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By Chris Covert
In a massive troop movement, the Mexican Secretaria de Defensa Nacional (SEDENA) announced that more than 8,000 soldiers are deploying to far northern Tamaulipas state, according to Mexican news accounts.
According to Mexican news reports, the newly arriving troops are expected to occupy Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa, Ciudad Mier, and Matamoros. Those cities are all border crossings and all known points for the transshipment of drugs into the the US border -- much of the outlying zones to the immediate south of those crossings are used by drug cartels as way points, and for camps for training and logistics.
Reynosa and Matamoras are controlled by the Gulf Cartel while the other three crossings are controlled or contested by Los Zetas. Additional troops are expected to be deployed to Ciudad Victoria, the capital of Tamaualipas and Tampico, well south of the US border.
Those areas include Tampico and areas south extending into northern Veracruz state, which have been flashpoints of fighting between rival criminal gangs and with the Mexican Army since the beginning of the month.
The total troop count in Tamaulipas is 13,000, or the functional equivalent of five combat brigades.
The new deployment is the largest since the beginning of 2010. The troop movement is significant because it essentially blocks two of Mexico's largest cartels main shipping point for drug and migrants into the US.
The troop movement also is the most direct government challenge to the Gulf and Sinaloa Cartels and Los Zetas and their drug shipping activities and associated organized crime businesses in Tamaulipas.
Last year, SEDENA began raising 18 rifle battalions specifically earmarked for deployment to the north, and last spring began deploying those units. However, it is unclear if this new deployment in Tamaulipas includes more than the three rifle battalions known to be already deployed and operating in the state, or if SEDENA has shifted troops from elsewhere.
A news story posted by Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas La Manana news daily posted on the newspaper's website Thursday afternoon quoted a SEDENA source saying that much of the reinforcement has come from southern and central areas of Mexico.
Among those reinforcements were part of the Mexican 15th Motorized Cavalry Regiment, sent to Coahuila arriving Tuesday evening after a nearly two day road march. That unit was sent to Coahuila to reinforce security efforts after a series of gunfights between rival gangs and with the Mexican security forces in Saltillo in the south and Piedra Negras in the north on the US border.
The deployments including the Mexican 15th Motorized Cavalry Regiment are part of Operacion Noreste, a counernarcotics campaign begun early last summer. The Coahuila deployment which includes 150 Mexican Naval Infantry (Marines)effectives, are at the periphery of the Operacion Noreste area of operation as an area to intercept escaping criminal elements.