Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

*** Mexico debating deal with drug barons.  Last week, Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon hosted Javier Sicilia, the renowned Mexican poet whose son was killed in drug-related violence in March.  Two days later, on 11 May, Sicilia was invited by the senate standing committee to address them on how to restore law and order in Mexico.

Sicilia’s view is that the state cannot beat the gangsters and that it should do a deal.  The deal he has in mind is not one that will endear him to the United States.  He believes that the government should turn a blind eye to drug trafficking (ie shipping drugs to the US), but not to drug pushing within Mexico.  Sicilia needs to be taken seriously.  On 5 May he led a march from Morelos to Mexico City that eventually gathered 100,000 followers.

The gangster murder rate in Mexico has shot up again after a lull in the first quarter and is on target to surpass last year’s 11,583.  In 2006, the year that Calderon came to power, the annual gangster-related death toll was under 2,500.  Approximately 300 people a week are now being killed by gangsters, and the public no longer accepts the government view that most of the victims are involved in the drug trade.  Like Sicilia’s son, too many of the victims are innocent bystanders

***  France immoveable on CAP.  As the European Union continues to struggle with the debt problems of its weaker members, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has reiterated France’s immoveable opposition to any reduction in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).  The CAP represented 31% of the EU’s budget in 2010.

Speaking on 12 May, Sarkozy said: “France wants to retain the Common Agricultural Policy’s budget to the very last euro...and if people don’t want to understand that, France will block it.”  Sarkozy faces a tough re-election battle in 2012.

*** Russia to reinforce Kurile defences.  Russia’s chief of the General Staff, General Nikolay Makarov, has said that the defences of the disputed Kurile Islands (taken from Japan at the end of World War II) are to be upgraded by 2015 at the latest.  Speaking in Moscow last week, the general said: “By 2014, or by 2015 at the latest, the Kurile Islands grouping will have a completely new look with modern armaments and combat equipment.”  Makarov later backtracked somewhat saying that the plan was not yet final and “will be submitted for approval to the country’s leadership in the very near future”.

In March, Japan issued a rebuke to Russia over its plans to deploy anti-ship cruise missiles on the islands, with former Japanese defence minister Shigeru Ishiba calling the move “extremely problematic...[with] significant political implications”.  Russia was unimpressed by that rebuke, and Makarov’s statement last week seems to confirm that it has no intention of backing off.