Thread: Mexico vows more troops for drug war near U.S. border

Mexico vows more troops for drug war near U.S. border
Wed Feb 25, 2009

9:15pm ESTBy Julian Cardona

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (Reuters) - Mexico promised on Wednesday to pour more troops into a northern border city at the heart of the country's drug war, where a meeting of federal officials was rattled by bomb scares earlier in the day.

Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, has become Mexico's most violent city as security forces take on drug cartels warring for control of smuggling routes into the United States.

"We aren't going to give up an inch of the city and we will expel them from Juarez," Interior Minister Fernando Gomez Mont told reporters after a security cabinet meeting in Ciudad Juarez, which was heavily guarded by federal police.

"There will be a substantial increase in military and federal police presence in the coming weeks."

Threats against public officials have been rising in the region. Last week suspected drug hitmen killed two city councilmen near Ciudad Juarez.

Gangs also have threatened to kill the mayor and last week forced out the police chief after killing his deputy and promising murders of police officers every 48 hours.

"They want to sow terror and the municipal and state police are totally overwhelmed," Chihuahua state lawmaker Victor Quintana told Reuters.

A former soldier attacked a convoy carrying Chihuahua state Governor Jose Reyes late on Sunday in what Mexican media speculated was linked to the drug war.

During Gomez Mont's visit to Ciudad Juarez, authorities received bomb threats and found traces of explosives in a vehicle parked at the airport, which was evacuated by soldiers and federal police but reopened by late afternoon.

"Anonymous calls to the police and army alerted us to the threats but they turned out to be false," army spokesman Enrique Torres said.

Frightened travelers waited outside the airport and flights were diverted to the state capital, Chihuahua.

President Felipe Calderon has sent out about 45,000 troops across the country but clashes between rival gangs and security forces killed some 6,000 people last year.

Even with about 2,500 troops and federal police in Ciudad Juarez and surrounding areas, more than 250 people have died in drug violence this month in the city.

Drug trade experts say Mexico's most-wanted man, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, who leads a cartel from the Pacific state of Sinaloa, is vying to take Ciudad Juarez's lucrative smuggling route from local cartel leader Vicente Carrillo Fuentes.

Law and order in the city has collapsed as Guzman's hitmen seek to destroy the Juarez's cartel's entire operation, said Tony Payan of the University of Texas in El Paso. Continued...

They are warring each other to death," he said. "The violence in Chihuahua state has surpassed all limits. The mayor of Ciudad Juarez and the state governor are not in control."

(Additional reporting by Robin Emmott in Monterrey; Editing by John O'Callaghan)

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNew ... ews&rpc=76

The border needs to be shut, down, sealed and guarded. It should have been done long ago but there are corrupt individuals on both sides that want it to stay open. The insanity continues.

Mexico vows more troops for drug war near U.S. border

Just keep your corrupt Mexican troops on YOUR side, not ours.

Lets put ours on this side of the border and see who blinks first

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (Reuters) - Mexico is sending up to 5,000 new troops and federal police to the country's most violent city, where law and order is on the brink of collapse in a brutal war between drug gangs aided by corrupt police.

The army said on Thursday the new deployment could take the number of soldiers and federal police to over 7,000 in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas. This month drug hitmen killed 250 people in Juarez, where a meeting of cabinet members on Wednesday was rattled by bomb scares.

"In yesterday's meeting (government officials) talked about sending 5,000 troops and police to Ciudad Juarez," said army spokesman Enrique Torres. "They are expected to arrive in the next few weeks."

At the heavily guarded meeting on Wednesday, Interior Minister Fernando Gomez Mont said the troop reinforcements would be "notable" but declined to give more details.

Torres said there were 2,020 troops and 425 federal police in Ciudad Juarez, a city of around 1.6 million people.

Drug trade analysts say those soldiers risk being overwhelmed by vicious drug gangs fighting over smuggling routes in league with corrupt city and state police.

President Felipe Calderon has sent out some 45,000 troops across Mexico to try and crush drug gangs but clashes between rival cartels and security forces killed around 6,000 people last year. The United States is concerned the violence could spill over the border, escalating the conflict.

Mexico's most-wanted fugitive, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, who leads a cartel from the Pacific state of Sinaloa, wants control of Ciudad Juarez, currently in the hands of local drug lord Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, to traffic drugs into Texas.

Law and order in Ciudad Juarez is close to collapse as Guzman's hitmen seek to destroy the Juarez cartel's entire operation, drug experts say, and kidnappings and extortions of business people are rampant.

(Reporting by Julian Cardona; additional reporting by Robin Emmott in Monterrey; editing by Bill Trott)

I thought the drug cartel WAS the Mexican army? Isn't that like asking a wolf to guard the hen house? I say shut the border down, and get our troops down there to protect us from these idiots!

I say shut the border down, and get our troops down there to protect us from these idiots!

