...the most common accident here in mexico is the killing of civilians in checkpoints, politicians argue about the lack of touch of the military and ask the police to do their job, but police is ill equipped and ill trained, they die like pigs in the shootouts...
Killing of civilians by the police or the army in any cross fire is always lamentable (and somewhat unavoidable in a fire fight with civilians around). When you say that the Mexican police can't do their jobs at check points, then it indicates that the level of violence has over-matched the training, the equipping and the capability of Mexico's police. IMO, the manning of check points is a low value added task that most police forces in third world countries can be equipped and trained for. If your police are unable to do so may say more about the incompetence of Mexico's police than about the capability of your army.
I am of the view that using the army is a practical solution for Mexico but on a longer term basis, it is also a misuse of resources. What a number of countries have done is to raise para-military forces for policing. Amongst those countries with paramilitaries would include the India (which has many types of specialist police forces like the Central Reserve Police Force, that was in the news recently) and Italian Carabinieri (upon which the Iraqi police is modeled after). Even in countries where the police are not equipped and organised along para-military lines often have special response units (like the GSG9 of the German Federal Police). This is a choice that your country and government have to make for yourself.
my question is, it exists an corp in any army specialized in urban combat, and if it not, do you think is a viable option. I know that modern armies train soldiers in this kind of combat, but i dont know if there is any specialized corp.
Urban warfare is warfare in complex terrain, which to me means an army acting as a occupying or 'peacekeeping' force - to deal with armed and determined hostiles. When I talk about urban warfare, I do not mean misusing the army to perform the role of the police by virtue of police incompetence (which is a rule of law and law enforcement issue). IMO, this is the case in Mexico.
When talking about urban warfare, I mean an army sent abroad to fight your way into a foreign city and thereafter occupy it in the face of determined resistance. This could occur scenarios like the American army in Iraqi cities or it could in an 'armed peacekeeping' setting like the Australian army in East Timor. For more info read up on 'International Force for East Timor (
INTERFET)' and '
United Nations Mission in East Timor (UNAMET)'.
i bring this question to the table, because i live in mexico, a country with shootouts every day, regular soldiers fight with efficiency the narco guerrillas, the problem comes next, the army even if its doing a good job, its often critized by politicians, the same happens in iraq and in other warzones,
I think the situation, as bad as it is in Mexico is not as bad as in Iraq or even East Timor in the 1999 to 2003 period (as the government in Mexico still exists and is broadly seen as legitimate).
Without foreign support by the US and other coalition troops, in the 2004 to 2008 period, the Iraqi government would have collapsed because of the level of violence. I've enclosed a video of US troops at Fort Dix, training to go to Iraq:
[nomedia]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ck2SqWLF9s&NR=1[/nomedia]
In the case of East Timor, there was no effective government at the point of independence and the Indonesians engaged in a scorched earth policy because the people of East Timor had voted for independence from Indonesia on 30 August 1999. The Indonesian army equipped armed militias and these armed militias presented a significant threat to UN personnel and forces deployed in East Timor. That is why the Australians deployed armoured personnel carriers to present an over-match to the Indonesian trained para-military forces out to wreak havoc. The ADF led coalition forces deployed also needed to imposed authority across all levels of a fractured society, making face-to-face contact with potential belligerents of both sides. There the Australians applied the following general approach:
• Saturation—secure a large area with sufficient force deployed in unit sectors.
• “Oil Spot”—systematically secure limited areas with a “clear-hold-build” approach.
• Safe Areas—secure concentrations of vulnerable population.
Further, in many armies there are special considerations when operating in a urban environment. This would include equipping and training troops to operate in such environments but it is within the core competency of that army. For infantry, the ability to work through walls in urban warfare can be important (this is an extreme scenario, where very strong resistance is expected and there are numerous IEDS set up by the enemy to cover all avenues of approach). In 2002, during the
invasion of Nablus by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), they literally carved through a whole series of buildings to ensure that their troop movements were thus almost entirely camouflaged. Soldiers used none of the streets, roads, alleys and none of the external doors, but rather moved horizontally through party walls, and vertically through holes blasted in ceilings and floors. A commander of the Israeli Paratrooper Brigade describes his forces as acting:
"like a worm that eats its way forward, emerging at points and then disappearing. We were thus moving from the interior of homes to their exterior in a surprising manner and in places we were not expected, arriving from behind and hitting the enemy that awaited us behind a corner."
Post-battle surveys later revealed that more than half of the buildings in the old city center of Nablus had routes forced through them, resulting in anywhere from one to eight openings in their walls, floors, or ceilings, which created several haphazard crossroutes.
The invasion of Nablus depicts what it means for the IDF to bend space to meeting their particular navigational needs to bring the fight to their enemy in the urban environment. Palestinian families, whose homes and walls were blown up to facilitate IDF troop movement were of course not very happy and were probably terrified by the ordeal.
and i thought well maybe a urban combat corp will be the solution, specially trained to wage war in urban environments, with special equipment (vehicles and weapons) just like the marines or the airborne, and also trained in the management of civilians and other stressful situations that most soldiers cant manage.
I am Singaporean and I would say that in our conscript army, training for urban warfare is a core training module that is required of most operational infantry units in Singapore. Equipping for urban warfare requires specialist things like ammo (like
frangible ammo, especially if troops are protecting oil installations), tools (rifles with cameras to shoot round corners unexposed) and training (in relation to the use of less-lethal solutions, like
LRADs, as part of various force protection measures). This could include the attachment of armour support, additional snipers (or what we call company sharpshooters for some of our infantry battalions) and other specialist troops like engineers (to blast holes through walls or disarm IEDs), dog teams (to seek out weapons caches) and so on to deal with various threats. Below is a video on some of our army tools and our new urban training environment (it's not a particularly good example but I wanted you to see the video, for what I mean as training in MOUT, as a core competency):
[nomedia]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aqs2SBacwhA[/nomedia]
