|
_______________________________________
|
|
The
Real Quagmire:
Bad
news came from Mexico last week: According to Mexican
Attorney General Daniel Cabeza de Vaca, that country's
Federal Agency of Investigation (AFI) -- created
in 2001 because the federal judicial police department
was considered too corrupt to be reliable -- is
now itself falling under the influence of organized
crime. "We are starting to have a problem with
corruption and penetration," Mr. Cabeza de
Vaca warned.
Thanks
largely to the AFI's 7,000 employees, more drug
lords have been arrested under the presidency of
Vicente Fox than under any other Mexican president.
Yet just as the arrest of the notorious Colombian
drug lord Pablo Escobar didn't end Colombian drug
trafficking, Mexico 's valiant attempts aren't turning
the tide of the drug war. Instead the level of narco-corruption
and violence in the country is skyrocketing, as
rival gangs target each other and law enforcement
in a battle over a drug trade estimated at $4 billion
annually. At least eight judges are operating under
death threats; the murder of elected officials and
police is common. Mr. Cabeza de Vaca said last week
that 822 Mexicans have been killed in narco-violence
this year.
It
hardly needs to be added that the money that finances
all this corruption and violence has a return address:
U.S. drug consumers. Mexico has now supplanted Colombia
as the nation's primary supplier, including 92%
of the cocaine sold here last year. That's something
to think about next time you're griping about Mexican
illegals flooding into the U.S. Trashing our southern
neighbor has become a national pastime north of
the Rio Grande, but poor Mexico also has to share
a 2,000-mile border with the United States, a country
harboring the hemisphere's most voracious narcotics
consumers. The American drug habit literally underwrites
Mexico 's criminals, who are ruining every Mexican
attempt to build clean institutions.
The
only perplexing question is why, knowing full well
the dynamics of this market, anyone thinks the drug
war is a constructive exercise.
--
Mary Anastasia O'Grady August 30, 2005
Posted
with expressed permission from Political Diary,
WSJ
|
