WAR IN MEXICO A threat to our security at the border

By Ted Galen Carpenter
2:00 a.m. February 8, 2009

Even as U.S. attention remains focused on Iran, Afghanistan and other distant spots, violence in Mexico, mostly related to the trade in illegal drugs, has risen sharply in recent years and likely spiraling out of control. While the violence entails battles between drug traffickers and Mexican military and police forces, it also involves turf fights among the various drug-trafficking organizations as they seek to control access to the lucrative U.S. market.

More than 5,300 people died in the fighting in 2008. With 18 people found shot dead in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, and another four in a neighboring state – on the property of the state-run oil company Pemex – in just one two-day period (Jan. 26-27), 2009 is off to an ugly start.

The carnage is now so bad that the U.S. State Department has issued travel alerts for Americans going to Mexico. One such alert warned that the battles in portions of northern Mexico are “the equivalent of military small-unit combat and have included the use of machine guns and fragmentation grenades.â€