In our two-part discussion ‘Countering Militarised Public Security in Latin America’,  Sarah Kinosian and Matt Budd explore the roots of the increasing trend towards militarisation of  public security across Central and South America and ask what lessons can be learnt from alternative methods.

Across Latin America, governments are sending their militaries into the streets to act as de facto police forces in the face of disproportionally high crime and violence rates. This trend has been going on for several years, but has accelerated in 2013. With the move to deploy over 40,000 troops for citizen security in Venezuela, President Nicolás Maduro joined a growing list of leaders throughout the region – in Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, and Dominican Republic, to name a few– that have relied on their militaries to carry out police duties. Yet, in the past 20 years, there are no regional examples in which relying on soldiers for the security of citizens for an extended period of time has brought crime rates down.

Aside from being ineffective, there are other problems associated with militarization of law enforcement. This tactic might offer short-term political or security gains, but it does not provide a long-term solution to the causes of crime. While the presence of the armed forces can slow violence initially, it often just displaces crime to another area, which can return once the troops leave. Sending soldiers to the streets also raises human rights concerns, as the armed forces are trained to track and kill an enemy with as much force as necessary.

Police, on the other hand, are theoretically trained to use minimal force, investigate crimes, and respect the rights of citizens. When governments deploy troops, the differences between the functions of the police and the military get lost and the line between citizen and enemy becomes blurred. Yet each of the countries mentioned above has weak, corrupt, public institutions, particularly penal and justice systems, which have yielded high rates of impunity and crime. Shifting tides in the drug trade, the expansion of organized crime and rampant inequality, has exacerbated these problems. While police reform efforts are underway, they are flagging, largely due to a lack of funding and/or political will.

So why, instead of heavily investing in police reform, have governments in Latin America increasingly turned to the military to solve public security problems? With the highest murder rate in South America, and a corrupt government with a strong military tradition, Venezuela provides an ample case study.

The shadow of Chávez

When Hugo Chávez died in March, he left behind an economy in shambles, a dysfunctional judicial system, a broken prison system, security forces rife with corruption, and a politicized government bureaucracy incapable of tackling the resulting spike in organized crime, violence and drug trafficking. In the two decades since Chávez took power, murder rates doubled  – or tripled according to some sources  – and in 2012, Venezuela had the second-highest homicide rate in the world[1]. Caracas, the country’s capital, on its own registers one of the highest murder rates globally, as gang warfare and high levels of street crime plague most urban centers. The country also has become a major hub for drugs transiting from Colombia to the United States and Europe.

In a post- Chávez Venezuela, the dire security situation appears to be getting worse. In May, just two months after taking office, Chávez’s handpicked successor, President Nicolás Maduro, sent 3,000 members of the military and police to man roadblocks, carry out raids and patrol the streets of Caracas. The deployment was part of an initiative known as “Plan Patria Segura,” (or “Safe Homeland Plan”) which has been expanded to include over 40,000 members of the security forces. Soon, about 80,000 security forces will have been deployed and the military will have an active role in every state. Although the initiative was set to end this October, it looks like troops will be on the streets well past 2013.

Police Corruption

One reason Maduro has turned to the troops is that Venezuela’s police are among the most corrupt in Latin America. As in Guatemala, Mexico and Honduras, police in Venezuela have been dismissed by the public as ineffective, corrupt, abusive and complicit with organized crime. In 2012, a Transparency International survey found Venezuelans considered the police to be the most corrupt entity in the country.

This is not a recent problem – even before Chávez’s reign, the country’s police forces were accused of excessive use of force, unlawful killings of civilians, extortion, torture, forced disappearances and involvement in organized crime. By 2009, even the government admitted police were responsible for up to 20 percent of all crimes. In one poll, 70 percent of respondents agreed with the statement: “Police and criminals are practically the same.”

As with many forces throughout Latin America, police are underfunded, poorly trained and many times outgunned by criminals. This, compounded by high levels of impunity for officers and officials and a lack of central government control over the country’s 134 police units, has allowed organized crime to penetrate state institutions at every governing level.

Reform measures put into motion by Chávez in 2009 aimed to centralize law enforcement and create a professionalized national police force. The new body, the National Bolivarian Police (PNB), would be less militarized and given human rights training from a civilian-run policing university. Officers would be vetted and their salaries would be doubled while a council that included human rights activists would oversee the reform’s implementation.

