War on illegal drugs

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Chertoff lightin' a fire under Congress' butt...

Chertoff Blasts Congress Over Aid for Mexico
June 5, 2008, Security chief stresses that funds would fight drugs in speech at Rice

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on Thursday accused congressional critics of imperiling a "historic opportunity" by tinkering with a proposal to provide $500 million in aid to help Mexico combat heavily armed narco-traffickers menacing the U.S.-Mexico border. Chertoff indirectly addressed criticism raised by lawmakers — including Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas; Rep. Ted Poe, R-Humble; and Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin — during a wide-ranging, 48-minute address at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University.

Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate have balked at the White House's so-called Merida Initiative to funnel at least $1.1 billion to Mexico and Central American nations over the next two years. The initiative, as proposed by the Bush administration, would start with a $550 million package of military assistance and training this year, mainly for Mexico. Lawmakers have revised the administration's blueprint to impose restrictions on Mexico's use of the assistance and human rights safeguards, as well as an attempt to divert some of the spending to law enforcement on the U.S. side of the border.

Senior officials in Mexico have said the country would not accept aid if it includes human rights restrictions. Interior Secretary Juan Camilo Mourino, the second-most powerful official in the Calderon administration, said the conditions "are unacceptable for our country." Chertoff said the congressional action threatened to undercut "heroic" efforts by Mexican President Felipe Calderon in response to a wave of killings along Mexico's northern border. More than 450 Mexican police officers have been killed since Calderon began a crackdown on the country's drug gangs in late 2006.

'Unilateral conditions'

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US Drug Officials Nab Record Amounts of Cocaine
June 06, 2008 - U.S. authorities seized a record 316 metric tons of cocaine last year, top drug interdiction officials said Thursday as they credited Mexico's increasing cooperation with helping force drug traffickers to raise their prices and try new smuggling methods.

John Walters, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said the record seizures have led to a 21 percent jump in the price of cocaine and a drop in the purity of the drug. The price of methamphetamine has jumped even more, he said, thanks to a crackdown on U.S. labs and Mexican authorities doing more to stop importation of precursor material. Walters spoke Thursday at Fort Bliss, just outside El Paso, during a break in meetings with The Interdiction Committee, a multi-agency committee focused on stopping the flow of drugs into the U.S.

U.S. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, commandant of the Coast Guard and chairman of the committee, said the rise in drug prices shows U.S. anti-drug efforts are working. The average price of a pure gram of cocaine was $96.58 in early 2007 and rose to $117.22 by the end of the year, according to ONDCP, citing data from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Allen also said traffickers have been forced to find new ways to try to sneak drugs in, including the use of submarine-like watercraft capable of carrying up to 10 tons of cocaine. The vessels, almost entirely submerged in water, have been spotted from South America to the Northern California coast. "We have forced them to change," Allen said, adding that U.S. officials are also seeing liquid cocaine more often.

Federal officials said a key difference is an unprecedented level of cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico in combatting drug trafficking. Walters praised Mexican President Felipe Calderon's efforts to crack down on drug cartels. "There has never been an investment like this before," Walters said, referring to a proposed U.S. aid package and the Mexican deployment of soldiers around the country. "We can't do this effectively without international partnerships."

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Mexican journalist threatened...

Severed Head, Threat At Mexico Newspaper
June 9, 2008 - Journalist Warned: "You're Next" After Drug Trafficker's Head Shows Up In Newsroom

A note threatening a Mexican journalist was found outside the office of a newspaper in southern Mexico on Monday, two days after someone left a severed head there. Tabasco state Attorney General Gustavo Rosario said the letter was directed at Juan Padilla, editor of El Correo de Tabasco, which recently carried reports about migrant smuggling and kidnapping in the area. "You are next," the note read.

The head of a man police identified as a low-level drug trafficker was found outside the offices on Saturday. Soldiers later located his body in another part of the city alongside a separate note that said, "This is what will happen to those who go around pointing fingers." International media rights group Reporters Without Borders issued a statement Monday condemning the threats. Media groups say Mexico is one of the world's most dangerous places to report, and journalists - especially those covering powerful drug cartels or official corruption - have been threatened, harassed, kidnapped and killed.

Also Monday, President Felipe Calderon held a previously scheduled meeting with representatives of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists to discuss ways to protect reporters. In a statement, Calderon's office said the president agreed with the group's proposal to make all attacks on journalists federal offenses and to push for more thorough investigations.

