Mexico Drug War becoming fact

[Anthony_Scott]

It is one of my favourite campaigns and I have not even finished it yet. this news story grabbed my attention about a vigilante group in Juarez threatening to kill a criminal every 24 hours until order is restored:

www.elpasotimes.com/newupdated/ci_11463340?_requestid=2679576

And this report from United States Joint Forces Command spells it out all too clearly:

http://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2008/JOE2008.pdf

My point is that even our humble little game can predict the future sometimes.

Semper Fi, Carry On

[Skirmisher]

I wonder what actual combat units might be sent to mexico eventually?

And when? how long should they wait,it's pretty bad right now.

[Double_Deuce]

It is one of my favourite campaigns and I have not even finished it yet. this news story grabbed my attention about a vigilante group in Juarez threatening to kill a criminal every 24 hours until order is restored:

www.elpasotimes.com/newupdated/ci_11463340?_requestid=2679576

And this report from United States Joint Forces Command spells it out all too clearly:

http://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2008/JOE2008.pdf

My point is that even our humble little game can predict the future sometimes.

Semper Fi, Carry On

Hmmm, maybe I should stop designing any more campaigns. :doh: :D

[Anthony_Scott]

I wonder what actual combat units might be sent to mexico eventually?

And when? how long should they wait,it's pretty bad right now.

Well, there are many parallels to the drug war in Columbia and the one in Mexico but the main differance is that Columbia had a government that wanted to be stable, willing to confront corruption at all levels and had the the overt, and sometimes covert assistance of the US government. Columbia also had the stamina to go the long haul, facing a decades-long war not only form the communists but from the cartels.

Mexico on the other hand has no such assistance that we know of and the government itself is so utterly corrupt that any official must be regarded as untrustworthy. The only truly clean law enforcement branch is their equivalent to the FBI. Mexico does not have the legs so to speak to fight this sort of war due to rampant corruption and an inadequate police infrastructure. All those billions in remittances and Mexico still can't finish off the rebels in Chiapas let alone defeat the cartels.

Militarily the scope of operations would be very much like a COIN operation with a dependance on small semi-independant units with the will to do the dirty work that COIN frequently entails and I am certain that our new administration doesn't have them.

There would be a place for heavy maneuver units and for Stryker brigades but only if the intelligence is that good. The history of our neighbour to the south is a very sad one and my sympathy as always lies with the people.

Semper Fi, Carry On

[Anthony_Scott]

After further research, I have determined that the six main border provinces of Mexico are at or near total collapse due to the open war between the cartels and the Federales. Also, local cops are too terrified with dodging bullets and bombs to actually do real police work, like traffic stops and rape investigations.

Looks like the overall collapse is well underway and playing the campaign again has made me even more sad for my friends south of the border.

http://www.newswithviews.com/Wooldridge/frosty434.htm

Semper Fi, Carry On

[Double_Deuce]

And the saga continues although this appears to be in the southern part of Mexico:

Mexico police officer, 10 members of his family slain (http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/world/mexico/stories/DN-mexico_16int.ART.State.Edition1.4c0ad59.html)

I'm thinking, bringing the troops home from Iraq in the next 6-12 months might be a good idea.

[S.R. Krol]

There was a Harold Coyle novel I read years ago that had the US intervening in Mexico, "Trial By Fire". Looks like it's a good time to reread it.

[Double_Deuce]

Its sad when the military sent to protect the people are being told to get out.

Juarez, El Paso border crossings closed by protesters Tuesday afternoon (http://www.elpasotimes.com/juarez/ci_11723896)

I wonder how much of this was organized by the gangs and how much is real feeling about the military? From what I hear the military is not much better than the gangs.

[Anthony_Scott]

Excellent Stratfor article detailing many aspects of the current instability in Mexico:

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20090218_mexico_third_war

very informative, good ideas for individual scenarios. Still also very depressing.