According to Venezuela experts David Smilde and Rebecca Hanson, while “Venezuelans do not seem to think police corruption or inefficiency are major causes of crime, they do seem to believe that a professional police force and improved judicial and penal system could reduce crime.”

However, challenges still exist. With just under 14,500 officers, the reformed force lacks manpower, as well as the funding and political will necessary to tackle the spiraling violence. Also, several of the reforms, such as the increased wages, have yet to be implemented.

Despite Venezuelans support for the idea of citizen security reform, public support for the PNB appears to be one of its obstacles. For many citizens, the PNB’s tactics appear ineffective and “soft,” according to Smilde. While many residents prefer the humanist theory behind the force, many people in poor, crime-heavy areas see a more hard-line approach as the only option to target the sky-high levels of insecurity.

A History of Military culture 

Part of this public acceptance lies in the country’s entrenched military culture. The military dominated politics in Venezuela throughout the 19^th century until the fall of a military dictatorship in 1958. The institution’s role then subsided, until Hugo Chávez was elected in 1998. Under Chávez’s “Bolivarian Revolution,” strong civil-military ties were forged, with troops being deployed to oversee social projects like food distribution and housing construction. Military members also gained personal voting rights and were placed in top positions in the government.

Although Chávez initiated police reform, he focused even more attention and resources on the armed forces. Around the same time that he created the PNB, he set up two more militarized initiatives: the Bolivarian National Militia, a military-trained group of civilians that would act as liaisons between the army and the people, and the Bicentennial Security Dispositive, a military unit intended to target high-crime areas.

Maduro has continued the military’s social and political role by surrounding himself with former and current military members, increasing the armed forces’ salary budget, creating new “Bolivarian militias” headed by former military members and pledging $4 billion (USD) to “increase the defensive capacity of the country.” He has also announced the creation of a new bank, television channel and cargo company, all for the armed forces.

Given this context, as Smilde has noted, it is no wonder that for the average Venezuelan citizen, the military “represents order and efficiency against a background of chaos and dysfunction, and giving it an important social role appears logical.”

Political motivations

Maduro also has political motivations for sending in the military. Stuck in Chávez’s image, Maduro has been parroting his predecessor’s strategies and playing up the tight links between the military and the “Bolivarian Revolution.” In part, the troop deployment is a way to continue Chávez’s legacy and rally support for the government. Because of lingering popular support for Chávismo, the public has not turned on him and despite high inflation, shortages of basic goods, power blackouts, soaring murder rates, and corruption scandals, most polls indicate Maduro maintains a 45-50 percent approval rating.

By deploying the military, Maduro has shown the public he is responding to the security problem. In general, amid calls for security improvement, it becomes politically difficult to wait for the gradual progress of police reform. “It is a political response to a political problem” according to Venezuelan expert and NYU professor Alejandro Velasco.

What impact?

Although the Maduro administration claims murders have dropped by over 30 percent, the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence projects the country will record 25,000 homicides in 2013 – 4,000 more than in 2012. Even in the areas where military presence has mitigated crime, what happens when the military leaves?

Another concern is the lack of accountability for the military in Venezuela. Unlike the PNB, the armed forces are given no civilian human rights training and there is no mechanism for civilians to report incidents of abuse. There have been at least ten incidents of violations since July, including the shooting of a mother and her daughter by the National Guard. And while Maduro’s approval ratings have barely dipped, those for Plan Patria Segura show a downward trend.

What now?

In Venezuela and elsewhere, there are not a lot of hopeful choices to curb the immediate high crime levels. However, police reform is a key part of improving the security situation. As one U.S. State Department official recently said of Honduras, where a military police unit was just created, “the creation of a military police force distracts attention from civilian police reform efforts and strains limited resources.” This same logic applies to Venezuela – Maduro must politically and financially invest in police reform to strengthen and expand the role of the PNB. Police must also receive sufficient training, resources and supervision to ensure transparency. The public can begin to trust the police when they are the ones enforcing the rule of law.

A line must be drawn between civilian and military leadership, and the role of the armed forces clearly defined and distinct from that of the police. To curb corruption, improved mechanisms for investigating police and military criminality must be established while civilian-led vetting and oversight systems put in place for police and military members. Finally, strong justice and penal systems are fundamental, otherwise those committing crimes will have little reason to stop doing so and prisons will continue to be violent bastions of criminal education. Police reform must not be pushed aside due to short-sighted politics; without a concerted effort to get troops off the streets, Venezuela is vulnerable to descending into an unchecked cycle of criminality, both in society and within its security forces.

