Newshoggers.com

Expanding violence in Mexico

By Dave Anderson:

Being able to move large bodies of trained, armed men to reinforce a critical node is a high level capability.  Many nation-states do not have that ability.  At least one non-state armed group, the Zetas, and potentially two, have that capability in Mexico. This is a capability level that Hezbollah has in Lebanon where Hezbollah is the effective army and government of Southern Lebanon. 

In Iraq, the largest insurgent tactical groups were company sized formations that attempted overrun attacks.  Local militias could number more, but the effective tactical elements were never more than a few hundred men at once in any location besides Fallujah during the summer of 2004. 

The Taliban in Afghanistan have been able to muster and maneuver short 'battalions' of several hundred men.  The COB overruns and overrun attempts have been made with two to three hundred fighters.  These attacks were spearheaded by longer service fighters that are 'Taliban' affiliated but supported by local levies that were fighting for local issues. 

Tom Ricks at Foreign Policy is reporting that Mexican cartels have the ability to shift strong battalions of urban guerillas several hundred miles to wage urban guerilla warfare and urban takedowns:

Local TV news in Texas reported that the Zetas have left Reynosa tonight. They've moved about 150 miles west to Nuevo Laredo. Sources reported the Zetas want to take over the city and make it their base of operations. The U.S. Consulate General's office already has confirmed a gun battle in Nuevo Laredo. ... According to the TV news cast the Zetas are already calling in reinforcements. Some 700 Zetas from around Mexico are joining the 500 already brought to the area last week. The Gulf Cartel also called in reinforcements last week and reportedly joined forces with La Familia Michoacana (LFM) and the Sinaloa Cartel."

Borderland Beat has a summary of the violence that has touched off the Zeta redeployment:

Black-clad enforcers from the Gulf cartel over the border from Texas are attacking their erstwhile allies from the "Zetas" gang with automatic weapons and grenades in towns near the Laredo-Brownsville area in a fight over some of Mexico's most lucrative trafficking routes into the United States.

Rival gunmen, their gangs' initials emblazoned on their clothes and their flashy SUVs, have killed more than 100 people in the past two weeks along Mexico's northeastern border, local politicians say.

Navy special forces in helicopters have moved in, firing on gunmen from the air in the worst escalation of violence in the area since Mexico's top trafficker Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman made an unsuccessful push for the south Texas border in 2005.

If Hezbollah's capability is the appropiate comparison to cartel strategic mobility and command and control, then the cartels have already successfully hollowed out the Mexican government's capability to control the northern border zone. 

Reeling in the proxy rebels?

By Dave Anderson:

I'm coming late to this party, but I want to highlight a couple of things.

First, from Yorkshire Ranter from last week:

Well, this is unusual; Londonstani confirms that the Pakistanis just arrested 50% of the Taliban high command, in so far as such a thing matters. Not only that, they're willing to extradite one of them to Afghanistan. First of all, Pakistan and Afghanistan even talking is rare. Secondly, extradite? What is this, Germany? Don't they know they're meant to administer a medically unnecessary enema and ship the guy to the Kerguelens or somewhere where they can lock him in a dungeon for the next ten years...

Next Laura Rosen from about two weeks ago notes that Iran captured the head of Jundallah:

Iran says its security forces have captured the leader of the Baluch Sunni ethnic minority group Jundullah, which Iran has claimed is being supported by the U.S. and other western security services to destabilize the country, the Los Angeles Times reports:

Iran's security forces said they captured the head of an ethnic militant group they have fought for years Tuesday morning and claimed he was at an American base in Afghanistan a day before he was caught....

Via PBS Frontline's Tehran Bureau, the Iran-based "Iranian Diplomacy" research center reports that Rigi was arrested with the help of the Pakistani intelligence agency and possibly even the United States. The motive for the alleged foreign help not immediately clear to the analyst.

Jundallah has long been rumored to be a neo-con favored proxy for the United States. Ken Anderson noted that instability in Balochistan blocked several natural gas export routes that would lie outside of the US geo-political orbit in 2008, and Jundallah had claimed responsibility for several fairly effective terrorist bombings against Iranian security forces in Southeastern Iran. 

This is odd at first glance if the Jundallah leader was at a US compound and then was burned in either an Iranian-Pakistani cooperative arrangement or a menage a trois of nation-state interests coinciding.  The simplest explanation is the Iranian allegation is either out-right not true but intended for domestic consumption or it is technically, sort-of kind-of true but is still intended for domestic consumption.  A more complex explanation is the Obama Administration's policy of engagement with Iran means the value of Jundallah has gone down dramatically in the US's eyes, and the cost of burning a no-longer useful proxy is low if the outcome is a regional dentente. 

