Mexico’s Drug War or Ours?

By Nicole M. Ferrand.

With the Democrat primaries coming to an end, the candidates’ experience on crucial matters such as national security and foreign affairs has been largely discussed and scrutinized by the media, with Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. and Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton each claiming to have more international credentials than the other. So it is surprising to see how mistaken they are when they say that if elected, they will re-examine trade policy with other countries and that they will not ratify the Free Trade Agreement with Colombia, our best and closest ally in Latin America. This is unfortunate, especially in times when the United States is fighting a war against terror and when enemies such as Iran have entered this country’s sphere of influence with the help of Venezuelan President, Hugo Chávez. What is worse, Obama, while making plans to meet with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has already alienated Colombia’s President, Alvaro Uribe. In April, he declared: “I’ll oppose the Colombia Free Trade Agreement if President Bush insists on sending it to Congress because the violence against unions in Colombia would make a mockery of the very labor protections that we have insisted be included in these kinds of agreements.” Uribe immediately responded, with considerably more diplomacy than the Democratic front-runner: I deplore the fact that Senator Obama, aspiring to be President of the United States, should be unaware of Colombia’s efforts.[1]

The Venezuelan leader is working together with other terrorist organizations of global reach such as the FARC to do everything possible to attack and diminish the US and its allies in the region; instilling terror and fear whenever and wherever they can. Chávez and his buddies, President Evo Morales of Bolivia, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa and the Revolutionary Armed forces of Colombia (FARC) are trying to destroy democracy because they mistakenly believe that capitalism is corrupt and decayed, that it exploits workers and that it must be destroyed. Their aim is to groom groups in neighboring countries, forcing US friendly, democratic governments to take such repressive measures that discontented and violent people will rise up and overthrow their respective regimes. (To read about why trade is pivotal for US’ interests and why we must stand with our allies, please see the Americas Report from May 23rd, 2008: “We must stand with Colombia,” by Nancy Menges.)

We have written several articles on this matter; in fact our latest “The Americas Report” we state: “Instead of recognizing the outstanding leadership President Uribe has provided, the message he and the Colombian people are getting (from the Democratic candidates and leadership) is that we are punishing them by not passing the FTA. This weakens Colombia in the eyes of other Latin American leaders and proves Chávez right that America cannot be counted on as an ally.” Colombia is still our best Latin American ally and the Democrats are turning their backs on a true US friend. Now there is another controversy brewing in Congress, this time having to do with funding for the Merida Initiative, put forth by President Bush to assist Mexican President Calderon fight the drug cartels in his country.

Covering almost 2 million square kilometers, Mexico is the fifth-largest country in the Americas by total area and the 14th largest in the world. With an estimated population of 109 million, it is the 11th most populous country and the most populous Spanish-speaking country in the world. As a regional power and the only Latin American member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) since 1994, Mexico is firmly established as an upper-middle income country. Mexico is the 12th largest economy in the world by GDP by purchasing power parity. The economy is strongly linked to those of its North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) partners, despite being considered an emerging world power, the country’s social and security problems keep it from being effective. Mexico shares a 1,952 mile border with the United States. Violent criminal activity fueled by a war between criminal organizations struggling for control of the lucrative narcotics trade has escalated in recent months. Recent clashes between authorities and drug cartels have escalated to levels equivalent to small-unit military combat and have included use of machine guns and fragmentation grenades. In any case, the stakes are high for the United States because violence in Mexico is bound to spill over the border.[2]

Violence in Mexico
Since taking office in December 2006, President Felipe Calderón has sent 25,000 Mexican troops into the field in an all-out battle with drug trafficking cartels. He says the sovereignty of the nation is at stake and he is right. He vows to keep up the fight against those who threaten the state, especially the criminal organizations. The strategy has resulted in the arrest of numerous cartel bosses and forced the drug organizations to make costly detours on their trafficking routes. But it has also sparked a backlash: the cartels have retaliated with a new level of savagery, aided by the country’s legions of bent cops, that has left a trail of hundreds of murdered police, prosecutors, politicians and civilians.[3] More than 1,000 Mexicans have died this year in violence tied to organized crime. On May 8th 2008, Edgar Millán Gómez, Mexico’s acting chief of police, was shot nine times and died as he arrived home late at night. One of his bodyguards was wounded. The cartels “respond like this because they know we’re hitting their criminal structures,” President Calderón said after Millán’s killing.

Edgar Millán Gómez, Mexico’s former acting chief of police, shot dead by the cartels. Source: Sun/Mexico.

Political analyst George Friedman, who heads the Stratfor private intelligence company, says Mexico could become a failed state if the government does not make a strong counterattack on the drug cartels. “If Calderón does not respond effectively to this killing, any minister of his government is going to see himself at risk and that is going to change their behavior.” Friedman says Mexico could turn into the kind of battleground that existed in Colombia in the 1980’s when drug cartels held sway over several cities and operated with impunity. He says the private armies of the Mexican drug cartels resemble the militias that have undermined governments in other parts of the world.”[4]

President George Bush is trying to help Calderón with a package of aid and training that came out of a meeting between the two leaders last year in Mexico called the Merida Initiative. (To learn more about the Merida Initiative please see “The Americas Report,” December 6, 2007 titled: Merida Initiative – NOT Plan Mexico by Nicole M. Ferrand.) Bush’s request has been reduced by the U.S. House of Representatives and has yet to pass in the Senate, but the President continues to support it. “We are working hard to reduce demand for drugs here in America and, at the same time, we want to work in conjunction with strong leaders to make sure these drug traffickers do not get a stronghold and that is why it is important for Congress to fund the Merida project,” said President Bush. The courageous actions of Mexican President Felipe Calderón’s Administration have achieved historic results in taking down narcotics trafficking organizations. Mexico made record seizures of illicit drugs, weapons and money in 2007, reducing the illicit drug supply in major U.S. cities. Arrests of high level criminals and extraditions to the U.S. also set records.[5]

The Millán assassination has sparked new urgency on Capitol Hill to pass President Bush’s $1.4 billion, three-year plan to help Mexico combat narco-terror. Yet, while the House Foreign Affairs Committee approved the measure on Wednesday, even rising the funding to $1.6 billion, its fate on the House floor, and in the Democratic-controlled U.S. Congress, remains uncertain. Mexico’s security forces, whose firepower pales in comparison to the high-powered arsenals of the drug cartels, are in dire need of just the kind of short-term aid envisioned in the plan, dubbed the “Merida Initiative” for the Yucatan city where it was announced last year by Bush and President Felipe Calderón. While most of the aid package goes to equip Mexico with Black Hawk helicopters and more sophisticated surveillance equipment, it also includes funds for more credible training of police, prosecutors and judges. As Congress debates the best way to fix the problem, Mexico’s cartels, including the Sinaloa gang’s main rival, the Gulf Cartel, have in recent years raised the scale of the bloodletting by introducing such weapons as grenades, AK-47 assault rifles and bazookas, as well as ghastly methods like mass beheadings. The U.S. government says drug proceeds earned by Mexican cartels selling cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine in 2005 ranged from between $8 billion and $23 billion. Cocaine is shipped to Mexico from Colombia and other South American countries in speedboats, small planes and in one case a jumbo jet, all coordinated with state-of-the art technology and communications to move the cargo north by sea, air and land.[6]

The Republican response
In contrast to the Democrats, John McCain, the Presidential Candidate for the Republican Party, has declared: “Colombia is a beacon of hope in a region where the Castro brothers, (Venezuelan president) Hugo Chávez and others are actively seeking to thwart economic progress and democracy.” Stalling on the approval of the CFTA “will not create one American job or start one American business, but it will divide us from our Colombian partners at a time when they are battling the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) terrorists and their allied drug cartels.”[7]

Mr. McCain seems to really understand what is at stake here and apparently has done his homework with regards to international relations and what would be best for his nation. When Alvaro Uribe became Colombia’s president in 2002, he faced what seemed an impossible task: Waging a war on narco-terrorism, on a continent whose loudest voice is narco-terror supporter, Hugo Chávez. But since taking office, Uribe has made enormous progress, most recently in mid-May, when top FARC commander, Nelly Avila Moreno, known by the nom de guerre, “Karina”, turned herself in. In Uribe’s five-year tenure, Colombia has seen a dramatic drop in murders, kidnappings, and assassinations. According to Kathryn Jean Lopez from the National Review: “These facts don’t impress the U.S. Democratic Party, whose leadership is stalling the free-trade agreement. The free-trade agreement would cost Americans next to nothing. As things stand, most Colombian goods already enter the United States duty-free. The agreement would open Colombia’s markets to our exporters, and strengthen our economic and security ties to a friend that’s fighting the bad guys.”[8]

Mexico’s potential failure is important for three reasons. First, Mexico is a huge country, with a population of more than 100 million. Second, it has a large economy, the 14th-largest in the world. And third, it shares an extended border with the United States and violence can easily come to this country where the leading cartels will compete in the United States, and that competition will extend to the source of the money, as well. We have already seen cartel violence in the border areas of the United States, but this risk is not limited to that. The same process that we see under way in Mexico could extend to this country.[9] U.S. law enforcement agencies such as the DEA, the ATF and Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement work closely with their Mexican counterparts to halt the flow of arms and cash that provide firepower to criminal organizations.

