Mexican NSC Drug War
Troops after a shootout in Apatzingan, Michoacán.
Date December 11, 2006[1] – ongoing Location Mexican states of Baja California, Guerrero, Chihuahua, Michoacán, Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, and Sinaloa Status Ongoing
Belligerents
Mexico Supported by: United States[2]	Sinaloa Cartel Gulf Cartel Arellano Felix Cartel
Commanders
Felipe Calderón Sergio Aponte[3]	Joaquín Guzmán[4] Alfredo Beltrán Leyva [5] Carlos Landin Martinez[6]
Strength
25,000+[7]	300,000+
Casualties and losses
4,152+ killed[8] (450+ government forces)

The Mexican Drug War is an armed conflict taking place between rival drug cartels and government forces in Mexico. The crackdown has resulted in the arrest of some high-level figures in the drug trade, but as cartels are dismantled or left without leaders, violent power struggles erupt over who will take their place.

The cartels are reportedly using machine guns, grenade launchers and a variety of other military-grade arms as weapons. U.S. and Mexican authorities say that Mexico is the main supply route for cocaine and other illegal drugs entering the United States and that Colombia is where most of the plants used to produce illegal drugs are grown before shipment to the U.S. via Mexico and Central America.^[9]

Progress & escalation

The cartels in Mexico are allegedly linked to the cartels in Colombia as the Colombian cartels are the suppliers. The fighting between rival drug cartels began in earnest after the 1989 arrest of Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo who ran the cocaine business in Mexico.^[10] There was a lull in the fighting during the late 1990s but the violence has steadily worsened since 2000. Former president Vicente Fox sent small numbers of troops to Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, on the US-Mexico border to fight the cartels with little success. It is estimated that about 110 people died in Nuevo Laredo alone during the January-August 2005 period as a result of the fighting between the Gulf and Sinaloa cartels.^[11] In 2005 there was a surge in violence as a drug cartel tried to establish itself in Michoacán. Although violence between drug cartels has been occurring long before the war began, the government held a generally passive stance regarding cartel violence in the 1990s and early 2000s. That changed on December 11, 2006, when newly elected President Felipe Calderón sent 6,500 federal troops to the state of Michoacán to put an end to drug violence there. This action is regarded as the first major retaliation made against the cartel violence, and is generally viewed as the starting point of the war between the government and the drug cartels.^[12] As time progressed, Calderón continued to escalate his anti-drug campaign, in which there are now well over 25,000 troops involved.

In April 2008, Gen. Sergio Aponte, the man in charge of the anti-drug campaign in the state of Baja California, made a number of allegations of corruption against the police forces in the region. Among his allegations, Aponte stated that he believed Baja California's anti-kidnapping squad was actually a kidnapping team working in conjunction with organized crime, and that bribed police units were being used as bodyguards for drug traffickers.^[13] These accusations of corruption suggested that the progress against drug cartels in Mexico have been hindered by bribery and corruption.

On April 26, 2008, a major battle took place between members of the Arellano Felix and Sinaloa cartels in the city of Tijuana, Baja California, that left 17 people dead.^[14] The rival cartels were shooting at one another with not only handguns, but automatic weapons such as AK-47s and AR-15s as well.^[15] This fact reinforces the notion that gang members are purchasing weapons in the United States^[16] or are being funded from elsewhere. The battle also brings about concern about the violence spilling into the United States, as Tijuana and a number of other border cities become hotspots for violence in the war.

Smuggling of firearms

Seized weapons: LAW M72A2 Grenade launcher, hand grenades, M4 grenade launcher and 0.5 caliber carbine

Colt AR-15

American-made AK-47[3]

M4 Carbine with grenade launcher.

