Critical juncture for Mexico's war on drug lords
By Oscar Avila | Tribune correspondent
5:08 PM CDT, May 14, 2008

MEXICO CITY - On the home turf of Mexico's deadliest drug cartels, they hang banners that mock Mexican authorities trying to maintain order. "Little tin soldiers, federal officers made of straw," read one banner in the state of Sinaloa.

But a more powerful message is coming in the brazen and widespread burst of murders, much of it geared toward law enforcement officials, that has shaken even the most hardened Mexican in recent days.

Even as the body counts spiral in swaths of northwest Mexico, a single killing in Mexico City raised the stakes. Edgar Millan, the acting national police chief, was assassinated at his home last week, the highest-ranking official to be killed since President Felipe Calderon took office in 2006.

Millan's death, a coolly efficient hit in the nation's political and symbolic heart, has raised stark comparisons that Mexico could be heading the way of Colombia of the 1990s, when chunks of territory were out of government control and the indiscriminate killings of police chiefs, judges and prosecutors became commonplace.

This critical juncture for Mexico comes as the U.S. Congress is set to vote this week on the Merida Initiative, a $550 million anti-crime aid package. Bush administration officials say the recent violence shows the urgency of the proposal.

But Mexican authorities said Monday that Millan's slaying was an inside job organized by the Sinaloa cartel, showing how far criminals have infiltrated Mexican law enforcement. The murder has bolstered skeptics from both U.S. political parties who have questioned whether aid from the Merida Initiative could end up in the wrong hands.

At a Monday news conference, reporters asked Calderon whether he might need to reassess his get-tough approach, which includes the deployment of about 25,000 military troops and federal police to trouble spots.

"Those who insinuate that the government should back away from this strategy are those who would see us abandon journalists, citizens, businessmen, farmers and youth to the clutches of crime," Calderon said in some of his most forceful comments to date.

The U.S. has backed Calderon's efforts because Mexico is the primary corridor for cocaine and marijuana that enters the U.S. Also, violent clashes between drug traffickers often spill into U.S. territory along the border. Mexico has seen some successes, including the extradition of dozens of criminals to the U.S.

Law enforcement officials expected a violent backlash, but the governor of Sinaloa said the recent clashes, including one involving a bazooka, are the worst in recent memory.

A soccer team visiting the state capital, Culiacan, needed an armed escort back to its hotel. Music legends Joan Sebastian and Los Tigres del Norte canceled concerts. Televised images showed desolate streets as residents preferred not to risk a Mother's Day lunch.

More than 1,000 Mexicans already have died this year in murders related to organized crime. Security analyst Ana Maria Salazar said the new element is the widespread killing of high-ranking law enforcement officials.

In addition to Millan, the city's No. 2 police official was murdered Saturday in Ciudad Juarez along the Texas border. A week earlier, a federal intelligence official had been killed outside his home in Mexico City.

Mexican authorities reported Monday night that they had arrested six men tied to the Sinaloa cartel in the murder of Millan, the nation's top police official. Millan had helped coordinate the arrests of several associates of the cartel's Beltran Leyva family.

Authorities said a lone gunman had been waiting inside Millan's home, where he pumped him with nine rounds. It was apparently an inside job: one of the masterminds was a federal police officer who had previously worked in Sinaloa, authorities said.

Jorge Fernandez, a columnist in Excelsior newspaper, is one of several analysts to begin comparing Mexico with Colombia in the 1990s. He noted that it wasn't until Colombia cartels broke every barrier of society that they were eventually neutralized.

"The lessons are useful," Fernandez wrote. "What we are living in these sinister weeks and months appear to be part of a similar process that Colombia endured."

Salazar, a former Defense Department official who helped craft U.S. military policy in Colombia during the 1990s, said the comparison is not entirely accurate but worries that Mexico is getting closer to that dangerous situation.

"At this point, the criminal organizations really feel they can get away with murder," Salazar said. "Once the cartels decide to systematically kill cops and there is not going to be any consequences, that's what happened in Colombia.

"Mexico needs to make sure these organizations do suffer consequences," she said. "It can't be open season for killing law enforcement officials."

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Erubiel Tirado, director of national security studies at Iberoamerican University in Mexico City, said the Millan slaying showed that Calderon needs to move faster in weeding corrupt elements from Mexican law enforcement.

"You can't go back in midstream, but they need to re-evaluate their strategy because it is clearly not working," Tirado said. "The fact that we have such infiltration in the police structures that you can buy or threaten someone at the highest levels, it shows a great vulnerability of the state itself."

U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack also hinted this week at deeper risks, saying the resurgent violence shows a threat to Mexico's "democratic institutions."

While Bush aides see the spate of killings as reason to approve the Merida Initiative, some lawmakers aren't so sure. Congressional aides say they expect the measure to come up this week as part of a broader supplemental funding bill.




Tim Rieser, an aide to U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate subcommittee that funds foreign-aid programs, said Millan's murder illustrates that any aid request must include strict American oversight.

The murder of Millan "shows the need to help Mexico but it also shows the importance of conditionality and accountability to ensure that U.S funds don't end up in the wrong hands," Rieser said.

The AFL-CIO, Amnesty International and other organizations have called on the U.S. to kill the Merida Initiative altogether, alleging inadequate safeguards for human rights.

They received unlikely backing recently in a letter from U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) and other conservative lawmakers asking the State Department to shelve the Merida Initiative because of Mexico's "questionable drug enforcement and reputation for corruption within its government, police and military forces."

For now, Mexican officials are moving forward with their offensive.

Calderon dispatched a security working group of Cabinet members to Sinaloa on Tuesday and deployed nearly 3,000 more troops there. Two Mexican lawmakers even requested the incredible step that Calderon deploy military troops to patrol Mexico City.

James Jones, former U.S. ambassador to Mexico, said that Mexico is not the ideal partner but that the U.S. must be supportive. Jones recalled passing intelligence on a drug lord to Mexican authorities in the 1990s and being told "that there are only five people in the whole department they could trust."

"As long as Calderon really keeps up this commitment, I don't think Mexico will be a Colombia," Jones said. "Can we trust the people in charge? I think we can trust this government. We have to help him."

oavila@tribune.com

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