El Centro

Crime and Terrorism

by Colonel Robert Killebrew

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The U.S. has been at war in Iraq and Afghanistan now for eight years, and a great deal of our best thinking and most focused military development has quite rightly gone into fighting those two conflicts. We have built an effective counterinsurgency doctrine, we have re-equipped and re-re-equipped our forces, and we have perforce built huge bases of experience in dealing with Islamic insurgent and terror organizations. This is as it should be -- Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' admonition to "win the war you're in" is right on target.

In those eight years, though, as we have focused on the wars we're in, there have been some profound changes in the structure of global terrorism, particularly with regard to the relationship between terrorist movements and international crime. According to a panel of experts at a recent conference sponsored by the Center for a New American Security, terrorism and crime have now merged, to such an extent that all terrorist movements -- all of them -- have become partly criminal organizations to fund their operations, expand their reach -- and incidentally make the people on top extremely rich, while lower-level zealots continue to be recruited for suicide missions.

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Robert B. Killebrew is a Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Killebrew is a retired Army colonel who served 30 years in a variety of assignments that included Special Forces, tours in the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, XVIII Airborne Corps, high-level war planning assignments and instructor duty at the Army War College.

Third-Generation Gangs and Criminal Insurgency in Latin America

by Dr. Hal Brands, Small Wars Journal

Third-Generation Gangs and Criminal Insurgency in Latin America (Full PDF Article)

In May 2006, a previously obscure gang known as the First Capital Command (PCC) threw Sao Paulo into chaos. Over a period of five days, the PCC attacked hundreds of public buildings and private businesses, murdered policemen and civilians, and brought life in South America's largest city to a standstill. The scope of the violence clearly overwhelmed state and local authorities, and order was restored only after negotiations with the gang's leader, a man named Marcola. All told, the incident demonstrated that the PCC—rather than the government—effectively ruled large parts of Sao Paulo. As one Brazilian security official put it, "The sad reality is that the state is now the prisoner of the PCC."

Roughly a year and a half earlier, another Latin American gang staged an even more shocking display of its power and ruthlessness. In December 2004, members of Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, stopped a bus in Chamalecon, Honduras, and proceeded to massacre 28 passengers. As Ana Arana relates, the killings were as notable for their apparent randomness as for their gruesomeness. "The slaughter had nothing to do with the identities of the people onboard; it was meant as a protest and a warning against the government's crackdown on gang activities in the country."

Both the December 2004 incident in Honduras and the May 2006 attacks in Sao Paulo are part of a broader trend in Latin America: the rise of sophisticated, internationally-oriented, and extremely violent gangs. These "third-generation gangs," as they are often called, participate in the drug trade and myriad other illicit economies, and use violence and corruption to undermine the state. They increasingly straddle the line between crime and insurgency, and constitute a dire and growing threat to internal stability in the region. This phenomenon is most pronounced—and most remarked upon—in Central America, but it has spread well beyond the isthmus and now plagues countries from Mexico to Brazil.

Third-Generation Gangs and Criminal Insurgency in Latin America (Full PDF Article)

Not So Fast, Amigas y Amigos

by Colonel Robert Killebrew, Small Wars Journal

Not So Fast, Amigas y Amigos (Full PDF Article)

The United States has always had mixed feelings about our relationship with Central America, so when the Honduran Army sent President Manuel Zelaya packing last week, we joined with a chorus of regional leaders, including Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, in condemning the soldier's putsch.

But now that we've exercised our moral indignation, we ought to step back and take a deep breath. As reports continue to come in, it appears that it was Zelaya, not the army, that was most egregiously breaking the law. The president was apparently involved in his own takeover, against the courts and Honduran Congress, and was about to stage a Chavez-style referendum" on ballots printed in Venezuela and looted from an army warehouse where they were being safeguarded. The army's move was legitimized by the Honduran Supreme Court and applauded by the Congress, which has appointed a stand-in president until regular elections this November.

Certainly we deplore military coups, just as we deplore sin. But in the tangled web of Central American politics, Honduras has long been the U.S.' most staunch ally. Among the four states from Nicaragua north, it has tried hardest to convert from a military-run banana republic to a constitutional democracy and, until just the other day, with some success. It supported U.S. trainers in the Salvadoran civil war. It houses an American military joint task force. At our request, Honduran soldiers fought in Iraq. So while the verdict must be that military takeovers are bad, surely in this case there are extenuating circumstances for a faithful ally, particularly since the bottom-line issue seems to have been the survival of its constitutional form of government.

