Escalating violence in Mexico

By Dave Anderson:

The level and sophistication of violence is increasing.  It is increasing from a baseline of general lawlessness on the northern border as multiple cartels fight each other, local police, federal police, the army and a variety of commando groups for control of the extremely lucrative smuggling routes into the United States.  I have noted that the cartels have exhibited a level of theatre command and control that many nation states wish they had as the cartels have been able to shift large bodies of their fighters to critical nodes.  These fighters have been used as a combination of low level street muscle and as urban guerrillas in a quasi-Hobbesian war of all against all.

Earlier this week, a cartel group escalated the level of violence by engaging in a multi-prong attack against a pair of Mexican Army garrisons.  The attack was defeated, but it is indicative of training, concentration of forces and motivation that the cartel was able to attempt such an attack.  The LA Times has more info:

In coordinated attacks, gunmen in armored cars and equipped with grenade launchers fought army troops this week and attempted to trap some of them in two military bases by cutting off access and blocking highways, a new tactic by Mexico's organized criminals...

At least 18 alleged attackers were killed and one soldier wounded in the fighting that erupted Tuesday in half a dozen towns and cities in the states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon, the army said, topping off one of the deadliest months yet...

The increased agility of the drug gangs seen in Tuesday's violence indicates good intelligence, experts here and abroad said. Some of that intelligence comes from taxi drivers, street vendors and scores of other people on the traffickers' payroll who serve as lookouts for drug runners and their henchmen. But Payan and others suggested that some of the precise, street-level intelligence may come from soldiers, adding substance to fear that as the army is increasingly dragged into the drug war it is becoming susceptible to the same cartel-financed corruption that has long corroded police departments and many political structures.