MEXICO VS. DRUG GANGS: A DEADLY CLASH FOR CONTROL

In the Year and a Half Since Calderon Began a Crackdown, 4,100 People
Have Died.

TIJUANA - Mexico is at war.

Helmeted army troops steer Humvees past strip malls in the border city
of Nuevo Laredo, some of the 40,000 soldiers and 5,000 federal police
officers President Felipe Calderon has deployed to secure large swaths
of the country against entrenched drug traffickers.

The No. 2 police officer from Ciudad Juarez dies in a hail of bullets,
and his boss resigns after receiving threats over the police force's
own radio frequency.

Criminals unleash machine guns and grenades in urban battles that the
State Department describes as "equivalent to military small-unit combat."

In the year and a half since Calderon launched a crackdown against
drug gangs, about 4,100 people have died, the government says.At least
1,400 have been killed so far this year, including 170 in Tijuana,
about 400 in Ciudad Juarez and 270 more in the western state of Sinaloa.

Many of the dead were gang members killed by rivals or by the
government. Others have been bystanders. But at least 450 police
officers and soldiers also have been killed.

"It is a real fight," Calderon told reporters recently. "It is a
war."

The president asserts that the level of violence is one measure of
success. He says the cartels have been hurt badly, and that they are
now lashing out at the government and battling one another for control
of territory.

In addition to using military force, Calderon is seeking to strengthen
and clean up Mexico's police. Judicial reforms, such as expanded use
of plea-bargaining, are aimed at inducing low-ranking suspects to
testify against their superiors. And Calderon has agreed to extradite
more than 70 jailed drug suspects to the United States.

But for now, the bulwark of his strategy is the army, which says it
has made more than 5,800 arrests and intercepted 2,900 tons of
marijuana and 24 tons of cocaine. One commentator calculated that
overall, drug seizures have cost traffickers as much as $20 billion.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration reported in November that
street prices of cocaine and methamphetamine had risen, and purity
levels had fallen -- signs interdiction was working.

Despite the effort, many doubt that Calderon is winning the war. A
poll in the Reforma daily on Sunday said 53% of Mexicans believe drug
gangs have the upper hand. The killing of Mexico's top drug cop in his
Mexico City home last month by traffickers with keys to the house
shows infiltration at the highest level, they note.

In Sinaloa state, traffickers have hung posters mocking the 3,600
troops there as "little lead soldiers." In Nuevo Laredo and Reynosa,
another border city, recent banners advertised jobs in the Zetas, one
of the country's most feared crime groups, to soldiers and former
soldiers. They offered "good wages, food and help for your family."

Drug traffickers use severed heads as a tool of terror, leaving them
with notes to taunt police and one another.

Political analysts say the campaign has succeeded mainly
inpushingviolence from one region to another, without uprooting the
mafias that are challenging the power of the Mexican state.Federal
troops often are introduced only after particularly violent
outbreaks.They havehelped bringcalm to Nuevo Laredo,
inTamaulipasstate, for example,only to see the killing increase in
Baja California and Chihuahua, or farther south in Guerrero state.

"It's a strategy of temporary occupation that achieves just moments of
relative quiet, only to return to worsening violence," said Eduardo
Valle, a writer and commentator who once worked as an advisor in the
federal attorney general's office.

Many also doubt the Mexican government can do much more as long as
demand in the United States remains high.

Calderon is relying too heavily on the military and ignoring other
fronts such as money laundering, arms trafficking and intelligence
gathering, said newspaper columnist Jorge Zepeda Patterson. In fact,
drug traffickers often have better intelligence from corrupt police
than the army has.

Mexico has long had problems with the drug trade.What's new is the
scale and ferocity of the violence.Atty. Gen. Eduardo Medina Mora says
deaths are up 47% this year compared with last year.

Largely concentrated along Mexico's 2,000-mile border with the United
States and the Gulf of California state Sinaloa, the violence stems
from the government crackdown, clashes between the cartels and
internal fighting within the crime groups.

Calderon's predecessor, Vicente Fox, also sent troops into the
streets, but his more limited effort was widely regarded as
ineffective. Nearly 9,000 people were killed in drug-related violence
during Fox's six-year term. Calderon, politically weak after winning a
disputed election, chose a popular issue by taking a tougher approach
to drug traffickers.

