US boosts funds to fight Central American drug crime

But even with more money, Central American countries still face an uphill battle in fighting inefficiency and corruption that hinder their anticrime efforts.

Guatemala City

As Central America?s leaders sought more help from abroad this week in their fight against violent drug cartels, it was increasingly clear that solving the region?s security problems would require more than just money.

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Presidents attending a two-day regional summit in Guatemala City warned that the current surge of violence, fueled by drug traffickers, threatens the entire hemisphere, and pledges for financial assistance from the US and development banks approached $2 billion dollars.

But doubts remain about whether leaders are prepared to implement the reforms needed to take on organized crime groups that often have more resources than the weak states they terrorize.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on Central American countries to assume their ?shared responsibility? in fighting drug traffickers. She announced that the administration would increase assistance to the region by $40 million to $300 million this year, still a much smaller amount than the billion dollar sums guaranteed to Mexico and Colombia in the past decade.

?The folks at the State Department that are running the Central American Regional Security Initiative ? they are very skeptical about the ability of Central American countries to absorb, and spend effectively and wisely? any increase in international aid, said Kevin Casas-Zamora, a senior fellow at the Latin America Initiative at the Brookings Institution.

The Guatemalan capital provided a somber backdrop to the event, where heavily armed police patrolled the streets around the Westin Camino Real. Just days before the conference, candidates for mayor of a town outside Guatemala City considered suspending their campaigns after two opponents were assassinated. Elsewhere in the capital, neighborhood groups started barricading streets with bars and concrete to keep out criminals, Prensa Libre reported. The country?s homicide rate nearly doubled between 2000 and 2009, according to the Interior Ministry.

International donors committed $1.7 billion for security programs in Central America over the past three years, according to a study released this week by the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) and the Inter-American Development Bank. The report found a lack of coordination and communication between donors and recipient governments, which led to duplication of efforts and sometimes to conflicting goals.

?It?s not just an issue of quantity, but of quality and sustainability,? said Adriana Beltran, senior associate for citizen security at WOLA, in an e-mailed response to questions. ?Many countries have tended to focus on short-term, heavy handed responses that have proven to be ineffective and counterproductive.?

Ms. Clinton said yesterday that efforts are beginning to resolve those problems through more high-level coordination, and this week?s conference was the first ever meeting organized by the Central American Integration System, a regional body founded in 1991, that focused specifically on security.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/7Dge8ibek-g/US-boosts-funds-to-fight-Central-American-drug-crime

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