Almost 500 Military Deaths Since Start of Mexico's War on Drugs a Decade Ago David Gagne - Insight Crime
go to original February 21, 2017

A masked Mexican soldier patrols the streets of Veracruz (Yuri Cortez/AFP/Getty Images)

Mexico's defense secretary says nearly 500 military personnel have been killed since the start of the country's drug war a decade ago, an alarmingly high figure that nonetheless pales in comparison to the huge number of civilian casualties over the same period.

A recent report (pdf) by the National Defense Secretariat (Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional - SEDENA) counted 496 deaths of military officers during anti-narcotics operations since December 2006, when newly-elected President Felipe Calderón ushered in a more aggressive approach to combating the country's drug cartels.

El Universal, which did a comprehensive analysis of the report, found that shootouts were the most common cause of death, accounting for 249 of the cases. Vehicular accidents were a distant second (111), while airplane crashes came in third (50).

Tamaulipas has seen twice as many military deaths as any other state, with 120 cases. Sinaloa (60), Michoacán (54), Guerrero (39) and Chihuahua (27) round out the top five.

The most violent year for military personnel was 2010, when there were 89 deaths. Last year saw the fewest number of deaths, with authorities registering just 24 cases.

Two security experts interviewed by El Universal agreed that the government should stop exposing military officers to such high-risk environments and should begin withdrawing the armed forces from the drug war.

The authorities "must establish the expiration date for the intervention of the armed forces in the fight against organized crime, in order to avoid more military deaths," said Rodrigo Soto, an academic and security specialist at Universidad Panamericana.

Read the rest at Insight Crime

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