The Illegal Traffic of Firearms on the US-Mexico Border

The Illegal Traffic of Firearms on the U.S.-Mexico Border: A Problem of Governance? Jose L. García Aguilar Professor of International Studies Division of Social Sciences Universidad de Monterrey Overview To say that the United States and Mexico have a very complex relationship is to state the obvious. Indeed, our integration is deepening and covers not only trade aspects, but also environmental issues, energy, labor mobility and of course security among others. The latter is perhaps the most pressing challenge that both nations have to confront. For example, at the press conference that took place after the meeting of the three leaders of North America in Guadalajara, México, last August 10th, Felipe Calderon from Mexico said to the press that: “The struggles we have led in Mexico for the rule of law and the security of our Mexican people forces us to stop the traffic of weapons and of money that go from north to south that strengthen and nourish organized crime gangs”1 Meanwhile, President Barack Obama recognized the United States’ responsibility in this matter: “We will work to make sure Mexico has the support it needs to dismantle and defeat the cartels, and the United States will also meet its responsibilities by continuing our efforts to reduce the demand for drugs and continuing to strengthen the security of our shared border, not only to protect the American people, but to stem the illegal southbound blow of American guns and cash that helps fuel this extraordinary violence”2 The illegal traffic of arms in the border between Mexico and the United States has reached levels not seen before. In a testimony before the Subcommittee on the Western 1 “President Obama Holds a News Conference with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.” The Washington Post, available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2009/08/10/AR2009081001627_pf.html 2 Ibid Hemisphere, Committee of Foreign Affairs of the United States House of Representatives, Jess T. Ford, Director of International Affairs and Trade of the General Accounting Office, said: “Available evidence indicates a large proportion of the firearms fueling Mexican drug violence originated in the United States, including a growing number of increasingly lethal weapons. While it is impossible to know how many firearms are illegally trafficked into Mexico in a given year, over 20, 000 or around 87%, of firearms seized by Mexican authorities and traced over the past 5years originated in the United States, according to data from ATF. Over 90% of the firearms seized in Mexico and traced over the last 3 years, have come from the United States3 These figures only show the regional dimension (the U.S.-Mexico border) of a serious problem of global scale. This paper explores the trends of the illicit trade of firearms in the border between Mexico and the U.S. as a part of a global crime threat, but mostly it will concentrate in the governance side, in other words in those legal and political areas of which the criminals take advantage to continue with their illegal activities. Although cooperation between both countries has increased in particular since the beginning of the Obama administration which has recognized theta the United States has to more in order to curb the demand of drugs and to have a better control of guns,4 sometimes we see the lack of cooperation between the two countries to curb the problem. This uncooperative situation is the result of current laws, sometimes the result of corruption, but in any case, the problem reaches levels that constitute a real threat to the security to the countries in both sides of the border. 3 “Fireams Trafficking. U.S. Efforts to Combat Arms Trafficking to Mexico Face Planning and Coordination Challenges”, GAO, June 19, 2009, available at: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09781t.pdf 4 “Clinton Says U.S. Feeds Mexico Drug Trade” The York Times, March 26, 2009 This problem it also is a reflex no only of a bigger pattern (the global illicit trade of weapons) but also it responds to a very specific dynamics of the two countries; their laws, their enforcement institutions and the way in way both countries deal with guns, legal or illegal, in the context of a deep interdependence and an increasingly adverse situation of the threat posed by criminal organizations interested in this kind of activity. Transnational Crime As Global Security Threat Crime and criminal networks have been in the states’ agenda for a long time. The links between illicit activities and certain policy objectives are well known. The mujahideen in Afghanistan were allowed to continue the trade of opiates in order to maintain their fight against the Soviets. The FARC in Colombia developed ties with narco traffickers and there are indicators that the Basque separatist movement in Spain known as ETA has ties with Spanish criminal groups.5 As in any business, the criminals tend to obtain gains from the markets, in this case, global markets