Today I want to look at the situation across the border, and kind of look into the future of the narco war in Mexico. Also please read General McCaffrey’s After Action Mexico Report, as a good little primer on the situation. The question I have, is Mexico strong enough to battle these drug cartels, and how will the drug cartels treat the US as we feed the anti-drug war with Plan Merida?
So with that in mind, let’s for a second explore the possibilities, no matter how ridiculous. Already tunnels have been used to smuggle people, drugs, and weapons on the US/Mexican border. Notice how this same tactic is used by Hamas in Israel? There have also been incidents of criminals engaging with Border Patrol using automatic weapons, and operating more like military units, as opposed to thugs. Is this not what Hamas does? Or how about FARC? We have a deal with Colombia called Plan Colombia, and that support is used to fight a very bloody narco war there. Imagine if Colombia was right on our border in the US? Would FARC have crossed the border, and made the US pay for our support of Colombia? I am positive they would.
So where do all of these examples lead us? With a determined group, they will try everything they can to survive and keep the business going. These groups will learn from others, and will be inspired by working models of operation. Mexico’s Narco-insurgency will learn from Hamas and they will learn from FARC, and I am sure they will learn from others, as to the best way to stop the governments of both the US and Mexico from messing with their business.
One way that I could see these guys going, is launching rockets into the US, much like Hamas did with Israel. Hell, the FARC even did something similar within Colombia, by using propane lob bombs or IRAM’s. The idea being, is to piss off the larger neighbor to the north, and force the US to do something violent. They would want US forces to come into Mexico and try to shut things down. But once that happens, then the larger picture of Public Relations presents itself, and a US military action in Mexico would make the Mexican military and police seem even weaker and this action could piss off a lot of civilians. At worse, even civilians could be killed in that scenario. And if you are to study the FARC in Colombia, civilians have been killed during that narco-war, mostly by FARC, but also by accidents with government reaction to the FARC.
Now with an insurgency, when a smaller group attacks an occupier or an invading force, that smaller group actually becomes the good guy in some cases amongst the local populations. The drug cartels would love for this scenario to present itself. So if these guys could egg on the US, to become more involved, then they would be happy. The Plan Merida, much like the Plan Colombia, is our first step in combating these narco-insurgencies. But we also have to be prepared for some push back from the drug cartels for getting involved like this. Will these guys start launching rockets into US cities to start a fight? Who knows, but I do know that the drug cartels in Mexico are getting more brazen and more powerful all the time. The Mexican government is having a hell of a time fighting this, and my big fear is that a full blown narco war in Mexico could look a lot like the one in Colombia, and that would not be a good thing for the US. –Matt
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General McCaffrey’s After Action Mexico Report focusing on drugs and crime in Mexico.
Academic Mexico Trip Report – December 2008
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Mexico’s Narco-Insurgency
Hal Brands | 22 Dec 2008
World Politics Review
When Barack Obama takes office on Jan. 20, his foreign policy will almost certainly be consumed by the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet Obama would do well to pay equal attention to a third ongoing insurgency, one that is currently more violent than the war in Iraq and possibly more threatening to American interests. This insurgency is raging not half a world away in the Middle East, but just across America’s southern frontier in Mexico.
Since 2006, Mexico has descended into a multifaceted narco-insurgency. Well-armed and well-funded cartels are viciously fighting the government and one another over control of the drug-running corridors into the United States. As today’s discovery of nine decapitated bodies — including seven Mexican soldiers — indicates, they do battle with astonishing savagery, often beheading, immolating, strangling, and torturing their enemies, and advertising their expertise in such tactics in slickly produced videos posted to YouTube.
The violence has escalated this year, claiming nearly 5,000 lives since January, causing a palpable sense of insecurity throughout Mexico, and leaving the Mexican government’s control of large stretches of territory nominal to non-existent. Once renowned for its political stability, Mexico now seems en route to becoming a failed state.
The dangers of this insurgency hardly end at Mexico’s northern border. The upheaval threatens to produce a spike in illegal immigration to the U.S. — according to one study, the number of undocumented migrants heading north quintupled from 2006 to 2007. It could also imperil the $364 billion in annual commerce that crosses the border and more than $84 billion in U.S. direct investment in Mexico. Economic activity in the northern part of that country is already severely depressed.
More troubling still, the destabilization of Mexico would pose a host of security challenges for the U.S., depriving it of the essentially pacific southern border that it has enjoyed since the close of the Mexican revolution 90 years ago and raising the specter of lawlessness and chaos very close to home. This is hardly a far-fetched scenario, as cartel operatives have recently been implicated in murders in Dallas, Phoenix, and other southwestern cities. The violence in Mexico will likely only get worse in the coming months, and as it does it will increasingly spill over into the U.S.
What is to be done? In its last months in power, the Bush administration has unveiled a program known as the Merida Initiative, or Plan Merida. The initiative — a three-year, $1.4 billion counter-drug assistance package aimed mainly at Mexico — is meant to strengthen the enforcement, interdiction, and internal security capabilities of the Mexican military and police. The U.S. will offer training in counter-narcotics techniques and provide equipment like helicopters, X-ray scanners, and surveillance planes, thereby allowing the Mexican government to take the offensive in the fight against the cartels.
Plan Merida represents a good start insofar as it recognizes the immense U.S. stake in Mexico’s security and stability. In terms of grappling effectively with the drug trade and its attendant violence, though, it is only a start.
