NARCOTRAFFICKING MOVES INTO CENTRAL AMERICA

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is meeting in Guatemala this week
for talks with the presidents of Central America, Mexico and Colombia
on security assistance to Central America that will focus on the most
serious problem facing the region: drug trafficking.

As Mexico has interrupted transit routes across its territory and
along its coasts, drug cartels have been moving into Guatemala and
countries to the south. A particularly heinous manifestation of this
shift in activity was the killing of 27 people in northern Guatemala
last month, a crime for which Mexico's "Zetas" openly took credit.

The toll of this relatively new problem is already multidimensional.
Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras now have among the highest crime
and homicide rates in Latin America. The economic costs add up to as
much as 8 percent of GDP annually, as crime and violence deter
investment, divert resources, and generally drag down economic growth.
Democracy also suffers, as citizens lose faith in their criminal
justice systems, their political leaders, and the future itself. All
this in turn feeds the relentless stream of emigrants who forsake home
and family to face danger and discrimination as undocumented
immigrants in the United States.

Guatemala and other Central American countries are trying to fight
back, with support from the United States and other countries, as well
as from the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the
Inter-American Development Bank, and other institutions. Probably the
best known initiative in this area is the International Commission
against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), a U.N.-Guatemalan collaboration
aimed at improving the legal sector's ability to investigate and
prosecute crimes. Other efforts range from intelligence sharing to
community policing projects and even life-skills training to keep
adolescents out of gangs.

These efforts are beginning to pay off, but more must to be done to
help Guatemala and Central America:

* First, current levels of international security assistance must be
scaled up. In 2011, the U.S. pledged $200 million for all seven
Central American countries. More support is needed from other Latin
American countries, Europe, and multilateral institutions. Increased
information sharing, training, and other forms of technical assistance
are critically important.

* Second, Central America's drug war must become a regionwide effort,
with all countries working under a common strategy. This is the
welcome focus of the International Conference in Support of the
Central American Security Strategy, which Secretary Clinton is
attending.

* Third, more assistance must be focused on strengthening government
institutions, especially public prosecutors' offices and other law
enforcement and judicial agencies. Weak states cannot effectively
confront the violence and corrupting power of narcotraffickers.

* Finally, as recommended this month by the Global Commission on Drug
Policy, the United States must face head-on its role as a drug
consumer by opening up a national dialogue on drug policy options,
including a serious look at alternatives to drug prohibition.

One question that inevitably arises when discussing security
assistance to Latin America is the proper role of the military. It is
critical to acknowledge that significant political changes have
occurred in Guatemala and Central America during the last two decades.
Democratic governments and stronger civil societies are now the norm.
The armed forces are clearly under civilian control, and all important
political actors, both liberal and conservative, share a commitment to
keeping it this way. It would be a mistake to exclude the military
from international security cooperation in Central America.

As former U.N. CICIG head Carlos Castresana of Spain has said, "the
paradigm has changed" in Guatemala and the rest of Central America.
It's no longer the state that perpetrates violence. Rather, drug
traffickers and gangs threaten Central American citizens and the
stability of their governments.

The objective of security assistance must be to strengthen the state
and help it mobilize all its resources, not only to reduce crime and
violence but to ensure the survival of Central American democracy
itself.