Going After the FARC is Important for Terror Financing

By Douglas Farah

The indictment of 50 top leaders of Colombia's Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) is a sign of the increasing importance U.S. intelligence and law enforcement communities are placing on the extensive opportunities that the flow of FARC's illicit money provides to aid other terrorist organizations, including Islamic radicals.

Some intelligence efforts have been focused on the tri-border area of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina. But until recently no consenus had emerged in the intelligence or law enforcement communities over the existence of links between Islamic terrorism and the massive amount of drug trafficking revenues, comingled with tens of millions of dollars from contraband and counterfeit goods, that flow through the region.

There has been no solid evidence that the financial network of the FARC overlaps with the Islamic groups. While it is difficult to imagine that there are clear barriers to doing business when that much money is in play, so little is known from human intelligence that the reporting has been weak for years. That could be changing.

Because the amounts of money sloshing through the illicit money channels in Latin America are so large-billions from FARC-controlled cocaine and heroin trafficking, many millions more from other criminal activities-it is impossible to trace where the money goes.

A host of financial institutions, from banks to informal exchange houses to merchants willing to sell their products for cash, all help launder the funds. This needs to be juxaposed with another reality which is often overlooked or ignored: There have been many signs of radical Islamic activity in the tri-border region, from the reported visit of Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in 1995 to 1999 arrests of several al Qaeda-linked operatives in the region. The full blog is here.

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