Just when you thought we had enough problems...
McCaffrey Warns of Mexican Border Rush
January 08, 2009
El Paso Times
EL PASO. Texas -- Former U.S. drug czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey contends that millions of people may rush to cross the U.S. border if security conditions worsen and lead to a governmental collapse in Mexico.
"A failure by the Mexican political system to curtail lawlessness and violence could result (in) a surge of millions of refugees crossing the U.S. border to escape the domestic misery of violence, failed economic policy, po verty, hunger, joblessness, and the mindless cruelty and injustice of a criminal state," McCaffrey said in an after-action report based on the Dec. 5-7 International Forum of Intelligence & Security Specialists in Mexico, an advisory group to Mexican law enforcement leaders.
McCaffrey, who has compared Mexico's situation to Iraq's, said in his report "Visit Mexico: 5-7 December 2008":
-- Nearly 7,000 people were murdered in Mexico's drug wars since 2006; 3,985 of these occurred from Jan. 1 to Nov. 25, 2008.
-- Corruption is pervasive, and even reached into the U.S. Embassy "with a DEA Mexican national employee recently arrested for being an agent of the Sinaloa cartel ... corrupted with a $450,000 bribe."
-- The Mexican government under President Felipe Calderon has done much to crack down on the cartels.
-- Mexico is fighting for survival against narcoterrorism.
The report portrays a scenario reminiscent of ex-Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger's 1998 fictional book "The Next War," which describes U.S. military intervention after a Mexican regime collapse due to warring drug cartels.
Three years ago, Tom Clancy's video game "Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter," created controversy because it depicted ghosts of U.S. Soldiers taking out targets in Juarez, a game Chihuahua officials tried to ban.
Mario Gonzalez Roman, a former consultant for the U.S. State Department and United Nations, said that contrary to the picture McCaffrey paints, "the Mexican state is far from collapsing."
He operates a Web site in Mexico (
www.securitycornermexico.com) that provides free information on crime and loss prevention, and advises victims of crime.
"Attempts to disparage Mexico's image are being conducted by private security businesses that stand to profit from a failed state," Gonzalez said. "I also believe free trade has helped to facilitate kidnappings in this country."
McCaffrey's report also provides a glimpse into Mexico's general plan of attack against violent drug organizations: "The strategy articulated by Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora is to break up the four major drug cartels into 50 smaller entities and take away their firepower and huge financial resources."
Ex-DEA official Phil Jordan said this approach -- splitting big cartels into smaller ones -- "is not one the DEA would use. When I was an investigator, we believed it was more efficient to first go after the godfathers and their lieutenants instead of the smaller cells or groups."
McCaffrey, a retired Army general, visited Juarez in 1999 as White House drug czar. Then-Chihuahua Gov. Patricio Martinez criticized him for alleging Mexico was "awash in drugs."
In his report, McCaffrey recommends that President-elect Barack Obama's administration "immediately focus on the dangerous and wor sening problems in Mexico, which fundamentally threaten U.S. national security."
© Copyright 2009 El Paso Times. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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