Mexican Collapse? Drug Wars Worry Some Americans

Mexican soldiers stand on guard at a house where marijuana plants being grown were found in Tijuana, Mexico, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2009. Special forces soldiers found some 170 marijuana plants, in a room used as a greenhouse, and detained a suspect. (AP Photo/Guillermo Arias)

From Yahoo News/AP:

MEXICO CITY – Indiscriminate kidnappings. Nearly daily beheadings. Gangs that mock and kill government agents.

This isn't Iraq or Pakistan. It's Mexico, which the U.S. government and a growing number of experts say is becoming one of the world's biggest security risks.

The prospect that America's southern neighbor could melt into lawlessness provides an unexpected challenge to Barack Obama's new government. In its latest report anticipating possible global security risks, the U.S. Joint Forces Command lumps Mexico and Pakistan together as being at risk of a "rapid and sudden collapse."

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My Comment: This article provides a sober reading (and assessment) of Mexico.

From my own history .... when I was young I enjoyed visiting Mexico for years .... I do not now.

It is too violent and dangerous for foreigners. For my Mexican friends, the drug culture is now so pervasive in Mexican society .... almost everyone is affected in some way .... and none of it is good.

U.S. Anti-Drug Information Leaked To Mexico Cartels

Mexican federal police escort away members of a detained drug trafficking gang after a news conference in Mexico City October 19, 2008. (Daniel Aguilar/Reuters)

From Yahoo News/Reuters:

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Corrupt officials inside Mexico's security forces have leaked U.S. anti-drugs intelligence directly to drug traffickers to help them escape raids, a senior U.S. law enforcement agent said.

A recent anti-corruption sweep showed the infiltration of Mexican police forces had reached alarming levels, with several high-ranking investigators and a presidential guardsman arrested for selling information to drug cartels.

The U.S. agent said the arrests were an encouraging sign that Mexico's government is serious about stopping drug gangs from getting their hands on intelligence, some of which comes from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA.

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My Comment: At least some corrupt officials are now being arrested.

U.S. Military Ready To Battle Drug Gangs: Homeland Security

Chertoff: Military Ready If Drug Gangs Cross Border -- Houston Chronicle

Homeland Security plan also accounts for possible border surge by refugees fleeing the violence.

WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Wednesday that federal SWAT teams and military units are prepared to respond to Mexican drug gangs in the event they cross the Rio Grande and confront U.S. law officers.

The forces, another department official said, also stand ready to manage any surge to the border by Mexicans panicked by the cartels’ violence.

Chertoff described his department’s contingency planning in broad terms in an interview with the Houston Chronicle. The other department official provided details on condition of anonymity.

Chertoff ordered development of the contingency plans last summer in response to escalating drug syndicate violence in Mexico.

More than 5,400 people were killed there last year in violence among several large gangs and Mexican security forces.

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My Comment: There are almost 500,000 Mexicans locked up in U.S. prisons today. This is a problem that is hitting us NOW.

Instead of planning for the future, Chertoff should take measures that will confront this growing epidemic right now .... and to support the measures that many have been calling for in stemming the flood of illegal refugees across the U.S. southern border.

Mexico "Narco Junior" Teenagers Kill Drug Rivals

Federal police officers last week in Culiacán, in Sinaloa State. More than 600 officers have been sent in recent weeks to Sinaloa, the base of a powerful drug cartel. Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times

From Yahoo News/Reuters:

TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) – Mexican teenagers as young as 15 are killing rivals for a few hundred dollars in a brutal drug war on the U.S. border that is increasingly sucking in young people.

Feuding gangs in the violent cities of Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez prize teenage drug cartel members, known as "narco juniors", because they give the attacks an added element of surprise and because they can't be given long prison sentences, police and social workers say.

"There are lots of us and we get $300 for each kill," said 17-year-old Eduardo, a middle-class student who was arrested in December after an army raid on a drug safe house in Tijuana.

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U.S. Military Report Warns 'Sudden Collapse' Of Mexico Is Possible

President-elect Barack Obama listens as Mexico's President Felipe Calderon makes a statement to reporters in Washington, Monday, Jan. 12, 2009. Mexico is one of two countries that "bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse," according to a report by the U.S. Joint Forces Command on worldwide security threats. (AP photo)

From El Paso Times:

EL PASO - Mexico is one of two countries that "bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse," according to a report by the U.S. Joint Forces Command on worldwide security threats.

