A sobering view of Mexico drug war violence and the drug cartels by John Sullivan, who is authoritative on the subject.
The Mexico drug war has embroiled that country in internal conflict punctuated by hyper-violence, corruption and impunity. The battle for primacy among drug cartels for control of the plazas (lucrative transshipment nodes and routes) has resulted in a seemingly never-ending barrage of violence. Beheadings, dismemberment, massacres, and mass graves (narcofosas) punctuate the state of insecurity. While media outlets continue to report 50,000 killed, the numbers are much higher. Perhaps 99,667 persons have been killed in the drug war. An additional 24,000 persons are reported missing or disappeared. Many victims are never identified. Accurate numbers are hard to come by.
From his IVN bio.
John Sullivan is a lieutenant with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. He is also an Adjunct Researcher at the Vortex Foundation, Bogotá, Colombia; Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies on Terrorism (CAST); and Senior Fellow at Small Wars Journal-El Centro. He is co-editor of Countering Terrorism and WMD: Creating a Global Counter- Terrorism Network (Routledge, 2006) and Global Biosecurity: Threats and Responses (Routledge, 2010). He is co- author of Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency: A Small Wars Journal-El Centro Anthology (iUniverse, 2011). His current research focus is the impact of transnational organized crime on sovereignty in Mexico and other countries.