CARTELS GO ON OFFENSIVE AGAINST MEXICAN ARMY

Military Crackdown On Drug Traffickers Met With Assaults On Soldiers

MEXICO CITY - After decimating police departments in drug cartel hot
spots through cop killings and corruption, drug traffickers appear to
have set their sights on the powerful Mexican army, with three attacks
this week against soldiers who form the last line of defense against
exploding drug violence, analysts said.

In the most recent attack, gunmen late Wednesday fired 70 bullets into
the car of a navy base commander near the Zihuatanejo beach resort,
leaving him unhurt but killing a marine bodyguard and injuring two
others.

The traffickers' decision to take on a reasonably well-trained and
well-equipped army of about 100,000 soldiers shows they are moving
from defense to offense now that President Felipe Calderon has put the
military at the forefront of the drug war, analysts said.

"I guess we can call it a real war now," said Javier Ibarrola, a
writer on military affairs. "For me, there are two possible scenarios:
The federal government's use of the army is working, and the
[traffickers] feel cornered and forced to fight back, or it's not
working, and the narcos have turned their attention to the most
visible force fighting them."

This week, the National Defense Ministry announced the creation of a
drug-fighting unit called the Corps of Federal Support Forces.
Analysts said it appears the new unit will be an elite fighting force
with special training in civilian law enforcement.

It will also become the narcos' newest target.
Message: Back off

The slew of recent attacks by drug squads against soldiers "is sending
a message: Get in our way and you're going to die," said Roderic Ai
Camp, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in
Claremont, Calif., and an expert on the Mexican military.

Mr. Calderon has said that Mexico will win the drug fight because it
must, and his crackdown on traffickers has helped him earn a hefty 68
percent approval rating, according to an opinion poll last month in
the Mexico City newspaper El Universal.

But there are risks for Mr. Calderon, analysts say. With its
aggressive response, the military is facing accusations of human
rights violations. And some fear that that the army could eventually
lose the fight or become corrupted by drug lords.

That's exactly what happened over time to some Mexican police forces,
which have been outgunned by the narcos and increasingly found on
their payroll, authorities say. Should that same scenario play out
over time with the army, "then you have Colombia," Mr. Camp said,
referring to the patchwork of territorial control in Colombia by the
government, paramilitary groups and cocaine cartels.

"If the government, using the military, attempts to exert its
sovereignty in cities where Mexican drug traffickers have control and
fails, then you are going to have parts of Mexico that are governed by
legitimate elements and parts of Mexico that are ruled by others - the
drug traffickers," he said.

Mexico's left-leaning weekly magazine Proceso put in bold headlines on
its cover this week: "Narco. Calderon's Iraq." Below was a picture of
army helicopters sweeping into a town where five soldiers were killed
in an ambush last week.

The National Human Rights Commission sent six representatives to that
town, Caracuaro, Michoacan, and others nearby to investigate
complaints of arbitrary detention, torture, illegal searches and
assault by soldiers and federal police, the commission said in a
prepared statement.

The Defense Ministry did not have an immediate comment on the charges
of rights violations.

Web of rivalries

Michoacan is Mr. Calderon's home state and the first place he sent the
army after taking office Dec. 1. The drug fight there is complicated
because of the number of homegrown trafficking groups and the presence
of Mexico's two biggest drug organizations - the Gulf cartel, based on
the Texas-Mexico border, and the Sinaloa cartel, based on the Pacific
Coast.

The cartels fight among themselves; with federal, state and local
police they suspect of being on their enemies' payroll; and
increasingly with the Mexican army. Figures from the National Defense
Ministry show that the number of soldiers killed in the drug fight has
been relatively steady at about 21 per year during this decade. But so
far this year, 13 have been killed, including six this month.

The string of attacks also suggests a tit-for-tat typical of the turf
wars between drug trafficking groups, with an escalation in the level
of violence, the numbers killed and the deadliness of the weapons
used, analysts said. "I doubt that the narcos are as well-organized as
the army, but in terms of firepower I think they are about equal,"
said Mr. Ibarrola.

The traffickers are also well-financed and highly motivated.

"I'm not sure how far they are willing to go" in terms of violence, he
said, "but they are not willing to give up their business, period."

String of attacks

In the Caracuaro incident on May 1, the Defense Ministry said soldiers
investigating a citizen tip were ambushed with gunfire and grenades.
Mr. Calderon called the men heroes, and military officials said they
joined 512 army soldiers and 39 marines who have died in the drug
fight since 1976.

After the ambush, soldiers poured into the area, took over the town of
Caracuaro and detained its police force on the grounds that the
officers failed to come to the ambushed soldiers' defense even though
they were nearby. On Monday, also in Michoacan, soldiers attempted to
search a house in Apatzingan after receiving information that drug
traffickers were inside. They were met with gunfire, and after
repeated calls to the seven people in the house to give up their
weapons, soldiers used a grenade launcher to punch through walls,
setting vehicles on fire and killing four of the trafficking suspects.

Then early Wednesday, gunmen approached a joint military-police
checkpoint outside of the Pacific Coast resort of Huatulco, left their
vehicles and opened fire, injuring a civilian. The soldiers returned
fire, killing one of the gunmen and forcing the rest to flee on foot,
according to media reports.

Later that evening, the marine bodyguard was killed in the shooting at
Zihuatanejo, according to the official government news service
Notimex. Political columnist Froylan M. Lopez Narvaez tried to put
Mexico's shifting landscape of violence into perspective this week in
the Mexico City newspaper Reforma. "While it's true that you can't
come to the determination that Mexico is in a state of civil war ...
it's not too much to say that it is suffering from a psychological
war, a dirty war and a vast rural and urban guerrilla force," he
wrote, referring to the drug gangs. "The majority of our citizens
suffer from these wars."