Mexican militia groups spring up to protect the people from the cartels

Guardian:

With their scuffed shoes, baggy trousers and single shot hunting guns, the eight men preparing to patrol their hillside barrio in the southern Mexican town of Tixtla hardly looked like a disciplined military force. But this motley collection of construction workers and shopkeepers claim to have protected their community from Mexico's violent drug cartels in a way the police and military have been unable – or unwilling – to do.

"Since we got organised, the hit men don't dare come in here," said one young member of the group, which had gathered at dusk on the town's basketball court, before heading out on patrol. "Extortions, kidnappings and disappearances are right down."

Over the past year, vigilante groups like this have sprung up in towns and villages across Mexico, especially in the Pacific coast states of Guerrero and Michoacán. They make no pretence to be interrupting drug trafficking itself but they do claim to have restored a degree of tranquillity to daily life.

In a country where the police are commonly felt to commit more crime than they prevent, the militias have won significant popular support, but they have also prompted fears that the appearance of more armed groups can only provoke more violence.

Tensions exploded this weekend when a march by self-defence groups triggered a gun-battle between gunmen and federal forces in the city of Apatzingán, followed by attacks on power stations that left hundreds of thousands without electricity.

Nearly seven years after the government launched a military-led crackdown on the cartels, the weekend's events have caused many to ask if the new government of President Enrique Peña Nieto is presiding over the first rumblings of an undeclared civil war.
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The way you defeat an insurgency  is by increasing your force to space ratio to the point that you can cut off the enemy's movement to contact.  That is exactly what the described group is doing and the government would be wise to bring these militias into the fold and have them working directly with the army.  Give them communication equipment to call in the army if they get in a hot spot.  These militia's primary objective is to protect the people.  That is how you defeat a criminal insurgency.