MEXICO SENDS ITS MILITARY INTO DRUG WAR

Mexican President's Crackdown On Increasingly Violent Drug Cartels
Has So Far Met With Mixed Success

ACAPULCO, Guerrero -- On the sun-kissed beach, women paraded by in
bikinis, vendors sold cheap bracelets to tourists, and heavyset men
in Speedos sipped margaritas.

Up on the boardwalk, though, members of Mexico's elite federal police
force, armed with machine guns, pulled over cars for random
inspections, stopped city buses and checked trunks and IDs.

More than 250 people were slain last year in this Pacific resort as
it became the latest battleground between rival cartels battling for
supremacy of the multibillion-dollar drug trade.

After what experts called a decade of paralysis, corruption and
inefficiency, newly elected President Felipe Calderon has sent 20,000
Mexican soldiers and federal police to six states to confront the drug cartels.

It remains to be seen whether Calderon's operations, the defining
action of his young administration, will restore law and order or are
a publicity gambit, as his critics claim.

What is more clear is that, as the war between the Matamoros-based
Gulf Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel plunges into its third year,
Mexico has passed into a period of violence unprecedented in the
nation's modern history.

Police are gunned down inside their own headquarters, the executions
videotaped by gloating hit men; traffickers are decapitated, their
heads spilled across dance floors as warnings; federal lawmakers are
sprayed with bullets; singers are murdered after concerts; former
havens such as Monterrey have become battlefields; beach resorts have
become militarized zones.

"The Mexican state wasn't ready for this war," said Jorge Chabat, a
Mexico City analyst who specializes in criminal justice. "The
narco-traffickers have traditionally lived in their own dimension,
with their own laws. Until recently the narcos didn't leave that
dimension. Now we're seeing them leaving, like ghosts leaving a haunted house."

Luis Astorga, a sociology professor at Mexico City's National
Autonomous University, says the Gulf Cartel, with its armed wing of
former army officers known as Zetas, has accelerated the levels of destruction.

"It's part of the psychological war, which they learned in the
counterinsurgency while they were in the military," he said. "They're
killing machines without ethical brakes."

Few expect Calderon to dismantle the cartels, or even seriously
weaken them. "He's trying to establish a minimum of order," Chabat
said. "He's sending a message that someone is in charge."

Calderon has earned praise from the White House for his firm stance
against the cartels and for extraditing some top drug lords,
including Osiel Cardenas, who was running the Gulf Cartel from his
maximum-security prison cell.

But at home, Calderon faces criticism from those who think he's using
the anti-drug operations to inject his presidency with popular
support and legitimacy after a bruising electoral battle that he won
last year by less than a percentage point.

The operations have met with mixed success. Even critics acknowledge
that soldiers have brought order to some far-flung pockets that have
long existed beyond the rule of law. While experts warn it's too
early to tell, it seems as though the pace of drug killings -- more
than 2,000 in 2006 -- has slowed since the military was unleashed.

At the same time, a government report says the cartels remain intact
and executions have spread to previously violence-free areas.

In the central state of Aguascalientes, four local police officers
were killed Feb. 15. A Michoacan gang tied to the Gulf Cartel and
known for decapitating its enemies claimed responsibility.

In the previously quiet border town of Agua Prieta, across from
Douglas, Ariz., the police chief was gunned down Monday in an ambush
reminiscent of the worst violence in beleaguered Nuevo Laredo.

Echoing a common sentiment, Acapulco bar manager Ulises Olivera calls
the military operations a Band-Aid. "It's like the cockroach effect,"
he said. "The true narcos just went to other states. When (the
military) leaves, they will be back. Everyone knows that."

And in some cases, the traffickers seem to have been emboldened by
the federal operations.

In Acapulco, traffickers targeted officials in early February, just
days after federal forces fanned out across the city. Gunmen dressed
as soldiers penetrated a local police station, killing seven and
videotaping the massacre.

Mexican cartels have emerged as the undisputed lords of drug
trafficking in the Western Hemisphere with the downfall of the
Colombian cartels in the late 1990s.

Alliances among the top four cartels -- the Sinaloa Cartel with the
border-based Juarez Cartel, and the Gulf Cartel with the Tijuana
Cartel -- have made it largely a two-sided struggle.

In the past, drug lords have recognized that extreme violence sparks
international pressure, which is bad for business. Former drug lord
Amado Carrillo Fuentes reportedly brokered an agreement between rival
cartels in the 1990s to protect business, and some think it's
possible the military operations will spur a similar agreement.

"That's what Calderon is hoping for," Chabat said. "But it can't
happen if one cartel sees the other as weak."

In that scenario, the cartels will continue their three-year-old war
until a victor emerges from the ashes.

Previous President Vicente Fox gets much of the blame for what many
call a flawed strategy against the drug cartels.

Fox targeted high-profile drug leaders, such as Gulf Cartel leader
Cardenas, but seemed unprepared for the chaos and reprisals that resulted.

Fox's term of "isolated or nonexistent actions left behind
infiltrated institutions, decapitated police officers, corrupted
judges, gunned-down prosecutors and disappeared journalists," wrote
political analyst Denise Dresser in Mexico's Reforma newspaper
recently. Mexico is "a kidnapped state that Calderon is trying to
rescue with a daring and high-risk strategy. If Calderon wins, he
fortifies his presidency and national security. If he loses, he puts
both at risk."