DRUG WARS NEXT DOOR

As if our military didn't have its hands full in Iraq and Afghanistan,
the head of the Minuteman Project border security group seems to think
they might also make good narcotics cops.

Minuteman cofounder Jim Gilchrist suggested in recent radio interviews
that the U.S. give Mexico 12 months to corral its criminal drug
cartels and rising violence, particularly in border towns like Juarez
and Tijuana -- or deploy the U.S. Army to do the job.

That's the Minutemen. Their remedies for the drug war next door sound
simplistic, but at least they're paying attention.

While most of us north of the border have been absorbed with our
presidential sweepstakes and other happenings, or southern neighbor
has exploded into the full-scale drug violence previously associated
with Colombia or Peru.

For now, we're not sending troops, just money. The Senate last week
approved a $1.6 billion, three-year package of anti-drug assistance to
Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. Known as the "Merida
Initiative," it includes $400 million for military equipment and
technical assistance for Mexico's anti-drug fight. The bill was passed
earlier by the House, and President Bush is expected to sign it.

Mexico's government cheered the bill, because it waters down proposed
restrictions that would have required Mexico to change the way it
handles allegations of human rights abuses by its military. Mexican
leaders threatened to reject the money, if there were too many
restrictions on their sovereignty.

But the omission brought jeers from Amnesty International and some
other human rights organizations, like the Friends of Brad Will,
founded in the name of a freelance New York journalist who was shot
and killed while shooting video of a teachers strike in Oaxaca two
years ago. Will was 36.

His final video shows protesters hurling rocks and captures the sounds
of gunshots, along with a shout: "Stop taking photos!" A shot is heard
whizzing toward Will. He was struck in the abdomen and once in the
right side.

Within days, state authorities took two men into custody, a local town
councilor and his security chief. But they were released less than two
months later. A state judge ruled that they were not close enough to
have shot Will.

No further suspects were brought in. Publicity eventually helped to
nudge federal authorities into taking over the state's investigation,
but the federals have not made much progress, even with a murder that
was caught on tape.

Twenty-one journalists have been killed in Mexico since 2000,
according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, of
which I am a board member, seven of them in direct reprisal for their
work. Seven others have gone missing in the past three years.

"Mexico is not at war," said Joel Simon, executive director of the
committee. "And yet it is one of the world's most dangerous countries
for the press."

But that's only a sliver of the thousands of drug-related murders of
non-journalists in Mexico. By various counts, more than 4,000 people
- -- including some 500 local, state and federal police officers -- have
been killed in the 18 months since President Felipe Calderon launched
his campaign against the drug gangs.

Gang wars have escalated in recent years over smuggling routes to the
United States and over control of local police forces. Among other
particularly grisly touches, drug gangs in the northern state of
Durango recently have left severed heads with warning notes attached
in coolers by the side of the road.

Journalists like Francisco Ortiz Franco, co-editor of the Tijuana
newsweekly Zeta, have been killed for aggressively covering corruption
and drug trafficking. At age 50, he was fatally shot in front of his
children on a downtown Tijuana street.

Cases like his led to a meeting between President Calderon, who has
sent federal troops in to bring peace to some towns, and CPJ board
members, including me, in Mexico City on June 9. Among other press
freedom reforms, he agreed to work toward laws that would protect
speech and press freedoms at the federal level, not just the states,
where corruption is more rampant.

With hundreds of millions of Washington anti-drug dollars still
pending at the time, Calderon had ample reason to speak in glowing
terms about human rights reforms. Now he needs to follow his talk with
action -- and Americans needs to keep an eye on how well our money is
being used.