Pubdate: Sat, 12 Feb 2005
Source: Sun News (Myrtle Beach, SC)
Copyright: 2005 Sun Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/sunnews/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/987
Note: apparent 150 word limit on LTEs
Author:  Susana Hayward

MEXICO'S DRUG WAR PITS POLICE AGAINST ELITE EX-COMMANDOS

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico - A car whipped across the street, cutting off the 
taxicab. Six men, sporting military-style crew cuts and sunglasses and 
toting AK-47 assault rifles and walkie-talkies, quickly emerged and 
encircled the cab.

"What are you doing taking photos around here?" one demanded. He examined 
the photographer's press ID, which had been passed nervously through the 
window. Then, as quickly as they'd appeared, they vanished into the gloom 
as darkness approached.

The men were members of the Zetas, former Mexican elite commandos trained 
to combat drug traffickers, who've switched sides. As the government 
dispatches federal police and soldiers to cities along the U.S. border in 
an effort to stanch a war between rival drug gangs, the Zetas are the major 
challenge it faces.

No one knows precisely how many former elite commandos are in the employ of 
drug cartels. But their work is well known in the cities of Nuevo Laredo, 
Reynosa and Matamoros, hard against the U.S. border, where they control 
neighborhoods and watch for any outsiders who might be government spies.

They're thought likely to have been responsible for the execution Jan. 20 
of six prison employees near the federal maximum-security prison at 
Matamoros. And it was fear that they were plotting to bust out jailed drug 
traffickers that prompted a crackdown Jan. 15 at the La Palma prison in 
central Mexico, where one of the country's best-known drug bosses, Osiel 
Cadenas Guillen, was housed.

"There's no antecedent to this type of phenomenon," said Jorge Chabat, a 
political analyst who studies the drug trade. "The majority of other 
criminals don't have this type of training. They move like guerrillas, 
appear in one city and then another. They're not a traditional army. . 
Their violence is sophisticated, and that should worry the Mexican government."

The attorney general's office for years dismissed the Zetas as decimated. 
But officials now acknowledge that curbing them is a main goal of the 
current crackdown, in which hundreds of federal agents have been sent to 
border cities and dozens of inmates have been transferred within the 
correction system to break up prison gangs.

Maximum-security prisons at La Palma, outside Toluca, and Matamoros remain 
under virtual military occupation, and Cardenas, for whom the Zetas are 
thought to work, has been transferred to Matamoros. Another major drug 
boss, Benjamin Arellano Felix, remains imprisoned in La Palma.

Whether the government can beat the Zetas is an open question. Many think 
the Zetas are better-trained and better-armed than their government opponents.

When 100 soldiers encountered a reported eight drug traffickers Jan. 28 in 
the state of Sonora, the troops withdrew. News reports quoted army 
commanders as saying, "They have better weapons. We could do little."

Fear of the Zetas is palpable along the border.

"Everyone's afraid," said a businessman from Laredo, on the U.S. side. 
"Business is down on both sides. You don't mention the Zetas or 
traffickers. Word gets around."

"You say one wrong thing to the wrong person and you and your family end up 
dead in a ditch," one housewife said.

Federal police agents, on patrol in Reynosa, south of Brownsville, Texas, 
asked that they not be identified. "We don't want to die," one said. But 
they also said they believed they'd overcome the Zetas eventually.

"Sooner or later, something's got to give. They'll have to come out to 
resume their dealings. We call it the cockroach effect: They run, but come 
back to the place where there's food," said an officer who helped capture 
Cardenas in Matamoros in 2003.

The Zetas are just one sign of the strength of Mexico's drug gangs even 
from behind bars. The military takeover of La Palma found that drug 
traffickers jailed there had set up a parallel administration for the 
prison, with access to cell phones and other sophisticated communications.

La Palma had become lax, officials said. X-ray machines and metal detectors 
didn't work. Officials said that guards, who make $400 to $900 a month, 
allowed weapons and drugs in.

La Palma wasn't the only place where drug gangs operated. Last Sunday, 
federal authorities arrested the head of President Vicente Fox's travel 
staff, Nahum Acosta, for allegedly passing information to a drug cartel 
about Fox's travel agenda.

Acosta, 42, has denied the charge. He remains under guard at a secret safe 
house, according to Mexican news reports.

Fox, who at first pronounced the arrest a sign of the drug rings' 
capabilities, has since tried to downplay its importance, saying Acosta had 
no access to "confidential information."

Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha said his office had "serious" 
and "convincing" proof of a leak from the president's office.
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