Drug warriors in the United States and Mexico are ebullient this week, after scoring their biggest victory over the cartels in a generation.
They shouldn't be, according to their own intelligence.
The world's most successful and most wanted drug dealer -- Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the chief of the Sinaloa cartel -- is in their custody, captured in a sophisticated sting after eluding authorities for almost 13 years.
The subject of feature articles and a staple of the Forbes list of the worlds' billionaires, Guzman's stature is near mythical. Attorney General Eric Holder called his capture a "landmark achievement." Holder's Mexican counterparts did him one better. "He was our Osama," Fusion reported an intelligence official as saying.
Indeed. Because, like an Al Qaeda member who remained active after Osama bin Laden's disappearance and death in the decade after 9/11, the Sinaloas will continue to deal drugs with their boss in prison.
"No change" in the flow of drugs results when key cartel figures are nabbed, according to U.S. Border Patrol documents.
Under Guzman, the Sinaloas dealt so much cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana in the United States that "Shorty" was named Public Enemy no. 1 in Chicago, a city where he may never have stepped foot.
And without him, the Sinaloa cartel is likely to continue doing just that. While a capture of this magnitude has not happened -- possibly ever -- the killing or apprehension of key cartel members had "no change" on the amount of drugs flowing across the border, a memo from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection says.
In the memo, unearthed and provided to media by the drug war opponents at Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and the Marijuana Majority, drug war intelligence operatives said that data collected over a year's time from January 2009 to 2010 "indicates that there is no perceptible pattern that correlates either a decrease or increase in drug seizures due to the removal of key DTO personnel."
Here are the memo's "key findings":
- There was no change in the seizure rates when a key DTO member was arrested or killed.
- If the weight of drugs seized was increasing prior to the event, the trend continued.
- If the weight of drugs seized was decreasing prior to the event, that trend also continued.
- Availability due to agricultural growth cycles had the greatest impact.
- The lowest seizure rates correlate directly with major religious holidays.
- Arresting one or two individuals from a DTO does not significantly impact drug trafficking flows.
Not the kind of stuff to encourage one that the war is being won.
"Given Guzmán's history of evading capture through secret tunnels and escaping prison in a laundry cart, authorities deserve credit for a difficult capture," said Darby Beck, a spokeswoman for LEAP, which is comprised of ex-cops who turned against the Drug War. "However, the disappearance of the man does not mean the disappearance of the extremely violent, multi-billion-dollar market he commanded."
The theory here is that the Drug War is a demand-side problem, not a supply-side problem -- though to be sure, there are no shortage of drugs in Mexico or demand in the United States.
So, just like the war on terrorism didn't end with the assault on Abbottabad, the Drug War will continue long after the next El Chapo rises to power.
Almost as if that was the idea all along.
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