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September 19, 2008
Multinational Drug Busts Show Positive Power of Cooperation
Yesterday’s DOJ announcement of a major, multinational bust of the Gulf Cartel shows that cooperation across agencies and international borders can yield significant results.
With the growing nexus of the drug trade and terrorist activities, it is no longer possible to view the drug trade as separate from the merging organized crime/terrorist pipelines that we are seeing across Latin America and Asia.
The 15-month “Project Reckoning” operation stretched from Mexico to Italy, yielding 175 arrests, the seizure of $60 million and other benefits. It touched sections of the transnational criminal pipeline in Colombia, Panama, Guatemala, Mexico, and the United States.
There is no question the results are particularly good news for Mexico, where the Calderon government is fighting for its survival and the survival of the Mexican state in the face of renewed drug cartel violence.
It is hard to understand why more such operations are not undertaken. Part of the reason is the lack of sustained focus by previous attorneys general on the issue of transnational crime and its long-term impact on the societies in which it operates, including creating conditions that foster an alliance with terrorist organizations (the FARC in Colombia, the Taliban in Afghanistan/Pakistan, the Tamil Tigers etc.)
Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey has gone a long way toward remedying that oversight and neglect, and I hope it continues, regardless of who wins the elections.
“The scope of the threat demands a deliberate and sustained response and the success we have had, such as the takedowns announced today, is due to the combined efforts of federal, state, local and international law enforcement” Mukasey said. “Although I am pleased with the efforts so far, we cannot and will not rest on these successes. The threat posed by international drug cartels is too great. It will take all of us working together to prevail.”
That, and a talk earlier this year at CSIS, are more than had been said on organized crime and its threat in the past seven years.
What is interesting in this bust is the view of the pipeline it provides, a pipeline I described in NEFA Foundation paper I did for the US Special Operations Command in Tampa, Florida.
We have weapons, cocaine, meth, heroin, and vehicles all traveling the same transnational route, operated by the same people.
It is not difficult to extrapolate that the same pipelines carry illegal immigrants, endangered species (one of the most lucrative illegal trades out there) and many other things. It is not difficult to see how that diversified pipeline can carry other, more dangerous cargo, from nuclear components (as A.Q. Kahm mastered) to biological weapons, to members of terrorist cells.
That we have an attorney general who gets this is important. That the education and emphasis carry into the next administration is vital.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Douglas Farah is an award-winning investigative journalist and Senior Fellow in Financial Investigations and Transparency at the International Assessment and Strategy Center. E-mail him at doug@douglasfarah.com.
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