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POLITICS:
Mexican Cartels
Armed by U.S.
By Marina Litvinsky
WASHINGTON (IPS) - Many of the firearms fuelling
Mexican drug violence originated in the United
States, says a new report by the Government
Accountability Office (GAO) released Thursday.
According to U.S. and Mexican government officials,
these firearms have been increasingly powerful and
lethal in recent years. Many are high-calibre and
high-powered, such as AK and AR-15 type
semiautomatic rifles.
"It is simply unacceptable that the United States
not only consumes the majority of the drugs flowing
from Mexico, but also arms the very cartels that
contribute to the daily violence that is devastating
Mexico," said Rep. Eliot L. Engel, chair of the
House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western
Hemisphere, who commissioned the first ever report
on this topic from the GAO.
While it is impossible to know how many firearms are
illegally smuggled into Mexico in a given year,
about 87 percent of firearms seized by Mexican
authorities and traced in the last five years
originated in the U.S., according to data from
Department of Justice’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms and Explosives (ATF).
Many of these guns come from gun shops and gun shows
in southwest border states, like Arizona, California
and Texas.
U.S. and Mexican government and law enforcement
officials stated most firearms are intended to
support Mexican drug trafficking organisations,
which control most of the U.S. drug market, and
which are also responsible for trafficking arms to
Mexico.
"I don’t think there are that many surprises (in the
report)," said Maureen Meyer, associate for Mexico
and Central America at the Washington Office on
Latin America (WOLA).
"I think it is one additional important analysis of
different weaknesses that exist in the U.S. system,"
she added, contending that there the report presents
"obligations for both countries".
Gun violence in Mexico has increased dramatically in
the last two years, with the number of drug-related
murders more than doubling from around 2,700 in 2007
to over 6,200 in 2008.
Growing criminal activity in Mexico, particularly in
communities across the southwest border, has raised
concerns that the violence might spill over to the
U.S.
President Barack Obama has expressed concern about
the increased level of violence along the border,
particularly in Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana, and has
called for continued monitoring of the situation.
The Obama administration’s recently released 2009
National Southwest Border Counternarcotics Strategy
calls for deploying new technology, stepping up
intelligence gathering and increasing interdiction
of ships, aircraft and vehicles that are smuggling
drugs, gun and cash.
It includes, for the first time, a chapter on
combating illicit arms trafficking to Mexico. Since
the 1970s, the United States has collaborated with
Mexican authorities and provided assistance to
Mexico to combat transnational crimes associated
with drug trafficking, including illicit firearms
smuggling.
However, counter-arms trafficking efforts have been
a modest component of broader bilateral law
enforcement cooperation.
In the past, the Mexican government has considered
illicit arms trafficking a problem that originated
in the U.S. and thus needed to be dealt with by U.S.
authorities. However, it now regards illicit
firearms as the number one crime problem affecting
the country’s security and has taken on a greater
focus in combating arms trafficking in recent years.
"The arms issue... is a subject that was not
considered when discussing drug trafficking, however
today it is part of the dialogue we have with our
colleagues from the United States," said Genaro
García Luna, Mexico’s secretary of public security
According to the report, the U.S. government faces
serious challenges in combating illicit arms sales
in the U.S. and stemming their flow into Mexico.
Officials identified key challenges related to
restriction on collecting and reporting information
on firearms purchases, a lack of required background
checks for private firearms sales, and limitations
on reporting requirements for multiple sales.
U.S. law enforcement assistance to Mexico does not
target arms trafficking needs, limiting U.S.
agencies' ability to provide technical or
operational assistance. The biggest drug enforcement
aid package the U.S. has given Mexico, the 1.4
billion dollar Merida Initiative, provides general
law enforcement and counternarcotics assistance to
Mexico, but does not provide dedicated funding to
stop weapons smuggling.
Additionally, agencies generally have not
systematically gathered, analysed, and reported data
that could be useful to help plan and assess results
of their efforts to address arms trafficking to
Mexico. Officials said a number of efforts that
could be helpful in combating arms trafficking -
such as establishing and supporting a bilateral,
multiagency arms trafficking task force - have not
been undertaken.
"It is mind-boggling that for a year and a half, we
have had no inter-agency strategy to address this
major problem, but instead have relied on
uncoordinated efforts by a variety of agencies,"
said Engel.
The report found that U.S. assistance has been
limited due to Mexican officials’ incomplete use of
ATF’s electronic firearms tracing system, eTrace, an
important tool for U.S. arms trafficking
investigations. The ability of Mexican officials to
input data into eTrace has been hampered partly
because a Spanish language version of eTrace, under
development for months, has still not been deployed
across Mexico.
According to Mexican and U.S. government officials,
extensive corruption at the federal, state, and
local levels of Mexican law enforcement impedes U.S.
efforts to develop effective and dependable
partnerships with Mexican government entities in
combating arms trafficking.
Mexican federal authorities are implementing
anticorruption measures, measures - including
polygraph and psychological testing, background
checks, and salary increases - but government
officials acknowledge fully implementing these
reforms will take considerable time, and may take
years to affect comprehensive change. |
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