Pubdate: Tue, 15 May 2007
Source: Quad-City Times (IA)
Section: Pg A04
Copyright: 2007 Quad-City Times
Contact:  http://www.qctimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/857
Author: Associated Press
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Note: Article appears under photograph entitled: AUSSIE BIKIE FUNERAL 
and captioned: Victim Of Drug War - Members of the Bandidos bikie 
gang ride in a funeral procession Monday along a highway in Western 
Sydney as they take the coffin of a colleague to a cemetery.
Ken Tanti, a Bandidos gang member, was killed in a suspicious traffic 
accident last week. Violence between rival gangs, the Nomads, 
Bandidos, Comancheros and Rebels has escalated in the past two 
months, with a series of shootings and fire bombings of clubhouses in 
Sydney and Newcastle. Police say they are part of a turf war for the 
Sydney nightclub drug scene.

MEXICAN DRUG LORDS TAKE ON THE MILITARY

President Tries To Regain Territory Lost To Cartels

APATZINGAN, Mexico -- Mexican drug cartels armed with powerful 
weapons and angered by a nationwide military crackdown are striking 
back, killing soldiers in bold, daily attacks that threaten the one 
force strong enough to take on the gangs.

The daily bloodshed includes an ambush that killed five soldiers this 
month, a severed head left with a defiant note outside a military 
barracks on Saturday and the slaying Monday of a top federal 
intelligence official who was shot in the face in his car outside his 
office in Mexico City.

Mexicans were shocked last week by televised images of kindergartners 
fleeing their school during a grenade-andgun battle between 
traffickers and soldiers that lasted for two hours in this small town 
in President Felipe Calderon's home state of Michoacan.

The unrelenting bloodshhas forced a change in strategy for Calderon, 
who sent more than 24,000 federal police and soldiers out in December 
to reoccupy territory from Michoacan's poppy-dotted mountains to the 
tourist-packed port of Acapulco.

Now, to supplement the massive presence of soldiers and tanks in 
small towns, he's ordered the creation of an elite military special 
operations force capable of surgical strikes.

"We are not going to give in," Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia 
Luna said. "In the states where there is most violence, we will be 
right there to confront the phenomenon."

The drug trade is all-powerful in Mexico. Analysts estimate that 
cartels here make between $10 billion and $30 billion selling 
cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine to the U.S. market, 
rivaling Mexico's revenues from oil exports and tourism. The gangs 
also make billions through robbery, kidnapping and extortion of 
businesses and would-be migrants.

The Calderon administration insists the crackdown is working -- the 
government has already detained more than 1,000 gunmen and burned 
millions of dollars in marijuana plants. Traffickers are being 
extradited to the U.S. more rapidly than ever before, and police 
recently made the world's biggest seizure of drug cash, $207 million 
neatly stacked inside a Mexico City mansion.

U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency officials say it's too early to judge 
the crackdown's success. Seizures at the U.S. border indicate the 
flow of drugs north may actually be increasing -- 20 percent more 
cocaine and 28 percent more marijuana has been seized in the past six 
months, compared with the same period a year earlier. Violence 
nationwide in Mexico seems to be increasing.The country's three 
leading newspapers estimate shootouts, decapitations and 
execution-style killings have claimed the lives of about 1,000 people 
this year, on track to soar past last year's count of 2,000. The 
government doesn't count drug-related killings, and a top federal 
police official, Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna, has 
referred to the newspaper figures as the best numbers available.

This month's death toll for soldiers and sailors is the worst for the 
military in more than a decade -- violence that shows the gangs' 
desperation, officials say.

On Saturday, drug gangs left the head of a 37-year-old auto mechanic 
wrapped in a sheet outside an army base near the port city of 
Veracruz, along with a note that read: "We are going to continue, 
even if federal forces are here." The grisly message came shortly 
after the government said it was sending troops to the city to 
respond to a shooting attack.

Many Mexicans fear even the army is outgunned.

"Calderon's war on drugs has been a big disappointment for us," said 
Pedro Ortega, a family doctor in Aguililla, a Michoacan farming town 
at the center of the drug trade. "The reality is that we are scared 
to go out of houses, scared about what could happen to our children."

Aguililla was one of the first towns to receive soldiers.

Convoys of Humvees rolled down the streets, black helicopters 
clattered low over the houses and soldiers at checkpoints frisked 
motorists for guns. But residents say the military presence has been 
sporadic since then, and most of the time they are left without 
protection from the traffickers.

"There is no government here. We just pray to God to take care of 
us," said 60-year-old Soledad Lombera, sobbing at a cross of candles 
in her house, an alter she created days after her son Francisco Alvez 
was found shot and buried on a nearby ranch.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman