MEXICO SAYS CRACKDOWN IS PRESSURING CARTELS

'There Will Be No Retreat' In Drug War, Official Vows

MEXICO CITY - Little more than a year after President Felipe Calderon
launched an offensive against Mexico's powerful drug cartels, the
gangsters seem willing and able to strike back with a vengeance.

The arrests last week in Mexico City of 11 heavily armed men, whom
authorities say were assassins for the Sinaloa Cartel led by Joaquin
"El Chapo" Guzman, suggest the crackdown is having an impact, officials say.

Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, a top anti-narcotics official in the
federal attorney general's office, told Mexican interviewers that he
had been the target of at least two assassination attempts in the past month.

"They plan to generate violence to force a retreat by authorities,"
Genaro Garcia Luna, Calderon's secretary of public security and one
of Mexico's top cops, said last week.

But, Garcia vowed, "There will be no retreat. We are not going to
take a step back. The fight against crime is going to to be
permanent, systematic."

Departure From the Norm

If both sustained and successful, such resolve may well mark a
dramatic departure from the norm in Mexico's decades-long dance with
its criminal empires.

Since the country became a major transshipment point for South
American cocaine headed for U.S. consumers in the 1980s, Mexico's
politicians and security forces tended to treat the crime of drug
trafficking as a nuisance - and too frequently as a source of illicit gain.

Over the years, some gangsters, including cartel bosses, were jailed
or killed, and some police officers and soldiers were also slain on
anti-narcotics operations.

But the leaders of the cartels rarely targeted senior officials or
challenged the state - as they did in Colombia - because high-level
government officials never really presented much of a threat to their
smuggling business.

The old style might have been best defined in the 1990s when Mexico's
drug czar, an army general praised by U.S. agents for his crackdown
on Mexico's leading trafficking gang, was convicted of working for a
rival group.

But if that were once the way of things, some American and Mexican
officials insist it's not anymore. Since taking office 13 months ago,
Calderon has made the crackdown on drug cartels the anchor of his
administration.

"Our intention is to make it so complicated for them to come through
Mexico that they will seek to smuggle through somewhere else," a
senior Mexican official said, speaking on condition he not be identified.

U.S. Partnership

More than 40 tons of cocaine have been seized since the crackdown
began in December 2006. Top crime bosses have been extradited to face
U.S. courts.

Soldiers and police have battled cartel gunmen on the streets of
border cities. Intelligence-gathering has been enhanced, and more
importantly, acted on.

"People who have come here, who have talked to the Mexican
government, who have engaged, really see a distinction here, a real
expression of political will," said David Johnson, the U.S. assistant
secretary of state for narcotics and law enforcement, who was in
Mexico City last week for talks with Mexican officials.

Johnson is helping shepherd the Bush administration's proposal to
give Calderon's government $1.4 billion worth of law enforcement
technology and training in the coming years to aid in the fight.

The plan faces concerns in the U.S. Congress, which is expected to
vote on it by this summer.

"We think it's appropriate that America be a partner to try to work
with the (Calderon) administration, to try to push this process
forward," Johnson said.

Daunting Challenge

Mexican security forces and senior officials "must be capable of
confronting all the costs, all the risks ... including in lives
offered to achieve the Mexico we desire," Calderon said Friday in an
offhand comment to the Mexico City newspaper El Universal.

But even with such unwavering will, and with the proposed U.S. aid,
the challenge facing Calderon seems daunting.

With annual earnings estimated at $10 billion, Mexico's drug gangs
are deeply embedded in the country's economy. That's especially true
along the key cocaine smuggling routes and in areas where marijuana
and heroin poppies are grown and where crystal methamphetamine is manufactured.

Cartels Have Upper Hand

Drug gangsters control complete towns and wield influence in wide
swaths of entire states. Some local and state police forces, despite
periodic purges of personnel, effectively remain in the gangs' employ.

Supplied with weapons smuggled from the United States and elsewhere,
the cartel's foot soldiers are often better armed than the security forces.

Although leading traffickers like Guzman make the headlines, scores,
even hundreds of smuggling gangs operated across the country. With
such a lucrative return, gang bosses who are jailed or killed are
quickly replaced by their ambitious lieutenants.

Mexico's smugglers grew more powerful and wealthy this decade as
Colombia's cartels splintered into smaller organizations under the
weight of that country's anti-narcotics efforts.

'Superior' Capabilities

At the same time, the fall of Mexico's one-party government at the
ballot box, accompanied by the growing political power of state and
local governments, made it easier for gangsters to gain more
political influence here, said John Bailey, a Mexico expert at
Georgetown University.

"Decentralization and inter-party competition complicates this whole
thing," Bailey said. "The state and local fellows don't have the
firepower or intelligence network to take on these guys. "

Still, Calderon's senior officials insist they'll prevail.

"The great challenge in this effort is to prevent them from taking
root," Garcia, the public security minister, said.

"Their logic of trying to generate violence to intimidate authorities
is not going to work," he said. "The capabilities of the Mexican
government are superior."

[sidebar]

ORCHESTRATING A WAVE OF VIOLENCE

The drug war came to Mexico City last week, and heated up on the
border. The events:

Dec. 18: Police detain five men riding in a car in a section of
southern Mexico City where a senior drug official lives. Three of the
men are police agents.

Jan. 17: Three heavily armed men, allegedly members of the Sinaloa
Cartel, are arrested in the same section of the city as those in
December. Authorities later identified them as part of an assassination squad.

Mond ay: Alfredo Beltran Leyva, one of five brothers accused of being
top leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel, is arrested in Culiacan, capital
of Sinaloa state.

Tuesday: Federal police raid two houses in upscale Mexico City
neighborhoods, arrest 11 alleged assassins for the Sinaloa Cartel and
seize a stockpile of weapons. Soldiers and federal police disarm
police forces in five cities on the Texas border including Nuevo
Laredo and arrest some officers for collaborating with drug traffickers.

Thursday: Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, a senior drug official,
tells reporters the cartel gunmen arrested in Mexico City had planned
to assassinate him.

Friday: Soldiers in Matamoros, across the Rio Grande from
Brownsville, seize 12 automatic rifles, more than 2,600 bullets,
radios, helmets and bulletproof vests from three parked cars, two of
which were army vehicles. Matamoros is said to be the territory of
the Gulf Cartel, whose reputed leader, Osiel Cardenas, is jailed in
Houston awaiting trial on federal charges.