Feral Jundi

Monday, April 26, 2010

Mexico: Cartels Take It Up A Notch And Focus Their War On Authorities

    Public Safety Secretary Minerva Bautista was among the wounded but was recovering from non-life-threatening injuries, according to the state attorney general’s office. She was traveling in a bullet-resistant sport utility vehicle.

   State Attorney General Jesus Montejano told the local Milenio television station that the attackers used assault rifles, grenades, a grenade launcher and a powerful .50-caliber sniper rifle whose rounds are capable of penetrating bullet-resistant materials.

  “In the ambush, they used concentrated fire from these types of weapons, forcing her and her escort to crash into a trailer truck that they had pulled across the road,” Montejano said.

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   I posted three stories here, that are pretty telling of where Mexico is at with their war against the cartels.  There are two ways to read this.  Either the cartels are threatened more by the government and authorities, or the cartels are thinking in terms of taking the fight out of the authorities so they can continue to eradicate their competition.  So is the government a threat, or are they just getting in the way?  Interesting stuff, and this first article below goes into the various angles on this.

   My personal thoughts on it, is that the cartels will do whatever they need to do in order to win control over the drug markets.  If law enforcement or government officials directly or indirectly help their competitors, they will do what they can to remove that element of the equation.  Because I really think that if the cartels were purely focused on combatting the government, we would see way more deaths of officials.  The death toll figures support this as well, with most of the deaths in the war being members of the drug cartels. But this could change, and we will see how this goes.

   None the less, these are still attacks on the state.  And when the cartels start using .50 caliber sniper rifles (see second story below), grenade launchers, and assault rifles against armored motorcades in well coordinated ambushes, I tend to take notice.  Unfortunately, the next level will probably be more usage of IED’s in these ambushes and all of the rules of Iraq and Afghanistan will apply to this latest evolution of the drug war.

   The third story is another disturbing tale about cartels purposely attacking law enforcement.  Seven officers killed is pretty bad, and that indicates to me that the cartels have absolutely no fear or respect for law enforcement.  They are just obstacles that need to be removed, so they can focus on the bigger war of gaining territory for their drug operations. Thanks to Doug and others for sending me these stories. –Matt

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Body Guards

An injured bodyguard of Mexico’s Michoacan state’s public safety secretary walks with help from a police officer after being wounded during a shootout in Morelia, Mexico, early Saturday. A fellow bodyguard lies dead. 

Mexico says cartels turning attacks on authorities

By MARK STEVENSONThe Associated PressSunday, April 25, 2010

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s drug cartels have changed tactics and are turning more attacks on authorities, rather than focusing their fire on rivals gangs, the country’s top security official said Sunday.

Interior Secretary Fernandez Gomez-Mont said at a news conference that two back-to-back, bloody ambushes of government convoys – both blamed on cartels – represent a new tactic.

“In the last few weeks the dynamics of the violence have changed. The criminals have decided to directly confront and attack the authorities,” Gomez-Mont said.

“They are trying to direct their fire power at what they fear most at this moment, which is the authorities,” he said.

Officials here have long said that more than 90 percent of the death toll in Mexico’s wave of drug violence – which has claimed more than 22,700 lives since a government crackdown began in December 2006 – are victims of disputes between rival gangs.

Mexican drug gangs have been known to target security officials. The nation’s acting federal police chief was shot dead in May 2008 in an attack attributed to drug traffickers lashing back at President Felipe Calderon’s offensive against organized crime.

But such high-profile attacks were rare in comparison to inter-gang warfare. But after the large-scale attacks on officials Friday and Saturday, “casualties among the authorities are beginning to increase in this battle,” Gomez-Mont said.

On Saturday, gunmen armed with assault rifles and grenades attacked a convoy carrying the top security official of the western state of Michoacan, in what appeared to be a carefully planned ambush.

The official survived with non-life-threatening wounds – she was traveling in a bullet-resistant SUV – but two of her bodyguards and two passers-by were killed. Of the other nine people wounded, most were bystanders, including two girls ages 2 and 12.

(more…)

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Mexico: Cartels Team Up To Destroy Los Zetas

   You know, on the flip side I guess this should be good news that the cartels are killing each other.  But the violence impacts the locals, and the police and army get in the way and they get killed too. And eventually someone takes the top position of the heap, and imposes their will on the population.  It will be interesting to see what cartel wins in this exchange, and it would be a fascinating study to find out what was the strategy involved.  This kind of cartel/gang warfare, is really free market warfare. It is also hybrid warfare, because these guys are using military hardware and tactics–complete with grenade launchers, assault rifles, and IED’s.

   The cartels contract their hit men or contract killer companies, and they all fight each other with no limitations on strategy or tactics. That is interesting, because in that kind of environment, innovation can really flourish.  If chopping someone’s head off makes strategic sense, they do it. Putting a price on the head of their enemies, and turning it into a sustainable industry makes sense to them.   So this kind of cartel/private warfare is interesting to watch.

   The question I have is when the dust clears, will we see a cartel that rises to the top that has the kind of capability that not only can destroy their competitors, but can take on the government and all of it’s forces?  For the sake of Mexico and the world, I hope not. –Matt

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Mexico: Cartels team up to destroy hit men gang

By OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ

Apr 12, 2010

MEXICO CITY — Two Mexican drug cartels have joined forces to destroy a feared gang of hit men along the border with Texas, a shift in allegiances that is fueling drug-war violence, federal police said Monday.

Intelligence reports indicate the Gulf and La Familia cartels — formerly bitter rivals — have formed an alliance to fight the Zetas gang in the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas, said Ramon Pequeno, the head of the anti-narcotics division of Mexico’s federal police.

It was the first official confirmation of the alliance, which has been rumored since banners appeared throughout the region announcing the pact and warning residents not to leave their homes, saying the conflict would get worse. E-mails were also sent with the same message.

(more…)

Friday, April 3, 2009

Bounties: Two Major Drug Cartel Leaders Have Been Captured

Filed under: Bounties,Mexico — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Matt @ 9:06 PM

   Awesome news, and strike two booger eaters off the bounty list. Good on the guys down south for taking them down. –Matt

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Drug war strikes blow to Mexican economy in crisis

Apr 2, 2009

02 Apr 2009MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexican police have captured a leading drug baron from the border city of Ciudad Juarez, the country’s most violent town in a turf war that killed 6,300 people last year.

Vicente Carrillo Leyva, a leader of the Juarez cartel, was seized while exercising in a park in an upscale residential district of Mexico City, police said on Thursday.

The Juarez cartel is locked in a bitter war with traffickers from the state of Sinaloa for control of smuggling routes into Texas. The fighting forced the government to send 5,000 extra troops into Ciudad Juarez last month.

Carrillo Leyva is the son of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, a late drug lord who flew jetliners full of cocaine into Mexico in the 1990s and was known as ‘Lord of the Skies’.

(more…)

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Mexico: Drug Cartels’ New Weaponry Means War

Filed under: Mexico,Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Matt @ 10:58 PM

     Doug sent me this one, and this is very interesting on two levels.  The gun control folks in the US have been saying that all the weapons the cartels use, are coming from the US, and obviously they are not. The pistols and basic rifles maybe, but the war grade munitions like grenades and what not are coming from Central America.  

     The second point is the type of weaponry that they are getting out of Central America. Grenades, belt-fed machine guns, rocket launchers, .50 caliber sniper rifles–all of it is war munitions, and requires a very specific approach to defend against and deal with. So if security companies start picking up contracts down there, the level of security should at least be on par to combat this type of stuff.  I am not talking mall cop security, I am talking Iraq style security.  Thats if PMC was ever used to battle PMC down there. –Matt

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Drug cartels’ new weaponry means war

Narcotics traffickers are acquiring firepower more appropriate to an army — including grenade launchers and antitank rockets — and the police are feeling outgunned.

By Ken Ellingwood and Tracy Wilkinson

March 15, 2009

Reporting from Zihuatanejo, Mexico, and Mexico City — It was a brazen assault, not just because it targeted the city’s police station, but for the choice of weapon: grenades.

The Feb. 21 attack on police headquarters in coastal Zihuatanejo, which injured four people, fit a disturbing trend of Mexico’s drug wars. Traffickers have escalated their arms race, acquiring military-grade weapons, including hand grenades, grenade launchers, armor-piercing munitions and antitank rockets with firepower far beyond the assault rifles and pistols that have dominated their arsenals.

Most of these weapons are being smuggled from Central American countries or by sea, eluding U.S. and Mexican monitors who are focused on the smuggling of semiauto- matic and conventional weapons purchased from dealers in the U.S. border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

The proliferation of heavier armaments points to a menacing new stage in the Mexican government’s 2-year-old war against drug organizations, which are evolving into a more militarized force prepared to take on Mexican army troops, deployed by the thousands, as well as to attack each other.

(more…)

Monday, March 23, 2009

Mexico: Los Zetas, A PMC/Cartel That Truly Deserves Negative Media Attention

Filed under: Law Enforcement,Mexico — Tags: , , , , — Matt @ 8:23 PM

   Thanks to Eeben for pointing these guys out to me.  You learn something new all the time, and these guys have been going off the hook since 2003. This is a group, founded by Mexican Special Forces, that executed it’s operations like the military complete with an intelligence apparatus, all for the sake of the drug trade.  That to me is evil, and that deserves an onslaught of negative media attention.  Yet the media continues to focus on groups like Xe, because it’s easy and safe. Pffft.  

    The really bad guys are just south of the US border, and have been murderous heathens when it comes to crimes against humanity, yet where is the media pressure?  I mean there is no comparison, when you put these guys up against Blackwater, but by all means keep demonizing BW.  How about it Jeremy Scahill, why not write about a truly evil PMC and put your efforts into a Los Zetas book……that’s if your man enough? smirk

    I also like the idea that Eeben came up with in that same post in the comments section.  PMC versus PMC!  I would love to see Executive Outcomes come out of retirement and take on these fools.  That would be money well spent in my humble opinion.  Although from the sounds of it, Los Zetas has kind of taken on an Al Qaeda type of emergence, where the original group is really not in control and the idea of the group lives on in spirit. Missed opportunities. Either way, the myth of the Los Zetas would be a good one to crumble if we could. –Matt

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Los Zetas: Evolution of a Criminal Organization

11 Mar 2009

By Samuel Logan for ISN Security Watch

From the original 31 members, the Mexican organized criminal faction Los Zetas has grown into an organization in its own right, operating separate from the Gulf Cartel and just as violent, Sam Logan writes for ISN Security Watch.

Between the first of the year and mid-March, 2009 the Mexican criminal organization most commonly known as “Los Zetas” has been busy. Members of this group have been linked to a death threat delivered to the president of Guatemala, a grenade thrown into a bar in Pharr, Texas, the death of a high-ranking military general in Cancun, and a fair share of the organized crime-related deaths registered this year in Mexico.

(more…)

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