Mexico Under Siege

ARMY'S ROLE IN MEXICO DRUG WAR SEEN AS CRUCIAL YET RISKY

Observers Fear the Deployment Will Hurt Democracy and Civil
Institutions, but They See No Alternative.

Nuevo Laredo, Mexico -- Although the Mexican army has been able to
quiet drug violence in some hot spots, political observers say the
deployment of thousands of soldiers could undermine civilian
institutions and jeopardize Mexico's evolving democracy.

Critics say the military lacks the training and sensibilities for such
work, and fear it will trample on the rights of ordinary Mexicans.

The army, with its low salaries and high desertion rate, also could
prove as vulnerable to corruption as police, who often have acted as
hired guns for smugglers. Five Mexican soldiers, including a major,
were indicted in January on charges of leaking information on their
unit's movements to members of the Sinaloa drug cartel.

"The amount of money is huge," said Luis Garfias, a retired three-star
general who said he fended off entreaties while stationed on the
border in Mexicali in the early 1990s. "You like women? You like
alcohol? It's free for you. Completely free, and dangerous."

During the 1980s, the army's job was mainly to find and destroy opium
poppy and marijuana crops in western and northern Mexico.

In the 1990s, then-President Ernesto Zedillo ordered the air force to
chase drug flights and named an army general as the nation's top
anti-drug officer.

That general, Jose de Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, was later convicted on
charges that he helped Amado Carrillo Fuentes, reputed head of the
Juarez cartel.

Zedillo's successor, Vicente Fox, maintained army involvement in the
drug fight by naming a general as federal attorney general. But
President Felipe Calderon, a conservative elected in 2006, has
ratcheted up the military's role to new levels.

"The military for the first time is being used in a very blatant way
to substitute for the incompetence and corruption of civilian
agencies," said Roderic Camp, an expert on the Mexican military who
teaches government at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont.

Nuevo Laredo, where gun battles and kidnappings chased fearful
business owners out and kept tourists away, has quieted down since the
army arrived. Many residents wonder whether the quiet will last; some
believe it is more likely the result of an arrangement among drug
rivals. But any respite is welcome.

"There haven't been clashes between armed men. There haven't been
violent deaths," said Police Chief Alfonso Olvera, whose 517 officers
were disarmed in January while the military ran a criminal check. "A
big part of this is the work that the [army] is doing."

Jewelry shop owner Rogelio Armenta, who doubles as the city's point
man on tourism, hopes to entice visitors back to Nuevo Laredo, where
one-third of the tourist businesses shut down in recent years.

Some activists say the army, long accused of heavy-handedness in
dealing with domestic dissenters, has shown the same tendencies in the
drug fight. But polls show that ordinary Mexicans favor using the army.

In a surprising turnabout, Jose Luis Soberanes, the nation's human
rights ombudsman, said this month that it would be "suicide" to pull
the military from the streets. Soberanes had previously called for an
end to the deployment.

Almost everyone agrees that there are few good alternatives to the
army unless the government can improve the overall professionalism of
the police, at least at the federal level. Past efforts have given way
to more corruption, and more promises of reform.

Many analysts say the pattern will repeat itself as long as the U.S.
offers a lucrative market for illegal drugs. What officials lack,
critics say, is an exit strategy for the military.

"The biggest question we are going to face is, how are we going to
pull the soldiers off the streets?" said Erubiel Tirado, a national
security expert at the Ibero-American University in Mexico City. "We
are contaminating the military, politically speaking."