DRUG WAR TRAINS ZETA TRAFFICKERS

America's war on drugs is doing more harm than good. Take yet another
example that affects the Rio Grande Valley: Our ongoing attempt at
prohibition has collided with the government's Latin America policy,
resulting in members of a Mexican drug gang who received military training
in the United States.

"The Zetas, hired assassins for the Gulf Cartel, feature 31 ex-soldiers
once part of an elite division of the Mexican army - the Special Air Mobile
Force Group. At least one-third of this battalion's deserters was trained
at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Ga., according to documents
from the Mexican secretary of defense," states a story published last week
in the Star.

If the School of the Americas sounds familiar, that's because it's the site
of an annual protest over its curriculum. The school, now called the
Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, teaches soldiers
from Central and South American countries techniques in military
intelligence, counterinsurgency, psychological warfare and interrogation.

Protesters say the school teaches human rights violations, oppression and
torture. Graduates of the School of the Americas have been implicated in
human rights abuses throughout Latin America, including the assassination
of Archbishop Oscar Romero and civilian massacres.

Whatever the school teaches, some of its former students are now applying
those skills in a war to take over the drug trade. The Zetas, who take
their name from a radio code word referring to a police commander, are led
by former members of the Mexican army battalion, which was stationed in
Tamaulipas in 1995 as part of that country's war on drug traffickers.
Thirty-one members of the 350-man unit deserted and began working for the
cartel.

"They have high-powered weapons, training and intelligence capabilities,"
said Francisco Castillo Zaragoza, brigadier general at the 8th Military
Zone in Reynosa.

The Zetas are suspected in many shootouts and execution-style killings in
Nuevo Laredo and elsewhere along the border, as well as murders of Mexican
police officers and federal prosecutors. And they might be operating on
this side of the Rio Grande as well.

Some Mexican authorities think a Zeta was behind the Feb. 5 shooting of
former high-ranking Mexican federal antidrug officer Guillermo Gonzalez
Calderoni, who had close ties to drug kingpins. That killing occurred at 11
a.m. outside a lawyer's office on North 10th Street, one of the busiest
roads in McAllen.

It's scary enough worrying about assassins on our streets. To learn that
these killers might have been trained by our own U.S. military - a military
that is supposed to protect us - is even more disturbing.

And don't forget the federal government's foolish drug policy, which has
done nothing but make illegal substances more expensive than they would
otherwise be. That artificial scarcity creates high profits for drug
dealers - and enables them to enlist former soldiers as mercenaries in
their turf battles.

When Rio Grande Valley residents travel to Fort Benning this year to join
the annual demonstration against the School of the Americas on Nov. 21-23,
they'll have one more thing to protest: Drug wars and foreign policies that
combine to form a new menace that threatens Mexican and American citizens.
Should the United States continue its international military training at
the School of the Americas in Georgia?