Passports and the Criminal/Terrorist Networks
By Douglas Farah
Seems that the UK is tightening its entry requirements for South Africa. The reason:
Britain has threatened to impose a visa regime on visitors from South Africa amidst fears that the country is being used as a transit point by al-Qaeda operatives to gain easy entry to the UK.
The Government is also concerned that the country is being used by people smugglers to bring non-South Africans into the UK.
There it is: the criminal/terrorist network. Both groups need the same thing and acquire them from the same place, with the same fixers running the shadow infrastructure that will service anyone who can pay.
Yesterday I attended a conference at the Wilson International Center for Scholars where Félix Maradiaga, Senior Researcher, Institute of Strategic Studies and Public Policies (IEEPP), Nicaragua, discussed how Iranians were flooding into his country because visa controls had been relaxed.
Disturbingly, those who enter Nicaragua without control can then travel without visas to the rest Central America, who, like the EU, have a free transit zone in the region. My full blog is here.
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