Drug wars in Mexico are as conventional as sombreros and Burritos. For decades, cartels have been fighting for territory and power – while the government has acted as an inept bystander. The current president López Obrador has pledged a paradigm shift in the cartel wars. In lieu of fighting them, he is conducting an appeasement policy – with fatal consequences even beyond Mexico’s borders.

The Cartels Aren’t Interested in Compromise

It is a one-sided peace mission President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is undertaking. His credo, “abrazos, no balazos”, meaning hugs not bullets, could be mistaken for a comedy show script. It sounds simply too naïve to be official policy. Nevertheless, it is the reality in Mexico these days, a country that never managed to get the cartel wars under control nor the violence that makes Mexico one of the most dangerous places in the world.

Unsurprisingly, the first 19 months of Obrador’s presidency have been a fiasco, a farce. Example? The government recently released the son of drug kingpin “El Chapo”. Not due to lack of evidence but due to the Sinaloa Cartel. Once the arrest occurred, the cartel appeared in armoured vehicles in the city, committed arson and engaged in shootings with the authorities. Not unusual for Mexico: it was the authorities who had to retreat.

The message was sent: release Guzman’s son or all hell will break loose. The government succumbed to the cartel’s demands, and Ovidio Guzman walked out of jail the very same day. The government’s excuse? Guzman’s release was made to avoid an escalation of violence in order to protect the population. Translation: The Mexican government does not have the power, nor the reputation for applying any form of pressure onto the cartels. The executive branch is a government branch in name only.

Appeasement Doesn’t Work

It fits in with the president’s appeasement approach, which he has been pursuing with regard to the cartels since taking office: leave the cartels alone to end the violence, carte blanche in the middle of a war. The issue with the “abrazos, no balazos” approach is that the violence has not decreased but exacerbated. Homicides have not disappeared but are at a record high.

In the period from January to April, it was, according to official information, a record 11,535, after 11,266 in the same period last year. For López Obrador, who had sharply criticized his predecessor for the high number of murders during the election campaign, his first year in office was the bloodiest in recent Mexican history: in 2019, a total of 34,582 people died a violent death. The majority of these murders are related to drug crime in the country. An end does not seem to be near. Since the extradition of El Chapo into the US, the resulting power vacuum has been attempted to be filled by several cartels and gangs.

However, the violence of the cartels also affects many people outside the crime syndicates. These included assassinations of police chiefs, murders of a federal judge and his wife or the massacre in a rehab clinic in which 24 people were murdered only recently.

Obrador’s Popularity is Still High in Mexico

Obrador’s popularity remains high despite his apparent incompetence. His approval ratings are usually between 50 and 68.4 per cent, primarily as his government has invested heavily in the reduction of poverty and simplified access to loans for agriculture. With the fight against economic inequality, the president seeks to remove the breeding ground for organized crime, but he seems to ignore that the cartels are long-established criminal enterprises, financially bigger than Walmart. Shortage of new prodigies due to slightly more pesos in one’s pocket hence seems inconceivable.

Instead, he continues to endanger the country with his appeasement policy as the long-term effects are highly likely an overwhelming increase in crime of all kinds and security organs that are unable to curb the violence of the cartels as these are currently able to operate at will.

Obrador’s policies also ignore the fact that the Mexican drug trade is a global problem. As a producer and middleman, the country supplies the majority of the heroin and cocaine consumed in the United States, of up to 90 per cent. Moreover, the ongoing drug war is forcing hundreds of thousands of Mexicans to migrate to the United States – with dramatic political and humanitarian consequences.

L'articolo Mexico’s Appeasement Policies Against the Cartels proviene da InsideOver.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted life for nearly everyone, drug cartels included. A recent Foreign Policy report chronicled their plight as they face supply shortages and lower demand. While under normal circumstances a downturn in illicit drug markets would be welcome news, the crisis and desperation have driven drug lords to more extreme measures, resulting in a sharp uptick in violence in several states.

In Mexico, authorities reported 2,500 homicides in March, the state’s highest since record keeping began in 1997. Brazil has also experienced a rise in murders. Whereas it had previously experienced three years of decreases, coronavirus-related drug squabbles saw the tide turn upward 10%. In one Brazilian state, Ceará, the rate nearly doubled in 10 days during March.

The story is the same in El Salvador where a pre-virus decline was reversed due to increased gang violence, which led President Nayib Bukele to permit police to use lethal force.

