Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada's Arrest Could Push New Waves Of Violence In Mexico: Report
Mexico’s most powerful Sinaloa Cartel will see a new era now as its key leaders are likely to be behind the bars for a long time. US authorities captured Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada earlier this week. Zambada is said to be last of the grand old Mexican drug traffickers.
According to experts, Zambada’s arrest is going to push a new wave of violence in Mexico even as Zambada could potentially provide loads of information for U.S. prosecutors.
Zambada, is known for being an astute operator, aced in corrupting officials and having an ability to negotiate with everyone, including rivals. He had eluded authorities for decades and had never set foot in prison.
So the possibility of removing him from his ‘throne’ could set off an internal war for control of the cartel that has a global reach — like it has occurred with the arrest or killings of other kingpins — and open the door to the more violent inclinations of a younger generation of traffickers from Sinaloa. Keeping this in mind, the Mexican government deployed 200 members of its special forces Friday to Culiacan, Sinaloa state’s capital, reported The Independent.
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Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow in the Strobe Talbott Center for Security Strategy and Technology at the Brookings Institution said, there is “significant potential for high escalation of violence across Mexico. He said it is bad for Mexico, and US. He said there is possibility that the even more vicious (Jalisco New Generation cartel) will rise to even greater importance.
He said Zambada’s arrest could be considered a “great tactical success,” but strategically problematic.
While details of the drug lord’s arrest remain little, it is reported that Zambada was tricked into flying to the U.S., where he was arrested along with Joaquín Guzmán López, a son of the infamous Sinaloa leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, who is serving life sentence in US prison.
A small plane left Hermosillo in northern Mexico on Thursday morning with only an American pilot aboard, bound for the airport in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, near El Paso, Texas. Mexican Security Secretary Rosa Icela Rodríguez said Friday that while one person left Hermosillo, three people arrived in New Mexico. The flight tracking site Flight Aware showed the plane stopped transmitting its elevation and speed for about half an hour over the mountains of northern Mexico before resuming its course to the US, said The Independent.
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the Mexican President, who is also a vocal critic of the strategy of taking down drug kingpins, said Friday that Mexico had not participated or known about the U.S. operation, but said he considered the arrests an “advance”.
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Citing José Reveles, author of a number of books about the cartels, the report said that sons of “El Chapo” Guzmán were somehow in on the trap for Zambada. Guzmán López, who was also arrested Thursday, “is not his friend nor his collaborator,” Reveles said. The so-called Chapitos, or Little Chapos, make up a faction within the Sinaloa cartel that was often at odds with Zambada even while trafficking drugs, he added.
The arrested son of El Chapo is said to be the least influential of the four brothers who make up the Chapitos, who are considered among the main exporters of the synthetic opioid fentanyl to the United States. Joaquín Guzmán López is now the second of them to land in U.S. custody. Their chief of security was arrested by Mexican authorities in November.
Zambada’s arrest is crucial. He could now offer reams of information about the cartel’s operations if he decides to cooperate. He faces charges in multiple U.S. federal courts.
He is considered as the most skilled agent of corruption and the most influential trafficker who “has been running extensive corruption networks across many administrations in Mexico, across vast geographic spaces, from the top of the Mexican government to municipal institutions,” Felbab-Brown said.