The Merida Initiative is a three-year, $1.4 billion program to help Mexico wipe out drug traffickers and terrorists. Taking these barbarians on is critical to Mexico’s and the region’s future and an act of courage that has been shown by no other Mexican leader. As Ms. Jean Lopez correctly analyzes that “Chávez will delight in and be emboldened by the failure of the Colombian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA), which will be seen as Uribe’s failure to get a vote of confidence from the world’s No. 1 superpower. Chávez has already used it as a rhetorical weapon on state-run television. He has insanely accused Uribe of running a ‘genocidal government.’ For Congress to hand Chávez this victory would be a shameful and dangerous act.” Imagine how he would feel if the Democrats now reduce the funds for the Merida Initiative.

The Democrats’ agenda
Worried about “human rights abuses,” the Democratic-controlled U.S. Congress is expected to trim the $500 million in aid planned for this year. They have a lot of “excuses” for withholding the money. Their friends in the AFL-CIO, who have enough pull in Congress to ice Colombia’s free-trade pact, are now playing the same power game by contending Mexico’s human rights aren’t good enough for U.S. aid. Their alternative: Let the violence continue until every Mexican cop is perfect. The aid is aimed at helping clean up the Mexican police forces so they can fight and win. The union’s opposition probably is more rooted in a leftist agenda that wants the Calderón administration to fail. Democrats who resent Bush entering the agreement on his own, relish the chance to remind him they’re in charge now. So far, they’ve whacked $88 million from the proposed first installment.

The United Steelworkers sent House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid letters saying that “without significant and concrete improvements in institutional mechanisms to weed out criminals, provide training in human rights, and establish effective civilian oversight, additional funding to these security forces is likely to worsen corruption and violence.”[10]

Senator Chris Dodd, D-Conn., calls the Merida Initiative “the old war-on-drugs paradigm” that orthodox leftists doubt can ever be won. Along with Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., Dodd doubts the tough security approach that cleaned up New York City and Medellin, Colombia, can ever work.[11]

Colombia’s urban areas went from gunfire-ridden hellholes to Singapore-like cities with virtually no trash, graffiti, beggars or dopers, cities with courteous soldiers, professional policemen and honest citizens, not to mention 7% economic growth. Every night in Bogota’s Candelaria district, college kids literally celebrate peace in the streets “because we once couldn’t,” one told us. That’s a transformation. What could be better for the United States than to bring that to Mexico? In terms of illegal immigration from Mexico, there are many Mexicans who cross the border who are fleeing from drug violence, in addition to seeking higher paying jobs. Get rid of the drug traffickers and many Mexicans will have reason to head home. Apparently, Democrats have no enthusiasm for the promise of such success. They would prefer to see Mexico suffer, pat themselves on the back as they lecture on human rights and throw every roadblock they can at its future to get back at Bush. This is no way to treat a neighbor whose house fire could easily spread to ours.[12]

Why we should help Mexico
Some analysts see the recent spike in violence as a sign of progress. Calderón’s campaign has disrupted established drug-trafficking channels, creating cash shortages and causing turf battles among the cartels. But the drug business in Mexico has a way of rebounding, thanks to relentless demand from the north. The supply of cocaine in the U.S. has declined in the months after Calderón’s assault on drug cartels began. The front lines have pushed north to towns such as Tijuana, Nuevo Laredo and Ciudad Juarez. Already the State Department has issued a travel alert, warning citizens about visiting Mexico.[13] The U.S. has a huge stake in this conflict, and not just because of the growing security risk along the border. About 90% of the cocaine smuggled into this country comes from or through Mexico.

The bottom line
There is no good reason to oppose the Merida Initiative. This is our war too. Mexican soldiers and police officers are dying while fighting an enterprise that exists largely to feed the drug habits of users in the U.S. It would be a serious mistake to abandon Mexico in this time of struggle by reducing funding for the Merida Initiative from the proposed $500 million to less than $300 million. We have a strong vested interest in this battle and a responsibility, as Calderón himself noted pointedly in a recent visit to the U.S. “I’m not asking the United States for a favor,” he said. “This is a shared problem that requires a shared solution.”

*Nicole M. Ferrand is a research analyst and editor of “The Americas Report” of the Menges Hemispheric Security Project. She is a graduate of Columbia University in Economics and Political Science with a background in Law from Peruvian University, UNIFE and in Corporate Finance from Georgetown University.

[1] Recent developments in Mexico’s drugs war. May 20, 2008. Reuters.
[2] Dems vs. Latin American Democracy. Kathryn Jean Lopez. National Review.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Mexico: On the Road to a Failed State? By George Friedman. May 13, 2008. Stratfor.
[5] AFL-CIO opposes aid package for Mexico. May 9, 2008. McClatchy Newspapers.
[6] Why Are Dems Making Mexico Suffer? May 13, 2008. Investor’s Business Daily.
[7] Mexico Wages Bloody War with Drug Cartels. May 21, 2008. Voa News.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Obama Alienates Another Ally. April 2, 2008. The Associated Press.
[10] Home Country: Mexico. March 20, 2008. Oklahoma State University.
[11] Can Narco-Terror Be Stopped? May 16, 2008. Time.

[12] Ibid.
[13] It's not just Mexico’s war. May 21, 2008. The Chicago Tribune.

Merida Initiative—Not Plan Mexico

By Nicole M. Ferrand.*

December 6, 2007

According to The Government Accountability Office over 90% of cocaine coming into the United States now transits through Mexico. This has given rise to a huge amount of gang and criminal activity inside Mexico and along our southern border. In an effort to combat this problem, President Bush recently announced that he has requested $1.4 billion in funding over the next three years for a new security cooperation initiative with Mexico and Central America called “The Merida Initiative”.[1]

During the Merida Summit held in March 2007, Presidents Felipe Calderon and George W. Bush stated the following: “we share a deep concern over the threat to our societies by drug trafficking and other criminal organizations operating on both sides of our common border. The growing operational and financial capabilities of criminal groups that traffic in drugs, arms, and persons, as well as other transnational criminal activity, pose a clear and present threat to the lives and well-being of U.S. and Mexican citizens. The United States and Mexico will make it a priority to break the power and impunity of drug and criminal organizations that threaten the health and public safety of their citizens and the stability and security of the region… Our shared goal is to maximize the effectiveness of our efforts to fight criminal organizations so as to disrupt drug-trafficking (including precursor chemicals); weapons trafficking, illicit financial activities and currency smuggling, and human trafficking. This comprehensive two-year plan represents a new and intensified level of joint cooperation that marks a new stage in the bilateral cooperation that characterizes the strong relationship between our two countries.”[2]

Officials in both countries say the proposed aid package, attached to a supplementary funding bill, is a response to the upsurge in violence unleashed by feuding drug gangs in Mexico. There were 2,100 drug-related murders in 2006, a number already surpassed this year. Many have taken place in cities just south of the border. Those killed include gangsters, police and soldiers, innocent bystanders and journalists.[3]

The Merida Initiative will build on specific activities that aim to 1) bolster Mexican domestic enforcement efforts; 2) bolster U.S. domestic enforcement efforts; and 3) expand bilateral and regional cooperation that addresses transnational crime. Mexico will strengthen its operational capabilities to more effectively fight drug-traffickers and organized crime and the U.S. will intensify its efforts to address all aspects of drug trafficking and continue to combat trafficking of weapons and bulk currency to Mexico.[4]

This partnership would support coordinated strategies to:

• Produce a safer and more secure hemisphere where criminal organizations no longer threaten governments and regional security; and

• Prevent the entry and spread of illicit drugs and transnational threats throughout the region and to the United States.

To achieve these goals, President Bush has requested $550 million as part of a multi-year program to provide:

• Non-intrusive inspection equipment, ion scanners, canine units for Mexican customs, for the new federal police and for the military to interdict trafficked drugs, arms, cash and persons.

• Technologies to improve and secure communications systems to support collecting information as well as ensuring that vital information is accessible for criminal law enforcement.

• Technical advice and training to strengthen the institutions of justice – vetting for the new police force, case management software to track investigations through the system to trial, new offices of citizen complaints and professional responsibility, and establishing witness protection programs.

• Helicopters and surveillance aircraft to support interdiction activities and rapid operational response of law enforcement agencies in Mexico.

