The raid could mark a turning point on the island. For more than a generation, men like Mr. Coke took charge of much of Jamaica as "dons"—kingmaking political patrons, organized-crime bosses and figureheads of Kingston's neglected slums, where they distributed food and justice.

Now, it appears the Jamaican government wants that control back—a fight that won't be easy.

"Jamaica has been riding a tiger that now threatens to consume it," says Trevor Munroe, a Jamaican public intellectual and former senator, of the dons. "This conflict dramatizes the need for society as a whole to prevent the state from being captured."

On Friday, Tivoli Gardens looked like a section of an occupied city. Soldiers stood with assault rifles and machetes. One bored soldier kicked at a few spent rounds on the street. Some residents were unable to leave their streets, penned in by barbed-wire blockades set up by security forces.

"We're starving here," said Elva Williams, 52 years old, standing next to soldiers.

Mr. Coke is wanted in the U.S. on drug-trafficking charges. Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding balked at an extradition request late last year, but was criticized by Washington and opposition politicians in Jamaica for trying to shield the alleged drug lord. Tivoli Gardens has been a reliable bastion for Mr. Golding's Labour Party.

Last week, Mr. Golding issued a warrant for Mr. Coke's arrest. Violence erupted Monday, soon after police went to capture the 41-year-old.

Col. Rocky Meade, who coordinated the military arm of the operation, said Friday that while the problem of organized crime had grown in Jamaica for years, this week's action was necessary because this was the first time a group had presented such a threat to the government.

"What we're seeing is organized crime taking over the state," Col. Meade said.

Police Commissioner Owen Ellington said more than 700 people had been arrested in the raid, in which three members of the security forces died.

The affair left many Jamaicans frustrated. "They went about it all wrong," said Horace Pinnock, a retired mechanic in Kingston. "If you're going to go after somebody, you don't tell him you're coming before."

Many Tivoli Gardens residents say the army and police used indiscriminate force in trying to subdue Mr. Coke's followers.

Apo Morrison, 46, leaned on a pair of crutches outside her sister's home on Friday where she had taken refuge after she says her house was ransacked by soldiers at least three times. She returned to the building Thursday to find her living room covered with a large amount of an unknown person's blood. "The entire place stinks, stinks," she said. "They must have killed someone up in there. They have killed innocents."

The government said it took pains to avoid casualties of bystanders. It said most of the victims appeared to be men under the age of 30, and that two women were killed.The government also revealed the extent to which Tivoli Gardens had armed itself for war.

The neighborhood had its own closed-circuit television cameras. The gang linked to Mr. Coke had police uniforms and underground tunnels, and had installed improvised explosive devices in buildings, police said. During the fighting, gang members used manhole covers as shields, police said.

Even as some here urge on a fight against the crime bosses, others urge caution. Former deputy police commissioner Mark Shields says the country's security forces aren't ready to take on the dons. "They're a force that's ready for peacetime security, not this," he says.

While Mr. Coke's influence in Jamaica is rarely disputed, his biography remains full of holes. His grand jury indictment cites a number of nicknames, some of them cryptic: "President," "General," "Shortman," and "Paul Christopher Scott."

Mr. Coke was raised in Kingston in the 1970s at a turning point in Jamaican history when politicians began yielding authority to neighborhood bosses in Kingston who said they could deliver votes. By the 1980s, these dons began raising money for political campaigns by trafficking cocaine into the U.S., solidifying their power by arming neighborhood militias.

A new shantytown unit, known today as the "garrison," was born. The dons formed "a kind of state within the state," says Theodore Leggett, a drugs expert at the United Nations. "Wealth from the cocaine trade essentially liberated these men from their political masters."

Mr. Coke's father was believed to be one of these bosses, leading the "Shower Posse," a fierce gang that operated in New York and Kingston, and got its name from "showering" crowds with bullets to kill rival drug lords.

The elder Mr. Coke's power grew, and so did the influence of his garrison, Tivoli Gardens, a long-neglected shantytown a short distance from Bob Marley's fabled Trench Town. Through Mr. Coke's political patronage, Tivoli Gardens's pull in Jamaica's Labour Party increased; politicians soon knew they were unlikely to win elections without the district.

The senior Mr. Coke's reign was cut short by an extradition request from the U.S. Then his body was found charred after a fire in a Jamaican jail cell where he was awaiting extradition. The mysterious fire was unsolved but many believe it was carried out by a rival garrison.

The younger Mr. Coke took charge of his father's business, according to U.S. authorities.

In Tivoli Gardens, Mr. Coke cuts a mysterious figure—feared, revered and rarely sighted. In late December, city residents gathered for a "passa passa"—an outdoor party popular in Tivoli Gardens. Disc jockeys played reggae tunes elbow-to-elbow with dozens of dancers.Mr. Coke decided to make an unannounced appearance.

The music stopped, the crowd parted. "You could hear everyone's heart beating. It was almost as if they were watching a mirage," said Anicee Gaddis, a writer who was there. Mr. Coke took the stage. Blood wars were rending Jamaica apart, he said. He appealed for unity and a truce between the garrisons, Ms. Gaddis recalls.

But violence in Jamaica was already reaching all-time highs. The flow of cocaine into the U.S. had shifted to Central America as Mexican drug lords took over trafficking and Jamaican marijuana lost market share to Mexican cannabis.

The Jamaican dons were "fighting over a shrinking pie," says Mr. Leggett of the U.N. Jamaica ended 2009 with 1,674 murders, making it one of the world's most dangerous places.

Prime Minister Golding's move against an alleged drug lord, under political pressure, echoes an effort nearby, in Mexico. In 2006, after a narrow election victory, President Felipe Calderón began a battle with drug traffickers by sending soldiers and federal police to combat a cartel in his home state of Michoacán.

The war rapidly expanded across the nation and Mr. Calderón found himself without adequate police forces for the fight. An effort to decisively fulfill a campaign promise had turned into a quagmire.

Mr. Leggett says it is a problem the region must grapple with to establish law and order. "Many Latin American countries need to address organized crime before it becomes a threat to the state, and particularly before these groups become institutionalized," he says. "In both Mexico and Jamaica, this time has long passed."