Meanwhile, Far Away From The Mideast

While events in the Mideast, most recently Libya, have been sucking all the media and diplomatic oxygen, a faraway state in Central Asia faces both internal and external threats.  Tajikistan hasn't made the news, but it is currently facing set of challenges which threaten to turn it into either a failing state or a hollow one.

Tajikistan is the poorest of the former Soviet Central Asian Republics.  Its poverty has not helped in the process of repairing the deep social and political wounds inflicted on the country by the five years of warfare between Tajiks and Uzbeks.  Even though that particular war ended nearly fourteen years ago, the scars run Grand Canyon deep across economy, society, and polity alike.  Insofar as there has been any recovery from that disastrous little war, it has been the inadvertent consequence of the attention and money flowing into Tajikistan following the invasion of Afghanistan.

Not unexpectedly that money and the "recovery" have served just as much to exacerbate underlying problems as it has to rehabilitate the place.

The sole reason the US or anyone other than either Russia or China is interested in the remote Wisconsin sized region is Afghanistan.  Tajikistan has a twelve hundred mile border with Afghanistan.  This border edges the formerly peaceful northeastern portion of Afghanistan.  The operative word here is "formerly."

Tajikistan borders China for a bit more than four hundred kilometers.  While much less than the borders with any of its other neighbors, the Chinese one has been the focus of international tensions.  Recently the tensions slacked apparently with the signing of a treaty which ceded some Tajik territory to China.  The government of Tajikistan crowed about its victory in that the Chinese gained only a small percentage of the territory it claimed.  But, to Tajiks living near the Chinese border, the victory was hollow at best.  In a side agreement the government agreed to lease ten square miles of land to China at, to put it delicately, well below market rates.  Also, the government permitted China to provide several hundred (thousand? reports differ) farmers to use the land.

President Rahmon has been attacked over the China deal which is seen even in Dushanbe by the microscopic local elite as a sell-out to Beijing.  There is a fair amount of belief that China will seek to "lease" more agricultural and pastoral land in the near future while defenders of the president see him as a canny player of the China card as a make weight to Russia.

There is a good deal of accuracy in the notion that President Rahmon is attempting a balancing act so as to curb the possible de facto takeover of Tajikistan by the Kremlin.  At the moment Tajikistan is heavily dependent upon Russia for external defense as well as the heavy lifting regarding the insurgency mounted by advocates of violent political Islam.

Rashmon is shaking in his boots over the ever increasing presence of the advocates of political Islam, particularly those of the violent sort.  He has been facing a shooting war for the past five years in which the security forces of Tajikistan have not covered themselves with glory--or even much success.  Not to overstate the matter, there is a direct link between the uptick of insurgents in the border region and the insertion of larger numbers of lethal and well motivated Afghan Taliban into the northern part of Afghanistan.  Given that the Tajik-Afghan border is so porous as to make the Great Fence of the Southwest look more impenetrable than ever was the Berlin Wall, this development should not have surprised anyone--even the Germans who sought service in north Afghanistan as a way of doing something for NATO without actually having to be involved in a shooting war.

The only effective force on the Tajikistan side of the border is a unit of the Russian army.  It is there both to stop insurgent border crossers and drug smugglers.  The border area is a primary, perhaps the primary, land route for opium and its derivatives on route to Russia and Eastern Europe.  The most recent estimates from the Tajikistan government is that some 130 million "doses" of heroin cross the border every year.  There was, of course, no source for this figure.

While the amount of drug traffic may be in doubt, there is no doubt who controls the route to and through Tajikistan.  The men who run the affair are all advocates of violent political Islam.  Most are native Tajiks.  The drugs are, along with unemployed workers, the major export of Tajikistan.  The Kremlin is of the view, with accuracy, that many of the migrant workers from Tajikistan are themselves members of groups espousing violent political Islam which increases the domestic threat from that quadrant.

The Rahmon regime has taken measures against the growth of political Islam.  Some of these have been unique and wide reaching.  Notable are the severe restrictions placed upon Tajiks studying in foreign madrassas.  Equally severe limits have been placed upon the number of mosques, madrassas, and religious students allowed in Tajikistan.  Most recently Rahmon's ministers have proposed prohibiting any person younger than eighteen from attending religious services of any sort.  This would affect Muslims primarily as ninety percent of the people are Muslims (eighty-five percent Sunni, five percent Shiite.)

The government has taken the firm position that the unrest, the drug trafficking, and the internal instability are all the result of Islam.  While the suppression of the religion may be impossible, it is clear the government has determined to lower the impact of political Islam to an irreducible minimum.  As a one time Soviet nomenclatura member, he recalls the old ways and days with fondness.

