Mexico
CIA Drug Operations in Mexico with Civilians Caught in the Endless Crossfire 20
January, 2014 04:52 The
ongoing long-running drug war in Mexico has taken a new turn as citizens
begin to take matters into their own hands in order to finally be rid of the
murderous drug gangs that have taken over large swaths of the country. Armed
vigilante groups first began to pop at the beginning of 2013 all over Mexico
and this past week one such group clashed not with the ruthless
narco-killers running the government linked drug cartels, but with Mexican
troops backed by none other than US President Barack Hussein Obama. In the
incident which left as many as a dozen dead, the civilians in the town of
Antenuz in the Mexican state of Michoacán did not have a chance against the
heavily armed US trained Mexican forces. After it was over there were bloody
bodies lining the streets and the dead included an 11-year-old girl.
Civilians trapped in US-backed drug war cross-fire The
outcry on behalf of the citizens has risen to an international level with
the incident once again shining light on yet more collusion between the US
Government, American special services and the illegal narcotics trade as
reports point to US backing of both Mexican Army units and the drug cartels
they are supposed to be fighting.
US
supports drug cartels
This duplicity is further underlined by a
recent
report by the
New American that: Federal authorities in the United States have been
quietly supporting certain Mexican criminal empires, especially the Sinaloa
drug cartel, in a bid to solidify the syndicates’ reign as dominant
powerbrokers in particular territories, according to leaked e-mails from a
U.S.-based Mexican diplomat to the private intelligence firm Stratfor. If
cartel chiefs cooperate with authorities, “governments will allow controlled
drug trades,” the diplomatic source wrote.
Although the armed civilian groups may also be said to share blame in the
escalation of violence after being forced to react against the non-stop
killings that have plagued Mexico. The real victims are the civilians as
they have been devastated both by the criminal syndicates and the
government.
Although the mission of the vigilante groups should be seen as being in line
with that of the government, the government sees them as a threat and they
are at odds with police and law enforcement making their struggle all the
worse. After the latest incident involving the shooting of an 11-year-old
girl it is now going to be even more difficult for the government to bring
these groups into its fold and for the vigilantes to trust the federal
forces.
Turf war and the “Knights Templar”
The BBC
reported thatthe massacre of the
civilians came after they launched an offensive against a powerful drug
cartel which calls itself the Knights Templar.
According to the BBC and other media outlets including Mexican newspapers
there is currently a very strong police and military presence said to be
protecting the cartel in the town of Apatzingan where the Knights Templar is
based. The narco-group is reportedly in control of most of the
methamphetamine trade and traffic that is bound for the US.
The BBC reports one of the leaders of the
local vigilante groups as having stated: "How does the federal government
imagine that we would lay down our arms when they haven't detained a single
leader of the Knights Templar? How is that fair?"
Join the police Last
Monday the Mexican Interior Minister Angel Osorio Chong announced that
Mexico would be deploying federal troops to the western state of Michoacan
and that the choice had been given to the vigilante groups to either lay
down their arms or join the police. This is something many in the groups do
not want to do because in many parts of the country the police are working
in unison with the cartels and joining them would be suicide.
Federal troops move in
Federal troops have so far moved into the towns of Antunez, Nueva Italia and
Paracuaro which had been seized by the armed vigilante groups last week in
escalation of the violence in the state of Michoacán.
US
needs war on anything
As the War on Terror winds down and the list
of countries that were targeted for regime change and intervention has been
put on hold, in various places
such as in Afghanistan and now Mexico we
have seen an upsurge in news related to illegal narcotics trafficking and
the narco-trade. The correlation between the two events, the winding down of
the War on Terror and the now almost seamless escalation of the US’ decades
old War on Drugs is one that cannot be ignored.
Billions in black operations funding The
illegal narcotics trade and the collusion between the CIA and the West is
one that is almost impossible to investigate as anyone who attempts to do so
or gets too close is quickly shut down, but it is one that we know enough
about from what has leaked out in the past 40 years or so and from the brave
efforts of a handful of journalists, to say without a doubt that it exists.
Mr. Yury Fedotov, the Executive Director of
the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), recently called news
of a 40 fold increase in
opium production in Afghanistan
"sobering" and stressed that this situation poses a threat to health,
stability and development in Afghanistan and beyond: "What is needed is an
integrated, comprehensive response to the drug problem. Counter-narcotics
efforts must be an integral part of the security, development and
institution-building agenda". In
an early article I wrote “the elephant in the room that everyone is ignoring
is the fact the United States and their CIA are colluding with the producers
of heroin and in fact protecting the opium fields in Afghanistan while
running duplicitous policies with the Taliban and the Karzai government.”
With regard to Mexico the problem appears to be the same.
Enough is enough
Mexico, if we want to use some metaphors loved by American law enforcement
proponents, is suffering from a plague of narcotics related crime that has
spread like an epidemic throughout the country, engulfing, diseasing and
destroying everything in its path, and the Mexican people have quite simply
had enough with the level of crime and the inability of the authorities to
stop it and have decided to take their communities back.
