killed; more than 1,080 civilian deaths have been recorded, 
though most of those were the result of infighting among cartels.

Analysts say it is too soon to tell whether the military operations 
will have a long-term effect. Execution-style killings have decreased 
somewhat in recent weeks, but some news reports attribute that to 
what they call a truce between warring cartels; Medina Mora credits 
the military and said there was no evidence of such a truce.

The approach has won admirers in the United States, where law 
enforcement agencies have long pushed for Mexico to confront drug 
cartels more aggressively.

Mexican authorities are hoping the United States will reciprocate by 
paying for additional training and equipment. Calderon, in 
particular, is suggesting that the United States has an obligation to 
help with Mexico's law enforcement costs because of the extent of 
Americans' illegal drug use. The talks have been complicated by 
sensitivities in the United States related to Mexico at a time when 
Capitol Hill lawmakers were debating immigration proposals.

"When there was a school shooting over in Russia, I got e-mails 
saying, 'That's why we need a wall on the Mexican border,' " Reyes 
said. "Regardless of what we do, there are going to be those who try 
to politicize it."

Mexican authorities are well aware that political tensions could 
delay or scuttle proposals for more U.S. aid. For now, they are 
preparing for months, maybe years, of military battles with drug 
leaders without more help from the United States and for long Monday 
mornings in the presidential library. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake