Arizona’s Neighbor from Narco-Insurgency to Narco-State? By Ralph Peters
In 1910, insurgents in northern Mexico rose up to fight for justice, opportunity and a reformed constitution, igniting a great revolution. A century later, insurgents have again taken up arms in Mexico’s northern states — but these very different rebels wage war against a democratic system, public order and the rule of law. Drug cartels and their narco-armies have turned Mexico’s border cities and the surrounding states into bloody ungoverned spaces, with 23,000 dead in less than five years — 9,000 in 2009 alone -- and the pace of assassinations and murders is accelerating. No wonder Arizona has taken action.
In recent months, the two factions of Mexico’s major cartels have not only continued their two-front conflict with each other and local authorities, but expanded their insurrection to launch direct attacks on military forces and even killed U.S. consular employees. The narcos terrorize great stretches of Mexico, torturing, raping, and killing to impress their will upon the population. Often better armed than the 48,000 soldiers and federal police deployed to subdue them, the cartels essentially operate parallel states. Their next strategic goal is to shape Mexico’s 2012 presidential election to their advantage.
If President Felipe Calderon, who’s struggling to rescue his country, cannot show clear progress, the narcos anticipate a public backlash that would install a president willing to make peace with the drug cartels. Were this to happen, we would have a de facto narco government on our southern border — a region already fraught with intractable problems. The stakes could not be higher. Yet, Washington’s level of interest is far from commensurate with the threat to our national security.
Begun under President George W. Bush and continued under Barack Obama, the Merida Initiative commits 1.3 billion dollars to aid President Calderon’s campaign against the cartels. The funds help train police officers; support prison reform; facilitate border cargo inspections; foster bilateral programs, subsidize canine inspection teams and provide non-lethal military equipment -- most notably helicopters (up to 21 used helicopters have been promised, although only five have been delivered).
All this may sound impressive, but it’s merely a token meant to excuse Washington from taking serious action along our border, an omission Arizona recently noted legislatively with such dramatic results. Payments and equipment transfers have lagged badly, but even were the full amount to be expended immediately and combined with the eight billion dollars spent by the Calderon administration to combat the narcos, the total would be only one-fifth of high-end estimates of drug cartel profits for a single year. The U.S. is, once again, just throwing money at a problem it wants to duck — and not even very much money, compared to our vast expenditures in the madcap struggle to turn Afghanistan into Idaho (while fighting Russia’s drug war, instead of our own).
Meanwhile, the virus of Mexico’s narco-insurgency has infected our own country. That tally of 23,000 dead doesn’t include the victims of drug gangs in our inner cities, drug-related criminality throughout our country, or borderland ranchers, accidental witnesses and law-enforcement officials murdered by narcotics smugglers. Our federal government’s attitude is that what happens in Mexico, stays in Mexico. But it doesn’t. Our southern border is no longer a fixed frontier, but merely a zone of transition. Border violations carry no serious penalties, while left-wing activists and the establishment media prefer indicting our border agents over enforcing our laws. Nor are the consequences of this narco-insurgency limited to the drug front. The cartels do business in the complementary fields of human trafficking, kidnapping, extortion, arms smuggling and a broad range of other criminal activities. In recent months, border officials in Arizona and California have reported a shift in the character of illegal immigrants they apprehended: Instead of the usual working class Mexicans and Central Americans hoping for employment, they’ve caught a startlingly high proportion of criminals with ugly records.
What’s happening is this: As jobs grew scarcer, illegal economic migration trailed off. Now we’re seeing two species of narco-criminals infiltrating our border: First, criminals fleeing from other criminals as their faction loses power amid the cartel turf wars, and, second, agents of the victorious cartels heading north to extend their franchises on our soil.
This is not good news.
Mexico isn’t only exporting illegal drugs — up to 300 tons of South American cocaine annually; most of the meth amphetamines consumed in the U.S.; and plenty of heroin and marijuana — it’s also exporting its narco civil war. And we’re worried about the “rights” of illegal immigrants!
Meanwhile, narrow-issue activists in the US howl about the alleged injustice of Arizona’s move to allow police officers to enforce the law of the land — as if illegal immigration occurs in isolation from all else that’s ravaging both sides of our southern border. Although ideological fanaticism on the left immediately made the popular legislative initiative in Phoenix a scare headline, Arizona’s slandered law is no more than a last ditch effort to stand up to a vast criminal onslaught haunted by history. Arizona isn’t throwing “innocent” illegal immigrants overboard: state leaders are reaching for a life preserver for the state’s law abiding citizens. The only question is whether the “Battle of Arizona” will mark the turning of the tide against ideologically sanctioned lawlessness.
The rise of narco-power and the breakdown of government authority in northern Mexico was not only predictable — it was, indeed, predicted. In the late summer of 1994, I was tapped by General Barry McCaffrey, then the Commander in Chief, U.S. Southern Command, to travel through the countries of South America’s Andean Ridge and provide him with an alternative analysis of our counter drug strategy. As bad as things down-range seemed at the time, what struck me as particularly alarming was the foreseeable erosion of the rule of law in drug-transit countries — notably, Mexico.
