War on Drugs crippling Northern Triangle countries

07 June 2016
Expert
Dr. Joseph S. Tulchin
Region:
Central & South America
March 1, 1988: a Honduran Second Lieutenant talks with American
soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division during joint exercises in
Judicalpa, Honduras (source: dpa)
The United States has been trying for decades to solve its drug problem
by conducting a War on Drugs. That policy has failed and will continue to
fail, so long as the declared enemies are the producing countries and the
criminal organizations that ship the goods to the U.S.
The three countries in Central America that comprise the Northern
Triangle Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras are the
transshipment route for 80 percent of the illegal cocaine entering the
U.S. It is no accident that the three countries are also the starting point
each year for tens of thousands of migrants to the country.
The U.S. considers both the drugs and the immigration threats to
national security. Washington sees the area as a geopolitical unit and
has militarized its response to the drug trade in the form of the Central
American Regional Security Initiative (CARSI).
The trouble with this policy is that these countries populations consider
the military part of the problem. Along with poverty, violence and a lack
of accountability among the military and police are the principal drivers
of mass migration to the U.S. The Obama administration has attempted
to deal with the economic and social drivers of migration through an
initiative called the Alliance for Prosperity, but Congress has been slow
to fund the project.
Washington sees the area as a geopolitical unit and has
militarized its response
All of Central America was a war zone during the Cold War. Most
significant for the geopolitics of the region, the conflicts in El Salvador
and Guatemala could be resolved only with outside mediation by the
United Nations, the Organization of American States, and Mexico. In
neither of these cases could the U.S. determine the outcome. Local
governing elites were unable to suppress armed opposition.
In Honduras, a staging ground during the Cold War for armed
intervention in the rest of the region, the political establishment has
managed to maintain its grip on the country. It even got away with an

old-fashioned coup against a populist president in 2009. In El Salvador,

the Marxist guerrillas evolved into a political party and compete with the
old ruling class for control. In Guatemala, the elite cling to authority as
the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG in
Spanish) has succeeded in bolstering the judiciary to the point where it
was able to prosecute the former vice president and president for
corruption, pushing both of them from office.
The principal problem in El Salvador is the violence of the maras (gangs).
This requires improving the police and strengthening the judiciary. In
Guatemala, the guarantors of the peace must continue to force the
government to play by its own rules. In Honduras, the U.S. must push
the government to expand the political space for the opposition and the
press. A one-size-fits-all economic development program will not work,
nor will providing more equipment for armed forces that are out of
control and corrupt.