Narco-Guerrillas Mobilizing in Mexico

The U.S. Defense Department is getting very nervous about signs that Mexico's two most deadly drug cartels are working on a deal that would create a multi-local insurgency against the Mexican government. Senior U.S officials went on record Monday to say that the situation in Mexico is now at "crisis proportions".

This coordinated insurgency could potentially mobilize more than 100,000 heavily armed “foot soldiers”. Provoked by recent arrests and raids on cartel resources, such an army would rival Mexico's own armed forces and threaten to turn the country into a full fledged narco-state. Mexico's national army comprises no more than 130 000.

U.S officials are openly acknowledging the enormity of the challenge Mexico and the United States face as they struggle to contain a veritable civil war along the U.S.-Mexico border.

In the past year, about 7,000 people have died during the cartel’s posturing against government agencies – mostly in defense of their trade routes into the U.S. More than 1,000 people have been killed in January alone. The death toll exceeds that in the two current U.S led wars: Afghanistan – with 200 fatalities in the first two months of 2009; and 400 fatalities in Iraq during the same period. The violence includes beheading and bodies dissolved in vats of acid.

Some analysts warn that “narco-terrorists” have even infiltrated the Mexican government, to an alarming degree, further complicating efforts to contain and destroy the cartels. And local peoples are increasingly turning to these cartels for economic opportunities - creating new alliances and social relationships with various gangs. Mexican drug gangs are even becoming ‘folk heroes’ to locals, and celebrated in folk ballads called "narcocorridos"

The biggest and most violent combatants are the Sinaloa cartel, known by U.S. and Mexican federal law enforcement officials as the "Federation" or "Golden Triangle," and its main rival, "Los Zetas" or the Gulf Cartel, whose territory runs along the Laredo, Texas, borderlands.

If these two “organizations” merge, the Mexican government could potentially be overthrown, replaced by notoriously brutal criminal leaders, and seriously threatening the stability of the whole region.

More Info Here: NPR coverage