The Yorkshire Ranter has a few more interesting points about the seeming crack-down on troublesome insurgent groups in South Asia:

It certainly looks like some kind of sudden outbreak of regional cooperation, in a sort of tacit agreement to jointly attack each others' rebels. Someone smarter than me would probably point out that this is natural - it's the difference between being a state and not being a state....

The first talks between India and Pakistan at foreign minister level for a while. It seems to have gone reasonably well; in the light of the Kayani doctrine speech, in which the General said that Pakistan would be satisfied if Afghanistan wasn't explicitly aligned with India, as opposed to being run by the Taliban as satraps for Pakistan, you might wonder if there's a bigger deal afoot.

If India agrees not to claim a sphere of influence in Afghanistan, Pakistan might be willing to lock up the Quetta shura as a sign of good faith, and then...perhaps they might get a payoff in concessions on Kashmir, and/or trade with India and with the wider world. How that interlocks with the Iranians is not quite clear, but it would fit with the Pakistanis getting sufficient assurances from the other regional powers for them to crank down the degree to which their various half-rebels, half-proxies cause trouble.

Coke, corruption and cash

By Dave Anderson:

Corruption is a component of a black market system that has significant cash flow. Corruption hollowed out most major municipal governments during Prohibition because booze created massive illicit cash flows that could be used to buy access and thus security.  A black market needs to be of sufficient size for corruption to be worthwhile as I am fairly sure that no one in Pittsburgh is on the take over the small black market for counterfeit Pirates gear. 

Corruption weakens institutions, creates systemic and acute distrust between a government and its citizens as well as other governments as no one is sure of motives or objectives.  It is pervasive and hollowing.  The drug trade is the largest black market in the world, and it brings about massive corruption, asSteve Taylor at Poliblogger catches this morning:

Via the BBC:  Guatemala police chief arrested over ‘cocaine link’

Guatemala’s chief of national police and the country’s top anti-drugs official have been arrested over alleged links to drug trafficking.

Attorney General Amilcar Velasquez said police chief Baltazar Gomez and Nelly Bonilla were being held in connection with a cocaine theft in March 2009.

Mr Velasquez said five police agents were killed as a result of the theft.

Dr. Taylor has more information in his post concerning the capture of Guatamela's anti-idrug units as basically another cartel that was better armed, trained and positioned to benefit from greater international interconnectivity. 

Guatamala has been the scene of signifcant overflow violence and organizational capacity for further violence as Mexico has attempted to crack down on the drug gangs.  Guatemalan sites have been used as training facilities for Mexican cartels, gangs and hitmen. 

On Nov 25 Salvadoran federal police intelligence reported that no fewer than 40 gang members from several countries in Central America  were  recently trained at a Zetas training camp alongside Laguna  El Tigre  in Guatemala across the border from Tabasco. A dozen were members of Mara Salvatrucha  (MS 13) cliques from  several municipalities in El Salvador–a new wrinkle as most Maras working for the Zetas have been from southern Mexico and Guatemala....

As long as there is significant and profitable demand for black market cocaine, the cash will allow for massive corruption and replication of this story. 

Black tar as crack or Dominoes?

By Dave Anderson:

Black tar is a type of heroin that is becoming increasingly common and available in the US from an unusually non-violent Mexican distribution system.  The LA Times has been on the spread of this form of heroin for a while now and it piqued my interest. Mark Kleimanhas some more background and analysis:

Quinones identifies the new style – based on aggressive marketing and retail delivery, rather than the more traditional waiting around for customers to show up – with expatriates from the small municipality of Xalisco, on the southeast coast of the Gulf of California. He reports that the distribution networks are fluid and competitive rather than centralized, and that the new style does far less collateral damage – in particular, generates far less violence – than traditional street-corner dealing....

If the Xalisco product that sells at $15.50 per 100 mg. were 50% pure, the price-per-pure-milligram would be a modest 25 cents. For a naive user, 5 mg. of pure heroin would be ample, suggesting that the heroin experience is now available for about the price of a candy bar....

Oxycodone, which has somewhere between one-half and one-quarter the potency of heroin, trades on illicit markets for around $1 per milligram, suggesting that Xalisco black tar enjoys something like a tenfold potency-adjusted price advantage.)

The major social costs of heroin addiction are overdoses (fatal and non-fatal), violence as a means of agreement enforcement in the black market, and crimes committed by hardcore users in order to get money to pay for the next hit.  If I remember correctly, the price-demand curve for heavily addicted individuals is very inelastic, so cheap heroin will not have significantly increased demand for that market segment.  The major area of increased demand for heroin instead of Oxycodene or other downers would be from casual users as they could afford significantly more hits which could lead to addiction.

