[Iran Press TV Latest] Mexico sends 1,500 additional soldiers to its northern borders to contain rising drug violence after initial troop deployment failed to effectively address the problem. The northern border city of Ciudad Juarez has witnessed an upsurge in drug-related violence in recent weeks despite earlier reports that troop presence in the flashpoint city had caused a reduction in drug-related crimes.
Some 5,000 soldiers were deployed in the city in March.
The additional soldiers will begin patrolling the city on Monday, said Enrique Torres Valadez, the spokesman for the joint security operation of soldiers and state police in Ciudad Juarez, AP reported.
Victor Clark, a drug-trafficking expert based in Tijuana, claimed that troops had not been able to settle the ongoing problem in the city, blaming the failure on the lack of an effective drug intelligence program in the army.
"I see two wars, the visible and the invisible one. The visible one is the dead that the media reports on every day, but the dead are just cheap labor," said Clark, director of the Binational Center for Human Rights in Tijuana. "The invisible one is ... the business class and the politicians who really benefit from the millions that the drug trade generates."
"The army had not carried out profound intelligence work," he added. "In Juarez, they have not dared to touch that level of organized crime."
President Felipe Calderon has used 45,000 Mexican armed forces to crackdown on drug trafficking and violence across the country. The operations have resulted in the arrest of several cartel members.
Ciudad Juarez, which witnessed 1,600 drug-related killings last year, has had almost no high-profile arrests.
More than 10,800 people have been killed in drug-related violence since Calderon launched his anti-drug operations in December 2006.