Drug cartel terrorist designation will only add fuel to Mexico’s dire security situation – La Cartita News

There is no doubt that Mexico’s fragmented rule of law has been making a mockery of public institutions for decades, thanks to local and state-level cooperation with drug trafficking organizations. Nowhere does this ring truer than in Culiacan, Sinaloa, where two factions of the Sinaloa Drug Cartel syndicates battle for access to and control over the city’s busy political and business connections. The Mexican public is being forced to look at what decades of growth and corruption have made possible.

In the ill-planned world of US drug policy, a new beast is emerging: the Drug Cartel Terrorist Designation Act, which threatens to explode the already fragile landscape of US-Mexico relations and threaten the lives of those affected. with the bullets flying around them, missing their intended target: drug trafficking organizations and their consumers with an insatiable appetite for their products.

The bill was reintroduced by an irrelevant senator from Kansas, Roger Marshall, whose experience in U.S.-Mexico relations could not be less relevant to the task ahead. Nevertheless, the bill attempts to label Mexican drug cartels as “terrorist.” The point, however, is that cartels don’t push ideology; they seek profit, which makes them much easier to deter and manage using the conventional tools already available to law enforcement.

El Cartel de Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation are not Al-Qaeda or ISIS with a taste for tequila; they are ruthless companies exploiting a growing market created by American demand and sustained by failed policies on both sides of the border. If they make one dollar, someone in the US makes two, and this speaks volumes about the nature of their illegal activities. The consequences would instead turn a patient friend into an enemy in Mexico.

As usual, US senators will settle down comfortably in their offices in Washington, where they decide to pour gasoline on the inferno that is the Mexican cartel problem. Their solution? More guns, more violence, more “counter-terrorism” tactics. It’s like they’ve seen too many action movies and decided that’s how real life works. Usually informants are sufficient, as was the case for the Five Families in New York City.

Poverty, corruption, weak institutions – these are the breeding grounds for cartel power. Yet our esteemed lawmakers seem to think that shouting “terrorists” loud enough will magically solve these deep-seated problems. But this is where demand on the US side needs to be reduced!

The purchasing power of Mexico’s DTOs far exceeds the institutional power that poorly financed and poorly organized local governments can wield at the regional level. In fact, the billions made from American impulsiveness also have an impact on American law enforcement. Since that is the case, would Senator Marshall be open to waterboarding enterprising Border Patrol agents? If not, why should we accept the same treatment for the Mexican smuggler who paid him? The whole plan smells discriminatory. Again, there is no solution to ‘kill’ or ‘bomb’.

This will likely only make people charge more for their participation in an artificially dangerous logistics chain that ends with a drug dealer selling to a willing consumer. Thus, using a terrorism statute for what is primarily a public health issue and then a law enforcement issue will only create enormous profitability and bloodshed.

And let’s not forget the potential for backlash. Remember the ‘Gun Walker’ fiasco caused by the ATF sending weapons to the Zetas in Operation: Fast & Furious? That little mishap in American law enforcement ultimately armed the very cartels it sought to combat. One can only imagine the chaos this new designation could cause.

The architects of the bill, in their infinite myopia, have even decided to slam the door on potential refugees fleeing the violence they are about to exacerbate. The bill states that it should not be interpreted as an extension of the right to asylum. It’s a masterclass in creating a problem and then refusing to deal with its consequences.

At its core, this bill represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the drug trade. It’s not a war you can win with more firepower; it is a public health crisis and a challenge for law enforcement.

Perhaps, given the bill’s sponsors, this is the intended effect. After all, Mexicans have been paying the bill for decades through deaths from illegal armed exports, but keep a large share of US dollars in the south. So it appears that US senators want to give a boost to their own constituents: the weapons manufacturers and the bloated military-industrial complex.

The definition of terrorism requires that senseless acts of violence be linked to some extremist ideological line that makes the resulting bloodshed morally inexplicable. The problems in Mexico are serious, but not the result of bin Laden’s spiritual protégés. In fact, we would do well to remember who the US relied on to secure the border after September 11. The US needs to do the right thing when it comes to measuring the likely impact of such a bogus piece of legislation.