John Robb looks at the social cohesion of the black-tar distribution network and notes that it is unusual for drug dealing systems to have such cohesion:

while there is intense competition, it's limited to business operations.  Since everyone knows each other, violence isn't a default option.  Further, due to these social connections, drivers are paid very well at $1,000 a week (plus expenses).  The high pay for line workers likely allowed them to save enough to start their own businesses, which in turn drives the expansion of the aggregate network.  Another big driver is the high levels of innovation due to an open source sharing of techniques:

Crack cocaine when it was first introduced had some similarities to black tar heroin in that it was aggressively marketed to non-traditional markets as a cheap and very potent high.  The biggest difference was the market structure was far more diffuse, and crack cocaine could be prepared by almost anyone at any location so the market was extremely fragmented.  Black tar heroin on the other had has a currently limited supply source, and it is very unlikely that there will be any heroin production facilities within the city limits of major American cities unlike the proliferation of crack houses.  

My big question is whether or not black-tar's relatively low associated level of violence is a temporary abberation as the socially cohesive network strong ties weaken due to the combination of internal expansion and external competition as other drug smuggling networks realize that this new business model has significantly revenue attached to it and they muscle in OR whether this is a sustainable black market operation that minimizes costs and harm to the wider society. 

Cross-border violence

By Dave Anderson:

The common story of cross-border violence between the United States and Mexico is the following:  Mexican drug smugglers hire Mexican muscle to attack or kill a US citizen who was either a threat to the smugglers' organization or had reneged on a deal.  That is the common story.  It is not the only story.

ThaIndianNews reports on a rash of violence in Mexico that was cross-border in nature, but it was a Texas based gang that carried out an attack against a high school party that left about a dozen people dead:

On Sunday, hitmen stormed a high school party in Ciudad Juarez, killing several students. Federal authorities said on Monday night that a Texas-based gang called “The Aztecs” was probably behind the killings.

Nearly 1,000 people have died in Mexico in drug-related violence in 2010, according to a tally published by the Milenio newspaper.

The northern Mexican states are becoming a TAZ for drug cartels and other smugglers.  They have created a comprehensive network of violence producers that can vie with the state's monopoly on violence.  The cash flow that fuels this complex system is also fueling cross-border producers of violence; those gangs are likely to freelance when the price is right. 

Cutting off a significant element of the cartel cash-flow as a defensive matter would be a worthwhile idea, but our policy and political apparatus is kludged, so defensive cannabis/THC legalization is not even on the table in the US. 

More On The State-ergy For Af/Pak

By Steve Hynd

I mentioned the new State Dept. "Afghanistan and Pakistan Regional Development Strategy" (PDF), in my last post and some more really should be said about it. AfPak Channel's daily brief today mentions it in passing:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced a new strategy for civilian engagement in Afghanistan yesterday, one that involves an increased, long-term civilian presence in Afghanistan beyond the nearly 1,000 civilians already there or slated to arrive in the near future (Department of State, Reuters). The plan addresses issues from agriculture development to corruption and reconciliation efforts with Taliban fighters, though some doubt whether the ambitious strategy, developed by Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Amb. Richard Holbrooke, will receive sufficient support from Congress (AFP).

But the document is really worth reading as this is "it" for the civilian surge in the region for the forseeable future. As such, it's a grave disappointment. A mixture of impossible pipedreams and stuff that's not at all new (or working all that well right now), its a blueprint for more of the same in Af/Pak. But at least it sets benchmarks, although it calls them "milestones" - which means at least State has publicly announced metrics when the DoD still hasn't.

Occassional Newshoggers contributor Gregg Carlstrom has some thoughts on the "State-ergy" over at his usual home, The Majlis blog. He's rather more optimistic about the document than I am but wonders about execution. I'd say that's a well-placed worry.

Gregg points to one set of not-new objectives, for example.

Overhauling aid. One-third of the metrics in this section deal with reducing the overhead and waste from foreign NGOs and USAID. 40 percent of aid will be delivered through local entities by the end of 2010, for example. Better late than never, I guess?

But unfortunately this one seems like it's going to miss its due date, in Pakistan at least.

The Obama administration has reversed plans to redirect more than $200 million in aid money for Pakistan away from American contractors and nongovernmental organizations, documents obtained by ProPublica suggest. The move signals that the administration's broader plan for Pakistani assistance, which calls for relying more heavily on local organizations to run the growing U.S. aid programs there, may be harder to achieve than officials had first hoped.

