The Americas

MEXICO UNDER SEIGE

Perhaps it is a sign of a maturing electorate that Barack Obama's
past drug use has not become a disqualifying factor in his bid for
the presidency. It may signify that Americans are beginning to view
the intake of mind-altering substances as a private decision.

For those who embrace the notion of personal responsibility, such a
change in public attitudes might be considered progress. But in
Mexico, what suggests an increase in tolerance of illegal drug use in
the U.S. has a tragic flipside: the gut-wrenching violence that
arises when demand meets prohibition. This country is paying dearly
for that contradiction. Under prohibition, only criminals can serve
the market for illegal narcotics. And they have a lot of incentive to
do so since prohibition pushes prices up. These market dynamics have
given rise to transnational crime networks -- modern, savvy
businesses run by ruthless killers bent on preserving their income.
Anyone who tries to get in the way risks becoming a statistic. Last
year in Mexico there were 2,713 homicides attributable to organized
crime, up from 2,120 in 2006 -- according to the intelligence arm of
the country's attorney general.

It's a pretty grim picture. Yet there is at least one man in Mexico
who believes that it doesn't have to be this way. His name is Eduardo
Medina Mora, and 14 months ago he chose to accept what some would
regard as mission impossible: taking on the job of attorney general
with the express goal of restoring order to a nation turned upside
down by organized crime. I interviewed him last year, just 100 days
into his new job, and I met with him again two weeks ago to take a
reading on progress. He reports that the Mexican state is reasserting
itself, though he also warns that the battle is far from won.

Mr. Medina Mora suffers no illusions about his office's capacity to
shut off the supply of drugs to the U.S., or for that matter in
Mexico, where drug use is on the increase. That's a welcome relief:
After decades of a war on drugs claiming thousands of innocent lives,
poisoning institutions in developing countries, and raising the
incentive for pushing narcotics on children -- all the while
delivering not a modicum of success -- the argument for attacking
supply to end demand is by now tedious. Instead, Mr. Medina Mora is a
realist. "The objective," he says, "cannot be destroying
narcotrafficking or drug-related crime, because demand is inelastic."
"It is very important not to lose perspective on the goal," he tells
me. "Trying to get rid of consumption and trafficking is impossible,
as a bold objective."

This in no way implies surrender on his part. What's important, he
says, is that the goal be clearly understood. Instead of focusing on
supply, he is concentrating on the suppliers, and specifically their
ability to run business empires. It's about removing "the enormous
economic and fire power" of the cartels which threaten the Mexican
democracy, and "recovering the territory [controlled by organized
crime] for the people and the state." This view is not unlike that of
Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe, who has led the fight to end the
tyranny of organized crime in some parts of his country. In Mexico,
Mr. Medina Mora continues, "there are areas where organized crime
disputes the state's exclusive use of force and its power to collect
taxes. They are not only shipping drugs but they are involved in
extortion, prostitution rings, smuggling goods and people, stealing
Pemex [the state-owned oil company] products, and forcing legal
businesses to pay protection taxes."

The attorney general's strategy has been to hit these businesses
where it hurts most: in their pocketbooks. By studying the way the
narcotics market works, his office has used "operational mapping and
mapping of their supply and distribution routes" to "put obstacles in
the way and block traditional flows." This approach involves tighter
controls on air traffic, better technology and smarter inspection
systems for shipments from South America. Mr. Medina Mora says the
plan is working, and rattles off a string of captures and seizures,
including some 10 drug-trafficking planes -- even one DC-9 -- large
enough to carry up to five metric tons of cocaine. Last year he
reeled in a 23.5 metric-ton shipment of cocaine coming by sea from
the Colombian port of Buenaventura, and broke up a Mexico City
operation that allegedly supplied "meth" producers annually with over
100 metric tons of the precursor pseudoephedrine.

The attorney general is rightly proud of this record, and says that
lower availability has meant sharp increases in the street price of
both cocaine and "meth" in 38 cities in the U.S. -- according to U.S.
officials. Still, the seizure scorecard does nothing to prove
progress in the battle against drug use, any more than body counts
reveal who is winning a war. And as prices rise so do cartel
incentives, particularly when demand is notoriously resistant to change.

But going by Mr. Medina Mora's measure of success -- which is damage
to organized crime such that it ceases to dominate Mexican territory
and society -- there may be progress. Unfortunately, he says, proof
of that could come in the form of more violence in the short run.
"When this kind of criminal network begins to collapse, the criminals
go back to more primitive methods of crime -- kidnapping, car theft
and extortion. They fragment and lose control; cells start operating
on their own and fighting with each other. Turf becomes very important."

As if to prove his point, two days after we talked a bomb exploded in
the trendy neighborhood of Zona Rosa here. A government investigation
is ongoing, but there is reason to believe that the device was meant
as payback to law enforcement for the arrest two days earlier of
seven members of the powerful Sinaloa cartel.

Mr. Medina Mora believes more could be done with greater
international cooperation against money laundering, and with a U.S.
effort to stem the flow of high-powered weapons into Mexico. Another
way, which he is too polite to mention, would be for U.S. authorities
to acknowledge that under present policies they are losing their drug war.