Mexican Gangs and Cartels: Evolving Criminal Insurgencies 8/18/14 9:02 PM

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Monday, August 30, 2010

Mexican Gangs and Cartels: Evolving Criminal Insurgencies

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By John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus

Counterinsurgency and its discontents dominate discussion of

American defense policy. Hot topics of discussion include
assessing the meaning of what is popularly known as the Iraq
“surge”; COIN’s role in Afghanistan strategy, as well as the
historical validity of current Anglo-American COIN doctrine.

However, thinking about insurgency as a whole is moving away

from viewing threats to states through “Maoist” models of
competition towards a wider appreciation of decentralized
networks and criminal insurgency. Meanwhile, American strategy
is set to reject the idea of COIN as an instrument of third-party
state-building. No matter the ultimate outcome of Afghanistan and
Iraq, this intellectual ferment will have wide-ranging
consequences for military theory and practice.

The Janus face of the COIN

First, it is important to note the circumstances in which the COIN

debate in America takes place. The contemporary concept of
“counterinsurgency” evolved in the 1950s out of an assorted
mixture of best practices in “small wars” of varying stripes. The
current American conception of COIN has been heavily
influenced by Cold War conflicts or “wars of national liberation,”
as well as the more recent political project of state-building that
underscores US strategy since the 2002 National Security
Strategy.

As state-building is increasingly questioned, COIN is likely to

return to its roots in small-scale foreign internal defense (FID)
missions, the more narrow concept of “countering irregulars,”
gathering intelligence for strikes, and “flying” police squads like
the kind employed by British irregular warfare pioneer Orde
Wingate in the 1930s. Since counterinsurgency is largely a
military activity carried out by military forces, the principal
emphasis in past COIN operations has been countering irregular
forces with military force. Even in the operations of police in a
COIN role in countering criminal insurgency the ultimate goal is,
as Clausewitz noted, forcing the adversary to accept the state’s
political will. Confusion about COIN occurs because of the

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political role of COIN in American strategy, not necessarily the

history of COIN doctrine itself.

As Mark Safranski noted (See Mark Safranski, “The Post COIN-

Era is Here,”), political and fiscal forces will not support a
continued focus on rebuilding broken states. However, COIN
doctrine isn’t just returning to an older doctrinal template of
countering irregulars. COIN thinking is also embracing a broader
view of insurgency that takes into account both new views on old
concepts and innovations in contemporary insurgencies.

Army War College Professor Steven Metz’s 2007 monograph

Rethinking Insurgency is a seminal—if under-referenced—work in
the emerging understanding of insurgency. Metz helped move the
field away from its 50s-60s roots in countering broadly “Maoist”
Vietcong-style movements, incorporating a wider template of data
on conflicts over the last thirty years, Metz particularly focused his
research on the emerging blurring of crime and war. His eye was
not on the Algeria of the 1950s but more fractured and chaotic
places like Mexico, Somalia, and Afghanistan. The complex
blurring of greed, grievance, and criminal insurgency promises
greater challenge for aspiring counterinsurgents on tactical,
operational, and strategic levels. In this discussion, Metz
postulated “commercial insurgencies” as an economic variant to
the traditional ideological wars of national liberation (See Steven
Metz, Rethinking Insurgency). Commercial insurgencies exist
primarily to give warlord-like bosses segments of political power
and income and can sustain themselves for potentially decades.

One case study in this blurring of crime and war are the “criminal
insurgencies” at work in Mexico and Latin America at large.
Though they target the state, gangs and cartels are not after
revolution. In these evolving ”criminal insurgencies” criminal
organizations are acting in a neo-feudal manner challenging the
legitimacy of the state and creating autonomous zones outside of
state control. We have written on these insurgencies in the past in
the context of Mexico, although we are far from the only ones to
observe these criminal insurgents in action (See John P. Sullivan
and Adam Elkus, “Red Teaming Criminal Insurgency” and John
P. Sullivan, “Criminal Insurgency in the Americas,”). As Metz
notes, these conflicts are extremely messy and often beyond the
ability of outsiders to manage even through very indirect
assistance.

Mexico’s conflict provides an excellent window of observation into

dynamics of parallel states and criminal insurgencies. Mexico’s
president Felipe Calderón has recently said the gangsters are
seeking to replace the state and impose their own law in zones of
impunity throughout Mexico. In doing so, the cartels’ drug war
has killed over 28,000 people in about four years. Relying on a
barbarization of conflict that includes beheadings, attacks on
police and journalists, and corruption of elected officials and the
police. Increasingly, the cartels have expanded their reach into
the state to include the provision of social goods and cast
themselves in the mantle of “social bandits” to secure support and
legitimacy from the communities and businesses—including
Petróleos Mexicanos/PEMEX—from which they extort “street

