MEXICO'S CALDERON TAKES ON KINGPINS

President Mobilizes Military to Stem Rising Drug Violence; an Appeal
for U.S. Assistance

MEXICO CITY -- President Felipe Calderon escalated Mexico's bloody
clash with narcotics gangs this month by dispatching troops to the
Gulf Coast state of Veracruz. They got a grisly greeting: A severed
human head at the barracks with a note scoffing at the president's efforts.

Mr. Calderon is taking on heavily armed drug gangs on a scale that is
unprecedented in Mexico. Since taking office Dec. 1, he has ordered
24,000 soldiers and federal police to states where drug lords hold
sway. This year he has extradited to the U.S. at least 15 drug
kingpins who were running their gangs from Mexican jails; in 2006,
Mexico extradited a major drug lord to the U.S. for the first time.

The success or failure of Mr. Calderon's assault on drug crime has
important implications for the U.S. Mexico is by far the biggest U.S.
supplier of cocaine -- most of it originating in Colombia -- and a
major supplier of marijuana, heroin and methamphetamines. Mr.
Calderon's government has begun talks for increased aid from the U.S.
to ramp up its drug fight, Mexican government officials said. He also
is pressing the U.S. to stanch the flow of arms smuggled from the
U.S. into Mexico.

U.S. officials said the administration applauds what Mr. Calderon has
been doing and hopes to assist him. So far, discussions between the
two sides remain preliminary. "Nothing is being proposed yet from
either side," said a State Department official. "There is a real
desire to help, but we have not yet put any request forward to get
money from Congress."

The U.S. and Mexico have a long history of cooperation on drug
investigations, though U.S. financial assistance is relatively small,
owing in part to Mexico's reluctance to accept outside aid on
law-enforcement matters. Possible areas of increased U.S. aid could
include technological support in monitoring Mexican airspace as well as money.

Mr. Calderon's bold strokes have boosted his popularity in Mexico
after he eked out a narrow victory at the polls. But he may be
betting his presidency on an issue that has long proved intractable.
His predecessors shied away from confronting drug gangs out of fear
it could thrust the government into a fight reminiscent of Colombia
in recent decades, when politicians were routinely gunned down and
car bombings terrorized ordinary citizens against the backdrop of a
drug-fueled guerrilla war.

Mexico has a long way to go before it resembles Colombia's bloody
past, but there are reasons why some here are making the comparison.
This year, more than 1,000 people have died from drug-related
violence -- putting the country on a path to exceed last year's
unprecedented toll of 2,000 dead. Colombia averaged 1,850
combat-related deaths a year from 1998-2002, according to a recent
University of London study.

"The difference with Colombia is that here, we are trying to catch it
at an earlier stage," said Mexican Public Security Minister Genaro
Garcia. [Combo]

Mr. Calderon may not have had much choice. Drug violence that once
seemed out of the way in rural Mexico spilled into cities over the
past several years as the government of Vicente Fox failed to curb
violence between drug gangs. Monterrey, a hub for business and one of
the country's richest cities, is now the scene of regular
assassinations of police officials. The police chief of the posh
Monterrey suburb of San Nicolas was slain this month. Acapulco, the
Pacific Coast playground of the Mexico City elite, is becoming known
more for severed heads than for coconut-rum drinks.

Mexicans were stunned last year when a gang dumped five severed heads
on the stage at a nightclub in the state of Michoacan as a warning to
a rival gang. Gangs send videos of police or rival traffickers being
tortured to newspapers. Police in Acapulco have been terrorized by
the sight of the bleeding heads of officers impaled on stakes outside
police stations.

The prospect of fighting Mexico's drug organizations, which employ
paramilitary fighters with sophisticated weapons, has provoked
unnerving questions among senior officials and policy analysts: Does
the Mexican state have the equipment, manpower and nerve to displace
narcotics gangs? What happens if the government loses?

"In play are...liberty, the rule of law, justice, the state itself,"
political analyst Federico Reyes Heroles wrote recently in the
Reforma newspaper. "It's that simple and dramatic."

Mr. Calderon's stance has attracted doubters. Opposition lawmakers
passed a nonbinding resolution calling on the president to return the
military to its barracks. The nation's human-rights commission, an
autonomous government body, has criticized the use of the military as
risking civil-rights abuses. A small-town mayor on the front lines of
the drug fight in Guerrero state has called on Mr. Calderon to cut a
deal with traffickers as the best way to quell violence. One
explanation for the violence is that it is an unintended result of
law enforcement's strategy of targeting drug lords. Mexicans are
learning that the death or jailing of a kingpin begets more violence
as lesser barons battle for the spoils.

Another explanation is drug gangs are fighting over lucrative Mexican
markets for retail drug sales that didn't exist a few years ago.
Mexican authorities have estimated that drug use has risen 20% in the
past 10 years.

Mr. Calderon is relying heavily on the military, an alliance he
sealed shortly after taking office by granting a near-50% pay raise
to servicemen. Mr. Calderon needs the military because many local
police forces are perceived to be corrupt, senior government
officials said. The army is the only organized force in Mexico
equipped to deal with the outbreaks of violence and the loss of state
control in many towns and cities.

But attempts to rely on the army in the past have backfired. A
general tapped as Mexico's antidrug czar in the 1990s was later
convicted of being on the payroll of a cartel, and critics of Mr.
Calderon's approach said dispersing the military in drug zones could
lead to corruption in the ranks.

While the military may be able to match the firepower of drug gangs,
it hasn't proved capable of the detective work needed to dismantle
the organizations. Soldiers this month fired grenades into a house in
Michoacan, where suspected gang leaders were hiding, killing everyone
instead of arresting them. Mr. Calderon has announced the creation of
a new military division that will support federal police work, as
well as an overhaul of the federal police, which has been undermined
by links with organized crime. But attempts to create an elite
drug-fighting corps have failed in the past when security forces came
under the suspicion of corruption.

To learn more, Mr. Calderon and his top security officials plan to
fly to Italy Saturday to meet officials with experience battling the Mafia.