Forget ISIS: The U.S. Should Bring the Fight to the Mexican Cartels Coleen Jose - World.Mic
go to original November 6, 2014

Fault Lines travels to Mexico to investigate one of the worst humanitarian crises of disappearances in Latin America. (Al Jazeera)

Why are Americans more concerned about the distant threat of IS, rather than a drug war already affecting many parts of the country? And what, then, does that say about us?

Mexican drug cartels versus IS: Objectively, Mexico's cartels kill far more people each year than the Islamic State. A United Nations report on the protection of civilians in armed conflict in Iraq documented the casualties in the country: An estimated 9,000 civilians were killed and 17,386 were wounded in Iraq in 2014, more than half since IS fighters rampaged through the northern part of country. Several thousand deaths in Syria have yet to make the tally.

By comparison, the Mexican drug cartels' crimes overshadow the atrocities committed by IS thus far. In 2013, members of drug cartels killed more than 16,000 people in Mexico alone. Another 60,000 people were killed between 2006 and 2012, "a rate of more than one killing every half-hour for the last seven years."

Cartel violence extends far beyond Mexico thanks to the drug market's porous, transnational borders. And while IS attacks the American psyche, the cartels attack American citizens and their wallets.

Mexico is a major supplier of heroin to the U.S. market and its largest supplier of methamphetamine and marijuana. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, production of these three drugs increased in the past 10 years. More than 90% of cocaine travels through Mexico and into the U.S., an increase of over 18 percentage points since 2002, when it was 72%.

U.S. officials point to conflict in Syria and Iraq as the clear and imminent threat despite the higher number of casualties fueled by a metastasized drug war. As of October, more than 5,500 people have been killed in Iraq since the IS offensive began. Over the span of six years, an average of 12,896 have died each year because of Mexican drug cartels.

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