In Africa, former child soldiers are often stigmatized and considered impure by the people they once lived among. But religious rituals, in the form of spiritual purification, can help reintegrate former fighters back into communities.

Author’s note: The statements cited in the text are a combination of the author’s own experiences as a former child soldier and his investigative research works with former child combatants, ECOMOG Soldiers, refugees, military officers, religious and tribal leaders in Northern Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia, South Sudan, Mali and Côte d’Ivoire. All respondents, including children currently serving prison term in Giwa Barrack and those in 5th Battalion Operational Ground Headquarters, Gubio Northeast Maiduguri, Nigeria; gave consent for the interviews and publication. Most children in Northern Nigeria pleaded that we tell the world what has happened to them; however, the information they have provided will be published in an upcoming publication.

Introduction

The involvement of children in armed conflict has raised more questions than answers regarding the future of Africa. Child soldiering is strictly prohibited in international law, yet over 500,000 children in conflict hotspots are exposed to the worst forms of cruelty on the face of the earth. Governments and international bodies have discussed remedial policies, but have largely failed to formulate effective reintegration initiatives to tackle this serious problem. Part of this failure lies with inability of Western approaches to child soldiering, and more generally African conflict resolution, to address the local and religious settings of the people. This is a problem because whilst the highly religious nature of African societies can stigmatize former child soldiers, it can also provide a means to reintegrate them back into societies.

This article discusses a study conducted by the Charles Wratto Foundation in rural Liberia using local solutions to address local challenges. Among other experiments, indigenous religious purification rites were performed for the acceptance and reintegration of former child soldiers while tribal leaders and youth were trained to discuss tolerance and lead peace-building activities within their respective communities.

Mental health and child soldiers

Despite the wealth, security and comfort of stable societies, studies show that, on average, an estimated one million people commit suicide every year worldwide. The reasons for these suicides include, but are not limited to, an inability to deal with extreme emotional pain, divorce, physical and mental violence, low self-esteem and substance abuse. According to the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, an estimated 22 deaths through suicide take place among US service men and women every day. In comparison, regardless being poorly trained or equipped for battle and conscripted to fight in guerrilla armies where they are subjected to serious mental and physical mistreatments, the development of a high suicide rate, if any, is yet to be seen among former child soldiers, particularly in Africa. Indeed, the harsh realities of war, has bestowed on these children the will to survive beyond our imagination.

Although researchers in the field of mental health eagerly and critically examine the behaviours of those formerly associated with child soldiers, it should be noted here that suicidal ideation, which is a thought, and suicide, meaning the action of taking one’s own life, are distinct and entirely different. Despite the evidence, the idea that a child soldier is scarred with mental disability and in no position to function as a normal human being has come to influence our thoughts, communities and, most importantly, our political and educational philosophies. Regrettably, it is based on this discourse that the youth and children associated with armed groups in post war Africa, are, for the most part, marginalized and excluded from national priorities including sustainable reintegration strategies.

The relevance of the indigenous approach

Contrary to the imaginative views of non-Africans, the wars on the African continent are not restricted to the uses of small weapons, drugs or alcohol alone; instead, they involve also deep-rooted and extreme tribal rituals practices that demand human or animal sacrifices believed to protect a warrior against an enemy in battle. Against this backdrop, there is no doubt that, from the point of view of a warlord, ritualistic oblations are strategies designed to strike fear and horror into the hearts and minds of their much larger and better-equipped enemy. However, once the gun beat ceases and peace treaties are signed, reintegration becomes a major challenge as the rural communities to which most of these children are returned to, hold religious purification in the highest esteem.

The returning soldiers are considered unholy, and, as such, required to undertake spiritual cleansing in order to sanctify themselves from the evils of war and appease the spirits of dead victims. These ceremonies are significant and symbolic as they acknowledged the vile practices that have occurred, and thus, serve as a deterrent to future reoccurrences. As is the case, refusal to perform these religious appeasements would be seen to contaminate the entire clan and lead them into misfortune. But there is more to the ritual than this. There is also a fundamental and unshakeable credence that the avenging spirits of those killed during the war, but were denied their place in the ancestral world due to the lack of a proper burial, possess the ability to harm their killers and community members. In this sense, it should be noted here that such impending danger, which includes, but not limited to, the reappearance of a victim’s ghost to his/her killer cannot be prevented or resolved by Western treatments as they are seen to hold no place in the spiritual realm. Undertaking these ritual rites does not necessary mean a child is mentally unstable, but above all else, it is a precondition for readmission into society.

