Title: Mexican Drug Cartels Are Violent — But They’re Not Terrorists - War on the Rocks
Headings: Mexican Drug Cartels Are Violent — But They’re Not Terrorists
Mexican Drug Cartels Are Violent — But They’re Not Terrorists
Scott Englund
Are Mexican Drug Cartels Terrorists, Insurgents, or Something Else?
Is the Distinction Important?
Labeling Cartels as “Terrorist Groups” Won’t Work

Content: In combination, the laws that direct the Secretary of State to make such a designation is pretty exhaustive. Titles 8 and 22 of the United States Code draw up a broad list of activities that count as “terrorist activity,” which includes hijacking, taking hostages, assassination, and using weapons with the intent to endanger lives or damage property. A “terrorist group” can consist of as few of two people, but just one of which has to actually participate in or provide support to terrorist activity. To “engage in terrorist activity,” can include participating in the foregoing, planning, gathering intelligence in support of, soliciting funds for, recruiting personnel, or providing logistical support for an act of terrorism. At the root of all this, the relevant U.S. legal definition of “terrorism” is “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents.” Insurgencies seek to remove and replace a country’s existing political system. The 2018 version of the U.S. Department of Defense counterinsurgency manual defines insurgency as “the organized use of subversion and violence to seize, nullify, or challenge political control of a region.” That manual contemplates the existence of an insurgency driven by criminal enterprise, which may be consistent with drug cartels, but it also dismisses these as unique exceptions to the rule that insurgencies have political motives. Adding a criminal facet to insurgency amounts to an unfortunate muddying of the concept. If a violent movement is criminal in nature and driven by profit, and does not want to supplant established political governance (but perhaps diminish a government’s effectiveness at crime-fighting), then it is not an insurgency.