THE DRUG WAR
U.S. Policy Corrupting Mexico Army

SWARTHMORE, PA.Mounting evidence of widespread

Drugrelated corruption in the Mexican military should be a wakeup call to
American policymakers: There is something fundamentally wrong with U.S.
drugwar policy.

Last February, Mexico's top antinarcotics official, Gen. Jesus Gutierrez
Rebollo, was arrested for selling protection to one of the country's most
powerful drug lords. In March, a second general was arrested on
drugcorruption charges. The news sent shock waves through Washington.
Congress initially threatened to impose sanctions on Mexico, then settled
for a milder censure.

Now, evidence gleaned from Mexican Defense Ministry files indicates that
corruption in the military may be more widespread than previously
recognized: 10 generals and 22 other military officers are under
investigation for alleged ties to drug traffickers. The scandal and
intrigue are widening.

Gutierrez claims he was targeted for prosecution because of his own
investigation into alleged drug connections of members of the family of
Mexico's president, Ernesto Zedillo. In late July, an important witness
against Gutierrez was ambushed and wounded. Four days later, Irma Ibarra, a
lawyer and reputed mistress of one of the 10 Mexican generals, identified
in the files as having brought him and other officers together with key
drug traffickers, was assassinated.

Untangling the roots of Mexico's drugrelated corruptionand determining
how deep they runis difficult. The Mexican military is shrouded in a
culture of silence. It has long escaped public scrutiny and accountability.
Officials in the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) have been
hesitant to press for thorough investigations. The United States,
meanwhile, has mostly chosen to turn a blind eye to the evidence gathered
by U.S. intelligence agencies of drugrelated corruption among Mexican
officials.

In 1991, for example, Washington knew that Mexican soldiers protecting a
drug delivery gunned down Mexican police agents. The United States had
evidence in the early 1990s of drug corruption high in the administration
of thenPresident Carlos Salinas de Gortari; both his brother and his
assistant attorney general were implicated. In 1994, the U.S. Embassy
quietly drew up a long list of top Salinas administration officials
suspected of having drug ties. Early this year, court documents confirmed
that the Tijuana cartel has been paying off hundreds of Mexican
lawenforcement officials for tipoffs, help in guarding shipments and
assistance in crossing the U.S. border.

U.S. officials have been reluctant to move forcefully or publicly on such
evidence, because they feared such action would threaten progress on other
U.S. priorities, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and
immigration. But the rising mountain of evidence has become too big to
sweep under the rug. Congress and the media have focused U.S. public
attention on the issue. The Mexican public may also be drawn in: The PRI's
losses last month in the lower house of Congress have positioned opposition
parties to investigate and expose corruption, if they choose to do so.

As the problem of widespread official corruption has become increasingly
difficult to dodge, the Clinton administration has rushed to reassure
Congress and the public that the situation is under control. First, the
administration has repeatedly expressed absolute confidence in the
incorruptibility of Zedillo and contended that the entire system can be
cleaned up, since corruption has not "started at the top and moved down,"
as was the case in Colombia.

Second, the administration is heartened by the creation of a new Mexican
drugfighting agency, whose screening techniques are said to be much more
refined. The agency was established to replace the discredited institution
headed by Gutierrez until his arrest. But history offers little reason for
confidence. The general, after all, had been brought in to rebuild the last
antidrug agency, which had also been created to replace a corrupted
predecessor.

Finally, using a favored tactic, the administration continues to press
Mexico to bypass the thoroughgoing corruption of the civilian police by
calling in the military, one of the few armies in Latin America that has
historically remained outside politics and respectful of civilian rule. But
the evidence suggests that drug corruption will move from one institution
to the other, and that corruption will overwhelm the Mexican military long
before the military curtails the drug trade. The corruption might also
undermine civilian control of the military at precisely the time that
democratization is taking hold in Mexico.

The administration's optimism in the face of this history masks a deeper
denial of the sources of corruptionand the unintentional complicity of
the United States. Taking on the problem of drugrelated corruption demands
confronting how and why the problem has become endemic throughout the
countries charged with conducting the U.S. war on drugs. In Mexico and
other drugproducing and trafficking countries, police and military forces
are pitted against a trade so lucrative that the cartels spend an estimated
$6 billion a year on bribery in Mexico and still make billions of dollars.
The mix of huge drug profits and the small salaries of police and military
officials make it rational for counternarcotics forces to "trade" their
enforcement capability for a share of the profits. The pattern is
widespread. One official of the Drug Enforcement Administration explained
that in Bolivia, an antinarcotics agent "simply has to instruct his guys
not to search some traffickers at a particular checkpoint for three days,
and he earns a lifetime's salary." In many cases, counternarcotics forces
go beyond simply "overlooking" drug activity and actively assist the drug
traffickers: One U.S. Special Forces commander confirmed that members of
the Peruvian Army have received payments for allowing traffickers to use
airstrips. The problem is most serious when state institutions are used to
shield individual accountability. On occasion, state and military power
have even been used by heads of state to participate in the drug trade, as
in Panama under Manuel Noriega and Bolivia under Gen. Luis Garcia Meza's
regime in the 1980s.

Some policymakers admit that corruption inevitably follows big drug
profits. What is difficult for U.S. officials to acknowledge is that the
U.S. drug war deepensrather than reducesthe incentives for corruption.
The drug war aims to raise prices in order to curb drug use in the United
States. The pricehike strategy attempts to curtail supply by targeting
producers and traffickers. But success in raising prices also radically
inflates blackmarket profits for growers and traffickers. A pure gram of
pharmaceutical cocaine that would cost about $15 when produced legally
brings about $150 on the retail black market. As long as demand runs high
for an illicit product, explained Colombia's Prosecutor General Gustavo de
Greiff in 1994, "the narcotraficantes will continue to receive these
immense profits that allow them to corrupt everyone."

A frustrating dynamic is created: The more efficient U.S. training and
resources make the Mexican police and military, the better able they are to
track and find the drug traffickersand the higher the bribes they can
expect for nonenforcement.

The possible corruption of the Mexican military is a legitimate U.S.
foreignpolicy concern; it would undermine civilian government and restrict
the possibilities for further democratization; it could trigger instability
and political turmoil at a time when our two countries should be drawing
closer. But to blame official Mexican corruption as the cause of our drug
problemsand to place sole responsibility on weakwilled Mexican
officialsis deeply misleading. The drive to corrupt is, to a disturbing
degree, fueled by U.S. enforcement strategies and by Americans' continued
demand for drugs a demand that must be addressed through prevention and
treatment at home. Confronting these dynamics is a necessary step toward
addressing the corruption of the war on drugs.

Eva Bertram, a Policy Analyst, and Kenneth E. Sharpe, Professor of
Political Science at Swarthmore College, Are Coauthors of "Drug War
Politics: the Price of Denial."

Copyright Los Angeles Times