The Border

A SMARTER DRUG INTERDICTION POLICY FOR MEXICO

Focus Efforts on Middle Layer of Drug Cartels

President Felipe Calderon visited Washington earlier this month amid
a significant escalation in drug-related violence in Mexico and
strained relations with the United States. However, it is critical
that dissatisfaction on both sides does not give rise to purely
symbolic actions aimed at placating concerns rather than achieving
real results in ending the Mexican drug wars. Neither the U.S. nor
Mexico will benefit from more frequent but less strategic hits
against Mexico's drug gangs. Ramping up of the campaign against
Mexico's drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) without being truly
strategic may satisfy some critics, but it will not enhance the
necessary development of law enforcement, justice and corrections
institutions in Mexico that are needed to make real headway in ending
the Mexican drug wars. Counterproductively, non-strategic action will
likely further increase the violence and decrease Mexican public
support for the effort in the long term.

The shooting of two U.S. law enforcement agents in Mexico last month
marked another escalation of the bloody drug war that has claimed
more than 34,000 lives since Calderon came to power. Statements by
U.S. officials questioning Mexico's capacity and stability have
angered Calderon. He recently lashed out against what he described as
U.S. distortions and exaggerations while blaming the United States
for failing to stop the flow of U.S. guns to Mexico and reduce demand
for drugs.

Reducing demand in the United States would be enormously helpful not
only for law enforcement, but also for decreasing other social costs
of drug use. The Obama administration has emphasized demand reduction
and modestly increased demand-reduction spending. But even with a
bigger budget and better knowledge about the effectiveness of various
demand reduction policies, reducing demand in the United States will
take a long time. Moreover, Mexican DTOs are already branching out
into other rackets, such as extortion of businesses, human smuggling
and kidnapping.

While investigations show that 90 percent of identified weapons used
by Mexican DTOs originate in the United States, focusing on the
weapons flows as the mechanism to reduce the violence in Mexico is a
red herring. The Obama administration has undertaken several
initiatives to combat the weapons flows. But U.S. gun laws make
increasing the interdiction rate difficult, and stopping guns at
borders is as hard as stopping drugs at borders. The global market of
small arms is fully integrated -- even if U.S. law enforcement was
able to shut down the flows, Mexican criminals would buy the weapons
elsewhere. Most importantly, weapons availability does not seem to
greatly influence strategic violence by criminal organizations.
Analyses of violence levels after changes in weapons laws and
weapons-collection drives show that smaller availability of weapons
does reduce unpremeditated violence, including domestic or street
disputes escalating into armed assaults. These are important
improvements. But there is little indication that such anti-gun
measures reduce strategic warfare among criminal organizations or
against the state. In the United States, the same Mexican DTOs
operate with even a greater access to weapons, but are nowhere as
violent as in Mexico.

A key reason for the violence in Mexico is the way interdiction
operations have been carried out - focusing the hollowed-out law
enforcement and justice sector on high-value targets, such as top
capos, and arresting tens of thousands of foot soldiers, while the
middle layer of DTO operators has not been severely affected.

After decades of underdevelopment and corruption, neither the
judicial nor the corrections systems in Mexico have caught up with
the drug-trade challenge. Many petty drug pushers end up doing a
year-or-two stint in overcrowded prisons that serve as higher
education for criminals and more deeply anchor them in the cartels'
grasp. A complete overhaul of the justice system could not be
expected to proceed rapidly. Police reform in Mexico, given the level
of corruption, technical deficiencies and complexity of police
institutions, was bound to take at minimum a decade.

Non-strategic, high-value targeting on the basis of incremental
intelligence without consideration of what kind of turf wars it will
provoke is one reason behind Mexico's violence. Without prior or
simultaneous arrests of middle commanders, DTO leadership easily
regenerates. The temporary weakening of a DTO that just suffered the
arrest of a narcojefe tempts other groups to try to take over its
turf. To reduce such regeneration, interdiction operations in the
United States frequently arrest hundreds of cartel members at once,
including as much of the middle layer as possible, often having built
up intelligence over several years. But the lack of strategic
intelligence capacity in Mexico and the fear that intelligence will
leak out prematurely put a premium on quick, high-value targeting.

Expanding targeting to the middle layer needs to become a key feature
of the strategy in Mexico, along with a steadfast institutional
development and social policies to reduce communities' vulnerability
to crime. Reducing violence equally needs to be integrated into
strategy - otherwise, public support in Mexico will continue to
weaken and temptations by local officials to strike deals with the
narcos will increase.