THE CARTEL

Break Tijuana's Murderous Drug Syndicate

The extended coverage of Tijuana's Arellano Felix Organization in today's
special section of Insight is predicated on two fundamental observations:

First, that this profoundly evil criminal enterprise threatens vital
interests on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Second, that efforts
over the past decade to counter the Tijuana cartel have been plainly
inadequate and that more of the same would be doomed to almost certain failure.

The scourge of narcotics addiction kills about 52,000 Americans every year.
It blights the lives of an estimated 14 million Americans who regularly use
illegal drugs. While drug use figures from Mexico are imprecise, the
Mexican government reports a 56-percent increase in the five years from
1994 to 1999. Predictably, the assumption that Mexico could become one of
the major drug-trafficking countries in the world without its own people
becoming victims has proved dead wrong.

And drug abuse isn't the only problem. Absent drug use, aggregate crime
rates in the United States would be less than half of what they are today.
In Mexico, the appalling crime waves engulfing, for example, Mexico City
and Tijuana, are closely linked to increasing drug abuse as well as drug
trafficking. Tijuana, once comparatively safe, officially re-corded more
than 500 homicides last year. That's a rate at least seven times that of
San Diego.

Against these harsh realities, the quaint notion that selling and using
narcotics is somehow a victimless crime collapses.

Thus, as a purveyor for profit of human misery and degradation, the
Arellano Felix Organization ranks high on any scale of villainy. But even
among the scum of drug traffickers, the Arellanos are infamous for their
viciousness and violence. Officials suspect the cartel's hired guns and
assassins have killed hundreds; not only rival drug figures but also
Mexican police, prosecutors, investigators -- anyone perceived to be in
their way. The cartel reputedly also kills on this side of the border. Half
a dozen murders or more in the San Diego area in recent years are
attributed by U.S. law enforcement to the AFO.

Then there is the mortal peril posed to Mexico's national security and its
people's hopes for a decent future. The AFO and Mexico's other drug cartels
are, by definition, at war against the rule of law. That puts the
traffickers directly blocking the only road to a modern, prosperous,
democratic Mexico. Conversely, a corrupted narco-state in which the drug
traffickers are stronger than government and law enforcement is a recipe
for Mexico's ruin.

To be sure, Mexico isn't yet another Colombia and most analysts regard this
direst outcome as extremely unlikely. But it's also true that the Arellanos
and other syndicates have been operating in Mexico with something close to
impunity for years. The implications of that are chilling.

What's more, Mexico's 2,000-mile border with the United States would, in
turn, make any worst-case scenario a national security nightmare in
Washington, too.

Clearly, then, there is an urgent case for not only countering the Arellano
Felix Organization but for defeating it, dismantling it and apprehending
its leadership.

This is not an impossible goal. Even battered Colombia managed to break the
feared Medellin and Cali cartels, although that alone could not end the
drug threat. Lamentably, Mexico has done far less against formidable but
not insurmountable adversaries.

In the 11 years since the AFO's formation, the syndicate has thrived and
prospered. With rare and mostly recent exceptions, Mexican law enforcement
has been wholly ineffective against the Tijuana cartel. Most of that
failure is explained by the pervasive corruption bought and paid for with
drug money. The Arellanos are believed to have simply purchased protection
and immunity as needed from police, public officials and even the Mexican army.

Vicente Fox's thunderclap triumph in last Sunday's presidential election
over the corrupt Institutional Revolutionary Party that ruled Mexico for 71
years offers some reason for cautious hope that this may change. Fox vows
to attack "corruption, impunity and organized crime." If he does so
effectively, the Arellanos' days could be numbered.

While we wait to see what Fox and Mexico's political opposition can
accomplish (don't expect miracles), there is plenty more that can be done
on this side of the border. Despite the dedicated efforts of literally
hundreds of law enforcement agents, investigators, police and prosecutors
for the past decade, the U.S. effort against the Arellanos also has come up
short.

As former U.S. Attorneys Charles La Bella and Alan Bersin argue so
persuasively, what is lacking on the U.S. side is the commitment and
political will in Washington. Defending the United States against the flood
of narcotics crossing its borders should not be a politically partisan
issue. Nonetheless, it must be said that the Clinton administration didn't
so much lose the supposed war on drugs as abandon it. That policy of benign
neglect must be replaced with an aggressive, proactive and comprehensive
strategy against the traffickers.

Countering Mexico's drug cartels, starting with the Arellano organization,
must be put front and center on Washington's agenda. U.S. intelligence
agencies, heretofore mostly marginal players in the drug wars, must be
enlisted against Mexico's cartel empires.

These, after all, are the new enemies of security and stability in the
Western Hemisphere. In their own way, they are every bit as dangerous to
democratic prospects and the rule of law as the guerrilla insurgencies and
terrorist movements of the past. They should be dealt with as such.

Breaking the Arellano Felix Organization wouldn't end drug trafficking
along the Southwest border with Mexico. In one form or another, that will
plague us until we succeed in the longer-term goal of dramatically reducing
America's drug habit. The siren song of drug legalization is no answer, not
least because it would lead to more, not less, drug use and abuse.

But bringing down the Arellanos would score a signal victory for the rule
of law, for the cause of justice over manifest evil. That, and nothing
less, must be a priority objective for Mexico and the United States alike.