Finally, A Focus on the "Near" and Lethal Enemy
By Douglas Farah
While Islamist terrorism has been the focus of almost all counter-terrorism policies since 9-11, there are some indications that the long-standing and equally intractable struggle with drug-related terrorist gangs is coming back on to the radar screen.
It is worth remembering that the damage done by drug trafficking structures, due to the huge amounts of revenue and violence that they generate, do considerable damage as well. This is not a debate or whether drugs should be legalized, but a recognition that policy is not going to change any time soon, and this is the reality.
In fact, drug traffickers are the only other economic group that can rival the billions of dollars the Saudi government and wealthy Gulf donors but into the infrastructure that supports Islamist terrorism.
Despite the signs of progress in Colombia, the FARC remains a formidable, multi-billion dollar industry with significant ties to criminal and terrorist organizations, from weapons traffickers to the Lebanese expatriate communities that send significant resources to Hezbollah and, to a lesser degree, Hamas.
The FARC's ties to the Central American gangs and weapons trafficking networks pose a challenge that is only now being studied. The pipelines of people trafficking, weapons trafficking, drug trafficking and money laundering merge into one large stream from Honduras through Mexico.
The threat is not just potential alliances between the drug-fed groups and radical Islamist groups, although that danger is real. It is the that the pipeline is not discriminating at all in what it carries, and most of the products are lethal or potentially so. My full blog is here.
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