The looming problem was obvious. Cocaine production was booming in response to U.S. demand (it was the high watermark of the crack epidemic). But all booms lead to over production. When the target market becomes saturated, producers resort to payment in kind to middlemen. Dope was going to fall off the truck on the way to the U.S. The consequent introduction of new players into the fight for market share could only lead to violence and destabilization in states less well equipped than our own to deal with challenges to government authority. I predicted that Mexico was headed for big trouble within a decade.
A serious strategic thinker, McCaffrey got it. But Mexico wasn’t included in CINCSOUTH’s (as the position was then called) area of responsibility. And Washington wasn’t interested in future problems if it wouldn’t affect the next election cycle, neither political party gave a damn. Mexico was already a criminal’s dream. Eight decades of single-party rule by the PRI (the Party of the Institutional Revolution) had, inevitably, led to massive corruption and a judiciary with a taste for bribes. Although state and local power had begun to shift to reformist parties by the late 1980's, the conservative opposition only gained the presidency at the turn of the millennium. A well-intentioned president, the PAN’s Vicente Fox, promptly found himself a collateral victim of September 11, 2001, as President Bush dropped his plans to revamp our relations with Mexico to devote himself to the struggle with Islamist terror. As a result, Fox achieved frustratingly little during his six-year term. Calderon, his beleaguered successor, may be Mexico’s last hope.
Of course, relations with Mexico are complicated by the PRI’s long legacy of blaming the U.S. for all of Mexico’s problems. For the PRI — which hopes to regain power and shows indirect sympathy toward the narcos in its critiques of Calderon — Washington was a useful “Great Satan” long before the Ayatollah Khomeini coined the term. There was, indeed, a long list of historical conflicts in which the U.S. all too often behaved unscrupulously — or simply refused to see the Mexican side of the problem. But the PRI refused to stop picking at old scabs.
Yet, for all the transfusions of bad blood, there’s been more cooperation between our two countries than generally perceived. Cross-border trade has boomed, of course, thanks in great part to the maquiladoras program of duty free assembly plants on Mexican soil, and the legal side of immigration has benefited both countries. But quiet cooperation has far deeper roots than generally known. Diplomatically, even the PRI, while rabble-rousing in public, often helped us behind the scenes in hemispheric crises. For our part, we even allowed our neighbor’s troops onto our soil, once in the latter years of the Mexican Revolution and again in the 1920's, when Mexican forces rode U.S. rail lines to relieve threatened garrisons in border cities.
Now the greatest obstacle to effective cooperation may be the establishment media in both countries. Sensationalist Mexican outlets (some reportedly in the pay of the narcos) continue to warn of imperialist gringos. In the U.S., the media treat the narco-insurgency as a curiosity that might as well be happening in Mongolia. Worse, activists and journalists (to the extent we can distinguish between the two) attack the Mexican military for alleged human rights abuses in the struggle to defeat the narco-insurgents. Given cartel violence that celebrates exotic tortures and has massacred 23,000 human beings, it’s bewildering that the media would call for the withdrawal of government troops from the urban-warfare-plagued streets of Ciudad Juarez or Tijuana -- bewildering, until you recognize that the cartels understand the media’s psychology and can afford plenty of public relations talent. The source of most human rights abuse allegations lies within the propaganda organs of the cartels. And journalists will believe narco-insurgents before they’ll credit anything claimed by a state that hasn’t reached the Castro-Chavez level of declared socialism. The narcos watched how the Western media lofted their pitchforks and torches over the alleged “abuse” of hardcore terrorists then chose the terrorists’ proven strategy of claiming to be victims (Hezbollah Law of Media Relation Number One: “When your back’s against the wall, trot out a dead baby...”).
Our media’s enthusiasm for anti-Mexican-government propaganda is especially revealing, given that hundreds of crusading Mexican journalists have been murdered by the narcos. Journalists with degrees from our most expensive universities are as susceptible to the romantic myth of resistance to the power of the state as are the semi-literate Mexican slum dwellers and agricultural workers who applaud narco-corridos, the popular ballads of bold deeds and early deaths in the narcotics trade.
Mexico is fighting for its life as a democracy, and our “best and brightest” agonize over the alleged mistreatment of bloody-handed sadists.
What is to be done? In addition to providing greater moral, diplomatic, and material support to Mexico’s besieged government, we need to take firm control of our southern border — which neither political party has been willing to do. Arizona’s passage of a law empowering law enforcement officers to ask detainees for proof of citizenship was a desperate cry for help. Washington’s response was, “Let them eat cake.”
Sending our active duty armed forces to our southern border is not the right answer to our border crisis (although if we dither long enough, it may become the only answer). Long term border security requires recreating the Border Patrol as a constabulary force, with more personnel, greater legal authority and heavier weapons (at least equal to the narco-insurgents’ escalating firepower.).
We have not only a right, but a duty, to secure our southern border. Among other things, that means toughening our laws to impose serious penalties on border violators. We cannot succumb to the left’s (and, inevitably, the media’s) insistence that the only victims in all this are the illegal immigrants. We need to publicize the massive societal, economic and structural damage illegal immigration causes not only in our border states, but throughout our country (the Pennsylvania coal towns where I grew up are now plagued by Latino gang violence and the narcotics trade — Mexico’s narco-insurgency comes in an export model).
