BORDER TOWN CAUGHT IN CROSS-FIRE

Killings Escalate As Drug Cartels Fight For Control, Despite Mexico's
Attempts To Root Out Corruption

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico - The general who'd been in charge of Mexico's
efforts to quell drug violence on the border with the United States
hasn't been seen by officials here in weeks, and the program is in disarray.

Drug killings are on the rise, local news outlets have been cowed
into silence, and evidence is mounting that members of two warring
drug-trafficking cartels have infiltrated the program's elite anti-drug forces.

U.S. officials are concerned that the violence is crossing the
border: Assaults on U.S. Border Patrol agents are up 108 percent this
year, according to recent congressional testimony.

New program kicks off

Mexican officials, recognizing that the 9-month-old Secure Mexico
program had failed, announced a new program last week, dubbed
Northern Border. Under the program, 600 to 800 more federal police
agents were dispatched to this besieged border city.

But few expect that to make much difference, and drug traffickers
aren't intimidated. After the announcement of the new initiative,
they gunned down four federal police intelligence agents in broad
daylight outside a school. At least 30 shots were fired into the
agents' bodies.

Adding to the confusion is the absence of Gen. Alvaro Moreno Moreno,
who'd been in charge of Secure Mexico. Nuevo Laredo city officials
and a Mexican diplomat on the U.S. side of the border said they'd had
no contact with the general in weeks.

"I couldn't tell you where he is," said Eloy Caloca, a spokesman in
Mexico City for the federal Ministry of Public Security, the agency
to which Moreno reports. Asked who's in charge in Nuevo Laredo now,
Caloca said: "I don't have his name right now."

The deaths of the four agents brought the number of killings blamed
on drug traffickers in this city this year to 50 in less than three
months, a rate that outpaces last year's, when about 170 people total
died in drug violence.

Statements by Ruben Aguilar, a spokesman for President Vicente Fox,
suggest that efforts to get rid of corrupt city police officers have
failed. He said preliminary evidence indicated that the hit men who
killed the four agents were municipal police aligned with one of the cartels.

Experts see no end to the killings as long as the two cartels battle
to control the distribution routes that lead into the United States.

"It won't be resolved until this war is over, until one of the
cartels wins," said Jorge Chabat, an expert on U.S.-Mexico relations
and border security. "It's clear that the federal government doesn't
have the capacity to stop this wave of violence," he said, referring to Mexico.

Mexico's federal authorities launched Secure Mexico last year after
Nuevo Laredo's police chief, Alejandro Dominguez, was gunned down by
suspected traffickers only hours after he took the job.

The Secure Mexico program was designed to weed out local police
corruption and place all levels of law enforcement under the command
of a single military official: Gen. Moreno.

Media attacked

But the violence has become only more virulent, often spectacularly
so: Suspected drug gang members used a hand grenade to attack a
newspaper newsroom in the city last month.

The Mexican government's new initiative is supposed to re-establish
order. Authorities announced that they were sending up to 800 more
agents from Federal Preventative Police, known by its Spanish acronym
PFP. There already were hundreds here, but estimates vary wildly on
the total number patrolling now.

Few are optimistic. "Last year, there were over 170-something
murders. I don't think anyone was charged or has been arrested in
connection with those murders, and the majority of those were
drug-related," said a U.S. official involved in drug enforcement who
was granted anonymity because his agency doesn't allow him to speak
publicly. "They've had the military employed at different occasions
during those spates of murder, and they've continued to happen."

Presumed traffickers increasingly have targeted the local news media.
In February, armed assailants riddled El Manana newspaper with
bullets and dropped a grenade on the floor on their way out. Reporter
Jaime Orozco was injured in the attack and may never walk again, his
colleagues say.

Last week, a radio reporter was killed, leading many news outlets to
either quit reporting stories on the murderous chaos or provide
abbreviated accounts with no bylines, tucked deep inside the paper.
Several journalists refused to be quoted for this story, even
anonymously, for fear of reprisals.

Police forces infiltrated

Meanwhile, Mexican media reports and public statements have raised
questions about whether the PFP forces sent to restore order under
Secure Mexico have been infiltrated by elements of the drug cartels.

Public Security Secretary Eduardo Medina Mora acknowledged during a
December news conference that there were PFP agents -- he wouldn't
say how many -- who'd been involved in organized criminal activity,
acts that he said were "totally intolerable" and under investigation.

In Nuevo Laredo, questions center on a Feb. 2 shootout in which armed
bandits, in broad daylight near the police headquarters, attacked a
marked PFP vehicle that was carrying a suspect, U.S. citizen Javier
Escalera. The American was later handed over to U.S. authorities.

News accounts said two PFP agents were wounded. But since then,
doubts have been raised about whether one of the wounded men was
really a PFP agent. Photos show him wounded, dressed in a PFP uniform.

But the man in the photos, identified as Mario Humberto Rodriguez
Castillo, later fled Nuevo Laredo by bus toward the northern Mexico
city of Monterrey. Along the way, he was attacked and shot again by
armed assailants, according to Rafael Luque, a spokesman for the
state of Tamaulipas. He survived, but his whereabouts aren't known.

Daniel Hernandez, Mexico's consul general in Laredo, said it's not
unusual for law enforcement agencies to protect the identity and
whereabouts of an agent who might be involved in intelligence. He
also noted that corruption can be found on both sides of the border,
citing the recent indictment of two U.S. Border Patrol agents who are
accused of taking $300,000 in bribes from smugglers to release
immigrants from detention.

The violence has become a problem for Nuevo Laredo's businesses, said
Jack Suneson, owner of upscale Marti's jewelry and crafts store in
Nuevo Laredo. Noting that many businesses have relocated to the U.S.
side of the border, Suneson said he might have to shut his doors
after five decades of operation.

"No more promises. I want them to safeguard our city," Suneson said.
"I don't know how much longer we can hold out. This is the third year
we've taken a nose dive."