Thank You, Mexico!

No, not for surpassing the United States as the most obese country in the world (I'm sure we'll regain that dubious honor soon enough), but rather for its recent aid in apprehending two U.S. fugitives who had fled there.

In June, Walter Lee Williams was arrested in the beach resort of Playa del Carmen on Mexico's Carribean coast.  Although Williams' name sounds eerily like a serial killer's, the University of Southern California gender studies professor was actually on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list for charges of sexual exploitation of children.

On Saturday, Wanda Lee Ann Podgurski was arrested in Rosarita in Baja. Although Podgurski was only wanted for insurance fraud, she failed to show up for her trial in January, and subsequently made headlines in June when she taunted authorities from her Twitter account: "Catch me if you can." Well, they did, and she is facing more than 20 years in prison.

I've argued elsewhere that the critical difference between the successful Geronimo Campaign in 1886 and the failure of the Punitive Expedition to capture/kill Pancho Villa in 1916-1917 was the level of cooperation U.S. forces received from the Mexican government and the local population in Northern Mexico, which in turn determined the availability of intelligence on the targeted individual's movements. Although both manhunts were conducted over roughly the same terrain, Mexican troops and peasants supported the U.S. pursuit of the Apache war captain whose deadly raids had terrorized the peasants of Chihuahua and Sonora provinces for years. Conversely, the Mexican peasants considered Villa to be something of a Robin Hood figure, and even the Carrista government -- which was engaged in a violent struggle against Villa's forces -- refused to assist John Pershing's troops in any way.

Although neither the Williams or Podgurski case rises to the level of strategic manhunts (i.e. there were no U.S. forces or covert personnel deployed), when contrasted to the recent revelations about Pakistan's inability to locate Osama bin Laden for a decade (or other countries' refusal to turn over Edward Snowden, if you like), these cases reinforce the importance of bilateral assistance when targeting an individual abroad.