The US military has opened up a new phase in its cooperation with counterparts in the Mexican armed forces. According to the Washington Post’s Mary Beth Sheridan this morning, officials from both the US and Mexican military now confirm they are “sharing information” and collaborating on soldier training in “an expanding effort to help [Mexico] battle its violent drug cartels” – an admission that the US military has been “hesitant to discuss” previously because of Mexico’s wariness about foreign interference. That wariness, however, may be changing. Here’s the Post:
“Current and former officials say the U.S. military has instructed hundreds of Mexican officers in the past two years in subjects such as how to plan military operations, use intelligence to hunt traffickers and observe human rights. “
Sheridan’s reporting suggests a program that is significantly larger than what the Post’s Bill Booth reported on last February. It may also add to what both the El Paso Times and Milenio were reporting on in late October. Those programs, according to Booth, included embedding US intelligence agents with Mexican law enforcement units charged with going after cartels, but it seems to have been run primarily through the DEA. To the contrary, the Post’s latest reporting shines new light on the role of the Pentagon in Mexico, noting the Defense Dept. has tripled its counternarcotics aid to the country since 2008 (up from $12.2 million then to an estimated $34 million in 2010).
Meanwhile, at the State Dept., still the principal source of US anti-drug aid to Mexico, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton has continued to allude to increasing US concerns about drug-related violence in the country – the most famous of which being her depiction of cartel activity as an “insurgency.” In fact, it’s that model – and its opposite, counterinsurgency – to which US military officials are now referring with increased regularity.
Gen. Victor Renuart, who recently retired as head of the U.S. military's Northern Command, tells the Post that recent changes in the relationship between the US and Mexican militaries are “historic.” He continues:
“We have tried to share many of the lessons we've learned in chasing terrorist organizations in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Meanwhile, Mexico is on President Obama’s mind as well. A senior official tells the paper that the president himself has instructed a group, “at a very high level,” to “really think hard about how we can up our game, do more to support” the Mexican government. One plan allegedly under consideration includes would involve shifting “$50 million in funds from the Pentagon's 2011 budget to improve security along Mexico's southern border.” Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), currently the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has also suggested increasing the joint deployment of aviation, surveillance and intelligence assets along the border. But, again, changes are already well underway. Once more, the Post, on new US-Mexico security training:
“Among those traveling to Mexico to give seminars to the military are staff members from the Joint Special Operations University, a sort of ‘college’ for U.S. Special Operations forces. Mexico's army has stationed a permanent liaison officer at the Northern Command, which is based in Colorado. And for the first time, a Mexican officer is serving as assistant commandant at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation at Fort Benning, Ga., formerly known as the School of the Americas.”
To other stories:
· The LA Times also with US-Mexico drug war coverage. The paper says a new US inspector general’s report has determined a federal program (Project Gunrunner) intended to thwart gun smuggling from the US to Mexico is “unwieldy, mismanaged and fraught with ‘significant weaknesses.’” According to the damning assessment of ATF anti-gun efforts (paraphrased by the Times), “agents with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives focus only on small gun sales and do not share information with law enforcement officials on both sides of the border.” Meanwhile, “even the cornerstone effort of tracing U.S. guns in Mexico too often comes up short because of missing data and the lack of U.S. training for Mexican police.” The paper calls the report the first to find “systemic problems in a once highly praised project,” adding that “it mirrors concerns of many on the border that weapons from the U.S. are helping the violence spiral out of control.”
· A new Monterrey Institute of Technology study on impunity in Mexico says 98.5% of crimes currently go unpunished in the country. “Out of 7.48 million crimes – both federal and common – committed in Mexico this year, the study says the conviction rate has been only about 1 percent. Meanwhile, EFE also reports that a new study by the Private Security Council – a group composed of some 200 private security firms – shows drug related crimes and kidnappings on the rise in the country’s capital, Mexico City.
· And in Washington, Milenio and the Latin Americanist report on a hunger strike being staged by women activists in front of the White House, demanding the US focus attention on the border region’s social ills, rather than security, narrowly defined.
· In Paraguay this week, EFE says US Asst. Sec. of State Arturo Valenzuela renewed a security cooperation agreement with the Paraguayan government. Meeting with President Fernando Lugo, Valenzuela highlighted the United States’ willingness to continue supporting anti-drug efforts, as well as efforts against common “criminality,” in the country.
· All the major US papers this morning are reporting on the arrival of cholera to the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. The New York Times says authorities are telling residents to “brace for a more severe epidemic than previously thought,” as at least 73 cholera cases have now been confirmed in Port-au-Prince. I’m not sure where these estimates come from, but, according to the Times, “medical officials” also add that the disease could afflict as many as 270,000 people over the next several years. Jacqueline Charles at the Miami Herald quotes the director general of Haiti’s Ministry of Health who is now calling the epidemic “a matter of national security.” But as US State Dept. spokesman PJ Crowley indicated Tuesday, the rise in confirmed cholera cases does not necessarily mean a spike in infections – it also implies improved monitoring and detection by medical groups in the country.
· On the Walid Makled case, reported here yesterday, Venezuela’s El Universal adds more on the likelihood that Makled will eventually be extradited to Venezuela, rather than to the US. According to Makled’s own lawyer, Miguel Angel Ramirez, part of Venezuela’s extradition claim includes murder charges against the businessman-turned-trafficker. [The US only has trafficking charges on its extradition claim]. And according to Ramirez, “When two countries require an individual, the requested government, according to the law, should first take into account the most serious crime.” The extradition process, however, could take up to a year.
· Also in Venezuela, EFE reports on the birth of a Green Party movement in the country, sparked by citizen activists who are tired of the country’s polarization. EFE: “The Venezuelan Environmental Movement, or Movev, has managed to unite ‘people of judgment who have taken the decision to vote for a new alternative.’”
· The UK’s Telegraph says Great Britain will support Brazil’s bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. This as the US backed a similar bid by India earlier this week.
· Mercopress, by way of O Estado de Sao Paulo, says Brazils current Central Banker Henrique Meirelles could end up as the country’s ambassador to Washington rather than having his term at the Central Bank renewed. According to Brazilian press, Rousseff may not support another term for Meirelles at the country’s Central Bank because of his “aversion to cutting interest rates” – a topic of significant debate within Brazil and within the PT itself.
· IPS with more on the 13 Cuban dissidents who have not yet been released as part of the Catholic Church brokered deal that was supposed to free 52 individuals detained in 2003. Also, the Miami Herald with more on the economic agenda on tap for Cuba’s Communist Party Congress in April.
· Finally, opinions and reviews. In the Guardian, La Jornada opinion editor Luis Hernandez Navarro with an excellent piece on Mexico’s growing list of nameless civilian drug war victims. Hernandez Navarro: “The population is equally afraid of the drug dealers and the men in uniform. Young people are suspect simply by virtue of being young; they are stopped in the street and threatened at gunpoint. The police break into private houses without a warrant and terrorize those who live there. The first victim of the war against the drug traffickers has been human rights.” An editorial in the Washington Post looks at life after Lula da Silva and Nestor Kirchner. Michael Shifter reviews a new book by Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, What if Latin America Ruled the World?, for the Post. And New York University’s Tamiment Library released the papers of famous Latin America CIA operative-turned-defector Philip Agee yesterday. Robert Baer, at Foreign Policy, has few good things to say about the man who offered historians and journalists an inside look at CIA activity in the region during the Cold War.
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