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Mexico leader: No retreat on drugs
In interview before 1st U.S. visit as president, Felipe Calderon calls for approval of aid to fight traffickers
2/7/08|Chicago Tribune| by Oscar Avila - Tribune correspondent

In his first year in office, Mexican President Felipe Calderon has gone beyond his predecessors in declaring war against drug traffickers and organized crime, dispatching tens of thousands of troops to lead the charge.

But the enemy isn't going down without a fight. After months of improvement in security, January saw a surge in drug-related violence, including bloody battles with Mexican forces along the U.S. border. Law-enforcement officials call it a counterattack against Calderon's offensive.

In an interview Wednesday ahead of his first presidential visit to the U.S., Calderon appealed for approval of a $1.4 billion U.S. aid package proposed by President Bush to give Mexico's anti-drug battle a boost with aircraft, surveillance equipment and police training. The package has stalled in Congress.

With an eye on the festering violence back home, Calderon will visit Chicago on Tuesday where he will discuss immigration reform and other issues with Mexican community leaders. He also will visit New York, Massachusetts and California next week.

While Calderon tries to strengthen Mexico's ties with its citizens in the U.S., the leaders of both nations want to integrate their efforts at combating drug trafficking, the gravest crisis facing Calderon's young presidency.


Drug war's toll
In a wide-ranging discussion at the Los Pinos presidential compound with the Tribune and Hoy, a daily, Spanish-language newspaper owned by Tribune Co., Calderon said Mexican police and military have felt the brunt of the drug war's casualties.

But his diplomats are stressing to U.S. lawmakers that it "is affecting Americans, that it is affecting the children of those congressmen … and requires the cooperation of everyone to resolve it," he said. "It is a problem that we share as neighbors."

The Calderon administration has claimed its share of successes, including the detention of about 20,000 people linked to organized crime and an operation in October that netted 23.5 tons of cocaine, which the government trumpets as a world record.

One key element of Calderon's strategy has been deploying the military to conduct raids and staff checkpoints in hot spots, such as the state of Michoacan. After a spate of killings near the Texas border around New Year's, he dispatched about 6,000 troops to the state of Tamaulipas and even had navy ships patrolling the Gulf of Mexico.

But U.S. law-enforcement officials and security analysts say the successes have come with a price. Mexico suffered 235 drug-related murders in January, up more than 50 percent from January 2007, according to El Universal newspaper

Reforma newspaper, which also tracks crime data, put the number of drug-related murders in 2007 at 2,275, a 15-percent jump from 2006.

Experts speculate that drug traffickers are violently angling for power as Mexico targets and captures the leaders of cartels. Also, Mexican officials say they think organized crime is trying to shake the will of the Mexican people through horrific attacks.

U.S. Atty. Gen. Michael Mukasey said he regrets the resurgence in violence but also views it as a sign that Calderon's approach is working.

"In a perverse kind of way, the level of violence suggests a level of success. [The drug cartels] may very well be so constricted that they feel the necessity to hit back," Mukasey told a gathering of foreign journalists in Mexico.

In Wednesday's interview, Calderon said he was concerned but not surprised by the violence.

"Naturally, this was not going to be an exchange of flowers," he said. "Confronting crime means applying the force of the state. And we are applying it. We are giving it to them with everything."

Mexico is a producer, consumer and transit point for illicit drugs from methamphetamine to marijuana. For example, the U.S. General Accounting Office estimated in October that the percentage of cocaine flowing from South America to the U.S. that goes through Mexico increased from about 65 percent in 2000 to about 90 percent in 2006.

Because of the global nature of the problem, Bush and Calderon crafted the "Merida Initiative" during a 2007 meeting in that eastern Mexican city. Spread out over three years, the funding would provide for helicopters and other technology but also integrate U.S and Mexican law-enforcement efforts.

Calderon said a key element would be a greater exchange of intelligence. U.S. officials said they hoped to get involved directly in efforts to weed out corrupt Mexican police, which would increase their confidence in sharing sensitive information.


Complaints in Congress
But after complaining that they were shut out of formulating the Merida Initiative, U.S. lawmakers have put the money on hold as they press for more details. "It is obviously not a good way to kick off such an important bilateral effort," complained U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) at an October hearing on the plan.

Although the initiative does not involve deploying U.S. troops, some lawmakers and activists on both sides of the border have expressed fears of an escalation or open-ended commitment, like the one they say occurred with U.S. assistance to Colombia.

Joy Olson, executive director of the Washington Office on Latin America, a think tank, said she thinks lawmakers will eventually approve the plan but will not give the Bush administration a blank check. She recently testified before Congress on the plan.

Calderon said he already has seen positive signs, including the U.S. giving Mexican officials access to a program called eTrace, which can track the origin of weapons used to commit crimes.

But Calderon said he also expects the U.S. to address the problem of reducing American demand for illicit drugs.

"If I wanted to fix the problem of organized crime in Nuevo Laredo, I need to address the consumption and purchases in Laredo [in Texas]. If I wanted to fix that of Tijuana, I need to fix the matters in San Diego," he said.

 

elgrande

It amazes me that this mayhem is politically preferable to some form of legalization. For the Drug War to work, demand for currently illegal substances must cease. That's not going to happen, and even if it did, deaths from drug use would hardly drop at all because most of those deaths are a result of alcohol and tobacco use. Perhaps half a million Americans die prematurely from using those drugs every year while deaths from illicit drug use are a drop in the bucket. And, of course, cannabis isn't even on the death-from-use charts.