Vicious drug turf war turns Mexican border town of Tijuana into a killing zone

Vicious drug turf war turns Mexican border town of Tijuana into a killing zone – Telegraph
The four men in bulletproof vests, Kalashnikovs held casually at their sides, crossed the street to Tijuana’s Crazy Banana pool hall so calmly that onlookers presumed they were undercover police officers – until they heard the gunfire and screams. 

Moments later, the men raced back out of the bar and sped off in a getaway car, leaving the once-popular pool hall with its thatched roof and yellow painted walls a bullet-ridden crime scene.

The five billiards players gunned down there were the some of the latest victims in a brutal drug turf war that has unleashed an orgy of killing along America’s southern frontier.

The attack was one of dozens of recent incidents in the sprawling Mexican border city, where nearly 300 people have been killed since late-September – many mutilated, tortured and beheaded in gruesome terror tactics copied from Iraq’s brutal conflict.

In the past week alone, there has been an attack in a nightclub popular with students that left five young people dead or dying; a hit squad stormed a private hospital and killed a patient who was being treated for gunshot wounds; and armed men opened fire on a car parked outside a popular US-owned discount warehouse, killing a woman and seriously injuring a man.

Mexico’s drug war death tally of more than 4,000 this year – 685 in Tijuana – makes it one of the most dangerous countries in the world, and the extreme violence has intensified since the federal government launched a crackdown against the cartels.

My only venture outside the United States was a run to Tijuana when I was 25.  I remember the streets packed with young American people, from about 16 years old to my age, many escaping the US drinking age of 21 in the Mexican bars.  Now the streets are empty as the violence has scared away all the gringo tourist dollars.  Mexico’s economy is crashing and the narcotraficantes business is booming.  As Mike Gray told me last week, how do you find an honest policeman working for $200 a month when the cartels will offer $150,000 a week to just take the money and look the other way?  Mexico is very quickly destabilizing and we run the risk of having a de facto failed state run by drug lords.  Our drug prohibition is very literally destroying countries and killing people.