IN JUAREZ, DRUG WAR GETS EVEN BLOODIER

72 Slain This Year in Border City; Worst Is Still to Come, Officials Say

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - This city and Nuevo Laredo have historically
shared a fierce rivalry over the benefits of their border location,
especially when it comes to trade routes. These days, however,
they're competing for a title nobody wants: bloodiest border city.

Since the beginning of the year, Juarez has suffered an onslaught of
killings - 72 as of Wednesday - most of them tied to organized crime.
They are the result of a bloody fight for control of drug
distribution routes to U.S. cities, including Dallas. And U.S. and
Mexican law enforcement officials say the worst is yet to come.

Separately, Mexican officials on Wednesday announced the discovery of
eight bodies buried at a Juarez warehouse.

The surge in violence is generating much concern across the border in
El Paso - worries buttressed by a recent El Paso Times/News Channel 9
poll that showed 64 percent of El Paso residents fear that Juarez
violence is spilling into the U.S.

U.S. and Mexican officials warn that Juarez is all too quickly facing
the fate of Nuevo Laredo, where a bitter cartel feud in the last five
years over transportation routes has left hundreds dead and sent
businesses fleeing to Laredo, Texas.

Among the dead there: journalists, a city council member and a police
chief on the job just seven hours before he was gunned down.
Additionally, the cartels tried to assassinate a federal legislator.
And efforts to clean up the force have stalled as nobody wants the
job of police chief. Local media self-censors to survive.

The violence has diminished, largely the result of 24-hour military
presence, but tensions remain high.

"We're seeing the importation of Nuevo Laredo-style violence being
unleashed to take control of this important gateway," said a senior
U.S. law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of
anonymity. "The ... magnitude, the brutality, the type of violence,
this is what we now call Nuevo Laredo-style. It's a proven strategy
aimed at intimidating the public, law enforcement, the media."

After killing two Juarez police officers this month - nine for the
year - the assassins left a note at a monument for fallen officers
with the names of 17 others they want to kill.

"For those who don't believe it, we will do it," the note said,
followed by the names of the officers. Days later, four of those on
the list were dead and a new list was left, leading one policeman to
say: "This job isn't worth being killed over."

Since the beginning of the year, 40 policemen have left for various
reasons, a spokesman for the Juarez Police said.

The El Paso-Juarez region, the world's largest border community,
touts itself as the capital of the border. But the violence is taking
a toll. Some have fled into El Paso, including at least two
reporters. Carlos Huerta, a reporter for Norte de Ciudad de Juarez
newspaper, left following death threats. "We're reporting maybe 15
percent of what's happening in our city," said Alfredo Quijano,
editor of the newspaper, whose building has received bomb threats.
Mr. Huerta recently returned to work, but the newspaper issued a
statement telling readers his reporters will stick to reporting "dead
bodies and not investigations."

Last week, in broad daylight, fake policemen set up roadblocks to
check for weapons, confiscating a few.

Juarez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz recently warned motorists to be
careful and report any suspicious activity.

'A pragmatic approach' Some analysts say the latest surge in violence
raises questions about the effectiveness of President Felipe
Calderon's counter-drug strategy and how many battles he can take on
without overextending the military. Mr. Calderon has deployed 30,000
soldiers throughout Mexico to take on the cartels - including in
Nuevo Laredo and Reynosa, on the border with Texas. "At some point,
Calderon will have to negotiate agreements with the cartels," said
Howard Campbell, an anthropologist at the University of Texas at El
Paso who is working on a book on Mexico's drug traffickers. "Calderon
knows they can't beat them and so they simply want to control them
and that's not such a bad strategy. It's a pragmatic approach." Mr.
Campbell, who teaches border culture at UTEP, said kingpins are so
entrenched with corrupt law enforcement, that eliminating organized
crime altogether is much more complex.

A spokesman for Mr. Calderon has said no deal with kingpins is under
way. Mr. Calderon himself reiterated his commitment to fighting
cartels during a speech this week in the northern state of Durango.

"Retreating or acting cowardly is not the answer," he said. "Nor
should we act as though this reality doesn't exist."

Meanwhile, El Paso, a city of more than 700,000, is finding itself
dragged into Juarez's messy situation.

At least two victims from Juarez drug fights landed at El Paso's R.E.
Thomason General Hospital, including Cmdr. Fernando Lozano Sandoval
of the Chihuahua State Investigation Agency, hospitalized for 10
days. El Paso police and sheriff's offices increased security at the
hospital during his stay and installed metal detectors to protect
patients. Additionally, some local and U.S. law enforcement officials
say some El Paso residents, suspected of working for Mexican cartels,
have been kidnapped and taken across the border to Juarez.

El Paso police spokesman Javier Sambrano denied that assertion. "We
haven't seen cases of people kidnapped in El Paso," said Mr.
Sambrano, whose department touts El Paso as the second safest city of
its size in the United States. "We do know of cases, maybe six
isolated cases [in the past eight years], of El Pasoans murdered, and
through investigation, we have discovered they had ties to the cartel
in Juarez."

Battle far from over Robert Almonte, executive director of the Texas
Narcotics Officers Association and a 25-year veteran of the El Paso
police department, said he's not ruling out kidnappings.

"It would be naive to say nothing is happening," said Mr. Almonte,
who's running for El Paso Sheriff. "We're a border area, but we're
one area. Do Mexican cartels have a presence in El Paso? The answer
is yes, absolutely yes." Mr. Almonte cited the recent arrest of 21
suspected drug cartel members in Juarez. Five of those arrested were
from El Paso.

U.S. and Mexican intelligence officials said the killings in Juarez
started in early January and described them as a "cleansing" in which
hit men strategically kill members of the Juarez cartel and their
protectors, among them police officers on their payroll.

Several of the 1,600 police officers have either left their jobs, or
taken "sudden vacations," as one Juarez policeman explained. Those
who returned were handed high-power weapons to defend themselves in
the days and weeks to come. Some in the Mexican government say they
believe the Tijuana cartel is moving into Ciudad Juarez. But local
residents and law enforcement officials say the Tijuana cartel is too
weak to be involved.

The battle appears to be between the entrenched Juarez cartel and
members of the Alliance, also known as the Federation and the Golden
Triangle, local intelligence officials say. The Federation is
allegedly headed by Juan Jose Esparragoza-Moreno, also known as "El
Azul ," or the "Blue One," because of his dark skin.

In October 2004, Mr. Esparragoza-Moreno was indicted by the U.S.
government and charged with conspiracy to possess with intent to
distribute a controlled substance. His face is plastered on
billboards in El Paso with a $5 million wanted sign.

The executions - eerily similar to the armed enforcers known as the
Zetas in Nuevo Laredo - raise questions about whether some
paramilitary or mercenary group is behind the killing spree,
intelligence officials from both sides of the border say. The
assassins sport military attire and are methodical in their approach.

What is clear is that the violence and drug activity is far from
ebbing. In the last 48 hours: A top police commander, Juarez native
Ricardo Chacon, was gunned down in nearby Chihuahua City; at least
four people were killed in different parts of Juarez; and three
Juarez banks were robbed on Tuesday alone, possibly by members of the
Juarez cartel. Meanwhile, the military confiscated 4.5 tons of
marijuana and U.S. authorities seized $1.8 million from the back of
an SUV with a driver from Kansas who had been denied entry into
Mexico by Mexican customs officials.

Last week, the assassins allegedly sent out word of their imminent
return and warned the military and anyone else to "stay out of the
way," according to an e-mail sent to Mexican law enforcement and media.