Is the CIA behind Mexico's Bloody Drug War?

By Mike Whitney

April 26, 2010 "Information Clearing House" --  On Friday, two patrol cars were
ambushed by armed gunman in downtown Ciudad Juarez. In the ensuing firefight,
seven policemen were killed as well as a 17-year old boy who was caught in the
crossfire. All of the assailants escaped uninjured fleeing the crime-scene in three
SUVs. The bold attack was executed in broad daylight in one of the busiest areas of
the city. According to the Associated Press:

  "Hours after the attack, a painted message directed to top federal police
commanders and claiming responsibility for the attack appeared on a wall in
downtown Ciudad Juarez. It was apparently signed by La Linea gang, the
enforcement arm of the Juarez drug cartel. The Juarez cartel has been locked in a
bloody turf battle with the Sinaloa cartel, led by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

"This will happen to you ... for being with El Chapo Guzman and to all the dirtbags
who support him. Sincerely, La Linea," the message read." ("7 Mexican police officers
killed in Ciudad Juarez", Olivia Torres, AP)

The massacre in downtown Juarez is just the latest incident in Mexico's bloody drug
war. Between 5 to 6 more people will be killed on Saturday, and on every day
thereafter with no end in sight. It's a war that cannot be won, but that hasn't
stopped the Mexican government from sticking to its basic game-plan.

 The experts and politicians disagree about the origins of the violence in Juarez, but
no one disputes that 23,000 people have been killed since 2006 in a largely futile
military operation initiated by Mexican president Felipe Calderon. Whether the killing
is the result of the ongoing turf-war between the rival drug cartels or not, is
irrelevant. The present policy is failing and needs to be changed. The militarization of
the war on drugs has been a colossal disaster which has accelerated the pace of
social disintegration. Mexico is quickly becoming a failed state, and Washington's
deeply-flawed Merida Initiative, which provides $1.4 billion in aid to the Calderon
administration to intensify military operations, is largely to blame.

The surge in narcotics trafficking and drug addiction go hand-in-hand with
destructive free trade policies which have fueled their growth. NAFTA, in particular,
has triggered a massive migration of people who have been pushed off the land
because they couldn't compete with heavily-subsidized agricultural products from the
US. Many of these people drifted north to towns like Juarez which became a
manufacturing hub in the 1990s. But Juarez's fortunes took a turn for the worse a
few years later when competition from the Far East grew fiercer. Now most of the
plants and factories have been boarded up and the work has been outsourced to
China where subsistence wages are the norm. Naturally, young men have turned to
the cartels as the only visible means of employment and upward mobility. That
means that free trade has not only had a ruinous effect on the economy, but has also
created an inexhaustible pool of recruits for the drug trade.

Washington's Merida Initiative--which provides $1.4 billion in aid to the Calderon
administration to intensify military operations--has only made matters worse. The
public's demand for jobs, security and social programs, has been answered with
check-points, crackdowns and state repression. The response from Washington
hasn't been much better.  Obama hasn't veered from the policies of the prior
administration. He is as committed to a military solution as his predecessor, George
W. Bush.

But the need for change is urgent.  Mexico is unraveling and, as the oil wells run dry,
the prospect of a failed state run by drug kingpins and paramilitaries on US's
southern border becomes more and more probable.  The drug war is merely a
symptom of deeper social problems; widespread political corruption, grinding
poverty, soaring unemployment, and the erosion of confidence in public institutions.
But these issues are  brushed aside, so the government can pursue its one-size-fits-
all military strategy without second-guessing or remorse. Meanwhile, the country
continues to fall apart.

THE CLASHING CARTELS

  The big cartels are engaged in a ferocious battle for the drug corridors around
Juarez. The Sinaloa, Gulf and La Familia cartels have formed an alliance against the
upstart Los Zetas gang. Critics allege that the Calderon administration has close ties
with the Sinaloa cartel and refuses to arrest its members.  Here's an excerpt from an
Al Jazeera video which points to collusion between Sinaloa and the government.

