Pubdate: Tue, 19 Mar 2002
Source: Houston Chronicle (TX)
Webpage: www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/editorial/outlook/1300175
Copyright: 2002 Houston Chronicle Publishing Company Division, Hearst Newspaper
Contact:  http://www.chron.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/198
Author: Ted Galen Carpenter

TO AVOID MAKING MEXICO THE NEXT COLOMBIA ...

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/narcotrafficking 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 
counternarcotics campaigns, not counterinsurgency 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 in 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 
of 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.

- -- Carpenter is vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at 
the Cato Institute, in Washington, D.C. His latest book is Bad Neighbor 
Policy: Washington's Futile Drug War in Latin America (forthcoming 
Palgrave/St. Martins). 
- ---
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