• Funding for security cooperation with Central America that responds directly to Central American leaders’ concerns over gangs, drugs, and arms.
• Equipment and assets to support counterpart security agencies inspecting and interdicting drugs, trafficked goods, people and other contraband as well as equipment, training and community action programs in Central American countries to implement anti-gang measures and expand the reach of these measures in the region.[5] Within three years, the package to this initiative could amount to US$1.4bn. In Mexico, the program will consist of police training. [6] It is important to point out that Mexico so far has contributed $3 billion.

Combating the drug trade and the power of the cartels is a centerpiece of the Calderón administration’s policies. Shortly after he took office in December 2006, Mr. Calderón sent up to 30,000 federal troops to several Mexican states plagued by narcotics trafficking and related violence. An estimated 4,000 Mexicans have died in the last two years as rival drug gangs have fought turf battles. The government has also extradited several drug kingpins to the US. Drug lords, for their part, have responded to the crackdown with a violent backlash against government troops, such that the war on drugs has yet to result in any decline in violence.[7]

This aid package from the US introduces a new level of security cooperation between the two countries, which in the past has often been hindered by Mexico’s strong concerns about national sovereignty. Also, the White House’s willingness to provide such a substantial amount of funding indicates that it has faith in the Calderón administration and its counter-narcotics program. The Merida Initiative should help to strengthen Mr. Calderón’s image as well as maintaining his high popularity rating. It stood at around 65% in August, according to a survey by the newspaper, Reforma.[8]

Recently, on November 5th, 2007, Mexican drug lord, Francisco Javier Arellano Felix, was sentenced to life in prison for running the notoriously violent cartel that bears his family’s name. Arellano Felix, 37, was captured after a manhunt by U.S. authorities in an August 2006 raid on a sport fishing yacht off the Baja California coast. Arellano Felix, the youngest of the cartel's seven brothers, pleaded guilty, this past September, to running a criminal enterprise and conspiring to launder money.[9]

Those crimes carry a mandatory life sentence. Arellano Felix, who has been in custody without bond at a downtown San Diego federal detention facility, is not currently eligible for any kind of parole. The Arellano Felix cartel emerged as a drug trafficking powerhouse in the 1980s in Tijuana, across the border from San Diego. The cartel was once led by seven brothers and four sisters, but Francisco Javier's brother Ramon was killed in a shootout with police in 2002. His elder brother Benjamin was jailed in Mexico the same year; federal prosecutors in San Diego are seeking his extradition to face charges in the United States.[10]

Prosecutor Laura Duffy said she does not know when Benjamin Arellano Felix will be extradited, but said she hoped it would be soon. Arellano Felix was captured during a U.S. Coast Guard-led raid off La Paz, Mexico, and towed back to San Diego aboard his 43-foot yacht, the Dock Holiday. The arrest at sea came after an intense manhunt, during which the State Department had offered a $5 million reward for the drug lord's capture.[11]

Also aboard the boat was Arellano Felix’s right-hand man, Manuel Arturo Villarreal Heredia, who pleaded guilty to racketeering and conspiracy to invest illicit drug profits. He faces up to 30 years in prison when he is sentenced in January. Since their capture, Arellano Felix’s older brother Francisco Rafael and two senior cartel capos have been extradited to the United States and sentenced on drug charges in San Diego. Arellano Felix admitted in court that he helped run the cartel as it brought into the United States hundreds of tons of cocaine and hundreds of tons of marijuana and laundered hundreds of millions of dollars. According to his plea agreement, Arellano Felix and his partners murdered informants and potential witnesses and paid millions of dollars in bribes to law enforcement and military personnel.[12]

Why people call it “Plan Mexico”?

Some critics of the program insist on calling the Merida Initiative “Plan Mexico” in allusion to Plan Colombia insisting that these two are the same. They want people to outright reject the Merida Initiative or oppose it. They insist that the name was changed on purpose from “Plan Mexico” to Merida Initiative to avoid any comparison. But in reality, there was no name change; it was never called Plan Mexico. This was an initiative born out of conversations that Presidents Bush and Calderon had in Merida, Mexico, which led to the name, the Merida Initiative with the understanding that it is a broader security cooperation package involving the United States, Mexico and Central America.[13]

Opponents use the term “Plan Mexico” so that people will immediately associate it with “Plan Colombia” pointing out that the latter has failed after seven years to curtail drug production or shipments to the US market and that the same will be the result of this program.

To the contrary, Plan Colombia has been a successful policy that has combined an effective balance of coherent macroeconomic policies, active and well-designed social programs, and, very importantly, advances made to improve security and the rule of law. In the area of security, Plan Colombia has strengthened the country’s democratic institutions and has resulted in the following conditions:

• Reduction of kidnapping cases from 1,709 in 2002 to 289 in 2006
• Decrease in homicides from 28,837 in 2002 to 17,277 in 2006, a reduction of 40.1%
• A positive impact on the war against the world drug problem. Eradication, both manual and aerial, of coca crops has increased from 61,589 in 2000 to more than 200,000 hectares in 2006. As a result coca hectares have been reduced from 163,289 in 2000 to 78,000 in 2006• Development programs have been created to provide alternative income for coca farmers. These include 784,035 families currently participating in the program Familias en Accion. As for the economy, during 2006 Colombia grew at a rate of 6.95%, the highest since 1978. The most recent figures for the first quarter of 2007 show a growth rate of 8.1%.[14]

The international press tends to refer to Plan Colombia as only a military operation, but this is inaccurate because the program is a social and political strategy to bring government presence to the country’s frontier territories and reunite them with the rest of the country. In other words, it seeks to strengthen public institutions and the rule of law in an area overwhelmed by lawlessness.[15]

Plan Colombia also seeks to fight against the drug trade, because a significant portion of the multi-billion dollar profits from drug-trafficking are funding the activities of guerrillas and paramilitaries, while thousands of innocent civilians are caught in the crossfire. A final peace agreement, probably the most important of the four main objectives of Plan Colombia, will remain illusive as long as the terrorist groups maintain an unlimited source of funding from drug trafficking.

There is a two-track approach to counter-narcotics in Plan Colombia. For the first time in Colombian history, a voluntary eradication program is being offered to all farmers who grow coca on small individual plots. If they agree to eradicate their coca crop, the government will provide them with cash recompensation and the tools they need to move into legitimate farming – such as seed, equipment and technical support.[16]

At the same time the Colombian National Police are spraying large industrial coca plantations. In reality, the so-called “military” part of Plan Colombia, is really no more than an escort service for the Colombian National Police’s activities of spraying industrial coca plantations and destroying cocaine laboratories. The only reason why this is needed is because both guerrillas and paramilitaries will fire from the ground at the spraying aircraft and fire at the Police when they enter these areas in order to destroy a drug laboratory. Counter-guerrilla or counter-paramilitary operations are forbidden.[17]

Secondly, the “Merida Initiative” is very different from Plan Colombia:

1. Mexico is free from Colombia’s large guerrilla and paramilitary forces and American aid will be relatively small. Mexico plans to spend $7 billion on law enforcement over the next three years. American officials stress that the package is testament to the growing confidence and cooperation between law enforcement agencies on both sides of the border.[18]

2. The Merida Initiative will include the transfer of equipment and technical resources, consistent with all appropriate standards in both countries of transparency and accountability of use. The strategies also include training programs and two-way exchanges of experts, but do not contemplate the deployment of U.S. military personnel in Mexico.[19]

3. Less of the military and police aid is lethal; it is almost entirely made up of transport helicopters, surveillance planes, scanning and communications equipment.[20]

4. Plan Colombia puts emphasis on fighting drugs by fumigating areas where coca leaves are grown. 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 US). The focus instead is on obstructing the distribution of drugs within the Mexican territory and smuggling them to the US. It also involves going after the organized-crime figures that profit from it.

5.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. But the U.S.-donated equipment will not be used on counter-insurgent missions.

The bottom line On the positive side, The Merida Initiative is based on a mutual understanding between the U.S. and Mexico that the two country’s need to work together to combat the drug trafficking, gang activity and lawlessness within Mexico and along our southern border.[21] On the Mexican side critics say that until the low pay, poor organization and systematic corruption of the Mexican police forces are cleaned up, it is unlikely that this initiative will make much of a dent. They also say that one of the most useful things the U.S. could do would be to curb the flow of guns to Mexican gangs and traffickers. With a high demand for illegal drugs on the U.S. side of the border and billions of dollars reaped in Mexico as a result of it, the Merida Initiative, tough not perfect, is an attempt to reduce drug related activities in the region and bolster the security inside Mexico and the United States.

*Nicole M. Ferrand is a research analyst and editor of "The Americas Report" of the Menges Hemispheric Security Project at the Center for Security Policy in Washington DC. (www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org). She is a graduate of Columbia University in Economics and Political Science with a background in Law from Peruvian University, UNIFE and in Corporate Finance from Georgetown University.

[1] The Merida Initiative: United States, Mexico, Central America Security Cooperation. October 22, 2007. US Department of State.

