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August 12, 2009
Exclusive: Alternatives for the U.S. Should Mexico Face the ‘Worst Case Scenario’ (Part Three of Five)
Expanding Corruption in the United States
Another disturbing result of the northward expansion of the cartels is that corruption has seeped across the border into the United States. This is to be expected, given the money involved and the way the United States has for years mismanaged the border. For example, Rey Guerra, sheriff of Starr County, Texas, pled guilty in 2009 to charges that he exchanged information to drug traffickers for money and gifts. And on a federal level a U.S. customs memo of June 29, 1990, obtained by Narco News and published in 2004, tells of corruption that even then was said to have reached “crisis proportions” in Arizona border communities.
The memo, written by John Juhasz, leader of a border corruption task force in Arizona known as Firestorm, says in part “…Current investigative information indicates heavy involvement in the corruption of two customs employees by an organization in Cochise County (Arizona) which is believed to include law enforcement and court officials. There are strong indications of the same type of activity in Santa Cruz County, which, like Cochise County, is adjacent to the Mexican border.” The document also says, “Other federal agencies in Arizona implicate the same organizations as being part of the drug smuggling problem.”
That was in 1990. More recently, James Tomsheck, assistant commissioner for internal affairs at Customs and Border Protection, told USA Today (4/25/09) that an increasing number of Customs and Border Patrol agents are being arrested for corruption, an alarming trend, he says, about which they are “deeply concerned.” In 2004, 84 agents were arrested and 62 convicted. Twenty-one were arrested in the fiscal year ending in September 2008, up from eight the previous 12 months. Another agency, the Office of Inspector General of the Department Homeland Security also reports an increase in corruption along the border. Another troubling trend, says Tomsheck, is infiltration into border law enforcement agencies of people sent by the cartels for that purpose. This is an effective tactic that has been used to compromise so many police agencies in Mexico. Tomsheck says that since 2007, at least four agents have been arrested who are believed to have been sent to infiltrate the Customs and Border Protection agency.
There are indications that corruption goes higher up the ladder of the decision and policy making hierarchy than just line agents, up to the highest levels of the executive branch of the federal government and among elected officials from border areas. The Firestorm task force was suddenly ended, “shut down overnight as a result of one phone call”, says a U.S. customs agent and member of the task force, when a list of suspects to be investigated included the name of a U.S. Senator. The Senator says the appearance of his name on the list name was politically motivated. No one was allowed to find out if this was true, since the project was subsequently cancelled. Other elected officials appear suspicious but no one in authority is willing to ask relevant questions.
The justice system also appears to have been affected – not with bribes but with a corrosive culture deriving from obstruction of justice, the wrongful prosecution of agents and double standards to cover up misconduct and to accommodate the interests of foreign powers. One result has been demoralization among the agents and a reluctance to take initiative, preferring to remain reactive, more afraid of their superiors, says one former federal law enforcement agent, than of bin Laden, and in some cases even willing to accept bribes, all to the detriment of proper law enforcement and of national security (see “Unjustifiable and Impeachable: Friend’s of the Border Patrol’s Report on the DHS, DOJ and the Courts” www.fobp.us).
Security Threats to the United States
Terrorism is another important factor among the potential threats from south of the border. On July 2, 2005 Pauline Arrillaga and Olga R. Rodriquez filed an Associated Press story based on a review of “hundreds of pages of court indictments, affidavits, congressional testimony and government reports” as well as interviews in both the United States and Mexico documenting the extent of hemisphere-wide smuggling operations and how it works, indicating the growing number of people from “special interest countries” that are involved. “Special interest” refers to countries that harbor or sponsor known terrorist groups.
