New light has been shed on the multibillion-dollar drug war along the U.S.-Mexico border, a battle that has resulted in the deaths of 70,000 people and the disappearances of 25,000 since 2006. A new Washington Post report shows that George W. Bush declined a request by then-Mexican President Felipe Calderon to fly U.S. drones over Mexican airspace to curb cross-border drug trafficking, but maintained strong intelligence sharing with his Mexican counterpart.
Many drug policy experts have conceded that the more militaristic approach to fighting Mexican drug cartels since 2006 has failed to reduce drug trafficking and rampant violence. Despite considerable efforts to cut down on trafficking, Mexico remains the U.S. market’s largest supplier of heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine. It is also the transshipment point for 95 percent of its cocaine.
Estimating the total quantity of illicit drugs passing into the U.S. each year is difficult given the ineffectiveness of police enforcement. According to an internal document from the Department of Justice, authorities seized 1,626 metric tons of illegal drugs including cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana, heroin and MDMA (“ecstasy”) in 2009. The majority of these drugs were seized along the southern border with Mexico.
Calderon reached out to Bush ahead of his 2006 inauguration — asking for aid and assistance from the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Bush agreed to commit U.S. resources to help with the growing problem, launching the $1.9 billion Merida Initiative to combat the violence resulting from the drug trade.
This program included robust intelligence sharing under a classified program, code-named SCENIC. The CIA trained Mexican police on how to recruit people to help the police force and how to guard against infiltration by narco-traffickers.
Despite Calderon’s requests, Bush declined the Mexican president’s requests for armed drone aircraft capable of striking drug traffickers and cartel leaders.
History has shown that lethal drones used in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia have killed many high-level al-Qaeda targets, but have not been the precise method of warfare promoted by the Bush and Obama administrations.
According to the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, more than 1,000 civilians have been killed in U.S. drone strikes since 2002, including about 200 children.
Recognizing the failures of the drug war, an increasing number of Mexican citizens have turned to community-oriented approaches to reducing street violence and protecting communities. This was a central promise of Enrique Peña Nieto, now president of Mexico, who promised to take a new approach to fighting the drug cartels when running as a candidate for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
Nieto vowed to take a more community-oriented approach that involves “altering our public security strategy [by creating] more effective law enforcement coordination and stronger judicial institutions.”
Murders and kidnappings remain elevated, especially along the border, but Nieto’s strategies appear to be part of a broader trend of decriminalizing controlled substances like marijuana.