  For generic squark masses, box diagrams with squarks and gluinos give
unacceptably large contributions to neutral meson ($K$, $B$ and $D$) mixing.
The standard solution to this problem is to assume that squarks are degenerate
to a very good approximation. We suggest an alternative mechanism to suppress
squark contributions to flavor changing neutral currents: the alignment of
quark with squark mass matrices. This mechanism arises naturally in the
framework of Abelian horizontal symmetries.
