The Criminal/Terrorist Pipeline to the United States

By Douglas Farah

The Justice Department recently unveiled a case that demonstrates the growing nexus between criminal and terrorist organizations.

The case involves corrupt Colombia police officials facilitating the travel of informants purporting to be from the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), the Western Hemisphere's oldest Marxist guerrilla movement and designated terrorist organization. The FARC has, over the past decade, devolved into an organization that concentrates heavily on kidnappings, extortion and the protection of the drug trade rather than any ideological motivation.

What is interesting in the case is that criminal groups are willing to knowingly transport terrorist to the United States, and not simply using the "coyote" route through Central America and Mexico.

Rather, the criminal groups offered false passports from Spain with all the supporting documents, to those posing as terrorists seeking safe passage to the United States.

This reinforces the point I have been making in recent talks to the military and elsewhere-that that pipelines matter, and control of the pipelines is one of the key concepts of the new, flat world of transnational criminal organizations. My full blog is here.

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