Drug violence in Mexico presents threat at US backdoor

Underscoring that concern, the Associated Press highlights the chilling extent to which drug violence is spilling right into the US's backyard.

Just as government officials had feared, the drug violence raging in Mexico is spilling over into the United States.

US authorities are reporting a spike in killings, kidnappings and home invasions connected to Mexico's murderous cartels. And to some policymakers' surprise, much of the violence is happening not in towns along the border, where it was assumed the bloodshed would spread, but a considerable distance away, in places such as Phoenix and Atlanta.

Investigators fear the violence could erupt elsewhere around the country because the Mexican cartels are believed to have set up drug-dealing operations all over the US, in such far-flung places as Anchorage, Alaska; Boston; and Sioux Falls, S.D.

MSNBC adds: "More than 200 American citizens have been killed since 2004 in Mexico's escalating wave of violence, amounting to the highest number of unnatural deaths in any foreign country outside military combat zones, according to the US State Department."

As the fight against drug cartels intensifies, there are growing calls for Mexico's government to ensure human rights, as the International Herald Tribune reports.

Amnesty International said Monday that Mexico glossed over human rights problems in its annual report to the UN Human Rights Commission, adding to criticism of President Felipe Calderón's army offensive against drug cartels....

Since taking office in December 2006, Calderón has dispatched tens of thousands of troops to fight warring drug gangs. Amnesty said those troops were implicated in 50 alleged incidents of unlawful killings, rape, torture and arbitrary detention between January 2007 and June 2008.

Mexico has instituted new procedures for training and screening police, but the government reported in November that almost half of the country's 375,000 police officers failed security, psychological or background tests.

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