Drugs, Law and Conflict

**A wall pierced by bullet holes in a botched drug raid in Sinaloa, Mexico, via TIME.

Thanks to WOLA for alerting us to Rep. Eliot Engel’s bill H.R. 2134, which would create a commission to evaluate US drug policy in the Western Hemisphere. I’m pleased to see the commission plans to focus not just on (much-needed) assessment of Plan Colombia and Merida Initiative aid, but also explicitly on demand in the US, including existing prevention and treatment programs. Also quite welcome is an exploration of current cooperation mechanisms with foreign governments, NGOs and regional bodies.

See the full text of the legislation here, and testimony from WOLA’s John Walsh before the House Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere here.

Update 10/23: See testimony from Crisis Group’s Mark Schneider before the subcommittee here.

• Just in time for the Israeli elections: the Holocaust Survivors & Grown-Up Green Leaf Party. (via Chris Blattman)

• The American National Security Council (NSC) will be reorganized and expanded, perhaps to include the DEA, under Obama. As Eric Sterling argues on his blog, Sterling on Justice and Drugs, “Elevating the issue can help clarify that the intrinsic ineffectuality of drug prohibition is a serious aggravation of our national security.”

• Afghans are increasingly pessimistic about their country’s future, a BBC/ABC News poll finds. Drug traffickers are perceived as a declining threat, as the Taliban establish greater territorial dominance, and security concerns are greatest in the south and east of the country.

• Guatemala and the US have signed a letter of agreement releasing $3.65 million of Mérida Initiative aid. According to the State Department press release, “the Guatemalan Ministry of Government will participate in the following five projects fully funded by the U.S. Government: Central American Fingerprint Exchange, $400,000; Central American Vetted and Sensitive Investigative Units (SIU), $500,000; Transnational Anti-Gang Initiative (TAG), $1,225,000; Improved policing and police equipment, $975,500; and improved prison management, $550,000.” $550,000 will also go to the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala.

• More on Mexican Brigadier General Mauro Enrique Tello Quiñones, tortured and killed last week in Cancún, from the Washington Post. Tello was one of the highest-ranking military officers in Mexico and recently tapped to create and head an elite special forces unit to combat drug traffickers in the city. According to the article,

The Cancun mayor said he believes that “the strongest theory” points to the Zetas because of the brutality of the crime and its sophistication. Also, during his long military career, Tello served as the commander of army forces in the state of Michoacan, a drug production and trafficking hot spot. “The general worked very hard and did a lot of work in Michoacan, where the Zetas have a very strong presence, a very active cell,” Mayor Sánchez said.

There are other possible motives. A decade ago, Tello served as a leader of Mexico City’s public security agency, where he was accused of torturing and killing six detained youths. He was cleared of the charges.

According to reports in the local media, there are a number of clues, including footprints and fingerprints on the pickup truck in which the three bodies were found in the jungle, and video camera images from the streets around downtown Cancun where the men were abducted.

• An LA Times photo essay on the fall-out of the capture of “El Pozolero,” who allegedly disappeared hundreds of corpses of rival drug traffickers in Tijuana. Full story here.

• A new take on the Michael Phelps marijuana revelation, from a Boston Globe op-ed: “The legalization of pot would also afford Phelps the chance to become a pioneer in the field of celebrity-endorsed paraphernalia. After all, who wouldn’t want to buy a water pipe officially endorsed by Aquaman?”

**Mexican soldier with seized marijuana plants; courtesy of the AP.

A few links to start off the week:

• The US Border Patrol in Brownsville, Texas reports a significant increase in the amount of marijuana flowing across the border from Mexico, due in part to pressure from the Mexican government. Calderón’s crackdown on Mexican traffickers, according to Border Patrol spokesman John López, has led them to divert their routes from the western to the eastern part of the Rio Grande Valley. Yet López also cites the harvest season (October to early December) as a cause for the increase:

“The same way farmers grow and harvest their crops, narcotics dealers have fields of marijuana hidden away and they harvest it the same way a farmer would.”

…Except in this case, when Border Patrol finds it, they burn it.

• The New York Times has a probing piece on Bill Clinton’s drug czar General Barry McCaffrey, and his work as a consultant for a private military company and on cable news.

• The State Department releases two new fact sheets about the Mérida Initiative. In “Explaining the Merida Initiative: Myths, Facts, and Sound Policy,” a strong response to the question about the US not doing enough on its side of the border:

“We continue to make progress in reducing the demand for illicit drugs in the United States. Cocaine use among 18-25 year-olds, the leading demographic in the U.S., dropped 23% between 2006 and 2007. Cocaine positive tests in the workplace, with no breakdown by age, dropped 19% in the same time period. Additionally, we are increasing resources to U.S. federal agencies responsible for preventing weapons from entering Mexico and Central America from our territory, and we are implementing new strategies to track the flow of bulk cash out of the United States.”

(Note the absence of a mention of the Assault Weapons Ban.)

• The State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs posts what appears to be the very first edition of their newsletter, “The INL Beat.” All sounds pretty positive!

• The Kaibiles, an elite corps of Guatemalan soldiers who committed a number of massacres during the 1960-96 civil war, are serving as peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The fabulous bloggers at Wronging Rights report concern that the notorious Kaibil training may negatively impact their work as blue helmets, and reference reports from 2005 linking former Kaibiles to Mexican drug cartels. Indeed, earlier this year the Mexican Attorney General’s office confirmed information regarding the existence of at least six camps along the US-Mexico border where ex-Kaibiles are training groups of Zetas, the Gulf Cartel’s famously vicious gunmen. It appears that the Zetas are taking advantage of Calderón’s crackdown and their superior skills to stake out their own claim in the trafficking business as the capos fall.

• Old but unfortunately still very relevant: Time photoessays on Mexico’s Drug Wars and The Battle for Culiacán