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Very. And it’s not just arms, it’s military training and procedures. The cartel mentioned most often in the article (the Zetas) literally WERE the army - they
by alasdair_ 6y ago
Very.
And it’s not just arms, it’s military training and procedures. The cartel mentioned most often in the article (the Zetas) literally WERE the army - they were special forces and commandos that decided to become the muscle for the Gulf Cartel because it paid more.
Then the Gulf Cartel learned the problems of relying on mercenaries when the Zetas turned on them as well, becoming one of the most dominant cartels in the world.
Anyway, to answer your question: the cartels have tanks, helicopters, ships, submarines, mortars, grenades and missiles.
Many of them are crude versions of course (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narco_tank https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narco_tank) but it’s definitely not just small arms fire.
A bunch of highly trained ex-commandos with billions in budget and hundreds of thousands of “troops” (in aggregate) that doesn’t much care about hurting civilians can do a lot of damage.
- noir_lord 6y ago> There was a general shifting of position and a group clearing of throats. > 'What about mercenaries?' said Boggis. > 'The problem with mercenaries,' said the Patrician, 'is that they need to be paid to start fighting. And, unless you are very lucky, you end up paying them even more to stop -' (from the book Jingo by Sir Terry Pratchett).
- 082349872349872 6y agoI had the impression that cartels, north of the border, prefer mail bombs to bullets. Yet the narco tanks that image search gives me are uniformly flat-bottomed, suggesting that IEDs are not common south of the border.