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A threat to our security at the border
February 8, 2009
Even as U.S. attention remains focused on Iran, Afghanistan and other distant spots, violence in Mexico, mostly related to the trade in illegal drugs, has risen sharply in recent years and likely spiraling out of control. While the violence entails battles between drug traffickers and Mexican military and police forces, it also involves turf fights among the various drug-trafficking organizations as they seek to control access to the lucrative U.S. market.
More than 5,300 people died in the fighting in 2008. With 18 people found shot dead in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, and another four in a neighboring state – on the property of the state-run oil company Pemex – in just one two-day period (Jan. 26-27), 2009 is off to an ugly start.
The carnage is now so bad that the U.S. State Department has issued travel alerts for Americans going to Mexico. One such alert warned that the battles in portions of northern Mexico are “the equivalent of military small-unit combat and have included the use of machine guns and fragmentation grenades.” U.S. tourism to cities on Mexico's border with the United States, where the bloodshed has been the worst, has dropped sharply. Even the Marines at Camp Pendleton near San Diego are banned from spending leave time in Tijuana – because it is too dangerous.
And Mexico's violence is spilling across the border into communities in the southwestern United States. Indeed, Mexican drug gangs now operate in numerous cities throughout the United States. Cartel enforcers have published lists of Americans, including police officers, who are targeted for assassination.
U.S. officials, alarmed at the growing power of the Mexican drug cartels, continue to pressure the government of Felipe Calderón to wage a vigorous anti-drug campaign. Calderón has responded by giving the army the lead role in efforts to eliminate the drug traffickers instead of relying on federal and local police forces, which have been thoroughly corrupted by drug money. In return, Washington is rewarding his government with the so-called Merida Initiative, a multibillion-dollar measure to aid the anti-trafficking campaign.
Despite occasional optimistic pronouncements coming out of both Washington and Mexico City, it is increasingly apparent that the drug gangs are winning the war. Los Zetas, the enforcement arm of the powerful and especially ruthless Gulf Cartel, openly sought recruits to their ranks, posting help-wanted signs and hanging a large banner across a major thoroughfare in Nuevo Laredo last spring. The banner read: “The Zetas want you, soldier or ex-soldier. We offer a good salary, food and benefits for your family.”
Traffickers have thoroughly penetrated Mexico's government institutions – even the agencies that are supposed to be dedicated to battling the cartels. In recent weeks, prosecutors charged top officials in the Attorney General's Office with being informers for the drug organizations. They allegedly received payments of $150,000 to $450,000 per month for information regarding surveillance targets and potential raids. Those sums are more than even high-level law enforcement personnel can make in several years – and lower-level personnel can make in several decades.
With such resources at their disposal, and with the U.S. and global demand for illegal drugs remaining robust, it is no wonder that the cartels are doing well.
Given Mexico's increasingly precarious economic situation, the cartels' power is likely to grow. Mexico is suffering badly from the economic recession. For the first time ever, financial remittances sent home from Mexicans working in the United States declined in 2008. As the already meager job prospects in Mexico shrink further, the drug cartels will be one group of employers willing and able to pay for new hires.
President Obama ought to put the drug violence in Mexico at the top of his list of national security priorities. While it is premature to describe Mexico as a full-blown failed state, as some experts have done, the situation is alarming. The campaign against drug trafficking in Mexico is the latest failed front in the international war on drugs. The brutal truth is that the illegality of the drug trade creates a multibillion-dollar black-market premium that attracts the greediest, most violence-prone elements. Neither the Merida Initiative nor any other program will change that fundamental economic reality.
President Obama needs to order a comprehensive reassessment of America's drug strategy before the security environment along our southern border gets even worse.
Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of eight books on international issues. He is also the author of a new Cato policy study, “
A threat to our security at the border
February 8, 2009
Even as U.S. attention remains focused on Iran, Afghanistan and other distant spots, violence in Mexico, mostly related to the trade in illegal drugs, has risen sharply in recent years and likely spiraling out of control. While the violence entails battles between drug traffickers and Mexican military and police forces, it also involves turf fights among the various drug-trafficking organizations as they seek to control access to the lucrative U.S. market.
More than 5,300 people died in the fighting in 2008. With 18 people found shot dead in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, and another four in a neighboring state – on the property of the state-run oil company Pemex – in just one two-day period (Jan. 26-27), 2009 is off to an ugly start.
The carnage is now so bad that the U.S. State Department has issued travel alerts for Americans going to Mexico. One such alert warned that the battles in portions of northern Mexico are “the equivalent of military small-unit combat and have included the use of machine guns and fragmentation grenades.” U.S. tourism to cities on Mexico's border with the United States, where the bloodshed has been the worst, has dropped sharply. Even the Marines at Camp Pendleton near San Diego are banned from spending leave time in Tijuana – because it is too dangerous.
And Mexico's violence is spilling across the border into communities in the southwestern United States. Indeed, Mexican drug gangs now operate in numerous cities throughout the United States. Cartel enforcers have published lists of Americans, including police officers, who are targeted for assassination.
U.S. officials, alarmed at the growing power of the Mexican drug cartels, continue to pressure the government of Felipe Calderón to wage a vigorous anti-drug campaign. Calderón has responded by giving the army the lead role in efforts to eliminate the drug traffickers instead of relying on federal and local police forces, which have been thoroughly corrupted by drug money. In return, Washington is rewarding his government with the so-called Merida Initiative, a multibillion-dollar measure to aid the anti-trafficking campaign.
Despite occasional optimistic pronouncements coming out of both Washington and Mexico City, it is increasingly apparent that the drug gangs are winning the war. Los Zetas, the enforcement arm of the powerful and especially ruthless Gulf Cartel, openly sought recruits to their ranks, posting help-wanted signs and hanging a large banner across a major thoroughfare in Nuevo Laredo last spring. The banner read: “The Zetas want you, soldier or ex-soldier. We offer a good salary, food and benefits for your family.”
Traffickers have thoroughly penetrated Mexico's government institutions – even the agencies that are supposed to be dedicated to battling the cartels. In recent weeks, prosecutors charged top officials in the Attorney General's Office with being informers for the drug organizations. They allegedly received payments of $150,000 to $450,000 per month for information regarding surveillance targets and potential raids. Those sums are more than even high-level law enforcement personnel can make in several years – and lower-level personnel can make in several decades.
With such resources at their disposal, and with the U.S. and global demand for illegal drugs remaining robust, it is no wonder that the cartels are doing well.
Given Mexico's increasingly precarious economic situation, the cartels' power is likely to grow. Mexico is suffering badly from the economic recession. For the first time ever, financial remittances sent home from Mexicans working in the United States declined in 2008. As the already meager job prospects in Mexico shrink further, the drug cartels will be one group of employers willing and able to pay for new hires.
President Obama ought to put the drug violence in Mexico at the top of his list of national security priorities. While it is premature to describe Mexico as a full-blown failed state, as some experts have done, the situation is alarming. The campaign against drug trafficking in Mexico is the latest failed front in the international war on drugs. The brutal truth is that the illegality of the drug trade creates a multibillion-dollar black-market premium that attracts the greediest, most violence-prone elements. Neither the Merida Initiative nor any other program will change that fundamental economic reality.
President Obama needs to order a comprehensive reassessment of America's drug strategy before the security environment along our southern border gets even worse.
Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of eight books on international issues. He is also the author of a new Cato policy study, “