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Shop: Kraken Kratom Red Vein Kratom   Unfolding Nature Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order

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InvisibleveggieM

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
Mexico orders army offensive against drug gangs
    #6358498 - 12/11/06 05:28 PM (17 years, 2 months ago)

Mexico orders army offensive against drug gangs
December 11, 2006 - Reuters

MEXICO CITY, Dec 11 (Reuters) - Mexico's new government, struggling with rampant drug trafficking and crime, ordered thousands of troops to the western state of Michoacan on Monday to fight drug cartels locked in a vicious turf war.

President Felipe Calderon's security cabinet said more than 5,000 soldiers and Marines were being deployed to crack down on drug gangs in the state, a key air and sea transshipment point for U.S.-bound cocaine.

"We will establish control points on highways and secondary roads to limit drug trafficking, along with raids and arrests," Interior Minister Francisco Ramirez Acuna said.

The soldiers, accompanied by federal police, also would search for and destroy drug plantations in the state, famous for poppy and marijuana production, Ramirez Acuna said.

Almost 3,000 people, mostly drug gang members and police, have been killed in the past two years in escalating cartel wars across Mexico.

The conservative Calderon took office on Dec. 1 and has vowed to stand up to the gangs, who are frequently better armed than local police and have de facto control of some coastal areas and parts of the U.S.-Mexican border.

Hundreds of people have been killed in the once-tranquil state. Brutal drug gangs fighting for control of lucrative production and trafficking routes leave behind severed heads and mutilated corpses, reminding rival gangs and authorities who is in charge.

This weekend, troops captured several gang members in three separate raids in Michoacan. One involved a shootout.

Federal forces in Michoacan, Calderon's home state, also scored a record drug bust last week, intercepting 20 tons of ephedrine, a tightly controlled chemical used for making methamphetamine.

Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cocaine, amphetamines and heroin pass through Mexico en route to the United States.

Calderon's predecessor, Vicente Fox, launched what he called the "mother of all battles" against cartels in early 2005, but failed to rein in the gangs' power.

Violence actually increased after he sent hundreds of troops and federal police to cities along the northern border.

Although the drug war is the most urgent and dangerous issue for Calderon, he must also handle protests from leftists who claim he stole the July election, and violence in the tourist city of Oaxaca, where activists trying to oust a state governor have repeatedly clashed with police.

Election observers found few anomalies with the vote, which Calderon won by a razor-thin margin, but the new president is starting his six-year term questioned by millions of voters who back his defeated leftist rival Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

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InvisibleveggieM

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
Re: Mexico orders army offensive against drug gangs [Re: veggie]
    #6368500 - 12/13/06 11:25 PM (17 years, 2 months ago)

Mexican soldiers kill drug traffickers
December 13, 2006 - CNN

AGUILILLA, Mexico (AP) -- Soldiers killed several drug traffickers in a gunbattle in the rugged mountains of western Mexico on Wednesday, the military said.

The soldiers battled the traffickers near Aguililla, a remote farming community overrun by a drug cartel, said Gen. Hector Sanchez, one of several officers in charge of the offensive.

Sanchez said several traffickers were killed in the shootout, but said the exact number could not be confirmed until later. No army casualties were reported.

On Monday, President Felipe Calderon sent soldiers, sailors and federal police to Michoacan state to crack down on the drug gangs that have been waging a bloody war over lucrative shipping routes for marijuana and opium plantations and billion-dollar smuggling routes to the United States.

Calderon, who took office December 1, said Wednesday he was also assigning 10,000 soldiers and sailors -- mainly from military police units -- to the federal police force, which is used in everything from riot control to drug interdiction. Many current members of that police force are on loan from the military.

"We must, at all cost, prevent this public safety problem from becoming a national security problem, to the extent it challenges the Mexican government," Calderon said in announcing the transfers. "This task will not be easy or quick, but the public demands results and we must act immediately."

There have been more than 2,000 drug-related killings across Mexico this year. Calderon's mountainous home state of Michoacan has been one of the worst hit.