[2]THE MERIDA INITIATIVE: A New Paradigm for Security Cooperation.

[3] Just don't call it Plan Mexico. October 25, 2007. The Economist.
[4] US Department of State – Ibid.

[5] US Department of State – Ibid.

[6] Beefing up the anti-drug war. October 25, 2007. The Economist.

[7] Beefing up the anti-drug war. October 25, 2007. The Economist.

[8] Ibid.
[9] Mexican Drug Lord Gets Life in Prison. November 5, 2007. CBS News.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.
[13] The Mexico/Central America Security Cooperation Package. October 22, 2007. U.S. Department of State.
[14] Plan Colombia: A SUCCESS STORY. Sept. 19, 2007. EMBASSY of COLOMBIA. Washington DC.
[15] Plan Colombia: The Roadmap for Peace. Embassy of Colombia, Washington DC.

[16] Ibid.
[17] Ibid.
[18] The Merida Initiative – Ibid.
[19] Ibid.
[20] The Merida Initiative – Ibid.

[21] Ibid - The Economist.

Democrats wrong on cutting Mexican anti-drug aid

By: Andres Oppenheimer Tribune Media Services
May 13, 2008

The murder of the acting chief of Mexico's federal police amid an unprecedented wave of drug gang attacks on security officials will soon become a major issue in the U.S. presidential candidates' escalating war for Hispanic votes.Until now, Republicans and Democrats had tried to make as little noise as possible about the Bush administration's Merida Initiative, a request for $500 million to help Mexico fight its drug cartels. They hoped to pass it quietly, fearing that a high-profile debate would stir up political passions on both sides of the border and kill the proposal.But with drug war violence in Mexico escalating to record levels in recent memory, that's changing fast.

Likely Republican candidate Senator John McCain will probably try to cut into the Democrats' growing lead among Hispanics by saying that their proposal to reduce the Merida Initiative by up to $190 million amounts to "abandoning" Mexico at a time when President Felipe Calderon's government is facing a bigger than ever attack from the drug cartels.

It may be much like when McCain blamed Democrats for "abandoning" Colombia by resisting ratification of the U.S.-Colombia free-trade agreement. Only that, in Mexico's case, the political stakes at home are higher because more than 65 percent of the more than 10 million Hispanic voters are of Mexican origin.When I asked the McCain campaign Friday evening for a reaction to the Democrat majority-proposed cuts to the Merida Initiative, I got a statement from McCain's top foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann that sounded like the opening salvo of the coming Republican offensive."At a time when we have a Mexican president willing to take the fight to vicious narco-traffickers, it is appalling and irresponsible that congressional Democrats would cut funding," Shuenemann said. "This is just the latest example of Democrats undermining our allies."Carl Meacham, a senior Republican staffer at the Senate Foreign Relations, said that last week's killing of acting federal police chief Edgar Millan Gomez is "a huge thing." He added, "An escalating war is raging along the U.S. border, and many in Congress are refusing to assist a neighbor who has come for our help."The slain police chief was the highest-ranking of about 200 officers killed by drug trafficking gangs over the past year and a half in apparent retaliation against Calderon's military offensive against the drug cartels.According to a U.S. Senate report authored by Meacham, 2,600 Mexicans have lost their lives in police actions against drug traffickers over the past year, and the Mexican government has invested $3 billion and deployed 30,000 troops in an effort to combat the drug cartels.The Merida aid package is aimed at helping Mexico buy eight transport helicopters, improve intelligence sharing, and reduce the massive smuggling of .50 mm rifles, grenades and other high power U.S. weapons to Mexico. The plan does not contemplate the presence of U.S. troops in Mexico.Most Democrats in Congress say they want to vote for aid to Mexico, but they object to what they say is an excessive focus on military aid at the expense of institution-building assistance, and they note that some anti-immigration Republican legislators are opposing the Merida initiative.Senate Western Hemisphere subcommittee chairman Chris Dodd of Connecticut told me in an e-mail that "we are planning to provide the Mexican government with critical financial assistance, while at the same time ensuring that we can also address various humanitarian emergencies around the world."On Friday, the AFL-CIO and the United Steelworkers, which are baking the Democrats in the November elections, called for blocking the aid plan, citing concerns over human rights abuses.My opinion: In this column a week ago, I ripped McCain for moving increasingly closer to anti-immigration hawks in his party, and for leaving behind the comprehensive immigration plan he once supported to embrace a new stand that I described as economically stupid, politically unwise and dangerous from a national security point of view.Today, it's the Democrats' turn to be singled out for caving in to the populist-isolationist wing of their party, and irresponsibly turning their back to an escalating war against the bad guys on the U.S. border. Unless Democrats and their candidates give their full support to the initiative, they should face a backlash among some of the growing numbers of Hispanic voters who have flocked to the Democratic Party in recent months.

Andres Oppenheimer can be reached at aoppenheimer@miamiherald.com.

APRODEH: An NGO for Terrorists and Criminals.

By Nicole M. Ferrand.*

Do you sometimes wonder why we mostly hear about non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) when members of criminal or terrorist organizations are in trouble? It’s rare to read about these associations openly supporting real victims, especially in Latin America. So it was a breath of fresh air to come across the excellent article by Mary Anastasia O’Grady from the Wall Street Journal on April 28, 2008 titled “Friends of Terror in Peru” where she points out “Terrorists can advance their cause with the help of non-governmental organizations and under such headings as “human-rights” advocacy, NGO’s that share the ideology of the far left try to legitimize their buddies who, behind the scenes, continue their “armed struggle.” The kicker is that these NGOs are often funded by foreign governments and philanthropists.” Ms. O’Grady’s column is insightful and clearly shows that she understands the dynamics of the left, terrorism and non-governmental organizations in the Americas. Here is the link to her article and video interview:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120934263440048541.html?mod=googlenews_wsj.

With the downfall of communism in Eastern Europe, leftist movements were thrown into a temporary identity crisis. They sought to recycle themselves, forming and strengthening human rights and ecological nongovernmental organizations (NGO’s), receiving considerable funding from mainly Western European leftist counterparts. In practical terms, the new NGOs filled the vacuum created by the fall of the leftist parties. Skillfully and patiently networking their efforts to promote these issues, these associations have produced a reemergence of the left. In fact, a high ranking diplomatic official once revealed: “When leftist leaders or groups start making trouble in our countries, we send them to Latin America, to run an NGO.” NGO’s have become a major factor in international relations. There are many organizations that call themselves NGO’s, but are basically a bunch of people, who are mainly interested in making a profit off foreign aid. There are many problems with NGO’s, and these problems are now becoming more visible to the public.

In their recent meetings on April 25, 2008, the European Parliament agreed to remove Peru’s Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) from its list of terrorist organizations. A letter sent on April 23 by the Peruvian so-called “Human Rights” Association (APRODEH) argued that the Marxist-Leninist MRTA no longer exists and their argument was accepted. Why is this NGO sending a letter to the European Parliament without consulting the pertinent Peruvian authorities? Are they 100% sure that this group no longer exists? To the majority of Peruvians, this action shows that APRODEH and the majority of non-governmental “human rights” organizations are defending terrorists and insulting the armed forces that fought the terrorists who murdered thousands of innocent civilians, including women and children, and severely injured members of the armed forces and police.

As described by Ms. O’Grady “the vote by the European Parliament to take the MRTA off its terrorist list has Peru in an uproar. For good reason: The MRTA is notorious for kidnapping, torturing and murdering civilians to advance its political agenda. More recently, Peruvian officials have linked it to Hugo Chávez’s ‘Bolivarian Movement,’ which seeks to destabilize democracies in Latin America, and to the Colombian rebel group FARC.” In fact Ms. O’Grady interviewed Peruvian Congressman Rolando Sousa, who headed a congressional subcommittee that looked into the activities of the Bolivarian Movement in Peru and what she reveals of this interview is quite alarming. Mr. Sousa says that “Mr. Chávez’s Bolivarian Movement sits on a three-legged stool. Two of the legs are legal, the third is not. The first leg is official Venezuelan ‘diplomacy.’ Discounted oil shipments have bought the allegiance of 19 countries in the region. Other ploys, such as the purchase of Argentine debt and aid for Ecuadorian energy projects, are likewise designed to create dependence and establish Venezuelan dominance.”[1]

Peruvian Congressman Rolando Sousa. Source: 24 Horas Libre.

s. O’Grady continues: “The second leg of the stool is the effort to establish ideological control within unions and grassroots organizations. These organizations have created a series of nonprofit “associations” like the “Houses of Alba” (Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas). Openly, the associations administer eye clinics, literacy programs and health centers manned by Cuban doctors. Behind the scenes, the congressman warns, they work to indoctrinate the poorest Peruvians in the ideology of the extreme left.”[2]

