DRUG WAR AS TOUGH AS IRAQ

Mexican Chiefs Are Brazenly Kidnapping Businessmen

Mexican drug cartels are now as heavily armed as America's enemies in
Iraq and are extending their bloody war into the United States, say
security experts.

Law enforcement agencies in American cities close to the border with
Mexico -- including San Diego in California, and El Paso in Texas --
are "gearing up" for street confrontations with the drug gangs, which
are armed with rockets and grenades and have brought death and chaos
south of the border.

The confidence of the cartel chiefs has increased so much that they
are moving to affluent neighbourhoods in America to kidnap Mexican
businessmen and smuggle them across the border to be ransomed, a
private security consultant told The Daily Telegraph.

Van Bethea, the operations director for the Steele Foundation, an
American private security company that has protected foreign
businessmen in Mexico as well as Iraq, said the two countries were
now comparable in terms of the potential danger.

"Quite frankly, in Mexico you can't be armed enough," said Bethea.

"The dynamic of this combat is approaching the early days of the Iraq
war. The cartels' men are well trained, disciplined and are armed
with the latest weaponry, including armour-piercing bullets,
rocket-launchers and grenades."

His claims were backed by Congressmen in Washington, who have said
money and guns smuggled from the U.S. were fuelling violence that was
now creeping over the border.

In Ciudad Juarez, a Mexican border city of 1.5-million people, five
deaths a day in January and February were attributed to drug violence.

But the recent arrival of more than 10,000 troops and federal agents
has succeeded in quelling much of the violence.

Soldiers have disarmed and replaced a local police force, many of
whose members were believed to have been working for the cartels.

But despite the success in Ciudad Juarez, officials estimate that the
Mexican cartels are already established in 230 American cities. The
gangs have been blamed for killings as far afield as Anchorate,
Alaska, and Atlanta, Ga., as well as 366 kidnappings in Phoenix,
Ariz., last year alone.

Medea said many Western businesses, including British companies, had
invested heavily in the Mexican factories and were unable to give up
doing business in the country easily.

The cartels' ability to smuggle both guns and kidnap victims into
Mexico has been facilitated by lax U.S. border controls, although the
Americans are starting to tighten up.

DRUG LORD'S SON IS ARRESTED

Mexican authorities arrested the son of one of Mexico's top drug
lords, saying the younger man had become a top-level operator of a
trafficking group in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, officials
said Thursday.

Vicente Zambada, the 33-year-old son of Sinaloa-based kingpin Ismael
Zambada, was detained Wednesday in a well-to-do section of Mexico
City during a joint operation between the army and federal agents.

Federal authorities described the arrest as an important blow against
the alliance of Sinaloa-based traffickers headed by Joaquin "El
Chapo" Guzman Loera, who is Mexico's most-wanted fugitive.

"With the arrest of Vicente Zambada Niebla, 'El Vicentillo,' the
Guzman Loera organization's ability to operate and move drugs is
significantly affected," the military said in a statement. The army
said he had ordered the killings of police and rivals.

Officials said the younger Zambada was designated by his father to
oversee operations, logistics and security, putting him among the top
leaders of Guzman's group, the so-called Sinaloa cartel.

Vicente Zambada is the latest member of the family captured during
President Felipe Calderon's two-year-old crackdown on drug traffickers.

In October, police arrested Ismael Zambada's brother, Jesus, who
allegedly headed the group's operations in central Mexico.
Authorities said he oversaw smuggling of cocaine and chemical
ingredients for making methamphetamine through Mexico City's airport.

The army-led offensive has roiled Mexico's drug-trafficking world,
stoking turf fights between gangs that have killed more than 7,000
people over the past 15 months. During the arrest of Vicente Zambada,
authorities seized three AR-15 rifles, three .38 Super pistols, three
cars and nearly $5,000 in Mexican pesos and U.S. dollars.