...Chemonics and CARE International, two development organizations that are set to receive almost three-quarters of the funds under the Economic Growth portfolio, declined to respond to questions about the policy shift, including whether they had asked the administration to reconsider its original timeline.

CARE is a bona-fide international charity and does good work across the world. Chemiconics, on the other hand, is a for-profit contractor that makes about 90% of its money from U.S. federal contracts. It's the single biggest winner in USAid's Pakistan funding, with a $90 million deal to encourage business and entrepreneurship. It's chairman served as a senior USAID director under the first President Bush and is a long-time major contributor to the GOP. It's performance in places as far afield as Afghanistan, Poland and South Africa could be described generously as disappointing.

Then there's this objective on page 6:

Rehabilitation and expansion of key irrigation infrastructure, especially in the Helmand River Valley

Sounds good, right? But the last time the U.S. tried it, in a money-grubbing effort from the 50's through to the 70s, the contractor fouled up agriculture in the area so badly that opium poppy was one of the few cash crops left that would grow well. Holbrooke may not remember that, but I'm sure farmers in the region do.

Or how about page 16?

targeting narco-insurgency networks and shutting down drug bazaars – an approach that is already showing results

Sound great too, but only if it stops being what amounts to using the US military to pick the winners in Afghanistan's narcotics industry - and those winners all being karzai-backing but corrupt and brutal warlords.

And then there's page 28, where one of the milestones is.

U.S. disapproval ratings in Pakistan decrease, with Pakistanis’ increasingly convinced that the United States is committed to a long-term partnership on an array of issues, not just counterterrorism.

I almost snarfed when I read that bit of pony planning.

Right now, it's looking to me very like much of the glad talk from State is just that, rather than a true blueprint for changing the way things are done. There's no discussion even of the options if Afghanistan and Pakistan flat refuse to do the things the U.S. wants them to. Mind you, those options are pretty narrowly defined by the administration's previous caves over issues like the Kerry-Lugar Bill or Karzai's election - all that remains is something along the lines of "well, we'd tell them again".

Revisiting Defensive Legalization

By Dave Anderson:

In August 2008, I argued that drug prohibition is counter-productive and stupid as well as expensive, especially as it applies to marijuana because it creates and sustains a massive black market.  The black market has norm enforcement through violence instead of lawyers, and the fund flow is easily skimmable by groups that have a strong and vested interest in hollowing out states.

We also know that prohibition has not been successful in eliminating drug use in the United States or other rich nations.  It is a moral/political posture of luxury that may bite us in our ass as it fuels a visible insurgency in Afghanistan, potentially funds Hezbollah in Lebanon and could potentially lead to a massive failed state in Mexico with the attendant mass migration flows that would entail.

Bringing the drug market into the overt and open white market and away from the black market would be a significant blow to these insurgencies.  Legalizing most narcotics and then taxing them at a high rate is a viable option.  It will strengthen weak states where the United States has a strong interest for stability. This will occur by removing a significant funding stream for the guerrillas and transferring it to the state.    Prohibition is a failed luxury that I am not sure we can afford for that much longer.   

Not much has changed in the past sixteen months.  A few more US states are dabbling in the medical marijuana masquerade of consumer legalization, and several more states are moving towards decriminalization of personal possession, but the cash flows are still massive and flowing into the black markets that fuel instability in both American cities and most of Mexico. 

The Wall Street Journal this week is taking a look at the argument of defensive legalization in order to cut a major smuggling cartel cash cow.  The idea is gaining acceptance in the terms of debate and policy discourse.

Growing numbers of Mexican and U.S. officials say—at least privately—that the biggest step in hurting the business operations of Mexican cartels would be simply to legalize their main product: marijuana. Long the world's most popular illegal drug, marijuana accounts for more than half the revenues of Mexican cartels....

"Economically, there is no argument or solution other than legalization, at least of marijuana," said the top Mexican official matter-of-factly. The official said such a move would likely shift marijuana production entirely to places like California, where the drug can be grown more efficiently and closer to consumers. "Mexico's objective should be to make the U.S. self-sufficient in marijuana," he added with a grin.....

Making pot legal might actually increase violence south of the border even more in the short term, with drug gangs fighting over a smaller economic pie of the remaining illegal drugs. But it would eventually reduce the overall financial clout of cartels.

Pulling marijuana into the overt economy makes dispute resolution a matter between barristers, not bullets.  We saw this as alcohol was relegalized; Capone and the other bootleggers quickly lost market share to Budweiser, Miller and Coors and while they and their associaters were still very powerful, the Mob was marginalized as one of their great money makers was now 'legit' and they could not out-compete the fully capitalized 'legit' producers. 