The Kremlin is quite willing to back Rahmon as it is better to rule the Tajiks from a distance than up close and personal.  At the same time any significant growth of the Tajik presence in the North Caucasus based Muslim insurgency will result in more direct, more significant Kremlin involvement in Tajikistan.

The most basic need of the country is money.  The problem is the place has little to offer in return for investment.  Only the Chinese can see a real potential in Tajikistan.  That potential comes not from the microscopic hydrocarbon resources under the soil but the soil itself.  The areas closest to the Chinese border are those with the best soil, longest growing season and, the big consideration, the best water.  China is facing crop and water shortages at home such as to occasion investment in farmland in Africa.  Extending Chinese agriculture and pastoral activities over a few hundred (or thousand) square kilometers of Tajikistan is both cheaper and more convenient.

Should the proposed hydroelectric dams be completed either with World Bank or Chinese investment, they will produce not only quite a bit of electricity (most of which will have to be transported hundreds of kilometers to market), but also irrigation water.  This implies that even more land can be brought under (Chinese?) cultivation.  If the Chinese insist on providing their own labor force, the difficulties with Tajikistan could be monumental given that nearly eighty percent of the Tajik population is agrarian or pastoral.

Should the Chinese displacement of native Tajik workers continue, and the Islamist insurgency not be fully suppressed, the combination would spell failed state for the Dushanbe government.  The only alternative would be to become an independent government and state in name only.  This would make Tajikistan the first "hollow state" within the Central Asian Republics.  It would probably not be the last.

While most US attention has been directed to other of the several "stans" in Central Asia, it has a dog in the Tajikistan fight.  The long, open border with Tajikistan means Taliban and others have free access to Afghanistan not only from Pakistan.  As has been seen in recent months, this provides the insurgents with opportunities for horizontal escalation which render American battlefield victories less impressive in their overall effect.  Also the convenience of Tajikistan as well as the tightly organized Muslim Tajik cartels which handle the cargo provide an alternative cash cow route.  This, in turn, means that even a total halt to flows through Iran or Pakistan will not end the utility of narcotics to the Taliban and others.

All of the various assessments of the state of American strategy (if what we are doing really deserves that term) in Afghanistan have given very, very short shrift to the Tajikistan connection both material and religious. This has been another of the numerous blind spots which have plagued American Deep Thinkers tasked with finding success in that dismal contest.

Just a little reminder that important things are underway far from the attention of the fly-by-night media and their diplomatic cousins.  It is an interesting world even when the television cameras aren't there to record.

Now, Hezbollah Joins The Narcos--Why Not?

Sue Myrick (R. NC-9) is a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. It may be recalled that she garnered more than a little notoriety when she wrote the forward for the book Muslim Mafia last year. This book accused the Council On American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) of being a subversive entity. (It is interesting in this regard that CAIR during ensuing litigation did not charge the book's authors or publisher with libel or defamation but rather with having acquired certain documents by illegal methods.)

Alarmed by the book's allegations that CAIR had planted espionage agents within committees charged with national security duties, Ms Myrick, joined by other Republican Members of Congress, demanded the Sergeant At Arms investigate to determine whether or not interns appointed with CAIR backing had served in this sinister role. Later she, again with other Republicans, requested the Internal Revenue Service investigate as to whether CAIR had violated its tax-exempt status by lobbying efforts.

It is without surprise that CAIR and other pro-Islam groups including the Islamic Society of North America and the Muslim American Society as well as Democratic Party heavyweights, most notably, John Conyers and Mike Honda, pushed back--hard. Weakening the push back efforts was the undeniable linkage of CAIR with officially identified Muslim terrorist groups as an unindicted co-conspirator in the controversial Holy Land Foundation trial.

Ms Myrick has written another letter recently. This time the recipient was Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano. The subject: Investigate the possible linkage of Hezbollah and Mexican narcotrafficking cartels.

The letter is a fine example of unspecified "former intelligence officers," and "well trained officials," and "some authorities." Ms Myrick's missive rests additionally on some well known and unpleasant realities deep south of the border such as the cooperation between Iranian capo Ahmadinejad and Venezuelan supremo Chavez, the long established presence of Hezbollah operatives in the drug smuggling region of the Tri-border between Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina, the skill shown by Hezbollah in digging tunnels, and, as a bit of a stretch, the similarity of terrain between that of the southwest US-Mexican border and the border between Israel and Lebanon.

In Ms Myrick's estimate, the probable current or near-term partnership between Hezbollah and the assorted smuggling cartels operating on the US-Mexico border constitutes a definite national security threat. As such, the matter deserves, at the least, the establishment of a task force which "could explore all these issues."

It is the wishy-washy nature of the Myrick request which undermines her argument that the US may soon be experiencing "Israel like car bombings of Mexican/USA border personnel or National Guard units in the border regions." Get a grip, Congresswoman Myrick!

Either the US does face a growing threat from a partnership between Hezbollah (or Hamas or the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) and the cartels or it does not. If the potential for such exists to the degree you appear to believe, then action beyond the formation of a "taskforce (which) could explore all these issues," is necessary.

The use of the resources, personnel, and knowledge of the smuggling cartels would be of great utility to an entity such as Hezbollah or an adverse state like Iran. However, the potential utility of such an alliance would be eroded significantly if employed for petty efforts such as "Israel-like car bombings." The killing or wounding of a few Border Patrol agents or National Guardsmen would be a frittering away of a capacity with much greater potential.

The current dynamics of global politics makes the use of the smuggling cartels an attractive option. Of course, this option would not be either cheap or risk free, so it seems reasonable that any partnership would have as its goal operations far more damaging to the US than the sound of VBIEDs in the desert air.

Ms Myrick would be well advised to reform her letter, its arguments, and the sketchy evidence supporting her contentions to an appropriate level. Not to be unduly alarmist, but taking into account the strong probability that Iran will have the capacity to take two Hiroshima sized bombs off the shelf within eighteen to twenty-four months, a legitimate level of threat is that of a WMD attack using either nuclear or biological munitions.

The capabilities of the smuggling cartels, their human resources, their collective knowledge are up to the task of introducing agents and equipment into the US. This capability should be understood not as simply dumping the martyrdom seekers and munitions across the Great Fence of the Southwest but delivering them well into the interior of the US.

The complex, well-organized, and highly redundant delivery system developed and constantly improved upon by the cartels provides a ready capacity for delivering a devastating attack on the US at any time. All that is necessary is the formation of a partnership between one or more cartels and either Iran or one of its proxies.

This takes time. The cartels are run by men who are even tougher of mind than the mullahs and their stooges. It will take more than a slight amount of effort to persuade the cartel chiefs that what is in the deal more than offsets the risks of American response. It will take careful playing off of one cartel with the others as well as meticulous manipulation of relevant and receptive Mexican police, military, and government officials.

None of this is made easier by the arrogant xenophobia which has been well noted by those foreigners--even other Muslims--who have had dealings with Iran or Iranian proxies. Nor does the assistance of Hugo Chavez ease the path to partnership.

Chavez enjoys no particularly high standing in the estimate of the cartels. He has even lower standing with members of the Mexican elite both in and out of government. Any Chavez involvement will be obvious since that is the only way Hugo, The Mouth Of The South, knows how to operate. The evident participation of Hugo will make any deal with Mexican officials all the more difficult given the nationalism which is always present in their makeup along with greed.

The culture gap between Islamist jihadi and Latin American narcotrafficker is wide and deep. It will not be bridged quickly and easily--if at all. This ground truth is far more relevant in considering the potential of an emerging threat on the border than is the presence of a few jail tattoos in Farsi.

Ms Myrick is correct in being concerned. The growth of an alliance between Iran or its proxies and the elaborate smuggling networks of LatAm is a real threat in the longer term. But, the right way to go about countering this potential is not in the writing of politically expedient letters.

The right way is that of careful monitoring of developments and their disruption whenever possible. And the options for disruption are manifold given the nature of the relationship between Islamists and traffickers. Not to simplify the matter, time is on the side of the US in this area of threat assessment and abatement.

In short, Ms Myrick should put her word processor on stand-by. Unless the intelligence community has become significantly more incompetent in recent months (not impossible but highly unlikely), the Iranian-smuggling connection is already on the radar screens. As a rule of thumb, if we hear nothing about it, the matter is being handled properly and effectively.

"Friends" Tell "Friends" Tough Truths

Secretary of State Clinton was at her hectoring best the other day when she addressed the AIPAC conflab. During her exercise in telling the AIPAC heavyweights (and the government of Israel) just where it was at, she offered as justification the assertion that the best friend is one who tells the blunt, plain, unvarnished truth.

In the case of Israel the truth according to Ms Clinton is that Israel was in the deadest of dead wrong zones to continue the construction of Jewish housing developments in Jerusalem. While she did not mention it, there was a historical context to the continued construction.

Quite simply put, the US has tacitly approved of both construction in Jerusalem and its status as an undivided city within Israeli territory. When the government of Israel moved quickly in the wake of the Six Day War to declare Jerusalem to be both (a) undivided and (b) the capital of Israel, the US made no protest. While we did not move our embassy to Jerusalem, there was no other sign of even the mildest disapproval for the Israeli action.

