Imagining (the US's) Pakistan policy on the U.S.-Mexico border

Let’s re-contextualize America’s continuing problems on the porous Aghanistan-Pakistan border, the 2,600 km line established in 1893. Both sides are largely inhabited by ethnic Pashtuns. They are about 60 percent of the population in Afghanistan, slightly more in the opposite Pakistani province.

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As with terrorists operating across the east-west Pakistan-Afghan frontier, the Mexican cartels are moving north. The violent Mexican cartels operate now in 195 U.S. cities. In September, one carried out an assassination in Texas. More recently the U.S. Justice Department busted an alleged plot by Iran to deploy a Mexican cartel to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington.

Now let’s imagine that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton flew to Mexico City demanding the notoriously divided and allegedly corrupt federal police in Mexico crack down or eliminate Los Zetas, the cartel figured in the Iran-Saudi plot. Imagine she also demanded the Mexicans bring Los Zetas to the negotiating table to discuss a comprehensive plan to end drug violence in North America.

I think we’d be scratching our heads over her likelihood of success.

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