of illicit goods. The world has become a truly global market for any kind of illegal trade: drugs, human beings, endangered species, diamonds, firearms, among others. To deal with this phenomenon it is required to have a comprehensive approach in order to cover all the aspects of this complex international security issue. After the Cold War, different approaches to define security began to emerge. The global confrontation between the major super powers was the defining element concerning international security. From a scenario of war inter-states, now the new situation started to unveil the struggles intra-states. Among these conflicts we can mention ethnic rivalries, sometimes with catastrophic results such as the Rwanda case, 5 “Saviano dice que ETA es ‘paramafiosa y trafica con cocaína.” El País.com, available from http://www.elpais.com/articulo/cultura/Saviano/dice/ETA/paramafiosa/trafica/cocaina/elpepucul/2009083 1elpepucul_5/Tes the revival of nationalism (as in the former Yugoslavia) and radical religious groups. This does not mean that the aforementioned problems did not exist, but the Cold War somewhat covered them. In the context of an increasingly rapid globalization, with the advent of a global scale trade and technology, other threats began to surface too. Clearly, crime was one of them along with the environmental degradation and social conditions such as poverty. The nature of these threats is that they are not state-centered, in spite of the fact that some of them are originated within some states. Their true nature is that they are transnational, eroding the traditional concept of state sovereignty. Globalization has created the conditions of a network society. People just get in touch with other with similar interest in order to attain certain goals. The networks can have legitimate social or political objectives such as some NGO’s like Human Rights Watch, Greenpeace, Amnesty International or the World Wildlife Fund among others. With the internet technology, these networks also can organize global protest against, ironically, globalization itself, like the protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle, WA in 1999. Some authors say that these networks are the expression of a truly global society.6 But not all of these transnational networks are necessarily benign. Some of them like terrorist groups or crime organizations are taking advantage of the situation constituting real threats to international security. This situation became clearer after the attacks to the World Trade Center in New York and Washington, D.C. in September 11th, 2001. Al Qaeda is a very complex network of loyalties to a borderless web of Muslim extremist that the same are in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen or London and whose more visual member is Osama Ben Laden. 6 See for example, Ronnie Lipschutz, “Reconstructing World Politics: the Emergence of Global Civil Society” in Millenium: Journal of International Studies. Vol. 21, No. 3, 1992, pp. 389-420. Transnational crime organizations act alike. The national identification of these groups in well known in the literature: Italian mafia, Chinese mafia, Russian mafia, Japanese yakuza, Mexican and Colombian drug cartels, Somali pirates, just to mention some of them. Ironically, these organizations are not “nationals” in the sense that they only operate in their own national territories. They have networks around the world, they create strategic alliances with other criminal organizations in order to get new markets or to fight against other organizations for turf control, they develop new distribution routes, they establish economies of scale and diversify their “portfolios” of activities.7 Although some of them specialize in certain activity such as drugs, they also tend to cooperate with some other criminal networks in order to be more efficient. Thus, some bands specialize in stealing of cars to commit other crimes such as kidnapping. Some make alliances to sell drugs and human beings usually for prostitution. Others transport and sell weapons to those who are involved in wars against other criminal groups or against the forces of public order. Those activities can not achieve without taking advantage of law loopholes and help from corrupt local and national authorities. Indeed, corruption is endemic in some countries that host these organizations. The lack of a truly rule of law, fragile governance and permissive institutions, and a weak social capital that promotes the creation of wealth as quickly as possible, tend to create the conditions of widespread corruption practices. 7 See, for example, Mette Eilstrup-Sangiovanni and Calvert Jones, “Assessing the Danger of Illicit Networks” in International Security, Vol. 33, No. 2, Fall 2008, pp. 7-44. There is a plenty of good literature on illicit markets and transnational crime, see, for example, Moisés Naím. Illicit. How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats are Hijacking the World Economy.

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