Illegal immigrants have basic human rights, but they do not have civil rights. They are, by definition, criminals, intruders who have broken into our national house, and it is not our responsibility to comfort burglars. We hear endless laments about the cruelty of breaking up illegal immigrant families through deportations, yet illegals broke up their families when they left their homes to violate our border. And what of the families of U.S. citizens done out of their jobs by undocumented workers paid a pittance? What of the American family dinner that’s not on the table tonight? What of the parents who see their neighborhoods and schools collapse under the weight of illegal immigration? What of the emergency rooms so crowded they can’t handle emergencies? What of the honest legal immigrant, who plays by the rules and waits his or her turn — then must compete for wages with illegals?
The left offers compelling, melodramatic stories, but has scant regard for facts.
We also need to re-think the truisms taken for granted on the conservative side. For example, we hear endless demands to “just build a wall” along the entire border. Well, a wall as part of a defense in depth is a great help in California, and extending the current fencing in Arizona could help, too. But, as my friend David Danelo, who’s written a great deal about the border, points out, we really have two borders, with two separate border cultures and geographies.
A wall isn’t just an aid, but a necessity in southern California. These are real badlands — and the key word is “lands.” But east of El Paso, Texas, our border is the Rio Grande River. Apart from ecological issues — which are real — where would we put a wall? On our side of the border, surrendering the river and its waters to Mexico? In the middle of the river? Furthermore, the culture of the Texas border with Mexico is one of established, interrelated families sprawling across la frontera. Some of these families have been in place for three centuries and long ago worked out a border crossing routine — supervised by our enforcement officials that did neither country harm. They’re as much victims of the narcos as anyone else. Drug violence has turned their previously thriving border towns into wastelands. In what is essentially a counter-insurgency situation on our southern border, it’s as important to avoid punishing the innocent as it is to go after the guilty.
There is no substitute for a legally empowered, uniformed constabulary force built upon the current Immigration and Customs Enforcement base, but organized on paramilitary lines — with platoon, company and battalion organizations capable of conducting low-intensity combat missions, if necessary. And we need to protect its members against frivolous lawsuits and mischievous charges. To the accusation that this would be a militarization of our southern border, the answer is that when you’re faced with a violent insurgency that’s taken 23,000 lives on your doorstep, you’re no longer in the realm of police work. This isn’t a call for a Maginot Line, but for imaginative, effective solutions.
Our current system simply isn’t working — not even for the illegals, in the end. Illegal immigration, not its suppression, is inhumane. At present, law-abiding American citizens are dying — along with tens of thousands of Mexicans — for the left’s post-modern myth of the noble savage. Well, Mexico’s narco-insurgents are certainly savage. But there’s nothing noble about them.
Of course, the corollary effects of Mexico’s narco-insurgency and the negative consequences of illegal immigrations are of no interest to the American left, where the immediate concern of the power brokers is the alluring prospect of granting citizenship to the ten million illegal immigrants plundering our country. To the cynical leaders of the Democratic Party, a path to citizenship for these criminals (and every illegal immigrant is a criminal — that’s what “illegal” means) would herald a permanent majority in national elections, as well as in a decisive number of state and local contests. Even some Republicans appear willing to grant our most precious right — the vote — to ten million criminals who will have, essentially, stolen it.
How can we contemplate allowing border violators to determine who will become our future presidents? Or even aldermen? Any illegal immigrants allowed to remain in this country must do so under new residency conditions that, while providing basic legal protections, would prevent them from ever casting a vote in a national, state or local election. Furthermore, we must remove a prime incentive to illegal immigration by amending the law that bestows automatic citizenship on the children of illegal immigrants who are born on our soil. Illegal means illegal.
For over a hundred years, change in Mexico has come from its north, long the most developed and most prosperous part of the country (thanks to its proximity to the U.S.) Today, change is again coming from northern Mexico, but this change is brutal and destructive. Under siege, the Mexican government needs all the support we can offer. Is that government ideal? Of course not. But better to defend a government willing to fight Mexico’s crippling corruption than to face a government a few years from now that would provide a sovereign sanctuary for drug cartels. Mexico is struggling for its survival as a rule-of-law democracy, however flawed. If that fight is lost, the consequences for our own security veer toward the unimaginable.
Mexico’s narco-insurgency and our illegal immigration problem are not separate issues, but are both cause and symptom of the atmosphere of lawlessness we have allowed to prevail on our southern border. We refuse to control the flow of drugs and criminals northward, and we decline to impede the flow of weapons southward (a problem about which profiteers have bamboozled conservatives). We’re not faced with Mexican problems over there and U.S. problems over here. The dilemmas are inseparable. _________________
Ralph Peters is a retired U.S. Army officer, a strategist and author, an opinion columnist for the New York Post and Fox News’ Strategic Analyst. He is the author of 25 books, including the recent Endless War: Middle-Eastern Islam vs. Western Civilization.
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