Semper Fi, Carry On

[Anthony_Scott]

And now it is open war between Federales, the Army and the narcos in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico!

http://m3report.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/running-gun-battle-in-the-streets-of-reynosa-tamaulipas-mexico/

Gods help the innocents caught between the three!:eek::(

Semper Fi, Carry On

[Skirmisher]

If the United States didn't spend 10 billion dollars a year on drugs this wouldn't be happening.

[Anthony_Scott]

Another superb article dealing with the topic. I want to design scenarios like the firefight in Reynosa but the lack of Mexican OOb is frustrating.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4684

The quote that makes me want to design scenarios is this:

"The outgunned Mexican law enforcement authorities face armed criminal attacks from platoon-sized units employing night vision goggles, electronic intercept collection, encrypted communications, fairly sophisticated information operations, sea-going submersibles, helicopters and modern transport aviation, automatic weapons, RPG’s, Anti-Tank 66 mm rockets, mines and booby traps, heavy machine guns, 50 [caliber] sniper rifles, massive use of military hand grenades, and the most modern models of 40mm grenade machine guns."

So in essence it is a platoon-level street combat between small forces. Is that a workable scale in the game?:confused::D

Semper Fi, Carry On

[Skirmisher]

So in essence it is a platoon-level street combat between small forces. Is that a workable scale in the game?:confused::D

Semper Fi, Carry On


Check out what I did in the Cartel Crackdown scenario. It's basically what your looking for. Theres some Mexican made weapons that just arent availible in the stock OOB's but using green I was able to simulate the Federal Police and the Cartels
reasonably well. I know the equipment I gave everybody isn't 100 percent acurate but it's the best I could do.:cool:

[Skirmisher]

I want to design scenarios like the firefight in Reynosa but the lack of Mexican OOb is frustrating.


Don't be discouraged. The Green OOB is for that purpose. Use the capture feature and use anything you need from the rest of the world. :cool:


Believe it or not alot of player's of this game get a brain cramp when the subject of alternate oob's come up. I mean if you make a scenario you want as many people as possible to be able to play it.
But if you use somebodies custom OOB's (no matter how good or historically acurate they are) ,you limit the amount of people that are going to play it.

[cbreedon]

[QUOTE=Skirmisher;676325

Check out what I did in the Cartel Crackdown scenario. It's basically what your looking for. Theres some Mexican made weapons that just arent availible in the stock OOB's but using green I was able to simulate the Federal Police and the Cartels
reasonably well. I know the equipment I gave everybody isn't 100 percent acurate but it's the best I could do.:cool:[/QUOTE]

Where is this scenario?

[cbreedon]

I want to design scenarios like the firefight in Reynosa but the lack of Mexican OOb is frustrating.


Don't be discouraged. The Green OOB is for that purpose. Use the capture feature and use anything you need from the rest of the world. :cool:


Believe it or not alot of player's of this game get a brain cramp when the subject of alternate oob's come up. I mean if you make a scenario you want as many people as possible to be able to play it.
But if you use somebodies custom OOB's (no matter how good or historically acurate they are) ,you limit the amount of people that are going to play it.
I wouldn't mind using the green so much.. It is just the flag issue I have. I may make some flags and use the green and overwrite some country I don't use. Any suggestions as to what country would model Mexico as far as morale, and leadership, etc?

[Skirmisher]

Where is this scenario?

At the moment its about 5 posts below this one in the
270-Cartel Crackdown thread.

The zip file for the scenario can be found there.:up:

[Skirmisher]

I wouldn't mind using the green so much.. It is just the flag issue I have. I may make some flags and use the green and overwrite some country I don't use. Any suggestions as to what country would model Mexico as far as morale, and leadership, etc?

I don't know as far as which country would be the nearest to Mexico's training levels. You could just make green Mexico. Make the flag Mexican and Scrap the OOB, being that Green is supposed to represent generic latin america.

I recently learned that Mexico is the worlds 13th largest economy. I'm abit curious why the developers didn't drop one of those african nations and include mexico.

