Here’s the comments of one of our ambassadors at a recent conference:

“Now imagine the military playing a new role, securing the perimeter of this small five-block by five-block area, and giving the kids inside it a sense that they are in a safe zone,” Pascual said. “Add to that the deployment of foot police who engage the neighborhood and build trust. And then keep expanding the perimeter…”

Baghdad? Mogadishu? Kandahar?

Nope — Ciudad Juarez, across the river from El Paso.

It’s in a report by Frontera NorteSur, not online I’m afraid, about Texas congressman Silvestre Reyes’s annual border security conference held August 12-13 at the University of Texas at El Paso. Some more excerpts from the report:

Even by the standards of Ciudad Juarez, the week of August 13-20 was an especially bloody one, according to numerous press accounts. As of early Friday, August 20, at least 99 people were reported murdered in nearly seven days. Young people were slaughtered at parties, in private homes and on the streets. Other victims included Sergio Natividad, adviser to Mayor-elect Murguia, and Ruben Reyes, political activist and brother of the late human rights advocate Josefina Reyes, who was gunned down last January.

And this:

At the end of the day, re-making Ciudad Juarez will involve far more than new construction projects or even expanded social programs. In recent years, the justice system all but collapsed, the economy crashed and burned and the social fabric came virtually undone.

Better get that fence built.