Investigators say Aguililla, about 120 miles southwest of Morelia, the state capital, has been a key stronghold of a Michoacan cartel called Los Valencia, who have carried out a wave of killings of rival gangsters and state police.

The winding mountain roads into the town make perfect terrain for ambushes, and assailants killed 10 police in two recent attacks on nearby highways.

Most visitors stay away from the community, and journalists from nearby cities have been turned away by armed men.

"It's a no man's land. But with this operation we can re-conquer it and the rest of the state," said Francisco Garciduenas, a top federal prosecutor in the nearby town of Apatzingan.

On Wednesday, soldiers patrolled Aguililla's streets supported by armored vehicles with machine-gun turrets and black helicopters flying low over the town. Other soldiers set up checkpoints, ordering passengers out of cars and buses and frisking them for guns or drugs.

Jaime Lopez, a soldier pointing his rifle at a resident he was searching, said he was not scared of the drug traffickers.

"They are tough, but we are tougher," he said.

Many residents welcomed the forces, saying they preferred military occupation to the rule of drug traffickers.

"It has been a nightmare here. I've been scared to walk the streets, even in the day," said Mateo Ramos, 50, who recently returned to Aguililla after working on a farm in California.

The new offensive follows earlier crackdowns by Mexican presidents who ordered mass firings of corrupt police, revamped courts, sent thousands of troops to battle traffickers and accelerated drug seizures -- without making much of a dent in the quantity of narcotics crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

During the term of Calderon's predecessor Vicente Fox, police arrested several top drug lords and tens of thousands of their soldiers. But investigators say his efforts created an underworld power vacuum in the country responsible for most of the marijuana, heroin, cocaine and methamphetamines in the United States.

Investigators say the Gulf cartel unleashed a bloody turf war after it sought to battle its way into Michoacan after the 2004 arrest of Valencia drug gang leader Armando Valencia.

The Michoacan violence has included a wave of decapitations, with the human heads left in public places with written warnings. One recent message in Michoacan read: "See. Hear. Shut Up. If you want to stay alive."

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InvisibleLe_Canard
The Duk Abides

Registered: 05/16/03
Posts: 94,392
Loc: Earthfarm 1 Flag
Re: Mexico orders army offensive against drug gangs [Re: veggie]
    #6368535 - 12/13/06 11:36 PM (17 years, 2 months ago)

I don't see this working any better than Fox's campaign. :rolleyes:

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InvisibleZippoZM
Knomadic
 User Gallery

Registered: 06/17/03
Posts: 13,227
Loc: Pongyang, North Korea
Re: Mexico orders army offensive against drug gangs [Re: Le_Canard]
    #6368594 - 12/13/06 11:51 PM (17 years, 2 months ago)

damnit, this is just going to make it harder to travel and drive in mexico for us non mexicans


--------------------
PEACE

:mushroom2:zippoz:mushroom2:



"in times of widespread chaos and confusion, it has been the duty of more advanced human beings - artists, scientists, clowns, and philosophers - to create order. In such times as ours however, when there is too much order, too much m management, too much programming and control, it becomes the duty of superior men and women and women to fling their favorite monkey wrenches into the machinery. To relieve the repression of the human spirit, they must sow doubt and disruption"

"People do it every day, they talk to themselves ... they see themselves as they'd like to be, they don't have the courage you have, to just run with it."

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InvisibleveggieM

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
Re: Mexico orders army offensive against drug gangs [Re: veggie]
    #6372229 - 12/14/06 10:17 PM (17 years, 2 months ago)

Mexico to send troops to other states in drug war
December 14, 2006 - Reuters

MEXICO CITY, Dec 14 (Reuters) - Mexico announced plans on Thursday to broaden its fight against feuding drug gangs, saying it would dispatch soldiers to other areas after sending 7,000 troops and police to one violence-plagued state this week.

"We started in Michoacan, where there was a more intense situation of violence, but the same will be applied in other states," Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora told reporters.

