Politics Outside US

It has long been known inside Afghanistan that heroin dealers in high positions benefit from the United States and Afghan governments' counternarcotics policies. Now the American public can get a glimpse. US embassy cables published recently by WikiLeaks expose the insider opinion that Afghan officials are using poppy eradication teams to weed out the competitors of major traffickers with whom they are linked.

The mayor of Ciudad Juárez has accused federal police of killing one of his bodyguards in an incident that underlines the growing tension between the different authorities in Mexico's drug prohibition war capital. "My bodyguard, accompanied by another, identified himself, raised his hands and was shot in the head," Héctor Murguía Lardizábal told reporters. "That's a murder." The mayor said that when he went to the federal police base in a nearby hotel to demand an explanation, he received a volley of insults an had a gun pointed at him.

Twenty one percent of the 375 tons of heroin produced from Afghanistan's opium fields now finds its way through central Asia into Russia, according to the United Nations. Unlike most countries around the world, Russia refuses to finance harm reduction programs such as needle exchanges, or to legalize methadone. Over the past few months, Moscow has decided to discontinue the work of foreign donors and NGOs with heroin addicts. Critics go as far as to accuse Moscow of willfully neglecting its citizens and thereby fueling what the World Health Organization says is one of the fastest growing HIV/AIDS epidemics in the world.

Monterrey, Mexico's business capital and third-largest city, is being pushed to the breaking point by a drug prohibition war that has left about 80 people, including 14 police officers, dead this year alone and pushed authorities to the limit. The city, home to more than 50,000 corporations, including some of the largest multinational businesses in Mexico, fears for its future if the prohibition-caused violence is not stopped. "This is a very difficult time, perhaps the most difficult in the recent history of Nuevo Leon" state, Gov. Rodrigo Medina said.

The untold story of Mexico's prohibitionist campaign against drug trafficking organizations is the surge in lethal violence against women. As Mexico enters its fifth year of conflict and escalating militarization, the country's ability to ensure basic protections for its citizens – and, in particular, for those most at risk – has never been less certain.

Gunmen who attacked a group of youths playing soccer killed seven people in the violent northern border city of Ciudad Juárez. The latest drug prohibition violence came on the eve of a one-day visit to Mexico by US secretary of State Hillary Clinton to discuss bilateral cooperation against the country's powerful drug trafficking organizations. The stadium where the shooting occurred was inaugurated just four months ago as part of a campaign called "We are all Juarez" that the local government has hoped will help stem a wave of drug prohibition related violence.

Australia's early and widespread use of clean needle programs seems to have kept HIV rates among injection-drug users in check over the long term, according to a study. In many countries, needle exchange programs allow drug users to trade in used needles for new ones, but in Australia users are simply given new ones.

A Penticton, B.C., man vacationing in Mexico is recovering in hospital from a gunshot wound after being caught in a bloody crossfire that left one man dead in yet another round of drug prohibition violence in the troubled country. The man, in his 60s, was leaving a Mazatlan pharmacy with his wife on Sunday when gunmen opened fire, spraying their intended target with bullets and striking the man in the leg below the knee, according to family members.

Guatemalan soldiers tasked with sweeping out Mexican drug trafficking organizations are finding they are outgunned and ill-equipped, raising fears of a power vacuum in parts of the country even after a 30-day military siege. "Organized crime is not just infiltrating us, it pains me to say it but drug traffickers have us cornered," Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom told Congress last week.