BORDER DRUG CRACKDOWN A WASTE?

U.S.-Mexico Agreement Will Not Likely Slow Thriving Cartels

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The Bush administration is strengthening ties between U.S. and Mexican law
enforcement agencies after years of mutual distrust and suspicion. The
effort may lead to better statistics for drug seizures, arrests and
deportations, but it will not slow organized criminal activity on the
border. Cartels are thriving and exploring alliances with each other and
with international criminal outfits.

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and his Mexican counterpart Rafael
Macedo de la Concha announced on July 26 a new bilateral initiative to
fight drug trafficking, arms smuggling and illegal immigration on the
U.S.-Mexico border.

The agreement signals a new phase in relations between U.S. and Mexican law
enforcement agencies, characterized for many years by mutual distrust and
suspicion.

The new accord may lead to more narcotics seizures and the occasional drug
kingpin's fall. But Mexico's top drug cartels will continue to thrive,
exploring new strategic alliances with each other and with organized
criminal enterprises in the United States, Latin America and Europe.
Forming such alliances will make it easier to stay ahead of the law.

Drug trafficking earns Mexico $30 billion a year and accounts for about 10
percent of the country's wealth, according to Mexican journalist Carlos
Loret de Mola. Two-thirds of the cocaine smuggled into the United States
comes through Mexico. Moreover, Mexico's increasingly sophisticated drug
cartels are continually adapting their operations to changes in policing
tactics on both sides of the border.

Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, national security adviser to President Vicente Fox,
says Mexico's war on drugs is not winnable. Fox has nevertheless launched
an aggressive effort to capture the country's increasingly powerful drug
traffickers and disrupt their operations.

For instance, Fox expanded the Mexican military's role in counternarcotics
efforts, assigning 30,000 soldiers to combat drug trafficking. He also
purged hundreds of corrupt federal and local police officials and
prosecutors, and he facilitated the extradition of Mexican nationals wanted
on drug charges in the United States.

Drug seizures by Mexican police and military units have increased in the
past year as a result, and several drug kingpins have been arrested,
including Alcides Ramon Magana, a top leader of the Gulf Coast cartel, and
Adam Amezcua, leader of the Colima cartel and known in Mexico as the king
of amphetamines.

Corrupt politicians and military officers also have been arrested in Mexico
recently on drug-related charges, including Mario Villanueva, a former
state governor, and Army Brig. Gen. Ricardo Martinez, commander of the 21st
Motorized Cavalry Regiment in Nuevo Laredo, who was charged with protecting
drug traffickers operating on Mexico's Gulf Coast.

He is the sixth Mexican general imprisoned on drug-related charges since
the 1997 arrest of Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, who at the time was the
chief of all Mexican anti-drug efforts.

Mexico's top drug lords have responded to the government's cleanup effort
by exploring new strategic alliances with each other and with criminal
organizations internationally.

Last April, for instance, according to an Associated Press report, 60
Mexican drug traffickers held a three-day meeting in Apodaca, an industrial
town in northeastern Mexico, to discuss ways of creating a new mega-cartel
after 12 years of warfare between rival gangs.

The report said the meeting was called in response to the Fox government's
tough new anti-drug policies. Besides the Mexican drug lords and their
bodyguards, two men in Mexican military uniforms bearing general's stars
and a group of Colombians also participated in the summit.

The only major drug-trafficking group that did not send representatives was
the Tijuana cartel, led by the Arellano Felix brothers, which accounts for
about 20 percent of the illegal narcotics smuggled annually into the United
States from Mexico.

Instead of merging its operations with other Mexican cartels, the Tijuana
gang has opted for developing strategic alliances with Russian, Colombian
and Peruvian criminal enterprises.

Evidence of the Tijuana cartel's overseas associations has been
accumulating since the end of last year.

On May 3 the U.S. Coast Guard intercepted the Belize-flagged Svesda Maru, a
fishing vessel carrying 13 tons of cocaine about 1,500 miles south of San
Diego. The crew comprised eight Ukrainians and two Russians, and U.S.
authorities believe they must have had the permission of the Tijuana cartel
to ship this much cocaine to the U.S. West Coast, according to AP.

U.S. officials in southern California reportedly suspect the Russian and
Ukrainian crew of belonging to a Russian organized crime syndicate in Los
Angeles, where between 600 to 800 known Russian crime figures live, mostly
in the North and West Hollywood areas.

A 1999 California Department of Justice report found that Russian crime
groups based in Los Angeles also had formed alliances with La Cosa Nostra
in North America, Colombian cartels in Latin America and with the Sicilian
mafia in Europe.

The Tijuana cartel also did business with former Peruvian spy chief
Vladimiro Montesinos, who is now jailed in Lima on charges including drug
trafficking, money laundering, arms smuggling, bribery and murder. The
Mexico City daily El Universal reported July 8, based on Peruvian
intelligence documents, that the Tijuana cartel purchased 18 tons of
cocaine from Montesinos between 1995 and 1999. Peruvian government
officials in Lima confirmed the report's accuracy.

The new alliances give Mexico's cartels more resources and influence, new
drug shipment and transportation routes, and allow them to disperse
shipments to reduce seizures and lost revenue.

The cartels also gain access to more markets, including expansion in the
United States, where 57 Mexican drug enterprises are operating in North
Texas alone. The additional revenues can go toward the $500 million the
cartels already spend to bribe officials to avoid the law.

It was not a coincidence that the new U.S.-Mexico initiative was announced
officially in San Diego, across the border from Tijuana where the Arellano
Felix brothers have operated freely for more than 15 years, longer than any
other drug cartel in Mexico.

Ashcroft pledged a tough crackdown on weapons smuggling from the United
States to Mexico. In return, de la Concha declared the Fox government was
"determined to capture" the Arellano Felix brothers.

It will take far more than emphatic rhetoric, however, to capture the
Tijuana cartel's chieftains. The Arellano Felix brothers' cartel is one of
Mexico's bloodiest. Law enforcement officials on both sides of the
U.S.-Mexico border estimate conservatively that the brothers are directly
responsible for more than 500 murders.

If the Fox government targets the Tijuana cartel for annihilation, the
Arellano Felix brothers will very likely retaliate by murdering more police
and government officials.

The campaign won't just be limited to Mexican personnel though. The
increase in U.S.-Mexico cooperation will lead to even more U.S. officials
operating in Mexico, where it's likely that the Tijuana cartel will seek to
kidnap and kill U.S. counter-drug agents.