Mexico and Convergence Between Terrorism International Terrorist Groups and Drug Cartels and or Ordinary Crime

Mexico: Terrorism and Organized Crime

The convergence in numerous means of organized criminal activities that include terrorism and drug trafficking is a developing concern in the United States and the entire world. Some professionals in this filed imply that the increasing number of cases of terrorism and organized crime groups are jointly coordinated and the trend is increasingly developing into a worldwide phenomenon (Rollins 2). These occurrences pose a great and novel challenge from national security and law enforcement perspectives. Even though the convergence between terrorism and organized crimes is not interlinked in a direct and immediate contractual manner, the reality seems to imply that terrorism and drug trafficking in a coordinated manner is incredibly present (Rollins 2). Terrorism and drug trafficking are unlawful, concealed operations, and they hold numerous common needs. These needs include weapons acquisition, maintenance of anonymity, a steady cash flow, hiding assets and the two crimes strengthen their hands through their capacity to function transnationally. It is imperative to note that for various reasons, including the declined and collapse affluence of some governments, state terrorism financing is declining and as a result, terrorist organizations are considerably seeking other crimes such drug trafficking for funding.

Defining Terrorism and Drug Cartels

Terrorism refers to the action of deliberate inflict performed to instigate grave destruction or demise to persons with the main objective of overawing or pleading with a person, local or global organization or a given country's administration to adopt a certain policy. Following the 9/11 terrorist attack, FBI defined terrorism as, "the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population or any segment therefore in furtherance of political or social objectives" (Christop 14). On the other hand, Cartels refers to an organization of suppliers or manufacturers that upholds higher prices and limit competition. In this regard, drug cartels are illegal unions created to control and manage the formation and distribution of sedative drugs. Most drug cartels are linked to terrorism and their links are enhanced through financing terrorists groups. While most terrorist groups have a spread out portfolios of fundraising, some of these groups partially depend on drug revenues.

Convergence between Terrorism, Drug Castles and Other Organized Crimes

Convergence between terrorism, drug cartels and other organized crimes is already happening in Mexico. Violence linked to drug trafficking in the country started in mid 2000s. Narco-terrorism, violence and intimidation from illegal drug dealers put at risk the security stability of the country. The government of Mexico, police, judicial infrastructure and politicians face sustained pressure and assault from criminal gangs and drug cartels. International criminal organizations that convergence via drug cartels in Mexico spawn massive amount of corruption, intimidation, violence, and threatens the security of towns and cities across America (Shanty and Mishra 187). While organized criminal organizations in Mexico are not terrorist in conventional sense, they are effective at employing terrorists tactics to develop [p their drug business. These groups avoid arrest and carry on their activities through intimidating witnesses, killing and corrupting public officials. For instance, in 1999, members from the Gulf Cartel Group detained and attacked two United States agents, an FBI agent, and a DEA agent in Matamoros (Innes 103). Moreover, there are numerous tortures, murders and kidnappings of judicial and police officials in Mexico. While these actions do not amount to conventional terrorism, they illustrates terrorism affects the ability of the government to handle Mexico-based illegal; drug traffickers.

According to Camp, an author, the most significant security concern in Mexico is the increased presence of drug cartels and the degree to which cartels affect Mexico and the other parts of North America. Modern drug cartels in Mexico are a wider reflection of organized crime. These cartels have expanded into dozens of other activities ranging from kidnapping, bribery, money laundering and extortion in legal organizations such as the Mexican soccer teams (Camp 9). Given the temperament of their business, to produce drugs and transport them via and from Mexico to the United States of America, drug cartels have augmented their competition for management and control of the border (Alexander and Kraft 217). One of the focus of the Homeland Security in the United States is that international terrorists uses the Mexican border which is controlled by drug trafficking institutions that includes Zetas, one of top ten leading drug trafficking organizations, to cross clandestinely into the United States (Camp 9). However, the only recognized ties between a designated terrorist organization and drug cartels are the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the United Self-Defense of Colombia (AUC). The two organizations have been linked to Colombian drug traffickers (Alexander and Kraft 217).

Given that Mexican drug cartels have to trade most of the illegal drugs in the United States, they have built up several linkages to criminal components north of the Mexican border. One of the most powerful connections is to juvenile gangs functioning in most metropolitan areas. Drug cartels are also linked with gangs in key Mexican borders cities such as Ciudad Juarez (Camp 9). As a result, an acknowledged concern on the part of law enforcement agencies in the U.S. is the degree in which drug cartels are controlling and financing terrorists groups and those of juvenile gangs in the country. Drug cartels comprise of numerous government officials in the United States (Camp 10). Persons working for the government of the United States including in the American embassy in Mexico City and former director of the Nogales Immigration and Naturalization service have been in the pays of these cartels.