According to a Mexican government official, as many as 2,000 weapons enter Mexico each year and fuel an arms race between competing Mexican drug cartels. Since 1996, the ATF has traced more than 62,000 firearms smuggled into Mexico from the United States. ^[17] Mexican government officials suspect that corrupt customs officials, on both sides of the border, help smuggle weapons into Mexico; the most common of these firearms now includes the Colt AR-15 .223 caliber assault rifle, the AK-47 machine gun,^[18] FN 5.7 caliber semi-automatic pistol and a variety of armor piercing .50 caliber long range sniper rifles and machine guns.^[19] Also, there are multiple reports where grenade launchers were used against security forces;^{[20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28]} at least twelve M4 Carbines with M203 grenade launchers have been confiscated.^[29] It is believed that some of these high power weapons and related accessories were stolen from U.S. military bases.^[30][31]

An in-depth analysis of firearms trace data by the ATF over the past three years shows that Texas, Arizona and California are the three most prolific source states, respectively, for firearms illegally trafficked to Mexico.^[32][33]

Effects

Many people in Mexico have suffered the violence of the conflict although, the conflict is not present in all the country. The states that suffer the conflict mostly are Baja California, Guerrero, Chihuahua, Michoacán, Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, and Sinaloa (highlighted red on image right). President Calderón's government is currently fighting the drug-dealers especially in his home state of Michoacán, but there are more operations going on in the states of Jalisco and Guerrero.

The states where most of the conflict takes place, marked in red.

On December 24, 2006, the governor of Baja California Eugenio Elorduy announced a similar operation in his state with cooperation of state and federal governments. This operation started in late December 2006 in the border city of Tijuana. As of early 2007, these operations extended to the states of Guerrero, and the so called "Golden Triangle States": Chihuahua, Durango, and Sinaloa. In February 2007, the federal government extended these operations to two more states: Nuevo León and Tamaulipas. In response to these operations, organized crime tried to assassinate the federal deputy representing Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas.

As of early October 2007, the war appears to have had an effect on the drugs trade in the United States. In 37 states the price of cocaine has gone up by as much as 50%, while the average purity has dropped by 11%. ^[34]

On February 11, 2008, it was reported that already over 250 ^[35] people had died in the year of 2008 as a result of the two major drug cartels, the Sinaloa Cartel and the Gulf Cartel, fight against one another for territory, and against the Mexican military. By April 2008, this number had spiked up to 900 people killed in 2008.^[36]

Seizures and arrests have jumped since Calderón took office in December 2006. Calderón has also extradited more than 100 people wanted in the U.S., including Oziel Cárdenas Guillén, a former agent of the Federal Judicial Police and the head of the Gulf cartel, who is waiting trial on drug trafficking charges in Brownsville, Texas.^[37] A new rule that forces all private airplanes to stop for inspection at either the Cozumel airport on the Caribbean coast or Tapachula on the Guatemala border is credited, in part, for leading to confiscations of more than 270 planes in the past 1 1/2 years.

On July 10, 2008, the Mexican government announced plans to nearly double the size of its Federal Police force in order to reduce the role of the military in combating drug trafficking.^[38] The plan, known as the Comprehensive Strategy Against Drug Trafficking, also involves purging local police forces of corrupt officers. Elements of the plan have already been set in motion, including a massive police recruiting and training effort intended to reduce the country's dependence in the drug war on the military.

United States involvement

Main article: Mérida Initiative

During the first 18 months of Calderón's presidency, the Mexican government has spent about $7 billion USD in the war against drugs.^[39] In seeking partnership from the United States, Mexican officials point out that the illicit drug trade is a shared problem in need of a shared solution, and remark that most of the financing for the Mexican traffickers comes from American drug consumers.^[40] U.S. State Department officials are aware that Mexican president, Felipe Calderón’s willingness to work with the United States is unprecedented on issues of security, crime and drugs, so the U.S. Congress passed legislation in late June 2008 to provide Mexico and Central American countries with $1.6 billion USD for the Mérida Initiative, a three-year international assistance plan. The Mérida Initiative provides Mexico and Central American countries with law enforcement training and equipment, as well as technical advice to strengthen the national justice systems. The Mérida Initiative does not include cash or weapons.

External links

• Border Stories profiles a newspaper reporter caught up in the drug war in Mexico

See also

• List of wars 2003-current
• War on Drugs
• Los Zetas
• Los Negros
• Narcotrafficking in Colombia
• Juárez Cartel
• Vicente Carrillo Fuentes
• Mérida Initiative
• Drug submarine

References

• "Oaxaca: Peaceful Solution or Civil War?". Prensa Latina.