Not So Fast, Amigas y Amigos (Full PDF Article)

The Seven Deadly Questions

How to Think about Mexico and Beyond

by Roger Pardo-Maurer, Small Wars Journal

How to Think about Mexico and Beyond (Full PDF Article)

Quick Quiz

By the beginning of the new counterinsurgency strategy and arguably a turning point of the War in Iraq (late 2006 - early 2007), which country after the United States and Great Britain had the next largest combat-related loss of citizens in Operation Iraqi Freedom?

The answer is - Mexico .

Blood is indeed thicker than water, or at least thicker than the Rio Grande. If ever proof were required of how our two peoples have become intertwined in ways we can hardly begin to imagine, one could hardly do better than to point to the fact that Mexico, or rather, the people of Mexico, were in effect an invisible member of the Coalition.

A Country Taken for Granted

Since the Spanish-American War, the grand strategy of the United States has been to rely on stability in the Western Hemisphere in order to pursue its interests in Europe and Asia. If Mexico is not already our most vital strategic relationship, it will become so over the next generation: as a trade partner, as a source of demographic and cultural renewal, and as a pillar of our strategic worldview so taken-for-granted that it is difficult to imagine how things could be otherwise.

How to Think about Mexico and Beyond (Full PDF Article)

Future Conflict

Criminal Insurgencies, Gangs and Intelligence

by John P. Sullivan, Small Wars Journal

Future Conflict: Criminal Insurgencies, Gangs and Intelligence (Full PDF Article)

Gangs dominate the intersection between crime and war. Traditionally viewed as criminal enterprises of varying degrees of sophistication and reach, some gangs have evolved into potentially more dangerous and destabilizing actors. In many areas across the world—especially in 'criminal enclaves' or 'lawless zones' where civil governance, traditional security structures, and community or social bonds have eroded—gangs thrive. This essay briefly examines the dynamics of crime and war in these contested regions. Specifically, it provides a framework for understanding 'criminal insurgencies' where acute and endemic crime and gang violence challenge the solvency of state political control.

Criminal gangs come in many forms. They challenge the rule of law and employ violence to dominate local communities. In some cases they are expanding their reach and morphing into a new warmaking entities capable of challenging the legitimacy and even the solvency of nation-states. This potential brings life to the prediction made by Martin van Creveld who noted, "In the future, war will not be waged by armies but by groups whom today we call terrorists, guerrillas, bandits and robbers, but who will undoubtedly hit upon more formal titles to describe themselves."

Some advanced gangs—known as 'third generation gangs' and/or maras—are waging 'wars" and changing the dynamics of crime. In some extreme cases they are waging a de facto criminal insurgency. As Adam Elkus and I recently noted: Criminal insurgency is haunting the police stations and barracks of North America. Powerful criminal networks increasingly challenge the state's monopoly on force, creating new threats to national security." Mexico is currently challenged by extreme criminal violence, but it is by no means the only state in the Americas suffering from criminal insurgency. Transnational criminal organizations ranging from the transnational street collective Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) to the powerful Mexican drug cartels are steadily increasing in both power and reach. Even some American street gangs are evolving into 'third generation' gangs: large, networked, transnational bodies that may yet develop true political consciousness.

Criminal insurgency presents a challenge to national security analysts used to creating simulations and analytical models for terrorism and conventional military operations. Criminal insurgency is different from regular" terrorism and insurgency because the criminal insurgents' sole political motive is to gain autonomy economic control over territory. They do so by hollowing out the state and creating criminal enclaves to maneuver.

Future Conflict: Criminal Insurgencies, Gangs and Intelligence (Full PDF Article)

Plazas for Profit

Mexico's Criminal Insurgency

by John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus

Small Wars Journal

Plazas for Profit: Mexico's Criminal Insurgency (Full PDF Article)

In August 2008, we published an essay in Small Wars Journal called "State of Siege: Mexico's Criminal Insurgency." We were concerned at the lack of attention and policy discussion paid to the growing cartel violence in Mexico, which we called a "criminal insurgency." Now it is hard to escape discussion of Mexico's drug war. While we are heartened that security commentators are now focusing on Mexico, we feel that the "failed state" debate is at best a distraction that diverts discussion of the issue and a concrete discussion of the conflict's political-military dynamics would be more productive. We have updated our earlier assessment to include new events and trends in Mexico's criminal insurgency, and we will continue to periodically revise our assessment as the dynamics of the conflict evolve.

In broad scope, US policy should focus on helping Mexico rebuild the rule of law while hedging against cartel actions on the border. To do so, the US must engage both informal Mexican governing networks and help construct new cross-border partnerships that can act as policy shops for coordinating policy response and military/law enforcement cooperation against the cartels. At the same time, revamping of domestic security approaches also are needed to guard against overflow of drug war violence.