The command's "Joint Operating Environment (JOE 2008)" report, which contains projections of global threats and potential next wars, puts Pakistan on the same level as Mexico. "In terms of worse-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico.

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My Comment: I first visited Mexico 25 years ago and had a great time. Took the trouble to learn some of the language, and made a point of going there at least once a year.

No more now.

Violence .... much of it because of the drug culture .... makes it no longer the paradise that it once was. The Mexican Government under Calderon has finally moved against the drug cartels, but they are so interwoven in Mexican life .... it is going to take years and draconian measures to stop them.

Obama Administration To Inherit Southern Border Nightmare

Mexican soldiers stand over a detained man after a deadly gun battle with drug traffickers in Apatzingan, Mexico. Agencia Esquema / Ap File / MSNBC

From Homeland Security:

‘Mexico is ... fighting for survival against narco-terrorism’.

Barack Obama shortly will inherit a war an ocean away in the Middle East that potentially could spiral out of control dragging the US into it, but he immediately faces a far more deadly war that’s raging on his own back doorstep on the US-Mexican border. It's a war that's fast becoming America’s most serious and direct homeland security threat, as described in the January HSToday cover report, Savage Struggle on the Border.

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My Comment: Hmmmm .... Senator Obama supports the opening up of America's borders and for amnesty to illegal immigrants. Border fences, enforcement of existing immigration laws .... these are not measures that he supports. Drug enforcement .... same thing.

He is not inheriting a nightmare .... he is one of the many in Washington who created this nightmare.

Mexico's Drug War Is Spirling Out Of Control

U.S. Weapons Seized from Mexican Cartels

Mexico Murders Soar As Drug Violence Spirals Out Of Control -- The Telegraph

Murders and kidnappings have reached record levels in Mexico as the security forces wage a new offensive against drug cartels and organised crime.

This escalating battle claimed the lives of 5,367 members of the security forces or suspected criminals last year - more than double the figure for 2007.

President Felipe Calderón has mobilised the army behind this offensive, with soldiers now a common sight on city streets and highways throughout Mexico.

The army's deployment is unavoidable not just because of the spiralling levels of violence but also because many police officers are tempted to supplement their meagre wages by accepting drug cartel bribes. On Christmas Eve, troops detained 23 suspected traffickers in the south-western state of Guerrero. Among them was a local security official, who enjoyed a six-strong police bodyguard.

The cartels' tentacles are alleged to reach the highest levels of the government. Last November, Noé Ramírez Mandujano, a key figure in the government's anti-drugs campaign, was arrested on suspicion of accepting a $450,000 pay-off from a crime ring in return for highly sensitive information about operations mounted by the security forces. Mr Ramirez says he has done nothing wrong and has not been tried.

Read more ....

More News On Mexico's Drug War

Obama and Mexico's Calderon to talk drug war, trade -- Reuters
U.S. is not dealing with Mexican violence against Americans -- American Chronicle
Mexico’s drug wars a serious threat to U.S. -- Nevada Appeal
Effects of Mexico's drug war hit El Paso -- Dallas News
Legalized drugs only way to halt cartels -- El Paso Times

Mexico's Drug War Is Impacting The U.S. Mexico Border

A sign hung by the Raza Rights Coalition hangs on the Mexican side
of the border fence in Friendship Park Photo: AP

Symbolic Park Makes Way For New Fences On US-Mexico Border -- The Daily Telegraph

A beachfront plaza founded over 30 years ago as a symbol of goodwill between the US and Mexico border is being closed to make way for a giant, reinforced fence.

Friendship Park, between Imperial Beach in California and Tijuana in Mexico, was dedicated by Patricia Nixon, then first lady, in the early 1970s, and has long been a popular meeting and picnic spot.

Although a chain-link fence divides the space along the border, the barrier allows people on either side, often those separated by immigration status, to have contact, share food, talk and kiss.

But the US Border Patrol has ordered the area, part of the Border Field State Park, be permanently closed to the public and a secondary, solid border fence be erected north of the existing fence stretching out to the Pacific Ocean.

The US is already developing plans for a "surge" of force to tackle the escalating bloodshed from Mexico's brutal drug wars, should the violence spill across the border.

