U.S. firearm manufacturers profit from War on Drugs

Over the past 5 years, over 20,000 firearms, or 87 percent, of firearms seized by Mexican authorities originated from the United States.

In the past 3 years, over 90 percent of firearms seized originated in the United States. 68 percent of those firearms were traced to U.S. manufacturers; the remaining percentage were imported to the U.S., then sent to Mexico.

The above information was gleaned from a Government Accountability Office memorandum written in 2009.

The same memo admits that it is impossible to estimate how much the actual number of U.S. made firearms have been exported to Mexico for use by drug cartels.

It is not unlikely that the actual amount if far higher than the amount seized. The report indicates that a large percentage of the firearms seized were AK-47 and AR-15-type rifles. The cost of an AR-15 can range from $600-$2000, depending on the rifle’s specification.

If at a low estimate, we consider the $600 figure for purposes U.S.-originated weapons seized in Mexico, the amount of money at stake is $12 million. Again, the actual monetary amount involved is likely far higher. After all, given the persistent, day-t0-day, cartel-inflicted violence that is occurring right now, there seems to be generous amounts of firearms from the U.S. that have yet to be seized.

Thus, firearm manufacturers are profiting from sales of their products to drug cartels in Mexico. Unfortunately, it is impossible to gauge with any degree of certainty the real extent of the gun manufacturers profits from this sales, at least insofar as disclosed public information shows.

These guns kill on a very large scale. They kill Mexicans, for the most part. In the United States, the U.S. supplied & funded deaths of Mexicans inspires little emotional reaction. Nothing, in fact, in comparison to the populist reactions that result when someone sees an “illegal” take an American job(Yes, many a purportedly well-rounded educated folk, including attorneys I know, are just as easily taken in by the warmth of populist rhetoric) But don’t forget that U.S. activity and jobs directly cause deaths of Mexicans, something a bit worse than taking a job.

This is not revelatory; no one likes to look at themselves as responsible for the travails that affect our world.

One must have scapegoats, or stylishly–well, this, that, and this need to be considered before I even deign to consider an analysis– ignore a serious problem.

No action is free from undesirable consequences. But Mexico did not choose to have their fate decided subject to the whims of the entitled drug-using citizens of the U.S. It is time to take responsibility for our own actions and halt the dumping of our deadly effluence to Southern Neighbors.

Parties that stand to gain from the drug war(i.e. firearm manufacturers), will continue to fund a consistent stream of information that persuasively argues in favor of the war on drugs, or alternatively for criminalization of drugs, which are close to the same thing.

Unless the people of the United States refrain from the intuitive, knee-jerk reaction that across-the-board drug legalization is a fantasy, we will all be, to some degree, responsible for the casualties.

 

Toll of War on Drugs ticks upward as this is written.

While Barack Obama, Eric Holder, California, and everyone in between bicker over the legalization of Marijuana, Mexico is aflame. Today’s home page in Mexico City Newspaper “El Universal” gives a glimpse as to the severity of the current War on Drugs:

Some of the stories on Mexico are titled as follows:

–Nayarit: 15 carwashers executed

— Senate formally reproaches U.S. government on drugs

–FCH: Criminals murder without mercy

–Colima’s commander of police executed

— Situation in Juarez: very troubling

–Police station attacked in Tamualipas: 8 injured

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. The War on Drugs is a proven failure; it has only succeeded in causing death and suffering, though it has been quite useful in propelling many an elected official to office.

When you go to vote, note that none of the mainstream candidates are serious about legalizing all drugs, which is the only avenue available to genuinely undermine the endemic violence pervasive in the streets of our southern neighbors, as well as in our own streets.

Also take note of who benefits from the current war on drugs. Gigantic corporations(think Military Contractors, for one). Deeply rooted financial interests should not take precedence over common sense and decency. Vote Libertarian!(only party serious about legalizing all drugs that are not insufferable leftists).

 

 

Ciudad Juarez’s killing grounds expand to Guanajuato

You may have heard about the impunity with which women are shorn away from this world in the killing grounds of Ciudad Juarez. But in Guanajuato?

Mexico has never been a place known for law and order. But nowadays, with the ambitious and death-creating war on drugs, it appears that order is at the breaking point.

