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A war is taking place in Mexico: An interview with Dr. Robert J. Bunker
By Chris Covert Mexican security forces conducting Laguna Segura counternarcotics operations dismantled a sophisticated telecommunications network on Thursday in the Torreon, Coahuila metropolitan area, colloquially known as La Laguna. The network used a long range radio, as well as networked laptop computers to communicate with aircraft and to control/monitor the movement of ground assets. Other equipment reportedly found included more than 120 separate telecommunications devices. The telecommunication center was operated by Los Zetas criminal drug gang, which used the data from the set up to monitor and evade security forces' movements. The operation appeared to be similar to another one which took place earlier in September when Mexican Naval Infantry troops seized several telecommmunications nodes also operated by Los Zetas, this time in Veracruz, Veracruz on the east coast of Mexico. That network was reportedly sophisticated enough that the transmissions were virtually undetectable. The Laguna Segura counternarcotics operation, which was reinforced late last October, is apparently a more general attempt to gain federal and state government control. This is hoped to be achieved through the increased presence of federal security personnel and by coordinating routine security activities with Coahuila and Durango state police agents, as well as with municipal police agents in the cities of Torreon, Coahuila; Ciudad Lerdo, Durango and Gomez Palacio, Durango. In areas such as these, there patrols with a centralized Mexican Army operations center. These two operations dismantled a telecommunications network, which seems to be indicative of an increasing sophistication Mexican drug cartels are using in their drug processing and shipping operations. The higher level at which cartels now operate places them firmly in the rubric of a narco-insurgency, at least if you ask California professor Dr. Robert J. Bunker. Dr. Robert J. Bunker is a California national security academic whose recent writings place him as one of the top experts in the field as an applied theorist with regard to "non-state threat groups", "counter-threat strategies", "future war/conflict", and other advanced concepts concerning national security. His most recent contribution to the growing national debate on border security and the threat Mexican drug cartels pose to the national security of the United States came last September 13 when he gave testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere. His testimony was about the Merida Initiative, which is the US effort to provide support to Mexico's security apparatus in fighting the drug cartels in Mexico. It is Professor Bunker's belief that the violence and much of the growing sophistication Mexican drug cartels have demonstrated in recent years show that the cartels are slowly evolving from organized crime to something more sinister and harder to deal with, than simple bands of thugs selling drugs to Americans. His belief is bolstered by his contention that cartels are increasingly using warmaking means, such as telecommunications and the use of weapons heavier than small arms. In an interview published in the Mexican leftist weekly Proceso, Dr. Bunker reiterated his contention that cartels are a growing insurgency problem within Mexico which directly threatens the US southern border. This writer wanted to get Dr. Bunker's views on those very issues through an email correspondence. What would you say to critics who say you are trying to conflate normal Mexican organized crime operations to an actual insurgency, that you are trying to make one set of circumstances fit another without any logical nexus? To be candid, I think we have two levels of critics. One is comprised of those at the basic knowledge level-- internet trolls full of malice and readers with just enough knowledge to get themselves in trouble. I basically ignore that group-- I don't want to hear what a Maoist insurgency is and how the cartels do not fit its traditional patterns. The second level of critics is composed of the informed public (with deeper knowledge of the topic), some military/law enforcement readers, and those from the policy and academic communities. The toughest critics come from the last group-- and in fact the debates have already started in the academic/policy circles. Dr. Paul Rexton Kan in the Summer 2011 issue of Parameters put Barry McCaffrey, Hal Brands, Hillary Clinton, Max Manwaring, and yours truly in his theoretical gun sights. His basic argument is that 'high intensity crime' rather than narco-insurgency or narco-terrorism is taking place in Mexico. I've already responded-- in a sense-- with another edited volume of Small Wars & Insurgencies/Routledge book coming out on 'Criminal Insurgencies in Mexico and the Americas'. John Sullivan and I have an important theoretical writeup on new forms of insurgency-- criminal and spiritual as they pertain to the gangs and cartels-- in that work. However, I have recently decided, due to Kan's Parameters essay, that I'm going to have to do a comparative analysis of 'high intensity crime' vs 'criminal insurgencies' now as one response to the critics. To be fair to Dr. Kan, he is part of the El Centro program standing at Small Wars Journal in a few weeks-- we want his differing viewpoint included