Stability Operations In Mexico

BY Herschel Smith
12 years, 1 month ago

The Mexican military has retooled, adapted and retrained to conduct stability operations within its own borders.

Woe is the diplomat who uses the wrong word, no matter its veracity. Over the past year, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Undersecretary of the Army Joseph Westphal separately have used the word “insurgency” to describe the Mexican government’s fight against indigenous criminal cartels.

Maybe it comes too easily after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but in Mexico the word stirs cultural memories of heroic freedom fighters-not exactly the message that the government wants to convey-and drew cries of outrage from Mexico City, resulting in diplomatic retractions from U.S. officials.

I have called the cartel and gang violence both warlord-ism and an insurgency.  But of course, I have no romantic notion of insurgents as freedom fighters.  The insurgents in South America throughout the last quarter of the last century were mainly communists.  They weren’t fighting for anyone’s freedom from anything.  But since South and Central America is steeped in Marxist thinking, and thus conflates freedom with revolution, Mexico City became outraged.  Mexico City might prefer to think of them only as criminals, but at least they seem to be reacting to the problem with the correct tools.

Still, insurgency or no, one thing is for certain: The cartels present a serious, multifaceted, and increasingly well-trained and well-armed challenge to the state, but Mexico is reconfiguring its armed forces to meet the challenge.

Frequently outgunned and sometimes corrupted, entire police forces have been sacked and their duties assumed by the Mexican military in recent years. In December 2011, the entire Veracruz police force was fired, with the 800 officers replaced by 2,400 marines. The military has taken over policing in other places, such as Ciudad Juarez, Nuevo Leon and the border state of Tamaulipas.

At the same time, according to analysts, there also has been a real shift in the training and equipping of the military to meet the cartel threat. The army’s training doctrine has been realigned to address stability operations, doing things like setting up checkpoints and working to implement law and order in towns that have been overrun by violence. “They’re conducting stability operations in areas the size of Belgium,” says Inigo Guevara, a consultant on Mexican security and defense issues based in Washington. In one effort to rebuild its presence in the north, the armed service recently spent about $100 million to buy battalion- and company-sized “mobile headquarters” that can be easily constructed and taken down, in preparation for longer-term domestic stability operations, he adds.

Yet, these operations occur against an increasingly sophisticated enemy, with heavily armored “infantry” carriers dubbed “Los Monstruos” (the Monsters) by the Mexican media, as well as more professional infantry tactics refined at training camps in the barren spaces of northern Guatemala and southern Mexico. Cartel gangs are armed with everything from assault rifles and crew-served weapons, to military-grade explosives, .50 caliber rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, as well as using insurgent weapons like car bombs.

As a result, the army and marines have started to look for alternatives to the older, thin-skinned Humvees-Mexico has produced several thousand in local plants in a deal with AM General-and toward a variety of new armored vehicles like Oshkosh’s SandCat, of which 250 have been delivered so far. The navy also has conducted operational testing of Renault’s Sherpa light scout vehicle, most notably in operations in Veracruz late last year, but has not made a final decision on whether to buy it.

This is reminiscent of the need for MRAPs due to the IED threat in Iraq.  Note that Mexico isn’t relying on the police to curb the violence.  Mexico City has enlisted the assistance of the military in a big way, and the military is purchasing weapons and equipment needed for fighting large scale, violent, and highly effective insurgencies.

Aviation Week continues into the weeds concerning equipment, organization of the Mexican military, and various problems they sustain due to inefficiency in structure.  But continuing with this theme of warlord-ism, and insurgents, if we’ve learned nothing else from the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, we understand the need to control the borders, even if we didn’t effect that control.

The Arizona legislature might just act in lieu of the federal government to control their own section of the border.

The Republican-led Arizona Legislature is considering a bill to fund an armed, volunteer state militia to respond to emergencies and patrol the U.S.-Mexico border.

Gov. Jan Brewer could deploy the volunteers using $1.9 million included in the bill making its way through the state Senate. The militia itself was created by a law signed by Brewer last year.

