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InvisibleveggieM

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
How Hard is Mexico Fighting Drugs?
    #7621424 - 11/11/07 09:51 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

How Hard is Mexico Fighting Drugs?
November 9, 2007 - Time

Despite their reputation for incompetence, corruption and abuse, Mexico's police and military are pretty good anti-drug cops. That is, when they want to be. In recent weeks there has been some impressive interdiction work south of the border, including last week's seizure of 23.5 tons of cocaine — with a street value of more than $400 million — at the Pacific coast port of Manzanillo. It was, in fact, the largest coke bust in Mexico's history.

But there is a strong incentive for the massive show of efficiency: the U.S. Congress is currently debating whether to approve President Bush's two-year, $1.4 billion anti-drug aid proposal for Mexico. Veteran observers remark that every time Mexico wants to ensure U.S. State Department certification in the drug war, scores of Mexican drug traffickers get rounded up. Every time Mexico wants U.S. helicopters, mountains of methamphetamines suddenly get intercepted on their way across the border. The problem is, once Mexico wins the prize, a lot of its law enforcement usually repays the favor by joining up again with the country's drug cartels. That was the case a decade ago when, after Washington agreed to begin sharing important anti-drug intelligence with Mexico City, no less than Mexico's drug czar, Army Gen. Jesus Guterriez Rebollo, was discovered to be in the pocket of Mexico's major drug lord. "We've seen this movie before," says drug expert Bruce Bagley, professor of international relations at the University of Miami. "It's gotten to be almost a ritual."

It's time for a fresh approach: The U.S. has to make sure the aid is accompanied by a genuine modernization of Mexico's local, state and federal law enforcement, whose officers all too often become members rather than opponents of Mexico's $25 billion-a-year drug trafficking industry. "The U.S. must be strict and demanding in that sense this time," says Bagley, echoing a chorus of anti-drug analysts in both Mexico and the U.S. "If we make this aid an open spigot without transparent and measurable criteria for the professionalization of Mexico's police forces, then it risks being money wasted."

Experts like Bagley agree that reform at least seems more likely under new Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who during his first year has made a major military push against the nation's increasingly bloodthirsty drug cartels. (One of Calderon's cabinet-level anti-drug advisers, Sigrid Arzt, is one of Bagley's doctoral students.) Mexico's Public Security Minister, Genaro Garcia Luna, has begun a serious purge of the federal police as well as a training program for federal and state cops under U.S., Canadian and European tutors. None of that will mean much, of course, if Mexico doesn't start paying its cops salaries decent enough to make them less vulnerable to drug cartel recruitment — and many feel a good chunk of the new aid package should be used for just that purpose. But either way, Garcia declared that last week's Manzanillo seizure "reaffirms the reach of [Calderon's] strategy... to break the operational networks of organized crime groups" in Mexico.

Still, the stakes are higher this time because the U.S. is giving more money and more valuable equipment to Mexico than usual. Although the aid package doesn't reach the annual $1 billion-plus that Washington shells out to Bogota under Plan Colombia, it contains a cache of high-tech law enforcement toys the U.S. has been wary to share in the past, due to the risk of having them fall into Mexican traffickers' hands. (The leaders of Mexico's most vicious drug gang, a group of ex-army special forces soldiers known as the Zetas, are experts at high-tech communications.) Among them: sophisticated telephone eavesdropping; systems to track cell phones; lie detector machines and, perhaps most important, criminal data bases.

U.S. and Mexican officials also say heavyweight interdiction tools like Blackhawk helicopters are being discussed. As a result, many analysts believe the higher value of the aid package and its offerings could serve as more effective leverage to persuade Mexican law enforcement to finally get its act together — especially if it makes different police and military branches compete for the booty.

But the aid's real value is probably political, at least in the eyes of the Bush Administration. The conservative Calderon is a rare U.S. ally in a Latin America that is increasingly steering leftward. Because he won last year's presidential election by a less than 1% margin, the White House sees the aid as a solid means of shoring up his stature at home and abroad. It also allows Bush to look as if he's fulfilling his own 2000 campaign pledge to make Mexico a foreign policy priority — after the country was anything but the past seven years.

The U.S. is in no position to cut off funding, given the unprecedented cross-border drug flow and drug-related bloodletting Mexico is suffering today. It's the kind of south-of-the-border instability Washington can never stomach for too long. But perhaps this time there will some incentive for Mexico's cops to deploy their skills long after U.S. aid arrives.


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InvisibleEntheogenicPeace
Scholar
Male


Registered: 10/04/05
Posts: 3,926
Re: How Hard is Mexico Fighting Drugs? [Re: veggie]
    #7621722 - 11/11/07 11:41 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

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Edited by EntheogenicPeace (01/30/21 06:53 PM)


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Offlinenk pakelika
Visual assassin
Male


Registered: 04/02/07
Posts: 308
Loc: the mirror
Last seen: 15 years, 20 days
Re: How Hard is Mexico Fighting Drugs? [Re: EntheogenicPeace]
    #7623108 - 11/11/07 06:53 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

I'm pretty sure i know the dea pig on the right of the pic with his head turned. fucking snitch....


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when i get up i wake-n-bake, take a pis and shake, my clock stops at 420 what you want me too say.


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Offlinerodfarva
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=====-----=-=-=-=-I
Male


Registered: 07/31/07
Posts: 4,982
Last seen: 6 years, 10 months
Re: How Hard is Mexico Fighting Drugs? [Re: nk pakelika]
    #7623507 - 11/11/07 08:45 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Great !! lets give some poor ass country 1.5 Billion to "fight" a war on drugs. Then when all the drugs are gone say thank you and expect the mexicans to not try and cash in on our blind flinging of billions. IE government back channel support of drug cartels :frown:

Thanks for raising my college tuition again, taking 1/3rd of my paycheck, and sending half my friends to the middle east.


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InvisibleThirdEyeOpening
Lost In My Head
Male User Gallery


Folding@home Statistics
Registered: 08/24/04
Posts: 2,287
Loc: How the fuck should i kno... Flag
Re: How Hard is Mexico Fighting Drugs? [Re: veggie]
    #7624168 - 11/12/07 12:12 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

This is the most moronic idea of the war on drugs yet, beside the thought that it can be "won".


Throw money at the problem it will go away! And if it doesn't, we can get more idiots with too much money to join us, yey! Hooray America!!


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Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity. Im not too sure about the former.      -Einstein

Of course the rules need to be enforced, but the goal of law and order should be to create a just society, not to enforce laws. -Unknown

“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”  -Stephen Roberts


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Invisiblejeetered
Stranger
Male User Gallery


Registered: 07/07/06
Posts: 3,055
Loc: no clue
Re: How Hard is Mexico Fighting Drugs? [Re: ThirdEyeOpening]
    #7624761 - 11/12/07 08:02 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

the way this read to me, was the american govt. is paying 1.2billion dollars, for what they could have got for 400million, on the street.

that's a lot of drugs.
Bush has a baaaad habit then huh?


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