When the State sends in the military to tackle drug cartels and organised crime syndicates, one can understand the seriousness of the problem.
Some 30,000 soldiers and federal police have now been deployed to a dozen states throughout Mexico as part of President Filipe Calderon's war on drug cartels and organised crime.
Though the military made strong gains since Calderon took over in 2006, seizing record amounts of cocaine and extraditing 73 suspected drug traffickers to the United States for trial in 2007, the drug cartels are ready to play the waiting game -- ducking when the military has the upper hand and resurfacing when the military turns its attention elsewhere.
Not only that, when they resurface, they do so with renewed firepower and the local police is left to face the wrath. Thus, morale is on a downward spiral among cops, thanks to the military action.
In the two years since they began fighting crime, soldiers too have lost the will to fight: in 2007, more than 18,000 soldiers deserted. And worse, most of them join the scum they started out to weed, joining the drug cartels as 'zetas' (guns for hire)!
Image: Mexican policemen check the corpse of a member of the Federal Agency of Investigation, who was shot dead in Juarez City, state of Chihuahua.
Photograph: Guadalupe Williams/AFP/Getty Images
Also see: Violence in Nandigram
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