as we foster open scholarly debate on what is going on in Mexico. This all might sound like splitting hairs but part of the solution-- or in this case mitigation of the threat-- is to accurately define it so that we can properly respond to it. We are back into that "is it crime or war" debate that has been going on for over a decade now. The US Army underwent a similar debate with the emergence of OOTW (Operations Other Than War) back in the mid-1990s. Not to show my age, but I was actively involved in that debate too. Back then, the US Army thinkers just couldn't accept non-state groups were waging war-- only states were allowed to do that. In one of your articles at Small Wars Journal, you write "The cartels then sought in the various towns and cities to suppress and co-opt information produced and distributed by journalists/reporters and their employers." That passage would lead the reader to think that that cartel information offensive was planned from the start. How do you convince a reader that is the case? And how significant is it that cartels have planned information operations from the start. If the readers looked at background analytical documents, such as Lisa Campbell's operational assessment of Los Zetas-- specifically the operations and intelligence composition figures [See Narcos Over the Border, pp. 58-59] when they were allied to the Gulf Cartel-- they will see counterintelligence and deception (psychological warfare) organizational components identified. The other cartels may have taken a more haphazard approach, though, as the La Familia and splinter Los Caballeros Templarios groups have proven adept at winning the 'hearts and minds' of indigenous populations in Michoacan via their own propaganda efforts. The free press in Mexico has long been suppressed when reporting on the drug trade due to past PRI (and elite) complicity, profit taking, and collaboration with the initial cartels. Los Zetas, and later the Guatemalan Kaibiles, coming into this has made it even worse. They initially ushered in special operations planning into the decision making process for the Gulf Cartel-- info ops thus became a planning component. This required the other cartels to acquire their own capabilities just as we have seen with the 'arms race' that has been taking place with the deployment of cartel enforcers increasingly found to have military grade weaponry. I think cartel info ops have evolved over time along with the Mexican cartels, which are about two-and-a-half decades old, they definitely did not have them day one with some sort of grand plan. Information operations is also a broad concept-- what is possibly even more significant is that different levels of these operations exist and the various Mexican cartels seem adept at different levels. It could be argued that the Sinaloa cartel focuses on strategic level info ops issues while some of the other cartels do not. This was evident as early as the 1990s-- but very little has been written on it-- when car bombs were being directed against the Sinaloa cartel by the Arellano F"lix (Tijuana) cartel and the Sinaloa cartel did not retaliate in kind. Blog del Narco has had technical problems with Google in the past that wound up being attributed to sloppiness by Google. If Blog del Narco's problems are not under that category, does their current travails suggest Los Zetas have some influence with unidentified individuals in Google? I'm going to have to go with the sloppiness/too much network traffic explanation unless Google does not want Blog del Narco associated with it and therefore the technical service provided might not be considered a priority. Google is a business and the controversy generated by hosting Blog del Narco might represent a minor headache via the bad press it provides. Blog del Narco also gets the service it pays for and has been doing things on the cheap. This is all only speculation however-- but Blog del Narco has since migrated to another web site now and mirrored sites are causing some confusion. I don't see Los Zetas having any influence on unidentified individuals or embedding 'agent provocateurs' at Google. Google has its own unique corporate culture that is pretty alien to outside groups-- especially Los Zetas. Would it surprise you to learn that Blog del Narco has in the past been frequented by Mexican narcotraffickers? And that the identity of the bloggers are an open secret in one of the cities in Nuevo Leon? Not your first statement. The site is open and anonymous media content (pictures/video links/text) is sent in all the time. No doubt the Mexican narcotraffickers are providing some of the content directly to the site to settle old scores, set up competitors and others who stand in their way, further their own agendas, and facilitate components of their info ops plans. I'm sure many of the traffickers are also viewing the site to see how so and so was killed and to hear 'shop talk' about current incidents of interest. The second statement did surprise me. If accurate, it would mean those bloggers are either protected or allied to one of the competing cartels. I have trouble with the cartels viewing the bloggers as benign and just leaving them alone in a city like that once they have been identified-- that would appear to be an anomaly. Part II to be continued tomorrow. Click here to read part II Posted by: badanov 2011-11-23 |
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