Longmire 14

There is a lot of daily drama surrounding Mexico’s drug war. In fact, I often refer to the frequent changes of command, violent territory grabs, and back-room deals between former rivals as something akin to As the Narco-World Turns. As a result of that, I believe that some reporting on cartel happenings on both sides of our southwest border tends to turn sensational, either to grab headlines, generate buzz, or spark controversy in an attempt to increase readership. In some cases, an overblown and alarmist article can simply be the result of a misinformed writer. On February 20, 2014, an associate of mine brought to my attention an article from World Politics Review titled, “Strategic Horizons: All Options Bad If Mexico’s Drug Violence Expands to U.S.” I read this article with interest because I assumed it would address border violence spillover and cartel activities within the US. It did, but unfortunately, it wasn’t long before I was shaking my head with disappointment. Here was another article from a writer with a strong professional background that would inevitably lead readers to some very wrong conclusions. The “shock factor” treatment began in the first paragraph when I read, “Americans must face the possibility that the [Mexican] conflict may also expand northward, with inter-gang warfare, assassinations of government officials and outright terrorism in the United States.” This statement is sure to suck readers in, particularly with the notion that Mexican drug cartels could possibly engage in terrorist activity in the US. The writer, Steven Metz, expands on this thought by saying, “The Zetas already have a substantial connection to Hezbollah, based on collaborative narco-trafficking and arms smuggling…Since Hezbollah is a close ally or proxy of Iran, it might some day attempt to strike the United States in retribution for American action against Tehran. If so, it would likely attempt to exploit its connection with the Zetas, pulling the narco-traffickers into a transnational proxy war.” Unfortunately for Metz and his readers, this information is flat-out wrong. I devoted an entire chapter in my forthcoming book, Border Insecurity, to laying out the facts and fiction surrounding the potential (or lack thereof) for cartels and terrorist groups to work together. It seems that not enough people understand the corporate and profit-maximizing interests of cartels, and how any government or law enforcement attention brought upon them by such associations would crush their business operations. Drug cartels have almost less of an interest in working with Hezbollah than our government does in seeing them do so. This isn’t to say that terrorist groups and drug trafficking organizations don’t have several things in common, like selling drugs to raise money and using a variety of avenues to launder their ill-gotten proceeds. It’s well known that groups like the PKK in Turkey, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the Lashkar-e-Taiba in South Asia all benefit tremendously from their involvement in the drug trade. However, Hezbollah and a cartel like Los Zetas have two very different goals. Hezbollah has a fundamentalist and Islamist mentality that involves a deep hatred of the West and a desire to spread radical Islam throughout the world. Los Zetas and their rivals just want to make money, and need a stable government apparatus that they can simply manipulate, not control or take over.