Severed Head, Threat At Mexico Newspaper, Journalist Warned: "You're Next" After Drug Trafficker's Head Shows Up In Newsroom - CBS News

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Chertoff Says Border Will Be Secure 2 Years After Bush Leaves
June 10, 2008 Washington - Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff on Monday blamed tightened security on the U.S.-Mexico border for increased violence there, and he said the border probably will not be fully secured until 2011, two years after President Bush leaves office.

"(Increased violence) is what typically happens when you start to enforce and make it harder to fight over the shrinking pie, so to speak, and who gets the best opportunity to exploit the additional space that's left," Chertoff said at a news conference at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection headquarters in Washington, D.C. on Monday. "That's a good sign," he said. "The bad news is, it's created a lot of violence and created a lot of havoc, particularly in Mexico."

Chertoff added that quelling the violence will require working with the Mexican government - and millions of dollars from American taxpayers if Congress funds the Merida Initiative. The multi-year proposal would give Mexico $500 million and $50 million to Central America in 2008 to fight the drug cartels - another $450 million and $100 million respectively will be given for fiscal year 2009. "We have to recognize that both countries (U.S. and Mexico) have a common interest in securing the border," Chertoff said.

When asked by Cybercast News Service if the border will be secure by the end of the Bush administration, Chertoff was upbeat but implied that finishing the job will fall to the next president of the United States. "I think we will have made a dramatic amount of progress," he said. "I think if we continue on the course we've set now we can get the border secure ... sometime in 2011."

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Tough Habit to Break...

Mexico fighting a war on 2 fronts
Jun 12, 2008 | In Mexico's war on drugs, the government faces entrenched support for crime bosses in some poor communities.

In the yard under the midday sun at Santa Marta Acatitla, a women's penitentiary on the outskirts of Mexico City, a prisoner dressed in a stylish beige pantsuit, Jackie O-style sunglasses and heels, heads over to the pay phone in the shaded corner. "Look," says one inmate, her eyes lighting up and her jaw dropping slightly. "La Reina."

La Reina del Pacifico, the Queen of the Pacific, otherwise known as Sandra Avila Beltrán, was taken into custody late last year. The alleged drug queenpin who rose to the top of a male-dominated industry now spends her days here, awaiting trial for charges relating to alleged connections to organized crime. Her cellmates spend much of their days gossiping about her. "She's so cool," says one. She's a "hero" who worked around the system. At this another inmate frowns. "She's just one more here in the prison," she says cynically. "If she's really La Reina, then why is she still here? Why haven't her people come and rescued her yet?"

Such talk is increasingly common throughout Mexico today, from prisons to mountainside towns, as the country wages a ferocious military campaign against powerful drug cartels that make an estimated $13 billion a year and control swaths of national territory. On one side is the president, the military, the law; on the other, the drugs, the violence, but also the stuff of legends—the supposed Robin Hoods who steal from the rich and give to the poor, the bad boys for whom rules don't apply.

President Felipe Calderón is trying to do more than just eradicate drug production and smuggling into the United States, he's attempting to transform a culture that was built on cartel money, force and patronage. It won't be easy. More than 4,000 lives have been lost since Calderón started his initiative in December 2006.

More Mexico?s Drug War Is a Battle for Hearts and Minds | Newsweek International | Newsweek.com

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Mexican drug war comin' this way...

Mexican Smugglers Making U.S. Lands Unsafe
June 20, 2008 - Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne has said that drug traffickers sneaking into the United States from Mexico through U.S. lands administered by his department have made some of those lands unsafe for American families.

As reported by Cybercast News Service last month, the State Department similarly issued a largely unpublicized travel alert for the Mexican side of the border on April 14, warning would-be tourists that the "equivalent to military small-unit combat" was taking place there and that "dozens" of Americans had been "kidnapped and/or murdered" in Tijuana alone in 2007. As Cybercast News Service subsequently reported, State Department records indicate that 128 Americans have been murdered in Mexico over the past three years. And because the State Department headquarters in Washington does no centralized monitoring of how the Mexican justice system handles those murder cases, it cannot say whether anyone has ever been arrested or convicted for any of them.