The cartels support crucial criminal activities such as terrorism in the United States apart from sale of illegal drug, money laundering and sale of illegal weapons in the United States. The presence of criminal activities goes beyond the critical threat against the sovereignty and weakening of the Mexican governmental institutions on the state, local and national levels. Profits from drugs are so huge in Mexico, an estimated 25 billion dollars to 40 billion dollars a year, that these cartels are bribing government officials at all levels (Camp 10). These cartels are also engaging themselves directly in funding electoral campaigns. For instance, the Nation Action Party, elected its gubernatorial candidate for the Tamaulipas border state from central party headquarters to block any undue effect by potentially compromised politicians in 2010. The capacity of the political leadership in Mexico and the sovereignty of governmental organizations is at stake given that these institutions cannot protect the general citizenry and lower the increased levels of perceived insecurity that impacts a huge percentage of the population.

The convergence or nexus between terrorist groups and transnational crime has its foundation on the symbiotic link between the two. The convergence entails a dynamic that allows both entities to benefit financially. This convergence, which entails long-term and short-term agreements, exists along a continuum and its aim is to exchange expertise such as counterfeiting, bomb-making or money laundering, or operational support that enhances access to the smuggling routes (Piazza 299). A study carried out by the Library of Congress regarding criminal and terrorist organizations realized that the convergence between the two entities comes in three wide blueprints. The first form of contact between terrorist and criminal organizations is alliances of mutual benefit. In this view, terrorists enter into agreement with transnational criminals to gain funding without engaging directly into the business actions or compromising their dogma.

The second blueprints in which terrorists engage in other organized crimes is through removing the intermediary and uphold the ideological premise of their policy. The third blueprint entails the replacement of their ideology through profit as the major reason for their operations. The most apparent convergence is predominately in the filed of transnational smuggling operations involving drugs, people and illegal weapons. This synergistic unification of the international groups of terrorists' organizations and drug traffickers illustrates a well-organized web of terrorist groups and drug cartels, which include narcotics in Colombia, weapons in Mexico and Cuba and money laundering in Panama. The convergence within the web of organizations engages in money laundering for drug traffickers, terrorists and arms traffickers. Despite the expectation of mutual benefit, the convergence takes place for the purpose of profit. While transnational criminal groups have acknowledged the value of mobility, pragmatism, and flexibility, terrorists with powerful ideologies are trying to diversify. Whether the motive behind their actions is ideology, profit, or both, the result is destabilization and disruption through violence.

Interactions between drug trade and terrorism also go through subscript narco-terrorism. Narco-terrorism refers to the activity through which organized groups or individuals engage in not only abetting or aiding trafficking efforts through provision of security, but also become engaged in the cultivation, production, distribution and transportation of narcotic substances to fund their terrorist activities. The term also refers to efforts of narcotics traffickers to influence government policies through the systematic threat or violence use (Piazza 299). There are circumstances where criminal organizations run the operations of drug trafficking while the terrorist organizations control the boundaries where drugs get manufactured, processed, distributed and transported. This is the means through which terrorist groups such as the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), Al Qaeda and Lebanese used money from drug trade to expand their political agendas, the previous Taliban regime directly taxed and attained financial gains from Afghanistan's extensive opium trade. According a reported filed in 2000; approximately 80% of the Taliban's financial resources were as a result of tariffs on heroin and opium. The current insurgency of Taliban is supported through exhortation from opium trade. This drug trade also finances a considerable part of the Syrian and Lebanon economy (Annes 104).

The terrorists groups may be engaged in all facets of drug trade, from cultivation, production, transportation and distribution to laundering the profits from this trade. The profits generated from the drug trade offers terrorist group a degree of flexibility, relative freedom from scrutiny and autonomy. Frank Cilluffo, Director of Counterterrorism Task Force, in George Washing University asserted that whether the terrorists cultivate and traffic narcotics or impose taxes, the financial windfall guaranteed by the narcotics fills the gap left by state supporters. Terrorist groups also view drugs as a weapon system that helps them in weakening their enemies. Not only do proceeds from drug pay for terrorist activities, the increased profits from this trade get into the systems of banking and the major economic arteries of the target states through money laundering. Money laundering is a scandalous crime, normally disguised from the public. It entails illegitimate achievement of large amounts of money in ways that makes it appear as if the money is legal or originates from justifiable sources (Hopton 157). Money laundering entails a vigilant activity that if consummated makes to criminals achieve their illegal activities such as funding terrorism.