[cbreedon]

I was bored, so I replaced the Green Flag with the Mexican one. Just Remove the "mexico" piece of the file names and replace the files in your Graphics directory.

And kids remember always to backup your files before playing with these. :D

[Double_Deuce]

Looks like things are ramping up in Ciudad Juarez;

The army said on Thursday the new deployment could take the number of soldiers and federal police to over 7,000 in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas. This month drug hitmen killed 250 people in Juarez, where a meeting of cabinet members on Wednesday was rattled by bomb scares.
Full Story: Mexico sending 5,000 troops to besieged border city (http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN26178900)

I forsee a serious increase in running gun battles and car bombs in the near future.

[Anthony_Scott]

AN IBD article that issues the same warning we have heard before:

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=320893237619883

And it also says that paying lip service to making the border doesn't do anything.

Semper Fi, Carry On

[Double_Deuce]

Interestingly, I haven't really heard anything about the current financial crisis affecting Mexico in the news. That has to indicate how bad things are there when when a crisis of this magnitude doesn't seem to be making their situation any worse.

[Anthony_Scott]

You don't hear anything from the news that doesn't make the One look good or fit their "Blame America" narrative. The MSM is about as useful as a .22 against a tiger.

The news services on the internet has all the stories that the media SHOULD be covering but won't for the reasons cited above. My whole point of putting these news stories up is to show that our humble game is dead-on in many ways.

Semper Fi, Carry On

[Anthony_Scott]

Another aspect of the war down south: armored civilian vehicles and their producers seeing a 50% increase in demand, USAToday:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-03-04-mexico-border-violence_N.htm

Something else we could try to add to the game.

Semper Fi, Carry On

[cbreedon]

I was bored, so I replaced the Green Flag with the Mexican one. Just Remove the "mexico" piece of the file names and replace the files in your Graphics directory.

And kids remember always to backup your files before playing with these. :D


I was playing a game using these flags and noticed that the victory flags are not centered. I copied the flags directly over the old flags in the shp file. Any idea why it would be offset?

[Skirmisher]

Double Deuce,

Check out this article,it sounds alot like your original drugwar text.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7941043.stm

[Double_Deuce]

Check out this article,it sounds alot like your original drugwar text.

I have read that over the last 6 years there have been about 150,000 desertions from the Mexican Army including sizable numbers of their Special Ops guys. That would make a sizable force for any military to have to deal with, especially if they received any decent training before deserting. I'd say the only reason it hasn't spilled over the border is that the US hasn't really hurt the drug trade business. If the US was to really crack down I bet we would see things getting ugly very quickly. I wonder America response to seeing our citizen's heads dumped on our own streets?


Found some more interesting stuff here: Police: U.S. teens were hit men for Mexican cartel (http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/03/12/cartel.teens/index.html?iref=mpstoryview)

[Ramm]

It is one of my favourite campaigns and I have not even finished it yet. this news story grabbed my attention about a vigilante group in Juarez threatening to kill a criminal every 24 hours until order is restored:

www.elpasotimes.com/newupdated/ci_11463340?_requestid=2679576

And this report from United States Joint Forces Command spells it out all too clearly:

http://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2008/JOE2008.pdf

My point is that even our humble little game can predict the future sometimes.

Semper Fi, Carry On

Your first link is broken, it looks like a interesting story I'm sorry I can't read it:(

[Double_Deuce]

It is one of my favourite campaigns and I have not even finished it yet. this news story grabbed my attention about a vigilante group in Juarez threatening to kill a criminal every 24 hours until order is restored:

www.elpasotimes.com/newupdated/ci_11463340?_requestid=2679576

And this report from United States Joint Forces Command spells it out all too clearly:

http://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2008/JOE2008.pdf

My point is that even our humble little game can predict the future sometimes.

Semper Fi, Carry On

Your first link is broken, it looks like a interesting story I'm sorry I can't read it:(
Looks like they have Archived the story. Its here now:

ElPaso Times News Archives (http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=EPTB&p_theme=eptb&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&s_dispstring=allfields(Juarez%20vigilante)%20AND%2 0date(last%20180%20days)&p_field_date-0=YMD_date&p_params_date-0=date:B,E&p_text_date-0=-180qzD&p_field_advanced-0=&p_text_advanced-0=(%22Juarez%20vigilante%22)&xcal_numdocs=20&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&xcal_useweights=no)

BUT it'll now cost to access it. :(

[Anthony_Scott]

Nuts....

Sorry about that. I hadn't thought that they would archive it so rapidly.:mad:

Most of the good reports are actually coming out of Mexico herself and a really god site runs translations of the news stories:

http://m3report.wordpress.com/

And here is an interactive map tracing the violence in Mexico:

http://www.exonline.com.mx/diario/contenido/468598

Since I read, write, and speak spanish, I prefer to read the news directly form the countries involved, because as it has been said many times, things get lost in translation.:rolleyes::D

Semper Fi, Carry On

[Skirmisher]

Since I read, write, and speak spanish, I prefer to read the news directly form the countries involved, because as it has been said many times, things get lost in translation.:rolleyes::D



Tu Sabe

[Anthony_Scott]

Another excellent article with pictures this time. LARGE pictures, and in English for those of us language challenged...(that was a joke by the way okay kids?)

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/03/mexicos_drug_war.html

WARNING: graphic pictures are on that page.

Semper Fi, Carry On

[Anthony_Scott]

A handy map of the drug cartel's influence in Mexico, you know for scenario designing:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_XnIC3Wpq0Zc/ScDVJRAjwaI/AAAAAAAAB2o/uN-dtg_M2vQ/s1600-h/Mexican+drug+cartels.jpg

Semper Fi, Carry On

[Ramm]

A handy map of the drug cartel's influence in Mexico, you know for scenario designing:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_XnIC3Wpq0Zc/ScDVJRAjwaI/AAAAAAAAB2o/uN-dtg_M2vQ/s1600-h/Mexican+drug+cartels.jpg

Semper Fi, Carry On

What map?

-Andrew

[Anthony_Scott]

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p265/anthsco/Mexicandrugcartels.jpg

Sorry...

Here it is...

Semper Fi, Carry On

[Ramm]

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p265/anthsco/Mexicandrugcartels.jpg

Sorry...

Here it is...

Semper Fi, Carry On

NP, Mexico doesn't have much land left it controls completely:(:hurt:

Andrew

[Double_Deuce]

NP, Mexico doesn't have much land left it controls completely:(:hurt:
I'd say the only real control extends to the spot the Federales are physically standing on . . . the loyal ones that is.

[RVPERTVS]

You guys are looking for news? ok: As I type around 100 vehicules with roughly 1000 naval infantry elements are arriving to "frontera chica" (little border) wich encompasses the cities of Mier, Camargo, Guerrero, Miguel Alemán and Diaz Ordaz (border with Roma, Rio Grande and adjacent towns in TX) Seems like they´ve arrived campaign-prepared carrying all kinds of supplies, I believe this is the largest force ever deployed by naval infantry ever in this "war". Frontera chica is one of the border´s most violent spots right now, along with Juárez, Reynosa and Tijuana. Most of the engagments and firefights are not reported simply becasue there isn´t any reporter left at these towns, either they were killed, threatened of simply gone, so it´s a little tricky even for us mexicans to get a grasp of what is really going on at frontera chica, just about 110 miles NE from MTY.

Recently I´ve been thinking about some scenario ideas for MDW campaign involving mexican marines since the recent and growing involvment of mexican navy special forces in battling the cartels. Remember the Cuernavaca operation? yeap, that was them. The governemnt is throwing these brave boys after the current most dangerous targets, keeping in mind they´re battling against special forces desertors, some trained in the US.

Fortunateley for me, Green in spmbt has marine infantry with m16s :D