Civil war: Cartels increasingly control northern Mexico

The report, released Monday by the Texas Department of Agriculture and authored by retired Major General Robert Scales and retired General Barry McCaffrey, describes a conflict in which drug cartels have forced the “capitulation” of Mexican border cities, killed more than 40,000 people and have fueled “an internal war in Mexico that has stripped that country of its internal security to the extent that a virtual state of siege now exists adjacent to our own southwestern states.”

Residents in towns along drug trafficking routes have been forced out by cartels, leaving them abandoned. Throughout northern Mexico, civil society has “severely deteriorated.”

The authors go on to claim Mexican cartels have moved into Texas border counties to use as safe havens: hiding out from Mexican authorities under the nose of U.S. law enforcement, directing drug shipments into the United States interior and engaging in kidnapping. Cartels have built command centers in Texas comparable to brigade-level headquarters…

Writing for the New York Times, Damien Cave described a terrified public using Twitter, Facebook and blogs to transmit information traditional media cannot report for fear of reprisal. Cave points out that while Mexico is very dangerous, the country is broadly middle class and inundated with cell phones. Facebook has a 95 percent penetration rate. A laundry list of sites like El Blog del Narco report violence daily, often in extremely graphic detail.