Mexico loses 56,000 troops in drug war!, page

They've lost that many, not to death or injury, but to outright desertion. The figure represents a full and whopping TWENTY EIGHT PERCENT of the total number of men in their armed forces.

Over 56,000 soldiers have deserted the Mexican military since President Felipe Calderón took office and launched an offensive against the country’s powerful drug cartels six years ago, according to documents obtained by news website Animal Político.

Over 50,000 Mexicans have died since the start of the drug war in 2006.

Drug war violence has also spread into Central America in recent years, with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras registering some of the highest murder rates in the world.

Source

50,000 dead isn't a law enforcement problem, it's a civil war. It took the United States 10 long years of war in South-East Asia and the daily nonstop grind of combat operations to come near that number. It's staggering to consider this all starts just yards south of our fence line in places like Nogales and El Paso.

I'm not sure what the answer is for them down there, but what they're doing sure isn't it. It's absolutely in the Epic Failure category when you have over 1/4 of your military just throwing their hands up and walking away....and they almost match the number of dead since the war began.

Troubled times..and very troubled places. I recall someone here recently sharing on a thread that he lived in a rural area of Mexico and all was well and quiet there. That leads me to think the cities are even worse. If all those deaths are not across the nation but concentrated along the borders and shipment points like Guadalajara, it must be one heck of a raging conflict where it's happening. 50,000 in such a brief number of years is *A LOT* of killing going on down there.

reply to post by ArrowsNV

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Well, now I agree...and to stay on the right side of T&C for a topic that I realize is skirting along the edge, I'd say drugs aren't even the issue anymore. The cartels traffic in underage girls as sex products for their brothels all over Mexico as well as a variety of other black market things. Heck..I understand they also have heavy heavy money and power invested into the legitimate side of Mexico and other nations too....

Kinda lke the Italian Mafia in the U.S., Prohibition made them, true enough. Ending Prohibition sure didn't stop them. I think the cartels have diversified beyond the original limitations of what law can cover directly.

Well, I cant really blame them for saying....screw it

*from 2003*

www.brownsvilleherald.com...

The Zetas, hired assassins for the Gulf Cartel, feature 31 ex-soldiers once part of an elite division of the Mexican army the Special Air Mobile Force Group. At least one-third of this battalions deserters was trained at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Ga., according to documents from the Mexican secretary of defense.

*from 2009*

articles.cnn.com...:WORLD

Imagine a band of U.S. Green Berets going rogue and offering their services and firepower to drug cartels. That's what happened in Mexico in the 1990s. Commandos from the Mexican army deserted and set up a cartel, known as Los Zetas

www.newsmaxworld.com...

Mexico’s drug gangs are building monstrous, metal-clad vehicles resembling crude tanks to take on the competition and law enforcement, reports McClatchyDC.com.

These “el monstruo” (“the monster”) trucks, 100 of which have turned up during police raids on cartel compounds, often begin with beefy American trucks like the Ford F-150. From there, they are pimped out with soldered sheets of armored plating, gun turrets, and enough firepower to take on a small army.

www.washingtonpost.com...

Today’s competitive crime mafias in Mexico are no longer satisfied with bazookas, rocket-propelled grenades or land mines. The Mexican military has discovered that gangsters south of Texas are building armored assault vehicles, with gun turrets, inch-thick armor plates, firing ports and bulletproof glass.

Elite military soldiers working for one of the cartels, tanks.....and there's how many drug gangs down there right now? And...how well has this "war" been going for the Government? If I was a soldier, my moral would be pretty low right about now

And I wouldnt be suprised if this "war" is about to get even worse. To my knowledge, the Zetas (the military commando catel) are one of the most powerful cartels, and "El Chapo Guzman" (also an extremely powerful figure in the war) has re sparked a war between them.

www.chron.com...

MEXICO CITY - Drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman purportedly has come gunning for the vicious Zetas gang on the South Texas border, leaving 14 of their butchered bodies and a message vowing to rid Nuevo Laredo of its criminal scourge as a calling card

"We have begun to clear Nuevo Laredo of Zetas because we want a free city and so you can live in peace," proclaims a banner, under which were posed the bodies, as well as the gunmen presumably in Guzman's employ. "We are narcotics traffickers and we don't mess with honest working or business people."

Guzman's first attempt to seize Nuevo Laredo, bordering Laredo, in 2005 sparked a gangland war with the Zetas and their then-paymasters in the Gulf Cartel. The battles, complete with rocket attacks and massacres, killed more than 300 that year and gave birth to the hyper-violence still tormenting the borderlands and Mexico's interior.

The Zetas and the Gulf Cartel won that earlier contest. Now Guzman, one of the most wanted men in the hemisphere, looks to be back.

This came out on the 18th this month (yesterday). I expect a huge increase in amount of violence in the next couple weeks/months until once side pulls from the area

reply to post by buni11687

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Wow, thank you for that addition to my thread. I wish I had caught that myself to add it with the OP material. It sounds like things are about to get real busy again down there.

So many things getting bad and in so many different areas of the world at once. Why should Mexico have been different? I really feel for the people down there. The regular population sure did nothing to deserve any of this happening to their nation.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000

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Feel free to add anything I posted to your OP.

The regular population sure did nothing to deserve any of this happening to their nation.

We (the regular citzens) are the ones that are in a lose-lose situation here. The government is going to try harder and harder to combat these cartels, and at the same time, the cartels are going to go harder against eachother and the government. Its a big *cluster....free for all.*

I watched a documentary about the Mexico situation and there was an "El Chapo" part that really caught my attention.

*Around the 35 minute part*



One guy being interviewed says El Chapo helps build roads, hospitals, ect....

This gets me thinking, if the cartels (or maybe just El Chapo, although I suspect the other cartels are just as powerful, or even more powerful) are already doing government functions that the current Government of Mexico cannot, how long until a province just completely revolts again the Mexican Government?

reply to post by buni11687

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That is certainly something I would call a valid concern. As I understand what I've read in stories about all this, the cartels are working with weapons and equipment budgets in the billions as combined resources, so I suppose their lack of moving directly against the Mexican Government is simply a matter of never really having needed to. Why fight when they can just buy who they need to? I'm thinking groups like the modern FARC in Columbia or the former groups of El Salvador and Nicaragua in the 80's are where Mexico will go if they don't handle it all carefully and with every move backstopped for whatever the Cartels may throw back.

I recall reading back before 9/11 that the I.R.A. Provo people were keeping themselves occupied with side work training the Cocaine cartels that came before things really just expanded in all directions at once and into just about everything that can turn profits. I'm thinking that it'll all come to a head eventually and it'll have to with the U.S. as well. Eventually the cartels will push their boundaries in a hard core way with the U.S.. It'll sure be interesting how that plays out when it comes.

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