Burma s Drug Lord Generals

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I heard it was one of the most violent favelas, because the largest drug cartel controls it.

A world free of drugs and drug lords cannot be created without strengthening national judicial and law enforcement systems.

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Conversely, tribal power brokers, criminal leaders and drug lords have always remained just below the surface of the relatively peaceful regional security environment.

In one scene, two Mexican hit men ruthlessly slaughter a dozen innocent compatriots who could bear witness to their border crossing. In another episode, members of the Mexican Federal Police are seen assaulting a drug lord in his hacienda, with the implication that they are only doing the bidding of a rival dealer.

Never mind that someone or several people are shot dead in the street every day in Sinaloa, or that the cemetery is filled with ornate, two story mausoleums for drug kings, larger than many homes for the living.

Villarreal asked the reporter to write about prior incidents in that locale, including one in which a son of El Chapo Guzman escaped a military raid.

Although the recent report of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime noted some progress in cutting back opium poppy cultivation, Afghanistan risks becoming a narco State.

Moreover, the capacity of Mexico s security machinery appears diminished. The police are at best useless and at worst outright employees of the drug lords the army is less tainted, but unprepared for the role.

The police are at best useless and at worst outright employees of the drug lords the army is less tainted, but unprepared for the role. It will take years and billions of dollars to change this state of affairs Calderón does not have the time, and only the US has the money.

Criminal bosses and drug lords oversee complex production and distribution networks they manage interlinking criminal organizations, shifting resources around the world much the same as their legitimate counterparts do.

It is scandalous that drug lords enjoy more freedom to operate than aid agencies, while basic access to food, education, and health care suffers many restrictions, with up to 70 of Burma s children are chronically malnourished in some border areas.

Second, the US, with its incredibly lax restrictions on gun purchases, serves as a veritable arms depot for rich Mexican drug lords. True, they could arguably acquire similar weapons elsewhere, but not necessarily as cheaply and conveniently.

The notion that there are links between terrorism and other forms of crime arose in the 1980s, when the term narco terrorism was coined to describe the use of terrorism in Colombia and Peru perpetrated by large drug trafficking organizations.

MEXICO CITY For a glimpse of the average American s understanding of the relationship between the United States and Mexico, one only has to watch the critically acclaimed television series Breaking Bad. Set in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a few hundred miles from the border, the series chronicles the rise and fall of Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher who becomes a methamphetamine tycoon.

The Chinese hardly invented this game. It was not so long ago that Latin America was the big driver in the art market, owing to money escaping governance challenged economies such as Argentina and Venezuela, as well as drug cartels that used paintings to launder their cash.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia Latin America s oldest guerilla group formed alliances with narcotics cartels. Some Taliban groups in Afghanistan and elsewhere developed close ties with transnational Al Qaeda terrorists.

First and foremost, the US generates the huge demand for illicit drugs that sustains the entire Latin American mafia, just as the US experiment with alcohol prohibition in the 1920 s fueled the rise of gangsters like Al Capone. No one knows precisely the Mexican drug cartels annual profits, but they certainly amount to billions of dollars.

Several current heads of state could be considered technocrats President Felipe Calderónof Mexico, President Sebastián Piñera of Chile, and President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, among others. Nobody could accuse them of having led sheltered lives, or of being unaccustomed to making difficult decisions.

International support so far has been generous, but it is still well below per capita equivalents for other post conflict situations and the need is much greater. Farmers will be weaned off opium over the long term only if they have sustainable livelihoods.

Indeed, the furies of the Zetas in Mexico originate in the counter insurgency training provided in the 1990 s to a select group of special forces soldiers, who later deserted. The Zetas star recruits in recent years have come from the Guatemalan military s special forces, whose infamous induction technique involved biting off the head of a live chicken.

Now, nearly one million people have fled Burma s political and economic chaos for neighboring countries, and another million people remain internally displaced. Our youth are at an all time high risk of drug addiction from the massive flow of narcotics, particularly amphetamine type stimulants (ATS), from Burma, while the generals there maintain congenial ties with notorious drug lords.

The writer Robert Kaplan points to the birth of a new warrior class as cruel as ever and better armed ranging from Russian Mafiosi and Latin American drug kingpins to terrorists who glorify violence just as ancient Greeks did in the sacking of Troy. Kaplan argues that modern leaders must respond in kind, and that modern leadership will demand a pagan ethos rooted in the past.

Mali may be stable for now, but, with the separatist Tuareg rebels in country s north having just suspended their participation in peace talks, many experts believe that it is only a matter of time before the conflict there reignites and spreads. Drug barons and local warlords control increasingly large swaths of territory from Guinea on the Atlantic coast through Senegal to Mali, Niger, and beyond.

If Chávez s Venezuela has become a narco state in which the regime s acolytes are drug lords, this reflects their privileged relations with the FARC. Repercussions would also be felt in Mexico, where drug cartels are tearing apart the country, and the US, the world s largest source of demand.