Bush's anti-drug 'Plan Mérida' will fail unless poverty's addressed

Most if not all of the criticism that has been leveled against the Bush administration's proposal for its newest phase for their 'War on Drugs' on the Mexican front has been focused on the plan's failure to do anything about the profoundly corrupt Mexican police. With some reason, critics say that all the money in the world for fancy new helicopters and cops' uniforms won't mean a thing if it's given without conditions to an unreliable and inefficient police force. In a statement released yesterday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) eagerly jumped aboard the 'it's the cops' fault' bandwagon.

On Wednesday, Human Rights Watch urged the U.S. Congress to "oppose counternarcotics assistance to Mexico unless it includes strong conditions aimed at ending abuses by Mexican security forces."

"Helping Mexico confront its brutal drug cartels is a good idea," Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director of Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. "Giving a blank check to that country's abusive security forces is not."

In their statement, HRW argued that without focusing more directly on human rights abuses committed frequently in Mexico, Bush's plan will fail to make even a dent in its thriving drug industry. Unfortunately, while making a solid argument against the inadequate behavior of corrupt cops, it fails to mention anything about poverty, a human rights abuse committed by Mexico (and the whole damn world) on a much greater and more devastating scale than is its flippant attitude toward crooked police. Don't get me wrong, I don't favor granting amnesty to those 'good guys' who are doing business with the same people they're supposed to be fighting. I just believe that this War on Drugs has to adopt a more comprehensive approach if it really wants to have a hope of succeeding. More than anything this would involve addressing root-causes, the most fundamental of which is the poor living conditions that often force people into the drug business in the first place.

As would be expected, Mexican politicians are jumping at the opportunity to basically receive a blank check from the US and are expected to unanimously pass the 'Plan Mérida' in their National Congress in the next few days. While members of the leftist PRD recently expressed fear that the plan will undermine Mexico's sovereignty, as many have argued has happened in the case of the botched 'Plan Columbia,' they've said nothing about the importance of alleviating poverty. All we can hope for is that they have a sudden change of conscious; maybe it'll come from listening to their own drug experts...

Mexican officials also warn that catching traffickers will have a limited impact without a wider plan to clean up corrupt police forces and alleviate the poverty that pushes many into drug smuggling.

"When a trafficker is captured, unfortunately someone else steps up to fill that gap," said one anti-drug official who declined to be named.

I couldn't agree more.