A Call to Crackdown on Illegal Arms in the Americas

Mexican President Felipe Calderon seems to be losing his battle against organized crime. In the last two and half years, mob violence has claimed the lives of 12,000 people, and now even some within Calderon's own party are questioning the president's response to the problem.

Barack Obama will likely reinforce his support for Calderon during the North American summit in Guadalajara, Mexico, on Aug. 9-10, where he will meet with Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The summit will also provide Obama with an opportunity to recommit the United States to the broader fight against illegal arms trafficking.

The proliferation of illegal weapons is a top concern among Latin American leaders today. Small, light arms are not just being distributed to crime syndicates in Mexico, but also to gangs and guerrilla fighters in Central and South America.

Nowhere else are these weapons more lethal. While South America has 14 percent of the world's population, it suffers from roughly 40 percent of all firearm homicides, according to a recent report by the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey project. A 2004 Small Arms Survey report adds that region-wide, the rate of such homicides is "five times higher than the world average."

Fortunately, Calderon's offensive has sparked unprecedented cooperation between U.S. and Mexican law enforcement agencies. Now, when Mexican officials seize a weapon used in a crime and determine that it came from the United States, they notify the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Thanks to this information sharing, more than 1,400 defendants have been prosecuted in U.S. courts for crimes involving more than 12,000 firearms.

Cooperation will increase further through the Merida Initiative, a three-year, $1.6 billion anti-drug assistance package for Mexico and Central America that George W. Bush started last year and Obama is now continuing. By the end of 2009, Mexican authorities should have access to a Spanish-language version of the Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Bureau's weapons tracing system. A recent U.S. Justice Depart report said the system will give Mexican police "a better picture of firearms trafficking routes, trends and organizations throughout both nations."

For the first time, the United States is starting to control the volume of arms trafficking that occurs across the Rio Grande. Yet the Department of Homeland Security believes that the majority of weapons used by criminals in Mexico come from non-U.S. sources.

We know for example that Mexican drug cartels are using weapons that are not easily obtained in the United States. One weapons cache seized last year in Mexico included grenades, several grenade launchers and an anti-tank rocket launcher. "You can't legally buy an anti-tank missile in a U.S. gun store," says Matt Schroeder, an arms expert at the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists. "And I doubt a lot of grenades are stolen from U.S. depots."

If not from the United States, then where? Guatemala is a likely suspect. The Small Arms Survey rates Guatemala, Mexico's neighbor to the south, as "the most highly armed country" in Central America, with at least 1.5 million illegal weapons in circulation.

Another possible source is Venezuela, due to that country's notoriously poor record of weapons monitoring. Colombians have long known that weapons used by guerrilla forces have come across their shared border with Venezuela.

In fact, the latest diplomatic impasse between Colombia and Venezuela stems from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia's possession of Swedish-made -- and Venezuelan-purchased -- anti-tank rocket launchers. Some experts now wonder when criminal organizations will own some of the new and highly sophisticated portable Russian anti-aircraft missiles recently purchased by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

There are of course other weapons leaks in the region. In 2001, thousands of rifles belonging to the Nicaraguan army were shipped to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia. Individuals linked to the case could not be prosecuted, however, because they were in Guatemala and Panama, and neither country had laws to combat cross-border illegal arms trafficking.

The United States must reclaim leadership in this area and demonstrate its seriousness by committing fully to international agreements. To start, the United States must finally ratify the "Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives, and Other Related Material," which was first introduced in 1998.

The next step, according Bruce M. Bagley, a long-time drug trafficking and security expert at the University of Miami, would be at the global level, with the United States supporting a U.N. treaty on small arms. Previously, the United States "had been a principal opponent," of such a treaty, Bagley says.

Calls for a truce in Mexico are understandable. But coexistence with organized criminals is not an option. "If you back off they just get stronger," Bagley says. "They don't go away."