Pubdate: Sun, 13 Mar 2011
Source: Houston Chronicle (TX)
Copyright: 2011 Houston Chronicle Publishing Company Division, Hearst Newspaper
Contact:  http://www.chron.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/198
Author: Vanda Felbab Brown
Note: Felbab-Brown is a fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings 
Institution and author of "Shooting Up: Counterinsurgency and the War 
on Drugs."
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm (Opinion)

The Border

A SMARTER DRUG INTERDICTION POLICY FOR MEXICO

Focus Efforts on Middle Layer of Drug Cartels

President Felipe Calderon visited Washington earlier this month amid 
a significant escalation in drug-related violence in Mexico and 
strained relations with the United States. However, it is critical 
that dissatisfaction on both sides does not give rise to purely 
symbolic actions aimed at placating concerns rather than achieving 
real results in ending the Mexican drug wars. Neither the U.S. nor 
Mexico will benefit from more frequent but less strategic hits 
against Mexico's drug gangs. Ramping up of the campaign against 
Mexico's drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) without being truly 
strategic may satisfy some critics, but it will not enhance the 
necessary development of law enforcement, justice and corrections 
institutions in Mexico that are needed to make real headway in ending 
the Mexican drug wars. Counterproductively, non-strategic action will 
likely further increase the violence and decrease Mexican public 
support for the effort in the long term.

The shooting of two U.S. law enforcement agents in Mexico last month 
marked another escalation of the bloody drug war that has claimed 
more than 34,000 lives since Calderon came to power. Statements by 
U.S. officials questioning Mexico's capacity and stability have 
angered Calderon. He recently lashed out against what he described as 
U.S. distortions and exaggerations while blaming the United States 
for failing to stop the flow of U.S. guns to Mexico and reduce demand 
for drugs.

Reducing demand in the United States would be enormously helpful not 
only for law enforcement, but also for decreasing other social costs 
of drug use. The Obama administration has emphasized demand reduction 
and modestly increased demand-reduction spending. But even with a 
bigger budget and better knowledge about the effectiveness of various 
demand reduction policies, reducing demand in the United States will 
take a long time. Moreover, Mexican DTOs are already branching out 
into other rackets, such as extortion of businesses, human smuggling 
and kidnapping.

While investigations show that 90 percent of identified weapons used 
by Mexican DTOs originate in the United States, focusing on the 
weapons flows as the mechanism to reduce the violence in Mexico is a 
red herring. The Obama administration has undertaken several 
initiatives to combat the weapons flows. But U.S. gun laws make 
increasing the interdiction rate difficult, and stopping guns at 
borders is as hard as stopping drugs at borders. The global market of 
small arms is fully integrated -- even if U.S. law enforcement was 
able to shut down the flows, Mexican criminals would buy the weapons 
elsewhere. Most importantly, weapons availability does not seem to 
greatly influence strategic violence by criminal organizations. 
Analyses of violence levels after changes in weapons laws and 
weapons-collection drives show that smaller availability of weapons 
does reduce unpremeditated violence, including domestic or street 
disputes escalating into armed assaults. These are important 
improvements. But there is little indication that such anti-gun 
measures reduce strategic warfare among criminal organizations or 
against the state. In the United States, the same Mexican DTOs 
operate with even a greater access to weapons, but are nowhere as 
violent as in Mexico.

A key reason for the violence in Mexico is the way interdiction 
operations have been carried out - focusing the hollowed-out law 
enforcement and justice sector on high-value targets, such as top 
capos, and arresting tens of thousands of foot soldiers, while the 
middle layer of DTO operators has not been severely affected.

After decades of underdevelopment and corruption, neither the 
judicial nor the corrections systems in Mexico have caught up with 
the drug-trade challenge. Many petty drug pushers end up doing a 
year-or-two stint in overcrowded prisons that serve as higher 
education for criminals and more deeply anchor them in the cartels' 
grasp. A complete overhaul of the justice system could not be 
expected to proceed rapidly. Police reform in Mexico, given the level 
of corruption, technical deficiencies and complexity of police 
institutions, was bound to take at minimum a decade.

Non-strategic, high-value targeting on the basis of incremental 
intelligence without consideration of what kind of turf wars it will 
provoke is one reason behind Mexico's violence. Without prior or 
simultaneous arrests of middle commanders, DTO leadership easily 
regenerates. The temporary weakening of a DTO that just suffered the 
arrest of a narcojefe tempts other groups to try to take over its 
turf. To reduce such regeneration, interdiction operations in the 
United States frequently arrest hundreds of cartel members at once, 
including as much of the middle layer as possible, often having built 
up intelligence over several years. But the lack of strategic 
intelligence capacity in Mexico and the fear that intelligence will 
leak out prematurely put a premium on quick, high-value targeting.

Expanding targeting to the middle layer needs to become a key feature 
of the strategy in Mexico, along with a steadfast institutional 
development and social policies to reduce communities' vulnerability 
to crime. Reducing violence equally needs to be integrated into 
strategy - otherwise, public support in Mexico will continue to 
weaken and temptations by local officials to strike deals with the 
narcos will increase.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake