Mexico's largest cartel 'arming consumer drones with explosives' in turf war
Mexico's fastest growing drug cartel has developed drones laden with C4 explosives in the latest sign the country is losing control of an escalating cartel warfare.
Fears are growing that the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) are morphing into narco terrorism as Mexico deals with a bloody battle for territory and drug supply routes into the US.
Mexico’s General Attorney’s Office reported finding drones and the components needed to weaponise them during a search and seizure operation, and is now pursuing terrorism charges against the fast rising CJNG.
CJNG split off from the Sinaloa Cartel, belonging to now-US prisoner Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, around 2010, and today it has expanded its territorial control over nearly the entire country in an escalating wave of violence with rival organisations.
While both Mexico and the United States have actively arrested and extradited hundreds of cartel members and leaders, over the years the strategy has only caused cartels to fragment and regroup in new, often more violent, organisations.
El Chapo, who famously broke out of prison twice, on Saturday appealed against his life sentence handed down a year ago by a US court for trafficking hundreds of tons of narcotics into the country.
The end of El Chapo far from spelled the end of cartel violence in Mexico.
Rival CJNG has arguably become the most powerful cartel in Mexico. The drones follow other innovations such as manned planes to attack rivals, submarines to smuggle drugs, as well a tendency towards very public and brazen displays of power. On a recent video that went viral, dozens of heavily armed men wearing military fatigues along with a convoy of armoured vehicles, looking more like a professional military, pledged their allegiance to the cartel’s leader.
The video was released three weeks after a failed assassination attempt against Mexico City’s police chief (who attributed the attack to CJNG) and while President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) was visiting Jalisco.
When asked by reporters about the video, AMLO insisted on keeping up with his “hugs, not bullets” strategy against organised crime. Soon after taking office he dismantled the Federal Police to incorporate them, along with military troops, to a new National Guard. The force would deploy over 60,000 troops to ensure public safety, but many of these troops are currently diverted to immigration enforcement duties because of pressure from President Donald Trump.
AMLO has mostly moved away from the failed strategy of capturing cartel bosses, and claims poverty is what drives people towards organised crime. He has promised economic prosperity and ending corruption to stop violence, but Mexico’s economy shrank a year after he took office, before the coronavirus pandemic reached the country. Recent estimates project the economy to contract over 9 per cent, with no prospects for recovery within the next four years.
There has been some success. AMLO’s Financial Intelligence Unit froze nearly 2000 of CJNG’s bank accounts. Yet 2020 is on route to becoming Mexico’s bloodiest year on record.
National security expert and former intelligence officer Fabián R. Gómez, said of CJNG's drones: “We might be looking at a group that could be expanding from drug-trafficking related activities into narcoterrorism to retain their power."