From El Universal:

This year there have been 31 femicides[in Guanajuato] with diverse indications of hate towards the victims, like torture, cutting off of extremities, mutilation, abuse, sexual abuse, abandonment of the bodies in the street, and some nude, informed Ángeles López García, director of the Victoria Diez Center for Human Rights.

Since 2006, there have been 171 similar cases. Estimates state that 80 percent of the perpetrators are not brought to justice.

U.S. Complicity

It is no secret that the Mexican and U.S. governments have purposely sparked a civil war within Mexico; the illicit drug business is melded to the body of the Mexican government and to break that link necessarily includes a great deal of violence.

In this effort, Mexico’s law enforcement resources  are likely targeted towards the  goal of winning the war on drugs. Thus, the day-to-day duties of law enforcement–such as solving non- drug-related  murders, rapes, robberies–are likely significantly undermined. This, then, breeds impunity and concurrently incentivizes wrongdoers to act. If given the opportunity to kill or rape without consequences, the dredges within humans flourish.

The femicides in Guanajuato are likely a direct consequence of the stepped U.S.-sponsored war on drugs in Mexico. Disturbingly, it is clear that what is happening in Mexico was quite foreseeable and thus in the eyes of the two governments the lives lost are nothing more than coldly calculated casualties of a war that cannot be won.

We, the U.S. government; the U.S. drug users, and those that deflect the woes of our time upon those that are not responsible, have a hand in the responsibility for these crimes against humanity.

The war on drugs in Mexico and Colombia: A circle of death

In an interview with La Opinion, a Los Angeles based newspaper, Obama responded to Hilary Clinton’s previously made comments that Mexico is:

looking more and more like Colombia looked 20 years ago, where the narco-traffickers control certain parts of the country…

Obama spoke thus:

Mexico is vast and progressive democracy, with a growing economy, and as a result you cannot compare what is happening in Mexico with what happened in Colombia 20 years ago

First, Obama needs a lesson in history. Mexico could not in good faith be called a democracy before the year 2000, when for the first time since the Mexican revolution(1910-1917), an opposition party, the PAN, defeated the PRI, in presidential elections.

Perhaps one could call it a nascent democracy, but “progressive” is an attempt to say that in just 10 years of “democracy” Mexico is on an unbending path towards the likes of the United States.

Violence In Colombia Easier to Quell

The dynamics of the violence that arose in Colombia as it relates to the “war on drugs” differs significantly to those of Mexico.

The pervasive violence that wracked Colombia in the 1990s, unlike today’s Mexico, was linked to a political ideology, namely that of the FARC(Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), whose intent was to overthrow the Colombian government and institute a more just government for the people.

The FARC’s actions incited the wrath of wealthy cartels and landowners, who created their own small armies to protect their interests against the FARC. These small armies were widely referred to as paramilitaries, who according to many reports  had the implicit support of the Colombian government.

Both the FARC and the Paramilitaries committed a great amount of atrocities upon civilians, amongst them the vile practice of hostage taking. The Colombian people, understandably, did not appreciate living in a shadow of mortal fear on a day-to-day basis, and thus the government eventually, under Alvaro Uribe, using funds provided by the U.S. under “Plan Colombia”, managed to beat back the chronic violence that was present in all quarters of Colombia.

Part of why Uribe and his government were able to do this, perhaps, was that those who inflicted the violence–FARC, ELN, and the Paramilitaries such as AUC–were relatively easy to identify and thus provided a concrete enemy in the eyes of the people, allowing the government to garner widespread support in the initiative of destroying them.

Likewise, there was a clear target to attack–FARC and many of the Paramilitaries(the largest one, the AUC, has been officially dismantled; the FARC still exists, but has been significantly marginalized) had hierarchic structures that could be dissected and destroyed.

The violence of today’s Mexico, as it purportedly relates to the “drug war”, has claimed 28,000 Mexican lives since the inauguration in 2006 of President Felipe Calderon. Mexico has the distinct disadvantage, unlike Colombia, of bordering the behemoth of demand for illicit drugs: the United States.

