Plan Colombia and Beyond

Judging from the materials we’ve seen about the Bush administration’s $500 million funding request to Congress for “Plan Mexico” – sorry, that should be called the “Mérida Initiative on Regional Security Cooperation” – there are some key differences from Plan Colombia. But there are also some significant similarities.

First, the differences:

• The military and police component is much smaller. This is our best estimate of what is being requested:
  • About $37 million is administrative “overhead” costs for the State Department’s management of the new aid programs.

  Of the remaining $463 million:

  • Military assistance is about 44 percent, or $205.5 million. That is enough to pay for 8 helicopters for the army (enough to transport about 100 soldiers at a time), 2 surveillance planes for the navy, and some handheld ion scanners.
  • Police assistance is about 9 percent, or $41.25 million. Nearly three-quarters of this is for gamma-ray and x-ray scanning equipment to detect smuggling.
  • Intelligence or national-security agencies get about 7 percent, or $31.5 million. This is all technology upgrades, especially database and satellite communications equipment. The Mexican intelligence service (CISEN) will get much of this aid.
  • Other law-enforcement agencies would get about 14 percent, or $64.5 million. These agencies include Mexico’s Migration Institute (INAMI), Communication and Transportation Secretariat (SCT) and Customs agency.
  • Economic aid – mainly judicial assistance – is about 26 percent, or $120.3 million. Much of this is training and technical support for Mexico’s judicial system; there is also a large outlay for drug demand-reduction programs within Mexico.

  The 2000 “Plan Colombia” request was 75 percent military and police assistance, and more than 80 percent of U.S. aid to Colombia since 2000 has gone to its military and police forces. Plan Mexico’s military and police component is 53 percent; 60 percent if one counts the civilian intelligence service.

• Less of the military and police aid is lethal. It is almost entirely made up of transport helicopters, surveillance planes, scanning and communications equipment. There is no Mexican analogue to the military “Push into Southern Colombia,” an operation involving the creation and arming of new army and naval units, that lay at the heart of Plan Colombia in 2000.

• Obviously, there’s no eradication component. One of the cruelest aspects of Plan Colombia was its emphasis on fighting drugs by fumigating peasants who grow coca to survive – the weakest, least profitable link on the long drug production and transshipment chain. Mexico is not a large producer of drug crops (there is a small amount of opium poppy, and some marijuana, a crop that is already abundantly grown within the United States). The focus instead is on interdicting the product within Mexican territory and going after the organized-crime figures who profit from it.

• This isn’t a counter-insurgency mission. Mexico does have two small insurgencies, the Zapatistas (who at this point are more of a non-violent political movement) and the ERP, who seem to specialize in pipeline bombings. We do not expect the U.S.-donated equipment to be used on counter-insurgent missions in places like Guerrero and Oaxaca, which would carry a very high risk of human-rights abuse.

But there are some similarities with Plan Colombia:

• Those expensive helicopters and planes. Just as Plan Colombia spent nearly $300 million on Blackhawk and Huey helicopters, nearly half of the entire Mexico aid package will go to ten tangible objects: 8 Bell 412 helicopters and 2 CASA CN-235 aircraft (made by a company that is a joint venture between Spain and Indonesia). Is this the best use of scarce resources? If the number of helicopters for Mexico’s army were reduced somewhat, how many more honest judges, prosecutors and investigators could be protected and able to do their jobs? How many more ports would be outfitted with better screening equipment?

• The contractors that come with them. Unlike Plan Colombia, the Mexico package will involve almost no U.S. military personnel training Mexican soldiers and police. Mexico has made clear that it does not want a big U.S. military footprint on its soil, even for training. Instead – just like Plan Colombia – there is likely to be a large contingent of employees of U.S. contractor firms. Some will provide training in the use of all the equipment that the U.S. government is providing; some will actually help operate this equipment; others will provide logistical support, repair and other services. The heavy presence of contractors has been a contentious issue in Colombia; it has been far more so in Iraq. Now the contractors will be coming to Mexico.

• Human rights. Among Latin American armed forces, Mexico’s army has a reputation for being one of the most independent from civilian oversight and hardest to punish for human-rights abuse or other crimes. As has been the case in Colombia, impunity for human rights violations could make U.S. aid to Mexico controversial.

• A military response to organized crime. Mexican President Felipe Calderón has sent the military into areas dominated by violent drug cartels, a major new domestic mission for his country’s armed forces. This is a risky step. The cartels can have a huge corrupting influence, especially in an environment of impunity. The cartels are also intermingled with the civilian population, which requires a very sophisticated approach in order to avoid abusing, and further alienating, some of the country’s poorest and most vulnerable citizens.

Most past efforts to take down organized-crime syndicates have succeeded through a combination of careful police and judicial work, not military offensives. The U.S. package does include much support for such police and judicial work. But its large military-aid component – though mostly helicopters – also sends the message that Washington endorses and supports Mexico’s risky decision to deploy its army on a major new internal-security mission.

• A failure to get our own house in order. This is the most important similarity.

Even though U.S. addicts’ demand provides the resources that fuel both drug cartels and armed groups, Plan Colombia took place in a context of stagnant – or at best slowly increasing – investment in domestic drug treatment programs. Since studies show treatment to be the most effective way to reduce drug demand reduction, the lack of a major effort to expand access to treatment undercut Plan Colombia from the very beginning.

Meanwhile, as Mexico’s Attorney-General Eduardo Medina Mora pointed out the other day, the United States urgently needs to crack down on two other ways in which it facilitates drug-related violence south of the border. First, Washington needs to do more to keep guns – which are easily bought in the United States but hard to obtain in Mexico – from flowing across the border. Second, the United States needs to make it harder for Mexican drug organizations to launder money here; Medina said that Mexican cartels are currently laundering $10 billion each year in the U.S. banking system.

But these issues are “hard” to take on politically. Expanding treatment for addicts is unpopular, especially with U.S. conservatives. Anything that sounds remotely like gun control enrages the National Rifle Asssociation, one of the most powerful lobbies in the United States. Clamping down on money-laundering means confronting the U.S. banking industry.

Isn’t it easier just to send an aid package and hope the Mexicans can sort it out?

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