The indigenous methodology applied

The traditional purification rites performed for the youth and children with military backgrounds were aimed at dealing with their wartime experiences as well as rebuilding their morality for the re-admission into society. Hence, the rituals performed varied depending on the extent of the child’s involvement in the war. While some rituals addressed those who participated in the war but did not kill, others were focused on murderers.

During these ceremonies, the former soldiers were isolated from their communities and taken to shrines and secret locations of spiritual significance, where they were given sacred herbal medicine to drink. There, the healers spoke to ancestral spirits who were believed to be unhappy and pleaded forgiveness on behalf of the youth and the community through incantations. Furthermore, they were taken to streams for sanctified baths and were told not to look back upon emerging from the river. Doing so was considered a way of reopening the door to the evil war spirits and inviting them to harm the person. Their clothes and other objects from the war were burnt or washed away in a river to symbolize an end to a life of violence and the beginning of a new peaceful life.

In addition, the healers pleaded with the spirits of the dead, asking them to forgive the community and the perpetrators which included protecting them from harm and illness. During the Liberian civil war, brutality grew to its worst when every rebel group attempted to instilled terror and wanted be viewed as the most dreaded fighting force in the country. Children lacking military experience were ordered to eat the hearts of their captured enemies if they desired to be invisible to bullets. However, given the scarcity of finding an enemy’s heart, the definition of an “enemy” was redefined from anyone opposing you in battle to those outside your ethnicity. Needless to say, this led to the deaths of many innocent people falsely accused of being “enemies.” Informed of these experiences and aware that the bleeding spirits of those innocent souls will hunt their killers, the healers performed separate ceremonies to appease the dead upon request by each perpetrator.

Conclusion

There is nothing wrong with Western approaches to conflict resolution in themselves. Nevertheless, the concepts and contexts under which they are employed to address conflicts in Africa undermine the social and religious settings of the people. Consequently, scarce and precious resources are wasted and achieving the overall objective of sustainable peace in a timely fashion becomes a major challenge. It is a known fact that Africans are extremely religious with each tribe having its own religious structure established on a set of beliefs that is impossible to separate from daily life. That being said, they have welcomed new ideas and foreign assistance.

However, foreigners could be exploited if they ignored the traditional structures or the systematic realties of the communities they find themselves in. For instance, the assumption by most donors and international organisations that children formerly associated with armed groups are mentally ill and need the help of Western psychiatrists isn’t just a delusion, which deepens the wounds of fragile communities, but more than this, it provides a platform for children, who were never recruited to fight as soldiers, to exploit humanitarian organisations due to a pre-meditated notion of the situation. NGOs will be told what they want to hear by those with no military background in an effort to claim the benefits of a child soldier. After all, they are all victims of war. Lets not forget, Western veterans were born and raised in much more stable societies while the children in armed conflict were born and raised in dreadful environments which they considered normal.

Here, they mastered the art of survival when serving not only as combat soldiers, but as leaders and strategic decision makers who have developed a high sense of intelligence and a reservoir of knowledge that can be put to constructive use during peace time. For this group of children, reintegration programs organized by representatives of foreign donors are perceived as dangerous and unnecessary given that these programs differentiates them as evil monsters, which doesn’t just ruin the possibility of future career opportunities, but also exposes them to retributions and increases family shame.

While a few find it challenging to adjust in society, the vast majority, including female fighters, concealed their true identities and reintegrated into society without the help of internal or external bodies. For the girls who wish to have a family, this remains a personal and well-kept secret as associating themselves with armed groups could destroy the chances of having a future husband. In addition, both girls and boys, some of whom may have financial means or a place to stay, do so with the knowledge of being perfectly fine and thus, see no reason to attract stigmatization and societal imagination by seeking medical or psychological assistance.

Children endure harsh realities during their time in combat, but regardless of the brutality involved, these experiences do not lead all child soldiers into psychological crises. Naturally, we would imagine post-traumatic disorders occuring given that we are so distracted and disconnected from these realities due to the very nature of our lifestyle. As a result, the inability to live without certain preferences limit our vision to either recognize nor connect with those possessing outstanding survival qualities and resilience.

