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The illegal drug market in the United States is one of the most profitable in the world. As such, it attracts the most ruthless, sophisticated, and aggressive drug traffickers.

according to the U.S. Customs Service, 60 million people enter the United States on more than 675,000 commercial and private flights. Another 6 million come by sea and 370 million by land. In addition, 116 million vehicles cross the land borders with Canada and Mexico. More than 90,000 merchant and passenger ships dock at U.S. ports. These ships carry more than 9 million shipping containers and 400 million tons of cargo. Another 157,000 smaller vessels visit our many coastal towns. Amid this voluminous trade, drug traffickers conceal cocaine, heroin, marijuana, MDMA, and methamphetamine shipments for distribution in U.S. neighborhoods.

Its primary stated objective was to end drug trafficking in Colombia. Later on, it was discovered that the plan had the further objective of defeating the guerrilla movement,

it reaches $7.7 billion. But despite this investment, the U.S.-supported government of Alvaro Uribe has defeated neither the drug traffickers nor the guerrilla movement. To the contrary, the plan's only success has been to guarantee a majority to the parties that supported Uribe in the Congressional elections of March 2006, and to guarantee Uribe's own re-election last May.

The main suppliers of Cuban traffickers during the 1960s were Colombians. They would buy the coca paste from peasant farmers in Peru and Bolivia, transform it into cocaine in laboratories in Medellin, and then sell it to Cubans for distribution in the United States.

"It's looking more and more like Colombia looked twenty years ago," she said, "where the narco-traffickers control certain parts of the country."

Mexico doesn't even have a viable proclaimed guerrilla force aiming to topple the government. Instead, Mexico has labyrinthine drug gangs murderously fighting it out against each other-while they extort, intimidate, massacre, and conduct firefights with the government.

There is no law there," he warned. "They are the law."

IV. Mexico's Drug War Mexico continued its war on drug trafficking that Mexican President Felipe Calderón launched against drug cartels in 2006.

President Calderón announced that his administration would reform civilian law enforcement and the courts, and that "the Mexican army would continue to lead the fight until local and state police forces are free of corruption."20

These are but a handful of die murders reported in Mexico's drug wars. The level of violence attributable to die war on drugs and die organized criminal activity that precipitated it cannot, however, be measured simply by counting corpses. Kidnappings, carjackings, extortion, and other forms of crime and aggression infect the quality of daily life.

"This life was taken simply because he resisted being captured," Colombian prosecutor general Gustavo de Greiff said in a television interview from Bogota, monitored in Miami. "Let this be a lesson to all criminals that sooner or later we will catch them."

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"the most technologically advanced, sophisticated and dangerous cartel operating in Mexico."

Commandos from the Mexican army deserted and set up a cartel, known as Los Zetas.

Causes of Displacement Young people's vulnerability to abuses is the motivating factor for fleeing in many cases. The UNHCHR reports that threats by guerrillas and paramilitaries are the primary reasons for families to seek refuge elsewhere. According to CODHES, in 1998, 36 percent of families fled with their children because of direct threats; 25 percent because of fear; 22 percent because of massacres and killings; 8 percent because of battles; 4 percent because of "disappearances"; 3 percent because of armed attacks; and 2 percent because of torture. According to the ICG, armed conflict accounted for 66 percent of displacement cases in Putumayo in 2002. Families regularly cited fear of forced recruitment of children into armed forces as a reason for fleeing from their homes. For example, 60 families fled from their homes in the municipality of Cunday, in Tolima department in August 2002, following the announcement of a recruitment order by the FARC-EP for everyone over the age of 12, according to the UNHCHR (E/CN.4/2003/13, Annex). In 2002, fighting for territorial control between guerrillas and paramilitaries in western Urabá forced a group of 64 civilians, including 36 children, to flee to the Punusa area of the Darién jungle in Panama, near the Colombian border (UNHCR). World Vision Colombia reports in Victimas Civiles en Medio del Conflicto Armado, 2002, that paramilitary forces committed six massacres during the last quarter of 2002 that provoked displacements of at least 170 people each in Antioquia, Chocó and Córdoba departments. The report also cites 11 massacres by unidentified forces committed during the same period that also forced residents to flee. No specific locations or dates of these events are provided.

October 1986: Reagan signs the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which appropriates $1.7 billion to fight the drug war. The bill also creates mandatory minimum penalties for drug offenses, which are increasingly criticized for promoting significant racial disparities in the prison population because of the differences in sentencing for crack and powder cocaine. Possession of crack, which is cheaper, results in a harsher sentence; the majority of crack users are lower income.

Mid-1980s: Because of the South Florida Drug Task Force's work, cocaine trafficking slowly changes transport routes. The Mexican border becomes the major point of entry for cocaine headed into the United States. Crack, a cheap, addictive and potent form of cocaine, is first developed in the early '80s; it becomes popular in the New York region, devastating inner-city neighborhoods.

Nixon creates the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to coordinate the efforts of all other agencies.

Afghanistan is the global production center for opium poppy and opiates like heroin and has

A decade ago, before Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez and other Mexican cities became bloody front lines, the biggest battles in the drug war were taking place 3,000 miles to the south.