WE CAN'T AFFORD TO FORGET THE WAR NEXT DOOR

Let's keep watch on how Mexico spends our money, warns Clarence Page

As if our military forces didn't have their 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 co-founder Jim Gilchrist suggested in recent radio
interviews that the United States 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, 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 recently
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 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. By various counts, more than 4,000 people
have been killed in the 18 months since President Felipe Calderon
launched his campaign against the drug gangs.

Gang wars have escalated over smuggling routes to the U.S. and over
control of local police forces. Among other particularly grisly
touches, drug gangs in the 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.

Mr. Ortiz is among 21 journalists who have been killed in Mexico
since 2000, seven of them in direct reprisal for their work,
according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, of
which I am a board member. These tragedies led to a June meeting in
Mexico City between board members and Mr. Calderon, who has sent
federal troops in to bring peace to some towns. 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, Mr. 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.