The Arizona Republic reports the bill has a hearing Tuesday before the Senate Appropriations Committee. Senate Bill 1083 has already passed one committee along mostly party lines. It would provide $500,000 in one-time funding and $1.4 million a year from a gang task force fund.

The state is expecting a budget surplus this year, but lawmakers must deal with long-term debt and the May 2013 expiration of the 1-cent-per-dollar sales-tax increase, so it is unclear how much support this bill will receive.

“Something has to be done about the situation at the border — people are being terrorized,” Sen. Sylvia Allen, a Republican from Snowflake who is sponsoring the bill, told The Republic. “There are plenty of ex-law-enforcement officers who could do this. I don’t have any illusion that we can solve our border problem, but this would help.”

Former LEOs or not, they would be operating under rules that apply to everyone, i.e., deadly force can only be used in the case of imminent danger to life or sexual assault.  It isn’t clear that they would even have arrest authority.

What I have recommended is that the rules for the use of force be amended to move away from the Supreme Court decision in Tennessee versus Garner.  This has also been termed “exempting the Border Patrol from the rule of law,” but I have recommended that the U.S. Marines be used to patrol the Southern border.

The rules of warfare are clear.

The law pertaining to the conduct of hostilities (jus in bello), which has developed since antiquity and includes certain provisions of the modern Geneva and Hague conventions, permits the sanctioned killing of an opponent in an armed conflict, regardless of whether he is armed at the moment he is engaged. So long as the opponent meets the minimum criteria to be regarded as a combatant (even an unlawful combatant), he may be engaged with deadly force, even if he is separated from his weapon. He may be killed while sleeping, eating, taking a shower, cleaning his weapon, meditating, or standing on his head. It is his status as an enemy combatant, not his activity at the moment of engagement, which is dispositive.

So the following situation is posed to help the reader understand how serious he or she is concerning security on the border.  You are a border patrol officer, or a U.S. Marine, and you have charge of border security in your area of operations.  A string of what appears to be several dozen illegal immigrants is heading across the border (and is now on the U.S. side of the border), as you have ascertained using night vision.

In the front and bringing up the rear are two individuals, each toting what appears to be an AK-47, but what is most surely a weapon.  No one has fired any shots towards you at this point.  Is it morally justified to shoot and kill the individuals holding the weapons?  This is a different question that is it currently legal.

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Comments

  1. On February 14, 2012 at 8:15 am, TS Alfabet said:

    Just spit-ballin’ here, but in answer to your scenario above:

    1. If the scenario occurs on public lands (i.e., state or federal park), and the observer clearly saw the persons crossing the border such that it was a clear, observable violation of the law, then it would seem to fall under the general rules allowing for a citizen arrest. It might play out as follows: the citizens (being equipped with several, bright searchlights) switch on the search lights and call at a distance for the intruders to stop and drop their weapons and wait for the legal authorities to arrive, that they are under citizens arrest and may not leave. The local police or Border Patrol are called at the same time. If the intruders raise their rifles or take any threatening action, it would seem that the citizens would have the right to defend themselves from obvious bodily harm and could shoot. If the intruders flee back across the border, then it should be left to authorities to pursue.

    2. If the incursion happens on private property, then, assuming that the appropriate “no trespassing” signage is posted, anyone observed crossing the marked boundary is, again, committing a crime and if weapons are present then a private property owner has the right to defend themselves. To the extent that the incursions happen on private property, it would seem well within the rights of the landowner to host private security teams consisting of volunteers or persons paid by the state to secure the property. The same, general procedure as in #1 would follow for making an arrest.

    The question about moral justification does not seem very challenging if there are, in fact, weapons being brandished and a crime is being committed (illegal entry, trespassing, illegal weapon possession, criminal conspiracy, invasion). None of the intruders are “innocent,” weapon or no.

  2. On February 14, 2012 at 10:30 am, Rich Buckley said:

    I lack knowledge here. The point(s) you are making is that we have to change the law of our land in regards to using any military along our borders?

    As to the morality of who to shoot, if anyone, in the boarder crossing, what if those carrying rifles have empty rifles and all the others carrying large satchels carry concealed, loaded pistols…. an old Hollywood-type ruse. The point being the PR will quickly be turn against us and mishaps made public.

    But back to my know-nothing about border protection, what’s the legal problem(s) with protecting our borders using military force?

  3. On February 14, 2012 at 10:43 am, Herschel Smith said:

    But TS Alfabet, let’s keep pulling this thread. You and I cannot shoot anyone who isn’t an imminent threat to our lives. Not even LEOs can do that (Tenn v. Garner). So, for example, the fact that a LEO is pointing a weapon at someone doesn’t indicate that s/he can or will fire the weapon, even in the middle of active theft or other felonies. The felon can continue, turn and run, or whatever, and the LEO must holster his weapon and take chase on foot. Weapons cannot even be used to shoot escapees from prison in the act of escaping. As for us, the Castle doctrine applies only inside the home. The Castle doctrine is strong, and allows you or me to shoot anyone inside of our home, even if not brandishing a weapon, if we feel threatened. But again, it’s only inside the home.

    That’s why I juxtaposed the ROE from warfare with what is going on at the border. So is what is happening at the border a law enforcement action, or should it more correctly be consider a war?

    Regardless of how the law currently sees it, how SHOULD we see it? Is it even possible to address what is happening at the border if we see it exclusively as a law enforcement action?

  4. On February 14, 2012 at 1:03 pm, TS Alfabet said:

    @ Herschel:

    I may be misunderstanding the law in this area, but in my scenarios, if the intruders were armed *and* they raised and pointed their weapons in the citizens’ direction, then there would seem to be an “imminent threat of serious bodily harm” that would justify shooting. In either of my scenarios, if the intruders respond to the call to drop their weapons by running away, then the citizens have to rely on the authorities to give chase.

    The difficulty I see is that this approach is that the intruders will increasingly be armed with better weapons and eventually night vision devices so even a well-armed citizenry would be at a disadvantage eventually. At that point, any fool would have to see it as a war and the rationale for putting the national guard or Marines on the ground becomes compelling.

    Another way around the use of U.S. forces inside the U.S. (posse comitatus) is for the new President in 2013 (God willing) to tell the Mexican govt, straight up, that U.S. forces *will* be deploying on the Mexican side of the border at the most violent/vulnerable areas. The choice for Mexico is whether they will do so in concert and coordination with the Mexican govt or without. But it is clear that the Mexican govt (strangely like the Pakistani govt…..) is not doing enough to enforce the sovereignty of their own borders and it is imperiling the life, liberty and property of U.S. citizens, so we will act in self defense.

  5. On February 15, 2012 at 10:56 am, Rich Buckley said:

    ….”by making the other dumb poor bastard die for his country”….  
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kh9S1Hk975U&feature=youtube_gdata_player

    That is what a war on the boarder looks like. It seems to me the question today is “Why?”

    When neither party keeps any of it’s promises, why do we continue doing the same thing in the nomination process over and over and over every 4 years?

    It’s like we created a spoiled child and we we now realize keeping him at home will only kill the parents.

    Maybe it’s now time to just kick the kid out of the house,
    http://youtu.be/fOaCemmsnNk
     and move on with other ideas that fear and controlled mainstream media don’t want us to hear.

  6. On February 15, 2012 at 1:46 pm, Herschel Smith said:

    Last time Rich. This has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the subject of the post. This isn’t a forum from which to shout just whatever … there is a subject associated with each article. Stick to it.

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You are currently reading "Stability Operations In Mexico", entry #8244 on The Captain's Journal.

This article is filed under the category(s) Border War,Mexican Cartels,Mexico,U.S. Border Patrol,U.S. Border Security,U.S. Sovereignty and was published February 14th, 2012 by Herschel Smith.

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