“Blowback” is a CIA term first used in March 1954 in a recently declassified report on the 1953 operation to overthrow the government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran. It is a metaphor for the unintended consequences of the US government’s international activities that have been kept secret from the American people.–Chalmers Johnson, The Nation September 27 2001.
Following the arrests of ten Mexican soldiers accused of working for Chapo Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel, the Wall Street Journal ran a piece on (quel surprise)… narco ”corruption” in the Mexican military:
More recently, an unknown number of elite Mexican soldiers trained in counterinsurgency and counternarcotics tactics have defected and gone to work for the cartels, according to the government. Anaylsts say the involvement of the defectors–known as ” Zetas”–who went to work as enforcers for another cartel, the Gulf cartel, has increased the alrady high level of violence in Mexico’s drug wars. Anaylsts fear drug gangs will find willing recruits in the thousands of soldiers who desert the Mexican military every year. Some human-rights organizations charge that Mexican soldiers, lacking in police training, have been increasingly involved in abuses including murder, rape, and forced disappearances. New York-based Human rights Watch says accusations of abuse lodged with Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission, an autonomous government agency, skyrocketed to 1,230 complaints in 2008 from 182 complaints in 2006. Mexico’s defense ministry didn’t have any comment. In the past, the ministry has said it takes seriously and investigates accusations of human rights violations.
Time to revisit Los Zetas and the US military.
By ‘” recently”, WSJ means more than a decade ago. That’s when a cadre from the “elite” GAFE (Grupo Aeromovil de Fuerzas Especiales) shopped their US-trained skills to the Gulf narcos. Estimates of the number of the orginal GAFE defectors range from 30 to 60. Regardless, the number was more than sufficient to recruit, train and mobilize a miltiarized indigenous force in serviceof Oreil Cardenas, who headed Cartel de Golfo at the time. Cardenas was extradited to the US two years ago and is currently cooling his suedes in the slammer awaiting a September court date in Houston.
(Check Ted Bensman’s interview with former Gulf cartel attorney Ernesto Gutierrez at the Global Post. Gutiierrez, who is seeking asylum in the US, claims to have been abducted by Zetas, beaten and tortured at a ’safe house’ and then…unlike, most of those the Zetas take for a long walk…was set free.)
All the alarums over the Zetas vaunted special ops skills are neither new nor unwarranted. Between 1996 and 1999, some 3,000 GAFE soldiers attended courses in counternarcotics and special operations at the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School in Fort Bragg..
“The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men…”
The increasing cooperative military arrangements between Mexico and the US are relatively new. Until the Bush I administration, Mexico had a longstanding aversion to any American military involvement in their affairs. It was the friendship between two generals and the War on Drugs that eventually sealed the deal and brought the GAFE to Bragg, including the cadre who became Los Zetas. Writing in the Autumn 2000 issue of Joint Force Quarterly, Craig A. Deare renders this account:
The first meeting was held in December 1995 in San Antonio at a downtown hotel rather than a military installation. Over the next four years the group experienced successes and failures because of many factors. Of the original topics, airspace sovereignty was dropped at the outset because of Mexican reluctance to discuss such issues with the U.S. military. In the end the group focused on counternarcotics, owing to Mexican interest in the issue. This underscores a major lesson: Mexico aggressively put sues matters of national interest but only politely entertains others. In an effort to make the relationship work, DOD developed a plan to assist in counternarcotics. The first element was a train-the-trainer program, implemented with counterdrug funding. More than 3,000 soldiers were trained between 1996 and 1999, mostly at Fort Bragg by the 7th Special Forces Group in tactics, techniques, and procedures for Mexico’s airmobile special forces groups. This aspect of the program was relatively successful.
Strong emphasis on “relatively” is in order, considering the current situation.
The Best Trained Drug Gang in the World
According to a 1998 DOD Drug Enforcement Policy and Support report, from1996 through 1998, 432 GAFE officers were trained at Ft. Bragg under the tutelage of the 7th Special Forces Group. In 1996, Special Warfare, the official publication of the John F Kennedy Special Warfare School reported that the GAFE officers were being schooled with “a partiuclarly heavy emphasis..on those forces that will be located in the states of Chiapas and Guerrero.”
And so they did. Before the third wave of GAFE officers put their boots on the pine needles at Bragg in ‘98, bad news was already blowing from their comrades work down in Mexico. Six GAFE, including a lieutenant colonel, were charged with the kidnapping and torture of eighteen young men and women in Jalisco, December 1997. One of their victims was tortured to death. Eight months later twenty GAFE officers and noncoms were arrested for trafficking in drugs and undocumented immigrants at the Juarez airport.
For further details from that period, travel to the Center for Public Integrity’s 2001 “U.S. Forces Linked to Human Rights Abuses” and to Vietnam veteran, activist and author S. Brian Wilson’s 1997 The Slippery Slope-U.S. Military Moves into Mexico.
GAFE soldiers were trained at Bragg by the 7th Group–the original “snake eaters”, arguably the most accomplished insurgency/counterinsurgency specialists in the US military.
“The Mexican Army’s Special Airborne Forces Group, or GAFE, units, which were first established in the 1990s, continue to play an essential role in drug interdiction and in preparing for operations against other violent criminal and terrorist organizations. GAFE elements are tasked to conduct intelligence gathering, hostage rescue, and the capture of the most dangerous criminals. In these roles, the GAFE elements work closely with many Mexican nationallaw-enforcement organizations.”
–Special Warfare The Professional Bulletin of the John F Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, April 2003
With its history in Central and South America ops dating back to Reagan, the 7th Group SF was the obvious choice for GAFE training.
The 3rd Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group drafted the initial plan for US Military trainers in El Salvador that was accepted by SOUTHCOM and the Reagan Administration.
Throughout the decade of the 80s, soldiers from the 7th Special Forces Group played a critical role in helping the Salvadoran military grow form a constabulary force of 12,000 to a counter-insurgency force of 55,000 men under arms.
The 7th Special Forces Group also played a very important role in preparing the Honduran Military to resist and defeat an invasion from Nicaragua. The extensive 7th Special Forces Group operations throughout Honduras in the 80s not only prepared them for the threatened invasion, but also assisted the Honduran forces in conducting their own counter insurgency operations and ultimately defeating the Honduran communist-supported insurgency.
During the last half of the 80s, the 7th Special Forces Group became involved in counter narcotics operations in thr Andean Ridge countries of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. The purpose was not only to reduce the flow of drugs in the United States, but also to help control and reduce the violence that has resulted form the flow of illegal and uncontrolled dollars into South America.
From December 19, 1989 to January 31, 1990, elements of the 7th Special Forces Group participated in Operation “Just Cause” to restore democracy to Panama. On D-Day and over the next ten days the 7th Special Forces Group conducted many reconnaissance and Direct Action missions in support of the operation and the “Ma Bell Take downs” of five Panamanian cartels located in rural areas throughout the country.
Over the next six months, both 2nd and 3rd Battalions played key roles in “Operation Promote Liberty”, which transformed Panama from a military dictatorship supported by a corrupt military, into a legitimate democratic government, protected by a police force.
More on the 7th at Global Security.
It wasn’t the tactical combat training that GAFE/Los Zetas soldiers gained under the tutelage of the 7th that should be the greatest concern. It was the sophisticated lessons learned in intelligence gathering, counterintelligence, PSYOPS and building an indigenous insurgency that the Zetas bring to the narcogueraa. Things that raise them far above their counterparts in Mexico and here in the US.
Bloods and Crips and neo-Nazis may sign up in the Army and Marines for military training as means to raise their tactical skills back on the street, but compared to the Q Course and other specialized classes at SWC that the Zetas received–its the difference between high school and MIT graduate programs.
Making this bad situation worse is the alarming number of GAFEs who desert army ranks. On July 4 2007 the Latinnews Daily reported that the GAFE “desertion rate in their first eight years of existence was almost 25 %, more than twice the overall rate for the army”. According to La Jornada and El Financiero 1,383 GAFE soldier deserted their posts between 2000 and 2005.
Where did they go? Well…
(More on militarization of the narcoguerra to follow.)
3 Comments
June 26, 2009 at 9:24 pm
[...] but expect to have new item here over the weekend. Meantime check out story at NarcoGuerra Times..”Blowback from Bragg”…US military and Los Zetas–Best Trained Drug Gang in the [...]
October 2, 2009 at 8:38 am
[...] since Heriberto Lazcano and his fellow Ft. Bragg graduates began their program. (See ‘Blowback from Bragg‘. For more on what SF A-Teams can accomplish..go to offiical USASF statement at Global Security. [...]
November 26, 2009 at 1:02 pm
[...] This shouldn’t be much of a surprise considering the longterm alliance between rogue Kaibiles and the Zetas, one that dates back to the late 90s when they were being schooled together in advanced special operations skills at Ft Bragg, Ft Huachuca and Ft Benning. See June posting-Blowback from Bragg. [...]