It was just a few days after the story broke that there was a
battle going on within Los Zetas for control of this Mexican drug
cartel that it was confirmed that three high-ranking army generals
had been formally arrested for aiding in cocaine trafficking. One
of these officers was well known earlier to Washington in his
capacity as Deputy Defense Minister and before that as military
attaché at the Mexican embassy.
The fact is that there is a complicated war in progress in
Mexico that involves federal law enforcement and military
connections with certain drug gangs. There are also linkages of
cooperating state and local police to the illegal narcotics trade
and competition among these participants. Earlier this year the
Mexican government listed 47,515 civilian and cartel member
drug-related violent deaths since the fall of 2006.
The “Fast and Furious” exposé provided the soon-to-be outgoing
president, Felipe Calderon, with a convenient diversion on which he
could focus attention both politically and journalistically. This
now has given impetus to an important part of the announced
priority program of the incoming government of Enrique Peña Nieto
to reduce violence in Mexico — as opposed to emphasizing reduction
in drug trafficking. The theme of this politically profitable focus
is that Mexico’s problems really stem — if not totally, certainly
partially – from the U.S.- sourced gun supply and North America’s
insatiable appetite for narcotics.
Blaming the Americans for Mexico’s troubles is hardly a new
tactic, but it is unusual to have a term-ending PAN (National
Action Party) president to be seen to have prepared the ground for
a new PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) president. The
concept of diminishing emphasis on stopping the illegal traffic in
order to seek to reduce violence between the major cartels is
clearly to the liking of the narcotics organizations that now have
been decimated by their own bloodthirsty proclivities.
That the corruption had reached so high in the Army goes far to
explain the breakdown of command and control at the company and
battalion level responsible for anti-cartel operations in the
field. It has become well known that close cooperation between U.S.
and Mexican naval special operations forces has effectively closed
down cartel activity in areas where — except for certain small
specialized units — the army had been conspicuously ineffective.
Worse was the actual military assistance that army units sometimes
had given in support of cartel criminal ambitions.
Mexican navy teams, aided by American intelligence, civilian and
military, showed they were consistently superior to the combined
drug and army gangsters. Although this type of close
American/Mexican defense cooperation has been highly classified,
the results have made it possible for the new program of reducing
violence against the innocent civilian population even to be
considered.
There is a concern among some analysts of both nations, however,
that concentrating on reducing violence actually will create a
tendency to ignore the illicit drug trafficking itself. The fear is
that the practical effect will be to ease the process of
cross-border smuggling operations. This means that not only will
the physical shipment of the drugs be made less difficult if it no
longer features the typical cartel combat that has become a part of
the storage and transportation phase of the products, but it also
will ease the immense cash transfers that after all are the
ultimate reason for illegal drug smuggling.
Interdicting the transfer of vast amounts of cash has been a
priority not only of law enforcement, but also a target for rival
narcotics organizations. War among the cartels and their
sub-divisions inhibits their operations. They prey on each other
like prehistoric carnivores. Creating a peaceful environment
assists in reducing the criminal commerce to a “normalized”
business environment. Paying off local law enforcement and
judiciary becomes a far more simple “cost of doing business.” And
that is another problem faced by the new president, Enrique Nieto,
as he takes office this fall.
Mexico has existed for a long time with an economy subsidized by
an annual injection of billions of dollars produced by drug
trafficking. Any serious reduction in the dollars produced
endangers the gross national product, accounted for by the capital
created in the system, legal or not. As the illicit drug trade
works its way through to the eventual American consumer, another
underground economy has been created that serves in varying degrees
all socio-economic classes in urban and rural communities of the
United States.
It is clear that a serious unintended consequence is possible if
a major reduction in violence occurs in Mexico, even though the
flow of illegal drugs ceases to be obstructed by battling among
competing organizations. To seek to reduce the violence in Mexico
without simultaneously curbing the illicit drug traffic will do
nothing but allow the illegal narcotics trade to grow and prosper.
Has this been thought through at all?