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taxes.” The role of police in these conflicts requires an expanded

form of policing able to operate in a COIN-like fashion to exert
state control over these alternative hierarchies. Conditions
similar to those in Mexico are found elsewhere in Latin America—
notably in Guatemala—as well as west Africa. Transnational
gangs are altering sovereignty by forging zones of “dual
sovereignty” sustained by transnational illicit economic circuits.
The result is a reciprocal criminalization of politics and
politicization of crime. As such, states are faced with potential
challenges from what Robert J. Bunker calls criminal soldiers Wild
Cheryl Strayed
(See Robert J. Bunker, Ed., Criminal-States and Criminal- New
Soldiers).
The Art of Becoming
Other works on modern insurgency, such as David Kilcullen’s Homeless
Sara Alexi
Accidental Guerilla, John Mackinlay’s The Insurgent Archipelago,
New
and even more strictly counter-terrorist research such as Marc
Sageman’s Leaderless Jihad, have looked at newer, more French
decentralized, and networked organizations. These books either Patrice Lowe, Fren...
employ network theory, systems theory, or advanced tools of New
sociology, and build on insights in works of academic and popular
Livin' Lahaina Loca
military theory such as John Robb’s Brave New War and notably JoAnn Bassett
John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt’s seminal RAND compilation New
Networks and Netwars (See, for example, John Arquilla and
David Ronfeldt, Eds., Networks and Netwars: The Future of A Tour of the Heart
Maribeth Clemente
Terror, Crime, and Militancy). There are many more academic
New
works and journal articles, but these books and theorists are the
most popularly known and influential contemporary works. Rand McNally World
Folded Wall Map
The common aspect of these theories is their insight into the Rand McNally
fundamentally distributed nature of modern insurgency and New $5.35
Best $2.68
terrorism. Sageman’s Leaderless Jihad, in particular, looks at an
alternative future to be considered along more organization-
centric terrorism theories in which an alienated “bunch of guys”
radicalized in small groups rather than al-Qaeda pose the
dominant threat to domestic order. Mackinlay and Kilcullen also
think about broader transnational networks in a rigorous fashion.
Arquilla, Ronfeldt, and Robb, take what might be called an
operational look at irregular warfare doctrine and practice,
examining networks and self-organization’s impact on
organizational performance. Robb in particular looks at the Privacy Information
possible usage of insurgent tactics against moral and industrial
weak points in a strategy of attrition, comparing these to the
military doctrines he studied in the Air Force.

Of course, many of the developments chronicled in new theories

of insurgency are evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Social
bandits have been around since antiquity, and nineteenth century
anarchist groups practiced a primitive form of networking. “Analog
era” police networks were formed to successfully combat them.
Additionally, much research that is supposedly new is also the
result of simply having better analytical tools to examine old
problems. Still, the new theory on insurgency and terrorism is not
only a boon for academics; it is also helpful for practitioners and
policy makers.

Both academics and practitioners are looking beyond the usual

case studies and templates to recognize that there is no one

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“silver bullet” for countering irregulars. Different nations,

depending on their circumstances, have utilized differing
methodologies with varying degrees of successes. States will
employ differing methodologies based on their interests,
ideologies, and constraints. New works, such as Mark Moyar’s A
Question of Command, cast a wide historical net and avoid the
automatic assumption that David Galula’s brand of COIN was the
proper course of action. In this light, the experiences of nations
beyond the United States, Britain, and France—or a look at
hitherto unexamined angles in Anglo-French irregular warfare—
deserve attention.

A more open-minded view of COIN is essential, as partnering

with foreign nations with differing conceptions of COIN in small-
scale Foreign (or Domestic) Internal Defense missions will require
the United States and others to adjust even if we disagree with
those methodologies. It will also require development of
capacities to address networked, global insurgencies fueled by
transnational non-state armed actors ranging from extremist
movements (such as al-Qaeda) to transnational criminal
enterprises (criminal soldiers such as drug cartels, as exemplified
by Los Zetas, or gangs as exemplified by Mara Salvatrucha).
Mental and operational flexibility is thus crucial for management
of the full range of threats.

Conclusion

The way we understand insurgency and the way we fight it is

changing, and these changes will influence how a more focused
(or stripped-down) mission of countering irregulars occurs in a
potential “post-COIN” future. The “new” COIN will be also found in
unexpected places—the Naval Postgraduate School recently
helped the police of Salinas, California conceptually assess their
gang problem. This cross-fertilization of expertise is likely to be
replicated as limited commonalities between gang activities and
insurgencies are recognized both abroad and at home. Of course,
such military-civil interaction in domestic space requires careful
execution to preserve liberties as well as sustain the legitimacy of
local police and government structures. Indeed the interaction of
police and military forces in Latin America’s “states of exception”
arising from drug wars and criminal insurgencies highlight the
need for police-military interaction in concert with new security
structures.

The narrow focus of the COIN debate in America will eventually

end, but as long as irregulars defy state authority, police and
military forces will employ a variety of means—some new, others
stretching back thousands of years in origin—to combat them.

——————————
This article is published by John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus, and
openDemocracy.net, under a Creative Commons license.
openDemocracy publishes high quality news analysis, debates
and blogs about the world and the way we govern ourselves.

John P. Sullivan is a career police officer. He currently serves as

a lieutenant with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department where he

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Mexican Gangs and Cartels: Evolving Criminal Insurgencies 8/18/14 9:02 PM

is assigned to the Emergency Operations Bureau. He is also a

Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies on
Terrorism (CAST). His research focuses on counterinsurgency,
intelligence, terrorism, transnational gangs, and urban operations.
He is coeditor of Countering Terrorism and WMD: Creating a
Global Counter-Terrorism Network (Routledge, 2006).

Adam Elkus is an analyst specializing in foreign policy and

security. He is currently Associate Editor at Red Team Journal,
and his articles have been published in West Point CTC Sentinel,
Foreign Policy in Focus, Small Wars Journal and other
publications. He blogs at Rethinking Security, Dreaming 5GW,
and The Huffington Post. He is currently contributing to the
Center for Threat Awareness’ ThreatsWatch project.

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