Mexico’s cartels are for-profit, unrelated to a political ideology such as FARC and ELN were and thus are at times indistinguishable from the Mexican government. In fact, according to Transparency International’s 2009 corruption perceptions index, Mexico is more corrupt than Colombia: , Colombia ranks 75 out of 180 nations and Mexico placed at 89 on the same scale.

Assuming this index has any validity in the real world, Mexico’s  fight against cartels would be more difficult. Unlike Colombia in Mexico the “enemy” is a phantom, drifting from the cartels to the government officials that are the cartels.  This contradicts President Obama’s assertions that Mexico is better suited to fight the war on drugs than Colombia was 20 years ago

Other dynamics of Mexico–that it is a  magnet for immigrant smuggling to the United States; the cartels can purchase  weapons with ease from the United States; and the flashpoint of the border to top things off–create a perilous security situation that could be seen as even more difficult to address that that of Colombia. And this is all said without considering the purpose of all of this violence in the first place: eradicating the sources of illicit drug production.

A Likely Failure

In Colombia , coca crop production has decreased by 60 percent in the last 10 years, according to the UN, but it appears that the loss in production in Colombia has been diverted to Peru, which is producing 55 percent more coca than it was a decade ago. Disturbingly, in the United Nations world drug report for 2010, it hedges its findings of actual worldwide cocaine production, stating:

The increase in global potential cocaine production over the 1998-2008 period seems to have been more moderate (5%) from 825 mt to 864 mt, although there remain uncertainties around coca yields and production efficiency. Nonetheless, available data are sufficiently robust to state that global cocaine production has declined significantly in recent years(2004-2009)

The findings in the above paragraph contain the words “seem”, followed by “although there remain uncertainties”, and the use of the “declined significantly”. In other words, the report’s use of conditional language leads to the conclusion that the authors tried their utmost to put a positive spin on statistics that show that cocaine production has not declined so much as to indicate that eradication efforts have or will win the “war on drugs”.

Thus, according the the data above, the positive gains in Colombia  obtained through “Plan Colombia” would then need to be applied to Peru, perhaps in a “Plan Peru”.

But it seems transient; coca production takes place in remote areas, in the jungle and mountains, where the central governments are far removed from. Once the government stops the enforcement pressure(which requires signficant funds), it is plausible that people will return to produce the cocaine agan.

Thus, the violence related to the production of cocaine in Colombia may be, for the foreseeable future, cauterized, yet the actual production will, absent a never ending pipeline of U.S. dollars,  return to former levels as the demand for it dictates.

Yet despite these differences, there is a possibility that, with enough of a concerted effort, Mexico’s federal government may be able to undermine the excessive violence that the cartels contribute to.

But like in Colombia, even if the violence subsides, the production of it will likely still go on in some manner, and may return once the heavy packages of aid subside from north of the border.

The end result is that many will have died, yet illicit drugs will not be conquered. One may claim that at least the violence is not there any more, like in Colombia. But that is circular, because the original factor that led to so much of the violence–in both Colombia and Mexico–will still be there, waiting to sprout from its slumber once the shadow of drug eradication runs out of U.S. fuel. The common denominator is death, like in all wars, and profit for a select few.

Plan Colombia: Don’t back down, Obama.

If you mention “Colombia” to the average American on the street,the images that probably come to mind are: Cocaine, Guerillas, and Violence. When I decided to go on a two-week vacation to Colombia in April of 2009, this stereotype reached me as well; so much, in fact, that I paid my friend to sew pockets into the inside of my underwear to safeguard cash and credit cards.

The stereotype proved wrong, at least insofar as it related to my time there. Colombia became my favorite country in Latin America. (out of the 7 I’ve been to). The cities bustled, the people were exuberantly friendly, and I felt safe. But, clearly, I was a transitory visitor only capable of glancing at the surface. Signs from Colombia’s violent past(and present), lurked beneath.

In Bogota, the capital, an army squad marched down the narrow street in which my Hostel was located. In el Centro, a tent city of displaced(by the guerillas and paramilitaries) Colombians inhabited the plaza, asking the government to give them a place to live.

