MEXICO, THE UNITED STATES AND DRUG GANGS

Turning to the Gringos for Help

As Drug-Related Violence Continues to Rise, Mexican and American
Officials Unveil Plans for Unprecedented Security CO-Operation. but
Will They Work?

LAST March, after Mexican officials took offence at warnings from
their American counterparts about security south of the border,
Hillary Clinton travelled to Mexico City to repair the diplomatic
damage. The secretary of state accepted blame for her country's
demand for illegal drugs, recognised its need to control the
southward flow of guns and cash, and vowed that the United States
would be an equal partner in the "war" against drug gangs and
organised crime declared by Mexico's president, Felipe Calderon. Some
of those promises have been kept, in a modest way: over the past
year, Barack Obama's administration has seized a little bit more drug
money, begun to search southbound freight trains, examined its budget
for trying to cut drug demand and raised it by 13%, and shared
intelligence that led to the finding (and death) of a top drug trafficker.

But the drug "war" in Mexico has intensified, with 6,600 killings
last year, up from 5,800 in 2008. This year has started badly. In the
border city of Ciudad Juarez, 555 people have already died in 2010,
compared with 449 in the first quarter of 2009. The violence is
starting to strike innocents. In January 16 teenagers at a party were
massacred in Juarez. Two students at Monterrey's Technological
Institute were killed in crossfire this month; afterwards the
traffickers organised roadblocks of stolen and torched vehicles,
causing chaos in the city, Mexico's industrial capital.

In Reynosa the Gulf "cartel" and its former armed wing, the Zetas,
concealed their violent split for weeks by threatening local
journalists, killing one. Residents were reduced to finding out about
the gun battles they heard nearby on Facebook and Twitter. On March
13th the traffickers broke a taboo against taking on the United
States. In simultaneous drive-by shootings, gunmen killed a visa
worker at the American consulate in Juarez, along with her husband
and that of another employee there.

Faced with such a grim panorama, this week Mrs Clinton returned to
Mexico City, accompanied by the entire American national-security
team. She reiterated many of the same arguments. But this time both
sides wanted more than soothing rhetoric.

After three years of throwing some 50,000 troops against the drug
gangs, Mr Calderon is now trying to broaden his strategy. In tandem
with American officials, his government has announced a new plan to
fight organised crime. This will be enacted in pilot programmes in
Juarez and Tijuana, the two biggest border cities. It includes
customised attempts to dismantle each gang through intelligence;
spending on social development in violent areas; and a promise to
speed up a glacial effort to overhaul police forces and the courts.

All of this will require far greater teamwork with the United States.
American officials say that the new plan calls for more intelligence
sharing, with "fusion centres" where American agents are embedded
with Mexican analysts. American police will step up training and
vetting of their counterparts. To try to prevent security worries
clogging cross-border trade, American customs officials may be posted
throughout Mexico. "Secure corridors" would be set up where goods
could be tracked to the border. Mrs Clinton announced that the Merida
Initiative, a $1.3 billion anti-drug aid effort for Mexico involving
hardware and training, will be followed by $331m for social
programmes and to strengthen the courts.

In the past this closer American involvement would have prompted
Mexican outrage over the violation of its sovereignty. The mood is
changing. In the run-up to Mrs Clinton's visit both Mexico's
ambassador to the United States and the general in charge of its
defence college declared that the country needed international help
to win the drug war. "It was unprecedented for a high-level member of
the Mexican army to say that," says Denise Dresser, a political
scientist at ITAM, a Mexico City university. "But the situation has
gotten so bad that you're starting to see a wearing down of that
reflexive, historical anti-Americanism."

Yet compared with the $18 billion-39 billion that the drug gangs are
officially estimated to send south each year, American aid to Mexico
remains small. And only $128m of the money promised under the Merida
Initiative, signed in 2008, has been disbursed.

American officials point to the relative success of Plan Colombia, a
much bigger aid programme, in reducing drug-related violence in that
country. But Mexico poses some unique difficulties. It is bigger and
richer but more decentralised, with weaker police forces and courts.
Colombia has let several hundred American military advisers operate
in its territory. Some of the training of Mexicans takes place in the
United States. Mexican officials refuse to put American agents in
operational roles. "That takes a lot of options off the table," says
Scott Stewart of Stratfor, an intelligence consultancy. "There's only
so much you can do in the classroom instead of out on the streets."
And the Obama administration has ruled out seeking a new ban on the
sale of assault weapons in American gunshops-the main source of the
mobsters' weaponry.

The new strategy looks more promising, but as always success will
depend on implementation. Polls suggest that Mexicans' previous
support for Mr Calderon's crusade against the drug gangs is wearing
thin. In one recent poll only 21% of respondents said that it had
made the country safer, whereas half thought it had heightened the
danger. Mr Calderon's term ends in 2012, and his successor may not be
equally committed to vanquishing organised crime. The new long-term
plan will have to show some short-term results.