The killing of seven state law enforcement officials in Guerrero on 6 February highlighted major problems with the federal government's offensives across the country against the drug gangs. The principal problem is the suspicion the feds have of local police. This means that there is little coordination and even confrontation between federal and local law enforcers. Another problem is that law enforcement, at both the federal and local level, is handicapped by leaks to the drug gangs. Gloomy academics claim that unless there is a radical change in the way the government attacks organised crime, it will not win its war.
The feds, usually from the Policia Federal Preventiva (PFP), the army and marines, assume that the local police and law enforcement agencies are hopelessly compromised: either in the pay of the drug gangs or so frightened of them that they keep well out of the drug gangs' way. So the feds either disarm the local police, as they did when they moved into Tijuana on 2 January (see WR-07-01) or ignore them, as they did in Guerrero. In Guerrero, Eduardo Murueta, the state attorney general, all but blamed the feds' disdain for the local police for the deaths of the seven on 6 February: four state policemen; one state prosecutor and two secretaries were gunned down.
Murueta claimed that the commanders of the 7,600 or so federal troops and policemen deployed against the drug trade in Guerrero had not met their local counterparts and had not set up any sort of coordination with them. The drug gangs exploited this lack of coordination by sending in two teams of killers disguised as federal soldiers to two police stations in Acapulco on 6 February. The state policemen were taken in by the disguises and so allowed the "soldiers" into the police stations; there were no passwords or recognition codes, which might have alerted the local policemen that something was not quite right about the soldiers. Once the soldiers were inside, they opened fire. According to eye-witnesses, one gang of "soldiers" was accompanied by a film crew which apparently recorded the slaughter.
Murueta gave a broad hint that as a result of the killings, feelings were now running high inside the local police, particularly the local Policía Investigadora Ministerial. The risk for the federal government is that there is a repeat of the embarrassing occasion in Nuevo Laredo in June 2005 when local policemen opened fire on the federal policemen arriving in the town. This occurred during the first phase of the previous government's México Seguro operation, which used just the PFP to replace local policemen. The current government is deploying soldiers and marines as well.
The federal government rejects Murueta's accusations about the lack of coordination. It prefers the theory that the policemen who were killed were involved in the drug trade and thus were killed in a settling of scores with rival gangsters. On 6 February, the federal Procuraduría General de la Republica immediately declared that the killings were part of a "settling of scores": most commentators took that phrase to mean simply that the drug gangsters were counterattacking in Acapulco against the federal offensive, even though the PGR made no mention of regret about the policemen's deaths in Acapulco. On 7 February the PGR clarified its claim and said that one of the leads it was following was that the dead policemen were involved in the drug business and had thus been killed by rivals.
The underlying problem for the federal government is that the much-hyped offensives against the drug trade have not delivered much in the way of high profile captures or major seizures of drugs. The federal government, unwittingly, drew attention to the lack of success by trying to mitigate the effects of killings in Guerrero. The policemen in Guerrero were killed in the morning. In the afternoon the federal government claimed a couple of successes. It made its biggest ever drug seizure at Mexico City airport and then claimed to have dismantled a team of money launderers working for the Cartel de Juárez who handled the proceeds of the gang's sales in the northeastern US.
The army is beginning to show some signs of unease at the way it is being deployed. At the end of this month (February) the minister of defence, Guillermo Galván Galván has agreed to a major summit. All 12 of the country's regional commanders and all 45 of the zonal commanders will assemble to assess progress so far.
Already NGOs involved in human rights have warned the government against using the army for police work. The army too, which has a much higher public reputation than the police, is unhappy about a prolonged involvement. The army's reputation was badly dented when it transpired in 1997 that General Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo, then Mexico's top anti-narcotics officer, was in the pay of a major drug-trafficking gang, the Cartel de Juárez. Gutiérrez Rebollo was arrested in February 1997 and the army was subsequently withdrawn from the war against the drug gangs.
