El Centro

Mexico’s Drug Lords Ramp Up Their Arsenals with RPGs by Ioan Grillo, Time Magazine.

… The rockets, found on Saturday, are part of an increasingly destructive array of weaponry wielded by Mexican drug cartels, like the feared Zetas, in reaction to attacks on them by police and soldiers. While security forces have taken down several key cartel bosses this year, gunmen have struck back, setting off five car bombs, hundreds of fragmentation grenades and several shoulder-fired rockets. Soldiers even seized one homemade three-ton tank with a revolving gun turret. When Mexican marines on Oct. 7 claimed to have killed Zetas leader Heriberto Lazcano, he was also alleged to be found with an RPG-7. (Lazcano’s corpse was stolen from the morgue, and the Zetas are now believed to be led by his No. 2, Miguel Treviño.)…

With 60,000 Dead, Mexicans Wonder Why Drug War Doesn't Rate in Presidential Debate by Sara Miller Llana, Christian Science Monitor.

Much of Latin America was dismayed that they got only a glancing mention in Romney and Obama's final presidential debate.

Mitt Romney’s single mention of Latin America last night, calling it a “huge opportunity" for the United States, generated immediate glee from Latin Americanists across Twitter – but the hemisphere got no nod from President Obama, and then both went silent on the topic...

It’s great to be back at Small Wars Journal. It’s been nearly a year since my last post. Since then, I returned to the United States after 24 consecutive months in Afghanistan and assumed command of U.S. Army North (Fifth Army).  I’d like to take a moment to talk about this incredible organization. 

Army North, as the Army Service Component Command (ASCC) for U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM), has three distinct missions.  Briefly, they are:

• Theater Security Cooperation (TSC) with the armies of Mexico, Canada and the Bahamas.
• Defense Support for Civil Authorities (DSCA)
• Joint Forces Land Component for Homeland Defense

A few of our Soldiers have already begun to blog about our role in the CBRN Response Enterprise.  Today, however, we wanted to shift the discussion and talk briefly about our ongoing cooperation with Mexico, or more specifically, SEDENA (Mexico’s Secretariat of National Defense). 

Simply put, Mexico matters to the United States, well beyond that of a military to military relationship.  Open-source research reveals that our two nations have a number of vital mutual interests:

• More than one million legal border crossings take place along our 2,000-mile border every day.
• With a Gross Domestic Product (adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity) of $1.7 trillion, Mexico is the 11th largest economy in the world, according to the World Bank.  
• More than ten million Americans visit Mexico each year, making it the 10th largest tourist destination in the world.
• Eleven percent of U.S. auto imports come from Mexico, which is the 6th largest automotive exporter in the world.
• The U.S. accounts for 47 percent of all foreign direct investment in Mexico.  Fifty percent of Mexico’s imports come from the U.S., while 80 percent of Mexico’s exports go to the U.S.
• Mexico is the 7th largest crude oil exporter in the world and one of the largest suppliers of oil to the United States.  In 2010, Mexico was the second-largest supplier of oil to the U.S., with more than one million barrels of oil coming into the Uniteds States each day.
• Mexico is home to one million U.S. citizens, and 30 million Americans are of Mexican descent.
• Mexico is the United States’ third-largest trading partner, just slightly behind China. Nearly $1 billion exchanges hands each day.

We look forward to building upon our recent partnership efforts with SEDENA, and working together to address our mutual security interests.  In the long term, we envision our relationship with SEDENA as an enduring partner.

We look forward to your discussion and hope to explore a number of issues related to this valuable partner within the following weeks.

As always, thanks to Dave Dilegge, Bill Nagle, and Peter Munson for the opportunity to post.

Strength of the Nation!

Designing Law Enforcement

Many crime control strategies developed today are based upon successes of the past. Given the complex nature of the environment, the chances for these strategies to achieve real success are limited. Design thinking and Adaptive Campaigning recognize and incorporate the evolutionary nature of the environment in their structure, allowing law enforcement agencies to not only expect environmental changes to occur as operations are ongoing, but anticipating those changes and manipulating the responses toward an intended future. Design strategies permit law enforcement agencies to be increasingly effective in disrupting criminal activity and reducing crime, particularly against criminal organizations like street gangs. To develop such adaptive strategies, law enforcement command staff members must first assemble a group of critical and creative thinkers who can take the necessary time to understand the complex network of relationships within and between members in these criminal organizations and who can use this knowledge to target those relationships. By understanding the environment as it exists in real time and continuing a cycle of understanding, designing, influencing, and evaluating, designers can guide their target through a series of intended responses. Used against criminal organizations such as street gangs, adaptive strategies target and exploit the relationships among middle-tier operators resulting in their incarceration and removal from the operational environment. Without these middle-tier operators, the ability for the criminal organization to effectively conduct its criminal affairs is lost, resulting in the disruption, destabilization, and dismantling of the organization in a way that prevents a power vacuum and the violence typically associated with it.

SWJ El Centro Fellows Vanda Felbab-Brown and Eduardo Salcedo-Albarán Highlighted in Article.

Destroying drug cartels, the mathematical way

17 October 2012 by Sara Reardon 

Killing drug lords gets headlines, but complexity analysis suggests they are the wrong people to target to bring down a cartel

WHEN the Mexican navy announced on 9 October that Heriberto Lazcano, leader of the country's most violent criminal cartel, Los Zetas, had been killed it was hailed as a major victory in the war on drugs. But it's doubtful that Lazcano's death will be the end of Los Zetas - or reduce violence in Mexico. After all, there is already a new leader.

Mexican Drug Cartels Fight Turf Battles in Chicago by Armen Keteyian, CBS News.

... Daily turf battles over drugs and distribution, he said, are turning parts of this Midwest city into a Mexican border town.

"One of the hardest jobs I've had in the past couple of years is to convince our law enforcement partners that we need an enforcement mentality as if we're on the border," Riley said.

Miles away, Riley says, Mexican cartels have a significant influence in Chicago's gang violence problem.

"Let's take the gloves off on that," he said. "We know that the majority of the drugs here in Chicago, cartels are responsible for. We know that the majority of the murders are gang related. So it is very clear to see the connection and the role."...

Mexico Cartel May Have Targeted CIA by E. Eduardo Castillo, Associated Press.

A senior U.S. official says there is strong circumstantial evidence that Mexican federal police who fired on a U.S. Embassy vehicle, wounding two CIA officers, were working for organized crime on a targeted assassination attempt...

Via Fox News: 2 US Border Agents Shot, 1 Killed, Near Major Drug Corridor in Arizona.

Two U.S. Border Patrol agents were shot, one fatally, Tuesday morning in an area in south Arizona known as a major drug-smuggling corridor, authorities said...

Smuggling activity typically increases at this time of night and year since the weather is starting to cool...