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More News On Mexico's Drug War

Feds have plan if Mexico drug violence spills over -- AP
In Mexico, Curbing Violence Before It Is Learned -- New York Times
US, Mexican Presidents to Meet on Drug Crime -- Voice Of America
Bush to meet Mexican president in Washington -- AFP
Obama to meet with Mexican president -- MSNBC

U.S. Plans Border ‘Surge’ Against Any Drug Wars

Agents in Arizona keep watch on the border with technology that is to be part of the “virtual fence” of cameras and sensors. David Sanders for The New York Times

From The New York Times:

The soaring level of violence in Mexico resulting from the drug wars there has led the United States to develop plans for a “surge” of civilian and perhaps even military law enforcement should the bloodshed spread across the border, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Wednesday.

Mr. Chertoff said the criminal activity in Mexico, which has caused more than 5,300 deaths in the last year, had long troubled American authorities. But it reached a point last summer, he said, where he ordered specific plans to confront in this country the kind of shootouts and other mayhem that in Mexico have killed members of warring drug cartels, law enforcement officials and bystanders, often not far from the border.

“We completed a contingency plan for border violence, so if we did get a significant spillover, we have a surge — if I may use that word — capability to bring in not only our own assets but even to work with” the Defense Department, Mr. Chertoff said in a telephone interview.

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My Comment: Lax and/or non-existent border and immigration control has already brought the Mexican drug wars to the U.S. Failure from our political leaders to owe up to this problem is now only exacerbating what is already a crisis.

More News On Mexico's Drug Wars

Mexico drug war likely to intensify -- Seattle Times
Gunmen Attack TV Offices in Mexico -- Washington Post
Narcotraffickers Attack Televisa, Mexico's Top TV Network -- CS Monitor
More US Funds Freed for Mexico's Drug Fight -- Associated Press
In Crime Wave, an Interrupted Meal Haunts Mexico -- New York Times

Mexico's Drug Violence Expected To Intensify In '09

Coffins of six Mexican soldiers, decapitated in a gruesome, drug-related attack, were carried during their funeral last month in Chilpancingo. CLAUDIO CRUZ/The Associated Press

From Dallas News:

WASHINGTON – Drug-related violence in Mexico, already at unprecedented levels, is expected to escalate further this year, with targets likely to include top Mexican politicians and law enforcement agents and possibly even U.S. officials, according to diplomats and intelligence experts on both sides of the border.

The warning underscores the difficult choices confronting President Felipe Calderón as he takes on drug cartels while weighing the implications of growing casualties in a year of midterm elections and a slowing economy.

Read more ....

Mexican Drug Cartels Negotiating A Peace Agreement

The murders are notable for their brazen and excessive nature. Two police officers and a female civilian were killed in this rush-hour shootout on the city's main street. Photo from Time Magazine

From Dallas News:

CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico – Mexico's warring cartels are negotiating a truce that, if it holds, could end one of the bloodiest eras since the 1910-20 Mexican Revolution, according to a U.S. official and experts familiar with the talks.

A peace agreement would be the second in two years and, like the last one, its chances of surviving are slim, the U.S. official said.

"In the end, greed prevails over reason," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Last year was one of the bloodiest ever, with more than 5,700 people killed nationwide, including 1,600 in Ciudad Juárez.

Because of the mounting violence, some experts, including Howard Campbell, author of the upcoming book Drug War Zone, believe a truce is possible. Campbell, a border anthropologist at the University of Texas at El Paso, said violence will soon "peak out because all the attention is bad for business."

Read more ....

Chihuahua City Now A Model For Cleaning Up Mexico's Police

Photo: Rich Clabaugh/Christian Science Monitor Staff

From Christian Science Monitor:

A three-month-old program that allows human rights workers 24-hour access to live images of prison life is the newest effort toward transparency for Chihuahua's lauded police department.

Chihuahua city, Mexico - There is nothing extraordinary inside the municipal jail in Chihuahua City: Half a dozen men kill time – some sleeping, others pacing – their languid motions caught on TV monitors outside their cells.

But the cameras aren't just to aid the guards. Across town, Chihuahua's state human rights office is viewing the same scene on a TV screen that shows images from cameras set up throughout two city jails.