More than 500 hundred people have died since January in drug-related violence in Michoacan, the home state of new President Felipe Calderon, part of a power struggle between rival cartels across Mexico that has killed about 3,000 people in the last two years.

Calderon's government this week sent soldiers, federal police and Navy forces to Michoacan to try to recapture areas controlled by the gangs and destroy opium and marijuana plantations. The gangs are fighting for control of lucrative drug routes and plantations.

At least one suspected trafficker was killed in a battle with troops in the western state on Wednesday, the government said.

The violence in Mexico stems from a feud between groups linked to two drug gangs, the Gulf Cartel from the country's northeast and an alliance of traffickers from the western state of Sinaloa.

The Sinaloa gang is led by Mexico's most wanted man, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, who escaped from a high-security prison in 2001, just weeks after Calderon's predecessor President Vicente Fox took office.

Fox, whose term ended last month, later announced the "mother of all battles" against narcotics smugglers but did not extensively use the military to fight the traffickers. Despite some high-profile arrests, Fox failed to stop a surge in the killings.

The ruthlessness of the gangs, who in one infamous attack rolled five severed heads onto the dance floor of a nightclub in Michoacan in September, has shocked even crime-hardened Mexico.

The violence has spread from northern border states where marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine are smuggled into the United States, to Pacific coastal regions like Michoacan and tourist resort Acapulco, in the state of Guerrero.

Medina Mora denied any link between the offensive and the murder of the cousin of Mexico's first lady, who was found shot dead in his car on Tuesday, the day after security forces moved into Michoacan.

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InvisibleveggieM

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
Re: Mexico orders army offensive against drug gangs [Re: veggie]
    #6380979 - 12/17/06 08:22 PM (17 years, 2 months ago)

Mexico Nets Suspected Cartel Leader
By IOAN GRILLO, The Associated Press
December 17, 2006 - Washington Post

MEXICO CITY -- Mexican soldiers have captured a suspected drug cartel boss in the most significant arrest since President Felipe Calderon sent thousands of troops to restore order in a western state terrorized by drug gangs, the military said Sunday.

Elias Valencia, a suspected head of the Valencia cartel, was arrested along with four other people Friday at a mountain ranch near the town of Aguililla in Michoacan state, said Gen. Cornelio Casio, one of the officials in charge of the offensive.

Last week, Calderon ordered more than 6,000 soldiers, marines and federal police to his native state of Michoacan, which has seen a wave of drug-related killings and beheadings.

Officials blame the violence on a turf war between the Valencia and Gulf cartels over lucrative marijuana plantations and smuggling routes for cocaine and methamphetamine to the United States.

Mexican investigators say Elias Valencia is one of several figures who have run the cartel since his father, Armando Valencia, was arrested in 2003. He and the others were arrested with several hundred pounds of marijuana and an arsenal of firearms, Casio said.

Authorities say Aguililla, located 120 miles southwest of the state capital of Morelia, has been a key stronghold of the Valencia cartel. Assailants recently killed 10 police in attacks on winding highways nearby that are a common site for ambushes, authorities said.

Calderon, who was narrowly elected in July on a law-and-order platform and took office Dec. 1, has vowed a nationwide battle against drug violence that has claimed more than 2,000 lives this year.

Under the new offensive, soldiers supported by armored vehicles and helicopters have combed Michoacan state for drug traffickers and drug plantations.

On Wednesday, troops clashed with suspected traffickers protecting a marijuana plantation, killing one man and arresting another. On Saturday, soldiers arrested a man accused of being a key Sinaloa cartel lieutenant in the western city of Guadalajara.

But many security experts say it will take more than force to stop the cartels, who earn billions of dollars supplying U.S. markets. Calderon's predecessor, Vicente Fox, sent thousands of troops to battle drug gangs, make drug seizures and arrest high-profile traffickers without significantly reducing the quantity of narcotics crossing into the United States.

Critics of Fox's crackdown say it created a power vacuum in the cartels, leading to increased violence as rivals fought to replace the arrested leaders.

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