According to Innes, money laundering instigates a rise in stern crimes such as terrorism, human trafficking (p.104). Innes further states that drugs reach their target destinations where they corrupt and kill. In a proof before the United States Senate Subcommittee on Security and terrorism of the Committee on Judiciary, Alvaro Jose Baldizon noted that drug trafficking damages and corrupts young people in America with the aim of weakening and harming future generations (Innes 104). Drug trafficking also helps in funding liberation movements while the cocaine distribution network facilitates trafficking of weapons brought through the black market. This is perhaps what Osama bin Laden utilized when he supported the use of narcotics trafficking to weaken Western societies through supplying them with addictive drugs. In final analysis, terrorism and drugs regularly share common components of money, geography and violence. Besides narcotics trade, terrorist groups also engages in other crimes such as human trafficking and fraud. For instance, LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) amassed huge payoffs from human smuggling mostly to the European states.

Possible Scenarios in Mexico

According to McCollum, an author, an alarming trend has been the increasing cooperation between elements of the Russian mafia and FARC. The Columbian drug cartels had established a link with the Russian mafia since early 1990s (p.31). The Russian mafia augmented their trade deals with FARC, and the Russians developed arms pipeline to Colombia that brought in numerous weapons and tons of other supplies to support FARC fight their war against the Colombian government (Holmes, Gutierrez de Pineres, and Curtin 250). The weapons included assault rifles, air missiles and military helicopters. The ammunition and weapons were sold to FARC rebels, and in return, the cargo planes that brought these weapons were loaded with 40, 000 kilograms of cocaine headed to Russia where the Russian mafia distributed the illicit drug for profits. McCollum asserts that FARC by early 2000s was extending its cooperation to the boundaries of the United States. The arrest of a FARC figure in Mexico convinced American and Mexican authorities of a Colombian link to the Arellano-Felix-run Tijuana cartel. The states department trusted that FARC supplied cocaine to the Tijuana cartel in order to receive weapons and cash (McCollum 31).

According to Horgan and Braddock, the international laws enforcement pressures the U.S. making terrorists and criminal organizations to decentralize their organizational structures. The law enforcement efforts of Mexico are making drug cartels in Mexico to break into small units (p.332). Even groups that still sustain some hierarchical arrangement such as the terrorist group Hezbollah, hold little power over their expansive network. This flattening of organized crime groups instigates novel and dangerous prospects for collaboration between terrorists and criminals. The activities of the terrorist operatives and criminal underlings are not limited because terrorist or criminal headquarters are no longer in a position to micromanage their taskforce. Mid-level and lower level criminals are capitalizing on their independence to create synergistic nexuses amid the two groups (Horgan and Braddock 332). Some political militant organizations have also established financial incentive mechanism to recruit and retain militants. Given that members join to make money, they quickly set ideological objectives. Terrorists and criminals have worked together on some level for a period. International money laundering crackdowns makes it intricate for terrorist financiers to send money to their operatives (Kalin, 742). This trend makes terrorist groups to seek for alternative funding through collaborating with drug cartels and other organized crimes (Horgan and Braddock 332).

Because of the overall decline in state financial support, and the temperament of their organizations, terrorists have found alternative sources of their funding. The sources include drug production and trafficking. Some terrorists have build up loose mutually advantageous links with drug traffickers to support both the drug traffickers' interests and their interests. However, international terrorism is not generally dependent on funds from drug production and drug trafficking or any other international crime. Terrorists are taking crime to create funds aimed at sustaining their activities. Terrorist group using crime path to raise money are not a new development in the modern. In the past scores of terrorist organizations involved low-level local crime to fund their activities. According to Innes, an editor, there is an emerging convergence between organized criminal networks and terrorists groups to the degree that a single entity all-together displays terrorist and criminal characteristics (p.103). However, the interests of these groups are served through upholding a degree of instability to continue involving themselves in lucrative criminal activities.

