Rising Death Toll in Mexico's Drug War Signals
Imminent Victory, Attorney General Claims

As of last Friday, the death toll in the
prohibition-related violence wracking Mexico this
year had climbed to 1,378, up sharply from the
940 dead at this time last year, Mexican Attorney
General Eduardo Medina Mora reported. Since then,
that number has gone even higher, with killing
continuing on a daily basis. Among the dead this
week, seven police officers were killed in
Culiacán when they raided a house belonging to
the Sinaloa Cartel.
More than 4,150 people, including at least 450
police and soldiers, have been killed in Mexico's
drug wars since President Felipe Calderón
unleashed the army against drug traffickers at
the beginning of 2007, Medina Mora said.
Currently, some 30,000 troops are deployed in
border cities, Culiacán and Acapulco, and other
drug war hot spots.
This month, at least six high-ranking police
officials, including the police chief in Ciudad
Juárez and the acting commander of the Federal
Preventive Police have been assassinated,
presumably at the hands of cartel gunmen. Others
have fled to the US.
But for Medina Mora, the rising tide of blood is
a sign the government's offensive is working.
Recent arrests and seizures have created a power
vacuum, and different cartel factions are vying
for turf, he argued. "Evidently when they are
cornered and weakened, they have to respond with
violence," Medina Mora said.
The US government apparently doesn't agree. The
Congress is currently considering a three-year,
$1.4 billion anti-drug assistance program for
Mexico aimed at defeating the cartels. And
neither, apparently, does Medina Mora's own
government. It announced this week that it will
deploy the military against the cartels for at
least another two years.