KEY POINTS:
Mexico has launched an unprecedented purge of its top police officers as the latest step in its increasingly high-stakes campaign to combat the drugs cartels and end a gruesome wave of narcotics-related violence.
A total of 284 federal police chiefs spread across every state of the country have been temporarily removed from their posts. Each of them will be extensively vetted for corruption and possible ties to the cartels and their ruthless gangs of enforcers.
Since taking office last December, President Felipe Calderon has taken increasingly bold measures to tackle one of his country's most intractable problems - the unabated activities of the drug lords and the corruption within law enforcement that protects them from arrest.
It is a crusade that has drawn wide applause from mainstream Mexicans, who are tired of the bloodshed spawned by the drugs trade, and from the United States Government.
However, there is so far no evidence that the assault is slowing the distribution of drugs. Nor has it quietened the violence.
Replaced for now by agents who have already been extensively screened for their integrity, the suspended officers will be required to take drugs tests and undergo lie-detector tests.
Meanwhile, their relatives and friends will be interrogated and their financial assets examined - all measures designed to detect any ties they may have to the underworld.
The death toll last year from drugs-related killings reached 2000 and is on track to be even higher this year.
Corruption in the police, particularly at the local and state levels, is hardly a new problem in Mexico. It was highlighted in 2004 with the arrests of a regional intelligence director and 26 officers in Cancun following the killings of seven people, including three federal agents, in the city.
Calderon has deployed 24,000 army officers and federal agents to areas most impacted by violence.
But critics doubt if the war can be won with so much money at stake.
About 75 per cent of all the cocaine consumed in the US is smuggled through Mexico, generating up to US$24 billion ($31.4 billion) in profits. As much as US$3 billion of that is believed to be spent each year corrupting officials.
"The problem is the way the cartels are structured," said Alex Sanchez, a Mexico analyst at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington.
"Taking out one guy, even a top leader, just leaves a vacuum that others fight to fill. There is a perpetual cycle of violence unless they can take down every single member of a cartel, from the top capos to the lowest drug runners."
- INDEPENDENT
