Mexico drug gangs now using IEDs to take out army vehicles

Mexican drug cartels have started using improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to disable army vehicles on roads in the western parts of the country.

In Tepalcatepec, a town in the state of Michoacán, the self-defence movement has said that improvised land mines did severe damage to an army vehicle late last month.

A spokesman for the movement, which is fighting the Jalisco cartel, said the army vehicle was taken out of action on 29 January in Taixtan, a town near Tepalcatepec. Area residents have been fighting the cartel for months.

The factions also use improvised armoured vehicles and drones, which have been adapted to drop small bombs. But the use of IEDs is a possible new development in the drug wars.

The Mexican Defence Department said that army patrols had been attacked four times with explosives, homemade armoured cars as well as by gunfire on 29 January in the area, with ten soldiers being wounded, but the department didn’t specify if IEDs had been deployed against the army.

The Milenio TV station reported the IEDs as being PVC pipe bombs buried with a circular metal base underneath and a metal lid in the shape of a cone to aim the explosion.

Security and military analyst Juan Ibarrola said, “the worrisome thing is the improvisation that they (criminal groups) are doing with engineering, to create weapons, boobytraps, explosives and so on”.

The cartels aren’t fighting a war with the army, a fight they know they would lose – Mr Ibarrola said the cartels are instead using the IEDs and other improvised objects to try to “threaten and take on rival groups”.

It remains unclear if the IEDs are only being used by one side in the fight for Michoacan state, valued by the cartels for its smuggling routes and ports as well as the possibility of forcing money out of the avocado and lime growers in the area.

Cartels have used hand grenades and rocket-propelled grenades in the past, but the use of IEDs has been unknown.

In 2010, a car bomb was set off remotely using a cellphone in Ciudad Juarez across the US border from El Paso, Texas, killing a federal police officer, two civilians and wounding nine others.

In 2015, Jalisco cartel gunmen shot down a Eurocopter transport helicopter using a rocket-propelled grenade. Eight soldiers and a police officer died.

The Jalisco cartel has become the most militarily powerful drug group in Mexico, and the government is struggling to control their expansion, with the army using some of their heaviest artillery to fight the group, such as helicopter gunships equipped with electric mini-guns – rotating barrel machine guns that can fire thousands of rounds per minute.

Michoacan residents are tired of the government’s strategy of simply trying to keep the Jalisco cartel and the Viagras group that’s based in the state away from each other.

The policy put in place by the army in effect allows the Viagras, who are known for kidnappings and extortions, to establish roadblocks and checkpoints on many state roads. Goods entering and leaving the state are subject to a war tax collected by the gang.

The tactic seems to be in line with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s “hugs, not bullets” policy of sidestepping conflict with the gangs.

“The difficult thing here is that there hasn’t been any resounding effort by the government to confront” the gangs, Mr Ibarrola said. “That’s serious, not because there isn’t the capacity, the army is there and can do it, but the orders just simply don’t come.”

The most feared fighters have now become the “droneros” – the drone operators dropping bombs. The drones were at first dangerous to operate and reload, and while they are still imprecise, drones have become a more efficient way of conducting warfare, at times taking off the roofs of metal barns or sheds.

The Associated Press contributed to this report