Plazas for Profit: Mexico's Criminal Insurgency (Full PDF Article)

Mexico's Struggle with 'Drugs and Thugs'

SWJ Book Review

by John P. Sullivan

Mexico's Struggle with 'Drugs and Thugs' (Full PDF Article)

Mexico is in the thralls of bloody drug wars. Last year these battles for profit and power cost an estimated 6,290 lives. So far this year, over 1,000 people have died as the cartels and their criminal soldiers seek dominance in the lucrative global narco-markets. These narco-conflicts are waged by cartels, gangs, paramilitary militias. The cartels fight at three levels: within their own enterprise for dominance; against other cartel alliances for market control; and against the security forces of the state (police and military) to fend off interference. Collectively this amounts to a virtual civil war fought by criminal netwarriors.

These netwars challenge Mexico and the cross-border region that embraces the frontier between Mexico and the United States with a series of interlocking, networked criminal insurgencies. Communities cower with fear against cartel reprisals and public debate is hampered by a lack of detailed understanding of the conflict and its players. This monograph, Mexico's Struggle with 'Drugs and Thugs', helps fill the knowledge void.

George W. Grayson is the Class of 1938 Professor of Government at the College of William and Mary, is a respected area specialist on Mexico. In addition to his long-standing academic focus, he is a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and an associate scholar at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Grayson brings over a quarter century of experience to bear in this lean, yet rich account of the social and political dynamics underlying the current cartel conflict.

Mexico's Struggle with 'Drugs and Thugs' (Full PDF Article)

State of Siege

Mexico's Criminal Insurgency

by John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus, Small Wars Journal

State of Siege: Mexico's Criminal Insurgency (Full PDF Article)

Mexico is under siege, and the barbarians are dangerously close to breaching the castle walls. Responding to President Felipe Calderon's latest drug crackdown, an army of drug cartels has launched a vicious criminal insurgency against the Mexican state. So far, the conflict has killed over 1,400 Mexicans, 500 of them law enforcement officers. No longer fearing retaliation, cartel gunmen assault soldier and high-ranking federale alike. The criminal threat is not only a threat to public order but to the state. A top-ranking Mexican intelligence official has noted in interview that criminal gangs pose a national security threat to the integrity of the state. Cartels are even trying to take over the Mexican Congress by funding political campaigns, CISEN director Guillero Valdes alleged. Should Mexico's gangs cement their hold further, Mexico could possibly become a criminal-state largely controlled by narco-gangs. This is not just a threat to Mexico, however.

As the intensity of the violence grows, so does the possibility that Tijuana and Juarez's high-intensity street warfare will migrate north. Recent cartel warfare in Arizona indicates that America has become a battleground for drug cartels clashing over territory, putting American citizens and law enforcement at risk. But the northward migration of cartel warfare is not the worst consequence of Mexico's criminal insurgency. A lawless Mexico will be a perfect staging ground for terrorists seeking to operate in North America. American policymakers must act to protect our southern flank.

State of Siege: Mexico's Criminal Insurgency (Full PDF Article)

Maras in Central America

National Security Implications of Gang Activity South of the Border

by COL Terry Saltsman and LTC Ben Welch III, Small Wars Journal

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The strategic nature of conflict and violence, in addition to the definition of insurgent, is in a state of rapid change in both the defense and intelligence community. In the post September 11, 2001 world the United States is compelled to take a 360 degree view of the world in its efforts to "observe, orient, decide and act" against potential threats to vital national interests.

The challenge facing today's defense establishment is an asymmetrical enemy that most Western militaries are ill equipped to challenge and defeat in a manner that is acceptable to the civilian population. If Iraq has taught us anything it is that even the best publicly supported military plan can turn sour, and that support can wane, if the operation morphs into a perceived tar pit. It is imperative that the public's discernment of the events that will lead to ultimate victory be molded in an honest and realistic manner. This is increasingly essential in our pursuit of terrorists.

In the months following the unthinkable acts of 9/11, many terrorism experts specializing in violent conflict began to ponder the expanded dimensions of the new face of terror as it might apply toward the United States. Soon after, when President Bush introduced the American public to the "War Against Terrorism," many of these same individuals turned their attention on the obvious avenues of Middle Eastern and Islamic Fundamentalist centric terrorism.

In the past several years the United States has pursued the "War Against Terrorism" on a number of fronts. In one, fighting in a conventional manner, territory has been the central issue with military forces seeking and then taking control of entire countries (Afghanistan and Iraq). In another scenario, Special Operation cells have worked with the military forces of concerned regimes in order to restrict the use of territory by terrorists seeking to establish training camps in countries such as Algeria and Mali.

With so many issues confronting the National Security interests of the United States it is easy to overlook one particular unprotected, and often ignored, flank -- the maras (gangs) of Latin America.

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