Difficulties Abound

Challenges facing drug cartels are multifold and none of them are easy to overcome. First, there is a severe drought for ingredients used to cook methamphetamines, cocaine, and fentanyl. Chemicals necessary for their production typically are sourced from China, however the global shutdown has made their acquisition nearly impossible. Factories are closed, planes are grounded, and entire borders are locked shut. Ironically, Wuhan, the location of the initial COVID-19 outbreak, was one of the main suppliers for chemicals used in many illicit drugs.

“The main reason China has been the main supplier is the main reason China is the supplier of everything — it does it so cheaply. There was really no cost incentive for the cartels to develop this themselves,” said Ben Westoff, author of Fentanyl, Inc.

As a result, cartels have moved some production in-house, but basic chemicals are still needed from China, as Insider reported. Furthermore, if gangs manage to produce illicit drugs in the quantities they used to, they now lack the means to transport it to distributors in the US.

The US–Mexico remains closed for nonessential traffic until the end of the month. The reduced traffic flow makes it more difficult to smuggle contraband into America. For the small trickle that does make it across, buyers are now scarce, in part due to the closures of establishments that traditionally facilitated drug transactions — bars, clubs, and hotels — but also because of skyrocketing prices. 

“They are facing a supply problem and a demand problem,” said Alejandro Hope, a security analyst and former official with CISEN, the Mexican intelligence agency. “Once you get them to the market, who are you going to sell to?”

Trying Alternatives

Drug users across the world who would typically purchase hard drugs imported from Latin America are now trying a number of alternatives. Some are dialing back their choice of drug and opting for marijuana, which they can grow themselves, Foreign Policy reported. Others, such as heroine addicts in the UK, have turned to fentanyl, which is 50 to 100 times stronger and thus more deadly.

“While less drugs on the street may seem like a good thing, what replaces them is usually more dangerous. We know the purity of many drugs is decreasing as dealers cut them with different substances to increase their bulk. This means people often don’t know what they are taking, increasing the chance of overdose,” said Dr. Rachel Britton, directory of pharmacy at We Are With You, a British drug, alcohol, and mental health charity.

Fentanyl can be produced without a dependence on China, making it a lucrative alternative. Fentanyl also fetches a higher price than methamphetamine.

Different Tactics

Cartels have been raising prices and even hoarding drugs in this period of uncertainty. They’ve also turned to charity work in a bid to increase their soft power among local communities, much like how Pablo Escobar endeared himself with Colombians in the 1970s and ‘80s. 

Alejandrina Guzman, daughter of the infamous drug lord El Chapo, has led food drives for starving Mexicans, personally distributing care packages herself. Other cartels have seized the opportunity as well, thanks to the state’s inefficient social programs, as Deutsche Welle reported.

“Mexico isn’t facing a humanitarian crisis or a shortage of goods,” said Falko Ernst, an analyst with the Crisis Group which focuses on Mexico. “Mexican cartels are using the current situation to strengthen their social base.”

Other cartels are diversifying their talents by dabbling in cyber crime, which continues to increase. COVID-19 has forced them to generate new sources of income as traditional revenue streams dry up.

While they try and survive, violence will only increase, particularly as governments are locked down and preoccupied with the coronavirus pandemic. The opportunity is there for cartels to wreck more havoc than usual and the economic crisis gives them a compelling reason to do so. 

From manufacturing different types of drugs to hoarding supplies and fighting among one another, cartels are keeping busy. Ultimately, unless Latin American governments rededicate themselves to fighting drug syndicates, underground operations could become stronger when the pandemic ends. In a survival of the fittest, the ones who remain will be more deadly and efficient than cartels of the past. Thanks to their charitable outreach, they may even have more support among the general populace, and possibly even gain political power.

L'articolo Drug Cartels Become Deadlier Amid Pandemic Problems proviene da InsideOver.

President Trump recently announced a war against cartels seeking to send drugs across the Mexican border and terrorize citizens on both sides. This is almost getting swamped by the news of coronavirus and will likely lead to insincere accusations that Trump is trying to distract America. But the move still shows the importance of responding to recent events, the multifaceted nature of the border conflict, and sharply contrasts with the supposed Russian superiority in hybrid war.

