MEXICO SEEKS ANTIDRUG AID FROM THE US

A Deal Is Underway to Increase US Involvement in the Fight Against
Mexican Drug Lords.

Alarmed by rising threats to Mexican law and order from
ever-more-brazen drug lords, the Bush administration is quietly
negotiating a counternarcotics aid package with the Mexican
government that would increase US involvement in a drug war south of
the border.

The fact that Mexico - which has historically been averse to any
assistance from the US that could be construed as a breach of its
sovereignty - is seeking the increased aid shows how serious a threat
President Felipe Calderon sees drug gangs posing to his country.

The aid package could reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars
and include everything from Blackhawk helicopters and other
sophisticated military equipment to increased training and
surveillance capabilities. The discussions are underway as Mexico
confronts one of the bloodiest periods in more than two decades of
drug lords building and consolidating power. Since 2006, Mexico has
suffered 3,000 drug-related killings as the two most-feared drug
gangs - the Sinaloa and Gulf - have battled for turf, lucrative
transport routes, and political influence.

Upon taking office in December, Mr. Calderon wasted no time,
signaling his will to confront gangs by sending thousands of troops
into states where Mexico's top six gangs operate. He also used
diplomatic channels to issue a hushed but urgent plea for assistance
from the US - the primary market for Colombian cocaine transported
through Mexico.

"It's a huge difference that Calderon is asking for assistance,
something [former President Vicente] Fox never did," says Adam
Isacson, director of programs at the Center for International Policy
in Washington. "They have to be swallowing hard to even be asking the
US for hundreds of millions of dollars in aid."

A Sensitive Issue

Officials from both countries are reluctant to discuss details of the
aid package, given Mexican sensitivities and the questions sure to
arise in the US Congress over human-rights abuses in Mexico and the
infiltration of drug gangs into Mexican police and military. But
President Bush and Calderon are expected to take up the issue when
they meet in two weeks at a NAFTA summit in Canada.

Calderon has not been shy about publicly airing what he sees as the
US role as a drug-consuming country in Mexico's violence, and
therefore its responsibility to help address the problem. But the
scope of the package has led to it being dubbed "Plan Mexico" in some
congressional circles - a comparison to the multi-billion-dollar
"Plan Colombia" begun under President Bill Clinton to help Colombia
battle an entrenched "narcoguerrilla" and wean the rural economy off
of cultivation of the coca leaf, the raw material for cocaine.

Comparing Mexico's case with Colombia's is misleading, analysts say,
in part because Mexico is guarded about even a suggestion of US
military intervention.

"Mexico prohibits US military training in the country, and that's not
about to change," says Maureen Meyer, director of Mexico issues at
the Washington Office on Latin America.

Currently Mexico receives about $40 million a year in
counternarcotics assistance from the US, which puts it well below
Colombia and even Peru - a country that, like Colombia, is a producer
of coca. Some Mexican soldiers do receive training in the US, and the
FBI trains and works with police in Mexico. But unlike in Colombia,
where the US Army and Marines have served training and advisory
roles, no one is discussing the idea of putting American military
personnel on Mexican soil.

Mexico is battling a handful of powerful drug lords - who in turn are
fighting a war of attrition against one another - not a domestic
guerrilla group that has entered the drug trade as a way to make
money. The latter has been the case with Colombia's fight against the
trafficking operations of the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces, or FARC.

In Mexico, "it's not the FARC, it's Pablo Escobar," says Mr. Isacson,
referring to the storied Colombian cocaine king killed in 1993. "And
that suggests a very different kind of aid package."

Plan Colombia money also helps rural families displaced by decades of
fighting and goes toward "illicit crop eradication" and alternative
crop development - issues that are either nonexistent or (in the case
of eradication) less important in Mexico.

Mexico's increased aid is expected instead to buy equipment to
improve the country's monitoring of its air space, systems for
electronic surveillance, high-powered weapons, and professional
training for Mexican security forces, say officials from the two countries

One objective is to "level the playing field" for Mexican security
officers who confront opponents in drug gangs - some of whom are
better armed and trained than the officers. (Indeed, some members of
the Gulf cartel's notorious enforcement arm, the Zetas, are former
Mexican military personnel who received US training.)

Cause for Concern

But the planned aid increase raises some troubling questions, say
analysts from both sides of the border. They include:

To what extent will it deepen the involvement of Mexico's military in
a battle with domestic crime gangs?

How much will it focus on cleaning up and professionalizing the
Mexican police, considered in Mexico to be corrupt?

What emphasis will be put on reinforcing the rule of law by boosting
aid to Mexico's judicial system and civil-society organizations
focused on human rights?

To what extent does increased US involvement play into an extension
of the war on terror south of the border and into Central America?

"Unless a large part of any package deals with getting institutions
like the police and the judicial system ... back into the game,
you'll open the door to the military being the answer in all cases of
crime and law enforcement," says Isacson.

Some analysts say the US must develop a regional strategy against
drug-trafficking if it hopes to match the multinational fluidity of
the drug cartels. Europol could provide a "useful template" for a
regional antidrug effort, writes Roger Noriega, Mr. Bush's former
assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs, in a commentary
for the American Enterprise Institute published last week.

While that may be a long-term goal, Mr. Noriega says the US should
act quickly to assist Mexico in its drug war and take advantage of
Calderon's request for help. Leaving the matter to the appropriations
process would mean boosting aid perhaps a year from now, he notes,
adding that the opportunity presented by Calderon - and the ongoing
threat to US security from international drug trafficking - warrants
Bush seeking "urgent supplemental funds" this fall. "The opportunity
to build this alliance against a deadly foe may not come again," he adds.