The third illegal leg of the stool is the most dangerous. Mr. Sousa cites two groups: the “Continental Bolivarian Coordinator” and the “Bolivarian Congress of the People.” His committee found that both are recruiting and using the most extreme elements of the country, anarchists, terrorists and the radical left, to produce “the social conditions . . . the chaos” necessary to create the impression that democracy is not working. Once this is accomplished, the grassroots organizations, nurtured by the NGO’s, are standing by, ready to bring the extremists to power through the ballot box. The strategy was used in Bolivia to bring down the Sánchez de Lozada government in 2003 and bring Chávez puppet, Evo Morales to power. There is now ample evidence linking Mr. Chávez, the mastermind of the Bolivarian Movement, to terrorism, courtesy of the computers seized from the camp of dead Colombian guerrilla, Raúl Reyes.”[3]

Letter from Aprodeh to the European Parliament
The letter from APRODEH, signed by its leaders Francisco Soberón and Miguel Jugo, says that “the MRTA has been inactive for eight years, its main leaders are in prison, some have served their sentences, and dozens are no longer linked to the organization, and are living in many different places around the world.” Their claim is misleading, to say the least. Just enter the website, http://www.voz-rebelde.de/texto/noticias.htm to see that the MRTA is very much alive. As Aldo Mariátegui, Director of the newspaper, Correo in Peru accurately points out: “The arguments of Aprodeh and of the European members of parliament who backed the decision not to include the group in the list of terror organizations is absurd, brittle and an insult to intelligence. Aprodeh argues that this group should not be included in the list “because it’s inactive.” So the crimes the MRTA committed are not considered as such in Europe because the group is, for now, inoperative? With that logic, the Europeans should not consider the German group, Baader-Meinhoff, or the Italian organization, Red Brigades, (Brigate Rosse) as terrorists because they have not operated since 1993 and 2002 respectively. And what about the active networks that the MRTA still has in Europe?[4]

The reality is that this group still has sinister plans for our country (Peru) as we have been warned by members of our armed forces (Roque González, a MRTA member was recently detained in Tumbes, a northern province, for attending a meeting of radical groups held in Quito. Other attendees were the FARC and ETA. It has been reported that at this “gathering” they coordinated violent actions to be carried out in different countries including Peru.) Why was Aprodeh so worried about the MRTA being considered by the European Parliament as a terrorist organization?[5]

Six people were arrested in Peru together with Roque González upon returning from Ecuador. They have been charged with terrorism for having attended a meeting of the Bolivarian Continental Coordinator, a Venezuelan group that is considered by Peruvian authorities as a terrorist organization. Peruvian authorities say that the seven attended the meeting to receive instructions from violent leftist groups, such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), on how to destabilize Peru. FARC commander Raúl Reyes reportedly attended the meeting.

What is APRODEH?
Aprodeh is a self-proclaimed “human rights” organization registered in Peru as a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO). It was founded in the ‘80s as an appendix of the leftist political party “Vanguardia Revolucionaria” (VR) or “Revolutionary Vanguard” whose leader was Javier Diez Canseco Cisneros. In those times the VR operated from the offices of Diez Canseco, a representative of the political party “Unidad Democrática Popular” (UDP), or “Popular Democratic Unit,” formed by the VR, the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (Movement of the Revolutionary Left, of whom one of its members was former MRTA terrorist Victor Polay Campos) and the “Partido Comunista Revolucionario,” PCR (Revolutionary Communist Party).[6]

Javier Diez Canseco is a fervent leftist politician and former Congressman. He was among the 38 men who were released very shortly after the hostages were taken from the Japanese Ambassador’s residence in 1996 by the terrorist group ‘Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru (MRTA). He openly defended this and called for the government to negotiate a settlement.

The Director of Aprodeh is Francisco Soberón, also President of the National Coordinator of Human Rights. In the ‘80s, Soberón was an adviser to Congressman Diez Canseco and was also a member of the Central Committee of the Political Bureau of the Revolutionary Vanguard. It is legal for a political party to promote an organization of human rights but the problem was that the VR was not only a political party but an organization of Marxist ideology and Leninist structure whose goal was to take power by means of an armed conflict. The “Revolutionary Vanguard” had a legal team and a military clandestine subgroup which was in charge of training future members of the so-called ‘Revolutionary Army.” Why did a political party with these characteristics need to create a pro-human rights NGO? It is inexplicable since Diez Canseco and Soberón wanted to impose an absolutist anti-democratic regime.[7]

From the political perspective of the VR, Aprodeh had a clear role in the “legal realm” which was to denounce the “repression of the bourgeois state” and accuse the government of human rights violations, to neutralize it and limit its response capacity when the moment of the “armed conflict” came. This is an old discourse of subversive groups. The terrorist group “Shining Path” gave this duty to the “Asociación de Abogados Democráticos” (Association of Democratic Lawyers) and the “Asociación de Familiares de Víctimas de Genocidio” (Association of Families Victims of Genocide).

Who Funds Aprodeh?
In 2007, according to government records, Aprodeh received funding from Oxfam America, George Soros’s Open Society, the John Merck Foundation, the city of Barcelona, the Dutch embassy and a U.S. government agency called the Inter-American Foundation, among others. Last week, the Peruvian government asked Aprodeh to explain how its NGO status allows it to intervene on behalf of terrorists, as it did in the European Parliament.[8]

Sadly for now, Aprodeh has been successful in their goal to diminish the power of the Peruvian armed forces which can no longer freely fight terrorism since its members continue to be persecuted by judges and prosecutors who have been convinced by Aprodeh and other NGO’s, that the military and the police are murderers while the terrorists are let out of jails labeled as “social fighters and victims of the state.” In fact, Gloria Cano, an Aprodeh director, represented four Chilean MRTA members as their lawyer. It is this same organization that is the main promoter of the judicial persecution against the brave commandos of “Chavin de Huantar” who successfully rescued the hostages from the Japanese ambassador’s residence in 1997. Aprodeh never believed in the democratic system but takes advantage of it to protect the terrorists and neutralize the armed forces.

We need to keep in mind that the foreign employees of NGOs are infused with a certain degree of idealism. On the other hand, the locals that work with them are often leftist fanatics for whom this is their only way to make a living. They use the radical left’s double standard, which excuses terrorist atrocities but holds democracies strictly accountable for any defensive actions they take to defend themselves. The members of these associations should be made accountable and respond to the law just like everyone else. The Peruvian Congress is now investigating Aprodeh and their actions since the Peruvian people are outraged by what happened. If Aprodeh did break the law by lobbying on behalf of the MRTA then they must be held fully accountable for what they have done and their deeds exposed. Administrative sanctions should be applied and their license revoked according to the law. Aprodeh is supposed to be a Human Rights association and there is plenty to do in a poor country like Peru.

Analysts agree that the reason for Aprodeh’s action is to legitimize MRTA so that its members can run for political office and they can be viewed as a legitimate opposition party instead of a terrorist organization. This was Chavez’s aim at trying to have the FARC removed from the terrorist list. If it is not designated as a terrorist organization, then it can be potentially even more effective in working to bring down the Uribe government. Instead of writing letters on behalf of terrorists, why didn’t Aprodeh create programs to help people, such as providing aid to the real victims of terrorism, or to the victims of the earthquake that shook Peru in August? NGO’s should be fully investigated and the sources of funding disclosed to the public so that no hidden agendas are carried out in the name of ‘human rights.’

Nicole M. Ferrand is a research analyst and editor of “The Americas Report” of the Menges Hemispheric Security Project. She is a graduate of Columbia University in Economics and Political Science with a background in Law from Peruvian University, UNIFE and in Corporate Finance from Georgetown University.

[1] Friends of Terror in Peru. April 28, 2008. The Wall Street Journal. By Mary Anastasia O’Grady.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Clausuren Aprodeh. April 24, 2008. Diario Correo, Perú. By Aldo Mariategui.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Aprodeh. By Víctor Robles Sosa. May 3, 2008. Políticamente Incorrecto.

[7] Ibid.

[8] O’Grady – Ibid.

Paraguay’s New President, Fernando Lugo.

By Nancy Menges* and Nicole M. Ferrand.*

Paraguay is increasingly considered of great geo-political importance to the United States due to its borders with Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina and Uruguay, whose governments are frequently critical of some aspects of U.S. foreign policy. Significantly, Paraguay also shares part of the so-called “Triple Frontier” with Argentina and Brazil, an area under suspicion for possible involvement in drug trafficking and terrorism.

Map of the Tri-Border region between Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina. Source: Abovetopsecret.
Hezbollah, Hamas, Colombian extremists, Chinese Triads, Russian Mafia groups and Al-Qaeda operate in this area. In Ciudad del Este, Foz do Iguaçu and Puerto Iguazú which is located in this area, the illegal activity is immense. The turnout for the region is roughly estimated at more than 20 billion dollars annually.

