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THE IMPORTANCE OF HELPING MEXICO |
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Written by Ralph Peters
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Friday, 10 August 2007 |
Imagine if our country were so ravaged by
drug cartels that the president sent the military into a third of the
states to break the terror.
That's where Mexico is today. We all pay the price.
Narcotraficante infighting took over 3,000 lives in
Mexico last year as the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels struggled for turf. With
government officials and police officers facing the old choice of "silver or
lead," out-of-control corruption plagued the country.
Entire states fell under the influence of the drug lords. Narco-violence
spread to previously safe regions, such as Monterrey - the most prosperous city
between the Amazon and the Rio Grande. By late 2006, Mexico faced its gravest
internal crisis since the Revolution of 1910.
In response, Mexicans elected a tough president, Felipe
Calderon. And President Calderon took action, ordering the army into nine
states and deploying troops to cities such as Tijuana and the run-down resort
of Acapulco.
But the drug lords are fighting back. Today, the level of
violence transcends mere crime. Mexico faces a narco-insurrection. And its
government needs help.
The Bush administration is working with Calderon's team to
craft a counter-drug aid package that would provide surveillance equipment,
transport aircraft and training. The program could be announced when the
leaders of the U.S., Mexico and Canada meet in Quebec on Aug. 20. The finalized
program will probably cost several hundred million dollars.
Money well spent.
It's not only the Mexicans who are lucky to have Calderon in
office. We're lucky, too. Calderon broke a foreign-policy taboo to extradite
over a dozen high-level drug criminals wanted in the United States. Previously,
kingpins could count on staying in Mexico if arrested. Now they're scared.
But this is going to be a long struggle. Ninety percent of
the cocaine and much of the heroin and methamphetamine entering the United
States now transits Mexico. For us, the immediate problems are addiction and
crime. Drug abuse was behind many, if not most, of the 1.8 million violent
crimes committed here in 2005. And urban property crime is drug crime.
We can't just blame this problem on Mexico. Without the U.S.
market for illicit drugs, Mexico's transit-corridor problem wouldn't exist. And
the high-powered weapons arming the cartels flow south from the United
States. The arms and cash driving Mexico's narco-insurgency come from El
Norte.
Mexico's the victim here, not the perp.
In 1994, while still in the Army, I was sent on a mission to
study the narcotics problem in the Andean Ridge. A key conclusion I reached was
that the ultimate victims of the drug trade were going to be the transit
countries, the Central American states, Brazil - and, above all, Mexico.
Now, here we are. And we've got to do something. Because
Mexico's problem is our problem.
There's reason for optimism. After more than a century and a
half of bad blood between our countries, rational actors on both sides of the
border see the need to cooperate - and the challenges of Islamist terrorism
notwithstanding, Mexico remains the most important country to our national
security.
The drug trade and its consequences have killed far more of
our fellow citizens than al Qaeda or the struggle in Iraq. Of course, it's not
a choice of "which war to fight." We have to fight both
enemies, terrorists and drug lords. And the two often overlap.
Calderon needs and wants our help. But history demands that
the issue be handled sensitively (we won't see large numbers of U.S. trainers
deploying to Mexico). On this side of the border, the greatest threat to
cooperation will come from posturing lawmakers and from demagogues who reduce
our southern neighbor, with its 110 million population, to the issue of illegal
immigration alone.
A lot more comes across that 1,951-mile border than just
economic refugees.
Want to cut illegal immigration? Help Mexico become a
rule-of-law state where crime and corruption no longer inhibit economic
development.
For their part, the drug lords aren't stupid. They've taken
a lesson from Islamist extremists and they're already playing the human-rights
card with gullible gringos - blaming the Mexican army for civil-rights
violations while narco henchmen chop off heads, assassinate journalists and gun
down honest cops and straight pols.
Thanks to his crusade against the narcos, President Calderon
is himself a prime candidate for assassination.
Help him, and we help ourselves. This is one insurgency that
must - and can - be defeated.
Ralph Peters' new book is Wars
of Blood and Faith.
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