It contains few if any provisions for dealing with the deeper, more embedded issues that make the drug trade so intractable: official corruption, poverty and social alienation, and the remarkable weakness of the Mexican judicial system and other critical institutions. Plan Merida also has little to say about America’s own homegrown contributions to the Mexican drug trade: the demand for illegal narcotics that keeps the cartels in business, and the flow of guns, purchased legally in the United States and then smuggled south to the cartels, that fuels the violence in Mexico. As long as these issues go unresolved, Plan Merida will be a mere palliative for the narcotics trade and its devastating consequences.
To be effective, the security and interdiction components of Plan Merida must be integrated into a broader framework that not only strengthens the forces of order in Mexico but also combats the underlying problems that drive the drug trade. This means developing anti-poverty initiatives and giving at-risk populations access to opportunities other than crime and illicit commerce; helping the Mexican government fight official corruption and strengthen feeble institutions like the judiciary; and reversing the current trend of declining appropriations for prevention, treatment, and other demand-reduction programs in the United States. It also means getting serious about restricting the flow of arms into Mexico by tightening the lax laws that currently allow cartel middle-men to purchase assault rifles and other heavy weapons from U.S. suppliers with no questions asked. Finally, it means integrating all of these elements into a coherent, interagency and international effort.
Devising and implementing such a program will not be politically easy or financially inexpensive. Yet it need not be impossible, either. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), the chairman of the Western Hemisphere subcommittee of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, has spoken eloquently about the shortcomings of Plan Merida, and Obama himself has signaled a desire for a more comprehensive approach to issues like drug trafficking and economic development in Latin America.
If these officials can seize the opportunity presented by the current crisis to refashion U.S. counter-narcotics policy in bold and imaginative ways, they may begin to make progress in dealing with the entrenched problems that have long fueled the drug trade and drug-related violence in Mexico. If not, Plan Merida will go down as another failed offensive in the war on drugs.
Hal Brands is the author of “From Berlin to Baghdad: America’s Search for Purpose in the Post-Cold War World,” and works at the Institute for Defense Analyses in Washington, D.C.
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Obama-Calderon talks to focus on Mexican drug war
By ALEXANDRA OLSON
1/11/2009
MEXICO CITY (AP) — With violence spilling over the Mexican border into the U.S., President Felipe Calderon should have little trouble securing support for his battle against drugs when he meets U.S. President-elect Barack Obama on Monday.
But as wars and economic crisis take center stage in the U.S., Calderon may have a tougher time persuading Obama to make immigration reform a top priority.
Calderon’s office said Sunday in a statement that he will press for “better conditions for Mexicans in the United States, based on respect for their rights,” and may express concerns over stepped-up migrant raids.
He might expect a friendly reception from Obama, who last year supported an unsuccessful immigration reform bill that would have given millions of undocumented migrants a path to citizenship.
Yet Obama’s administration won’t likely rush to overhaul immigration law while joblessness and foreclosures climb in the U.S., said George Grayson, a Mexico expert at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. If anything, the flagging U.S. economy will pile pressure on Obama to emphasize border security and keep illegal immigrants out.
“The chance of having immigration reform is like having it snow in the dessert,” Grayson said. “With the unemployment rate surging in the United States and the economy expected to shrink this year, it is not a hospitable time to invite more workers into the country.”
Obama’s pick for homeland security chief, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, has backed tough immigration policies in the past, including sending National Guard troops to the border and punishing employers for hiring illegal immigrants. But both she and Obama have supported giving driver’s licenses to undocumented migrants.
While Calderon’s predecessor, Vicente Fox, pressed for profound U.S. immigration reform including giving undocumented workers legal status — which became known as “the whole enchilada” — Calderon may have to settle for smaller, piecemeal measures.
“Calderon continues to emphasize the contribution that Mexican workers make to the U.S. economy,” Grayson said. “He hopes that while there may not be an opportunity for the whole enchilada, there may be some tacos coming Mexico’s way.”
Also complicating immigration reform is the war on drugs, which has increasingly defined U.S.-Mexico relations. Drug-related homicides doubled in Mexico last year, led by rising murder rates in cities across the border from the U.S. Some Mexicans, especially police officers, have fled north seeking safe haven from death threats.
Last month, the U.S. Justice Department called Mexican cartels the biggest organized crime threat to the United States, saying they are increasingly pairing up with the Italian Mafia and other gangs to control distribution in American cities.
Calderon also meets outgoing President George W. Bush on Tuesday to discuss anti-crime partnerships, the White House press office said Saturday. He also plans to visit financial experts, academics and congressional leaders.
Calderon, who has been praised by U.S. officials for deploying troops to fight cartels and capturing top drug kingpins, already won a multimillion-dollar anti-drug aid package from Washington last year.
Obama supports that plan, known as the Merida Initiative, and promises to take up another cause that Calderon champions: stopping the smuggling of guns from the U.S. to Mexico, which the Washington-based Brookings Institute says has reached a volume of 2,000 weapons a day.
Obama has said that “southbound” strategy will complement the “northbound” crackdown on drug trafficking.
Still, Calderon will have to battle for Obama’s attention as the new president grapples with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the worst economic crisis in decades.
“Deficits, two wars — Obama is coming in with a full plate,” said Riordan Roett, a Johns Hopkins University professor who advised the Obama campaign on Latin American policy.
“The growing violence and security issues for both countries are probably going to give a notch up to the president-elect’s meeting with Calderon,” Roett added. “My sense is that … there really will be an effort to put this relatively high up on the agenda.”
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