Even before the State Department issued its travel alert for Mexico, however, Interior Secretary Kempthorne had stated -- again, with almost no publicity -- that some of the lands administered by his department on the U.S. side of the Mexican border have become dangerous places where "families can no longer live or recreate without fear of coming across drug smugglers." "Unfortunately," an Interior Department spokesperson told Cybercast News Service on Thursday, "DOI lands make up approximately 40 percent of the Southwest border, and I think there has been a shift in some of those illegal activities, particularly drug-trafficking crossings, to those lands because they tend to be less populated. "It's becomes more of a prime location for people to come through," he added, "and the net result has been an increase in violence."

Larry Parkinson, Interior's deputy assistant secretary for law enforcement, told Cybercast News Service Thursday that criminal activity along the U.S.-Mexico border has increased over the past seven years as criminals seek more remote locations to cross into the U.S. "On the law enforcement side, it's our biggest challenge," Parkinson said. The Department of Interior's Southwest Borderlands Web page warns visitors about criminals and criminal activities in national parks, wildlife refuges and recreation areas near the Mexican border. Five Indian tribes have land bordering Mexico. "Once pristine landscapes on the U.S. Southwest border have become dangerous corridors for drug smuggling operations and other illegal activities that threaten Indian communities, public land stewards and recreational visitors," the Web site says.

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Mexican Cartel Hit List Targets Americans
June 20, 2008 - More than dozen people living in New Mexico and Texas are named in what appears to be a hit list from a Mexican drug cartel, law enforcement officials said.

At least one police officer from southern New Mexico is among the 15 to 20 people named in the threat, said Arturo Baeza, a sheriff's captain in that state's Luna County. The list, thought to be a threat from one of Mexico's powerful and warring drug cartels, was provided June 12 to local authorities by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, Baeza said. Drug cartels are waging a bloody fight for control in Ciudad Juarez, a sprawling city across the Rio Grande from El Paso, and Palomas, a village across the border from Columbus, N.M. More than a dozen police officers were among more than 400 people killed in Ciudad Juarez this year.

Hit lists naming Mexican police officers have become somewhat common in the cartel fight. "We have been concerned for quite some time that this thing will spill over here," Baeza said. The list included threats against people living in southern New Mexico and Albuquerque, as well as current and former residents of El Paso, Baeza said. His office has been told federal officials were contacting the people on the list, he said, but he would not identify any of them.

Luna County Sheriff Raymond Cobos also confirmed the existence of the list in an interview with the Las Cruces Sun-News. Leticia Zamarripa, an ICE spokeswoman in El Paso, said she could not comment on Baeza's report of the hit list. Officer Chris Mears, an El Paso Police Department spokesman, said his agency had "no credible information suggesting that violence in Ciudad Juarez will spread into El Paso."

Source

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Mexican drug violence continues...

Deaths climb in Mexico's drug war
24 June `08 - 21 people were killed in Chihuahua, among them 18 Juarez alone; Mexico holds world record for most cocaine and money seized from drug cartels; Rampant corruption among police in northern border states has made area violent; Some 300 tons of cocaine are estimated to pass through Mexico to the U.S. yearly

The fight against narcotraffickers is showing good results, Mexican President Felipe Calderon said, a day after authorities linked 38 deaths nationwide to the drug war. "We are truly hitting crime's operative structure," he said on Tuesday. "This is making it so that the gangs are fighting among themselves and that is causing the deaths that are occurring in the country. For example, of all the violent deaths that we have seen, 65 percent have been in two states -- in Chihuahua and Sinaloa." On Monday, 21 people were killed in Chihuahua, apparently by drug traffickers. The dead included 18 found in the frontier town of Juarez alone.

There is plenty at stake. Mexico has sized more cocaine and money from drug cartels than anywhere else in the world. In addition, authorities have recently seized some 16,000 arms, including more than 1,000 grenades. Some 300 tons of cocaine are estimated to pass through Mexico to the United States each year, and Mexico is considered the largest foreign supplier of crystal methamphetamine to the United States. Calderon attributed the wave of violence to drug cartels fighting for supremacy and said the carnage was unavoidable in the government's quest to turn back the tide.

"It will cost human lives," he said. "Because we have decided to fight to rescue our country, that unfortunately will mean that some Mexicans will lose their lives." Calderon's campaign has met a vicious response that has resulted in more than 1,000 dead in drug-related violence since the beginning of the year. The dead include Mexico City's top federal police chief as well as four other federal police killed in an ambush this month in Culiacan. Rampant corruption among local police in northern border states has made that area particularly violent. Last month, a gunbattle in northwest Mexico left seven federal police dead and four wounded.