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My Comment: Transparency is the weapon that is most effective against corrupt police, bureaucrats, and politicians. This story is another example of what happens when you practice it.

Outside View: Mexico's Criminal Insurgency

From The Middle East Times:

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 18 (UPI) -- Behind the headlines about kidnappings, assassinations and shootouts, the escalating conflict in Mexico between drug cartels, gangs and the police is evolving into a kind of criminal insurgency.

Vying for domination of the lucrative drug trade, the cartels are seeking both market control and freedom from government interference. Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez and other border towns are racked with violence. Mexico City itself is not immune. Corruption joins the extreme violence and helps fuel Mexico's downward spiral.

Drug murders in Mexico have more than doubled this year to nearly 5,400, with 943 occurring in November alone. On Nov. 30 nine decapitated victims of the drug wars were discovered in Tijuana. Within the past few weeks, Mexican "drug czar" Noe Ramirez Mandujano was accused of taking $450,000 in bribes from Sinaloa's Pacific cartel. Five hundred municipal police in Tijuana were replaced because of fears that they were corrupt. Mexico's liaison to Interpol, Ricardo Gutierrez Vargas, was arrested under suspicion of leaking information from criminal intelligence databases to the cartels. A newspaper office in Culiacan, Sinaloa's capital, was also attacked with grenades.

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My Comment: For years the drug trade was isolated to only a few regions .... and was not perceived as a serious criminal and/or corruption issue. But in the past few years the drug trade has escalated via through murders and kidnappings .... as well as turf wars between numerous gangs and factions.

It was only natural that the Central Government had to respond to this drug culture and violence .... hence the war.

Will this criminal insurgency get worse .... probably. But in the end it will be the Central Government and its law enforcement that will win. The question is .... "how long will this fight last", and "what will be the body count" when it is over.

Two years after its launch, Mexicans question President Calderón's drug war

ON THE LOOKOUT: Mexican military helicopters patrolled the skies last month near Apatzingan, Mexico, an area plagued by drug trafficking and violence.
MOISES ORTEGA/NOTIMEX/NEWSCOM

From the Christian Science Monitor:

Drug-trafficking deaths have skyrocketed by more than 117 percent in 2008.

Mexico City - Five thousand, three hundred, and seventy-six people have been killed in Mexico's drug war so far this year, double the number from last year and more than all the US troops killed in Iraq.

Is this what victory looks like?

That's the question Mexico is grappling with two years after President Felipe Calderón took office announcing a massive military effort to dismantle drug trafficking organizations.

Thursday marks two years since Mr. Calderón announced "Operation Michoacán," the first of a sustained series of high-profile deployments of soldiers across the country.

Since then, federal authorities have disarmed scores of police departments, boasted of bundles of cash and caches of weapons confiscated, and heralded arrests of some of the highest-profile traffickers as proof of success.

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My Comment: There are two points that I want to offer to this discussion. (1) This drug war started before Calderon became President, and (2) Mexico does not have any other good options. Avoiding the entire drug war that is breaking out in the country is not going to solve the problem .... it will only become worse because of the money and corruption that it buys.

Indiscriminate Drug Killings Sow Terror In Mexico

The body of a man killed in a shootout lies on a street in Tijuana, in Mexico's state of Baja California December 9, 2008. (Jorge Duenes/Reuters)

From Yahoo News/Reuters:

TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) – Gunmen are deliberately killing innocent people with random shootings at bars, restaurants and shopping malls in the city of Tijuana in a new scare tactic that takes Mexico's drug war to new depths.

Hit squads have killed at least 50 people, including around 10 children, since October in an escalation of violence in public places that security officials say is akin to terrorism.

The indiscriminate attacks, including shootings in cinemas, pool halls and restaurants, appear to be an attempt by the weakened Arellano Felix cartel to show security forces and rival gangs that it is still a force despite setbacks.

Read more ....

More News On Mexico's Drug Wars

Killings in Drug War in Mexico Double in ’08 -- New York Times
Corruption Hurting Mexico's Fight Against Crime -- Los Angeles Times
Mexico's corruption fight reaches civil workers -- CNN
Mexico Drug Gang Killings Surge -- BBC News
Mexican drug war a threat to U.S. -- Concord Monitor
A Perfect Storm in Latin America -- Weekly Standard opinion

23 Seconds Of The Mexican Drug War

When four people in a Monterrey jewelry store were killed by gunmen who took nothing, few doubted that it was a message.