Charles Wratto is a former child soldier and a Ph.D. candidate whose research focuses on Child Soldiering, Youth Peace-Building and Indigenous Dispute Resolution Mechanisms on Sub Saharan Africa. He is currently a lecturer assistant and an associate researcher at the Babes-Bolyai University’s Conflict Studies Centre, in Romania. As a former child soldier, and now a peace activist, Charles has experience working with youth and children in armed conflicts, victims of war as well as community and religious leaders on issues relating to youth participation in post-conflict reconstructions. He has given public lectures at several universities and organizations across three continents and spoken at numerous conferences on the use of children in war and its impact on our society. He is also the founder of the Charles Wratto Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to rescuing and helping war affected youth and children. In January 2014, “Think Outside the Box,” a Romanian New Agency, named Charles one of the four heroes of the year.

With conflict causing much political instability and human suffering in parts of the world, there is a need for preventive diplomacy which stops the outbreak, relapse or escalation of organized violence. Frontline diplomats have potentially crucial roles to play in early preventive efforts.

Conflict prevention is popular in international political circles these days. In April 2016, the UN Security Council and General Assembly passed concurring resolutions on the review of the UN peacebuilding architecture in which they confirmed the essential role of the UN in “preventing the outbreak, escalation, continuation and recurrence of conflict”. On 5 July, the German Federal Foreign Office launched a public outreach process for the development of new guidelines on civilian crisis prevention, an area for which it increased its funds by 260% from 2015 to 2016 to 248.5 million €. Last year, the British government announced plans to increase its Conflict, Stability and Security Fund from 1 to 1.3 billion pounds by 2019/20.

The political reasoning behind the call for prevention is simple: if the escalation of political disputes into organized violence or even outright civil war can be stopped in its tracks, it not only saves lives, but also keeps refugee flows created by war at bay and helps leaders avoid making difficult and potentially unpopular decisions about whether to launch military interventions to quell conflicts. Despite what seemed like a long-term decline of organized violence, the number of armed conflicts has ticked up again in the past few years: 2014 saw 40 armed conflicts, the highest number since 1999, and 126,059 conflict-related fatalities, the highest number since 1994, according to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program. At the end of 2015, 65.3 million people were either internally displaced or international refugees, the highest number since the Second World War. Yet many UN member states tend to view conflict prevention with suspicion, as they fear international meddling in what they perceive to be their domestic political affairs.

Putting high-flying international commitments to conflict prevention into practice and “sustaining peace” throughout the conflict cycle, as the SC and GA affirmed in their parallel resolutions, requires an astute handling of sensitive matters with intelligence and tact, prudence and patience. In short: diplomacy. While government ministries can, of course, reach out to their foreign counterparts directly and permanent representatives negotiate mandates for international organisations in New York or Geneva, frontline diplomats, i.e. members of the foreign service posted abroad, have potentially crucial roles to play in early preventive efforts. Preventive diplomacy aims at the short- to medium-term prevention of the outbreak, relapse or escalation of organized violence, through both coercive and non-coercive means serving a political purpose. Taking preventive diplomacy seriously requires a different, more active and principled kind of diplomacy. In order to do adjust to this profile, frontline diplomats need to be better equipped, trained, and organisationally empowered.

Frontline preventive diplomacy: benefits and risks

Frontline diplomats may be able to resort to thematic expertise, funds or international networks that they can employ to tweak political dynamics in a country. As some diplomats are repeatedly posted to conflict regions, they may draw comparative conclusions and show domestic parties the risky trajectories of their actions. And diplomats are, theoretically at least, trained in the very skills of facilitation, brokering and negotiation that might be needed to cool down heated tensions.

As the International Crisis Group lays out in an excellent recent report, preventive diplomacy is fraught with dilemmas and considerable challenges. Usually, the elites in a given country carry the main responsibility for the escalation of political conflicts, and even high-level officials of major powers have limited entry points when positions have become deeply polarized and parties are entrenched in a zero-sum logic. As the Crisis Group succinctly observes: “Outsiders must tread carefully when pursuing these goals. All early action involves engaging in fluid political environments. There is a high chance of political friction, with misunderstandings and miscalculations derailing plans. No form of crisis response is neutral.”

Frontline diplomats may grant insurgent groups unwarranted legitimacy simply by meeting them. Officially mediating between parties may raise expectations about peaceful conflict resolution, that, when disappointed, may embolden domestic actors to pursue their goals by violent means. Short-term goals of stabilization may conflict with long-term goals of democratisation and transitional justice. Thus, preventive engagements must be based on continuing political analysis and do-no-harm principles.

