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New US concern: Mexico insurgency
[Iran Press] US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has expressed concerns that Mexico's powerful drug cartels are turning into an insurgency force, challenging government's control over its territory."These drug cartels are showing more and more indices of insurgencies. It's looking more and more like Colombia looked 20 years ago, when the narco-traffickers controlled certain parts of the country," Clinton said in Washington on Wednesday, Los Angeles Times reported. Colombia has recently been fighting a drug-financed leftist insurgency which, at its pick, controlled up to 40 percent of the country. Plan Colombia, the multi-billion-dollar US military and aid program, helped turn back Colombia's insurgents. "We face an increasing threat (in Mexico) from a well-organized network, drug-trafficking threat that is, in some cases, morphing into, or making common cause with, what we would consider an insurgency," Clinton added. Her comments show a U-turn in public comment by the Obama administration about drug war in Mexico, and the loss of more than 28,000 lives since December 2006. The US government has been assisting the Mexican government in its battle against well-financed and heavily armed drug cartels engaged in a bloodbath of assassinations, beheadings, shootouts and car bombings. Clinton's speech comes at a time Washington is considering a sizable increase on the Mexican drug war spending. US officials have also been debating on how to follow up the Merida Initiative, a three-year, $1.6-billion program that started in 2008 to provide equipment, training, and intelligence information to the Mexican, Central American, and Caribbean governments in their drug war efforts. However, the ongoing violence in the neighboring country could potentially spill into the United States' bordering states. Earlier this week, a White House official said, on condition of anonymity, that the joint anti-drug effort with the Mexican government "remains a top administration priority," adding the US government evaluates efforts "to make sure we are doing all we can on this issue." Posted by: Fred 2010-09-11 |
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