Mexico: um Estado (quase) falido? - o problema das drogas

O Brasil tem sorte de não estar perto dos EUA, não pelas razões habitualmente invocadas, como aquela bobagem do império e sua dominação sobre o coitado do México. Mas porque os EUA são um mercado muito atrativo para as drogas e um grande fornecedor de armas pesadas para as gangues de traficantes mexicanos, que adotam táticas criminosas próximas das situações de guerra na Somália, no Iraque ou no Afeganistão.
Temos sorte, mas talvez não por muito tempo.
Melhor aprender com a experiência do pobre México, uma situação terrivel...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

The U.S. is turning away from Mexico's failing drug war
Editorial The Washington Post
August 14, 2010

Give Mexican President Felipe Calderon credit for honesty as well as courage. Last week he presided over a three-day public conference to assess the results of nearly four years of war against Mexico's drug cartels. Most of the facts were grim:
-- According to the chief of the national intelligence service, 28,000 people have died violently since Mr. Calderon deployed the Mexican army against the drug gangs in December 2006. That number represents an increase of 3,000 over the death toll the government reported earlier this summer.
-- There have been 963 incidents involving federal forces and the gangs since the offensive began -- or just about one per day.
-- Mexican authorities have seized more than 84,000 weapons, including thousands of high-powered assault rifles, grenades and other military-caliber equipment. More than 80 percent of the guns whose provenance could be traced came from the United States.
-- The ferocity of the violence continues to escalate as drug gangs import the tactics of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. To kidnappings, beheadings and massacres of innocent civilians and even children can now be added car bombs -- two of which have been detonated in northern cities in the past few weeks.
Mr. Calderon bluntly spelled out the threat the cartels represent to Mexico. "The behavior of the criminals has changed and become a defiance to the state, an attempt to replace the state," he said. Drug lords are collecting their own taxes from businesses in some areas. According to the secretary of public security, they are spending $1.2 billion a year to buy the allegiance of 165,000 police officers.
Preventing the sort of cartel takeover that Mr. Calderon warned of is a vital interest of the United States -- which is why the Obama administration and Congress could benefit from their own truth-telling session about Mexico. Congress has appropriated $1.3 billion since 2008 to help Mexico fight drug trafficking, but because of poor implementation and bureaucratic delays, only a fraction of the money has been spent. Mexican forces are still waiting for badly needed U.S. helicopters, surveillance planes and drones as well as training programs in areas such as money laundering.
Worse, the Obama administration has shrunk from the duty of cracking down on the illegal trafficking of guns to Mexico, including improper sales by many of the 7,000 gun shops along the border. During his last visit to the United States, in May, Mr. Calderon pleaded with the White House and Congress to reinstate the ban on sales of assault weapons. As so often when it comes to the needs of this important neighbor, there has been no response.

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This Week at War: Is Mexico's Drug War Doomed?
Learning to live with drug cartels
BY ROBERT HADDICK
Foreign Policy, August 13, 2010

What happens if Mexico settles with the cartels?

The U.S. Department of Defense defines irregular warfare as "a violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant populations." By this definition, Mexico is fighting an irregular war. The Mexican government's campaign against the drug cartels is far more than a law enforcement problem; the two sides are engaged in a violent struggle for influence over the Mexican population.

Four years after Mexican President Felipe Calderón threw 80,000 soldiers at the cartels, their businesses remain as strong as ever. According to the Los Angeles Times, the overall drug trade continues to flourish, bringing in by one estimate $39 billion a year to the Mexican economy, equal to 4.5 percent of Mexico's economic output in 2009. The cartels, formerly just smuggling businesses operating largely out of sight, have evolved into political insurgents, and Calderón has openly wondered whether the Mexican state will survive. Neither side has the capacity to crush the other. This implies an eventual compromise settlement and with it a de facto or actual legalization of the drug trade in Mexico. When Calderón and the cartels make such a deal, the United States will have to deal with the consequences.

Calderón's war has managed to inflict pain on the cartels; government forces killed two top cartel leaders and have set the syndicate into a violent struggle with each other for smuggling routes. According to the Los Angeles Times story, the Mexican government estimates 28,000 people have been killed in the war, the vast majority of whom were cartel employees and associates who died in battles between the various gangs. Responding to the pressure, the cartels have transformed themselves into political insurgencies in an attempt to persuade the government to back off and to attract the support of local populations. Their actions are right out of an insurgency's standard playbook: attacks on the police (recently with car bombs), employees of state oil company Pemex -- the cornerstone of the government's revenue -- and the media.

In a speech to the nation last week, Calderón declared that the cartels' actions are "an attempt to replace the state." He pleaded with his countrymen to support the government and to report on local officials whom the drug gangs have co-opted. Calderón's plea comes as Mexico's main sources of foreign exchange are under pressure: The drug wars are chasing away tourism, competition from Asia threatens the manufacturing export sector in the north, the Pemex oil monopoly is in decline, and the struggling U.S. economy has hit expatriate receipts back to Mexico.

With Mexico's legitimate sources of foreign exchange wilting and with the government facing a bloody and open-ended war against the cartels, the prospect of a settlement must be increasingly attractive to Calderón. Legalization would legitimize the drug trade as another important export sector of the Mexican economy, along with oil, tourism, light manufacturing, and expatriate labor receipts. According to the New York Times, Calderon has opened up a dialogue with opposition political leaders in a search for possible alternatives, and has called for a national discussion on the possibility of drug legalization. Calderón's two predecessors, Vicente Fox and Ernesto Zedillo, now support some form of drug legalization.

Should Mexico call a truce and legalize its drug business, where would this leave the United States, the prime market for Mexico's drug exports? Many Americans would view Mexican legalization harshly and call for suspending Merida initiative aid and perhaps closing the border. But even if this were physically possible, vast legitimate commercial trade and the presence of so many family relationships on both sides of the border, the consequence of past migrations, would make a closure politically impossible. Should Calderón or his successors eventually choose this means of escape, the United States will simply have to cope with the consequences.

Robert Haddick is managing editor of Small Wars Journal.