PROGRESS MADE IN MEXICO'S DRUG WAR, BUT KEY BATTLES REMAIN

President Vicente Fox Has A Good Record, But The Narco-Business Realignment
Brings In New, Dangerous Players.

MEXICO CITY - Drug traffickers are scrambling like never before to get
around stiffened Mexican law enforcement and carve new smuggling routes to
reach the illegal-drug consumers in the United States, according to U.S.
and Mexican drug-enforcement officials.

The narco-business realignment has brought in new, dangerous players to
fill voids left by suspected kingpins now either dead or in Mexican or U.S.
jails.

And the bloody fallout has been a round of skirmishes throughout Mexico --
and especially along the Texas-Mexico border -- as drug gangs vie for power
and turf.

The new drug-gang violence reminds Mexicans of the 1970s, when Colombian
drug producers partnered with Mexican smugglers and touched off wars over
trafficking routes that could handle vast amounts of cocaine and heroin
bound for American streets.

But the Mexican drug-cartel reshuffling is also reminding U.S. and Mexican
law-enforcement officials that despite Mexican President Vicente Fox's good
record in the drug war, tough work lies ahead.

SUPPLIES AMPLE

Illegal-drug supplies in the United States -- a business said to be worth
$65 billion a year -- remain ample.

And street prices are low, evidence that there's been no pinch in supplies,
despite a series of high-profile arrests of drug kingpins in Mexico and the
United States.

And largely unaffected are labyrinthine financial networks that launder
money for cartels and crooked politicians who allowed drug lords to thrive
in Mexico, analysts say.

"There is much left to do, much to talk about," Jose Luis Vasconcelos,
chief of the organized-crime task force of the Mexican attorney general's
office, said in a recent interview.

Fox and his crime busters at the attorney general's office -- known by its
Spanish acronym, the PGR -- have scored well against major drug kingpins,
say U.S. officials and analysts of the trafficking business.

Simultaneously, Fox's chief prosecutor, Rafael Macedo de la Concha has
fired or arrested 1,500 federal agents and police on drug-corruption charges.

He's also the architect of a massive overhaul of the PGR -- the nation's
most important law-enforcement body, with 24,000 full-time investigators
and support staff.

But for all of Mexico's success, analysts of the illegal-drug business say,
there are signs that little has changed.

CONTROL OF POLICE

While Fox's government has struck hard at frontline corruption in the ranks
of prosecutors and federal police, analysts point out that there have been
no significant arrests of politicians on corruption charges, even though
local police under their command are said to routinely offer protection for
smugglers.

In Mexico, local and state politicians directly control municipal police corps.

For years, drug agents and political analysts have whispered suspicions
about Mexican politicians at all levels.

'LONGER-TERM TASK'

The highest-ranking Mexican politician now facing drug charges is Mario
Villanueva, former governor of the Caribbean coast state of Quintana Roo.
He is accused of aiding smugglers in the 1990s, when Caribbean smuggling
routes saw an explosion in business.

"The work against politicians is a longer-term task," said Luis Astorga, a
drug-trafficking historian and academic in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico,
the remote and desolate mountains of which have served as incubators for
many of Mexico's ranking drug smugglers.

"We are seeing the easy pattern: It is easier for Fox to go after corrupt
police and low-level agents than to get into difficult areas with politicians."

Vasconcelos said he thinks new international players are trying to muscle
in on Mexican smuggling action amid the void left by fallen kingpins. Chief
among them are affiliates of crime rings in Colombia. Russian mobsters also
have long been involved in smuggling South American drugs through Mexico
and to U.S. and European markets.

ADAPTATION

"In the life-or-death business of illegal drugs in Mexico, the operators
have created a system that can adapt to global changes and local changes,"
Astorga said.

"If a leader falls, the system is such that independent operators within a
cartel know how to continue operating. As long as there is global demand
for illicit drugs, the operators will continue to find ways to move drugs
in and out of Mexico."