Facts about Paraguay
Paraguay is a poor, landlocked country of 5.6 million people in the heart of South America. According to Paraguay’s Secretary of Technical Planning, 38 percent of the population is unemployed or under-employed, and half of the country lives in poverty. Paraguay’s Colorado Party is the world’s longest-ruling party still in power. The Colorado’s have governed for more than 60 years, backing the 35 year long dictatorship of General Alfredo Stroessner from 1954 until he was overthrown in 1989. A transition to democracy began that year but every President in office since has been investigated for corruption. The world’s fourth-largest soybean exporter, Paraguay relies mainly on agriculture and hydroelectric power. However, the underground economy includes contraband in drugs and weapons.[1] The US Government has warned of money-laundering and terrorist financing in the tri-border area, where Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil meet near the Iguaçu waterfall. Paraguay is also a major smuggling center, known as a transit point for weapons and drugs.

Political violence has tarnished Paraguay’s recent history, with military coup attempts in 1996 and 2000. Paraguay’s business freedom, labor freedom, property rights, and freedom from corruption are weak. Opening a business is difficult, and regulations are enforced by an opaque bureaucracy. The government significantly influences the rule of law, and corruption is widespread. Because of endemic judicial corruption, protection of property is extremely weak, while restrictive labor regulations hinder employment opportunities and overall productivity growth. The unfavorable business environment has been a major deterrent for foreign investors and has placed Paraguay amongst the countries in Latin America receiving the lowest rates of foreign direct investment.[2]

The President – elect: Who is Fernando Lugo
Fernando Armindo Lugo Méndez was born on May 30, 1951 in San Solano, San Pedro del Paraná, district, in the Itapúa department, Paraguay and became a priest in 1977, serving as a missionary in Ecuador for five years. In 1992 he was appointed head of the Divine Word order in his native country, was ordained a bishop in 1994, and then served for 10 years in the region of San Pedro. There, his support for landless peasants earned him the reputation of being “the bishop for the poor.” The more conservative Catholic Church leaders accused Lugo of betraying the church’s supposed non-political role in Paraguayan society while the more moderate and progressive churchmen rapidly rallied to his support.[3]

Bishop Fernando Lugo came to national prominence in March 2006 when he helped lead a rally against the government in the capital, Asunción. He resigned from the priesthood in December, 2006, but the Vatican refused to accept this, arguing that serving as a priest was a lifetime commitment and instead suspended him from his duties. The Paraguayan constitution prohibits ministers of any faith from standing as a political candidate. However, Mr. Lugo headed a coalition called the Patriotic Alliance for Change, made up of several parties and organizations and became a candidate for the presidency. Lugo defeated the Colorado Party candidate Blanca Ovelar in the presidential elections on April 20, 2008, breaking the Colorado’s sixty one year grip on power. He is associated with the Socialist International through the APC-coalition’s Revolutionary Febrerista Party.[4]

According to the Christian Science Monitor, Mr. Lugo’s opponents have painted him as Latin America’s newest leftist candidate, sure to follow in the footsteps of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez or Bolivia’s Evo Morales. While he does favor center-left policies – something that plays well with pockets of society here – his main draw comes from having no political attachments in a nation rife with corruption. Lugo himself refuses to be pigeonholed as part of the left-wing trend in South American politics. “There are people on the left who say I am from the right. There are people on the right who say I’m from the left,” Lugo says. “I am a person of the center who has a certain distance from left and right, but with the capacity to unite both.” His opponents have warned that he will imitate radical leftists elsewhere and claim that there were reports of Venezuelan and Ecuadorian agitators, posing as election observers, who created chaos and committed acts of violence on Election Day. [5]

Fernando Armindo Lugo Méndez, Paraguay’s President-elect. Source: El Pais.

His proposals include reassertion of national sovereignty in the utilization of energy, opposition to the immunity of U.S. troops in Paraguay, and the possible naming of a woman as vice-presidential candidate. (President Nicanor Duarte Frutos and the Paraguayan Congress authorized immunity for U.S. troops operating in the county, as part of joint military exercises). The U.S. military presence in the area has been interpreted by some as a maneuver to monitor the Triple Frontier area, often accused of housing suspected Islamic terrorists. Due in part to popular opposition, the military immunity agreement will probably not be renewed. He also promises to redistribute income and undertake land reform. The political class is wary of him, but Lugo has broad support among the country’s poor, who were drawn to his populist rhetoric about the evil rich and the promise of property to all of the country’s landless peasants. The fact that the land has to be taken from somebody to redistribute could be a very troubling sign, if we consider that Chavez and Morales did exactly that. [6]

In addition, the new Paraguayan president may clash with neighboring Brazil, as his campaign platform included a pledge to get this country, Latin America’s biggest, to pay more for the energy it imports from the jointly owned Itaipu hydroelectric plant, located on the border between the two nations. Analysts have warned that Paraguay must learn from the Bolivian experience: Paraguay, as Bolivia, can’t consume all the energy they produce and given its landlocked geography can only sell it to Argentina and Brazil.

His victory represents a break with the political tradition of Paraguay, where the Colorado Party had ruled for 61 years. The Colorado’s have ruled for six decades so there are generations of people who have not known any other reality. No single party will dominate the country’s congress, so Lugo will have to make deals with other groups. Some people are preparing for the worst and firmly believe that Lugo could become a dictator like Chávez.

Chavez’s reaction might give us a clue. After Lugo’s victory, the web site of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela read: “President Chavez congratulates the new president of Paraguay, Fernando Lugo” saying that Chavez wanted to have a “friendly telephone conversation” to congratulate the new President-elect. Chavez referred to Lugo as “brother” and praised Paraguay for its “political maturity.” Lugo, who takes office August 15, 2008, is called the “Red Bishop” by foes. Chavez’s site continued to say that both he and Lugo were eager to “meet as soon as possible” to make plans for their “cooperation.” Lugo expressed the same sentiments about Chavez. Ecuador’s president Rafael Correa was just as happy about Lugo’s election saying that the “the triumph of comrade Fernando Lugo is yet another stone in the foundation of this new Latin America that is just, sovereign, independent and, why not, socialist.”[7]

Relationship with Chavez, Correa, Morales and Ortega
US officials have voiced concern about our diminishing influence in Latin America after apparently another country in the region fell under the influence of Hugo Chavez. While the Paraguayan President-elect has repeatedly denied any alliance with the Venezuelan President, Lugo is expected to benefit from lower priced oil from Venezuela. An official at the US State Department said that Mr. Lugo’s victory had left Washington worried about its waning influence in Latin America, where Nicaragua, Ecuador, Bolivia and, to a lesser extent, Argentina have joined Cuba in declaring their loyalty to Mr. Chavez.[8] The outgoing President, Nicanor Duarte has worked closely with the US government, which is concerned about the financing of terrorist groups in Paraguay’s Ciudad del Este region, which hosts a large Arab population allegedly with links to Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda.

Conclusions
While we won’t know Lugo’s true colors until August 15th when he formally becomes President of Paraguay, some analysts assert that his victory signals a continuing left-wing shift in Latin America and that Mercosur, the regional Latin American trade group between Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay, plus associate countries Chile and Bolivia as well as Venezuela which is in the process of joining, is now mostly made up of leftist leaders. Up to now, Lugo is showing signs of wanting to distance himself from radical leaders such as Chavez and Bolivia’s Morales.

From a security standpoint, documents reveal that there are illicit networks that supply substantial funds to Middle East terrorist groups. Intelligence experts have been warning since the late 1990s that they had noticed a tendency among Islamic terrorists to operate from Paraguay. Financial terror cells operate in the country for the purpose of supporting terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas. The current government has been cooperating with the United States on this front and it is imperative that this effort continues.

There will be a great temptation for President-elect Lugo to join the Chavez camp as he takes the reins of a small impoverished country with weak institutions and a poorly functioning economy. He also has no former experience in the affairs of state. Chavez will try to woo him with economic handouts and cheap oil. Yet we will have to wait and see if he wisely follows the right path and chooses what is best for his country. He doesn’t need to look far to analyze the disastrous political and economic situations of Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Ecuador. He can implement successful policies similar to Brazil’s Lula and Chile’s Bachelet. Instead of nationalizing and closing Paraguay’s economy, he should privatize and aim at open markets. Let’s hope that Lugo understands that Paraguay’s poverty is not due to capitalism but to the lack of a free market economy.

*Nancy Menges, Editor in Chief of the Americas Report. Mrs. Menges, the co-founder of the Menges Hemispheric Security Project, is in charge of the weekly edition of CSP’s Americas Report. She holds a degree in International Relations from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has studied at the University of the Americas in Mexico City. Her postgraduate degree has been earned from the University of Maryland.

