MEXICO HITS DRUG GANGS WITH FULL FURY OF WAR

RIO BRAVO, Mexico -- These days, it is easy to form the impression
that a war is going on in Mexico. Thousands of elite troops in battle
gear stream toward border towns and snake through the streets in
jeeps with .50-caliber machine guns mounted on top while fighter jets
from the Mexican Navy fly reconnaissance missions overhead.

Gun battles between federal forces and drug-cartel members carrying
rocket-propelled-grenade launchers have taken place over the past two
weeks in border towns like Rio Bravo and Tijuana, with deadly results.

Yet what is happening is less a war than a sustained federal
intervention in states where for decades corrupt municipal police
officers and drug gangs have worked together in relative peace,
officials say. The federal forces are not only hunting cartel
leaders, but also going after their crews of gunslingers, like Gulf
Cartel guards known as the Zetas, who terrorize the towns they control.

The onslaught has broken up a longstanding system in which the local
police looked the other way for a bribe and cartel leaders went about
their business.

In Rio Bravo, for instance, the state police station sits across the
street from a walled compound that until recently was used as a safe
house by Zeta gunmen. A deadly gunfight broke out when federal agents
tried to arrest men carrying machine guns in a car.

As grenades exploded and gunfire ripped the air, Jesus Vasquez, 65,
dived behind the dusty counter of his store. He hugged the concrete and prayed.

"It was ugly," he recalled. "It's the first time something like this
has happened."

President Felipe Calderon, who won office in 2006 on a promise to
create jobs, has spent most of his first year in office trying to
break up organized crime rings. To the consternation of some liberals
here, he has mobilized the military to do it, sending 6,000 troops
into Tamaulipas state alone.

As those troops, along with thousands of federal agents, have begun
putting pressure on drug gangs, the midlevel mobsters and hit men
have put up a surprising amount of resistance. Again and again, they
have chosen to fight it out rather than surrender.

They have ambushed and killed more than 20 police officers this year.
In the past two weeks, four federal agents and three Baja California
police commanders have been assassinated, along with the wife and
child of one of them, apparently in retaliation for arrests, law
enforcement officials said.

That violence has spread to the United States. On Saturday morning,
drug-smuggling suspects from Mexico killed an American border patrol
agent, Luis Aguilar, 32, when he tried to stop their cars in sand
dunes about 20 miles west of Yuma, Ariz., then fled back across the
border. Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, said the
killing demonstrated how Mexican criminal organizations had responded
to the crackdown on their operations with increasing brutality.

"The Zetas are defying the state," said Jorge Chabat, an expert on
narcotics trafficking and security at CIDE, a Mexican research group.
"This operation in the north of Mexico in recent days has no precedent."

It remains to be seen whether Mr. Calderon's strategy will work in
the long run. Many of the nation's most-wanted drug kingpins continue
to elude federal forces, often with the help of local police officers.

Some federal officers admit privately that they face an uphill battle
as long as local police officers continue to tip off drug gangs about
their movements. The threat became clear on Saturday when federal
officials arrested four local policemen in Nuevo Laredo, along with
seven civilians, and charged them with feeding the Zetas information
over police radio frequencies.

"You cannot count on the local police," said a veteran federal
inspector in Reynosa, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of
losing his job. "The problem lies in the state police. They are
completely at the service of these guys."

In Tamaulipas state, just south of eastern Texas, the government's
focus has been on strangling the Zetas. Founded by former Mexican
commandos trained in the United States, the Zetas have long been the
professional assassins of the Gulf Cartel, which controls the flow of
drugs along the Gulf Coast and across the Texas border. The group is
believed to have scores of members, though the exact number is unknown.

The gunmen remain a formidable force, the authorities say. Federal
police commanders in the state must stay on the move and keep their
location secret to avoid assassination attempts. The state federal
attorney general's office has been vacant for months; officials in
Mexico City say they are having trouble filling the post.

Edgar Millan, a federal police commander who is in charge of tracking
down the Zetas, said a contingent of 1,200 officers in Tamaulipas
searched every day for members of the group, hitting specific targets
believed to be safe houses and watching for cars carrying gunmen.

The federal police also run a system of 10 checkpoints on major
highways in the eastern half of the state. Most of the time, they
stop cars with tinted windows that carry two or more young men,
hoping to make it harder for the gunmen to move.

But the Zetas have a sophisticated spy network as well, Commander
Millan said in an interview. They employ taxi drivers, store clerks,
street vendors and members of the local police to keep them apprised
of the movements of federal officers.

Several times in the past four months, the police have been close to
capturing the leader of the cartel, Heriberto Lazcano, only to have
him slip away at the last moment, Commander Millan said. Two other
important reputed cartel leaders, Jorge Eduardo Costilla and Miguel
Angel Trevino, have also eluded capture.

While the Gulf Cartel leaders remain at large, the government scored
a success in Sinaloa on Monday when it captured Alfredo Beltran
Leyva, one of five brothers who are high-ranking lieutenants in the
Culiacan-based cartel.

Though the big bosses have slipped through the dragnet -- the
offensive that was started against the Zetas in late November after a
prominent local politician was murdered in Rio Bravo -- it has paid
off in many respects, officials said. The police have arrested about
40 reputed members of the gang and seized dozens of machine guns,
rifles, side arms, grenades and boxes of ammunition.

The federal police have also begun to submit local police officers to
a battery of tests to determine who might be linked to organized
crime. Among the tests are polygraphs, drug tests and the vetting of
personal finances. The goal is to weed out collaborators.

Many people here say they welcome the federal intervention, even if
it means having columns of troops patrol their streets. But others
voice doubt that government forces can ever stamp out the cartel,
given its infiltration of the local police. All the federal forces
have accomplished, they say, is unleashing more violence.

"Living in Mexico has become very difficult," said one man who had
been searched at a roadblock near Matamoros. He spoke on condition of
anonymity for fear of drug dealers. "Even Colombia is looking better."

Others complain that the presence of soldiers and federal agents,
along with the gun battles, has scared away American tourists, an
important source of income. Last year, about six million fewer people
visited border towns than in 2006; hotel bookings are down and sales
of package tours have fallen steeply, according to the Association of
Mexican Hotels and Motels.

"A lot of people used to come over the border to eat and buy things,"
said Alfredo Tantu, 40, the owner of El Cazador Restaurant near Rio
Bravo, as the smell of roasting baby goat wafted from his kitchen.
"Now, almost no one comes because of all this police action."