A different diplomacy

More fundamentally, an active pursuit of conflict prevention requires a different kind of diplomacy. Conventionally, diplomats pursue a narrowly conceived “national interest”, acting on explicit instructions from the capital. They concentrate on the governing authorities as official partners in their bilateral relations. As a result, their engagement is reactive and ad hoc, while preventive diplomacy requires a forward-looking and principled approach, as David Hamburg already wrote in 2003.

“I am not the person who sits all day at the office. I want to see how people live out there,” is how German Ambassador to South Africa Walter Lindner introduces himself in a video message on the embassy’s website. It sums up the kind of spirit diplomats need to embrace are they to further the ambitious objective of conflict prevention. Christopher J. Stevens, the US Ambassador to Libya murdered in 2012, represented the skills of a “guerrilla diplomat” (Daryl Copeland): multilingual, frequently speaking to people on the street, and showing respect and compassion for local cultures, traits which President Obama highlighted in his speech at the UN General Debate in September 2012.

Yet these diplomats are usually seen as “unconventional”. If governments want to take their stated objective of crisis prevention seriously, they need to embrace the following policies that support and empower their agents in the field. Political leaders and senior officials need to foster an organisational culture that grants ambassadors and other frontline diplomats more autonomy, based on frequent reporting on their activities. Leaders need to highlight bold behaviour, even when diplomats encounter hostility from host governments despite their most sensitive efforts; rewarding best practices can start horizontal socialization processes. Ministries need to provide frontline diplomats with the authority to quickly disperse small development funds and include them in internal discussions on government-wide country strategies.

Lastly, they need to offer training to their diplomats in conflict analysis, mediation and critical thinking. The German Federal Foreign Office, for example, only started to provide dedicated mediation courses to its attachés and more senior diplomats a few weeks ago. Similarly, a recent reform report of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office argued to increase training in stabilisation and mediation as core skills for diplomats posted to fragile areas. Many intra-state conflicts are based on disputes within a country’s political elite; foreign diplomats trained in peace mediation may be able to facilitate conversations between polarized parties. As external third parties, they may help local stakeholders to identify mutually acceptable ways that lead out of their conflicts.

Conclusion

Historically, Western biases and wilful ignorance of domestic politics and cultures have marred international engagement in conflict prevention and resolution. A healthy dose of scepticism towards a renewed push for preventive diplomacy is therefore warranted. Diplomats need to overcome a rigid binary of local stakeholders whose actions need to be prevented and international actors who conduct preventive diplomacy.

If foreign services embrace a bolder, innovative style of (preventive) diplomacy that rewards local sensitivity, autonomy and innovation, however, they may improve the implementation of their foreign policy overall. Frontline diplomats need to travel in their host country extensively, collecting information about local grievances through first-hand observation. They need to reach out to the host population directly, through personal use of social media, as many British diplomats already do. And they need to maintain reliable relationships with key political actors that continue to function in crisis situations. If diplomats do that, they will find that an increased attention towards conflict prevention entails benefits – a deeper understanding of elite politics, influence beyond the capital and credibility with a broad spectrum of a country’s society – that continue to exist when a crisis ends.

Gerrit Kurtz is a postgraduate research student at the War Studies Department of King’s College London, where he researches the role of frontline diplomats in conflict prevention. He is also a non-resident fellow with the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin, where he worked between 2012 and 2015 on the policies of emerging powers on a responsibility to protect populations from mass atrocity crimes. He also conducted research in South Sudan on local conflict management by UN peace operations. Aside from preventive diplomacy, conflict management and peacekeeping, his research interests include protection of civilians, transitional justice in the conflict in Sri Lanka, the conflict in South Sudan, as well as German and Indian foreign policy.

In recent years, the Mexican government has been struggling to deal with a dramatic rise in crime and violence, with state responses largely failing to effectively resolve these problems. But there are some grounds for optimism.  

Over the course of too many years of elevated crime and violence, the Mexican government has been visibly struggling to identify the best possible course to improve public security and a more effective administration of justice. This article examines the magnitude of Mexico’s still ongoing security crisis, as well as the measures that the Mexican government has employed to try to resolve it. Drawing from an ample body of academic and policy research, there are some clear indications of what has not worked, as well as some bright spots for Mexico moving forward.

