By The Associated Press

Published: Thursday, January 17, 2013, 7:36 p.m.
Updated: Thursday, January 17, 2013

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is stepping up aid for Mexico's bloody drug war with a new U.S.-based special operations headquarters to teach Mexican security forces how to hunt drug cartels the same way special operations teams hunt al-Qaida, according to documents and interviews with multiple U.S. officials.

Such assistance could help newly elected Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto establish a military force to focus on drug criminal networks that have terrorized Mexico's northern states and threatened the Southwest border. Mexican officials say warring drug gangs have killed at least 70,000 people since 2006.

Based at the U.S. Northern Command in Colorado, Special Operations Command-North will build on a commando program that has brought Mexican military, intelligence and law enforcement officials to study U.S. counterterrorist operations from the United States to the war zones to show them how special operations troops built an interagency network to target al-Qaida mastermind Osama bin Laden and his followers.

The special operations team within Northcom will be turned into a headquarters, led by a general instead of a colonel. It was established in a Dec. 31 memo signed by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. That move gives the group more autonomy, and the number of people could eventually quintuple from 30 to 150, meaning the headquarters could expand its training missions with the Mexicans, even though no new money is being assigned to the mission.

The special operations program has helped Mexican officials set up their own intelligence center in Mexico City to target criminal networks, patterned after similar centers in war zones built to target al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Iraq, two U.S. officials said.

Mexican and American military officials played down the change, and it's unclear whether the Mexican government will agree to boost its training.

“We are merely placing a component commander in charge of things we are already doing,” said Navy Capt. Jeff Davis.

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