Since taking office at the beginning of 2018, Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador — often referred to as AMLO by his supporters — has been making the fight against arms and drug trafficking, as well as stopping the thriving trade in illegal timber and minerals, a top priority of his government.

Civil government institutions, however, are losing the war against the criminal networks that appear to have infiltrated much of Mexico’s crucial maritime infrastructure, including ports and customs services.

Amid rampant corruption, Mexico’s organized crime cartels have “mutated over the past 15 to 20 years,” said Falko Ernst, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank. The Mexico City-based analyst told DW their business was no longer only focused on smuggling drugs but has shifted to gaining “strong territorial control.”

The Mexican drug cartels have diversified their business model, which was formerly rooted in murder, kidnapping and drug trafficking. Now they are targeting sectors such as mining, logging and real estate, he says.

Raul Benitez Manaut, a political scientist and security expert at the Centro de Investigaciones sobre America de Norte (CISAN) think tank, told DW that “it’s been known for many years that corruption was rife within port administrations and the customs service.” President Lopez Obrador believes that the armed forces are “less corrupt and can fight organized crime more effectively.”

The port of Lazaro Cardenas is the largest Mexican seaport, with an annual capacity of around 2.2 million containers

Military takeover

Under AMLO’s latest plan, customs and port operations would be taken away from the civil servants in the Transportation Ministry and placed into the hands of army personnel. Respective legislation has already cleared a first hurdle in parliament last week and is expected to get final approval from lawmakers.

Attempts to give Mexico’s military leaders greater powers in the fight against corruption aren’t new to the country’s politics. The previous government placed one of Mexico’s most important ports, Lazaro Cardenas, under military control in November 2013, as local law enforcement officials had been suspected of collaborating with the drug cartels operating in the port city.

ICG’s Falko Ernst notes that securing military control over ports such as Lazaro Cardenas and Veracruz is a crucial step because the maritime infrastructure through which drugs and illegal goods are channeled “is making huge profits” for the cartels.

“Taking control over that [infrastructure] brings the government one step closer to controlling the problem,” he said.

However, it would be an illusion to believe that the illegal trade could be stopped, he adds, due to the vast volumes of containers shipped daily to and from those ports. Even stronger administrations in more advanced countries are unable to achieve this, he argued.

Militarization of ports?

But Mexico’s president has vowed to crack down on the rampant graft problem: “We will clean up and remodel the entire customs and port administration systems in the country,” Lopez Obrador said in mid-July — an all-out call to arms that invited criticism even from within his own government, and prompting Transportation Minister Javier Jimenez Espriu to step down.

Opposition leaders and other critics are also alarmed by what they describe as a “militarization of Mexican ports” that they say is threatening to have negative economic consequences.

“There is a real danger of slowing Mexico’s foreign trade because they [the military] have neither the capacities nor the experience and know-how of running the customs and port operations,” Marcelino Tuero, head of an advisory panel to Mexico’s commercial shippers, told El Sol de Mexico newspaper recently.

Read more: Mexico deploys military to block migrant caravan

The military would become a player in business, he warned, as the legislation was also giving it a “monopoly on procurement for maritime infrastructure.”

Benitez Manaut from CISAN shares the criticism, stressing that military leaders shouldn’t be allowed to launch tenders for civil infrastructure projects. At the same time, he admits that contractors would actually prefer military over civil procurement because they are saying: “There you have clearer rules, and they are monitoring port operations more efficiently.”

AMLO’s legacy on the line

During his election campaign some two years ago, Lopez Obrador pledged to curb the rising influence of the military under the previous governments and confine them to their barracks. Ernst says that the president has done exactly the opposite.

“The military budget is growing, and the army is taking over more and more state functions,” he told DW.

Often described as an economic nationalist, Lopez Obrador has been a politician for more than three decades

Under a government directive adopted in May, Mexico’s armed forces have been given a role in ensuring law enforcement in the country. Moreover, the Defense Ministry has been charged with completing the Santa Lucia international airport, one of the signature projects of the current government.

