Drugs When War Goes Global

Few analysts take seriously the problem of threats that are modestly defined as “emerging.” We usually talk about cyber, hybrid, disruptive technologies, and, if really necessary (after the attack in Moscow), terrorism. Instead, half of the ongoing wars – as we “learned” from the wars over the breakup of Yugoslavia and Afghanistan – cannot be understood unless one looks at their mafia substrate, necessary not only for the black market (as in World War II) but to feed irregular militias, circumvent embargoes, conduct dirty operations, and support the regular armies themselves.

Amid universal silence, there is a world war and almost 142,000 deaths per year (107,000 overdoses with fentanyl and other stuff). Only two jolts hit the media: the brutal execution of 14 high school students in Iguala in 2014 and the current dialog between Biden and Xi Jinping about blocking the invasion of fentanyl (a synthetic opioid) in the USA.

The theater of war is Mexico, its border with the USA, almost every state in the Union, and the rest of the world because of mafia globalization. It started in 2006 when President Clinton’s brilliant creation, NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico), was destroyed by the emergence of cheap Chinese-made goods. The agreement that linked Washington and Mexico City by exchanging semi-finished goods for cheap labor to process them is being terminated; thousands of workers in maquiladoras, small businesses that processed the products while providing profits to their northern neighbor, live in poverty. Meanwhile, the Colombian drug cartels of Cali and Medellín had collapsed, leaving a field for organized crime groups outside the Panama Canal: in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, actually, Mexico.

In those 18 years, everything has happened with violence, brutality, and sophistication that make even veterans of the most famous conflicts pale. It is a war without restraint that kills 20,000 people a year in Mexico alone and leaves an average of 2000 missing. Today we are at 30,000 (plus 5000 missing) after military intervention, Army and Navy Special Forces, self-defense groups, the creation of the National Guard, also backed by Washington, and massive use of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), as much as possible.

On the cartel side, there has been increased militarization of firing squads, the creation of armored convoys and networks of illegal surveillance cameras, the recruitment of people from intelligence and special forces, high-ranking hacking teams, as well as an impressive rampant torture and public dismemberment of victims. In addition, Mexico will hold general elections this coming June, and organized crime will be an important factor because of its widespread ability to intimidate.

At the strategic level, some elements matter. At the national level, the panorama of organizations has simultaneously simplified and fragmented, with only two major national and transnational cartels remaining (the ancient and powerful Sinaloa-CDS cartel, which has undergone a generational mutation, and the more recent Jalisco Nueva Generación-CJNG cartel), followed by four of national importance and a dozen at the local level. Also in Mexico, “the war on drugs” strategy, so dear to the USA, has so far failed, as has the strategy of the current president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), who wanted to reduce violence and start negotiations with certain groups.

In fact, AMLO created a 100,000-strong National Guard responsible for dealing with serious violations, but negotiations failed. On the other hand, the DEA is being hampered in the name of national sovereignty. In some Mexican states, self-defense militias operated because they were based in the territory, although sometimes they too formed hybrid groups with breakaway mafia groupings.

Mexican, Colombian, Central American groups and their local allies from the Bering Strait to Tierra del Fuego have deeply penetrated the American continent. As I anticipated in 2015, covering Latin America for the Italian Ministry of Defense, the USA has become a net importer of the Mafia, while the centuries-old symbiosis of the US arms trade to the south and the smuggling of goods/Mexican drugs to the north continues, with more trafficked migrants, who are a far more serious threat than the various cyber/hybrids from the usual suspects, with far more serious electoral consequences.

Finally, on a global scale, there are two unambiguous threats. The first, also expected in 2007, is that synthetic drugs will replace traditional drugs, with devastating effects on societies impoverished by globalization, with low levels of wealth and exhausting work schedules. Fentanyl is the latest development in many synthetic drugs, but it is a killer product for heroin, cocaine, and its consumers.

Second, the CDS and CJNG cartels have established global networks with strong footholds in Europe (Belgium, Holland, Poland, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Britain, Turkey, Serbia, Albania, Romania, Slovakia, Baltic States). The Italian (Calabrian) ndrangheta is such a reliable criminal ally that it has expanded its traditional ties from Sinaloa to Jalisco, guaranteeing itself supremacy in cocaine trade.

The rest of the world is full of opportunities: networks in South Africa, West Africa, and the Sahel. Constant complicity throughout the Levant and the Persian Gulf. Strong alliances with Chinese triads and standby auxiliaries in India in the field of chemical precursors. And finally landing in Australia, managing to establish itself there after some initial setbacks. The global war on terror is over, but the global war on the Mexican Mafia has been a dismal success so far.