Invite your attention to both article immediately below and four comments on it, second below. Some of the comments appear pretty sound to me. Integrity of any institution of Mexican (MX) government seems questionable — “plata o plumba” is a long tradition in Latin America and the MX government has been in the press many times for corruption. They are reportedly using screening polygraphs on a very widespread basis and I'm not sure it's getting them what they thought it would. Of course, DHS law enforcement agencies operating along the border and recruiting Spanish-speaking employees from the region are having the same problems. I think the former SF weapons sergeant (18B) is sort of prescient — the proposed program for SF to train MX commandos may not turn out well for the US if it is in fact true.
Special forces create new command to train Mexican troops
WASHINGTON – The Pentagon is stepping up aid for Mexico's bloody drug war with a new U.S.-based special operations headquarters to teach Mexican security forces how to hunt drug cartels the same way special operations teams hunt al-Qaida, according to documents and interviews with multiple U.S. officials.
Such assistance could help newly elected Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto establish a military force to focus on drug-criminal networks that have terrorized Mexico's northern states and threatened the southwestern U.S. border. Mexican officials say warring drug gangs have killed at least 70,000 people between 2006 and 2012.
Based at the U.S. Northern Command in Colorado, Special Operations Command-North will build on a commando program that has brought Mexican military, intelligence and law enforcement officials to study U.S. counterterrorist operations from the U.S. to the war zones, to show them how special operations troops built an interagency network to target al-Qaida mastermind Osama bin Laden and his followers.
The special operations team within Northcom will be turned into a new headquarters, led by a general instead of a colonel and established in a Dec. 31 memo signed by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. That move gives the group more autonomy, and the number of people could eventually triple from 30 to 150, meaning the headquarters could expand its training missions with the Mexicans, even though no new money is being assigned to the mission.
The special operations program has already helped Mexican officials set up their own intelligence center in Mexico City to target criminal networks, patterned after similar centers in war zones built to target al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Mexican and U.S. military officials played down the change, and it's unclear whether the Mexican government will agree to boost its training.
“We are merely placing a component commander in charge of things we are already doing,” said Northcom spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis in a written statement.
Mexico's Foreign Affairs Department emailed a statement saying it had been briefed on the changes and had no further comment.
The creation of the new command marks another expansion of Adm. Bill McRaven's special operations empire, as he seeks to migrate special operators from their decade of service in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan to new missions, even as the rest of the military fights postwar contraction and multibillion-dollar budget cuts. (COMMENT: NORTHCOM doesn't currently have a Special Forces Group aligned, so they'll have to borrow from another combatant command, probably SOUTHCOM. The Building has procedures to do that sort of thing routinely. I'd project that most such missions would go to 7th SF Gp, which is aligned to SOUTHCOM. I'd also project that MG Simeon TROMBITAS, a Spanish-speaking SF officer with long experience in Latin America, and who just relinquished command of US Army SOUTH and assumed duties as US DEFATT Mexico has his fingerprints on this.)
The initial document petitioning Panetta for the command stresses the command's role in military-to-military cooperation with Mexico. The document was signed in September 2012 by McRaven and Northcom commander Gen. Charles Jacoby.
Northcom's special operations training missions are an outgrowth of the Merida Initiative that was formalized in 2008, to provide extensive military assistance to Mexico. The extra special-operations staff, including both troops and civilians, will help coordinate more missions as Mexico requests them, current and former officials said.
Peña Nieto is likely to welcome the continued training to help him build and coordinate the forces he needs to reduce drug violence, according to the Rand Corp.'s Dr. Agnes Gereben Schaefer.
“He has talked about setting up a paramilitary force … made up of former military and police forces, which he has described as more surgical” than the current campaign by Mexican army and police, Schaefer said. He would dispatch the force into towns that have been overrun by drug violence, where police don't have the numbers to fight it, she said.
Special forces create new command to train Mexican troops – Comments
Aren't US trained forces in high demand by the cartels? I expect they'd be particularly attractive given this kind of training.
-2 +5How many millions and millions of $$$$ is this going to cost the American taxpayer? Are we going to be borrowing the money from CHINA to cover the base. And SURELY Mexico is going to help pay for it !!!! More than likely the Department of INjustice and the ATF will covertly arm them and “track the weapons” As soon as they are trained with all the knowledge and information the cartels can move in, bribe them and have themselves a nicely trained force to propogate themselves with. The “War on Drugs” is nothing less than a patheric joke and has been for decades. The cartels are increasingly becoming more and more violent and are infiltrating the United States. The only way to fight a “war” with the cartels is to send in the drones, decimate their mansions, put death squads on their tails and trails and start giving them a REAL war. Never going to happen folks.
As a retired Army 18B, I find this highly questionable. A high number of mexican military are already in the cartel's pockets, and now we are to train them SF techniques? This will not end well for Americans on the border.
We tried this once before. ZETA'S anyone? Coming soon to a border near you! When will they ever learn?
Phi Beta Iota: This is a classic case of stove-piped good intentions in a context of strategic idiocy. The entire world is imploding, and all the US can think of is “send in the military.” The US — and the Americas generally — desperately need an Open Source Agency (OSA) that discovers, discriminated, distills, and diseminates the truth — the whole truth for Whole of Government decision-making.
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