Of Mice and Men: Gangs, Narco-Terrorism, and the USA
Originally posted under the "The Switch" thread, I choose to begin anew given the circumstances...I'd appreciate your thoughts and comments, and if you are an interpreter, you can keep your mask on for safety.
v/r
Mike
Gentlemen,
Over the course of the last three weeks, my thesis research on Iraq has been distracted by a more pressing situation in Salinas, CA- the home of John Steinback. I believe that my observations are particularly relevant for this thread, and y'all may find the topic interesting and compelling for further discussion.
Salinas, along with many cities in Northern California (NorCal), are facing what they perceive to be as a gang problem. Levels of violence, drug use, and other criminal activity metrics have increased exponentially throughout the last decade. Some neighborhoods of Salinas are deemed no-go zones or ungovernable. Despite $5m invested by Congress to establish an anti-gang task force created to serve as "the local model for national level anti-gang task forces," Sen Boxer Press Comment progress is fleeting.
Local officials are exasperated. Local law enforcement is exhausted. In their own words, the situation is dire.
Just like in Iraq circa late 2006. The frightening realization is that I've walked this dog before. Even more frightening is that this problem is now in my own backyard, and we seem somewhat oblivious to it. It took us many years of fighting in Iraq to collectively realize that AQI was merely a symptom of a greater problem.
From my initial observations, I do not believe that Salinas has a gang problem-the gangs are merely symptoms of a larger problem that includes transnational terrorism, the drug trade, illegal immigration, prison reform, civil rights and equality, education, and poverty. As the world "flattens," Salinas is an example of the negative side effects of globalization.
Before I explain a portion of the greater problem that transcends the local government of Salinas and potentially leads further south to Colombia, El Salvador, Mexico, I would like to introduce local recruitment tools and propaganda used throughout NorCal: Generation of United Nortenos. In this video, you'll notice that they've successfully recruited Elmo and Mickey Mouse to become gangstas. In other videos, the children recruited are reminicent of the children we captured in AQI training camps in Diyala Province.
Switching gears...
As noted in a previous post, Plan Colombia has effectively demobilized the AUC and marginalized the FARC. We have had tremendous success in lower levels of violence in the country (95% decrease in kidnappings, 50% decrease in homicides, 70% decrease in oil pipeline attacks, and 80% increase in trafficability along roads). Furthermore, the big media success was the hostage rescue.
However, the drug production and exports are still escalating- the primary focus of the original Plan Colombia is a failure. Additionally, the Colombia military continues to be plagued with an image problem through continued Alleged Human Rights Abuses. CRS REPORT TO CONGRESS
Throughout Central America (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, etc...), outside of the regular issues of governance, the mayan population continues to remain disenfranchised, second-class citizenry.
In Mexico, we're seeing a significant rise in drug wars- the national police force is either penetrated, corrupted, or marginalized and the army is doing the fighting. As linked throughout this thread, the drug wars are threatening the stability of the government as the gangs are allegedly reinforced and trained by transnational islamic groups (AQ, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc..).
Back to Salinas...
Maybe none of this is related. Maybe Salinas just has a gang-problem.
Or maybe it is all inter-connected. I don't know. I'm just putting it out there for discussion. I read the original constitution (circa 1968) of the Norteno familia, one of the gangs in Salinas. What I read was 2/3s Che Guvera, 1/3 Chairman Mao sprinkled with some Ghandi.
The original organization was not a gang or shadow government. Originally, it was a community organization focused on the social, political, and economic progress of the perceived disenfranchised latino/hispanic community.
During the 1980's, ex-Vietnam vets joined the famila and militarized it using the hard fought lessons learned in their war.
I've adapted a Kilcullen quote on Afghanistan to summarize this thread...
Well, I doubt that an Anbar-style “awakening” is likely in Salinas. The enemy is very different from Al Qaeda in Iraq and, in any case, Salinas’ gangs have a very different makeup from Arab tribes. So even if an awakening happened it would likely play out differently from Iraq. Rather than talking about negotiations (which implies offering an undefeated gang a seat at the table, and is totally not in the cards)
I would prefer the term “community engagement.”
The local families, neighborhoods, and communities in some parts of Salinas have been alienated by poor governance and feel disenfranchised...This creates a vacuum, especially in terms of rule of law, dispute resolution, and mediation at the neighborhood level, that the gangs have filled. Rather than negotiate directly with the gangs, a program to reconcile with local communities who are tacitly supporting the gangs by default (because of lack of an alternative) would bear more fruit. The gang movement itself is disunited and fissured with mutual suspicion...
I'm interested in y'alls thoughts. While I'm stationed in NorCal, I think I'm gonna try to provide some help to the local officials.
v/r
mike
I wouldn't do anything to deter civic mindedness nor
to dissuade anyone from volunteering to help. Having done so a couple of times, let me warn you a few things:
Be prepared for some of the locals to blow you off (or worse) because you're interfering or not local or will only be there a short time or for some other reason including just jealousy that you do not HAVE to cope with what they do on a permanent basis. Don't let that stop you, just don't let it get to you if it occurs.
Don't expect to see the changes you think important; look at it as planting trees. You can help and do good things but it may take months or even years to see a result.
Little will be done if it's your idea -- it has to be a local guys idea to get implemented and (this is important) become an embedded process. So plant the seed and let someone else take the credit. As you know, making it better is what's important.
Go for it and have fun (and no that is not an out of place thing to say regardless of the situation -- if you aren't having fun, you aren't doing it right...;) ).
Late to Thread, but some thoughts anyway...
Firstly, I came upon this thread in search of conversations pertaining to insurgency and gangs. Coming from the thread titled "Commonalities and lessons learned between gangs and insurgencies"...
My thought was to find some leads as I try to compile reports, etc on possible lessons for COIN from anti-gang efforts. It has been really thought provoking to see a thread essentially going the other way and looking at how to bring COIN lessons to anti-gang efforts. Upshot for me...clearly many people who know better than I think there is sufficient commonality and potential for lessons learned, so I'm going to keep looking into this...any help is always appreciated, btw. Meantime, I'm going to follow some of the leads mentioned in this thread and read reports linked or referred to...
With regards to the questions surrounding the war on drugs, what has really happened in Colombia, etc, I thought the recent Economist has some pretty interesting stuff. (They contend COIN victory in Colombia, failure at anti-drug goal.) I don't have a dog in this fight, or perhaps more accurately I'm gonna keep my dog out of the fight. But the contention that many of the problems discussed here in this thread get fixed by starting with legalizing drugs...it is an idea seemingly dismissed out of hand. Is that a good thing?
Quote:
Failed states and failed policies: How to stop the drug wars
from The Economist: Full print edition
Prohibition has failed; legalisation is the least bad solution
A HUNDRED years ago a group of foreign diplomats gathered in Shanghai for the first-ever international effort to ban trade in a narcotic drug. On February 26th 1909 they agreed to set up the International Opium Commission—just a few decades after Britain had fought a war with China to assert its right to peddle the stuff. Many other bans of mood-altering drugs have followed. In 1998 the UN General Assembly committed member countries to achieving a “drug-free world” and to “eliminating or significantly reducing” the production of opium, cocaine and cannabis by 2008.
That is the kind of promise politicians love to make. It assuages the sense of moral panic that has been the handmaiden of prohibition for a century. It is intended to reassure the parents of teenagers across the world. Yet it is a hugely irresponsible promise, because it cannot be fulfilled. ...
Gotcha...my comment had more
to do with the lack of that debate in policymaking circles. It was sort of an errant thought that popped into my head as I was reading through the thread, since I had just put down that particular Economist yesterday. I guess what I was thinking as I read the thread was that the legalization debate seemed like one of the sides in the discussion taking place in the thread.
But, of course, I see now it might have appeared I was suggesting legalization as an option, which wasn't my intention. :eek:
Upon reflection, I probably should have stuck to what I was interested in re: my comment....the gang and insurgency commonalities.
Ah, well.
Hmmm I thought they were already there a while ago
Quote:
Originally Posted by
MikeF
If the drug cartels are adding oil as another business set, at what point do they become an insurgency? Is it possible that they are currently setting up shadow governments and controlling portions of territory?
I would welcome any feedback from the Council.
v/r
Mike
Just figured that nobody ever calls them insurgents because of all the political issues with needing to keep it a LE issue on our side. :confused:
International Criminal Actors
Here is MikeF's question:
Quote:
If the drug cartels are adding oil as another business set, at what point do they become an insurgency? Is it possible that they are currently setting up shadow governments and controlling portions of territory?
and Wilf's answer:
Quote:
They become an insurgency when they try to replace the existing government as that which exercises authority over them, and use violent means to secure that policy.
which is correct as a military definition. However, it is not the final answer as to what law and rules apply in engaging them.
Drug cartels and criminal gangs in general are Violent Non-State Actors. In their present-day highly evolved form, they are usually Transnational Violent Non-State Actors. Calling them that does not necessarily tell us what to do with them - it only defines what they are.
Nor, does it necessarily help to define them solely in terms of an insurgency. A transnational gang may not be violent on its home turf (it may already own that government, for example). It may be very violent in another country, but not have either the intent or ability to overthrow that government.
Cutting to the "cheese" (because I have an 87 year old, WWII 82nd Airborne vet, waiting to sign some docs), under US law, a state of "armed conflict" can be "declared" against a Violent Non-State Actor, as in the case of AQ.
Normally, we (US) handle gangs under criminal law enforcement rules.
Insurgent like, and very dangerous
http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_4_corruption.html
The Mexicanization of American Law Enforcement
The drug cartels extend their corrupting influence northward.
Quote:
Far less widely reported is the infiltration and corruption of American law enforcement, according to Robert Killebrew, a retired U.S. Army colonel and senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for a New American Security. “This is a national security problem that does not yet have a name,” he wrote last fall in The National Strategy Forum Review. The drug lords, he tells me, are seeking to “hollow out our institutions, just as they have in Mexico.”
http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts...#comment-89222
British Muslim Gangs and the “Chemical Jihad”
Quote:
Some law enforcement officials believe the British Taliban fighters may have links to criminal gangs in Britain whose members are Muslim and who have been connected to selling heroin on British streets. At least one other captured Taliban fighter was found to have British gang tattoos on his arms, according to a western law enforcement advisor to the U.S. military, and there is evidence that various British Muslim gangs have sent fighters to Afghanistan, or sell Afghan heroin on British streets. Roughly 90 percent of the heroin sold in Britain comes from Afghanistan.
Quote:
"The big bosses have Taliban and al Qaeda connections and we're often told only to deal it to non-Muslims. They call it chemical jihad and hope to ruin lives while getting massive payouts at the same time," said a street dealer quoted in this British tabloid.
While the word tabloid makes me immediately suspect, there are probably legitimate sources that can validate this.
Quote:
Although the DEA says less than 5% of the heroin sold on U.S. streets comes from Southwest Asia, some U.S. law enforcement authorities nonetheless fear that Afghan heroin could be headed this way. Currently the vast majority of criminal gangs tied to smuggling heroin into the U.S. are Latin American, not South Asian, in origin. That said, Canada's Royal Mounted Police recently warned that more than 60 percent of the heroin sold in Canada now comes from Afghanistan and links have been established between Indian crime rings and that emerging trend.
Interesting to see the Indian crime rings tied to the Muslim run drug trade. I guess tribal identity and patriotism only go so far. Then again they could be Indian Muslims (they only have a few million).
http://www.time.com/time/nation/arti...932030,00.html
A Major Blow to Mexico's Masters of Meth
Quote:
Whether or not La Familia is Mexico's most violent drug cartel, it is certainly the weirdest. Arguably, it is the world's first "narco-evangelical" gang. During this week's raids, U.S. officials found numerous religious images, "on fireplaces, in closets, everywhere," says one. La Familia members purport to be devout Christians who abstain from drugs themselves. In fact, they insist that while they sell meth and cocaine to the U.S., they keep it away from Mexicans. They also study a special Bible authored by their leader, Nazario Moreno, a.k.a. El Más Loco, or "The Craziest One." The cartel's profits have helped it build a large network of support among the poor in Michoacán, which is also the home state of Mexican President Felipe Calderón.
Insurgent like in that the cartel is attempting to mobilize the population using religion and money to in effect undermine the State's security forces.
All very interesting, and in my opinion this presents a very serious threat.
Iraq's lessons, on the home front
An update on the NPS project to help the Salinas community:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...src=newsletter
Quote:
In fact, the cavalry arrived in civvies, carrying laptops rather than M-16s and software instead of mortars. In this case, the most valuable military asset turned out to be an idea: Change the dynamic in the community and victory can follow.
Cites Mike F too.
NPS supports the homefront
David, thanks for the post, good to see the intellectual capital of DoD being employed to help American towns solve tough challenges. I hope it works out.