THE DRUG WAR JUST ACROSS THE BORDER

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 Minutemen might make good narcotics cops.

Minuteman co-founder 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 such
as 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, our 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
Thursday 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 other
human rights organizations, such as 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. A native of Chicago's North Shore, 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
nudge federal authorities into taking the case over, but they have
not made much more progress. Capturing his own killing on video did
not save Will from becoming one of thousands of casualties related to
drugs or politics in Mexico in recent years.

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

"Mexico is not at war," said Joel Simon, executive director of CPJ.
"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 such as Francisco Ortiz Franco, co-editor of the Tijuana
newsweekly Zeta, have been killed for aggressively covering
corruption and drug trafficking. At age 50, Franco 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 June 9. Among other press
freedom reforms, Calderon 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 need to keep an eye on how well our money
is being used.