Deaths climb in Mexico's drug war - CNN.com

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Terrorists fueled by drugs...

UN drug chief: Insurgents complicating drug war
Jun 26, `08 - More than ever before, authorities waging the global war on drugs are up against real insurgents.

Worldwide, illicit cultivation of opium and coca - the raw materials for heroin and cocaine - is rising as militants in Afghanistan, Colombia and Myanmar consolidate their control of key drug-producing areas, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime warns in a new report. "The explosion of narcotics in those areas is explained by their presence and the protection they offer," agency chief Antonio Maria Costa told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday.

"I believe that slowly these people, although politically motivated at the beginning, are becoming a kind of organized crime," he said. "Money tends to stick to fingers, and a big lump of money becomes very problematic." In its World Drug Report 2008 being released Thursday, Costa's office calls the glut of opium and coca "a very recent surge" and draws a direct link to Taliban militants in Afghanistan, armed revolutionaries in Colombia and several ethnic insurgency groups in Myanmar.

Afghanistan had a record opium poppy harvest in 2007, nearly doubling worldwide illegal opium production. U.N. experts say 80 percent of the poppy was grown in five southern provinces where Taliban fighters profit from drugs. "In the southern areas controlled by the Taliban, counter-narcotics and counter-insurgency must be fought together," Costa said. Officials say the expanding role of insurgents in the global narcotics trade is especially worrisome because their drug profits are used to bribe police and government authorities and to help finance terrorists.

More My Way News - UN drug chief: Insurgents complicating drug war

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China could have 2.3 million drug addicts
June 26,`08 : With drug abuse on the rise in China, there could be estimated 2.3 million drug addicts in the country, according to a health official.

The new 2008 Annual Report on Drug Control in China has revealed that number of known drug addicts in the country has risen to 1 million from 900,000 in 2006 "Our investigations in some high-risk cities show the ratio between known and unidentified drug addicts is about 1:1.3," China Daily quoted Yang Fengrui, director of the anti-drug bureau of the Ministry of Public Security, as saying.

That means it is suspected up to 1.3 million addicts are yet to be identified. Fengrui blames the increasing number of drug addicts to the new types of drugs such as Ice and Ketamine made in China. He said that nearly 80 percent of the drug addicts in China are addicted to heroin, but the number of those addicted to new types of drugs such as Ice and Ketamine is growing rapidly, especially among people below 35.

"Migrant workers in cities have become a high-risk group," he said. According to the police figures, 5.8 tons of Ice was seized in the country last year, up 26 percent over 2006, though heroin seizures fell to 5.9 tons from the 6.6 tons in 2006.

China could have 2.3 million drug addicts

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Mexican drug gangs ambush police...

Six Mexican Police Officers Dead After Ambush by Drug Gang
June 30, 2008 - Six police officers were shot to death Friday in an ambush while patrolling in the prominent marijuana growing state, Sinaloa.

An official with the state attorney general's office told The Los Angeles Times that two carloads of unidentified men cut off the police vehicles, then ambushed the officers. The murders come a day after a senior police official was shot and killed while having lunch at a busy restaurant with his bodyguard Thursday.

According to the LA Times, 4,400 people have been killed in drug wars since 2006 in Mexico. Officials say that the drug cartels target law enforcement officials to intimidate and terrorize, and to eliminate the people's faith in the power of the police and government by showing that they are more powerful than those entities thereby strengthening their organizations.

In some rural communities in Mexico, gangs have more weapons than the police. The United States has been criticized by the Mexican government for not doing enough to stop the transportation of guns across the border, however Mexican government officials on Friday were pleased by the U.S. Senate approval of a $400-million aid package for Mexico's drug war. The money will pay for training, telecommunications, aircraft and other equipment necessary to combat the ruthless drug gangs.

Six Mexican Police Officers Dead After Ambush by Drug Gang | AHN | June 30, 2008

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San Fran harboring drug dealers...

San Francisco 'Protecting the Rights' of Young Honduran Crack Dealers
Sunday, June 29, 2008 - Feds probe S.F.'s migrant-offender shield

San Francisco juvenile probation officials - citing the city's immigrant sanctuary status - are protecting Honduran youths caught dealing crack cocaine from possible federal deportation and have given some offenders a city-paid flight home with carte blanche to return. The city's practices recently prompted a federal criminal investigation into whether San Francisco has been systematically circumventing U.S. immigration law, according to officials with knowledge of the matter.

