Mexico Federal Troops and police rush into Juarez to try and retake the city

BY MICHAEL WEBSTER: Syndicated Investigative Reporter. March 4, 2009 at 3:00 PM PST

Mexican Federal Police personnel arrive in Ciudad Juarez to carry out an anti-narcotics operation. (Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images)


THE EL PASO/JUAREZ METRO-BORDERPLEX , Mexico—Thousands of Mexican Army troops and federal police heavily armed have moved into the city of Juarez searching for members of the Mexican drug cartels and thousands more are expected later this week according to sources in the Mexican military. The Massive show of force by the Calderon administration is an all out effort to prevent a total collapse in law and order in Mexico's bloodiest city just south of the U.S. border and adjacent to El Paso Texas.

Two of Mexico's deadliest drug cartels have reached a combined force of 100,000 foot soldiers, wreaking havoc across the country and threatening U.S. border states, the U.S. Defense Department told The Washington Times.
The cartels rival the Mexican army in size and have both Mexico and the U.S. in crisis mode as they deal with what they fear is a coming insurgency along the border.
"It's moving to crisis proportions," an unidentified defense official told The Times. The official also said the cartels have reached a size where they are on par with Mexico's army of 130,000.
Sirens blared as the army staged its biggest troop build-up ever in Ciudad Juarez, where violent murders and beheadings occur nearly on a daily bases as the bloody war between the Mexican Drug Cartels and the Mexican Government continues to raise havoc and death to its terrified residents.
Ciudad Juarez is engulfed in the worst drug violence in Mexico as cartels and corrupt cops and other officials fight over one of the country's most profitable drug and human smuggling routes. Four or more Mexican Drug Cartels (MDC's) have join forces and are now fighting to control Ciudad Juarez by taking away the Mexican Army's current hold on the city. While, at the same time roving criminal gangs made up mostly of unemployed youths have joined the battle extorting businesses, kidnapping their owners and just plain residents and robbing banks and hiring out as hit men for the MDC's.

Member of the local police of Ciudad Juarez, Chihuhua state, in northern Mexico that borders with the US, check the body of a beheaded person found on January 20, 2009. Four other men were assassinated in different locations of Ciudad Juárez, a convulsed (J. Guadalupe Perez/AFP/Getty Images)
More than 1500 people have been murdered so far this year and over 6,000 in the area over the past year. Last week MDC's flexed their mussel by forcing the city's police chief to resign with a threat to keep killing police officers until he quit.
"We've got to show we can achieve security in Juarez, for Mexico's sake, for its economy, for people's lives, for our international reputation," said Victor Valencia, the Chihuahua state governor's representative in Ciudad Juarez.
Chihuahua state which includes Ciudad Juarez is prime real estate about in the center of the 2,000 mile U.S. Mexican border with road and rail links deep into the United States. The Pacific-coast Sinaloa gang, led by top fugitive Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, is one of several fighting for control of the city.  
Mexico's law enforcement are corrupted to the highest levels by drug money, while President Felipe Calderon stakes his reputation and future that his army will win the war.
According to high ranking army sources Cd. Juarez is the central war zone in the battle for ground and important smuggling routes north.
"The solution is with the military. The federal, state and municipal police are infiltrated by organized crime," Said one Mexican official.
The Catholic church through their bishops run ads in the local papers pleading for an end to the killings that are "staining the state with blood".
The army expects to have 7,500 soldiers and federal police stationed in Ciudad Juarez by the end of the week, with a further 2,000 troops in the rest of Chihuahua. Troops rolled past U.S.-style shopping malls in Ciudad Juarez Tuesday to set up checkpoints at bridges running over the border and at the city's international airport, briefly shut last week after bomb threats.
Calderon has about 50,000 soldiers across Mexico fighting cartels but has never before sent so many troops to one city.
"Juarez is prisoner to an infinity of groups fighting for the territory, and others who are making the most of the confusion for easy money," said army spokesman Enrique Torres.
Guzman, Mexico's most-wanted man, wants to seize Ciudad Juarez from local drug boss Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, and officials say the shadowy La Linea cartel from the western state of Michoacan and the feared Zetas hit men from the Gulf of Mexico cartel have been at war. But now the cartel bosses say its time for a truce among the cartels and they must now focus their attention on getting the army out of Juarez and show the President who is really in charge, said a protester at last weeks march near the international bridges.
The jump in killings in the city to around 10 a day in February has put Calderon under intense pressure.
U.S. officials publicly are asking whether Mexico is becoming a failed state and voiced concern about the spillover of executions, kidnappings and extortions into the United States.
Last month, gunmen killed two city councilmen and forced out Ciudad Juarez's police chief by killing his deputy and vowing to murder an officer every 48 hours until he stepped down. Reportedly the city's mayor and family now lives across the border in El Paso since a series of death threats.
During the same week a former soldier attacked a convoy carrying Chihuahua's state governor and killed one body guard and wounding another in what many believe was an attack linked to drugs.
"The drug hit men are in control here. Things are out of control, there's so much death," said textile salesman Valente Salazar in Ciudad Juarez's main square as troops swept past in Humvees. "At six o'clock I go home and I don't go out at all after that. There are so many killings."
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