In a series of blogs this week, Baker Institute experts debated the prospect of a paramilitary force to fight drug cartels, as Mexico’s President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto has proposed. Nathan Jones, the Alfred C. Glassell III Postdoctoral Fellow in Drug Policy, wraps up the series today in a post that suggests how such a plan could work.
- Read the July 25 post, “A strategy shift in Mexico’s drug war?” by Baker Institute nonresident drug policy fellow Gary Hale, former chief of intelligence for the Houston field division of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
- Read the July 26 post, “Not your father’s National Guard,” by Baker Institute information technology fellow Chris Bronk, a former state department diplomat whose postings included Mexico.
- Read the July 27 post, “Recycling a failed idea in Mexico,” by visiting Baker Institute Scholar for Immigration Studies Tony Payan, an associate professor of political science at The University of Texas at El Paso.
Mexico, drugs and a possible way forward
If Mexico implements president-elect Enrique Peña Nieto’s proposed paramilitary force (gendarmerie) composed of 40,000 former soldiers, the success of the force and its impact upon drug-related violence will depend on its funding levels and initial selection process. The goal is laudable: remove the military from an essentially civilian police function by creating a force capable of fighting Mexican organized crime groups.
The media has called the proposed force a “paramilitary” group, a classically ambiguous term. In the Latin American context this can conjure images of nefarious and dangerous actors that engage in the work of death squads. Paramilitaries, or “paras” in the Colombian context, referred to armed groups sometimes in alliance with, but independent from, the state. These groups were often guilty of serious human rights violations. The paramilitary force envisioned by Peña Nieto is more along the lines of the French National Gendarmerie, which blends the military’s fighting capability with police functions in rural areas. It is an officially sanctioned and regulated state law enforcement agency.
Unfortunately for Mexico, reorganization and the creation of new law enforcement agencies has not been a panacea for security needs. Mexico has had a veritable alphabet-soup of new, reorganized and renamed federal police agencies since the dissolution of the Direccion Federal de Seguridad (DFS) in the 1980s following the murder of U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agent Enrique Camarena. These agencies have been widely viewed as incompetent and/or corrupt, making the initial selection process and funding of this new agency critical to its success. If it is infiltrated by drug trafficking organizations early it will be doomed to failure. If it is poorly funded, it is sure to be infiltrated.
Further, building a new federal law enforcement agency from scratch is a long-term proposition. Any effect would likely take years and the force would not start with 40,000 members, but would rather grow to that size over time. Some have argued that the new force is simply “a repackaging” of the military. Whether or not this will be the case will depend upon the training and initial institutional culture of the new agency. A recent U.S. Senate report on Mexico has urged greater emphasis on institution building in the police and judiciary over the military. Peña Nieto’s gendarmerie seems to be at least a tacit recognition that a de-emphasis of the military is the way forward.
There are some reasons to be hopeful that this force might be better. Peña Nieto has recently been open to U.S. military training for Mexican law enforcement and military in counter-insurgent and counter-narcotic operations. He has been clear that he would not support the use of American troops or personnel in a law enforcement capacity on Mexican soil. The recent deaths in counter-narcotic operations in Honduras involving American DEA agents has clearly put leaders in the region on edge. Nonetheless training from U.S. personnel proved invaluable in Colombia in the fight against the Medellin and Cali cartels. Peña Nieto has also named Oscar Naranjo, Colombia’s former top cop, as one of his chief security advisers. He was considered critical to Colombia’s security gains and may provide a strategic vision for Peña Nieto’s organized crime policy.
The force’s impact upon violence levels would also depend upon how it is used. Peña Nieto has described it as aimed at policing rural areas, though he has said he is still fleshing out this idea. If the paramilitary force is simply shifted from hotspot to hotspot, it may have little impact on overall levels of violence. If, however, it is used to target cartels and cartel cells that focus on extortion and kidnapping, it might to reduce violence by punishing cartels and local gangs that use those methods. In a similar vein, Peña Nieto has played with the idea of focusing on “smaller gangs” that engage in extortion, homicides and kidnappings in their efforts to control their respective turf areas. It should not be forgotten that large cartels like Los Zetas also emphasize these “high impact” crimes. Los Zetas is likely the second-most profitable drug trafficking organization and may be the largest in terms of manpower and territorial presence.
As the other contributors to this series have pointed out, the establishment of this gendarmerie is far from certain and will be subject to intense political debate that will play a formative role in its institutional culture and capabilities. The gendarmerie’s ability to assist in the implementation of a counter-violence strategy will ultimately depend upon its funding and political support. Its success or failure in the context of drug-related violence in Mexico will be as one piece in larger state effort that must include judicial, penal, police and education reforms.
Nathan Jones is the Alfred C. Glassell III Postdoctoral Fellow in Drug Policy at the Baker Institute. His areas of interest include U.S.-Mexico security issues, illicit networks and cross-border flows.