Cartels

This is by far the ugliest face of narco-politics.

Over the past few months, thousands have been killed in an on-going war among the major Mexican drug cartels. Many of those killed were tortured, set afire with blowtorches, their bones broken until they expired.

One single cartel member, charged with disposing of the corpses of murder victims, admitted to having dissolved over 300 of them in acid solutions. The public cemetery at Ciudad Juarez, right next to the US-Mexico border, has hundreds of graves containing the remains of unidentified people killed by the drug cartels.

Recently, the police chief of Ciudad Juarez resigned his post after the drug cartels threatened to kill a policeman per day until he did. They had actually begun executing police officers by the time the police chief left the place.

Half the police force of Ciudad Juarez was dismissed because they were linked to the cartels. The remaining half did not have the motivation to fight the heavily armed drug rings. As a result, army units were sent in to restore order in Ciudad Juarez. But even the regular troops were outgunned by the drug militias.

Ciudad Juarez today resembles Baghdad. In all hours, army convoys patrol the streets, on alert against militia attacks. Every now and then, bloody clashes break out and bullets are sprayed at the center of the city.

State prosecutors are regularly executed. The mayor of Ciudad Juarez can move around only under heavy guard.

Everyday, people are abducted in Mexico. Some pay ransom but are killed anyway. One recent victim was an American kidnapping expert who went to Mexico for a seminar on how to guard against kidnapping. There is no trace of him to date, weeks after he disappeared.

We thought the situation in Colombia was bad. But in Mexico today, the capacity of the drug cartels to challenge the state is overwhelming.

After many years and billions of dollars of US support to build up the law enforcement capabilities of the Colombian state, the activities of the drug cartels have been limited to some degree. But the distribution and processing of illegal drugs simply shifted to Mexico.

The Mexican cartels are so powerful and well-organized, they actually have operational units in dozens of US cities. The violence happening in Mexico has begun to spill over to American cities. The bloody rivalries between competing drug rings in Mexico has carried over to the US.

Unless something is done to stop the cartels, they will overwhelm the state in Mexico. Then their power will begin spilling over into the US.

Which is why, last week, Barack Obama dispatched Hillary Clinton to Mexico. Her message was clear: the rising power of the drug cartels is not just a Mexican problem; it is an American problem too.

It might be considered a Philippine problem just as well.

In Colombia, the international community paid scarce attention to the menace posed by the rising power of the drug cartels until it was too late. By the time assistance enforcement came, the cartels and their allied insurgent movements had accumulated armed and organization strength that the domestic law enforcement institutions could no longer contain.

In Mexico, too, little international support came until the drug war had broken out with such fury, until it became obvious that the existing law enforcement effort had been overwhelmed.

Perhaps it might be that the threat posed by the drug cartels was treated as something less menacing than the threat posed by ideologically motivated terrorist groups. The cartels were considered a police matter rather than, as the Al Qaeda for example, it treated as a national security matter.

Treated as a mere police matter, governments failed to see the potential of the drug gangs to grow very quickly, nourished by the large revenues flowing into that illegal trade. They could grow at such a pace that they soon overshadow the very institutional capacity of the existing state. They could quickly co-opt other political groups, as we saw in Colombia where the drug cartels eventually absorbed the existing leftist insurgency.

In an electoral democracy such as the Philippines is, the financial and organizational clout of the drug rings could co-opt the weak political factions who regularly contest state power.

We have what is probably the biggest drug abuse problem in all of Asia. The narcotics trade in the country is estimated to have an annual turnover of well over P200 billion. In addition, the Philippines is quickly becoming a key transshipment point for drug syndicates running operations across many countries.

We have more than enough reason to look very closely at the tragedy that has now engulfed Mexico. This country is not the main market for narcotics. It is simply the most convenient transshipment point for drugs emanating from Colombia and destined for the US market.

What has happened in Mexico could very well happen here. Not only do we have a large domestic market for illegal drugs, we also have porous borders than positions us well as a transshipment point. Add to that a vulnerable law enforcement structure and political system that could easily be corrupted by the volume of undocumented cash the drug rings amass.

On the eve of an electoral season where undocumented money plays an inordinately important role, we should look at Mexico and shudder.