In 2005, then assistant secretary for ICE Michael Garcia told Congress that “the threat remains that any criminal organization that exploits our border for profit could, for the right price, bring in terrorists or bring in components of weapons of mass destruction.” Also in 2005, a Drug Enforcement Agency document reports that terrorist cells within the United States are co-operating with smuggling cartels to raise money for their terrorist activities. Islamic radicals tied to the Islamic Brotherhood says the report, are fluent in Spanish, camouflaged as Latinos and are operating on the border. A 2006 Department of Defense document also reports that al Qaeda has attempted and is planning to use the U.S.-Mexico border as a point of entry into the United States. Another law enforcement professional, Steve McGraw, head of the department of Texas Homeland Security told the North Texas Crime Commission in a speech in September 2007 that individuals with connections to Hamas, Hezbollah and al-Qaeda have been arrested on the border, noting that the “porous border …without question is a national security risk.” Similar observations have been made by former head of the DEA Asa Hutchinson and by Mike McConnell, retired vice admiral who was head of the National Security Agency between 1992 and 1996 and who served in 2008 as a principal presidential advisor on security matters.
Muslim enclaves have been growing in Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia and other Latin American countries, including Mexico where missionary work is said to be underway. Among the newcomers to those enclaves are Jihadists who are apparently becoming active in the drug trade. Most recently Michael Braun, former chief of operations of the Drug Enforcement Administration says that the Iran-backed Lebanon-based terrorist organization Hezbollah works closely with smugglers on the U.S.-Mexico border. He says that Hezbollah, in order to raise money from drug sales in the United States, relies on “the same criminal weapons smugglers, document traffickers and transportation experts as the drug cartels.”
Mark Juergensmeyer, director of the Ortalen Center for Global and International Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara, told the Inland Daily Bulletin in 2007 that the 2005 DEA document reveals information on a new evolution of terror tactics that pose serious security concerns for the United States. “In some ways,” he said it is “even more frightening to think drug trafficking organizations in Mexico may adopt Jihadist ideology. If it’s an ideology being adopted by a drug culture then that makes the situation very dangerous.” One thinks of Afghanistan and Pakistan in that regard. Much more likely, and equally as dangerous, is the adoption of the business practices and organizational skills and methods of the drug traffickers by the Jihadists, as has been the case with ideologically motivated groups in other parts of the world.
Complicating the matter is the increasing threat from nuclear weapons of mass destruction. So concludes the bi-partisan Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism established by Congress in 2007 on recommendation of the 9/11 Commission. After six months of work, the commission, chaired by Bob Graham (D-FL), said in its preliminary report in February 2008 that the odds at that time were better than even that a major city would be attacked using a nuclear weapon. The report warned that such a weapon would be used somewhere in the world by 2013. The commission advised then President-elect Obama to take “decisive action” since “no mission could be more timely.” The commissioners went on to say, “In our judgment, America’s margin of error is shrinking not growing.” The source of this growing danger, they say, is rogue states and the spread of material and technology in the Third World nuclear smuggling networks.
Numerous other experts have testified to Congress, and have gone on record elsewhere, saying that conditions on the border and in Mexico pose a security threat to this country. Among those experts was Admiral James G. Savridis, commander of the U.S. Southern Command who told the House Armed Services Committee at the end of March 2009 that the nexus between illicit drug trafficking and “Islamic radical terrorism” is a growing threat to the United States.
These warnings are ominous in the light of the already developed black market for weapons that is apparently operating in Mexico, along with the fact that well established smugglers, who run the highly effective cross border flow of drugs, guns, money and people, have no loyalties and will do anything for money. The threat is further compounded by the presence of terrorist networks around the world with the money to buy their services. Those warnings become even more unsettling when we think of the possible failure of the state in Mexico and the resultant conditions that would develop along our southern flank.
In this regard an unnamed U. S. Department of Defense official told the Washington Times (5/28/09) “We’re going to have to pay very, very close attention to Mexico.” His remark was made in the context of a report issued in early May 2009 by the United States Army’s Asymmetrical Warfare Group. That group had been conducting joint intelligence operations with Joint Task Force North (part of the Defense Department’s counternarcotics and counterterrorist operations) along with Customs and Border Protection, the United States Coast Guard and local law enforcement in the San Diego with the purpose of observing “asymmetrical infiltration operations and emerging asymmetrical threats” from the cartels.
A Failing State?
Not only is the Joint Forces Command concerned about the viability of the Mexican state, so are a number of experienced participants in the wars on drugs and terrorism. Former drug czar, General Barry McCaffrey says “Mexico is not confronting dangerous criminality – it is fighting for survival against narco-terrorism” (italics added). Another former drug czar, John Walters has said, “the consequences if president Calderón and the institutions of government, at least in the northern part of the country, become controlled by terrorist mafias – well, we worry about ungoverned spaces far away from the U.S. and this is right next door.”
And in February 2009 the new U.S. director of National Intelligence, former navy Four Star Admiral Dennis Blair reported to Congress that “the corruptive influence and increasing violence of Mexican drug cartels impedes Mexico City’s ability to govern parts of its territory.” On March 26th, Admiral Blair backed down from those remarks saying that Mexico is in “no danger of becoming a failed state.”
One reason for his reversal may be the reaction of the Mexican government to any reference to Mexico as a “failed state.” Mexican ambassador to the United States, Arturo Sarukhan, says that calling Mexico a “failed state” is a very “irresponsible remark.” And President Felipe Calderón dismisses such statements as “absurd.” Also, some American observers regard the possibility of Mexico failing as “farfetched.” It seems that such pundits believe that Mexico is too big to fail. But can it? And just what is a failed state? And can that term describe Mexico or the direction in which it is headed? And if so what might be the response of the United States to the dangers such dissolution would pose on its southern border?
According to the Global Policy Forum, failed states are those that “can no longer perform basic functions such as education, security, or governance, usually due to fractious violence or extreme poverty.” Some of the conditions that bring about such a breakdown are the operation within the territory of informal markets beyond the state’s ability to tax and regulate, as well as banditry, the activity of warlords whose power in some regions outweighs that of the state, terrorist activity, etc. Those factors are exacerbated or caused by endemic weakness of governing institutions such as political corruption, judicial ineffectiveness and ineffective bureaucracies.
Those factors are all present in varying degrees in Mexico, and to one degree or another always have been. It is not a matter of whether Mexico is now a failed state - as if “failed state” were a single bound category with, say, Somalia as its defining example – but rather to what degree is Mexico failing, in what parts of the country and how far along the road to the kind of collapse feared by the Joint Forces Command it has gone? The important questions, therefore, are not whether the Mexican state is failing in the most extreme version of that category, but rather can the slide be halted and how?
A Narco-State?
The powerful and wealthy cartels use force and intimidation to bend the state to its will. They also use politics. One growing concern is the insertion of cartels in political campaigns, both in supporting pliable candidates and running their own. This effort is non-partisan, affecting the Greens and the PRD. Godoy … The PRI is gaining momentum against the PAN government. It is reasonable to believe that cartel money and influence is also involved there. By the same token …
So far we have treated Mexico as a state under siege by powerful, well armed non-state actors, standing apart from its enemies, bothered by corruption, but not to the degree seen at the state and local levels of government. But does this image do justice to what is really going on? Does the same kind of influence seen on lower levels of government affect the federal government enough to weigh the balance of federal action in favor of some illegal enterprises for the benefit of others?
It has been said that the party formerly in control of the government, The Party of Institutionalized Revolution, PRI, had made accommodations with drug dealers, as it did with other interests in the country in order to stay in power. That is what some journalists say they have heard from former PRI officials, but have no definite evidence to support the claims. Given the endemic level of corruption in Mexico and the way the PRI operated we can certainly treat those claims as potentially true. If so, the question is, has the present party, PAN, now in charge, fallen victim, at least in some areas, to the same corrosive forces?
The definition of narco-state is one in which illegal narcotics enterprises exercise influence over the state in protecting and spreading their activity. The possibility of Mexico becoming a narco-state if the government were to lose the war with the cartels is openly discussed. Another consideration is, how far has this process already gone?
Part Four will continue with a discussion of Mexico’s endemic problems.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Glynn Custred is professor emeritus at California State University East Bay (formerly Hayward), a member of the American Anthropological Association and the Association of Borderland Studies.
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