The Dangerous Mexico Border Region

The history of the US-Mexico border region includes a recent massacre of dual citizen families. Back in November of 2019 nine family members, including three mothers and six children, were brutally massacred by a Mexican cartel. The family members felt safe in this province because they were nominally off limits. The thinking for this immunity goes all the way back to the American mob and the St. Valentine’s day massacre. There were many in the mob that thought high profile attacks and massacres alerted the authorities and were bad for business. That business worked better, as Bugsy Siegel said, when they only killed each other, and the authorities were less focused on them as a result.

These new attacks then were apparently from a faction that disregarded the old rules and struck American women and children which Trump is now proving will very much be bad for business. It is excellent news that America is finally acting against the cartel. Still, one can’t help but feel that any potential strikes might be more successful if the cartels didn’t know US strikes were coming. Everybody knows the US has amazing intelligence capabilities and drones that can surveil targets 24 hours a day. But a massive surprise strike could kill key leaders, destroy important buildings, and strike terror in the hearts of our enemies when they realize that we can unleash great havoc with no warning. The only apparent advantage of announcing the program is that it’s possible alerting drug gangs of an increased readiness to fight might act as a deterrent to cartel members trying to take advantage of a distracted America.

How Can America Crush the Cartels?

Yet beyond a vague concept of drones and some talk about coast guard and Navy ships it’s important to discuss what those assets will do. As mentioned, American drones already provide ready surveillance and can transmit data to attack drones. But there is much more to a drug war than launching missiles.

Additional US Coast Guard ships will provide increased reconnaissance patrols in the Pacific and Caribbean. The Navy is also supplying P8 Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft, destroyers, and littoral combat ships. All of these specialize in shipping interdiction. The littoral combat ships and Coast Guard Cutters are smaller vessels designed to operate closer to shore. The littoral ships are also stealthy so they can better track and follow drug smugglers than the cutters and the navy’s destroyers. The bigger ships like the destroyers bring have impressive radar and carry a compliment of helicopters. Mexico has been relying on its helicopters to track down smugglers for years.

At the same time America is putting warships and planes along travel routes from Mexico, which is not a strictly war time scenario. They can’t simply attack any target in Mexico. What they can do is use the gathered data to assist the Mexican police in their operations to seize drug shipments, arrest cartel leaders, and confiscate drug shipments in international waters. Thus it requires a great deal of sensitivity to wage what newspapers are calling “war” but what actually involves carefully supporting legal operations against a shadow Mexican regime without violating Mexican sovereignty.

The Complexity of Hybrid Warfare

Having to fight something that is both warlike and a legal battle at the same time shows the difficulty of actual hybrid warfare. The army chief of staff defines it as a “diverse and dynamic combinations of conventional, irregular, terrorist and criminal capabilities.”  Russia has been cited as a bogeyman for their use of so-called hybrid warfare in seizing the Crimea and their destabilizing of Ukraine. Russia seems more similar to meddling and sometimes opportunist bad actors from the past that use these limited new concepts in supported of traditional goals and methods. In contrast, the US faces a tougher and more thorough hybrid war in that they must use military assets and various intelligence gathering methods across different services and 22 different countries. The operation will also have to utilize law enforcement officials in what are both military and legal operations against a powerful shadow state. The latter actually looks more difficult than anything Russia has done in the last decade and shows that US hybrid war capabilities should not be underestimated.

As you can see this is not simply a diversionary exercise during the coronavirus, but a much-needed — if complicated — effort to stop the cartels from exporting drugs and violence. Trump is finally taking extra action against barbaric cartels that killed American citizens in Mexico and make money off of drugs that kill many more. This is a largely intelligence-driven effort to aid interdiction and law enforcement efforts that also uses many military methods and tactics. It shows that America shouldn’t be intimidated by buzzwords like hybrid warfare being used by foreign adversaries since in actual practice Washington displays much more capability at it than any other actor.

L'articolo Trump’s Overdue “War” on Drug Cartels proviene da InsideOver.

American President Donald Trump wants to categorize Mexican drug cartels as foreign “terrorist organizations”. His announcement came after nine American women and children were killed by members of a drug cartel in Mexico on Nov. 4, 2019. Three women and six children, members of the La Nora Mormon community in Sonora state, Mexico, were killed after their convoy was ambushed in the daytime by cartel members. The victims, who held dual Mexican and American citizenship, were part of a community that farms land in northern Mexico.

“This is the time for Mexico, with the help of the United States, to wage WAR on the drug cartels and wipe them off the face of the earth,” Trump tweeted following the attack.