Impacts on the Mexican Government and the United States

Terrorists and people involved in organized crime are practical actors, operating clandestinely against the state. Both employ the use of violence or violence threats as means of achieving their objectives. Some of the tactics employed by terrorists and other criminals are akin and they include bombings, assassination, kidnappings, coercion, extortion and intimidation (Borgeson and Valeri 18). While criminal actions offer funds to terrorists groups, organized crimes syndicates use tactics of terrorists such as kidnappings and bombing to add credibility to their extortionist demands. For instance, in a series of attacks, drug cartels in Colombia assassinated Lara Bonilla in 2004, bombed the United States embassy in Bogota in 1984 and threatened to kill citizens from the U.S., in retaliation for seizure of drugs by Special Ant-Narcotic unit in Colombia. Consequently, in connection with terrorist group M-19, the drug cartels raided Colombia's Palace of Justice, killed eleven judges and damaged huge numbers of documents related to Colombian nationals awaiting extradition to the United States. Such activities show the link between drug cartels and terrorism and their effects to people and properties. As a result, convergence between terrorism and other organized crimes weakens the Mexican government besides loss of its credibility. These acts also instigate immigration as people escape for fear of attacks from terrorists and criminals.

Organized crimes in Mexico cost the country one percent of its yearly Gross Domestic Product. This is according to the Mexican Finance Ministry economic analysts, Messmacher Miguel. Drug trafficking are the major problems facing the country ( Morales 141) .The country's output on Marijuana increased to 44% in the years 2004 to 2006 making the country a top producer of the drug in the world. Former Mexican president, Felipe Calderon's efforts to crack down drug barons were successful. Instead, the country's police and soldiers get killed in line of duty, and are outnumbered by drug barons and terrorist groups. Drug linked deaths are left unsolved because of fear of increased murders of those involved in these cases.

Drug cartels are using illicit weapons Imported from America to control major sections of Mexico. This trend raises fears of terrorists' mafias controlling Northern Mexico parts and this not only threatens the country, its citizens and properties, it also acts as threat to the United States (Morales 141). This is because these terrorist mafias create instability on the Mexico, U.S. border and gain access to the U.S. According to the United States Department of Justice, Mexican gangs form the largest organized crime risk to the U.S. A former Homeland Security Secretratay, Chertoff Michael, ordered for the erection of 660-mile frontier boundary marker and surge of the United States law enforcement ability when the crimes spread cross the boundary between the United States and Mexico. The government of the United States through the Obama Administration offers its support to the Mexican president through provision of anti-drug help packages known as the Merida Initiative (Morales 141).The United States government supported Calderon's efforts in improving the Mexican border security besides fighting the illegal trafficking of weapons from the U.S.

According to the former Mexican National Security advisor, Hadley Stephen, the worsening situation of Mexico jeopardizes the democratic substance of the country situation (Morales 141). Mexico may get into anarchy and when the country fails, the U.S. military intervention will be required. The convergence between terrorism and drug cartels put the country at an economic blink. The outburst of narco-terrorism leads to abrupt decline in price of oil. Mexico is one of the leading oil suppliers in the United States, and therefore the increased crime atmosphere threatens U.S. And Mexico's economy.

United States; DHS and NORTHCOM View

The extraordinary cooperation among drug traffickers, organized crime organizations and terrorists has exacerbated major threats to the United States. The temperament of the war has shifted and the United States reaction calls for a change as well. The convergence between terrorism and drug cartels in Mexico is a national security problem. Colombia and Afghanistan highlights a good example of the new threat triggered by the convergence of terrorism and drug to the U.S. national security. Department of Homeland Security and NORTHCOM helps in combating terrorism in the United States.

The Department of Homeland Security was established after the 9/11 terrorists attacks in New York. DHS is a cabinet unit of the U.S. federal government (Mark 278. The main role of DHS is to protect the U.S. And its territories from terrorists' attacks, natural disasters and man-made accidents. On the other hand, the United State Northern Command (NORTHCOM) is an incorporated Combatant Command in the U.S. army that functions to provide military assistant for civil powers in the country. NORTHCOM also functions to safeguard national interests and borders of the U.S. within the neighboring, Mexico, Alaska and Canada. The body was established in 2002 after approval of unified command by the Bush Administration in the aftermath of 9/11 terrorist attack. NORTHCOM functions to prevent deter and combat aggression and threats directed to the United States, its interests and territories.

With respect to the convergence between terrorism (international terrorists) and drug cartels or other ordinary crimes in Mexico, DHS and NORTHCOM views this trend as a threat to the national security in the United States (Mark 278). The trend may spread drug trade and associated violence into other areas bordering Mexico and the United States. It may also lead to weakening of the U.S. And Mexican governments, the economy of the two countries since the convergence of these crimes instigate money laundering crimes that weakens the currency of the affected states.