Interesting Map of Cartel turf

By Dave Anderson:

Via the BBC, an interesting and useful map of what cartels are dominant where in Mexico:

Is Decriminalization MAD?

By Dave Anderson:

I have been puzzled as to why the Mexican cartels have not begun to attack the Mexican government's cash flow.  The Mexican economy has five main sources of foreign currency; hydrocarbon exports, light manufacturing in the border zone, tourism, remittances and smuggling into the United States.  The cartels control the last source of hard currency, the middle three are correlated with the state of the US economy while hydrocarbon exports are over a third of the federal budget. 

Knock out that source of cash, and the Mexican government has a series of unfortunate problems.  It would either have to increase taxes on the rest of the population, reduce services and outlays, or go into deeper debt on tight international credit markets.  Increasing taxes makes the government value proposition weaker, reducing services and outlays makes the value proposition weaker as well, and bowing to either the United States, the IMF or international credit market demands for cash is a legitimacy reducer as well. 

I have been scratching my head hard as to why the Mexican oil export infrastructure is still up and functioning at normal capacity for over a year now.  About a month ago, I was having a few beers with a very intelligent friend who groks system disruption and we war-gamed this scenario out. 

The current situation of a slowly weakening and hollowing state is an acceptable outcome for the cartels.  A full-scale civil war or a fully mobilized government that can crush several of the participating cartels is a non-desirable outcome.  There is a significant collective action problem on the cartels as bringing about state financial collapse by attacking the oil infrastructure, or a society wide collapse by triggering a mass refugee crisis by pounding Mexico City's water and electrical infrastructure would be a net win for the cartels as a whole.  However it would bring about significant localized pain for some of the involved players. 

So an extreme quasi-nihilist destruction of the state is not a favorable outcome.  However sniping and restricting the freedom of action and possibility of the state is a desirable outcome.  Escalating too greatly though comes with a strategic risk to cartel cash flow.  What would happen to cartel cash flow if both the United States and Mexico engaged in wide-scale decriminalization of marijuana alone?  That would be a massively market disrupter as locally grown marijuana in the United States would be cheaper to grow and distribute than smuggled weed.  At that point the 20% to 30% cash flow reduction that a pipeline campaign would cost the Mexican government would be counterbalanced by the cartels losing their biggest money maker, marijuana production, smuggling and distribution.

Is decriminalization MAD? 

Mexican Hollowing

By Dave Anderson:

I have long thought that the primary cartel goal in Mexico is not a collapsed state, as we see that Somalia is too dysfunctional for large scale, complex criminality in the anarchic south, but a hollow state that maintains the pretenses and appearance of sovereignty but not the capability to effectively control its territory or its population.  

It is nice to see that my amateur analysis is starting to get picked up in the US government decision apparatus, as Small War Journals passes along an interesting paper from the Army War College.  Here are a couple of highlights:

generates relatively uncontrolled coercion and violence, and its perpetrators tend to create and consolidate semi-autonomous political enclaves (criminal free-states within the Mexican state) that develop into what the Mexican government has called

“Zones of Impunity.” In such zones, criminal quasi states may operate in juxtaposition with the institutions of the weak de jure state, and force the local population to reconcile loyalties and adapt to an ambivalent and precarious existence that challenges traditional values as well as the law...

The drug cartel, the enforcer gangs, and the Zetas operating in Sinaloa have marginalized Mexican state authority and replaced it with a criminal anarchy. That anarchy is defined by bribes, patronage, cronyism, violence, and personal whim. One is reminded of Thomas Hobbes description of life in a “State of Nature.” That is, life is “nasty, brutish, and short..."

What makes these small private armies so effective is the absence of anyone to turn to for help. Weak and/ or corrupt state security institutions, as in Mexico, are notoriously unhelpful and tend to be a part of the problem—not the solution. In such a vacuum, only a few relatively well-armed and disciplined individuals are capable of establishing their own rule of law...

the Zetas organization does not appear to be intent on completely destroying the traditional Mexican state political-economic-social system and replacing it with its own. Rather, the Zetas demonstrates a less radical option; it apparently seeks to incrementally “capture” the state.   [my emphasis]

To accomplish this aim, the leaders of the Zetas have determined that—at a minimum—they need to be able to freely travel, communicate, and transfer funds all around the globe. For this, they need to be within easy reach of functioning population centers. Thus, the Zetas does not find the completely failed state particularly useful. It would prefer to have Mexico as a weak but moderately functional international entity. The shell of traditional state sovereignty protects the Zetas from outside (U.S.) intervention....