U.S. Can’t Solve Central America’s Problems With Money Alone

I have a new article with the World Politics Review entitled U.S. Can’t Solve Central America’s Problems With Money Alone.

On Jan. 29, in an op-ed for The New York Times, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden announced that the White House would request $1 billion from Congress in its 2016 budget to finance a range of development, security and good governance initiatives in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, often referred to as Central America’s Northern Triangle. The news is a welcome announcement for a region that is suffering from the effects of long-term poverty, inequality and insecurity. Despite the promise of U.S. aid, however, a great deal will have to fall into place for Washington’s new commitment to Central America to deliver much-needed results on the ground.

I'm skeptical that the president will get what he wants from Congress and that the US and its Northern Triangle partners have the ability to carry out meaningful reform in the short-term. However, even incremental improvements are worth the financial expenditures.

Check it out here.

Weak and Corrupt Justice Systems in Central America

Human Rights Watch recently released its World Report 2015. Insight Crime has a summary of the Latin American highlights, including some harsh words for Central America's justice systems.

Failing justice systems were particularly noted in the Central American nations of Guatemala and Honduras. Corrupt and ineffective courts have hindered the prosecution of powerful criminal organizations within both countries. In Honduras, corrupt courts are presided over by judges subject to intimidation and political interference, with reform efforts making little progress. A similar situation in Guatemala has resulted in high levels of impunity, allowing organized crime to engage in "widespread acts of violence and extortion," HRW said.

However the report did note some progress in Guatemala. In February nine members of the Zetas cartel were convicted for the massacre of 27 farmers in 2011 in the northern Peten region.

With regards to Guatemala, I am disappointed. The reforms supported by the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) and the international community, the Public Prosecutor's office under Claudia Paz, and a reinvigorated civil society, had so much potential. Don't get me wrong, I still believe that the justice system is stronger today than it was five years ago, from criminal investigations all the way to prosecutions and sentencing. Impunity has been somewhat reduced and violent crime, homicide, has been reduced from approximately 46 to 32 per 100,000. Remember, El Salvador and Honduras have homicide rates that surpass 60 per 100,000, down from highs in both countries, and justice systems where estimates indicate that less than five percent of homicides are solved and result in prison sentences.

If the political and economic elites were on board with the reforms, conditions probably would have improved even more so. Unfortunately, they seem to want to obstruct at every turn. Obviously, not all of them, but enough to stymie much needed progress. The extent to which they went to capture the supreme and appellate court selection progress is evidence of their commitment. As of right now, President Otto Perez Molina seems to be content with saying good-bye to CICIG later this year. It will take some pressure from the international community to convince the Guatemalan elite that denying an extension to CICIG will cause more harm than good.

Hezbollah figure behind bombings of Israeli sites in Argentina killed

Adam Goldman and Ellen Nakashima have a report in the Washington Post that looks at cooperation between the US CIA and the Israeli Mossad in the killing of Imad Mughniyah, Hezbollah’s international operations chief, in Syria on February 12, 2008.

The United States has never acknowledged participation in the killing of Mughniyah, which Hezbollah blamed on Israel. Until now, there has been little detail about the joint operation by the CIA and Mossad to kill him, how the car bombing was planned or the exact U.S. role. With the exception of the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden, the mission marked one of the most high-risk covert actions by the United States in recent years.

U.S. involvement in the killing, which was confirmed by five former U.S. intelligence officials, also pushed American legal boundaries.

Mughniyah was targeted in a country where the United States was not at war. Moreover, he was killed in a car bombing, a technique that some legal scholars see as a violation of international laws that proscribe “killing by perfidy” — using treacherous means to kill or wound an enemy.

...

“Remember, they were carrying out suicide bombings and IED attacks,” said one official, referring to Hezbollah operations in Iraq.

The authority to kill Mughniyah required a presidential finding by President George W. Bush. The attorney general, the director of national intelligence, the national security adviser and the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department all signed off on the operation, one former intelligence official said.

The former official said getting the authority to kill Mughniyah was a “rigorous and tedious” process. “What we had to show was he was a continuing threat to Americans,” the official said, noting that Mughniyah had a long history of targeting Americans dating back to his role in planning the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut.

“The decision was we had to have absolute confirmation that it was self-defense,” the official said.

Among other attacks, Imad Mughniyah was believed to have been responsible for bombs that were used in two attacks in Argentina, the 1992 suicide bombing of the Israeli Embassy and the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center.

While I don't remember this attack being covered in the book, you might want to check out Mark Mazzetti's The Way of the Knife which goes into some detail about how the Bush administration worked to transform the CIA, JSOC and other US forces into into kidnapping, torturing and killing units after 9/11. The CIA had gotten out of the killing and torture business following scandals in the 1970s and 1980s, imperfectly so, but were brought back in following the September 11th attacks.

It wasn't exactly a transformation that all CIA accepted but the Bush administration supported those in the agency who would carry out their demands. That's one reason why greater blame should be placed on civilian officials who ordered the CIA torture program. The CIA would not have gotten into the business had that not been what they were told to do.

Mark goes behind the scenes on some of the debates surrounding capture vs. kill, the legality of carrying out missions in countries where we were not at war, and the competition/coordination between CIA and Defense. It's a good, easy read.

I highly recommend the book. I almost assigned it for the September 11, 2001 and Beyond class I am teaching this semester. Mark is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who writes on national security issues for the New York Times and other outlets. We also graduated from Regis High School together in 1992.