Nor did the US utter the slightest dissent when each and every Israeli administration after 1967 moved to create "facts on the ground" in and around Jerusalem. The Israelis made no secret of their actions and we entered no demurrers.

Ms Clinton and her boss, Mr Obama, have reversed historical course. Regrettably, neither worthy has seen fit to acknowledge this reality let alone justify it. Both have proceeded to pressure Israel while giving the other side, the Palestinians, a free pass on any obligations to the "peace process." This self-evident "tilt" must be excusable in their minds because Israel is a "friend" and the Palestinians are not.

The Secretary of State's remarkable inability to either acknowledge the historical trajectory of US policy regarding Israeli construction in Jerusalem or explain the reasoning behind the sudden reversal is matched by her geographically based definition of the word, "friends." Consider her recent flying visit to Central America and her even more recent day trip to Mexico.

The subjects of both the Central American and Mexican jaunts were twofold: drug smuggling and illegal immigration. The first got most of the press play. The second, however, was by far the more important both to the US and our regional interlocutors. (It should also be mentioned that both drug running and illegal immigration are joined shoulder and hip, Siamese twins sprung from the same seed.)

Leaving aside the standard issue Hillary Clinton brand of schoolmarmish hectoring which dominated both sets of meetings, the major issues discussed were (a) the amount of money the US would be spending in Mexico and elsewhere and (b) to what end(s) would the money be expended. Some, even most of the greenbacks would be spent on traditional military and police needs, the importance of which were attested to by the presence and words of Secretary of Defense Gates and JCS Chairman Mullen. That was all rather typical yadda-yadda.

The surprise came with the second category of expenditure, the category which was particularly embraced and extolled by Ms Clinton. She termed this category to be "community development" which, from the description she provided, seems to be a lite form of nation-building. Apparently Ms Clinton and presumably her superior, Mr Obama, have convinced themselves that an approach which has proven to be an expensive failure in South Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan will work in a miniaturised form in Mexico and elsewhere in the region.

Of course, the "new" emphasis on "community development" underwritten by the gringos was applauded warmly by the Mexican government. Likewise other regional governments.

Reading the tales of largess soon to flow and the expressions of gratitude already pouring from those who are scheduled to be on the receiving end should have filled one with the warmth of friendship offered and accepted. But, this was not the case. For the offer and eager acceptance of money for denatured nation-building is not an act of genuine friendship.

Rather, the dangling of gigabucks was like the "friend" who gives the car keys to an obviously drunk associate.

The US as well as the countries of the region would have benefited far more from a gesture of friendship akin to that offered by Secretary Clinton to AIPAC and the government of Israel. We all would have been far better off if Ms Clinton had told a few blunt truths which need to be heard and heeded on both sides of the Big River.

Honesty and policy alike would have been properly served if the American secretary had told her listeners that the primary responsibility for both illegal immigration and the explosive growth of drug smuggling (and related violence) resided with the governing elites of Mexico and the other countries of the region. Illegal immigration and, to a lesser extent, drug smuggling are a necessary, expectable, and totally understandable response of a desperately impoverished people to their condition and the oppression which surrounds it.

The hoi oligoi of the region and Mexico in particular have assured poverty and repression are endemic. These ruling elites have pursued a set of social, economic, and political policies which have benefited those on top at the expense of those below.

Normally, the result of decades, generations of self-serving rule would have resulted in offensive insurgency, revolution if you prefer the less technical term. Offensive insurgencies have resulted in countries at a relative remove from the Rio Grande: in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala.

While lesser, more distant countries have fought and bled in wholesale amounts as a result of the combination of poverty and repression, Mexico, the "Mr Big" of the region, has been immune for nearly a century. This immunity has not come about as a result of benevolent or proper use of the vast natural resources available in Mexico. Nor has it been the consequence of the government, the elite, effectively employing the energy, talent, and skills of the large Mexican population.

Mexico has been immunized by geography. The US is conveniently next door. As the proprietors of the Land of the Big PX, the Yanquis provide the necessary safety valve for the most ambitious, most capable, most highly motivated segments of its population.

Emigrants, both legal and otherwise, not only remove themselves from the Mexican economy, they send literally billions of dollars in remittances every year. The combination goes a long way to assuring Mexicans do not demand a less unjust economic reality down south as well as lowering direct governmental expenses on domestic affairs.

Drug smugglers provide lucrative employment to many. The black economy in Mexico and elsewhere in the region is both vast and growing. The ripple effects of the black economy spread throughout the larger economy with results beneficial not only to the hoi polloi but the hoi oligoi as well.

