Pubdate: Wed, 20 Mar 2002
Source: Providence Journal, The (RI)
Copyright: 2002 The Providence Journal Company
Contact:  http://www.projo.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/352
Author: Ted Galen Carpenter
Note: Ted Galen Carpenter is vice president for defense and foreign - 
policy studies at the Cato Institute. His latest book is Bad Neighbor 
Policy: Washington's Futile Drug War in Latin America (forthcoming, 
Palgrave/St. Martins).

IS MEXICO SLIDING DOWN COLOMBIA ROAD?

Washington

AS PRESIDENT BUSH prepares to travel to Latin America, one of the top 
issues for discussion will be the war on drugs.

The Bush administration is especially alarmed at the situation in Colombia, 
fearing that the democratic political system in that country could collapse 
under an assault by leftist insurgencies allied with powerful drug 
traffickers. Washington's nightmare scenario is the emergence of a Marxist 
narco-trafficking state.

U.S. leaders are so worried about that possibility that they are ready to 
expand America's military aid to Bogota and eliminate the restriction that 
the aid must be used only for counter-narcotics campaigns, not 
counter-insurgency campaigns.

The fears about Colombia are not unfounded, but U.S. policy makers have a 
serious problem brewing much closer to home. The prominence of the drug 
trade in Mexico has mushroomed in recent years.

Just two years ago, Thomas Constantine, head of the Drug Enforcement 
Administration, told Congress that the power of Mexican drug traffickers 
had grown "virtually geometrically" over the previous five years and that 
corruption was "unparalleled." Matters have grown even worse during the 
past two years.

As is often the case with lucrative black markets, the illicit drug trade 
in Mexico has been accompanied by escalating corruption and violence. In a 
number of troubling ways, Mexico is beginning to resemble Colombia a decade 
or so ago. Indeed, Mexicans are beginning to refer to the trend as the 
"Colombianization" of their country. True, Mexico does not face a 
large-scale insurgency like that afflicting Colombia, but the similarities 
between the two countries are greater than the differences.

U.S. policy seems to assume that if the Mexican government can eliminate 
the top drug lords, their organizations will fall apart, thereby greatly 
reducing the flow of illegal drugs to the United States. Thus, U.S. 
officials have rejoiced at the recent capture of Benjamin Arellano Felix -- 
the leader of one of Mexico's largest and most violent drug gangs -- and 
the apparent killing of his brother.

But that is the same assumption that U.S. officials used with respect to 
the crackdown on the Medellin and Cali cartels in Colombia during the 
1990s. Subsequent developments proved the assumption to be erroneous. The 
elimination of the Medellin and Cali cartels merely decentralized the 
Colombian drug trade.

Instead of two large organizations controlling the trade, today some 300 
much smaller, loosely organized groups do so.

The arrests and killings of numerous top drug lords in both Colombia and 
Mexico over the years have not had a meaningful impact on the quantity of 
drugs entering the United States. Cutting off one head of the 
drug-smuggling hydra merely results in more heads taking its place.

Of all the similarities between Colombia and Mexico, the most troubling may 
be the increasingly pervasive violence.

It is no longer just the cocaine and heroin trade that is characterized by 
bloodshed. Even the marijuana trade, which traditionally had generated 
little violence, is now accompanied by horrific killings.

Indeed, the biggest and bloodiest massacres over the past three years in 
Mexico have involved marijuana trafficking, not trafficking in harder drugs.

Mexico can still avoid going down the same tragic path as Colombia. But 
time is growing short.

If Washington continues to pursue a prohibitionist strategy, the violence 
and corruption that have convulsed Colombia will increasingly become a 
feature of Mexico's life as well. The illicit drug trade has already 
penetrated the country's economy and society to an unhealthy degree.

The brutal reality is that prohibitionism simply drives commerce in a 
product underground, creating an enormous black-market potential profit 
that attracts terrorists and other violence-prone elements.

U.S. officials need to ask whether they want to risk "another Colombia" -- 
only this time directly on America's southern border.

If they don't want to deal with the turmoil such a development would 
create, the Bush administration needs to change its policy on the drug 
issue -- and do so quickly.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens