US-trained cartel terrorises MexicoFounders of the Zetas drug gang learned special forces techniques at Ft. Bragg before waging a campaign of carnage.
創始人齊塔人販毒團伙在布拉格堡學到特種部隊的技巧，在發動一大屠殺的戰役前。
Chris Arsenault
Last Modified: 28 Oct 2010 13:38 GMT
Translation by Autumnson Blog
Despite the deployment of 50,000 troops, Mexico seems to be losing the 'war on drugs' [AFP]儘管部署50,000部隊，墨西哥似乎在'對毒品戰爭'失敗[法新社]
It was a brutal massacre even by the gruesome standards of Mexico’s drug war: 72 migrant workers gunned down by the "Zetas" - arguably the country's most violent cartel - and left rotting in a pile outside a ranch in Tamaulipas state near the US border in late August.
它是一場殘酷的大屠殺事件，甚至以墨西哥毒品戰爭的可怕標準：72名移民工人被“齊塔”人 - 可以說是全國最暴力的卡特爾 - 所槍殺和遺下腐爛的成一堆在一牧場外面，八月下旬時在靠近美國邊境的塔毛利帕斯州。
The Zetas have a fearsome reputation, but the real surprise comes not in their ruthless use of violence, but in the origins of where they learned the tricks of their bloody trade.
齊塔人有一可怕的聲譽，但真正的驚奇不是來自他們殘酷的使用暴力，卻是他們學習他們的血腥貿易技巧的起源地方。
Some of the cartel's initial members were elite Mexican troops, trained in the early 1990s by America’s 7th Special Forces Group or "snake eaters" at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, a former US special operations commander has told Al Jazeera.
一些卡特爾的創始成員是墨西哥軍隊的精英，在20世紀 90年代初由美國的第七特種部隊或“吃蛇者”所訓練，在北卡羅萊納州布拉格堡，一名前美國特種作戰指揮官已告訴Al Jazeera。
“They were given map reading courses, communications, standard special forces training, light to heavy weapons, machine guns and automatic weapons,” says Craig Deare, the former special forces commander who is now a professor at the US National Defence University.
"I had some visibility on what was happening, because this [issue] was related to things I was doing in the Pentagon in the 1990s," Deare, who also served as country director in the office of the US Secretary of Defence, says.
The Mexican personnel who received US training and later formed the Zetas came from the Airmobile Special Forces Group (GAFE), which is considered an elite division of the Mexican military.
Their US training was designed to prepare them for counter-insurgency and, ironically, counter-narcotics operations, although Deare says they were not taught the most advanced commando techniques available at Ft. Bragg.
Military forces from around the world train at Ft. Bragg, so there is nothing unique about Mexican operatives learning counter-insurgency tactics at the facility. However, critics say the specific skills learned by the Zetas primed them for careers as contract killers and drug dealers.
“The Zetas definitely have the reputation of being the most dangerous, the most vicious, the most renegade of the cartels,” says Kristen Bricker, a Mexico-based research associate with the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA).
About 29,000 people have died since Felipe Calderon, Mexico’s president, declared war on the drug cartels in 2006.
極端暴力
Extreme violence
The group has mounted the severed heads of its victims on pikes in urban areas, posted torture and execution videos on the internet, forced poor migrants into prostitution and massacred college students during house parties.
"Other cartels have accused them of not following the 'gentlemen's code' of drug trafficking and causing undue violence," Bricker told Al Jazeera.
"At one time, it was considered bad form to kill pregnant women, but not any more." For safety concerns, Bricker didn’t want to say where she lives in Mexico.
Deare estimates "probably more than 500" GAFE personnel received special forces training. He is unsure exactly how long the programme lasted. The Zetas came to the attention of Mexico’s Attorney General’s office in 1999.
After US training, GAFE operatives defected from the Mexican military to become hired guns, providing security to the Gulf cartel, a well established trafficking organisation, according to Laura Carlsen, director of the Americas program of the International Relations Center.
"They split from the Gulf cartel and formed as a cartel in their own right," Carlsen, based in Mexico City, told Al Jazeera.
The Zetas' alleged current leaders, Heriberto Lazcano, known as Z-3 and Miguel Trevino, or Z-40, were first recruited by Osiel Cardenas, the now-jailed leader of the Gulf cartel. The name "Zetas" originates from the radio code "Z" used by top military commanders in Mexico.
But unlike Zorro, the Mexican outlaw hero who also used the "Z" alias, Los Zetas steal from everyone, not just the rich. And they certainly don’t give much back to the poor, except the corpses of their relatives. "They are just known for being a different kind of human being," says Bricker.
頻繁跳槽
Frequent defections
The number of initial defectors from GAFE is thought to be somewhere between 30 and 200, but "the exact number is unclear", says Deare. However, the possibility of defections should not have come as a surprise to US trainers.
The Mexican state "does not pay soldiers enough" Deare says. "I am not saying they [the government] have to pay as much as the cartels, but they [security forces] must be paid decently if they aren’t going to be susceptible to corruption."
The GAFE’s desertion rate of an estimated 25 per cent is high, even by the low standards of Mexico’s security forces. Between 2000 and 2005 more than 1,300 of the elite troops defected, La Journada newspaper reported.
The Zetas decided forming their own cartel was more profitable than working for the military or even other drug gangs [Reuters]齊塔人決定組成他們自已的卡特爾，那是比為軍方或甚至是其它的販毒團伙工作更有利可圖的 [路透社]
"The US really needs to examine their vetting procedures and manuals to see why so many people who they train do so many terrible things when they go back home," Bricker said.
But just blaming Uncle Sam for the rise of the Zetas and increasing drug violence is too simplistic, says Bricker.
"It wasn't just US training. The GAFE were also trained by the Kaibiles of Guatemala, a notoriously brutal special operations force from that country’s dirty war in the 1980s," said Bricker.
And even without special training for cartels, there is little trust that Mexican security forces can deal with the drug trade.
In May 2006, "La Barbie" a leader of the rival Sinaloa cartel, took out a full page advert in a Mexico City daily newspaper, to allege that Mexican police were protecting the Zetas.
For their part, the Zetas have long complained that the Sinaloa cartel enjoys police protection.
Despite debacles surrounding the Zetas and increasing violence, Deare - who physically resembles the tough but fair minded under-secretary of defence played by Harrison Ford in the fictional drug war thriller Clear and Present Danger - thinks Mexico needs more, not less, US involvement.
America has pledged some $1.3bn to assist Mexico in the drug war through the 2007 Merida initiative, but much of that cash hasn’t been spent because it has been stalled in Congress, Deare says.
Ulterior motives
Other analysts are critical of the initiative because it allows the US to "meddle" in Mexico’s affairs and has not garnered the desired results.
"For citizens here, Merida causes two great concerns: it raises questions of national sovereignty and there is a lot of fear that under the cover of the drug war there will be increasing attacks on grassroots movements," says Carlsen.
GAFE, for example, was established in 1994 to fight Zapatista rebels in southern Mexico, La Journada reported.
The Zapatistas, a poorly armed primarily indigenous militia, rose up against the Mexican government on January 1, 1994, the same day the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into effect between the US, Canada and Mexico.
The Zapatistas called NAFTA a "death sentence", in part, because the agreement would allow subsidised US crops to enter the Mexican market, pushing small farmers off the land.
After battling the insurgency, GAFE gained additional training and support from the US to fight the drug trade, a business which arguably benefited more than any other from NAFTA. Relaxed borders increased trade flows in many goods, illegal drugs in particular, and rural displacement swelled the ranks of unemployed young men eager to make quick cash by any means necessary.
Valued between $19bn and $40bn dollars on a yearly basis – exact figures aren’t available for obvious reasons- the drug trade has massive power as a corrupting influence.
And despite 50,000 Mexican troops fighting the cartels, despite the mangled bodies and US assurances of support, Bricker speaks for all three analysts from divergent political outlooks when she states: "No one has been able to present any evidence that the Mexican government is winning this war."
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2010/10/20101019212440609775.html
墨西哥又爆血腥屠殺 15人死
(路透)2010年10月28日 星期四 16:28
（路透墨西哥市27日電）疑似販毒集團殺手今天在墨西哥西部洗車場，開槍擊斃15人，是短短幾天內發生的第3起血腥屠殺案，對打擊暴力猖獗的墨西哥總統卡德隆（Felipe Calderon）增添更多壓力。
歹徒乘坐3輛休旅車，開槍掃射在納耶瑞州（Nayarit）泰比克（Tepic）近郊洗車場，引起一陣驚恐，洗車場員工全都倒臥在地。
納耶瑞州總檢察長辦公室發言人說：「員工全是男性，他們洗車時，疑似遭組織犯罪集團歹徒開槍掃射。」
地方媒體刊出照片顯示，受害人陳屍路旁，頭部中彈，倒臥血泊。
這是22日以來墨西哥境內第3起血腥屠殺案，歹徒當天闖進毗鄰德州艾巴索（El Paso）華雷斯城（Ciudad Juarez）民宅派對，槍殺14人、重傷一名9歲男童；24日又有兇嫌在與加州聖地牙哥接壤的蒂華納（Tijuana）一家復健中心，開槍殺死14人。中央社（翻譯）
http://hk.news.yahoo.com/article/101028/21/kyf0.html
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