The State of Play in Mexico

For the past decade, the Justice in Mexico program based at the University of San Diego has studied the proliferation of crime and violence in Mexico, the country that has seen the greatest increase in homicides among all Latin American countries. Notably, following a marked decline in violent crime from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, Mexico experienced a dramatic increase in homicides during the five year period from 2007 to 2011, when homicide rates rose threefold nationally, from 8.1 to 24 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to official homicide statistics. (Based on the author’s own elaboration from Mexico’s national statistical clearinghouse, the National Institute of Statistics, Geography, and Information; see here also). The net result during that period alone was a total of nearly 100,000 homicides, and the subsequent four years through 2015 added roughly 90,000 more. Many of these homicides—an estimated 30-40%—bear characteristics frequently associated with the country’s powerful drug cartels and other organized crime groups: use of high caliber weapons, mutilation and dismemberment, execution style killings, publicly displayed bodies, and chilling messages and threats authored by the perpetrators.

While casual observers might assume that Mexico’s violence was widespread and pervasive throughout the country, the phenomenon was highly concentrated in certain regions and localities, primarily in the northern border region and in the country’s Pacific coastal states. In 2007, a Mexican city with more than 100 homicides could easily make it onto the country’s “top ten” list for total homicides; in fact, that same year, only Tijuana—the quintessential Mexican border city—reported more than 200 homicides (206 to be exact). Yet, just two years later, no city among the top ten most violent cities in Mexico had fewer than 200 homicides, and the top five had at least 400 homicides (as illustrated in Figure 1). Indeed, by 2010, arguably the peak of the violence, there were 18 Mexican cities with more than 200 homicides: now Mexico had many “Tijuanas.” Indeed, some of Mexico’s most violent cities—such as Acapulco, Ciudad Juárez, and Nuevo Laredo—saw rates more than triple the national homicide rate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In a country unaccustomed to the civil wars and brutal dictatorships that plagued other parts of Latin America in the 20^th century, such an explosion of violence was unexpected and previously unfathomable. The Mexican government’s apparent inability to resolve the problem triggered an international debate on the problems and limits of the Mexican state. A 2008 worst-case assessment by the U.S. Joint Forces Command named Mexico as one of two countries—along with Pakistan—that could suffer a sudden collapse into a “failed state.” Specifically, the report asserted, “In terms of worst-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico…”. Pronouncements by U.S. officials—including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2010—asserted that Mexico’s woes were comparable to Colombia’s long-standing problems of domestic insurgency, or even on par with a civil war. Others sensationalized Mexico’s recent violence as a new hybrid threat of “criminal insurgency” or suggested that the power and infiltration of such groups had turned Mexico into a “narcostate” overrun by violence, corruption, and “narco- terrorism.”

The merits of such assertions were quite debatable then and have proved false with time, as they tended to exaggerate and misconstrue Mexico’s current security situation. The methods and organizational forms of Mexican organized crime groups are arguably terrifying and sometimes truly mimic those of terrorists and insurgents. Yet, Mexico’s organized crime groups have shown no ambition to govern or supplant the state. They have no record or evident intention of disrupting the state’s capacity to deliver basic services. Moreover, the Mexican state maintains substantial democratic legitimacy, and has successfully deterred would-be insurgents in recent decades. Lastly, by the various measures used by the Fund for Peace to compile the Fragile States Index (formerly known as the Failed State Index), the health of the Mexican state ranks about average for Latin American countries, and its capacity is far greater than in war-torn countries like Afghanistan, Central African Republic, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, or Yemen.

The Mexican State Response

There is no doubt that Mexico’s recent security crisis presented—and continues to present—a major challenge for the Mexican state, and raises serious questions about its limits and failings. It is true that, like any other individuals who violate the law, the goal of organized crime groups is to minimize the state’s ability to detect, prevent, and/or punish their illicit activities. Yet, unlike other criminal actors, organized crime groups—and particularly drug trafficking organizations—in Mexico have demonstrated a remarkable capacity to secure protection from the state to support and sustain their criminal activities, with corrupt officials on their payrolls at all levels of government. Also, to varying degrees, such groups have at least temporarily attained a stronger presence and degree of control than the government in some limited geographic areas. Moreover, in some places, organized crime groups have capitalized on anti-government sentiments to achieve a degree of popularity or even legitimacy that seriously undermines state capacity. What, then are the sources of Mexico’s recent violence, and why have state responses failed to resolve the problem in a timely manner?

