According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, Ciudad Juárez is ground zero in Mexico’s war against drug cartels.

After gunmen blasted away at a taxi and killed two men and a woman, the army and police were unable to obtain information from any of the witnesses:

Capt. Velásquez scrambled to the site of the killings, where the gunmen had already vanished. He and his men yelled questions at dozens of eyewitnesses: How many killers were there, what kind of car did they drive? “Not one person said a word. Not even what direction they had gone,” says Capt. Velásquez, 42. “Executions here happen at any time, at any place. That terrifies the population. They don’t trust anybody. And they don’t talk.”

On December 21, 2009, cartel hit men carrying AK-47 and AR-15 assault rifles burst into a house in eastern Mexico killing several relatives of a slain Mexican Naval Special Forces officer named Melquisedet Angulo. Angulo, 30 years old, was recently killed in a firefight with the Beltran Leyva cartel that controlled smuggling routes in central and southern Mexico and the Mexican capital. The cartel was allied with the Gulf cartel. The Gulf cartel and the notorious Zeta hitmen, control northeastern Mexico.

Arturo Beltrán Leyva, the head of the Beltran Leyva cartel and other members of the cartel were also killed. The attack against the mother and other members of the slain Mexican hero’s family is a message to the government that things are leading to a new level of terror in the war between the Mexican government and the cartels. The leaders of the cartel are intent on intimidating any opposition and can and do extend their reign of terror across the border into the United States.

Mr. Angulo’s mother, aunt, a sister and a brother were killed in the attack Tuesday. A sister was badly wounded. According to the Wall Street Journal:

The shooting came just hours after the enlisted sailor was buried with a military honor guard for his role last week in a Navy Special Forces operation that killed Mr. Beltrán Leyva, the highest-profile drug lord taken down in Mexico since Osiel Cárdenas, former head of the Gulf Cartel, was arrested in 2003.

Mexico’s powerful drug cartels and affiliated gangs are battling for control of the city and President Felipe Calderón has sent 7,000 soldiers and 2,000 federal police into the urban warfare. The residents of Mexican war zones like Juarez are helpless as murder rates soar in Mexico, a nation where citizens that are not members of the police and armed forces are prohibited from owning guns:

In 2008, 1,600 people were killed in drug-related hits. This year, more than 2,500 have died. By some estimates, Juárez’s approximately 165 deaths per 100,000 residents make it the murder capital of the world. That compares with 48 violent deaths per 100,000 residents of Baghdad.

In the Philippines, possession of guns is much more highly regulated than in the U.S. Nevertheless, well-armed rebel groups, bandits, politicians and ordinary people obtain all kinds of weapons, including home-made military-style weapons that are often just as effective as those possessed by police and military personnel anywhere in the world.

Last November, a Maguindanao politician’s son, Andal Ampatuan, Jr., allegedly participated in a massacre in Ampatuan township. Local gunmen, allegedly including six officers and the Maguindanao provincial police chief and his deputy, diverted vehicles containing journalists and the wife, two sisters, an aunt and several supporters of Ampatuan’s rival. The Ampatuan clan has previously provided heavy political support to Philippine President Arroyo.

Ampatuan’s political opponent, Vice Mayor Esmael Mangudadatu of Maguindanao’s Buluan township, sent several female family members along in the convoy in the belief they would not be harmed. The convoy was forced to a secluded location where fifty-seven were hacked, raped and shot, then buried in a brave that had been prepared with earth moving equipment in advance. At least thirty journalists were among the dead.

The point of these anecdotes is to show that an armed citizenry is always in a more powerful position when armed. Keeping and bearing arms makes citizens disciplined, vigilant and alert to danger whether it is from domestic political factions, criminal organizations or foreign enemies.

Mexico’s government has waged war with the drug cartels by militarily occupying many areas within Mexico:

Mr. Calderón’s war on drug gangs has defined his presidency so far. Within months of his 2006 inauguration, he dispatched the army to states where drug-related violence was on the rise, calling powerful drug cartels a threat to national security. Three years later, some 45,000 troops—about a quarter of the army—patrol areas ranging from Ciudad Juárez to Mr. Calderón’s home state of Michoacán.

Jorge Tello, Mexico’s National Security adviser, stated that Mexico has done more to fight drugs and violence in Ciudad Juárez than any other place in Mexico. Many residents of Ciudad Juárez are demanding an end to the military occupation. Soldiers cover their faces with black balaclavas in order to conceal their identities from the narcotistas. The government deploys .50 caliber machine guns during patrols.

Despite machine guns and constant patrols, the local Juárez Cartel, the Aztecas and a cadre of corrupt cops and ex-cops called La Linea oppose rival gangs acting on behalf of Joaquin Guzman that aim to take over the drug trade in Juarez; namely the Artistic Assassins and the Mexicles. The gangs simply observe the timing of the patrols and then change the time and locations of their attacks accordingly.

The drug gangs have diversified and extortion has provided a new motivation to increase the body counts:
The extortion wave has spread to funeral homes. Last month, an assassin and his driver parked in front of the Funeraria del Refugio, a squat, yellow building on a crowded street. The killer walked in, interrupting a funeral, and locked mourners in the bathroom, yelling that he had come to collect a protection payment. He then executed the funeral home’s manager, police and eyewitnesses say. The next day, the men returned and burned down the funeral home.

Former soldiers, known as “Zetas” are the Gulf Cartel’s enforcers. They decapitate rivals and law enforcement officers. Another deserter from the Mexican army is Manuel Aponte. A former lieutenant in the army, he deserted in 2004 and is now a top lieutenant for Joaquin Guzman, the cartel leader.

Another example of dysfunctional government intervention is the United Nations. The UN is allegedly involved with joint military operations in the eastern Congo that have resulted in the deaths of 1,400 civilians. The United Nations urgently needs “a new approach to protect civilians,” according to a Human Rights Watch report.

The presence of about 19,000 United Nations peacekeepers has not only failed to protect women and children from rape, torture and murder but actually may have aided and abetted the slaughter, according to a number of reports including the New York Times.

Human Rights Watch researchers describe “girls being summarily killed after being raped, and other victims being tied together before their throats were slit”.

Many governments are working under the auspices of UN programs to disarm citizens. Even some Western Washington politicians seem to look to a nebulous UN agenda in their attempts to violate state gun laws, ban assault weapons and create sanctuaries for illegal aliens.

In some under-developed countries, governments have virtually declared war on their own people in efforts to ban guns. Uganda is one example of extreme violence perpetrated by the Ugandan government against selected tribes that hold onto their guns as protection in the midst of appalling ethnic conflict that is all too often enmeshed with governmental policies.

Many of the worst human rights violators around the world sit on UN committees that condone violence against Israelis or those of other ethnic and national origins. You could almost say that the world has become a mirror image of Chicago in the days of Al Capone- or today, for that matter!

The dictators around the globe are like Chicago aldermen that receive favors for keeping their neighborhoods in line. Every now and then, we hear about genocides (sometimes after the UN disarms the victims as it did in Rwanda) that remind us of the Valentine’s Day massacre, when gangsters dressed like cops gunned down Capone’s Irish rivals on the North Side. The best antidote to the tyranny of crime-related violence or political gangsters is a disciplined, trained and well-armed citizenry.