Cartel Car Bombings in Mexico
Abstract
Improvised explosive devices and car bombs have long been identified as threats to U.S. Army personnel deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have gained considerable attention and notoriety, even infamy, among our troops, who have had to learn the appropriate responses and countermeasures to contend with the fielding of these systems against them. Far less recognized is the fact that a similar threat embodied in car bombs has emerged much closer to our homeland within Mexico. Since mid-2010, cartel car bombings have taken place in a country on our southern border and have been targeted against both the forces of opposing cartels and those belonging to Mexican military and law enforcement agencies. With the election of the new presidential Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) administration in July 2012, these car bombings have ceased altogether after rapidly escalating in their levels of employment. Whether this was a response to the expected shift in countercartel policies from the National Action Party (PAN) to the PRI administration that began in December 2012, simply a strategic pause of some sort, or an outcome of another casual factor is unknown. What is important is that the use of car bombs in Mexico by the cartels has the potential to threaten U.S. agents, facilities, and interests in that nation and could also conceivably spread to our border cities though this would appear to be a very unlikely possibility based on the use of car bomb trends and analysis presented in this Paper. The authors of this Letort Paper, Dr. Robert Bunker and John Sullivan, draw upon their wealth of knowledge and expertise pertaining to the Mexican cartels and organized crime and, interestingly, is derived from their long-standing counterterrorism backgrounds with regard to suicide bombing and active aggressor response.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 01, 2013
- Accession Number
- ADA583617
Entities
People
- John P. Sullivan
- Robert J. Bunker
Organizations
- United States Army War College