Gulf Cartel Leader Captured (with Zetas Update)

The Associated Press reports that the Mexican army captured Mario Armando Ramirez Trevino, one of the contenders to lead the Gulf Cartel, in northeast Mexico near the Texas border Saturday. Although there are no details on the operation yet, or possible U.S. support, Ramirez is wanted on federal drug charges and the State Department had offered a $5 million reward for Ramirez's capture.

Gulf Cartel leader Mario Armando Ramirez Trevino, captured Saturday near the Texas border.

There has been no analysis yet (at least that I've seen) regarding how his capture will affect the Gulf Cartel. The drug empire has been weakened significantly over the past decade due to the 2003 capture of its former boss, Osiel Cardenas Guillen, and the defection and increasingly brutal competition with their former security wing, the Zetas. The cartel's previous top boss, Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sanchez, was arrested last September.

Incidentally, at Foreign Affairs.com, Dwight Dyer and Daniel Sachs provide a good analysis of the strategic consequences of Miguel Angel Trevino Morales' capture last month. Although the Zetas have traditionally relied upon a decentralized organizational structure (think more starfish than spider) that appears to negate a counter-strategy of leadership decapitation, the lack of a clear leader might also result in intra-gang competition. Like al-Qa'ida and its devolution into various affiliates, this prevents them from acting in a coordinated and strategic fashion (especially given that all of the Zetas' original leaders have been killed or captured), but means this instability may lead to increased violence at the local level. Dyer and Sachs argue that although "the arrest of Trevino may prove a devastating blow for the Zetas in Mexico," they are threatening to expand into parts of Central America that are not as well organized to fight them as are Mexican forces near the U.S. border.

On HUMINT and the Mexican Cartels

When I was speaking at the Naval War College last week, a Mexican Fellow at the NWC asked whether I thought the U.S. would start targeting leaders of the Mexican drug cartels in strategic manhunts.  I said "No," but relied more upon the definitional distinction that Mexican law prohibits U.S. military personnel from overtly operating on Mexican soil in way necessary to meet the standards of a strategic manhunt.  I consciously avoided the question of whether our law enforcement agencies were targeting the cartel leaders, partly because it falls out of the purview of my work, and -- to be honest -- partly because I just don't know that much about the topic.

Coincidentally, on Monday The New York Times had an interesting article on how U.S. agencies are infiltrating the Mexican drug cartels.  Specifically, the Times reports that by building up large networks of Mexican informants, U.S. law enforcement agencies "have helped Mexican authorities capture or kill about two dozen high-ranking and midlevel drug traffickers."  The article cites Vanda Felbab-Brown of the Brookings Institution, who says that even in an age of high-tech surveillance there is no substitute for human sources' feeding authorities everything from what targeted traffickers like to eat to where they sleep most nights.

In other words, even if these operations don't meet my definition of a strategic manhunt (i.e. there is no overt deployment of U.S. military personnel targeting one individual), this appears to support the conclusions of my book, namely that HUMINT still trumps technical surveillance in kill/capture operations, and that the "human terrain" is key (i.e. cooperation of indigenous forces and the local population/members of the target's network).