The rise of Mexico’s most powerful organized crime groups—commonly referred to as drug trafficking organizations, or “cartels”—came amid a severe economic crisis in the 1980s. While other industries faltered, illicit drug production and trafficking enjoyed a major boom and substantial impunity, thanks in part to the complicity of government and law enforcement personnel. By the late 1990s, growing problems of crime and violence contributed to a crisis of “public insecurity,” characterized also by a feeling of widespread fear and frustration on the part of the general public due to the inability of the Mexican government to maintain order. Following a major political transition in 2000—the ouster of the PRI, Mexico’s long-time ruling party, from the presidency—the administration of Vicente Fox (2000-06) disrupted the leadership of two of the country’s four main organized crime groups.

This tactic of arresting, extraditing, or otherwise eliminating the top leaders of major criminal organizations has been commonly referred to as the “kingpin” strategy. Fox’s successor, President Felipe Calderón (2006-12), deployed the kingpin strategy vigorously. Calderón and other proponents of the kingpin strategy argued that taking out the top leadership would help to disrupt their operations and convert a national security threat into a more localized public security problem. In some cases, at least, the government succeeded in reducing the functional capacity of some of the country’s major criminal organizations, but the unintended result was the creation of internal power vacuums and incentives for regionally based drug trafficking organizations to clash over turf and expand into rival territories. The subsequent conflicts within and among these groups were responsible for tens of thousands of organized crime-style killings that made up nearly the entire increase in homicides noted above, especially in major drug trafficking production and transit zones.

In December 2012, a new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, took office and restored the PRI to power. His government continued to deploy the kingpin strategy, arresting high-ranking members of the Zeta and Sinaloa cartels. Remarkably, these arrests did not produce the same kind of violent aftershock that occurred under previous administrations, perhaps because of a new equilibrium among organized crime groups (there were few large cartels left standing) or perhaps more effective accommodation strategies (such as negotiations with the leaders next in line to take control of criminal operations). Whatever the reason, during 2013 and 2014, Peña Nieto’s first two full years in office, levels of homicide actually declined by around 8 and 12%, respectively (author’s own calculations from INEGI data. http://www.inegi.org.mx). However, statistics on homicide investigations for 2015 suggest that there was slight increase—about 10%—in the number of homicides nationwide, reversing the modest downward trend and provoking concerns that Mexico’s violence would ramp up again in the coming years. Final figures for 2015 likely to be released by Mexico’s national statistics agency sometime in late summer 2016, but as of mid-2016 there are troubling signs that violence is on the rise. (As this article went to press, INEGI statistics were unavailable for 2015, so the figures referenced here are Mexican law enforcement investigations into homicides tabulated by the Mexican National Public Security System – Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Pública, SNSP).

Conclusion

Looking toward the future, Mexico’s security situation will likely be affected by a number of important international and domestic factors. International factors could also significantly shape Mexico’s prospects. As a growing number of leaders and civic organizations push for the legally regulated production, distribution, and consumption of drugs (including the legalization of marijuana in two U.S. states in November 2012), this shift in discourse and policy could have major implications for Mexican organized crime groups. A loss of illicit revenues will likely reduce the capacity of these organizations to challenge the state, but it will also result in a painful restructuring of black market industries, pushing drug traffickers to increase exports of other drugs (like heroin) and further diversify into other violent criminal activities (e.g., kidnapping, extortion, robbery, etc.). This has already caused an abrupt increase in violence in some states, like Guerrero. In terms of drug policy, there are no quick and easy fixes to the problem of organized crime and violence in Mexico.

However, there are some reasons for optimism in Mexico. Changing demographic trends (including a declining population of under-educated, underpaid, and underemployed young males) and an improvement of the country’s overall economic situation could facilitate a reduction of various societal ills, including both violent crime and large-scale external migration. At the same time, with the right mix of fiscal and political reforms, Mexico’s rising economic fortunes could also bolster the state’s capacity to respond more effectively to these problems, thanks to investments and reforms in the criminal justice system, as well as public education and social programs to strengthen the social fabric. Fortunately, in recent years, the Mexican government has begun to implement major economic, social and judicial sector reforms that could greatly strengthen both state and societal capacity to reduce the power of violent organized crime groups. The main question is whether these reforms will be rapid and adequate enough to substantially reduce the number of violent deaths in Mexico over the next decade.

Dr. David A. Shirk is graduate director of the Master of Arts in International Relations program at the University of San Diego, director of Justice in Mexico, and a global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is the co-author of Contemporary Mexican Politics, with Emily Edmonds-Poli.