| | |  Editorials | Issues 
U.S. Flailing as American Guns Fuel Mexico’s Drug War
 Adam Rawnsley - Wired
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November 11, 2010
| | (Mexican Federal Police) | |
Last month, a pair of Mexican drug cartels got into a shootout – and killed 15 recovering addicts who happened to be working at a car wash nearby. It’s part of a wave of violence that’s killed tens of thousands of people in recent years. And it’s partially America’s fault. 70,000 American guns have flowed into Mexico. And U.S. efforts to keep that from happening have been lame, at best, according to a new report from the Justice Department’s inspector general. “Project Gunrunner” didn’t even bother “pursu[ing] those who request and pay for the guns.”
DOJ’s inspector general report knocks the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms effort to trace the guns and nab the weapons traffickers who are fueling Mexico’s increasingly bloody and well-armed drug war that playing out along America’s southern border. According to the report, the ATF’s anti-weapons trafficking efforts are unambitious, poorly coordinated and a lack of resources.
Instead of taking down the networks who orchestrate gun trafficking, the report found that ATF is wasting it time on nickel and dime busts against the patsies that weapons traffickers put up to fill out the legal paperwork to buy their guns — around two defendants per case. Meanwhile, cases that target the networks as a whole are yet to be filed.
Justice Department investigators found that ATF had trouble cooperating with Mexican government officials regarding Project Gunrunner traces because of a lack of coordination within the various Mexican law enforcement agencies. ATF had also not informed Mexican government officials well enough about the Gunrunner program, its goals and successes, investigators said.
Within the U.S. government, the inspector general found that ATF had not coordinated well enough with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) despite the fact that the two agencies made nice in the form of June 2009 memorandum of understanding laying out roles and responsibilities between the two agencies on anti-gun trafficking.
But it’s not all ATF’s fault. A lack of resources is also preventing the Bureau from investigating gun trafficking in time to keep Mexico’s narco warrior in jail. As of June 2010, ATF’s inability to keep up with weapons tracing requests from the Mexican government had created a backlog of 200 requests or several months worth of work. The backlog’s a problem because, the report says, while Mexican cops wait for info suspects guns, the crooks go free.
Mexico faces what many analysts have called a “criminal insurgency” of drug cartels looking to carve out safe havens within the country. The Mexican government has tried to crack down hard on the cartels, deploying the country’s military in the fight against drug traffickers.” With over 30,000 killed in drug-related violence thus far, though, the violence shows little sign of slowing in the near term.Nearly 30,000 people have been killed because of the drug cartel violence in Mexico and some 70,000 guns that originated in the US were recovered in Mexico between 2007 and 2009. |
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