‘The Police Work With The Criminals’

Mexican federal officials announced that they are investigating the possibility that the crime group had mistaken the victims as rival crime groups.

“It’s common knowledge down here that the police work with the criminals,” Julián LeBarón, a cousin of the victims said.

“They have a monopoly on security and they get paid a wage for protection, and later we find out that they participate in the murder of women and children. These people take resources to protect us and they are murderers themselves,” he added.

Mr LeBarón also claimed that authorities arrived at the scene of the crime ten hours later. He added that his brother was murdered ten years ago, after standing up to local gangs.

“I’ve been marching in Mexico and speaking out against the violence, and I have never seen a case where a victim has had justice. The justice system has collapsed. The impunity rate is almost 100 percent,” he said, adding that nobody had been brought to trial for the murder of his brother.

Case Study: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s Drug War

Three years ago, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, declared a war on drugs, winning the election on a platform of strictly conservative ideals. Under Duterte, Filipino police have been given unprecedented power and granted quasi-total impunity to kill suspected drug dealers and drug users. In a July 2018 speech delivered at the Session Hall of the House of Representatives in the Philippines, Duterte said: “the war against illegal drugs is far from over. Where before, the war resulted in the seizure of illegal drugs worth millions of pesos, today, they run [into] billions in peso value.

“This is why the illegal drugs war will not be sidelined. Instead, it will be as relentless and chilling, if you will, as on the day it began. These drug dealers know fully well that their business is against the law. They know the consequences of their criminal acts, especially when caught in flagrante delicto and they violently resist arrest … They know that illegal drugs waste away lives, dysfunctionalize families, and ruin relationships. They know that once hooked, addicts will die slowly – slow deaths. And yet, they persist in doing what they do, oblivious to the terrible harm that they cause to the people and communities,” Duterte added.

Commenting one week later, Rachel Chhoa Howard, Amnesty International’s Philippines Researcher, criticized Duterete’s speech.

“Thousands of people in the Philippines have died as a direct result of President Duterte’s murderous policies, which have mostly targeted the country’s poorest people,” she said, adding that “Duterte’s claim to be a defender of human life is an insult to the families of these victims, especially coming after his public vow to continue the killings, which Amnesty International considers to be a crime against humanity.

“The right to life is a human right and the distinction President Duterte is trying to draw is completely false. While human rights groups have decried the thousands of extrajudicial executions carried out in the guise of an anti-drugs campaign, President Duterte has bragged about the slaughter and actively incited more violence,” Howard added.

The High Cost Of Tolerating Drug Dealers In Society

The criminal and human costs of drug and crime cartels are undeniable, but ruthless violence is not the answer. Duterte and Trump’s political answers to centuries-old social issues are ultra-right-wing responses whereby order is prioritized through totalitarian use of hard power. The failure of totalitarianism is that it prioritizes order above all else—including human life.

Trump’s desire to designate Mexican drug cartel as foreign terrorist organizations is an ultimate power move to increase US jurisdiction over Mexican governance. It increases the possibility of sending more US troops to Mexico, at a time when Trump still hasn’t explained why US troops are present in 53 African countries.

The struggle for power over who combats Mexicans drug and crime cartels will only escalate tensions between the already-strained Mexican-USA relationship.

Earlier this month on Dec. 6, Trump tweeted: “ … will temporarily hold off this designation [to classify Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organisations] and step up our joint efforts to deal decisively with these vicious and ever-growing organizations!”

It shouldn’t be overlooked by anyone that Trump’s promises to fight drug cartels – like Duterte’s – always seem to come just before an election period. Neither is it possible to miss that the US’ demand for drugs is funding a significant part of the Mexican drug cartels. Paul Angelo, a fellow for Latin America studies at the Council of Foreign Relations, added to this theory of “shared responsibility” between the US and Mexico.

“If we really accept that we have a shared responsibility – we have a partnership in helping Mexico with all its criminality – then we also have to take responsibility for all the firearms that are flowing out from the United States to Mexico and helping fuel this violence,” Angelo commented.

Trump’s concern with Mexican drug cartels is simply a way n effective to pander to his voters, stay in the Oval Office and consolidate his power.

L'articolo Why Trump Wants To Label Mexican Drug Cartels ‘Terrorist Organizations’ proviene da InsideOver.

