> MEXICO'S DRUG CARTEL MOVES TO U.S.: Atlanta a hub for East Coast
> Violence is following, but to a lesser extent
>
> By Jeremy Schwartz
> Cox International Correspondent
> Published on: 08/01/08
>
> Mexico City —- A series of drug-related kidnappings in Gwinnett County
> is part of the emergence locally of what federal authorities say is a
> problem of national scope: powerful Mexican drug cartels whose tactics
> have been honed in years of bloody conflicts in their home country.
>
> They say the cartels operate in dozens of U.S. cities, including metro
> Atlanta, and are moving to consolidate their control of the entire
> supply chain of illegal drugs.
>
> The Justice Department says that in the Atlanta area, Mexican
> trafficking organizations already control the lucrative
> methamphetamine trade, with the arrival of purer Mexican ice
> methamphetamine supplanting local powder meth production.
>
> In violence associated with the cartels, Gwinnett has seen at least
> nine drug-related kidnappings this year, including a man who was bound
> and chained in a basement in Lilburn and repeatedly beaten over an
> alleged $300,000 drug debt.
>
> David Nahmias, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia,
> said the Atlanta area is considered especially enticing to the cartels
> because it is a convenient distribution hub for the highly profitable
> East Coast market.
>
> For now, the cartel-related violence remains contained within the
> organizations and is not affecting the larger community, said Jack
> Killorin, head of the federal Atlanta High Intensity Drug Trafficking
> Area Task Force.
>
> "We're not seeing violence across the cartels," he said. "They're just
> not in conflict. Some people would say that at this end of the
> distribution chain, they're more interested in cooperating and making
> money than in conflict. Others would say there's plenty to go around
> so there's no need for conflict."
>
> Evidence of that plenty came in December, when local and federal
> agencies targeted two Mexican trafficking organizations, seizing more
> than 200 pounds of cocaine, 17 pounds of methamphetamine and as much
> as $10 million in cash. Officials said the groups used metro Atlanta
> as the distribution point for drugs smuggled from Mexico and for cash
> waiting to be smuggled back to Mexico.
>
> Killorin said the two groups were affiliated with the Federation, one
> of two dominant Mexican drug cartels among the seven Mexican officials
> have identified.
>
> The Federation is also known as the Sinaloa Cartel because it is based
> in the Pacific Coast state dubbed the Sicily of Mexico because it is
> the birthplace of many of Mexico's most important drug lords. Its
> leader is Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, Mexico's most notorious drug
> capo, who attained an almost mythical stature after escaping from a
> federal prison in 2001.
>
> In recent months, the Federation, which officials say controls Pacific
> smuggling routes from Central America, has been torn apart by an
> internal feud that they say may be responsible for a spike in violence
> in Sinaloa and its capital, Culiacan.
>
> Killorin said the Federation in recent years has eclipsed the Gulf
> Cartel as the predominant organization in the Southeastern United
> States. The Gulf Cartel, headquartered in the border town of
> Matamoros, once controlled East Coast operations but has been engaged
> in a brutal war with the Federation for years.
>
> Dominant distributors
>
> Ricardo Ravelo, the author of several books on Mexican cartels and an
> investigative reporter for Proceso magazine —- an influential
> muckraking journal which has criticized the Mexican government's
> effort to fight the cartels —- said the Federation is well organized
> on the American side of the border.
>
> "I'm talking about distribution as well as the collection of profits,
> money laundering and smuggling money back to Mexico," Ravelo said.
>
> Nationwide, the Mexican cartels "are the dominant distributors of
> wholesale quantities of cocaine in the United States, and no other
> group is positioned to challenge them in the near term," said the
> Justice Department's 2008 National Drug Threat Assessment.
>
> "Their idea is to control the whole economic process of production and
> distribution," said Georgina Sanchez, an independent security
> consultant in Mexico and executive director of a public safety think
> tank.
>
> While in some areas of the United States the cartels have entered into
> partnerships with local gangs, in others they have directly assumed
> control of local drug distribution, analysts say.
>
> The Zetas, former Mexican soldiers who have become the armed wing of
> the Gulf Cartel, have been linked to killings along the Texas side of
> the border and as far north as Dallas, according to court records and
> press accounts. The Sinaloa Cartel has been linked to the Houston drug
> trade. And in Phoenix, suspected Mexican traffickers dressed as
> Phoenix Police SWAT officers recently attacked a home with high-
> caliber weapons.
>
> "The violence in [American] cities has a direct cause and effect
> related to what is taking place in Mexico," said Fred Burton, vice
> president for counterterrorism at Stratfor, an Austin, Texas-based
> private intelligence company.
>
> "The farther north you go from the border, the less that is
> understood," said Burton, a member of the Texas Border Security
> Council. The group focuses on homeland security and economic
> development along the Texas-Mexico border.
>
> The biggest worry for local law enforcement agencies is that the
> cartels will bring with them violent methods honed during furious
> cartel wars in Mexico that have left about 5,000 dead since 2006. In
> recent years, Mexican drug violence has reached new heights, featuring
> beheadings, videotaped executions shown on the Internet and the
> assassination of top Mexican officials.
>
> In the past decade, Mexican cartels have surpassed Colombian
> traffickers as the ascendant force in the hemisphere, moving into the
> United States and also taking control of Central American trafficking
> routes and dominating the market in South American countries like
> Peru, according to law enforcement officials.
>
> "It's all a question of business," said Carlos Humberto Toledo, a
> military affairs expert in Mexico City. "The American market
> represents the biggest consumer in the world, and all the cartels are
> focused on it."
>
> Expanding activities
>
> Analysts fear the cartels will bring not just drug violence, but
> peripheral cash-generating crime like kidnapping, extortion and
> protection rackets —- problems that are common in Mexico.
>
> Burton said there has already been an alarming spike in kidnappings
> along the Texas border. "We don't know how many have been kidnapped,
> but guesstimates by local law enforcement puts abductions in border
> towns at four to eight a week," Burton said. "They are snatched in the
> U.S. and taken to Mexico."
>
> Sanchez said kidnapping in the U.S. could be particularly attractive
> to the cartels because they may be able to demand more money than they
> do in Mexico.
>
> "The U.S. will begin to see a little of the same conflict that is
> happening in Mexico," Sanchez said. "If [the cartels] already have
> methods, and ways of diversifying into other crimes, it's normal that
> they won't stop at the border."
>
> But experts say it's unlikely the U.S. will see the type of large-
> scale drug wars that have paralyzed various Mexican cities and forced
> President Felipe Calderon to send about 25,000 federal troops to
> confront the cartels.
>
> Toledo, the military affairs analyst, said the cartels will continue
> to fight their major battles within Mexico. And less corruption and
> more effective law enforcement make it impossible for large cartels to
> flourish on American soil, he said.
>
> "In the U.S., there will be violence, but it's local, decentralized, a
> small dose compared to Mexico," he said. "The American system is much
> more effective in combating drug distribution."
>
> MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS
>
> The Gulf Cartel
>
> Based in Matamoros in the state of Tamaulipas along the Texas border,
> it has been one of Mexico's two dominant cartels in recent years. It
> has been strengthened by its armed wing called the Zetas, highly
> trained military deserters blamed for bringing new levels of savagery
> to the drug wars.
>
> The Federation
>
> The result of a 2006 accord between several groups located in the
> Pacific state of Sinaloa, it also is called the Sinaloa Cartel. U.S.
> officials say the Federation has become the dominant drug trafficking
> organization in the Southeast, taking control from the Gulf Cartel.
>
> Sources: Stratfor, Congressional Research Service