Pubdate: Wed, 11 Mar 2009
Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Copyright: 2009 Associated Press
Contact:  http://www.mercurynews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/390
Author: Traci Carl, Associated Press

PROGRESS IN MEXICO DRUG WAR IS DRENCHED IN BLOOD

MEXICO CITY -- Headless bodies in Tijuana, kidnapped children in 
Phoenix and shootouts on the streets of Vancouver: These are the 
unwanted byproducts of progress in the Mexican drug war.

While the headline-grabbing chaos creates the appearance of a drug 
trade escalating out of control, evidence suggests Mexico's cartels 
are increasingly desperate due to a cross-border crackdown and a 
shift in the cocaine market from the U.S. to Europe.

Those pressures are forcing Mexico's criminal networks, once 
accustomed to shipping drugs quietly and with impunity, to wage ever 
more violent battles over scraps and diversify into other criminal 
enterprises, including extortion and kidnapping for ransom on both 
sides of the U.S. border.

"This is not reflecting the power of these groups," Attorney General 
Eduardo Medina Mora told The Associated Press in an interview. "This 
is reflecting how they are melting down in terms of capabilities, how 
they are losing the ability to produce income."

As evidence of that pressure, the U.S. government says the amount of 
cocaine seized on U.S. soil dropped by 41 percent from early 2007 to 
mid-2008. Reduced supply is said to have raised street prices by 
nearly a third to about $125 a gram in the U.S. and lowered purity by 
more than 15 percent. Both the U.S. and Canadian governments are even 
seeing prolonged shortages of cocaine.

"The reason you see the escalation in violence is because U.S. and 
Mexican law enforcement are winning," Garrison Courtney, spokesman 
for the Drug Enforcement Administration, said Tuesday. "You are going 
to see the drug traffickers push back because we are breaking their 
back. It's reasonable to assume they are going to try to fight to 
stay relevant."

Mexican cartels are being cut out of the U.S. methamphetamine market 
as well, the U.S. and Mexican governments say, though smuggling of 
marijuana from Mexico has increased steadily since 2005 as demand increases.

The trouble for Mexico's illicit trade began Sept. 11, 2001, when 
terrorist attacks in the United States prompted heightened security 
at the border. President Felipe Calderon upped the ante by directly 
confronting the cartels on his first day in office two years ago, 
sending 45,000 soldiers and federal police to battle the cartels 
across the country.

Improved cooperation with the U.S. since then led to the recent 
arrests of 755 Sinaloa cartel suspects in U.S. cities and towns as 
small as Stowe, Iowa. Mexican authorities, meanwhile, rooted out more 
than two dozen high-level government security officials, including 
Mexico's former drug czar, who were allegedly paid to protect the 
same gang, Mexico's most powerful.

The U.S. Embassy reported a record 85 extraditions from Mexico to the 
U.S. in 2008, contributing to a power vacuum that sparked an all-out 
war among the cartels as they battle for routes to the U.S. and 
control of Mexico's growing domestic drug market.

These successes, however, come with a brutal cost: skyrocketing 
violence in Mexico, with twice as many deaths last year and more than 
1,000 people killed in the first eight weeks of this year; more than 
560 kidnappings in Phoenix in 2007 and the first half of 2008, and 
more than two dozen shootings so far this year in Vancouver, British 
Columbia, where a shortage of cocaine from Mexico has pushed prices 
up from $23,300 to almost $39,000 a kilo.

The Mexican government estimates that 90 percent of those killed are 
linked to the drug trade, and many kidnappings in the U.S. are also 
drug related.

Mexico was just a token player in the cocaine trade some two decades 
ago, when the U.S. cracked down on the Caribbean routes for Colombian cocaine.

Suddenly, Mexican cartels that already trafficked marijuana and 
heroin controlled the main routes to the coveted U.S. cocaine market.

Today, 90 percent of all cocaine that ends up in the U.S. moves 
through Mexico, according to the U.S. State Department, and the gangs 
make an estimated $10 billion in annual profits.

But the U.S. market is being eclipsed by booming demand for cocaine 
in Europe, where users now pay twice the going U.S. rate, and 
Colombian gangs don't need Mexican middlemen when shipping across the Atlantic.

Mexican gangs have tried to develop their own routes into Europe, 
even forging ties to the Italian Mafia. But they have had limited 
success and Medina Mora predicts the Colombians will win out in the end.

The Mexicans have also lost control of the vast U.S. meth market, the 
U.S. and Mexican governments say. In 2003, Mexico legally imported 
235 metric tons of the key precursor chemical pseudoephedrine -- 
about twice what was needed to supply its entire cold and allergy market.

But Mexico banned pseudoephedrine imports in 2007 after the 
spectacular discovery of $207 million in cash in a Chinese 
pharmaceutical businessman's Mexico City mansion.

While Mexican gangs may be on the defensive for the first time since 
their rise to power, they are far from dead.

A December report by the Justice Department says Mexican cartels 
already pose "the greatest organized crime threat to the United 
States," and the U.S. Joint Forces Command recently compared Mexico 
to Pakistan, saying both governments are at risk of "rapid and sudden collapse."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom