Rising fatalities spur calls for legalisation as president admits military tactics are failing.
Mexico's president, Felipe Calderón, launched his
presidency three and a half years ago with an unprecedented military-led
offensive against the country's drug cartels. Since then 28,000 people have
been killed in drug-related violence that continues to escalate, with little
sign that the power of the traffickers has been reduced.
Yesterday Calderón finally accepted that the strategy had
failed to rein in the cartels, and called on his growing number of critics to
help him revise the government's approach to the drug wars.
"I agree that the strategy should be
questioned," the president said. "And so I am willing to receive and
analyse proposals of how to change and improve it."
The admission came days after Calderón's predecessor
called for drugs to be legalised. Vicente Fox, who also belongs to the National
Action party, said prohibition had failed to curb violence and corruption.
"We should consider legalising the production, sale and distribution of
drugs," Fox wrote on his blog. "Radical prohibition strategies have
never worked."
Calderón himself fervently opposes legalisation, although
he recently called for a "fundamental debate" on the issue. He has
also claimed that Fox's relative inaction in the face of the cartels' growing
power contributed to the current situation.
In the latest of a series of government-organised debates
on the drug war, Calderón repeated that unilateral legalisation would increase
drug use and do little to reduce the cartels' income. But he was forced to
listen to blistering attacks on the government strategy by opposition leaders.
"The government's strategy is not working,"
Jesus Ortega, leader of the leftist Democratic Revolution party, said. "If
the government only attacks the traffickers then the error, and the failure, of
the strategy is evident."
Ortega also railed against the use of the army and navy
in anti-drugs operations. Critics of the offensive say the military's lack of
preparation for an internal policing role has caused human rights abuses.
Calderón said he agreed that withdrawing the military was
desirable, but impossible until civilian state and municipal police forces had
been purged of rampant corruption and were strong enough to face the problem on
their own.
The sessions also produced complaints about the scant
attention paid by the government to the money-laundering that fuels the illegal
industry and finances the violence. Mexican drug trafficking is estimated to be
worth anywhere between $10 billion (£6.4b) and $40b a year.
Calderón admitted that not enough had been done to track
illicit earnings but said the government had trouble hiring top financial
experts who could make much more money in the private sector without putting
themselves in danger.
The president agreed with calls by other leaders on the
need to improve education and employment opportunities for young people to help
them avoid drug use or recruitment by the cartels.
Analysts said the Mexican president's new willingness to
open the debate marks a dramatic departure from his previous tendency to equate
any criticism with a capitulation to organised crime.
"In almost four years the government cannot claim
any kind of victory and the debate is the result of the crisis of legitimacy in
the strategy," said Samuel Gonzalez, a former Mexican drugs tsar who has
been pushing for a rethink for years. "But at least it is now being
discussed and that has to be a good thing."
The debate was also seen as an attempt to spread
responsibility for the bloodshed. "If we join together we can win this
battle," Calderón said. "But if we continue to lack coordination and
blame each other, the simple truth is that we cannot move forward. I understand
perfectly well that there is a perception that the war is being lost, but I do
not share it."
The main problem, he said, is that local public
institutions are too weak to maintain control when the forces withdraw.
He added: "I am asking for the political parties for
their help, their strength and their collaboration to allow us to rebuild the
institutions of security and justice at all levels," he said. "We can
beat the criminals. We can re-establish the rule of law in this country."
Turf wars
Mexico's drug violence is rooted in a series of turf wars
between different trafficking organisations that are also involved in other
illegal activities, such as kidnapping, extortion and people trafficking. The
violence and the number of civilian casualties has increased since December
2006, when the government launched an offensive against them involving tens of
thousands of soldiers and federal police. The main axis of the war is the
rivalry between the Sinaloa cartel and the Zetas – a group founded by renegade
special forces troops. Sinaloa, led by the country's most famous kingpin,
Joaquin El Chapo Guzman, is based in the Pacific coast state of the same name.
The Zetas control much of the Gulf coast. Both Sinaloa and the Zetas are also
present in other parts of the country. One of the most intense current battles
is for control of the northeastern border state of Tamaulipas, just across from
Texas, where Zetas are fighting their erstwhile bosses in the Gulf Cartel,
which has now reputedly allied with Sinaloa.
Other relevant trafficking organisations involved in the
wars include La Linea, which is based in Ciudad Juarez, just across from El
Paso in Texas, and is trying to hold off the encroachment of Sinaloa. Here the
extreme violence is intertwined with rivalry between local youth gangs
reflecting a dramatic degree of social decomposition.
Elsewhere, the quasi sect-like group called La Familia is
rooted in the central state of Michoacan, and the Tijuana cartel maintains its
bastion in the border city just over from San Diego in California. The Beltran
Leyva group is involved in a bitter struggle for control of the organisation
following the death of its leader in a navy operation last year.