Mexico is the main illegal narcotics corridor into the American market and
it is a hotly contested one worth billions of dollars annually with rival
cartels vying for control in a bloody turf war that has raged for years. The
recent incident in the town of Antenuz in the Mexican state of Michoacán
underlines the desperation of the civilian population and the hypocrisy of
the Obama Administration and the US Government when it comes to the
so-called “War on Drugs”.
US
backs troops
According to numerous sources the Mexican
troops are backed by the Obama administration which also backs the criminal
syndicates. Again the New American reported
that American troops and special operations units are already operating in
Mexico. “In addition to supporting certain cartels such as Sinaloa, U.S.
troops secretly operating in the nation were reportedly working with Mexican
forces to perpetrate “surgical strikes.” Leading analysts equated the
machinations to “death squads.” Long before those revelations hit the
headlines, Obama announced an expansion of the Bush administration’s
controversial program to support the Mexican government in its
blood-drenched “war.” Despite widespread human-rights concerns, Washington,
D.C., has continued to pour hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into
the drug-war coffers of Latin American governments — especially the one
ruling Mexico — for years. So far, the schemes show no signs of slowing down
or getting anywhere near victory.”
Endless CIA drug funding Gary
Webb, who committed suicide by shooting himself twice in the head, was one
of the few journalists who successfully exposed a link between the CIA and
cocaine traffickers raising funds for the Nicaraguan Contras in what was
called the Iran-Contra affair. The
chief bank in that scheme, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International
(BCCI), was also used to launder money gained from the sale of opium from
Afghanistan and Pakistan and paid to Osama Bin Laden and his Mujahideen.
Although the Knights Templar in Mexico are involved in methamphetamine
trafficking and Columbian cocaine groups also work closely with CIA opium
appears to be the drug of choice for raising black funds. One
of the first such documented cases was the support of anti-Communist Chinese
Kuomintang (KMT) forces who were being funded by opium from China and Burma
which was flown to Thailand via the CIA’s now infamous Air America.
In a recent interview with the Voice of
Russia
I spoke to Wayne Madsen and he mentioned
Air America and CIA covert funding and their collusion in the illegal
narcotics business. Mr. Madsen said the CIA and the US Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) agents are often shooting at each other because they
have different missions, one to stop drugs and the other to import them.
Cocaine, opium and other narcotics find their way to American consumers
through various channels but Mexico almost always figures as part of the
voyage. From Afghanistan to Europe and Russia there is Manas and Camp
Bondsteel in Kosovo and Hashim Thaçi, in the US the Mena Intermountain
Municipal Airport in Mena Arkansas, is one CIA drop point, but almost all
shipments go through Mexico.
Miami International Airport is another location where the CIA allowed at
least one ton of nearly pure cocaine to be shipped into the US claiming they
were doing so to gather intelligence but the cocaine was sold on the street. In
1993 former DEA head Robert Bonner accused the CIA of importing several tons
of pure cocaine into the U.S. via Venezuela. In
1996 a Venezuelan anti-narcotics chief and longtime CIA asset named General
Ramon Guillen Davila, was indicted for working with the CIA to smuggle tons
of cocaine into the US.
According to Peter Dale Scott a former diplomat and professor of English,
who believed the CIA was involved in the deaths of up half a million people
in Indonesia in the mid-1960s, Mexico’s DFS intelligence agency, which was
later called the Center for Research and National Security of Mexico, was
like Al-Qaeda, a CIA creation and its director Miguel Nazar Haro, a CIA
asset, helped the Guadalajara Cartel become Mexico's most drug syndicate in
the 1980s. The cartel was also connected to the CIA through Honduran drug
baron Juan Matta-Ballesteros, another CIA asset. Ballesteros ran SETCO, an
airline used for smuggling drugs into the US. The
Godfather of the Mexican drug business Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo was also
working with and providing funds for CIA operations. His narcotics
activities were well known to the CIA and DEA, but they were ignored mainly
because of his huge charitable contributions CIA backed groups.
Claims made by Vicente Zambada Niebla, the son of Ismael Zambada García a
Mexican narcotics baron, that he and other top Sinaloa cartel members had
received immunity by U.S. agents to smuggle cocaine into the US, are backed
up by the New American story. He says they were allowed to operate as long
as they provided intelligence on rival cartels. Which of course would have
allowed the CIA to take out their completion.
Citing a Stratfor document the New American wrote: “Another bombshell
uncovered in the leaked e-mails indicated that the U.S. federal government
had deliberately allowed cartel hit men to murder people inside the United
States if they agreed to offer their services to Washington. “Regarding ICE
(U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) screwing up informants: They
(ICE) were handling big hit men from Juarez and letting them kill in the
U.S.,” a federal law enforcement supervisor wrote in an e-mail.
