MEXICO"S GRUESOME DRUG WAR

The Escalating Cartel Violence In Mexico Rivals The Death Tolls In Iraq,
Says David Danelo

On Nov. 3, the day before Americans elected Barack Obama president,
drug cartel henchmen murdered 58 people in Mexico. It was the highest
number killed in one day since President Felipe Calderón took office
in December 2006.

By comparison, on average 26 people - Americans and Iraqis combined -
died daily in Iraq in 2008. Mexico's casualty list on Nov. 3 included
a man beheaded in Ciudad Juárez whose bloody corpse was suspended
along an overpass for hours. No one had the courage to remove the body
until dark.

The death toll from terrorist attacks in Mumbai last month, although
horrible, approaches the average weekly body count in Mexico's war.
Three weeks ago in Juárez, which is just across the Rio Grande from El
Paso, telephone messages and banners threatened teachers that if they
failed to pay protection money to cartels, their students would suffer
brutal consequences. Local authorities responded by assigning 350
teenage police cadets to the city's 900 schools.

If organized criminals wish to extract tribute from teachers,
businessmen, tourists or anyone else, there is nothing the Mexican
government can do to stop them. And the United States has become numb
to this norm.

As part of my ongoing research into border issues, I have visited
Juárez six times over the last two years. Each time I return, I see a
populace under greater siege. Residents possess a mentality that
increasingly resembles the one I witnessed as a Marine officer in
Baghdad, Fallujah and Ramadi.

At the same time, with the U.S. economy in freefall, many illegal
immigrants are returning south. So illegal immigration - the only
border issue that seems to stir the masses - made no splash in this
year's elections. Mexico's chaos never surfaced as a topic in either
the foreign or domestic policy presidential debates.

Yet Mexico, our second-largest trading partner, is a fragmenting state
that may spiral toward failure as the recession and drug violence
worsen. Remittances to Mexico from immigrant labor have fallen almost
20 percent in 2008. Following oil, tourism and remittances, drugs are
the leading income stream in the Mexican economy.

While the bottom is dropping out of the oil and tourism markets, the
American street price of every narcotic has skyrocketed, in part
because of recent drug interdiction successes along the U.S. border.

Unfortunately, this toxic economic cocktail also stuffs the cartels'
coffers. Substitute tribal clans for drug cartels, and Mexico starts
to look disturbingly similar to Afghanistan, whose economy is fueled
by the heroin-based poppy trade.

Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, Mr. Obama's pick for homeland security
director, has argued for permanently stationing National Guard troops
along the border. That response alone will do little to assuage
American border citizens. To them, talk of "violence bleeding over" is
political pabulum while they watch their southern neighbors bleed.

If Ms. Napolitano wishes to stabilize the border, she will have to
persuade the Pentagon and the State Department to take a greater
interest in Mexico. Despite Mr. Calderón's commendable efforts to
fight both the cartels and police corruption, this struggle shows no
signs of slowing. When 45,000 federal troops are outgunned and
outspent by opponents of uncertain but robust size, the state's
legitimacy quickly deteriorates.

The Mexican state has not faced this grave a challenge to its
authority since the Mexican revolution nearly a century ago.

If you want to see what Mexico will look like if this pattern
continues, visit a border city like Tijuana, where nine beheaded
bodies were discovered in plastic bags recently. Inhale the stench of
decay. Inspect the fear on the faces. And then ask yourself how the
United States is prepared to respond as Mexico's crisis increasingly
becomes our own.

David Danelo is the author of "The Border: Exploring the U.S.-Mexican
Divide" and "Blood Stripes: The Grunt's View of the War in Iraq."