MEXICAN DRUG WAR EXPANDS BEYOND FIGHT OVER U.S. ROUTES

Rising Violence Complicates Government Crackdown

Mexico's violent drug gangs are fighting over homegrown addicts in
the dingy back streets of northern border cities, creating new turf
wars that will further stretch the country's security forces.

Hooded gunmen have stormed at least seven rehabilitation clinics in
Ciudad Juarez on the U.S. border since early last year in deadly
attacks that target rival drug dealers. Two strikes last month killed
28 people.

Hitmen have burst into bars and house parties in Tijuana to murder
dealers, dragged others to car junk-yards to torture and kill them
and dumped bodies of scrawny teenage addicts in piles outside slums
notorious for drug dealing.

The army, border officials and social workers say top drug lord
Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman has diversified from his battle for smuggling
routes into the United States to seek control of a growing pool of
Mexican addicts along the border.

"This is a new dynamic in the cartel war," said a senior Mexican
police chief on the border who declined to be named because of the
sensitivity of the issue.

"Guzman is trying to dominate the local market but other cells also
want control, so the conflict is intensifying."

As social norms have loosened, a growing middle class has become more
prosperous and tighter border controls make moving drugs into the
United States more difficult, leading gangs have sought to increase
consumption in Mexico.

Cartels prey on the huge transitory workforce in factories on the
Mexican side of the border, eager to create addicts of the 56,500
people who lost their factory jobs in Ciudad Juarez over the past two
years as recession hit the economy.

From Tijuana to Reynosa on the Texan border, Guzman's hit men are
trying to eliminate rival small-time smugglers and dealers--mostly
jobless addicts and high school dropouts -- in a new test for
President Felipe Calderon's efforts to crush the cartels.

CLINIC SLAUGHTER

Just metre s from the U.S. border in Ciudad Juarez, a group of gunmen
burst into a rehab clinic last month, lined up 17 patients and
murdered them. Blood flowed out onto the sidewalk.

"We never received any threats, they just came in and started
shooting," said a survivor of the clinic attack who declined to give
his name for fear of reprisals.

"We never hid anyone from any gang, we didn't have anything to hide."

Until now Mexican and U.S. antidrug officials have focused on the
cartels' fight over transit routes for South American cocaine into
the United States. Guzman's smugglers, from the Pacific state of
Sinaloa, battle the northeastern Gulf cartel for the$40 billion
US-a-year business.

More than 14,000 people, mostly smugglers and police, have died in
drug violence since Calderon launched his crackdown in late 2006.

Deploying some 10,000 troops and federal police in Ciudad Juarez has
failed to stop the killings. Nationwide the military is stretched
between Caribbean smuggling routes, remote marijuana-producing
mountains and the border area.

Some investors and officials in Washington worry spiralling drug
violence could overwhelm security forces in Mexico, a major exporter
of oil, minerals and manufactured goods.

The fight over the local market complicates the drug war because the
violence is so anarchic. It can be unclear who works for whom and
which groups are doing the killing, especially in the infamously
violent city of Ciudad Juarez.

"Dealers used to tell me they were working for (Guzman) and others
would say La Linea," former gang member and longtime social worker
Antonio Briones said, referring to the city's main cartel, known both
as the Juarez cartel and The Line.

"Now, we are seeing a new phenomenon because some don't have any idea
who they're working for," he added.

The number of Mexicans addicted to illegal drugs jumped 50 per cent
to around 500,000 people between 2002 and 2008, according to a
government study last year.

Drug trade experts say the real figure is much higher, with an
estimated 200,000 addicts in Ciudad Juarez alone.

"Now you make a phone call and they bring you drugs as if it was
pizza," said Jose Antonio Rivera, the director of a youth support
centre in Ciudad Juarez.