THE DRUG WAR CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY

"Progress" and "cooperation" are the official watchwords Washington likes
to use to describe the U.S.-backed drug war in Mexico. The cheery rhetoric
is essential to protecting relations with Mexico. When reality intrudes and
the official drug-war story threatens to unravel, the story is revised.
Just how deeply corrupting the drug was is on Mexico's political
institutions and, ultimately, on U.S.-Mexican interests is glossed over, if
mentioned at all.

The most recent need for damage control came with news that top
investigators in a new, U.S.-trained antidrug unit in the Mexican attorney
general's office may have ties to powerful drug cartels. Some senior
officials of the elite unit failed lie-detector tests, giving rise to
concerns that high-level drug investigations, and sensitive intelligence
shared by U.S. agents, may have been compromised.

It's a too-familiar story. The unit was created, with great fanfare and
talk about progress and cooperation, 18 months ago, after the chief of its
predecessor, Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, was arrested in February 1997
for selling protection to one of the country's most powerful drug lords.
Ironically, Gutierrez had been packaged as a step forward. U.S. drug-policy
director Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey called him a man of great "integrity ...
patriotic, honest, dedicate." Gutierrez had been brought in to rebuild the
previous antidrug agency, which also had been created to replace a
corrupted predecessor.

Gutierrez's appointment was part of a much-trumpeted move by President
Ernesto Zedillo to draft the military into antidrug enforcement, after the
ineffectiveness and corruption of the civilian police force became
overwhelming. Despite warnings from critics on both sides of the border
about involving the military in a civilian law-enforcement mission, U.S.
officials shamelessly pushed Zedillo to call in the troops. The military
would get tough with the drug traffickers, and its more professional image
would play well in the United States.

But now the drug war is corrupting the military. Last year, information
gleaned from Mexican defense-ministry files indicated that 10 generals and
22 other military officers were under investigation for alleged ties to
traffickers. In early September, 40 soldiers, all trained by elite U.S.
Special Forces, were removed from duty at the Mexico City airport after
investigators alleged that the soldiers had helped smuggle cocaine-filled
suitcases into the United States.

Despite the shadow cast by all this negative news on the drug war, the
United States and Mexico continue to spin stories about bilateral
cooperation, because painting Mexico as an unreliable ally in our drug war
threatens other U.S. interests. Goof-neighbor relations with Mexico are
essential to protect the commerce created by free trade and the steady flow
of investments, loans, tourists, oil and immigrant labor between the two
countries. These relations so deeply affect the economies, environment,
labor and stock markets, banking systems and human rights in both
countries, and demand such constant goodwill in negotiations, that neither
government can allow Mexico to be branded a bad neighbor in drug control.

So both sides repeatedly invent "bold new initiatives" in the drug war: new
antidrug units, new screening mechanisms, new training programs. Both sides
publicize arrests of corrupt officials and drug busts. The initiatives and
announcements are then trumpeted as evidence of progress and cooperation.
When reality blows the cover stories apart, U.S. officials wring their
hands in dismay, shake their fingers at the Mexicans, than invent another
bold new initiative to show that all is still cooperation and progress.

But these official stories do more than mislead. They conceal a second,
more dangerous myth: If only the Mexicans and other Latin governments would
seriously fight the U.S.-sponsored drug war, we could ameliorate abuse and
addiction in the United States. This reassuring fairy tale blinds us to the
ways in which high profits and porous borders doom the war on drug
traffickers from the outset.

By driving up and sustaining prices, the drug war ensures the trade's high
profits. For example, a gram of cocaine would probably fetch around $15 a
gram in the absence of a drug war; it currently commands approximately
$150. Yet, the war on supply will never drive the price high enough to
lower addiction in the United States. Rather, it will maintain profits at
levels sufficient to ensure a seemingly endless supply of traffickers and
to generate the estimated $6 billion a year these traffickers spend on
bribes in Mexico alone, bribes used to corrupt police and military
officers, judges and politicians.

Drugs also are so easy to smuggle that there are always new ways to elude
border controls. McCaffrey reported that U.S. border inspectors searched
more than 1 million railway cars and commercial trucks entering from Mexico
last year. They found cocaine on six occasions. Growing border traffic,
promoted by U.S. free-trade policies, makes the interdiction task even more
daunting: In 1996, 75 million cars and 3.5 million trucks and railway cars
entered the United States from Mexico. Even with the best cooperation and
minimum corruption, interdiction as a strategy is not going to produce much
progress on drug problems in the U.S.

On another level, a dogged pursuit of the drug war tends to undermine many
important interests we share with Mexico. U.S. pressure on Mexico to get
its military involved in the drug war is at crosscurrents with the
democratization of Mexico, a goal central to U.S. policy. The Mexican
military is increasingly charged with abusing human rights, a problem that
may worsen. As U.S. training and resources make soldiers better able to
track and apprehend drug traffickers, they become more efficient at
extracting higher payoffs for nonenforcement. The more we unwittingly
encourage this corruption and turn a blind eye to human rights abuses, the
more difficult it will be to build and sustain democratically accountable
security forces in Mexico.

The drug war already has poisoned U.S. relations with Mexico. When the
United States conducted Operation Casablanca, and undercover sting on
Mexican soil, earlier this year, it did not inform the Mexican government
of the operation on the ground that Mexicans couldn't be trusted with the
information. After 26 Mexican bankers were indicted for money laundering as
a result of the sting, the Mexican government reacted angrily. Zedillo
urged, "We must all respect the sovereignty of each nation so that no one
can become the judge of others and no one feels entitled to violate other
countries' laws for the sake of enforcing its own." U.S. officials claimed
they had alerted Mexican authorities of the sting, but the operation left
relations strained.

Regrettably, stories to protect Mexico's image as a loyal drug-war ally
will continue to be dashed by reality. But as debate focuses on how much
progress we are making against the widening corruption in Mexico, we risk
missing a deeper truth. Fighting drug abuse at home through a war on supply
abroad is not good policy, and it will make us both bad neighbors.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski