Iran in Mexico and the Caribbean: Building a Strategic Trampoline towards the US

Realite · Oct 28, 2011

Iran's plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington is a step further in a long term strategic effort to use Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean as a platform to operate in the US, says security expert Román D. Ortiz. http://bit.ly/ujllI8

Archer0915 · Oct 28, 2011

Realite said: ↑

Iran's plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington is a step further in a long term strategic effort to use Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean as a platform to operate in the US, says security expert Román D. Ortiz. http://bit.ly/ujllI8
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Interesting but what is the relevance?

waltky · Dec 4, 2011

Why isn't narco-terror also considered terrorism?...

Pervasive insecurity in Mexico: If this isn't 'terror,' what is?
December 3, 2011 - President Calderon called it "terror;" Hilary Clinton called it "insurgency." But still, after 40,000 drug war deaths, the insecurity in Mexico doesn't meet the world standard for "terror."

Across the country bombs packed with unsophisticated explosives have gone off, killing bystanders and targets alike; gory videos documenting the torture and beheadings of countless people are disseminated on the Internet; dismembered bodies are disposed of in public spaces with threatening messages penned as warnings to others. This may sound like a description of Afghanistan, a stronghold for targets of the US "war on terror." But in fact, it's Mexico. And despite the similarities in the tactics of violence and intimidation used, in Afghanistan it's called terrorism; in Mexico it's not.

There's no dispute that the violence – which has claimed more than 40,000 lives since 2007 – is escalating. Yet there is no consensus about what to label the troubling state of affairs. It's variously called a criminal insurgency, narcoterrorism, simply war, and – less frequently – terrorism. Mexicans, in everyday language, call it la inseguridad (insecurity). But does it matter what it's called? Politically and legally it does.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2010 warned that Mexican drug trafficking organizations may be morphing into "what we would consider an insurgency." She was instantly criticized by both Mexicans and Americans, and President Obama stepped in to issue an apology. (An insurgency, in security parlance, is often thought of as a step beyond terrorism, more of a mass movement of violence and crime.)

But Mexican President Felipe Calderón used the "terror" label in response to the casino attack in Monterrey that killed 52 people in August: He tweeted it, his spokesman repeated it, and then in a televised speech, he said it again. It was the first such official use of the term, and there was no domestic political backlash. Going beyond rhetoric, US Rep. Michael McCaul (R) of Texas proposed legislation earlier this year that would label six Mexican drug cartels foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs). "Calderón said it's an attempt to replace the state," says Mr. McCaul, "and he's right." He says the cartels fall under the US federal statute of terrorism.

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Mexico drug war casualty: Citizenry suffers post-traumatic stress
December 3, 2011 - Outwardly, life seems normal; but as drug war kidnappings, extortion, and violence brush closer to the average citizen, experts say, the mental terrain looks like post-traumatic stress.

It was not a stifling evening, so Carolina Gomez, a pretty and petite kindergarten teacher in this Gulf coast city, turned off her air-conditioning unit and slid open the window over her bed. The tropical breeze lulled her to sleep by 11 p.m. But not three hours later, she was jolted awake by a rumbling, like rocks being dumped on asphalt. As her head cleared, alarm dawned: The air of her neat middle-class neighborhood was thick with automatic weapons fire and explosions. Wishing she could hide under her bed, she lay immobile, partly due to a sprained ankle she was nursing and partly assessing her fears: How close was the shooting? Could bullets stray into her window? Worse, could a fleeing gunman enter her home, her bedroom?

Her cellphone rang: It was her parents in the room next door. "Are you OK? Stay put," they advised. Next, they placed a call to their son, Enrique, who lives on the ground floor of a two-story apartment building next door. "Get in your bathroom," they told him, because there are no windows there. He and his new wife crouched for 40 minutes on the tiled floor as gunfire continued to pierce the air, interrupted finally by the arrival of authorities in helicopters flying so low that Carolina's father, Sergio, says he saw one pilot's face through his window.

Even now, six months later, the bullet-pocked commercial street six blocks from the Gomez home is a testament to the collateral damage of the drug war – the imprint of fear on ordinary lives and what it can do to the civic fabric, from choices as simple as changing shopping habits to changing the nation's presidential politics. A culmination of months of creeping insecurity, the April shootout here was a defining moment for the extended Gomez family: They began arranging an escape – to immigrate to Spain. The family agreed to explore their experience with the Monitor if they could use pseudonyms they felt would assure their safety.

The shootout itself seems almost statistically ordinary in a nation that in 2010 saw 14 mayors assassinated, a surge in kidnappings and extortion acknowledged by the government, and cautionary beheadings become a new standard of criminal threat. Indeed, here in Veracruz it was hardly the first time Carolina had had a brush with violence; and it wouldn't be the last. In the past 22 months, a corpse was left outside her school, family members of her kindergarten students have been kidnapped, and she had to undergo security training in how to survive in the event of a shootout at the school. "But," she explains, "it was the first time I did not feel safe in my bed. I used to go to sleep with confidence. I have become totally convinced that there is not a single safe place in Veracruz."

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reedak · Dec 4, 2011

Realite said: ↑

.... a long term strategic effort to use Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean as a platform to operate in the US, says security expert Román D. Ortiz. http://bit.ly/ujllI8
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The hegemonic US has declared that the 21st century will be "America's Pacific century" while crafty Iran seems to have its own undeclared agenda of "Atlantic century".

Good strategy! It's worthy of emulation by China.

Please refer to the article headlined "Obama declares U.S. a Pacific power" at http://www.koreaherald.com/national/Detail.jsp?newsMLId=20111117000532

Gator Monroe · Dec 4, 2011

Korans & middle eastern food wrappers & clothing & other items found along with usuial litter & debris in Southwest Border areas seems to validate this stuff

Mushroom · Dec 5, 2011

waltky said: ↑

Why isn't narco-terror also considered terrorism?...

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Because they sell something that a lot of the people in this country seem to want to have.

Drugs.

And trust me, I have a front row seat to this happening. About 5 miles from where I am sitting, you have the deadliest city in the world, Juarez. And when you listen to the news just across the fence, it is full of atrocities.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alXnawbJZFY"]Footage of car bomb explosion in Juarez - YouTube[/ame]

We have had car bombs, public executions of rival cartel members, even decapitated bodies left hanging from freeway overpasses. We have even had massacres in drug hospitals because the cartel does not want people to stop useing their product.

It is safer in Baghdad then in Juarez, Mexico. And it has been for a great many years. And the violence seeps into the US also. Shootings are a daily occurence here, and I always find it funny that the local news will report finding the body of "a hispanic male with gunshot wounds" in the local desert, but they will mention nothing of drug or cartel connections.

http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_17553032

Something the legalization drones never want you to hear about. Or want you to foolishly believe that legalization would ever make this go away.

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