MEXICO'S DRUG CARTEL MOVES TO U.S.

Atlanta a Hub for East Coast

Violence Is Following, but to a Lesser Extent

Mexico City - A series of drug-related kidnappings in Gwinnett County
is part of the emergence locally of what federal authorities say is a
problem of national scope: powerful Mexican drug cartels whose tactics
have been honed in years of bloody conflicts in their home country.

They say the cartels operate in dozens of U.S. cities, including metro
Atlanta, and are moving to consolidate their control of the entire
supply chain of illegal drugs.

The Justice Department says that in the Atlanta area, Mexican
trafficking organizations already control the lucrative
methamphetamine trade, with the arrival of purer Mexican ice
methamphetamine supplanting local powder meth production.

In violence associated with the cartels, Gwinnett has seen at least
nine drug-related kidnappings this year, including a man who was bound
and chained in a basement in Lilburn and repeatedly beaten over an
alleged $300,000 drug debt.

David Nahmias, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia,
said the Atlanta area is considered especially enticing to the cartels
because it is a convenient distribution hub for the highly profitable
East Coast market.

For now, the cartel-related violence remains contained within the
organizations and is not affecting the larger community, said Jack
Killorin, head of the federal Atlanta High Intensity Drug Trafficking
Area Task Force.

"We're not seeing violence across the cartels," he said. "They're just
not in conflict. Some people would say that at this end of the
distribution chain, they're more interested in cooperating and making
money than in conflict. Others would say there's plenty to go around
so there's no need for conflict."

Evidence of that plenty came in December, when local and federal
agencies targeted two Mexican trafficking organizations, seizing more
than 200 pounds of cocaine, 17 pounds of methamphetamine and as much
as $10 million in cash. Officials said the groups used metro Atlanta
as the distribution point for drugs smuggled from Mexico and for cash
waiting to be smuggled back to Mexico.

Killorin said the two groups were affiliated with the Federation, one
of two dominant Mexican drug cartels among the seven Mexican officials
have identified.

The Federation is also known as the Sinaloa Cartel because it is based
in the Pacific Coast state dubbed the Sicily of Mexico because it is
the birthplace of many of Mexico's most important drug lords. Its
leader is Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, Mexico's most notorious drug
capo, who attained an almost mythical stature after escaping from a
federal prison in 2001.

In recent months, the Federation, which officials say controls Pacific
smuggling routes from Central America, has been torn apart by an
internal feud that they say may be responsible for a spike in violence
in Sinaloa and its capital, Culiacan.

Killorin said the Federation in recent years has eclipsed the Gulf
Cartel as the predominant organization in the Southeastern United
States. The Gulf Cartel, headquartered in the border town of
Matamoros, once controlled East Coast operations but has been engaged
in a brutal war with the Federation for years.

Dominant Distributors

Ricardo Ravelo, the author of several books on Mexican cartels and an
investigative reporter for Proceso magazine -- an influential
muckraking journal which has criticized the Mexican government's
effort to fight the cartels -- said the Federation is well organized
on the American side of the border.

"I'm talking about distribution as well as the collection of profits,
money laundering and smuggling money back to Mexico," Ravelo said.

Nationwide, the Mexican cartels "are the dominant distributors of
wholesale quantities of cocaine in the United States, and no other
group is positioned to challenge them in the near term," said the
Justice Department's 2008 National Drug Threat Assessment.

"Their idea is to control the whole economic process of production and
distribution," said Georgina Sanchez, an independent security
consultant in Mexico and executive director of a public safety think
tank.

While in some areas of the United States the cartels have entered into
partnerships with local gangs, in others they have directly assumed
control of local drug distribution, analysts say.

The Zetas, former Mexican soldiers who have become the armed wing of
the Gulf Cartel, have been linked to killings along the Texas side of
the border and as far north as Dallas, according to court records and
press accounts. The Sinaloa Cartel has been linked to the Houston drug
trade. And in Phoenix, suspected Mexican traffickers dressed as
Phoenix Police SWAT officers recently attacked a home with
high-caliber weapons.

"The violence in [American] cities has a direct cause and effect
related to what is taking place in Mexico," said Fred Burton, vice
president for counterterrorism at Stratfor, an Austin, Texas-based
private intelligence company.

"The farther north you go from the border, the less that is
understood," said Burton, a member of the Texas Border Security
Council. The group focuses on homeland security and economic
development along the Texas-Mexico border.

The biggest worry for local law enforcement agencies is that the
cartels will bring with them violent methods honed during furious
cartel wars in Mexico that have left about 5,000 dead since 2006. In
recent years, Mexican drug violence has reached new heights, featuring
beheadings, videotaped executions shown on the Internet and the
assassination of top Mexican officials.

In the past decade, Mexican cartels have surpassed Colombian
traffickers as the ascendant force in the hemisphere, moving into the
United States and also taking control of Central American trafficking
routes and dominating the market in South American countries like
Peru, according to law enforcement officials.

"It's all a question of business," said Carlos Humberto Toledo, a
military affairs expert in Mexico City. "The American market
represents the biggest consumer in the world, and all the cartels are
focused on it."

Expanding Activities

Analysts fear the cartels will bring not just drug violence, but
peripheral cash-generating crime like kidnapping, extortion and
protection rackets --- problems that are common in Mexico.

Burton said there has already been an alarming spike in kidnappings
along the Texas border. "We don't know how many have been kidnapped,
but guesstimates by local law enforcement puts abductions in border
towns at four to eight a week," Burton said. "They are snatched in the
U.S. and taken to Mexico."

Sanchez said kidnapping in the U.S. could be particularly attractive
to the cartels because they may be able to demand more money than they
do in Mexico.

"The U.S. will begin to see a little of the same conflict that is
happening in Mexico," Sanchez said. "If [the cartels] already have
methods, and ways of diversifying into other crimes, it's normal that
they won't stop at the border."

But experts say it's unlikely the U.S. will see the type of
large-scale drug wars that have paralyzed various Mexican cities and
forced President Felipe Calderon to send about 25,000 federal troops
to confront the cartels.

Toledo, the military affairs analyst, said the cartels will continue
to fight their major battles within Mexico. And less corruption and
more effective law enforcement make it impossible for large cartels to
flourish on American soil, he said.

"In the U.S., there will be violence, but it's local, decentralized, a
small dose compared to Mexico," he said. "The American system is much
more effective in combating drug distribution."

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MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS

The Gulf Cartel

Based in Matamoros in the state of Tamaulipas along the Texas border,
it has been one of Mexico's two dominant cartels in recent years. It
has been strengthened by its armed wing called the Zetas, highly
trained military deserters blamed for bringing new levels of savagery
to the drug wars.

The Federation

The result of a 2006 accord between several groups located in the
Pacific state of Sinaloa, it also is called the Sinaloa Cartel. U.S.
officials say the Federation has become the dominant drug trafficking
organization in the Southeast, taking control from the Gulf Cartel.

Sources: Stratfor, Congressional Research Service