“It’s a bad sign that the armed forces are taking on responsibilities that a normal, democratic government would place into the hands of civil forces,” said Benitez Manaut, adding this would weaken civil institutions.

Read more: Mexico: Jalisco cartel blamed for attack on police chief

Ernst adds that Lopez Obrador’s policies would concentrate both more political and economic power in the hands of the military. “Apart from running the ports and securing the border, the Mexican defense ministry, meanwhile, has come to be the de facto biggest construction company in Mexico, a trend that appears to continue.”

The ICG analyst describes the president’s claim the military is less corrupt as a myth and sees a rising danger of more corruption in Mexico if the generals are given a stronger role in running civil life. “There has always been corruption within the armed forces, there have been illegal killings and people just disappeared,” he said, and notes that transparency and control within the military is even weaker than in general society.

He believes Lopez Obrador’s pro-military policies are deeply rooted in his ambition to go down in history as Mexico’s “great reformer, who has changed the country.”

“There is the narrative that he aims to give the military, as a stringent and hierarchically structured force, more powers and resources to improve his chances of introducing change as quickly as possible, while at the same time avoiding a possible backlash from the armed forces,” Ernst argued.

Benitez Manaut hopes the military leaders themselves are sufficiently aware of the prominent and crucial role they are playing, and that they restrain themselves by accepting their new tasks only temporarily. But even more important, he says, is that civil society in Mexico maintains the pressure on the military leaders by demanding accountability on all of their actions.

Source: https://www.dw.com/en/mexicos-military-to-take-control-of-ports-in-the-war-against-cartels/a-55169773

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The United States and its European allies launched airstrikes early Saturday on Syrian research, development and military facilities in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack near Damascus last weekend that killed at least 40 people.

The tripartite military action from the United States, France and Britain was designed to set back or destroy Syria’s chemical weapons program, the three countries said, and deter any further use in violation of international conventions. They stressed that the strikes were limited and not intended to signal a Western intervention in the Syrian civil war or an attempt at regime change.

“The purpose of our actions tonight is to establish a strong deterrent against the production, spread and use of chemical weapons,” US President Donald Trump said in a televised address. “We are prepared to sustain this response until the Syrian regime stops its use of prohibited chemical agents.”

In London, British Prime Minister Theresa May repeated that the military action was not about “intervening in a civil war” and “it is not about regime change.”

“It is about a limited and targeted strike that does not further escalate tensions in the region and that does everything possible to prevent civilian casualties,” she said.

Read more: Airstrikes in Syria: What you need to know

Limited military operation

Sam Heller, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, said the military action seemed intended as a limited, proportional and deterrent response against chemical weapons use.

“That is how these strikes were evidently planned in terms of the targets that were selected and also how they were communicated publicly, which seems to be uniformly in terms of chemical weapons deterrent, not more expansive political demands or some attempt at regime change,” he said.

Trump, who in recent weeks has signaled that the US may pull back its presence in northeast Syria after the defeat of the “Islamic State” (IS), said in his remarks that the United States was not seeking a permanent presence in Syria.

The military action came despite concern that it could have unintended consequences, including direct Western conflict with Russia, which backs the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and has troops at the Hmeimim air base and its naval facility at Tartus.

Read more: Russia demands UN Security Council condemn missile attack

Moscow said none of the more than 100 missiles targeted its bases and it did not activate its air defenses, despite threats earlier in the week that it would shoot down missiles and the platforms from where they were launched. Russia said Syrian air defenses shot down 71 out of 103 missiles, although that could not be confirmed independently, and the Pentagon said the strikes “successfully hit every target.”

Read more: What foreign powers want from the Syrian war

Enough to deter chemical weapons use? 

It is unclear if the tripartite military action will have the desired effect of halting chemical weapons attacks. The Assad regime has repeatedly used chemical weapons, including chlorine and nerve agents, during the seven-year war, despite a 2013 deal brokered by the United States and Russia to remove Syria’s chemical weapons. Trump ordered 59 cruise missile launches in April 2017 on a Syria air base in response to a nerve agent attack in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun in northwestern Syria.