The graft, corruption, and related rot are quantitatively greater but not qualitatively different from the pus filled cavities which have long riddled the police, judiciary, and government in Mexico and elsewhere in the region. It simply means more money flows through more channels again to the benefit of the hoi oligoi far more than the lesser sort of folk.

As a collateral benefit the great Mexican war on drugs provides a mechanism for further repression of any potentially uppity peasant. (Of course our government knows all about this given our significant experience at limiting civil and personal rights in order to wage the "war on drugs" more effectively.)

This entire herd of elephants was in the rooms where Secretary Clinton spoke. But, as we are not a "friend" of Mexico or the other nations of Central America, as we are a "friend" of Israel, she did not see fit to remind her listeners of their direct, material, even central responsibility for having created the problems of illegal immigration and drug smuggling.

She did not, for example, point out that the Mexican state has the resources necessary to propel the Mexican people to a high level of prosperity and, thus, social and political cohesiveness. She did not note that proper development of the offshore oil fields as well as necessary upgrading of the old fields would provide the necessary wherewithal to bootstrap the Mexican economy, state, and people into the developed world of the Twenty-first century.

Neither did she mention that Mexican agriculture and industry continued to languish in the main somewhere in the backwaters of previous ages. Nor did she urge her listeners to put aside the false god of nationalism in favor of promoting full development of the greatly underused human resources of either Mexico or the region generally.

In short, Ms Clinton was no "friend" of the Mexicans. She promised unneeded and counterproductive charity, "community development" funded by the US rather than the badly needed full usage of the internal resources both natural and human of the region, a process which could be facilitated by international investment.

A genuine "friend" would have demanded that the local elites live up to their responsibilities. A genuine "friend" would have required that the local elites quit looking to the US government, the US economy, the American people to carry the freight, to bear the responsibility for local, willful failures.

This would have been, in Al Gore's term, "an inconvenient truth." It would have been the truth even so. By falling in with the Mexican version of the politics of victimization she did nothing but assure the victimization of the Mexican and Central American people by their own governing elites would continue--as would the smuggling of drugs, the illegal immigration, and the violence which accompanies both.

At least Ms Clinton was consistent in one way. Her words to Israel were not those of a "friend." Neither were her highly selective words to the Central Americans. With "friends" like Ms Clinton, and, by necessary implication, President Obama, who needs enemies?

How Close Is Mexico To Collapse?

The Mideast continues to exercise black hole level appeal to the US mainstream media and the attention of those few politicians who can tear their eyes (and calculations) away from failing banks, collapsing auto makers, and an imploding economy. Everyone has gotten into the act of offering advice to Barack Obama on what he should/must/can do to assure Mideast peace in our time.

From former Iranian presidents to the current Nobel Peace Prize recipient come torrents of well-intended suggestions for peace. When not gazing like a spotlighted deer at the Israel-Palestinian morass, attention is given to the swamp called Iraq and the ongoing war in Afghanistan and, most recently, the attacks in Mumbai. Except for an occasional glance tossed in the direction of the Merry Pirates of Puntland or the "humanitarian crises" in Darfur, Zimbabwe, and the Congo, the foreign policy and national security focus of the US stays firmly on the Mideast and Northwest Asia.

This is in keeping with the sweep of American foreign policy over the past century or so. Things falling apart far from our shores and even only tangential to our interests get the attention. Grave matters right next door are met with yawning indifference.

It's true that a few people looked askance at the rise of Hugo Chavez and his stridently anti-American agenda backed by improving relations with Iran and Russia. But hardly a soul noted the advent of equally anti-American regimes in Bolivia and Ecuador. Even fewer seemed to notice that Paraguay is lurching into the anti-US, pro-Hezbollah constellation.

Now to the nitty-gritty. Mexico. A place more deadly than Iraq. More lethal than Afghanistan.

The government of Felix Calderon inaugurated a full scale war on narcotrafficking in 2007. The use of the term "war" is appropriate as the Mexican army has been employed on a massive scale and the body count is impressive to say the least. The term "war" is also appropriate as the drug industry has grown to a level of power and has so penetrated the government and police forces that it poses an existential threat to the central regime.

This year the violence of the war has increased greatly--no--monumentally. Through the end of November some 5,376 people have been killed in the fighting between the government and the drug smugglers or in the inter-gang violence. In comparison only 2,477 died during the same period of 2007. (A further comparison of interest: The body count for 2008 alone is greater than the aggregate total of Americans killed in both Iraq and Afghanistan from day one through today.)

The killings have not only escalated in numbers, they have escalated in sheer barbarism as well. The drug gangsters have adopted the jihadist notion of decapitation with an exuberance which boggles the mind. They have even added some wrinkles which have eluded the jihadists such as rolling cut off heads like bowling balls into restaurants and bars.

