The Possible Threat from Latin America
By Douglas Farah
Earlier this year I wrote a paper for the International Assessment and Strategy Center on the Islamist threat from Latin America. What I found, after spending decades in Latin America, was startling, because of the clear focus both Hezbollah and Sunni groups funded by Saudi Arabia have placed on the continent.
There are now mosques and multiple web sites in countries with virtually no Muslim population (Bolivia, Peru), and extremely active sites in countries with small populations (Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana). These are somewhat separate from the Sunni websites that operate in Brazil and Argentina, where there are significant Muslim populations.
Not only is there an extensive network of websites linking to Hezbollah-related groups around the continent for communication and reinforcement of the message, there are pockets of radicalization with members frequently linked to organized criminal structures that reach deep into the United States, Europe and Africa.
To me, the primary concern is a combination of factors, in part facilitated by the close ties of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua:
Plots such as that of bombing JFK airport can come to fruition because of the mixture of Hezbollah training and intelligence guidance under the protection of states; access to sophisticated weaponry from the FARC and other rebel groups in the northern tier of South America, again with the protection of states, primarily Venezuela; clear, easy access to our borders through the normal _coyote_ routes through Central America; the ability to move people and materiel by the Central American _maras_, or gangs, that now have franchise operations in more than 30 states in the United States.
These gangs are particularly troublesome because they control the primary commodity Central America has to offer criminal and terrorist networks-the pipeline to move things (people, stolen cars, cocaine, weapons etc.). My full blog is here.
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