From Infoshop.Org.

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Former CIA Asset Who Revealed Presence of US Special Forces in Mexico Says Hit Squads Targeting Narco Splinter Groups

A small but growing proxy war is underway in Mexico pitting US-assisted assassin teams composed of elite Mexican special operations soldiers against the leadership of an emerging cadre of independent drug organizations that are far more ruthless than the old-guard Mexican “cartels” that gave birth to them.

These Mexican assassin teams now in the field for at least half a year, sources tell Narco News, are supported by a sophisticated US intelligence network composed of CIA and civilian US military operatives as well as covert special-forces soldiers under Pentagon command — which are helping to identify targets for the Mexican hit teams.

The US and Mexican government’s strategy of attacking the so-called “kingpins” of the narco-trafficking industry has failed to stem the tide of drugs flowing into the US nor has it reduced the number of players in the narco-trafficking business.

Instead, it has given rise to a slate of splinter narco-trafficking groups that have stepped into the power vacuums created when US or Mexican law enforcers and military have an occasional success and take out a top narco leader.

The violent acts unleashed by these legion splinter groups, which are only now coming to light in the mainstream media (stories of victims tortured horrifically and hung from bridges alive before being shot to death, or of a face cut off and stitched to a soccer ball) have been noted behind the scenes for some time in the police reports and intelligence briefings of the law enforcers and military personnel now engaged in the drug war, sources tell Narco News.

And the response of the existing political and monied interests of the state to this threat, according to one of those sources, former CIA asset Tosh Plumlee, has been to take a page out of the “El Salvador solution,” modify it for the current era, and go at these splinter groups directly but covertly — utilizing highly trained assassination units whose mission is to “neutralize” the leaders of the splinter groups before they can consolidate power.

And there will be a price to pay should this shortsighted covert counter-insurgency strategy — one that employs among the oldest schemes in the US military playbook, death squads — continue to play out absent public scrutiny and accountability.

Former CIA case manager Leutrell Osbourne warned of that steep price, stressing that the blowback against the United States from covert operations is always more damaging than any benefit attained.

And for Mexico, that blowback can come, as it did in Central America,
and Colombia, decades earlier, in the form of an institutionalizing of these death squads and a broadening of their targets to appease the paranoia and power aspirations of corrupt leadership and economic interests. The very soul of Mexico is at stake.”

Read the complete article online at Narco News.