CJ more violent this year
Ciudad Juarez has passed 1,700 murders this year, topping the number for last year with three months to go. Rather horrifically, of the 3,200 people killed in Juarez over the past two years, 500 of them have been drug addicts or those in addiction recovery programs.
There was a brief time in March when the Mexican military entered the city that violence dropped significantly. However, questions about the military's mission remained and the pace of murders picked back up as cartels learned to operate in the new environment. While the cartels have generally avoided confrontations where the military is deployed, CJ is simply too profitable for the cartels to retreat from.
Now, Mexico has 8,500 troops deployed in the middle of a growing cartel war. Worse, the troop deployment doesn't appear to be particularly effective at stemming the violence or transitioning security to civilian authority. As I wrote in July, the problem remains that Calderon doesn't have a strategy. I don't know when he is going to implement one, but the rising deaths in CJ need to be seen as a failure by the Mexican government to address some of the basic questions.
There was a brief time in March when the Mexican military entered the city that violence dropped significantly. However, questions about the military's mission remained and the pace of murders picked back up as cartels learned to operate in the new environment. While the cartels have generally avoided confrontations where the military is deployed, CJ is simply too profitable for the cartels to retreat from.
Now, Mexico has 8,500 troops deployed in the middle of a growing cartel war. Worse, the troop deployment doesn't appear to be particularly effective at stemming the violence or transitioning security to civilian authority. As I wrote in July, the problem remains that Calderon doesn't have a strategy. I don't know when he is going to implement one, but the rising deaths in CJ need to be seen as a failure by the Mexican government to address some of the basic questions.
Labels: conflict, illicit-trafficking, latinamerica, Mexico, security |