The drug related massacre has been accompanied by a grotesque increase in the number of kidnappings for ransom. No longer are the victims of this practice (which often ends with the victim's body being found in an abandoned car) confined to members of the Mexican rico class. Now even the children of street market booth proprietors are at risk. Since the overwhelming majority of kidnappings are never reported to the police (often from fear that the police are themselves involved in the crime), the exact number of snatches will never be known with precision. Estimates range from a low of not quite one per day to a conservative high of three each and every day.

The apprehension felt by many Mexicans that the police are involved in crime has been borne out in recent weeks by the high profile arrests of individuals ranging from file clerks to department heads on charges of corruption--of being bought and paid for employees of the smugglers.

While low level corruption has been endemic among the poorly paid and badly trained Mexican police for decades, the recent revelations of corruption in the highest levels of law enforcement have rocked confidence not only in the criminal justice system but in the capacity of the central government to provide even the most fundamental service of government: protection of the citizen from violence.

There are other very disturbing indicators of a state in distress, a state on the verge of collapse. Over the past eight years more than 150,000 men have deserted from the Mexican armed forces. That's right 150,000! Of these, some fifteen hundred have been members of various "elite" formations. These are the units most often called upon for the most dangerous operations against the drug cartels.

It might also be mentioned that at least some of these deserters, including those from the elite units which have received training by Americans or in the United States, now provide the most effective "muscle" for the cartels. Los Zetas has gained the highest notoriety in this area of endeavor but is not the only such group.

There is yet another consideration. Mexican stability like the well-being of many Mexican families depends upon the flow of cash from the US. In 2007 the Bank of Mexico reported that a record amount of dollars--23 billion, 979 million--flowed to the country from "migrants" primarily those resident in the US. This year the total is expected to reach 23.5 billion.

That's only a slight decrease. But it is a sign of things to come. Remittances are falling along with the US economy. They may drop to less than 20 billion next year. They may drop more.

While the total loss of remittances from "migrants" in the US can not be predicted with certainty, we can get a grip on one inevitable consequence. Social instability will increase. Another consequence is almost as inevitable. Reliance upon drug smuggling will grow. Along with that, violence will escalate.

Mexico's neighbor to the south, Guatemala, is suffering partial collapse as the result of the operations of drug cartels. Last week, cartel violence along the Mexico-Guatemala border reached a level that the redeployment of Mexican national army units was necessary to contain it. Much of Guatemala is outside the control of the central government. This government is fragile in the extreme. It must be remembered that the country underwent some thirty-six years of insurgency which ended only in 1996 after costing more than 100,000 lives.

The drug cartels move into governmental vacuums and such has been the case both in Guatemala and the southern states of Mexico. (You might remember the uprising in Chiapas state which garnered an inordinate amount of transient media attention some fifteen years ago.)

The vacuum is spreading in Mexico as the economy goes south and the drugs flow north. Thus, it is to be expected that violence--including an increase in attacks on the less than robust infrastructure of the southern Mexican oil fields--will reach the level that so far has been experienced only in the northern states along the US border.

Columbia almost went down the abyss of collapse. It was almost destroyed by a combination of drugs and insurgency. It still isn't a model of stability although it no longer teeters on the ragged edge of failure. But, Columbia survived due in large measure to an unprecedented amount of American attention and assistance The direct US aid to the Colombian military and police forces exceeded the four hundred million dollars promised Mexico under current plans by more than an order of magnitude.

So there it is. Violence which touches the lives of many, many Mexicans. Fear in the middle class that has resulted even in migration. Loss of confidence in the government and the instruments of national security. The prospect of even more of the same in the foreseeable future.

It is long past time that the situation in Mexico can be ignored by the US government and media. There is a collapsing state on our southern border. The implications of this are not at all good from an American perspective. The US government and We the People have several options available to us. None are completely palatable. But, one must be discussed, chosen, and implemented.

It is time for a change. One can only hope that the President-elect and his policy crew are aware of this. One can only hope that they get a firm grip on the reality to the south and move quickly to help Mexico solve the existential threat it faces.

Mexico--Life Is Bad And Getting Worse

The war zone starts not quite a hundred miles south of the canyon where the Geek lives. Just the other side of the Great Fence, the killing and dying goes on with a vengeance. So also does the kidnapping and dying.

"See Mexico--and die." That might be the new national motto of our neighbor to the south.

Grim but accurate. This year Mexico rivals Afghanistan and perhaps surpasses Iraq as a killing zone. Without even the assistance of American helicopter gunships or fast movers, the Mexican internal war(s) has pushed the country into the Big League of body counts. True, Mexico City does not yet come close to Caracas for the number of homicides recorded in a capital city, but, given time even that may happen.