In the coastal city of Cartagena, outside of the exclusive tourist zone, a soldier stood at every block. Most shockingly, a tour guide who traversed the same road that I did to get to the starting point of a 6-day hike to an indigenous ruin was shot to death, in front of the tourists he was driving.

All is not well, yet from the Colombians I spoke to and the reported severe decline in violence overall, I believe that Plan Colombia(to be explained below) has succeeded in what is most important–improving Colombians’ quality of life.

Plan Colombia

Plan Colombia’s beginnings can be traced to the 1990’s. It’s purpose was, in essence, to eradicate the production and subsequent trafficking of Cocaine. Between 1998 and 2002, the coca-producers became so powerful(which include leftist Guerrillas, like FARC and ELN, and Paramilitaries, like AUC), that Bill Clinton and others genuinely feared  the Guerrillas might seize the reins of the Colombian government. Since then, Plan Colombia was invested in by both the Clinton and Bush administrations with a hearty $5.4 billion, 80% of which was for military purposes.

The results were palpable, both in how the plan’s primary purpose–coca eradication–failed and an ancillary goal–improving the security situation–succeeded. In 2008, the murder per capita rate was cut in half from that of 2000:  31 from the 63 per 100,000 inhabitants. Kidnapping also declined significantly: in 2007, there were a reported 521 abductions, a mere fraction of the 3572 that occurred in 2000. In essence, the substantial U.S.-aid funds to Colombia enabled their army to seriously damage the martial ability of guerrillas, paramilitaries, and narcotraffickers. On a human level, what a Colombian told me in Taganga sums up the improvement: “A couple of years ago, we weren’t able to drive on our highways; now we can.”

Drawbacks

Coca production is nearly the same now as it was when Plan Colombia started in earnest in 2000. This could be interpreted to the ineffectiveness of Plan Colombia, or a statement on the “drug war” in general. I go with the latter. Furthermore, although many armed groups have been destroyed, new ones spring up in places where heretofore had no problems with coca production or armed groups. (the NY times exposes the suffering of indigenous people at the hands of armed groups) Likewise, the Colombian army has killed many civilians in the process of fighting the Guerrillas. The incompleteness of Plan Colombia is best understood from the following sad statistic: 3,000,000: the number of internal refugees in Colombia, second to only Sudan.

Barack Obama’s 2011 budget proposes a $50 million cut in spending on Plan Colombia. Colombian president, Alvaro Uribe, responded: “the reduction in money to Plan Colombia…worries us”. He is properly concerned; the presence of the instant cash reserve provided by illicit drug production keeps the embers of armed conflict hot and ready to explode. In fact, FARC and other armed groups are still operational in many rural zones of Colombia; this past Sunday, FARC attempted to abduct a candidate for governor of the Guiviare department, failing but killing 5. An NGO recently released a report claiming that armed groups have conscripted up to 14,000 children soldiers in Colombia.

If anything, Obama should increase money given to Plan Colombia. But, for the long term, programs like Plan Colombia will always fall short of complete success. More radical steps need to be taken to rid the world of the illicit drug consumption’s infliction of the absurdly macabre violence in which we have stood witness to.

The Crusade against Drugs: A Western Folly

To Obama and the U.S. Congress: Legalize illicit drugs. I’ve said this before, and will do so again. As long as there is a U.S. demand for illicit drugs, the latter will be produced and delivered to market. That production is unregulated and takes place in poor, already violent-stricken lands. Colombia will never see the end of armed conflict as long as drugs are illegal. Sure, things can improve and become more safe, but the monster can and most likely will rear its human killing head. Mexico and Central America are the latest manifestations of the monster. Can Felipe Calderon declaw Mexico’s powerful drug cartels? Maybe, but even if those specific cartels are decimated, new, novel groups will arise and, like in Colombia, the embers of armed conflict will lay in wait.

Of course, legalization is not a simple, straightforward task that comes without its own problems.(i.e. will use of drugs such as cocaine and heroin increase if legal, or will it remain the same). But why punish others for our own sins? Legalizing drugs may increase use in the United States and thus hurt more Americans, yet, for the most part, to use or not use a drug is a conscious choice.  In the countries of production and trafficking, no one gave the brutally murdered men, women, and children, a choice.