1,660kg of cocaine was found in Guinea-Bissau in September 2019, in one of Africa’s biggest drug seizures. The drugs, found in a bungalow outside Canchungo, Guinea-Bissau, was seized with another 250kg of cocaine found in a couple of houses nearby.

Three Colombians, a Mexican and eight other people were arrested at the scenes of the crime. A further eighteen cars were seized, along with a speedboat. The drugs were headed for Europe, where the UN World Drug Report 2019 has recorded increased cocaine use, alongside North America.

Earlier in March, Guinea-Bissau police seized 800kg of cocaine in the country known as “smuggler’s paradise”. Poverty and corrupt, dysfunctional judicial systems have left West Africa increasingly prone to drug smuggling rings.

More than a decade ago, Colombian drug cartels arrived in West Africa. Their purpose was to turn the region into a transit hub for cocaine being imported from Latin America and into Europe. Africa’s political instability has also left citizens vulnerable to the drug smuggling trade.

‘The fact of the matter is that without assistance, Guinea-Bissau is at the mercy of wealthy, well-armed and technologically advanced narcotics traffickers,’ said the Consultancy Africa Intelligence agency.

A senior official at the US’s Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) said: “Geographically, West Africa makes sense. The logical thing is for the cartels to take the shortest crossing over the ocean to West Africa, by plane – to one of the many airstrips left behind by decades of war, or by drop into the thousands of little bays – or by boat all the way. A ship can drop anchor in waters completely unmonitored, while fleets of smaller craft take the contraband ashore.

“A place like Guinea Bissau is a failed state anyway, so it’s like moving into an empty house.

“There is no prison in Guinea-Bissau. One rusty ship patrols a coastline of 350km, and an archipelago of 82 islands. The airspace is un-patrolled. The police have few cars, no petrol, no radios, handcuffs or phones.

“You walk in, buy the services you need from the government, army and people, and take over. The cocaine can then be stored safely and shipped to Europe, either by ship to Spain or Portugal, across land via Morocco on the old cannabis trail, or directly by air using ‘mules’.”

The global drugs trade is an incredibly complex, illicit industry. Law enforcement worldwide have found it impossible to control this industry, because of its complexity.

From the farmers who feed their families growing cocaine to the law enforcement officers who turn a blind eye for a ‘cut’ of the profits, to the everyday citizen in Europe – including wealthy, powerful people, some politicians – who abuse the drugs, the drug chain is too long and too complex to be defeated.

The United States would finally admit to this impossibility when different states began legalising recreational marijuana use, starting with Colorado in 2012. Unfortunately, this war on drugs would come at a huge cost to the country’s African American population who were deliberately criminalised for decades, by the US government, for using and selling marijuana.

In Europe, the rhetoric of blame continues to be used when talking about drug trafficking in Africa. News reports fully blame the lack of police equipment and social infrastructure that have attracted Latin American drug lords to operate in the area. Yet, West Africa’s drug trafficking would not be catalysed if demand from Europe didn’t make drug trafficking extremely profitable.

This is a rhetoric of power: the people who use the drugs from safe distances are allowed to point fingers at those who grow, make and traffic the drugs in unsafe, dangerous and, many times, hopeless conditions.

In 2011, Matthew S. Jenner, from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law would argue against criminalising drug trafficking.

“Forty years ago, the world declared war on drugs,” he wrote. “Today, after decades of failing to adequately control drug consumption, an even graver problem has emerged: violent drug traffickers have taken the industry hostage and will stop at nothing to preserve their power.

“Governments have instituted dozens of programs to dismantle the illicit drug industry, but they have seen only marginal success.”

In 2009, the West Africa Coast Initiative (WACI) was launched by United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), United Nations Office for West Africa and the Sahel (DPA/UNOWAS), Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) and The International Crime Police Organization (INTERPOL).

Its goal is to use force to “address the menace of transnational organized crime, including drug trafficking.” It is operational in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau and Cote D’Ivoire.

“All the venues are being screened to expand the WACI programme implementation beyond the initial five targeted States, to serve as a model for all ECOWAS members,” its website states.

The presence of WACI in these countries will only serve to make drug traffickers more crafty in their trade, and government officials more prone to corruption.

The global drugs trade is “one of the top five largest industries in the world after the arms trade”. Rather than making forceful attempts to squash this globalised and heavily-profitable network, Africa’s biggest challenge would be to fix the sociopolitical and economic problems drawing its local population to this industry.