From the L.A. Times:

Multiple security cameras recorded three attackers as they mowed down a guard posted near the entrance and three patrons at the display cases -- a police commander, his wife and a woman who sold jewelry door to door.

In the seconds before the gunmen burst into the tiny Lozano Garza jewelry store in this city's downtown, three shoppers browsed the display cases. An unarmed security guard sat by the door. Then three men with assault rifles ran in, one after the other, the muzzles of their weapons ablaze. By the time anyone reacted to the gunfire, it was too late. The four people collapsed in the barrage of bullets. One of the gunmen helped another, apparently wounded by a comrade, out of the store. Before the last killer fled, he fired final shots into a customer and the guard. Twenty-three seconds after they came, the gunmen disappeared into the traffic of busy Francisco Madero Avenue, lined with hardware and lighting shops, taco vendors and newsstands. The page of a catalog on one case fluttered in the breeze.

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Mexico To UN: Army Will Slowly Leave Drug Fight

From Yahoo News/AP:

MEXICO CITY – Mexico says its army will eventually leave the fight against drug trafficking.

But officials did not set a firm date for the start of the withdrawal.

The promise was made Thursday in the government's human rights progress report to the United Nations.

Mexico argues it must use soldiers in its nationwide crackdown on the drug trade because police are still too corrupt to take over the battle.

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Drug Violence Leaves 30 Dead In Mexico

Photo from Javno

From The Australian:

SUSPECTED drug-related violence has left 30 dead across Mexico in the past three days, officials said.

Most of the dead were found in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez, the country's most dangerous locale for gangland-style killings.

Authorities reported eight deaths in the city, including the bodies of a couple kidnapped by gunmen hours earlier.

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My Comment: And there are no signs that this violence is going to decrease.

Sorting Good Guys From The Bad In Mexican Drug War

International Herald Tribune:

MEXICO CITY: Many of the mug shots of drug traffickers that appear in the Mexican press show surly-looking roughnecks glaring menacingly at the camera. An anti-corruption investigation unveiled last week in the Mexican capital, however, made it clear that not everybody enmeshed in the narcotics trade looked the part.

There was a gray-haired, grandfatherly type who was pushing 70, as well as an avuncular figure with a neatly styled goatee and wire-rimmed spectacles. Some of the five men who found themselves on the front pages of newspapers on their way to jail wore suits and looked more like bureaucrats than bad guys.

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Mexico's Drug Cartels Are Preparing For War

The corpse of a Mexican policeman shot dead by assassins lies on the street in Rosarito, Baja California state, on October 16. Almost 400 people have died in the past two weeks in an intensifying drugs war in Mexico despite a government crackdown on cartels, trafficking and related violence.
(AFP/Said Betanzos)

FBI Warns Of Drug Cartel Arming
-- Washington Times

The FBI is warning that one of Mexico´s most brutal drug cartels is attempting to violently regain control of drug trafficking routes in the United States and has been ordered to engage law enforcement officers to protect their operations, according to an intelligence report obtained by The Washington Times.

Los Zetas, the enforcer of Mexico´s infamous Gulf Cartel, is reinforcing its ranks and stockpiling weapons in safe houses in the U.S. in response to recent crackdowns in the U.S. and Mexico against drug traffickers, said the FBI San Antonio Field Office's Joint Assessment Bulletin. The bulletin was dated Oct. 17 and was sent to law enforcement officials in the Texas region.

The bulletin said the cartel's regional leader, Jaime Gonzalez, has ordered the reinforcements to a tactical operational territory, or "plaza," in the area around the southern Texas towns of McAllen and Mission, about 235 miles south of San Antonio and less than five miles from the border with Mexico.

"In direct response to recent United States law enforcement activities against Los Zetas members of the McAllen-Mission, Texas Plaza, Jaime Gonzalez, AKA 'HUMMER,' has ordered additional personnel to the Plaza to regain control and engage law enforcement officers if confronted," states the bulletin, which was produced by the FBI's McAllen Intelligence Center.

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My Comment:As bad as the violence has been for the past two years in Mexico and on the U.S. side of the border, this FBI report is clearly indicating that things are going to get worse.