*Nicole M. Ferrand is a research analyst and editor of “The Americas Report” of the Menges Hemispheric Security Project. She is a graduate of Columbia University in Economics and Political Science with a background in Law from Peruvian University, UNIFE and in Corporate Finance from Georgetown University.

[1] Former Catholic Bishop Enters the Political Arena. February 22, 2008. WorldPress.org.
[2] Paraguay winner means more leftist leaders in Latin America. April 21, 2008. Mercury News.
[3] ‘Red bishop’ Fernando Lugo wins Paraguay election. April 22, 2008. The Telegraph.
[4] Facts about Paraguay. April 20, 2008. Reuters.
[5] Index of Economic Freedom: Paraguay. 2008 The Heritage Foundation.
[6] Paraguay election: Key candidates. April 17, 2008. BBC News.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Paraguay could shift left in Sunday’s presidential polls. April 18, 2008. Christian Science Monitor.

Peru: Iraqi – US Smuggling Ring Discovered.

By Nicole M. Ferrand*

This past July, a criminal ring attempting to smuggle Iraqis into the United States was discovered in Peru. The drama began on July 21st when three Iraqi siblings, two men and one woman, arrived at Jorge Chávez International airport in Lima and bought three tickets to travel to Los Angeles, California. They were planning to board a LAN Chile flight carrying German passports. Their names: Nader Yusef-Adib, (21), Nasim Yusef-Adib, (23), and Lina Yusef-Adib (33).[1]

When they were passing through security, they presented boarding passes bound to Santiago, Chile instead. Apparently, what happened is that in the waiting room they switched their boarding passes to avoid the scrutiny that passengers go through when traveling to the U.S. Airport officials scanned the woman’s passport and discovered that it was fake. She requested to go to the restroom and that is when a female worker discovered Ms. Lina destroying the boarding passes and other documents and contacted the police. Using a translator, they said they had arrived in Lima from Brazil where they had traveled after leaving Iraq two days prior. “The suspects said they wanted to go to the United States to work because the situation in Iraq is very difficult. We have requested the help of the Directorate Against Terrorism (Dircote), they are working on the case,” were the statements of the Chief of the Directorate of Criminal Investigation.[2]

Peruvian officials contacted German authorities and found out that the passports had been stolen from three German nationals: Matthias Becker, Meike Barth and Diego Amson. Local authorities learned that another group of Iraqis had been en route to the airport. “The others were slowed by traffic on their way to the airport,” Coronel Roberto Luján said. “When they arrived, they apparently saw what was happening and left.” Peruvian police are checking for possible connections to international terrorism networks and the suspects are being charged for lying to immigration officials and using false documentation. US Intelligence officials were soon contacted and arrived in Lima to investigate the case.[3]

Not even a month after this incident, Peruvian intelligence units spent several days watching an individual by the name of Mr. Pati and others thought to be part of the smuggling ring. Early in the morning of July 17, 2007, police in Lima raided three luxurious apartments in the upper scale district of Miraflores. They found six Iraqis with fake Dutch passports. No weapons were found on the premises but authorities alerted the US embassy asking for help in the investigation. The names of the people involved are: Mushtaq Yhana (25), Loay Elda (29), Adelmika Homow (61), Salema Kalzeak (53) and the brothers Danik (26) and Nail Mansour (29).[4]

Col. Luján, the official in charge of the raid and the case, stated that the leader of the criminal ring that smuggles illegals into the United States is Iraqi citizen, Rafid Jaboo Pati (40). According to Mr. Luján, Mr. Pati had the responsibility for the Iraqis who had arrived in Lima from Ecuador, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic with the intention of smuggling them into the United States. The suspects stayed in lavish locations while other members of the ring falsified the Dutch documentation in order for them to travel to Miami, New York, San Francisco, New Orleans and other US’ cities.[5] Rafid Jaboo Pati was captured in Miraflores, Lima with an Ecuadorian passport and identity card from the same country. Pati confessed that the other six Iraqis had arrived in Lima 25 days earlier.[6]

The seven people are currently being held by Peruvian immigration officials, Lujan added. Police also seized a laptop, a cell phone and other false documents, including an Ecuadorian driver’s license and fake Dutch, Ecuadorian and Iraqi passports from one of the apartments. “We’ve sent their fingerprints to Interpol headquarters in France to find out if they are wanted by the international police,” said Col. Luján. He said the seven had been under police surveillance since they entered Peru illegally by land from Ecuador 25 days ago.[7]

“Peru has a growing problem,” a U.S. official said. “It has become a center for people trying to enter the United States illegally.” Peruvian police became suspicious when it was determined that none of the Iraqis spoke Dutch or German. For now they will be charged with falsifying documents.[8]

Mr. Luján has said that the three Iraqis caught in the airport and the seven others seized in Miraflores are part of the same group under the leadership of Rafid Jaboo Pati. An 11th person was not in the apartment at the time of the raid and is at large, officials said. “The Iraqis refused to give the name of the missing individual,” “We have been told by Interpol sources in Lima that fingerprints of one of the men carrying a Dutch passport have been sent to Baghdad and is thought to have links to al Qaeda,” Col. Luján said, adding that he could not identify the man for security reasons.[9]

Lujan rejected a theory that the men could be Chaldean Christians, a group said to frequently attempt to enter the United States on claims of religious persecution in Iraq. “These people were not part of that group,” he said. “Besides the brothers, they did not even know each other.” One man was arrested while clutching a flag of unknown origin.[10]

Analysis
Telling Peruvian officials they were on their way to Chile and not the United States is what raised suspicion and led to their incarceration but there are many questions surrounding this bizarre incident. First, did the three that were caught in the airport buy tickets to both Chile and the United States which resulted in them having two different boarding passes? Secondly, this must have been a very well financed and orchestrated operation: where did they get the funding to travel to Brazil, then Peru and while there have cash for expenses? It is evident they had plenty of money to buy six tickets, three to Chile and three to the US. Then there are the added operating costs of having a contact and leader, Rafid Jaboo Pati, who made arrangements for their accommodations and prepared their false documents. Were they buying tickets to different destinations to obtain different boarding passes to mislead authorities and illegally enter the US? Maybe other Iraqis did this before successfully. Returning to the money issue, if they say they were en route to the US to find work because of the harsh conditions in their country of origin, where did they get the money to do all this?

Were the seven others caught in the luxurious apartments the ones that were to travel together with the three siblings and when they saw that something was wrong in the airport, decided to run away? Dutch and German citizens do not require visas to enter the United States, but if Peruvian authorities discovered the passports were fake, in the US they would have been surely caught. If those arrested were Iraqi Chaldean Christians who frequently try to enter the U.S., claiming they face persecution in Iraq and California is home to a sizable Chaldean community, why make false statements and destroy documentation at all? What were they trying to hide so desperately? They could have contacted the Chaldean community in the United States to get help.

Many Iraqis who try to get to the US have to find different routes to get to their destination. These individuals were caught in Peru but there must be other rings similar to this one operating in different countries. They may be trying to use countries that are U.S. friendly to avoid raising suspicions. Also, there is the issue of picking countries that are perceived as lax regarding security issues. It might be the case that some might be trying to find a better life, but that might not be true for everyone.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of people try to come to this country seeking better opportunities. Some go through the regular process and get rejected and some have better luck; some cross the Mexican or Canadian borders illegally; but this case is bizarre because of its complexity and for the availability of monetary resources at hand.

Peru handled this case in a very professional manor; identifying the problem, immediately beginning an investigation and seeking international cooperation to arrest the suspects. However, it still is not known what the true intentions of the Iraqis were other than their desire to enter the U.S. Hopefully, through the cooperation of the Peruvian authorities, INTERPOL and the U.S., we will learn whether they were asylum seekers or terrorists. Stay tuned.

*Nicole M. Ferrand is a research analyst and editor of “The Americas Report” of the Menges Hemispheric Security Project at the Center for Security Policy in Washington DC. (www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org). She is a graduate of Columbia University in Economics and Political Science with a background in Law from Peruvian University, UNIFE and in Corporate Finance from Georgetown University.

[1] Detienen a iraquíes con pasaportes falsos en Perú. El Universal, Venezuela. June 22, 2007
[2] Ibid.
[3] The Washington Times – Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Descubren tráfico de iraquíes a EEUU. July 18, 2007. La Republica, Perú.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Detienen a iraquíes que pretendían viajar a Los Ángeles desde Lima. El Comercio, Perú. June 22, 2007.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Iraqis captured en route to U.S. The Washington Times. September 11, 2007.
[10] Detienen a iraquíes con pasaportes falsos en Perú. El Universal, Venezuela. June 22, 2007

Free Trade: An antidote to Chavez

By John R. Thomson*

As Congress debates the merits of ratifying free-trade agreements with three Latin American countries, many arguments have been advanced from both sides. The politically charged climate on Capitol Hill obscures the underlying rationales favoring the treaties—and, broadly, free trade.