That is absolutely what needs to be done, however, they are afraid our troops would be successful in shutting everything down. There are corrupt individuals that would hate to see that happen.

If Mexico needs to put troops into the border area we need to put our troops on the border too.

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

If Mexico needs to put troops into the border area we need to put our troops on the border too.

Absolutely!

Behind the Troop Surge at the U.S.-Mexico Border

By IOAN GRILLO / MEXICO CITY Ioan Grillo / Mexico City – 50 mins ago

The ebbing stretch of Rio Grande that divides the Texas city of El Paso from the Mexican city of Juarez may soon become one of the world's most militarized borders. This week, as Texas Governor Rick Perry went to El Paso to announce that has asked Washington for 1,000 more "boots on the ground" to enforce the border, Mexico's government ordered 5,000 extra soldiers to Juarez. The armies massing on both sides of the border are marching against a common foe - drug cartels - and the coming months will be a crucial test as to whether they can effectively work together to fight it.


The Rio Grande "surge" comes amid a growing wave of drug-related bloodshed across Mexico that has visited some of its worst violence on Juarez. The sprawling industrial border city of 1.6 million became Mexico's murder capital in 2008, with more than 1,600 drug related killings, and this year's toll looks set to be even higher, with 250 killings in February alone. Mexican authorities were particularly shaken by a Sunday ambush against local state governor Jose Reyes Baeza's three-car convoy that killed one of his bodyguards. On Wednesday, President Felipe Calderon flew to Juarez for an emergency security meeting, which was plagued by three bomb scares. The following day, the army announced it would send 5,000 troops to back up the 2,000 soldiers already patrolling the streets of Juarez to fight the gangsters. A Baghdad-style surge, the Mexican government hopes, will quell the slaughter. (See images of the U.S.-Mexico border fence)


North of the river, Perry gave a news conference about his troop request on Tuesday while flanked by gun-wielding officers at El Paso's Chamizal National Memorial - a park that celebrates the buoyant border culture and flies U.S. and Mexican flags side by side. "I don't care if they are military, National Guard or customs agents," he said. "We're very concerned that the Federal government is not funding border security adequately. We must be ready for any contingency." Perry was not clear, however, as to exactly what the troops would do to fight the drug gangs. The violence on the Mexican side is not confined to Juarez, but has also exploded down the river in Reynosa, where earlier this month a series of simultaneous firefights locked the city down for four hours. Last week, Texas Homeland Security Director Steve McCraw named Mexican gangs as "the most significant threat Texas faces," while asking the state legislature for $135 million to boost his department. But Texas border towns have proven remarkably immune to the bloodshed across the river - El Paso had one of the lowest murder rates among U.S. cities, although many have lost loved ones across the river. Violence exported from Mexico has risen sharply, instead, in key trafficking points in the U.S. interior, such as Phoenix, Arizona, and Atlanta, Georgia.


Mexico's immediate reaction to Perry's call for reinforcements was largely ignored by Calderon and his top security officials this week. However, they did applaud the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency for its "Operation Xcellerator," a sting that has netted 755 suspected Mexican cartel members and seized 23 tons of drugs over several months. Rep. Roberto Badillo, secretary of the National Defense Committee in the Mexican Congress, said he had no opposition to the U.S. bolstering its southern border. "They have every right to move troops around and do whatever they feel necessary to defend their nation and its sovereignty," he told TIME. But he made a point of warning that the U.S. forces should stay firmly on their side of the river. "I would never, ever, support the intervention of foreign troops in our territory, and that is the way that 99.9% of Mexicans think," he said.


The specter of U.S. troops fighting the cartel armies on Mexican soil is not simply a product of paranoia, however. The possibility was raised in a Pentagon policy document last December. The report by U.S. Joint Forces Command, entitled "Joint Operating Environment 2008", focuses on the challenges potentially facing the U.S. military over the next 25 years. It speculates that the Mexican state could face "a rapid and sudden collapse" from the onslaught of cartel paramilitary armies, and says the U.S. forces would have to respond to such a threat. "Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone," it says.


The Pentagon report set off alarm bells in Mexico City, with Calderon characterizing the notion that Mexico could collapse as "false," "clearly mistaken," and "totally disproportionate." But some of Mexico's intellectuals and opposition politicians say the idea may not be that far-fetched. Rep. Jose Alfonso Suarez de Real of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party said that the level of insecurity in Juarez shows that the state is, in fact, failing there. Alongside the killings, there has been a wave of extortion, kidnapping and robbery, leading to thousands of residents packing their bags and leaving. "Even many Juarez politicians are keeping their families on the U.S. side for safety. How can you say the state is functioning normally under these conditions?" Suarez de Real asked. "When you have this level of killing, and it is Mexicans against Mexicans, it can only be understood as a civil war."


- With reporting by Hilary Hylton/Austin and Mark Thompson/Washington

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