The lack of intelligence
The big operational problem in the war against drug gangsters is the poor intelligence the government forces receive. The government is likely to get even less information after it raised the stakes in the war with the drug trade when it started, on 19 January, to hand over to the US any drug trafficker the US wanted to prosecute: drug barons now know that they will not be able to continue to run their business from gaol even after they have been arrested, as Osiel Cárdenas, leader of the Cartel del Golfo, did; until he was extradited to the US on 20 January. US jails are much more intimidating places than Mexican jails, so drug barons are likely to take fewer risks of being caught.
What should be worrying the federal government is that it is not only local policemen who are in the pay of the drug gangs. Although the federal authorities seized 1 tonne of cocaine (worth around US$35m) at Mexico City's airport on 6 February, they did not nab the people who should have taken delivery of the drugs. The cocaine was hidden in 25 suitcases on a flight from Caracas. Mexico's biggest drug haul in 2006, 5.5t of cocaine at Ciudad del Carmen, also originated from Venezuela. This coincidence suggests that the Venezuelan anti-drug authorities are tipping off their Mexican counterparts about major shipments. Yet at neither Ciudad del Carmen nor Mexico City were the intended recipients of the drugs caught. This suggests that the drug gangs became aware of the Venezuelan tip-offs.
Academics gloomily argue that the government will lose its war against drugs unless it is able to push through constitutional reforms to focus government efforts on beating the drug trade. One major advantage for the drug traffickers is that the authorities' anti-drugs efforts are diffused across municipal, state and national police forces. Another advantage the drug traffickers have is that their huge cashflows mean that they can bribe their enemies: traditionally Mexican police and prosecutors have been offered a choice:
plomo o plata (a bullet or cash).
To be fair, the government is trying to address the coordination problem. The public security minister, Genaro García Luna, said on 4 February that he intended to set up a separate department, technically a deputy ministry, to focus on the war against the drug trade and organised crime.
Clumsily, García floated the idea at a meeting with senators from the ruling Partido Acción Nacional. This looks like another attempt by the government to generate political capital out of its anti-drugs initiatives. Opposition politicians note that the government initially concentrated its anti-drug efforts in two states which are holding important elections this year, Michoacán and Baja California. Senators from the Partido Revolucionario Institucional and the Partido de la Revolución Democrática said that García's idea was half-baked because it could lead to a duplication of efforts.
In Mexico, under the constitution, prosecutions are handled by the Procuraduría General de la República. According to one senator from the opposition Partido de la Revolución Democrática, the most the public security ministry, the SSP, can do is to advise the PGR: what it cannot do, without breaking the constitution, is take over prosecutions, which is what García Luna appears to want to do. García Luna told PAN senators that this year his ministry, the SSP, would hire another 8,000 university graduates, presumably mostly lawyers, to bolster its forces for the war on organised crime. This would take the ministry's headcount up to 20,000. The SSP is traditionally a junior ministry, subservient to the interior ministry and the
PGR.
Two soldiers killed in Sinaloa
Even though both this government and its predecessor have tried to do something about the violence in Sinaloa, the killing continues. Sinaloa was one of the three states originally targeted by President Vicente Fox's México Seguro initiative in June 2005. The current government of Felipe Calderón Hinojosa has also identified the state as one where the drug trade is challenging the elected authorities for control of the state. The government recently reinforced troops and police deployed in the state when it launched its third front in its war against the drug trade. Sinaloa is part of the so-called "Golden Triangle" along with Durango and Chihuahua which is heavily used by drug traffickers.
The two soldiers were targeted by a vehicle transporting their killers and cut off. The police have recovered over 40 bullet casings from the crime scene which is only three blocks from the centre of Culiacán, the state capital.
The federal Secretaría de Seguridad Pública said that it has been able to trace the car used by the killers through the web of video-cameras covering the centre of the city. The ministry admits, however, there are no clear pictures of the faces of the killers in the car.