"The US Treasury identifies at least 20 front companies that are laundering drug
money for the Sinaloa cartel...There  are allegations that the Mexican government is
"favoring" the cartel.  According to Diego Enrique Osorno, investigative journalist and
author of the "The Sinaloa Cartel":
"There are no important detentions of Sinaloa cartel members. But the government is
hunting down adversary groups, new players in the world of drug trafficking."
 International Security Expert, Edgardo Buscaglia, says that "of over 50,000 drug
related arrests, only a very small percentage have been Sinaloa cartel members, and
no cartel leaders. Dating back to 2003, law enforcement data shows objectively that
the government has been hitting the weakest organized crime groups in Mexico, but
they have not been hitting the main crime group, the Sinaloa Federation, that's
responsible for 45% of the drug trade in this country." (Al Jazeera)

  There's no way to verify whether the Calderon administration is in bed with the
Sinaloa cartel, but Al Jazeera's report is pretty damning. A similar report appeared in
the Los Angeles Times which revealed that the government had diverted funds that
were earmarked for struggling farmers (who'd been hurt by NAFTA)  "to the families
of notorious drug traffickers and several senior government officials, including the
agriculture minister." Here's an excerpt from the Los Angeles Times:
"According to several academic studies, as much as 80% of the money went to just
20% of the registered farmers...Among the most eyebrow-raising recipients were
three siblings of billionaire drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, head of the
powerful Sinaloa cartel, and the brother of Guzman's onetime partner, Arturo Beltran
Leyva". ("Mexico farm subsidies are going astray", Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles
Times)

There's no doubt that if the LA Times knows about the circular flow of state money to
drug traffickers, than the Obama administration knows too. So why does the
administration persist with the same policy and continue to support the people they
pretend to be fighting?

  In forty years, US drug policy has never changed. The same "hunt them down,
bust them, and lock them up" philosophy continues to this day. That's why many
critics believe that the drug war is really about control, not eradication. It's a matter
of who's in line to rake in the profits; small-time  pushers who run their own
operations or  politically-connected kingfish who have agents in the banks, the
intelligence agencies, the military and the government.  Currently, in Juarez, the
small fries' are getting wiped out while the big-players are getting stronger. In a year
or so, the Sinaloa cartel will control the streets, the drug corridors, and the border.
The violence will die down and the government will proclaim "victory", but the flow of
drugs into the US will increase while the situation for ordinary Mexicans will continue
to deteriorate.

Here's a clip from an article in the Independent by veteran journalist Hugh
O'Shaughnessy:

"The outlawing and criminalizing of drugs and consequent surge in prices has
produced a bonanza for producers everywhere, from Kabul to Bogota, but, at the
Mexican border, where an estimated $39,000m in narcotics enter the rich US market
every year, a veritable tsunami of cash has been created. The narcotraficantes, or
drug dealers, can buy the murder of many, and the loyalty of nearly everyone. They
can acquire whatever weapons they need from the free market in firearms north of
the border and bring them into Mexico with appropriate payment to any official who
holds his hand out." ("The US-Mexico border: where the drugs war has soaked the
ground blood red", Hugh O'Shaughnessy The Independent)

   It's no coincidence that Kabul and Bogota are the the de facto capitals of the drug
universe.  US political support is strong in both places, as is the involvement of US
intelligence agencies.  But does that suggest that the CIA is at work in Mexico, too?
Or, to put it differently: Why is the US supporting a client that appears to be allied to
the most powerful drug cartel in Mexico? That's the question.

THE CHECKERED HISTORY OF THE CIA

In August 1996, investigative journalist Gary Webb released the first installment of
Dark Alliance in the San Jose Mercury exposing the CIA's involvement in the drug
trade. The article blew the lid off the murky dealings of the agency's covert
operations.  Webb's words are as riveting today as they were when they first
appeared 14 years ago:

   "FOR THE BETTER PART of a decade, a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold tons
of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions
in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence
Agency, a Mercury News investigation has found.


This drug network opened the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and
the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a city now known as the "crack'' capital of
the world. The cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban
America ? and provided the cash and connections needed for L.A.'s gangs to buy
automatic weapons.