Agreements have been negotiated with Colombia, Panama, and Peru, each geopolitically and commercially important to the United States.

Colombia is our closest friend in Latin America. Washington has worked to strengthen U.S.-Colombian ties and to assist Bogotá in eradicating its narcotics production and stabilizing its democracy. Venezuela’s autocratic socialist President Hugo Chávez presents an enormous external challenge.

Panama, created by a U.S.-Colombian treaty in 1903 as an independent entity to construct a Pacific-Atlantic canal, enjoys significant growth and is planning a major expansion of the critical waterway. China sought to become a major factor in the country before the United States ceded control of the canal to Panama in 1999. Hong Kong’s Hutchison-Whampoa group has since operated the canal, so crucial to world trade.

Perú is one of three major centers of cocaine production in South America, with Bolivia and Colombia. President Alan García, elected in 2006, has committed his second term to free-market, democratic policies, in sharp contrast to his 1985–1990 first presidential term, which was characterized by a radical socialist agenda. García has also pledged to cooperate with Washington to replace cocaine production with economically viable, legal agricultural activities. Each of these nations plays a key role in Latin America, for the region as a whole and for the United States.

In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith considered free trade a great boon to the participating nations’ economies, workers and consumers. Charles Rangel (D-NY), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, frequently opines that free trade is especially beneficial to unemployed workers in developing countries. Both assessments are correct, as we have witnessed in virtually every free-trade agreement (FTA) enacted by recent administrations.

Most recently, the U.S.-Uruguay FTA changed Montevideo’s political orientation from sympathy towards Hugo Chávez’s populist, socialist Bolivarian Revolution to solid friendship with the United States, re-committed to the market economy. The Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) with four Central American nations and the Dominican Republic, also concluded during the current Bush Administration, has stabilized their economic and political climates.

Perhaps most important, the NAFTA agreement among the United States, Canada and Mexico, enacted during the Clinton Administration, has seen significant stabilization of all three signatory countries’ economies and of Mexico’s unpredictable political situation.

Two observations illustrate NAFTA’s enormous positive impact. During the twelve years the agreement has been in force, the U.S. economy has added thirty million jobs and unemployment has steadily declined to the current five percent level—despite AFL-CIO fears to the contrary. While this did not happen solely because of the trilateral accord, economists generally agree that NAFTA has been a significant contributor.

Several Mexican analysts credit domestic economic improvements created by NAFTA with the victory of Felipe Calderón in last year’s presidential election. Calderón won despite being a member of the same political party as the disappointing outgoing president, Vicente Fox, defeating ultra-leftist Andrés López Obrador by less than 234,000 out of 41.6 million votes cast, a razor-thin margin of 0.56 percent.

President Calderón has further opened Mexico’s economy, and is aggressively fighting endemic corruption by replacing thousands of corrupt police and sacking hundreds of conniving government officials. Calderón is also helping the United States’ illegal immigration dilemma by deploying 20,000 army regulars to the border area. These troops are fighting the extremely powerful narcotics organizations that refine and ship 90 percent of the cocaine that enters the United States.

Uruguay and Mexico exemplify a critical benefit of free-trade agreements, well-understood by America’s enemies: Fair and balanced economic relations set the stage for close relations at all levels.

Opposition in Bogotá to the pending U.S.-Colombia free-trade agreement comes virtually exclusively from the Left, particularly from those in open or covert alliance with Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. Opposition to what Colombians call the TLC (for tratado de libre comercio, free-trade agreement) is based solely on critics’ not wanting Colombia to have close economic, military, political or cultural relations with the United States.

Chávez’s allies in Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua show no interest in being part of what Chávez refers to as the Bush “empire.” They have been co-opted into close political—and anti-American—relations by the checkbook diplomacy of Venezuela’s president. (In just the last two years, Venezuela has loaned Argentina’s tottering government at least $6 billion.)

Two of the three pending FTA’s are with Colombia and Peru, major cocaine-producing countries. The agreements, along with existing governmental programs, will create hundreds of thousands of jobs, a large majority of which will allow farmers who cultivate coca to desist from doing so. General Freddy Padilla de Leon, commandant of Colombia’s armed forces, observes:

Growing cocaine allows the farmer to buy his family rice, meat and other necessities. But our farmers don’t want that. To work cleanly and legally gives a man peace; to work illegally puts the [communist narco-trafficking guerrilla movement] FARC in control of his life.

We must fight the narcotics scourge at every level, but especially the agricultural sector. With solid economic growth, small farmers can enter the legal economy, which will decimate the cocaine crop and sharply cut the FARC’s income options.

Plan Colombia, instituted by the Clinton Administration, has for eight years trained and upgraded Colombian military and police forces, established job training programs for demobilized guerrillas and paramilitaries, and trained local government officials in effective community administration.

The U.S.-Colombia FTA, coupled with the extension of Plan Colombia, can deal a lethal blow to the Colombian drug trade and strengthen democratic forces prior to critical 2010 presidential elections.

Hugo Chávez is reportedly plotting with Colombia’s far left Polo Democrático Party to elect a radical socialist successor to President Álvaro Uribe, who was resoundingly re-elected in 2006. They plan to focus on some two million Colombians living in Venezuela—most of them illegally—offering permanent resident status, jobs and stipends in return for voting the Chávez-anointed presidential ticket. This, and Chávez’s commitment of five or ten billion dollars or more behind the chosen candidate, threatens to halt Colombia’s steady progress under Uribe’s leadership.

Colombian-American Manuel Rocha, a retired U.S. ambassador whose career focused on Latin America, including tours in Havana, Buenos Aires and La Paz, Bolivia, sees a continuation of Washington’s:

Self-punishing neglect of the region if Plan Colombia is not renewed and the FTA with Colombia not ratified. It will do far more than undermine our closest friend and the most entrenched democracy in Latin America. It will tell those who wish to be friends and allies of the United States they cannot rely on us, and open the door for more lethal mischief by Hugo Chávez. In so doing, we set the stage for a revolutionary hotbed south of the Rio Grande, and face the loss of Latin America to the free world for a generation.

On the other hand, informed Latin American and U.S. observers agree that successful implementation of free-trade agreements with Colombia and Peru, together with ongoing progress in Mexico, can substantially curtail the cocaine industry in Latin America and simultaneously strongly challenge Chávez’s Bolivarian revolution.

In addition to everything else, as political analyst and commentator Michael Barone recently observed, passage of all four pending free-trade pacts will provide 125 million potential customers for U.S. manufactured products.

Those who urge that a global World Trade Organization agreement is preferable to a series of bilateral and multilateral pacts ignore the WTO’s very limited progress towards creating global free trade. When the current expansion of free-trade accords has covered an overwhelming percentage of world trade, it may be possible for the WTO to fix the system, so no nation has preferential bias with one or another trading partner over others countries.

Indeed, as Congress demurs on the four critical agreements, a host of progressive-minded governments continue pursuing free trade with nations important to their economic and overall geopolitical interests. The creation and steady expansion of the free trade European Union of 27 countries is a fundamental reason for the region’s return to at least limited growth. Japan has negotiated an agreement with Indonesia canceling duties on 90 percent of products the countries trade, and is negotiating similar pacts with India and ASEAN. The 10 country Association of Southeast Asian Nations, is progressively converting the four decade old mutual defense organization, into a free trade bloc by 2015.

Colombia is undertaking free trade negotiations with 32 countries: the European Union plus Canada, Iceland, Lichtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. Mercosur, the world’s fourth largest trading block with a 250 million population and $1.1 trillion in cumulative GDP, has been invigorated by Venezuela’s entry in 2006. Chavez is promoting free trade among the signatory nations – Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela – accounting for 75 percent of South American GDP, as he pushes for Bolivian and Nicaraguan membership. Ecuador, currently an associate, is a likely additional full member.

Colombia’s lead negotiator, Hernando Gomez, president of the Private Competitive Council, observes that during the four year process; Both sides made compromises, resulting in a fair, strong, positive agreement, which our legislatures must now approve. Neighboring Peru will surely be approved in Washington first. If they have, say, a 20 vote margin in the House of Representatives, Colombia’s chances are good, but if it is very close….This is why it is so important for us to move forward with other FTA’s. When Congress realizes we are going to be importing wheat, soybeans and barley at favorable prices from Canada, they may see the value of taking action.

After a one and a half hour meeting, a visitor wonders why the articulate, well-informed Gomez is not involved in Colombia’s Washington lobbying effort. Knowledgeable advocates like General Freddy Padilla and Hernando Gomez could well make the difference.

There can be no doubt that taken together with strengthening bonds of friendship among like-minded governments in an increasingly tense world, passage of the pending FTA’s is clearly a deal Congress should not refuse.

*John R. Thomson is a businessman and journalist who writes frequently on geopolitical issues. He served as senior trade development representative in the Africa, Near East, South Asia (ANESA) region during the Reagan Administration.