Feral Jundi

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Mexico: A Mexican Army Surge for Juarez

Filed under: Mexico — Tags: , , , , , , , — Matt @ 11:12 AM

   Some startling news, and this is right on the US border. The thing I will be looking for, is where this feud will go next. When you clear one town, the combatants will just push on over to the next.  –Matt

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Mexico army to take over policing in drug-hit city

Wed Mar 4, 2009 7:09pm EST

By Robin Emmott

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (Reuters) – Mexico’s army will take over the local police force in the border city of Ciudad Juarez where it helped quell a deadly prison riot on Wednesday in its widening war against drug gangs.

Soldiers poured into the city this week to restore order after 250 people died in February in a feud between drug gangs, which are often aided by corrupt police.

Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas, and home to foreign-owned factories that export to the United States, has become the main flashpoint in President Felipe Calderon’s two-year-old war against drug smugglers.

Some of the several thousand troops expected in Ciudad Juarez by the end of this week will take over the municipal police, local jails and police traffic department.

On Wednesday they helped federal police quash a fight between drug gang inmates in a prison on the city’s edge that left 20 people dead.

“General Galvan will appoint soldiers to take control of the municipal police next week,” a spokesman for the Ciudad Juarez mayor’s office said, referring to Defense Minister General Guillermo Galvan.

Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora told Reuters on Tuesday the government is deeply worried about the killings in Ciudad Juarez, which have sparked fears that the war between drug cartels might spill over to the United States.

The U.S. and Canadian governments have warned tourists to stay away from dangerous border cities this spring. Mexico is a prime destination for college students traveling on spring break vacations.

Mexico’s army has increasingly taken over police operations to stiffen the resolve of agents who are often bribed to join the cartels or killed if they do not.

POLICE CHIEF QUIT

Ciudad Juarez’s previous police chief, Roberto Orduna, quit two weeks ago after drug hitmen murdered his deputy and another officer and pledged a police murder every 48 hours until he resigned.

Soldiers in Humvees backed by helicopters supported police as they brought a prison in the desert outside Ciudad Juarez under control after the riot.

Inmates from a drug gang known as the “Aztecas” seized a guard’s keys at the state penitentiary and opened cell doors, freeing 170 prisoners who went on a rampage.

“They attacked other prisoners in a high-security area with iron bars and home-made firearms,” said Victor Valencia, the state government representative in the city.

The Aztecas are believed to be allied to the Juarez cartel, which is fighting Mexico’s most-wanted man, Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman, for control of smuggling routes into the United States.

That feud is the most violent outbreak of a drug war that killed more than 6,000 people in Mexico last year.

Mexico’s army hopes to have 7,500 soldiers and federal police in Ciudad Juarez by the end of this week. They will patrol the streets and man checkpoints at the airport and on bridges across the Rio Grande into Texas.

Story Here

 

Monday, January 12, 2009

Mexico: US Plans Border ‘Surge’ Against Any Mexican Drug Wars

Filed under: Crime,Mexico — Tags: , , , — Matt @ 3:36 PM

    A big thanks to Doug for sending me this, and this is kind of a follow up to my other post.  The thing I ask myself is what would a ‘spill over’ into this country look like, if things got worse in Mexico?  Already, drugs/people/weapons are all being smuggled across the border–through tunnels and over land.  The kind of spill over I am thinking of, is if these drug cartels feel threatened at all by the US support of Mexico in this drug war and decide to hit back.  I think in terms of what Colombia looked like at it’s worst during it’s drug war, and then I try to apply that to what this situation could look like in the present and near future for Mexico.  

   The other angle I am looking at, is the contracting opportunities if this gets worse.  Surveillance stuff and some training opportunities will be the big ones.  Maybe some aviation stuff as well.  But if we need muscle on the border, and the troops are already spread thin, would security contractors come into play?  Security contractors are already being used to help secure borders or train the border patrols of Afghanistan and Iraq, they could easily be used for the US border efforts. We are a resource that has been used in the past by the federal government for disasters, namely hurricane support, and a disaster at the border is no different. Of course that is only my opinion on the matter.-Matt

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 U.S. plans border ‘surge’ against any Mexican drug wars

By Randal C. Archibold

Thursday, January 8, 2009

The soaring level of violence in Mexico resulting from the drug wars there has led the United States to develop plans for a “surge” of civilian and perhaps even military law enforcement should the bloodshed spread across the border, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Wednesday.

Chertoff said the criminal activity in Mexico, which has caused more than 5,300 deaths in the last year, had long troubled American authorities. But it reached a point last summer, he said, where he ordered specific plans to confront in this country the kind of shootouts and other mayhem that in Mexico have killed members of warring drug cartels, law enforcement officials and bystanders, often not far from the border.

“We completed a contingency plan for border violence, so if we did get a significant spillover, we have a surge ? if I may use that word ? capability to bring in not only our own assets but even to work with” the Defense Department, Chertoff said in a telephone interview.

(more…)

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