It is one of the most bizarre alliances in modern history: the union of a U.S.-backed
army attempting to overthrow a revolutionary socialist government and the Uzi-toting
"gangstas'' of Compton and South-Central Los Angeles." - ("America's 'crack' plague
has roots in Nicaragua war", Gary Webb, San Jose Mercury News)

 Counterpunch editor Alexander Cockburn has also done extensive research on the
CIA/drug connection. Here's an excerpt from an article titled "The Government's Dirty
Little Secrets", which ran in the Los Angeles Times.

  "CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz finally conceded to a U.S. congressional
committee that the agency had worked with drug traffickers and had obtained a
waiver from the Justice Department in 1982 (the beginning of the Contra funding
crisis) allowing it not to report drug trafficking by agency contractors. Was the lethal
arsenal deployed at Roodeplaat assembled with the advice from the CIA and other
U.S. agencies? There were certainly close contacts over the years. It was a CIA tip
that led the South African secret police to arrest Nelson Mandela." (The
Government's Dirty Little Secrets, Los Angeles Times, commentary, 1998)

 And then there's this from independent journalist Zafar Bangash:

   "The CIA, as Cockburn and (Jeffrey) St Clair reveal, had been in this business right
from the beginning. In fact, even before it came into existence, its predecessors, the
OSS and the Office of Naval Intelligence, were involved with criminals. One such
criminal was Lucky Luciano, the most notorious gangster and drug trafficker in
America in the forties."

The CIA's involvement in drug trafficking closely dovetails America's adventures
overseas - from Indo-China in the sixties to Afghanistan in the eighties....As Alfred
McCoy states in his book: Politics of Heroin: CIA complicity in the Global Drug Trade,
beginning with CIA raids from Burma into China in the early fifties, the agency found
that 'ruthless drug lords made effective anti-communists." ("CIA peddles drugs while
US Media act as cheerleaders", Zafar Bangash, Muslimedia, January 16-31, 1999)

And, this from author William Blum:

"ClA-supported Mujahedeen rebels ... engaged heavily in drug trafficking while
fighting against the Soviet-supported government," writes historian William Blum.
"The Agency's principal client was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one of the leading
druglords and a leading heroin refiner. CIA-supplied trucks and mules, which had
carried arms into Afghanistan, were used to transport opium to laboratories along the
Afghan/Pakistan border. The output provided up to one half of the heroin used
annually in the United States and three-quarters of that used in Western Europe...."

And, this from Portland Independent Media:

  "Before 1980, Afghanistan produced 0% of the world's opium. But then the CIA
moved in, and by 1986 they were producing 40% of the world's heroin supply. By
1999, they were churning out 3,200 TONS of heroin a year--nearly 80% of the total
market supply. But then something unexpected happened. The Taliban rose to
power, and by 2000 they had destroyed nearly all of the opium fields. Production
dropped from 3,000+ tons to only 185 tons, a 94% reduction! This  drop in revenue
hurt not only the CIA's Black Budget projects, but also the free-flow of laundered
money in and out of the Controller's banks." (Portland Independent Media)

    The evidence of CIA involvement in the drug trade is vast, documented and
compelling. Still, does that explain why the Obama administration has cast a blind-
eye on the Sinaloa/Calderon connection?

It's impossible to know for sure. But whenever government policy seems particularly
counterproductive, there's  always the temptation to think that nefarious masterminds
are skillfully moving the levers from behind the curtain. But that's not always the
case. Sometimes policies persist merely because of institutional resistance to change
or bureaucratic logjams or lack of imagination.  So, while the Sinaloa/Calderon
connection is worth keeping an eye on, there's nothing to suggest that the CIA is
controlling events from the shadows. More likely, the present policy simply reflects
the fact that Washington has been so thoroughly marinated in a culture of militarism,
that other remedies are no longer given serious consideration. As the saying goes,
"When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." And that's what's
happening here.

It has become impossible for policymakers to bust out of their ideological cage,
because the noxious ethos of militarism pervades all political decision-making.
American foreign policy is now reducible to one word: "War". And that's why the
pointless slaughter in Juarez will continue for the foreseeable future. "It's the policy,
stupid!"