City officials say they are trying to balance their obligations under federal and state law with local court orders and San Francisco's policies aimed at protecting the rights of the young immigrants, who they say are often victims of exploitation. Federal authorities counter that drug kingpins are indeed exploiting the immigrants, but that the city's stance allows them to get away with "gaming the system."

San Francisco juvenile authorities have been grappling for several years with an influx of young Honduran immigrants dealing crack in the Mission District and Tenderloin. Those who are arrested routinely say they are minors, but police suspect that many are actually adults, living communally in Oakland and other cities at the behest of drug traffickers who claim to be their relatives. Nonetheless, city authorities have typically accepted the suspects' stories and handled the cases in Juvenile Court, where proceedings are often shielded from public scrutiny.

Unorthodox strategy

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Merida anti-drug aid delayed...

Red tape may delay $400 million for Mexico drug war
WASHINGTON — July 2, 2008, White House says money probably won't reach the nation for months

The Bush administration said Tuesday it would take months, and possibly longer, to deliver $400 million in emergency assistance to help Mexico combat murderous drug cartels, days after pressing Congress to urgently approve the money. Three senior Bush administration officials outlined various bureaucratic impediments to speedy delivery of assistance to bolster Mexican President Felipe Calderon's $4 billion, military-style campaign against drug traffickers. The cartels have killed more than 4,000 people over the past 21 months, including some 450 police officers, soldiers or government officials.

Challenges to implementing the first phase of the Merida Initiative include developing coordination between the Defense Department, the State Department and the Treasury; setting benchmarks for success; and prolonged procurements of military equipment such as helicopters and surveillance aircraft. "Both governments have seized a political moment to show solidarity, but the real planning for implementation has yet to take place," said Andrew Selee, director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. "There was a real sense of urgency to show cooperation, without coordination on a long-term plan."

Staffers for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., did not immediately return telephone calls seeking comment about the potential delay in delivering U.S. assistance. But Rep. John Culberson, R-Houston, said he was "personally outraged and deeply disappointed that the Bush administration was so obsessed with pandering to Mexico." "How soon can we repeal the spending?" he added. A Calderon spokesman had no comment.

No surprise

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Four men found decapitated as Mexico drug war rages
Wed Jul 2, 2008 - The severed heads of four men were found dumped on a Mexican street on Wednesday with a message accusing a drug gang kingpin of treachery, police said.

Neighbors in the northern city of Culiacan found the men's bodies wrapped in plastic sheets and a blanket, with their heads stuffed into white plastic bags. An obscenity-laden note scrawled onto a piece of cardboard invited Joaquin "El Chapo" (Shorty) Guzman -- the head of the Sinaloa drug cartel -- "to see what his stupid acts had caused."

Guzman, who is considered Mexico's most-wanted man, is battling a rival gang led by his one-time ally Arturo Beltran Leyva, whose hitmen reportedly killed one of Guzman's sons in May.

In a separate incident in the same city, police said they killed four suspected drug gang members in a shootout. More than 1,600 people have died so far this year in drug violence as gangs battle for control of lucrative trafficking routes and as the government has stepped up anti-smuggling operations by deploying thousands of army troops.

Four men found decapitated as Mexico drug war rages | International | Reuters

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Sheriffs want their fair share...

US Funds for Mexico Drug War Frustrate Texas Sheriffs
July 3, 2008, WASHINGTON — They're demanding more federal help as they fight cartels along the border

Besieged Texas sheriffs vowed Wednesday to press the White House and Congress to deliver emergency assistance to law enforcement officers battling drug cartels along the Mexican border to match the $400 million on its way to Mexico. The sheriffs said they were frustrated that President Bush and Congress agreed to provide assistance to Mexico, as part of the Merida Initiative, without offering additional federal help to their departments.

The officers said they would seek direct federal assistance, as well as changes in Department of Homeland Security restrictions to permit local law enforcement departments to use homeland security funds to hire additional officers. Regulations currently require local police and sheriff's departments to devote homeland security money to equipment, technology and paying officers overtime.

Implementation of the Merida Initiative is ''really disappointing and disheartening because Washington seems totally oblivious to what we're facing on the Mexican border," said Webb County Sheriff Rick Flores, chairman of the 19-county Texas Border Sheriff's Coalition. ''If they allocate resources and money to Mexico, they should also consider protecting our side of the border first."

More Texas sheriffs feel snubbed as U.S. aids Mexico | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle