Further higlighting the tremendous problem Mexico’s drug war represents to the USA, about which I podcasted last September,
Via Instapundit, a Stratfor report: Worrying Signs from Border Raids
Last week, the Mexican government carried out a number of operations in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, aimed at Jaime “El Hummer” Gonzalez Duran, one of the original members of the brutal cartel group known as Los Zetas. According to Mexican government officials, Gonzalez Duran controlled the Zetas’ operations in nine Mexican states.
The Nov. 7 arrest of Gonzalez Duran was a major victory for the Mexican government and will undoubtedly be a major blow to the Zetas. Taking Gonzalez Duran off the streets, however, is not the only aspect of these operations with greater implications. The day before Gonzalez Duran’s arrest, Mexican officials searching for him raided a safe house, where they discovered an arms cache that would turn out to be the largest weapons seizure in Mexican history. This is no small feat, as there have been several large hauls of weapons seized from the Zetas and other Mexican cartel groups in recent years.
The weapons seized at the Gonzalez Duran safe house included more than 500 firearms, a half-million rounds of ammunition and 150 grenades. The cache also included a LAW rocket, two grenade launchers and a small amount of explosives. Along with the scores of assorted assault rifles, grenades and a handful of gaudy gold-plated pistols were some weapons that require a bit more examination: namely, the 14 Fabrique Nationale (FN) P90 personal defense weapons and the seven Barrett .50-caliber sniper rifles contained in the seizure.
The report details the cartels’ tactics, and some of the implications for US policy, concluding that,
While the arrest of Gonzalez Duran and the seizure of the huge arms cache in Reynosa have taken some killers and weapons off the street, they are only one small drop in the bucket. There are many heavily armed cartel enforcers still at large in Mexico, and the violence is spreading over the border into the United States. Law enforcement officers in the United States therefore need to maintain a keen awareness of the threat.
Glenn says,
I hope that those troops we’ll soon be able to bring back from Iraq won’t have to put their counterinsurgency and urban-warfare skills to work closer to home . . .
Indeed, they ought to be starting by now. I have discussed this Mexican drug wars problem with several people who live in Mexico, and they expect it to escalate such proportions that they don’t rule out the need for an invasion from the US military within the next five to ten years.
For a more detailed picture of the Mexican drug wars, read CRS Report for Congress on Mexico’s Drug Cartels.
Make sure you’re sitting down while you read it.
UPDATE
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As bad as the border area was, from my own experience, fourty years ago, it doesn’t even approach how dangerous it is now. Some areas of Tiajuana were indeed declared off-limits to Navy and Marine personnel but generally only when a ship or flotilla had arrived recently. Now owing to very sensitive feelings among the Mexicans whole areas of Tiajuana are unofficially off-limits and undercover Mexican army units and Shore Patrol, also undercover, regualarly patrol from the border to Rosarito Beach. Arrests of both victim and attackers are usual as well as shootings occuring every weekend. My granddad, a Scottish coal miner and race horse degenerate, used to go to Caliente to wager when Del Mar was closed during the 30’s to the 50’s. The stories he told of shootings, robberies, gang riots and one notorious bar by the bull ring kept the windows rolled up and the doors locked for years when I went to Baja to surf. I found out later that he had embellished some but my own readings of the San Diego newspapers from that period suggest that he might have made up a story or two but often these stories were true but had happened to someone else.
This is not necessarily a sign that the Mexican government has fallen down but actually an indication that they have successfully driven out some of the narcotrafficantes from the interior and the gangs have fled to areas where they previously had not been. They have been forced to become more violent yet I am not implying justification, because their profits have shrunk as their costs have gone up.
Human smuggling is down through US efforts as well as a depressed economy in the US which lessens illegal immigration. I think that this maybe the last gasp of this form of Mexican gangsterism as they are now pressed up against the border with an increasingly confident and assertive Mexican Army and National Police hammering at them and escape routes into the US cut off because of increased patrolling after 9/11. As to the claim that the US might have to invade, 1st, I think that is extremely unlikely and unwise, and 2nd, I can think of no greater tragedy befalling both countries.
Mexico is a great country and I can only hope that some day that attributed quote from Porfirio Diaz, “…so far from God and so near to the United States.” Will have a positive message and not the fatalistic patina it has now.
I’ve been asking for years, ‘can you tell the difference between an Arab and a Mexican?… On the border?… If he’s running?… At midnite?… With nite vision goggles?… Stoned???
I have been saying for some time that our next COIN deployment will be to the SW US and Mexico… the step-by-step process that NAFTA hurt Mexican agriculture, dislocated people once with that, a second time when the factories started moving to SE Asia and now with the ‘bio-fuel’ mess, is it any wonder that people started turning to the last well paying jobs that will always have openings: organized crime.
Worse is the amount of funds not just from folks like Hezbollah and al Qaeda, but the Red Mafia money flowing into the one place where the oligarch who can leverage moribund oil and natural gas can spend his money well. When you have $10 billion per year in your pocket, can strong arm Iran, then Mexican gangs and cartels don’t look so bad at all. Just get your cash in to influence them and slowly work the magic… and see if you can start to get some legislation to go your way.
This is a multi-vector threat all aimed north… but the blood will first run in Mexico and that must be stopped.
You have to admit that the drug war is working really well. If its purpose is to create criminals at home and narco States like Mexico and Afghanistan.
We could put an end to most of this with a stoke of a pen. If the American public had any sense. Instead we will demand the lives of our military. Not to mention the $50 bn or so spent in America annually on drug enforcement.
BTW I have been reading a number of articles on this lately and every one takes drug prohibition as a given. Oh. Well.
I have written on the subject and I place the blame squarely where it belongs.