Drug cartels attack enemies and spread terror with weaponized drones in US, Mexico
It began as a routine operation: Mexican police were clearing blockades placed by organized crime groups in El Aguaje, a Western Mexico town that has become a battleground for drug cartels.
Suddenly, authorities said, a drone flew over, dropping a
gunpowder bomb and wounding two members of the Michoacán state police force in
the arms and legs.
The April attack underscored an emerging danger in the
international fight against illegal drugs — weaponized drones.
Cartels such as the bloody and powerful Jalisco New
Generation Cartel, or CJNG, and its rival Cárteles Unidos, have upgraded their
arsenals by using drones to bomb enemies, posing a growing threat to Mexican
and U.S. citizens and allowing more drugs to flow into the United States.
Drones are part of the cartels' larger strategy to achieve
their aims by arming themselves like rogue militaries.
"I've been a strong advocate of designating the Mexican
cartels as terrorist groups because they're acting like terrorist groups.
They're equipped like terrorist groups. They're distributing record levels of
poisonous drugs in America," said Derek Maltz, a former agent in charge of
the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s Special Operations Division.
"They're going to use the latest and greatest
technology" to defeat adversaries in Mexico, go after police and fight for
territory that gives them better routes to funnel drugs into the United States,
he said.
Mexican drug cartels are increasingly using drones to attack
enemies and further their aims. These drones are from a seizure by the Attorney
General of Mexico in Puebla in 2020.
In an exclusive interview with The Courier Journal, one
rookie drone operator with Cárteles Unidos, who did not want to give his name
given the cartel’s criminal activities, said his organization has about 100
drones. Cartel members receive training on their use, he said, from a man
nicknamed "Lord of the Skies."
“He's been training us since last year,” the cartel member
said. “We have many drone models. They're not too sophisticated but can carry a
considerable amount of explosives."
He said the drones “come legally from the U.S.” through
“groups in Michoacán that support us and have legit money to buy the
drones."
The man said Cárteles Unidos deploys drones to keep watch
over territory and sometimes to attack CJNG. He said neither his organization
nor CJNG uses drones for trafficking drugs because it's not worth the money or
effort; drones are an inefficient way to carry the large volume of drugs CJNG
exports to the United States.
CJNG — which is known for kidnappings, torture and murders
in Mexico and the United States — is blamed for the spread of fentanyl, one of
America's deadliest illicit drugs.
CJNG and other Mexican cartels make fentanyl in clandestine
laboratories and also produce and traffic “the overwhelming majority of the
heroin available in the United States,” according to the DEA’s 2020 National
Drug Threat Assessment.
The Mexican media accused CJNG of launching the April drone
attack against police—a claim denied by an alleged CJNG member on Twitter. But
Mexican Secretary of Defense Luis Cresencio Sandoval confirmed CJNG was to
blame and said the person who used the drone was arrested.
Aguililla, the municipality containing El Aguaje where the
attack occurred, has become a strategic hub for the production of
methamphetamine. It’s also the birthplace of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, also
known as "El Mencho," the most powerful drug lord in Mexico and
leader of CJNG.
Shortly after the attack, the Associated Press reported,
Papal Nuncio Mons. Franco Coppola visited Aguililla, offering a mass for
residents and walking through the streets with an image of Christ "to
symbolically reclaim roadways where dozens of bodies — some decapitated — have
been left in recent months."
The drone attack in El Aguaje was one of many in the past
few years. CJNG has also been blamed for many attacks in Tepalcatepec in the
Michoacán state, and one in Baja California, a Mexican state bordering the
United States in which the cartel targeted the house of Public Security
Secretary Gerardo Sosa Olachea.
During a briefing in Mexico City, Sandoval said such attacks
are concerning, but “haven’t been as effective” as the cartels would like. He
said the drones they are using can’t carry enough explosives to seriously harm
a person or destroy a building.
But authorities are concerned cartels could get hold of more
deadly devices in the future. They also worry some cartels may step up efforts
to smuggle drugs across the border with drones; they say some are already using
this tactic to bring marijuana and other drugs into the United States.
Cartels have also used drones for surveillance along the
border. In the academic journal International Studies Perspective in 2018,
researchers cited an expert who said cartels use drones to look for border
patrol agents and inform drug smugglers of their positions.
As drones proliferate among cartels, public safety officials
in Mexico are trying to curb their use. The office of Mexico's attorney general
has launched several investigations into terrorism by organized crime and has
seized drones and C-4 explosives, which are commonly used in drone attacks.
Experts in Mexico and the United States worry more
militarized cartels will mean more casualties in both countries, a more
difficult battle for law enforcement and more drugs on American streets.
Earlier this month, government officials in both nations
held talks in Mexico City's Foreign Ministry to discuss a new joint security
policy. A statement released by the foreign ministry said, “Mexico and the
United States reaffirm the commitment to work together against transnational
organized crime.”
The ministry said the two countries’ priorities include
reducing arms, narcotics trafficking and violence caused by organized crime;
addressing addiction as a public health problem; and attacking the finances of
criminal organizations that operate in the two countries.
Over the years, various strategies against organized crime
have been implemented in Mexico with no success. Instead, the so-called war on
drugs led to tens of thousands of deaths. Cartels only grew stronger and better
able to supply the drugs fueling America’s drug epidemic.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, more than 81,000 people died from drug overdoses in the United
States in the 12-month period ending May 2020 — the highest number of overdose
deaths ever recorded 12 months.
“They're killing our citizens as we've never seen in the
history of the country," Maltz said.
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