Mexico may be entering new phase in drug war

"To strike back at narcotics traffickers suspected of ordering the assassination of Mexico's top drug cop, President Felipe Calderon dispatched 2,000 army troops and federal police to the gang's home base, the western state of Sinaloa," writes Times Mexico City bureau chief Héctor Tobar.

"The traffickers struck back themselves with a paramilitary-style ambush of a police station, and taunted the newly arrived troops with mocking signs on the streets."

With Mexico's border cities and drug-trafficking routes exploding in violence, and the recent assassinations of top police officials, some believe that Mexico "has opened a dangerous new phase in the country's drug war."

Officials insist that the drug cartels are resorting to more extreme violence out of desperation, because of the effectiveness of the government's crackdown. "We have damaged their financial and logistical operations," Calderon said today. "And this has apparently provoked these criminal acts of desperation in which they seek to recover the protected spaces they've lost."

But the killings also indicate the continuing power and reach of the cartels.

Comments

[Marcos El Malo]

@TFS: Pretty much. If drug prohibition ended in the U.S., there would be no financial motivation for these criminal enterprises in Mexico or the U.S. The "War on Drugs" has done nothing to stop drug use; it's only effect has been to boost organized crime, just as alcohol prohibition did in the last century.
@Lois: When are you racist anti-immigrant nut cases going to shut up? It's as if there is not a single societal problem anywhere in the world that you can't tie to immigration. Y'all are 21st Century Know-Nothings. Go back to the 19th Century where you belong.

[Lois]

I am so sure that the drug cartel battles will be held in Mexico and they will be very careful to not cross over into the American side. We can just look at this from afar, knowing that America will not be involved or have anything to do with this! AMERICA!!! when are you going to wake up!!! They (illegal Mexicans) have drained your heart over their children and 2 &3 heart transplants, their poverty, their draining of our schools and hospitals, their sob stories that are our fault...and now the drug war inwithin our gates. Wake UP! No amesty! No NOTHING, GO HOME AND CHANGE!!!!

[TFS]

So, what would happen if the U.S. ended the drug war? Would those fighting no longer have a reason to?