Conclusion
The CIA is out of control in their collusion
with the global illegal narcotics trade and making billions of dollars in
the process but things will soon be looking up. With the now open ended
presence of US/NATO air bases worldwide, including those now set up in
Afghanistan (now the world’s top opium producer) such as Shindad, Kandahar,
Bagram and Kabul and developments in drone technology, such as the General
Atomics Aeronautical Systems MQ-9 Reaper (Predator B-ER and B-003) Altair
and Mariner, which can carry up to 3,000 pounds (1,360 kilograms), the CIA
can make Air America look like child’s play. One advantage of drone drug
trafficking is no more bothersome pilots and ground personnel to expose
operations. Which might be why the CIA is adamant at keeping the
drones under their control. The
views and opinions expressed here are my own. I can be reached at
robles@ruvr.ru Updated: February 4, 2014 to correct naming Mr. Peter Dale Scott "late" as was stated in my source material. Mr. Scott is very much alive and well. John
Endemic Corruption Leads to Mexican Jailbreak 19 September 2012, 19:05
In the
Mexican state of Coahuila 131 prisoners have escaped through a tunnel that
was months in the making. The circumstances point to another case where
corrupt officials and prison guards are suspected of involvement,
underlining the need for reforms and the vetting of Mexico’s law enforcement
officials. The problem is one that affects not only Mexico but the
international community as well.
Another
massive prison break in Mexico has the world focused once again on Mexico’s
ongoing war against vicious drug gangs and battling drug lords.
The facts
that we know are as follows; 131 inmates escaped from the prison in Piedras
Negras in the Mexican state of Coahuila, a city near the US border close to
Eagle Pass Texas. They apparently used a 21 feet (6.5 meters) long and 4
feet (1.2 meters) wide tunnel that had been under construction for some time
and it is suspected that prison officials may have been involved or had
knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the escape.
According
to reports the prison housed less than 800 inmates and was not overcrowded,
leading to further speculation as to the involvement of the guards since the
number of escapees amounted to about a 5th of the prison’s entire
population.
A public
safety official in Coahuila, Jorge Luis Moran, said that the escape was the
work of the Zetas drug cartel and that even prisoners who were not members
of the cartel were forced to go along, reported Daily Mail quoting
Associated Press.
Mexican
media alleged that the Zeta cartel is engaged in a battle over the illegal
narcotics corridor into the United States, through which millions of dollars
worth of drugs enters the US, with the Sinaloa cartel run by drug lord
Joaquin Guzman who is at the top of Mexico’s most wanted list. The Zeta
cartel has been hit hard by the federal police and its members are dwindling
due to arrests and fatal shootings, so the Mexican authorities believe the
escape was planned to refill the ranks of the cartel.
In a
statement released on Twitter the President of Mexico Felipe Calderon said
that the escape was a deplorable act and that the vulnerability of state law
enforcement institutions must be corrected.
The Daily Beast’s Christine
Pelisek writes that the terrain through which the tunnel was dug was rocky
and would have required special tools and equipment to cut through, pointing
to further collusion between the prison officials and the escapees.
The
escape once again brings to the forefront the absolute corruption that
exists at the state level in Mexico underlined by the fact that this is by
far not the first time that such a bold prison escape has taken place in
recent years.
The
current mass escape is also the second in recent history where over a
hundred inmates escaped. The other such escape occurred in December 2010,
when 153 inmates escaped from a prison in Nuevo Laredo, which ended with 41
guards being sentenced on charges related to aiding and abetting the
criminals.
Another
brutal escape occurred in February when 30 inmates escaped from a prison in
Monterrey murdering 44 rival gang members in the process, afterwards 9
guards admitted to having aided them.
For the
president and the federal authorities in Mexico the rampant corruption at
the state level continues to be one of the most pressing problems in the
country and the largest internal threat to Mexico’s national security.
The
federal authorities in Mexico understand the need for reforms and have
attempted to correct the situation by introducing mandatory background
checks and drug testing for federal, state and local law enforcement
officers and agents. To date the results have been dismal at all levels,
with the numbers showing just how serious the situation is.
Speaking
to the press on Monday Mexico’s Federal Secretary of the Interior Alejandro
Poire said that progress in vetting the nations officers was slow. He said
that out of the over 430,000 police officers at the state level and lower
only 180,000 have undergone the vetting process and out of those
approximately 65,000 had failed to pass the tests.
At the
federal level the numbers are equally dismal with 2,045 federal officers out
of approximately 36,000, failing the tests since 2006 and of those only 302
being fired. Under the guidelines set forth in the vetting program any
officer at any level who fails the tests is supposed to be fired.
The
authorities say that due to Mexico’s labor laws and the lack of new
recruits, it is impossible to fire everyone who fails the tests. This means
that Mexico has over 67,000 officers working on the front lines who are not
able to pass simple background checks and the vetting process, and this is
only after less than half have been tested.
This
serious lack of a secure internal security apparatus is a grave threat to
Mexico’s national security. As Mexico is the main gateway for most of the
narcotics and contraband traffic into the ever consuming US “market” this is
also a problem at the international level as it only helps to sustain the
flow of illegal narcotics from all over the world into the US, the world’s
largest and most lucrative consumer.
The
transport corridors through Mexico allow growers, suppliers and criminal
groups worldwide, from Afghanistan to Columbia, to get their products to
their consumers.
This
means that the international community has a vested interest in assisting
Mexico if there is ever going to be an end to the illegal narcotics trade.
Something that is highly unlikely as long as the money flows with the blow.
|