A variety of Mexican groups along the U.S. border are making international headlines by clamoring for United Nations “peacekeeping” troops to come crack down on the violence plaguing the region.
The Mexican military has already deployed almost 10,000 federal troops and special police in Ciudad Juarez, but the murder, extortion and kidnapping continues. Over 2,000 killings have rocked the city of about 1.4 million people just this year, giving it one of the highest murder rates in the world. Tortured bodies are frequently dumped in the streets.
The situation has become so dire that an estimated 6,000 businesses have already closed or moved out of the city. Regular people report being in fear for their lives simply walking down the street.
In response, local civic and business leaders are calling for global military intervention via the U.N.’s Department of Peacekeeping Operations. The coalition is submitting the formal request for help through the Inter-American Human Rights Commission and the Mexican government.
"This is a proposal ... for international forces to come here to help out the domestic (security) forces," said Daniel Murguia, the local president of the National Chamber of Commerce, Services and Tourism, which also appealed to U.S. military police for help. He explained that businesses were being robbed and extorted. "We have seen the UN peacekeepers enter other countries that have a lot fewer problems than we have."
The U.N. does indeed have troops deployed across the world. The organization boasts on its website that it has over 110,000 personnel spread across 18 “peace operations” on four continents, who are “directly impacting the lives of hundreds of millions of people.” This is an eight-fold increase from a decade ago, with the U.S., of course, paying one fourth of the budget.
Other border business leaders joined the calls for U.N forces as well. "What we are asking for with the blue helmets (U.N. peacekeepers) is that we know they are the army of peace, so we could use not only the strategies they have developed in other countries ... but they also have technology," the president of a Mexican manufacturing association told the Associated Press. "We know that sooner or later, the violence will spill over into our sister city of El Paso, Texas."
Indeed, just across the Rio Grande from Ciudad Juarez lies the American city of El Paso, which has already started reporting some violence spilling across the border. But if the proposal is accepted, there would likely be U.N. troops patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border, just a few dozen feet from U.S. soil.
Governor Jose Reyes of the Mexican state of Chihuahua, where Ciudad Juarez is located, was quoted in Mexican media saying that “intervention by the U.N. in the security of Ciudad Juarez should be something that the federal government defines.” He appealed to the U.S. government for help clamping down on illegal gun imports from the U.S., though it is well known that corrupt Mexican military and police officials supply a significant portion of the heavy weaponry used by cartels. Guns are illegal in Mexico for the common people.
Meanwhile, Mexican President Felipe Calderon rejected the calls for foreign soldiers to resolve the internal conflict. According to Mexican news reports, he acknowledged having respect and understanding for the locals' point of view. But he emphasized that in his opinion, the key was better local, state, federal, and military cooperation in the matter.
The U.N. Security Council would have to approve any international troop deployments, and officials from the organization have indicated that they do not necessarily believe it is needed. “It is a very long process that also, in truth, I don’t see as absolutely justified here in Mexico,” said a representative for the U.N.’s regional anti-drug office. The Mexican federal government would likely have to agree as well.
But the security environment in Mexico is certainly bleak. The U.S. Joint Forces Command actually warned early this year in its Joint Operating Environment report that the Mexican government was at risk of “rapid and sudden collapse.” The document noted that the “government, its politicians, police, and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels,” and that Mexico is becoming a failed state could have drastic implications for U.S. security.
Despite the seriousness, however, there are far better solutions to the problem than the use of U.N. troops on America’s border. Ending the failed and unconstitutional war on drugs in the U.S. would likely eliminate the gangs and cartels entirely, since they would be immediately starved of their main source of revenue. Meanwhile, Americans should insist on properly securing the southern border, at the very least to prevent the spread of violence and crime.
But the true victims of this war are the innocent Mexican people stuck in the cross fire, prohibited from exercising their inalienable right to self-defense in the face of ruthless marauders. Ending Mexico’s war on guns would certainly improve the security situation. And cleaning up rampant corruption would help too, since Mexican government structures are rife with criminals, cartel members and bribed officials — many paid for with the billions in drug profits ironically made possible by the war on drugs. But as long as the U.S. government continues to cheerlead and fund Mexico’s “war on drugs” to the tune of billions of dollars, the violence will persist and even deteriorate.
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UN troops to be deployed on or inside US borders?
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Originally Posted by vector7
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