Troops are now patrolling in 18 of Mexico's 31 states.Working
alongside federal police, they carry out raids and set up checkpoints
to search for drugs, weapons and traffickers. They have disarmed
municipal police to check whether their weapons have been used in
shootings, tested officers for drug use and investigated them for
criminal ties.

Army generals are de facto police chiefs in some zones along the
border.

U.S. officials have praised Calderon's decision to extradite drug
suspects, including Osiel Cardenas, the former leader of the so-called
Gulf cartel, despite Mexico's traditional reluctance to send citizens
to the U.S. to face charges. The Bush administration also has proposed
a $1.4-billion three-year aid package for Mexico and Central America
that would provide Mexico with helicopters, high-tech scanners and
other equipment.

Most drug experts agree that the army has made it harder to move drugs
to U.S. markets and sharpened gang turf battles. But there is no sign
that it has dislodged trafficking groups from their strongholds, or
that cartel infighting will come to an end any time soon.

Even in places such as the western state of Michoacan, where large
numbers of troops were sent, suspected drug hit men fatally shot Mayor
Marcelo Ibarra of Villa Madero on Sunday as he was returning from a
family outing, the state attorney general's office said.

In Nuevo Laredo, where drug gangs once battled openly in the streets,
officials and residents say the presence of hundreds of troops has
created an air of relative calm.

"It's a lot safer," said Juan Pablo Castano Garza, an investment
broker. "It used to be that people were afraid to go out at night."

But residents still drop their voices to a whisper when talking about
the Zetas, whose original leaders were former soldiers. The Zetas have
cemented the dominance of the Gulf cartel in Nuevo Laredo.

In Sinaloa state, the government faced a new setback last
week.Grenade-hurling hit men killed seven federal agents and wounded
four others in Culiacan, the state capital.

Organized crime has nationwide reach, with drug trafficking groups
vying for control of shipment routes. But each works from a home base,
with the Gulf cartel in Tamaulipas and the three other major gangs
operating from Ciudad Juarez, Sinaloa state and Tijuana.

Analysts and officials say factional fighting is the result of unusual
ferment in recent years due to the emergence of spinoff groups and the
arrests or deaths of older crime bosses capable of brokering peace.

The archetypal Mexican drug cartel, with a kingpin leader and a
top-down hierarchy, appears to be giving way. In place of a handful of
cartels that have dominated drug smuggling in Mexico during the last
three decades may emerge a multitude of smaller groups seeking a piece
of the action.

The alliance of traffickers in Sinaloa is showing signs of coming
apart as a result of fighting between Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman and a
former deputy, Arturo Beltran Leyva.

This already has happened to the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix
organization. The death of Ramon Arellano Felix in a 2002 shootout
with police in Mazatlan, and subsequent arrests of brothers Benjamin
and Francisco Javier, has left day-to-day operations in the hands of
less-established subordinates, who are themselves under pressure.
Federal police in March arrested Gustavo Rivera Martinez, the gang's
suspected financial mastermind, and Saul Montes de Oca, a reputed cell
leader.

Remnants have branched into enterprises such as kidnapping and car
robbery. Internal tensions within the Arellano Felix group erupted
April 26, when gunmen battled along a commercial street in the middle
of the night. The shootout left 13 gunmen dead, and littered the
street with 1,500 spent casings and nearly two dozen damaged vehicles.

The Tijuana gunfight apparently pitted factions led by two
lieutenants, Teodoro Garcia Simental and Jorge Briceno.

The introduction of 3,300 federal troops, including reinforcements
sent after the April 26 shootout, has added a new element. Soldiers
have engaged in several shootouts with drug suspects, including a
three-hour battle near an elementary school in broad daylight.

"The violence we are seeing in Tijuana is part of the restructuring of
the cartels. The process of fragmentation is just beginning," said
Jorge Chabat, a Mexico City-based security analyst.

In Ciudad Juarez, violence has surged since the beginning of the year.
More than 100 people died in March, prompting Calderon to send an
additional 1,500 soldiers to augment the 500 already there. The
slayings slowed but then picked up.

Last month, the city's No. 2 police officer, Juan Antonio Roman
Garcia, died in a torrent of bullets outside his home. A week later,
his boss, Police Chief Guillermo Prieto Quintana, quit after receiving
threats by telephone and over the police force's own radio frequency.

A retired military official, Roberto Orduna Cruz, has been named to
succeed him.

Officials say police will get heavier weaponry, including compact
machine guns and more powerful handguns.

"We are going to win, although it might not look like it," said Medina
Mora, the attorney general. g