The future of the African Union is dependent on the continent achieving its aims to “promote sustainable development at the economic, social and cultural levels” and to “promote peace, security, and stability on the continent”.

The ENACT transnational organised crime programme’s research and analysis of Africa’s drug trade, policy, and future consumption trends reveals that sub-Saharan Africa will see the globe’s biggest surge in illicit drug users in the next 30 years, caused by organised crime and ineffective policy. With one in four people in the world predicted to be African by that time, the AU must hasten to achieve its sociopolitical and economic aims by its 2063 deadline.

West Africa’s opiate crisis, today, is an example of bigger problems to come if the AU does not meet its objectives. The same problems that caused West Africa’s drug trafficking boom are the same problems that will continue to exacerbate the problem unless the root of this continental malaise is addressed.

L'articolo The Global Drugs Trade Finds a Profitable Hub in West Africa proviene da InsideOver.

The Mexican drug cartels strike again and this time only a few miles away from United States soil. A death toll that recalls war zones such as Syria, Libya or even Somalia in the 1990s, but this time it’s a small Mexican town just 35 miles from the US border that is the scene of a major armed clash that left 23 dead and six injured.

It all started on Saturday morning when a group of heavily armed men riding in pickup trucks and belonging to the “Northeast Cartel” (CDN) attacked the town of Villa Union (3,000) aiming at local government offices, including the town’s city hall which was riddled with bullets. The military-style raid forced federal forces to intervene in a battle that lasted for more than an hour and which left on the ground 17 cartel members, four law enforcers and two civilians.

The reason behind the assault is still unclear as the state of Coahuila, which indeed has a violent history, has been far from the peaks of violence that have been involving other cartel-infested states such as Tamaulipas and Sinaloa.

However, the assault is likely to be related to the struggle for the control of drug smuggling routes in the Mexican-US border areas. On November 4th, killers belonging to a drug cartel slaughtered nine people (three women and six children) of US-Mexican origin, belonging to a Mormon community in the state of Sonora, approximately 70 miles south of the US border. According to some analysts, the victims’ vehicle might have been mistaken for the one belonging to rival cartel members.

In October, a massive operation by the Sinaloa cartel prompted the federal government to release the captured son of drug lord “Chapo” Guzman and withdraw the army, which found itself outmanoeuvred on the streets of Culiacan and which led to the so-called “Culiacan Fiasco”.

The Culiacan fiasco

On October 17th, a gruesome battle erupted in the Sinaloa capital city of Culiacan as the federal security forces arrested Ovidio Guzman Lopez, the son of drug kingpin “Chapo” Guzman, currently detained in the United States, with a final death-toll of 13 including seven cartel men and one member of the federal forces.

Ovidio Guzmán (28) and his brother Joaquin (34) were both charged last February by the US Department of Justice with conspiracy to distribute drugs to be imported into the country and they are both wanted for extradition. The two are believed to be leading a faction of the infamous Sinaloa Cartel.

The battle went on for several hours as the cartel-gunmen indiscriminately fired their assault rifles, threw hand-grenades, torched vehicles, blocked roads and forced civilians into hiding. As the security forces were outnumbered they were forced to release Ovidio Guzman and to withdraw. Some of the scenes were even caught on video.

Neo-elected Mexican president Andres Manuel López Obrador, belonging to the left-wing party “Morena”, backed Mexico’s Security Cabinet’s decision to suspend operations and release the drug kingpin to save lives: “The capture of a criminal cannot be worth more than the lives of the people … many citizens, people, human beings were at risk,” Obrador said during a press briefing in Oaxaca.

However, the “Culiacan fiasco” raised a series of questions regarding strategical and operational dynamics that are worth pondering on. Firstly, how is it possible that the Mexican security forces did not expect such a furious and massive response to the arrest attempt of Ovidio Guzman while operating in a notorious stronghold of the Cartel? Secondly, why did the security forces decide to operate in full daylight and attempt to detain the kingpin in an urban area packed with cars, hotels, shops, bars and restaurants? Was the operation planned or was it the result of a semi-improvised action with very limited planning?

Mexican president, Obrador, is correct when he claims that saving human lives is far more important than “capturing a criminal”, however, such complex and delicate operations should not be performed in highly populated urban areas and the middle of the day, something which Mexican security forces and the Security Cabinet should have known.

L'articolo The Mexican Drug Cartels Defeat the State: The “Culiacan Fiasco” proviene da InsideOver.