And what happens when Mexican peasants start to flee from the conflict?

A new report has come out showing that Mexico is almost as war-torn as Syria.

Did you know this? Does your average American know this? Shouldn’t we be informed about the state of our southern neighbor, after all, having an almost failed state on your border would seem to be a bit of a security problem. Perhaps the media doesn’t report on this because then Americans would start to worry even more about border security. From the report:

Syria’s six-year war came in first for most dangerous conflict for the fifth consecutive year, as 2016 saw 50,000 casualties in the area, by some estimates.

And According to the The Armed Conflict Survey 2017, an annual report analyzing global conflicts and casualties:

There were 23,000 deaths in Mexico in 2016 connected to the fight against drug cartels. Published Tuesday by the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS), the survey found that “scant attention” has been paid to Central American drug wars, with 16,000 deaths combined coming from Honduras, Ecuador and El Salvador.

It gets better:

IISS Director General and Chief Executive John Chipman said in the report, “The death toll in Mexico’s conflict surpasses those for Afghanistan and Somalia. This is all the more surprising, considering that the conflict deaths are nearly all attributable to small arms. Mexico is a conflict marked by the absence of artillery, tanks or combat aviation.”

That’s right, this is all being done with small arms or cold steel.

It is very rare for criminal violence to reach a level akin to armed conflict. But this has happened in the Northern Triangle of Central America (Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador) and, especially, Mexico. In all four countries, armed forces have been deployed for many years specifically to fight criminal gangs and, in the case of Mexico, transnational drug-trafficking cartels, with military-grade weapons and vast financial resources.

So let’s just call the situation out for what it is, Mexico is on the verge of becoming a failed state. If we do not get that wall up fast there may be a torrent of refugees if the cartels step up their violence even more and the Mexican government is unable to deal with the violence. According to the article, the situation is really getting that serious. In just the last couple of years, men in Mexico saw three years shaved off their life expectancy.

We don’t just need a wall, we may need to send the National Guard to the border soon.