There it is in plain sight — a full-scale civil war in Mexico
that continues to be downplayed by Washington as just another
battle among rival drug traffickers. Treated by the State
Department and Homeland Security as simply a domestic criminal
problem across the border, this no-holds-barred insurgency
threatens the existence of all phases of legal governance in a
large portion of the United States’ southern neighbor.
The importance of stability in Mexico for the U.S. easily
can be seen in the crucial fact that Mexico is the source of
close to one million barrels per day of oil imported into the
United States — third only behind Canada and Saudi
Arabia.
There is no higher level of terrorism worldwide than that
which exists today in Mexico. A conscious effort is in process by
the drug cartels to take over the physical areas of northern and
portions of central Mexico, replacing existing governmental forms
with their own deadly justice. This organized criminal contest
now has grown to constitute a form of civil war that isn’t much
different in effect from what is taking place in the Caucasus,
Congo, southern Philippines or even Afghanistan.
How many people have to be killed before the White House
will accept the fact that a full scale insurgency exists within
this strategically vital country to the south of the U.S. In
2009, the Associated Press estimated drug battle deaths added up
to more than 6,500. Just in the key manufacturing city of Ciudad
Juarez across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, local officials
have reported that approximately 2,600 people died last year in
the fighting. In the past three years Mexican official figures
conservatively set deaths occurring in this conflict on all sides
as nearing 15,000.
What began as turf wars among the six major drug cartels
has escalated into a major conflict between governmental forces
(police and military) and the several equally well-armed
organizations of the narcotics monopolies. And here is where
further complications are added, for it repeatedly has been
reported that uniformed soldiers have been active as drug cartel
enforcers. Other press reports indicate battles between the local
police and soldiers for control of given smuggling routes. The
stories of cartel, police and military interaction run the gamut
from business-like to bizarre.
Law enforcement sources in the four American border states
of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California are unanimous in
their intelligence concerning the character of the war itself.
All agree that the brutality of the fighting where few are left
wounded is matched by the bestiality of the drug cartels’ methods
of interrogation and revenge. Beheadings and body mutilation are
now the norm. When a federal police officer was exposed by name
after he was killed during a raid, his entire family — wife,
children, and parents — was assassinated as a lesson to other
federales.
President Felipe Calderon has decided that the local police
forces cannot be trusted and that their collaboration with the
drug cartels can be stopped only by their removal. His announced
aim is to replace all the local police with state police, who are
presumably less vulnerable to cartel blandishments and coercion.
This means creating 32 major police instruments (31 states and
Mexico City) to carry on the current jurisdiction of 2,022
municipal entities and their 160,907 town and city cops.
The physical and legal challenge of this strategy requires
a congressional mandate and subsequent hiring and training
program of enormous size. It is planned, however, that the better
educated of the metro forces will be converted into state police.
As 68% of Mexico’s municipal police force has only a ninth grade
education (according to the Mexican Office of Public Safety),
this will be quite a job indeed.
Calderon’s objective is eventually to remove the Mexican
Army from its internal policing role, which now reportedly
occupies 45,000 soldiers out of a total army force structure of
230,000. The problem with such a plan is that the current
security cooperation agreement between the United States and
Mexico that includes funding of $1.4 billion over several years
is heavily oriented to having the Mexican military assume a
continuing role in combating drug trafficking.
A new and expensive assistance mechanism between the two
countries will have to be created to provide the financial and
technical aid the central government in Mexico City needs.
Meanwhile, in addition to the 450,000 people estimated by
official American sources to be employed directly by the drug
cartels in cultivation, processing, and smuggling, there may be
multiples of that number indirectly involved. The entire illegal
business revenue has been reckoned in the region of $25
billion.
As long as this self-funding mechanism continues, so will
Mexico’s countrywide war against itself. How long will the United
States accept the dangers of having a criminally contested state
on its border?
