Consider Mexico

Actors & culture of Mexican problem are different but the scenario is close to that which prevails in Pakistan

At first glance, Mexico and Pakistan appear to have little in common — but look closer and there are chilling similarities, problems which are held in common and which may share a common solution. Mexico has a culture of violence, corruption and impunity which dwarfs that of Pakistan. The kidnapping by the police and presumed subsequent murder of 43 students by members of a drugs cartel to whom the police had handed the students, may represent a turning point. It cannot come soon enough. Since 2007, at least 135,000 people have been murdered and another 25,000 ‘disappeared’ — most of whom may be presumed dead. The Mexican government does not separate out those killings and disappearances related to the drugs cartels, but a body of academic opinion in Mexico avers that “a majority” of deaths and disappearances are drug and gang related. Large areas of Mexico are out of the control of the government and criminal gangs rule, alongside a massively corrupt police.

President Enrique Pena Nieto has now drawn a line. He has issued a 10-point package that lays emphasis on the eradication of corruption at the municipal level, and transferred the responsibility for municipal policing to the federal level. He vows to combat human rights violations by the security forces and to dissolve local institutions that have been infiltrated by criminals. The actors and culture are different but the scenario is uncomfortably close to that which prevails in Pakistan, where large armed groups challenge the writ of the state, criminals control significant areas of a major city, and the police and security forces are deeply corrupt from top to bottom. Civil administrations reek of corrupt practice with men and some women unacquainted with the words ‘truth’ and ‘honesty’. The significant difference is that the Mexican president has owned a Mexican problem. He has not tried to palm off the blame elsewhere, and has pointed the finger directly and unequivocally at those identified as the problem even though their primary task is identified as being part of the solution. Would that our own leaders had half that courage.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 8^th,  2014.

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