Mexican Drug War: Part of the Coming Anarchy

Mexican officials said Wednesday almost 13,000 people died in drug violence in the first nine months of 2011, pushing the toll since the start of a five-year military crackdown above 47,000.

Drug-related killings in 2011 were up 11% compared with the same period in 2010... _NatPost

National Post
Thanks to organised crime cartels, Mexico ranks as one of the most violent countries in the world. The only nations more violent than Mexico, are other Latin American nations caught up in drug cartel violence, or Sub Saharan African nations caught up in the perpetual tribal violence and power struggles of the dark continent.

One year ago, the government released figures showing 34,612 people had died in suspected drug violence since President Felipe Calderon started a controversial military crackdown on organized crime gangs at the end of 2006.

The latest figures were gathered from the offices of state prosecutors.

Wednesday’s statement underlined that 70% of last year’s suspected drug-related killings occurred in only eight of 31 states and the capital.

Local authorities have reported 40 gangland-style killings so far this week, including 13 bodies dumped near a gas station in the western state of Michoacan and two bodies found burned and decapitated in the capital Wednesday. _NatPost

Of course, without the rich drug markets of the US, Mexican organised crime would not be nearly so well-funded. If the US government were to discover an alternative approach to the problem of drug abuse which achieves better overall results than prohibition, a wide range of misery and violence might be mitigated in one fell swoop.

If the rich payoffs from drug crimes were suddenly taken away from the cartel jefes, they would probably feel forced into some other criminal activity such as kidnapping for ransom, or human trafficking. The general idea behind anti-crime policy-making should be to limit the extent and duration of harm that individual crime bosses can inflict, and to reduce the number of big crime bosses overall.

In low IQ societies, decapitation strikes are often quite successful against large criminal and insurgent organisations.