Read more: Opinion: Syrian airstrikes send a clear message

“The erosion of the norm (against chemical weapons use) has already taken place,” said Eran Etzion, a former Israeli deputy national security adviser. There is no reason to believe that the “overall erosion of the use of chemical weapons will change.”

Nicholas Heras, a Middle East Security Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, described Trump’s actions as a “dog and pony show.”

“The Trump administration literally slapped Bashar al-Assad on the wrist, and even worse, the Trump team seemed to justify al-Assad using non-chemical weapon means to win his war. As long as al-Assad does not use chemical weapons, he is good,” said Heras.

Joshua Landis, the director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, said the United States had tried to look strong in a situation where it does not have much leverage, and seeks to leave Syria.

“Ultimately, what Trump is doing with these deterrence exercises is influencing a very narrow bandwidth within the Syrian civil war, which is the use of chemical weapons,” he said, pointing out chemical weapons attacks have killed an estimated 1,900 people in a war that has claimed half a million lives.

War running in Assad’s favor

The Western military response comes as the Syrian regime, backed by Russia and Iran, has largely turned the war in its favor, retaking large swaths of territory from rebels since Russia intervened in 2015.

This week, the Syrian regime retook full control from rebels of the Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta, including Douma, where the alleged chemical weapons attack took place, after a two-month regime offensive.

“From the point of view of al-Assad, Iran and Russia, the real action of this war is happening on the ground and on the ground al-Assad is winning,” said Landis. “Syria and Russia have zero interest in escalating with America” at a time Washington is signalling it will pull back from Syria.

Read more: Opinion: A US pullback from Syria is a terrible idea

Both Russia and Iran decried what they called a violation of international law and Syria’s sovereignty, but it was unclear what, if any, response they would make. The reaction from Damascus and its backers following the 2017 US strike in Syria was muted despite repeated threats.

Asymmetric response

If there is a Russian, Syrian or Iranian response, it is likely to be indirect and asymmetrical, such as targeting or undermining the US presence in Syria or retaliating against its allies.

“There are certainly various asymmetric means through which Russia, Syria and Iran could respond inside Syria or outside,” said Heller.

The United States is vulnerable in northeastern Syria, where it has about 2,000 special forces deployed alongside the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a mixed Kurdish and Arab force fighting IS and seeking to stabilize the northeast of the country. It also has troops in Iraq, where Iran-backed militias hold considerable sway.

According to Heller, “there are ways the Syrian government and its allies can make it more difficult or less tenable for the US and its coalition to operate inside Syria,” including possibly Russia using its air defenses to limit US airpower.

“The lowest-hanging fruit for Bashar al-Assad and his allies is not to target the United States military directly in Syria, but to try to degrade the efforts of the Syrian Democratic Forces to govern in the wake of IS,” said Heras. “If al-Assad and his allies can weaken the SDF, they can crack the foundation of the US military’s planning for Syria.”

Threat of Israel-Iran conflict 

Another potential response could be aimed directly or indirectly at Israel, which has carried out dozens of airstrikes in Syria targeting Iran and its Lebanese Shiite proxy Hezbollah. On Monday, suspected Israeli warplanes targeted Syria’s T-4 air base, drawing a rebuke from Russia and vows of retaliation from Iran.

Following Saturday’s US-led strikes, a top Russian defense official, Colonel-General Sergei Rudskoi, said Moscow may reconsider supplying Syria with S-300 surface-to-air missile systems to upgrade its aging Soviet-era anti-missile systems. Such a move would restrict Israel’s freedom to maneuver across Syria’s skies.

“It is reasonable to expect that Russia will limit the ability of Israel to exercise a similar attack in the future,” Etzion said, referring to the T-4 strike. “For the Russians, they don’t want to be seen as supporting direct confrontation with Israel, but do believe the higher profile of alleged Israeli attacks in Syria are an increasing concern for them.”

Israel has long warned it won’t allow an Iranian and Hezbollah entrenchment in Syria that could target Israel, raising concern about direct conflict between the two enemies that could spiral into a regional war.

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