Security & Strategic Review February 2009 (ISSN 1741-4202)

The nature of Mexico's drugs wars — between the rival cartels and between them and the government — appears to be changing in two important ways. The first is that the number of armed confrontations between cartel gunmen and the security forces has been increasing, and the former seem more prone to engaging than to avoiding. The second is that the drug traffickers have begun to enlist the civilian population in political protest actions designed to achieve the withdrawal of the army from the antidrugs effort. The government, for its part, has been moving in the opposite direction, giving the military a greater role in law enforcement.