It may not even take that much time since there is an excellent chance that the overall quantity of social unrest will be increasing rapidly. Not because the Mexicans have any inherent love of facing death straight in the face. Not because the Mexican population is naturally more violent than that of any other country.

Not even because the gangs who batten rich, fat and powerful from the transport of drugs to the US have a decreasing market over which they must fight. Nor because these self-same drug runners are running more and more scared from the crackdown ordered by the Mexican president.

No. Social unrest and its almost inevitable violent expression will come because the employment safety valve known as the United States is not wide open as it was a year ago. Or even six months ago.

The Heimatsicherheitsamt--as the Geek unaffectionately calls that bureaucratic monstrosity created in a fit of panic by the current administration and a spineless Congress--has crowed with its customary willingness to take credit when no credit is due, noting that the tide of illegal immigration has slowed and even reversed. The reason for this, of course, is the tanking of the American economy.

This tanking of America caught not just the neocon ninnies of the current US administration with undue surprise, it did the same to the Government of Mexico (GOM.) The folks in charge in Mexico City and the capitals of the various Mexican states never thought there would be both a decrease in remittances from illegals in the Land of the Big PX and a reverse flow of newly impoverished former "undocumented workers."

The Mexican National Institute of Migration (the Geek loves this term for an outfit that studies illegal immigration from Mexico to the US) estimates that no fewer than 600,000 Mexicans will be crossing the border from the north to the south. The National Institute further estimates that no fewer than 1.5 million Mexicans have repatriated from the US in the twenty months ending in August of this year.

Here is the where the vibram hits the sand. No government anywhere in Mexico including GOM has made any financial provision for the relief or employment of this tide of men without jobs. GOM, or at least some in it, are pushing the panic button with the demand that a 1.8 billion peso emergency "rescue fund" be established in the 2009 budget.

Without such an emergency measure (and perhaps much more) the decrease in remittances from illegals working in the US coupled with the needs of the returning unemployed "could convulse half the country," according to one Representative. In an interesting wrinkle, it has been proposed that illegals remaining in the US would be eligible for assistance from this "rescue fund."

That would be a first. Pay those of your citizens who are illegally resident in another country to stay there.

(Hmm, the Geek ruminates, perhaps he should seek Mexican citizenship so that GOM can pay him to stay where he is. Yeah, the Geek concludes, he could live with that as a concept.)

From the Mexican perspective having illegals stay in the US even if GOM has to pay them is a far less-worse alternative than having jobless (and perhaps hopeless) men come on home. Jobless and hopeless men are desperate men. And, as is well shown throughout history, desperate men do desperate deeds.

The last thing Mexico needs right now is an increase in the available pool of pistoleros and mules employed by the trafficking gangs. The next to the last thing the Mexicans need is more individuals given to the latest money making fad in the country--kidnapping for ransom.

Traditionally kidnappers have snatched the progeny of people with lots of money. But not any more. At least not in Mexico. The lean and hungry have lowered their sights a bit. A very large bit.

In one recent kidnapping which took place in a suburb of Mexico City, actually a place that is rather much of a slum, the child-victim had parents who were fruit sellers in the street market. Selling fruit may be an honest occupation but it is not one noted for making its practitioners rival Donald Trump or Warren Buffett. The kid was killed by an injection of acid even before the snatchers made their ransom demand. A tip from a taxi driver led to the arrest of the teenage perps and their adult companions.

It was just one more sordid event. One more kidnapping in the estimated five hundred that occur every month throughout the country.

Desperate men do desperate deeds.

The influx of returning out-of-work illegals will provide more desperation at a time when most Mexicans are losing faith in the capacity of their government to provide that most basic of governmental services--personal, physical safety. Unlike too many Norteamericanos, Mexicans do not expect perfect safety. They do expect that the police will at least make a show of deterring criminals and arresting those whom they do not deter.

GOM is in a heap of hurt. The crackdown on the narcotraffickers is bogging down in blood and fear. Kidnappings threaten every family, even those whose economic viability is marginal. The senior levels of the police and Federal prosecutor's office have been shown to be penetrated through and through by paid agents of the drug gangs.

GOM could not even take advantage of the oil price boom because their fields are running dry. The petroleum infrastructure is ragged and near collapse. The new, large potential off-shore fields cannot be developed because there isn't enough money for the national oil company to do it. And, the foreign investment which would bring the new potential online cannot be sought due to the touchy understanding of national sovereignty which is a legacy of the long, long internal wars of the early 20th Century.

