MEXICO'S WAR

The Government's Battle Against Drug Gangs Is Deadlier Than Most
Americans Realize.

MANY PEOPLE in Washington are rightly alarmed about the rising toll
of military and civilian casualties in Afghanistan. They might be
surprised to learn that a roughly equal number of people have been
killed so far this year in a war raging much closer to home -- in
Mexico. More Mexican soldiers and police officers have died fighting
the country's drug gangs in the past two years than the number of
U.S. and NATO troops killed battling the Taliban. Civilian casualties
have been just as numerous, and as gruesome: There have been scores
of beheadings, massacres of entire families and assassinations of
senior officials. By the official count, kidnappings in Mexico now
average 65 a month, ranking it well ahead of Afghanistan and Iraq.

The challenge facing Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who
courageously declared war on the drug syndicates shortly after taking
office in December 2006, gets relatively little attention here
because Americans are only rarely among the casualties. But U.S.
money and weapons are fueling this war. Billions of dollars from
American drug users flow to the syndicates, along with thousands of
weapons smuggled across the border. Congress recently approved $400
million in aid for the Mexican government, most of which will be used
to better arm and equip the army. The stakes are large for the United
States: not just the success of Mr. Calderon's liberal and friendly
government but the survival of Mexico's democracy; not just the
stability of a neighbor but the ability of the United States to
control illegal immigration.

Some Mexican officials argue that the scale of the violence points to
the government's success -- by taking on and damaging the drug gangs,
it has provoked a backlash. But most Mexicans appear to believe the
government is losing the war. Tens of thousands marched in cities
around the country on Aug. 30 to protest the government's failure to
protect citizens. A 75-point, three-year strategy unveiled by Mr.
Calderon earlier in the month, including proposals to build new
prisons for drug traffickers and track gangsters through cellphones,
looked underpowered to critics in the opposition and the media.

Mr. Calderon's biggest problem may be the absence of reliable forces.
Most of Mexico's police are hired and managed locally; only 20,000
are federal. The army is less corrupt, but even the commitment of
40,000 troops has failed to turn the tide against the gangs. The new
U.S. funding should help, but the next administration in Washington
would do well to explore whether more assistance can be provided in
training Mexican forces, much as U.S. advisers have helped
professionalize the Colombian army. More must be done, too, to
curtail the cross-border gun trafficking. Mexico's war is in its own
way as critical to U.S. interests as Afghanistan's is; in both cases,
a larger American commitment is needed.