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MEXICO-US: Bold Anti-Drug Plan on the Rocks

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Jun 4 2008 (IPS) - The Merida Initiative, a U.S. anti-drug aid plan for Mexico and, to a lesser extent, Central America, is floundering. Originally trumpeted as an unprecedented instrument for cooperation, it is now the object of accusations that it would undermine national sovereignty.

The Mexican government and local politicians and analysts say the conditions imposed by the U.S. Congress in its approval process are unacceptable. The conditions include monitoring military and police performance, corruption and respect for human rights in Mexico.

“In the present context, the initiative appears to be doomed to failure,” Daniel Blanco, a political scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), told IPS.

Faced by the difficulty in obtaining the U.S. aid, and amid high levels of violence generated by the fight against drug trafficking in Mexico, President Felipe Calderón said that Mexico is contributing the “bodies” in the war on drugs, while the U.S. is contributing the addicts and their demand for drugs, which makes that country the world’s biggest market for narcotics.

Since December 2006, when Calderón took office, 4,200 people have been murdered in Mexico in drug-related violence.

The government has deployed 25,000 military troops and federal police in an unprecedented offensive against drug trafficking, but there are no signs, or ways of measuring, whether or not the battle is being won by the security forces.

U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza acknowledged the government’s efforts, but replied to Calderón’s remarks by saying that drugs are also consumed in this country.

But the United States is a world leader in the production of synthetic drugs and marijuana, and is home to 14 million narcotics consumers, including five million addicts. By contrast, users of drugs other than alcohol and tobacco are estimated at one million in Mexico.

An average of some 2,000 firearms a day and large quantities of ammunition enter Mexico illegally, 90 percent of them from the United States, according to official figures. The buyers are mainly local drug traffickers.

The Merida Initiative, named after the southeastern Mexican city where in March 2007 Calderón and U.S. President George W. Bush agreed the plan, originally provided for 1.4 billion dollars in anti-drug aid to be given to Mexico over three years, 500 million of which was to be handed over in 2008, for training programmes, arms and equipment.

It also included 50 million dollars in aid for Central American countries.

But in May, during its passage through the U.S. Congress, the offer to Mexico was cut to 350 million dollars for the first year, and no commitment was made for the rest of the money. However, although the bill is still in Congress, Mexico has already rejected the plan.

Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mouriño said that if the Merida Initiative includes plans for verifying goals, these should be agreed between the parties in a genuine spirit of cooperation in the face of a shared problem.

“Unilateral monitoring or evaluation intended to condition the use of resources committed to the initiative would be both profoundly contrary to its aims and spirit, and counterproductive. It would therefore be unacceptable,” he said.

Colegio de Mexico academic and social activist Sergio Aguayo expressed the view that U.S. legislators have introduced conditions, under the “pretext of human rights” concerns, to find ways of intervening in local security forces.

The conditions imposed on the aid package show that Washington “looks down on Mexico and treats it like its back yard,” making it impossible for the countries to cooperate as equals, said political scientist Leonardo Curcio.

Several local lawmakers also criticised the imposition of unilateral evaluation and monitoring, which they said would violate national sovereignty.

Blanco said Mexico and the United States were “irrevocably” linked in the fight against drug trafficking, which made cooperation essential. “Unilateral measures benefit no one but the drug mafias,” he added.

A group of 20 Mexican civil society organisations indicated their support for the idea that the fight against drug trafficking in the country should include monitoring of respect for human rights. In their view, though, this should be done by independent observers, with civil society representation.

“We understand the seriousness of the levels of violence during the last few months that have been in part a result of the federal government’s policies to fight drug-trafficking and organised crime; however, many sectors of civil society have questioned the current policies being undertaken specifically based on the disturbing number of human rights violations,” Amnesty International’s Mexican section and the Miguel Agustín Pro Human Rights Centre, among others, wrote in a letter to the U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee.

Aguayo, who is also a columnist for the Reforma newspaper, said that he is fully in agreement with human rights monitoring, but argued that in the context of the Merida Initiative, U.S. legislators were using the issue for interventionist purposes.

Federico Reyes, head of the Mexican branch of the global anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International, criticised U.S. lawmakers for what he understands to be their assumption that the whole problem of drug trafficking is located south of the border.

He wondered when the United States would produce the drug lords operating in that country and explain how large quantities of illicit substances enter the U.S. in spite of their supposedly strict control measures. It would not be a bad thing for Mexico to demand monitoring and oversight of U.S. police activity and policies, he added.

Neither the original text of the Merida Initiative nor the versions amended by the U.S. Congress have been made public, but the plan was supposed to usher in a new era of cooperation that would leave behind old quarrels and unilateral measures. In this, however, it seems to be failing.

The United States currently provides 40 million dollars a year to Mexico for combating drug trafficking. Under the present arrangement, as well as according to the Merida Initiative, no U.S. troops or police have permission to operate in Mexican territory.

Although the Merida Initiative was presented as an integrated anti-drug cooperation plan, it contains no provisions for reducing consumption or investing in education and health as the most effective long-term measures to curb the drug problem. On the contrary, it focuses solely on punitive aspects.

“Some, particularly the Mexican press, argue that conditioning U.S. aid on adherence to the rule of law is somehow an ‘infringement of sovereignty,’ ‘subjugation’ or ‘meddling.’ I strongly disagree,” said Patrick Leahy, chairman of the U.S. Senate State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee.

“Since when is it bad policy, or an infringement of anything, to insist that American taxpayer dollars not be given to corrupt, abusive police or military forces in a country whose justice system has serious flaws and rarely punishes official misconduct?” he said.