Now, to help stave off more symptoms of apparent collapse, Mexico must spend a lot of that which they do not have much of--money. Money spent on "rescue" isn't there for constructive purposes such as bringing new oil fields into production.

Money spent on keeping illegals safely in the US isn't available for something real, productive and future oriented such as laying the basis for long-term private sector employment. But, considering the current situation and making even a very conservative assessment concerning the probable social destabilization of Mexicans flooding home, what real choice does GOM have?

As the Mexicans have muttered for years, "Poor Mexico. So far from God. So close to the United States."

Shootin' 'Em Up South of the Border

The Geek lives (in)conveniently close to the Mexican border. In the old days the Geek liked to go south, down to Palomas and Juarez.

(That is he liked to before the Heimatsicherheitsamt acting in accord with a typical piece of Congressional fear driven legislation built the Great American Security Fence backed by the arrogant paranoids of the border crossings made the experience unpalatable in the extreme.)

Now, even if the badge and gun toters of DHS were to morph into gladhanding members of the Welcome Squad, the Geek would hesitate before seeking either bargains or cross-cultural enjoyment in Mexico.

Not since the glory days of Pancho Villa and the possibility of a grandstand seat in El Paso for the Revolution across the Big River has life in the borderland become such a risky business.

Of the roughly 3500 people killed to date in the virtual war between drug gangs and between the Mexican security forces and the druggies, approximately 1,000 of the corpses have been hecho en Juarez. Not long ago the police chief of Palomas nipped across the border to Columbus (that's Columbus, New Mexico in case you were thinking of the one in Ohio) seeking sanctuary from the narco-shooters.

Los Zetas, the highly trained, very well equipped para-military force has undertaken very successful and quite lethal operations deep in the border states of Arizona and Texas. A hit list containing targets in the Land of Enchantment (as New Mexico quaintly but not inaccurately calls itself) has been found in the pocket of a Zeta-ista.

(The Geek's name was not among the chosen probably because he never called anyone when the dope smuggling aircraft disturbed his sleep by flying too low over the wrong canyon.)

There is nothing humorous in the current bloodshed in Mexico. Since Mexican president Caldereon declared war on the narco-traffickers, the violence has increased geometrically. Fifty died in one week in Tijuana. The Zetas heaved hand grenades at an independence day ceremony. The noise level of the drug wars both between gangs and between government and criminals in no way obscured the growing levels of "normal" crime such as kidnappings for ransom and standard issue murders.

While the Mexican population initially supported the Caldereon crackdown overwhelmingly, recent polls show that only forty percent now do and an alarmingly low figure of twenty-five percent feel themselves to be safer now than when the anti-drug gang campaign started. More than a few Mexicans in the middle and upper classes feel that the wheels are coming off.

(An interesting sign of the times is the hottest new fashion boutique in Mexico City features bullet resistant clothing with prices running to $7,500.)

On this side of the Great Fence some are beginning to fear full-fledged civil war breaking out with an attendant flood of refugees and overflow of violence. The Geek is not among this alarmist group.

The Mexicans have shown a great capacity to persevere during times of extreme instability and violence. Their society survived the decades of internal war which ensued upon the ending of the Diaz dictatorship a century back. While the wars didn't come to a final end until the early Twenties, they did end. Since then the country and its people have outlasted regional separatist movements, most recently in Chiapas a little more than ten years ago.

Mexico has survived the collapse of the peso. It survived the mass shootings of dissident students (perhaps as many as 300) at the universities in Mexico City forty years ago this month. It has survived earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes. It even survived the graft, corruption, inefficiency, and arrogance of the Permanent Revolutionary Party during that crew's long, long decades in power.

And, lest we Norteamericanos forget, Mexico even survived losing a war with us, losing a great swath of territory and the profound feelings of humiliation which accompanied that defeat over a century and a half ago.

The heavy weight of history indicates that Mexico will both survive the current exsanguination and prevail over the drug thugs. It will be a long, hard fight and will require both understanding and assistance from the United States.

There is little doubt that both the violence and the friction between the US and Mexico will worsen as the effects of the current global credit collapse make themselves felt in the land to our south. The issue of illegal immigration (from our perspective) or "migration" from the Mexican point of view will once again charge forward in the American consciousness. The role of Americans as the largest consumers of the drugs produced or moved through Mexico will become a larger and more contentious issue between the two countries. Beyond that the question of de-nationalising the off shore oil resources of Mexico so as to allow necessary foreign investment will provide another point of diplomatic and political disagreement between Washington and Mexico City.

Get a grip on the bottom line reality: Mexico is a critical country in our national interest on multiple levels. We ignore it at peril. In a real sense we need them more than they need us.