“Several months before the State Department report was released, then Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly told students at George Washington University that terror groups were already deep in the process of networking with drug and other criminal entities in South America.”
A major international security conference to discuss global security threats emanating from South America recently concluded in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
The Ninth Parliamentary Intelligence-Security Forum was attended by representatives from a slew of nations including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, and Peru. The Forum was hosted by a US congressman, Representative Robert Pittenger of North Carolina.
Pittenger is vice chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Terrorism and Illicit Finance, so the man has some unique behind the scenes information regarding the financial infrastructure behind extremist militant groups.
What did Pittenger choose to highlight among the variety of security issues facing South America?
According to Pittenger, the latest emerging threat to the region is the teaming up of radical Islamic groups with crime lords on the continent, in areas such as drug dealing, gun trafficking, and money laundering.
Generally speaking, the presence of Jihadism in South America is not new. The Shiite militant group Hezbollah, for instance, has been operating on the continent for decades. In 1994, the bombing of the Asociacion Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA), a major Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, brought worldwide attention to Hezbollah operations in Latin America and their Iranian orchestrators. Following that attack, US policymakers began investigating into the widespread infrastructure of jihadists in Argentina and neighboring countries, noting that even government embassies of sympathetic countries in many cases were providing resources and support.
In the past several months, indications from media and US defense officials began to come out showing the radical groups, which now include ISIS, have taken a move to ramp up their activities in Latin America.
According to a US State Department report from July, both ISIS and Hezbollah have been working on formulating operative cells in many countries such as Mexico and Trinidad and Tobago. According to the report, the militant groups have taken advantage of the “porous borders” in many of these nations that allow jihadist agents to pass in and out with relative ease. Furthermore, this lax border control allows for local Muslim citizens to fly off to conflict zones in the Middle East and Africa, gain military training and combat experience, and then slip back into the country undetected.
Several months before the State Department report was released, then Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly told students at George Washington University that terror groups were already deep in the process of networking with drug and other criminal entities in South America. For this reason, Kelly has strongly advocated for the implementation of President Trump’s infamous southern border wall policy.
Recent statements by Congressman Pittenger highlight the growing threat to national security that these networking activities pose.
Criminal groups partnering with Jihadist organizations opens a variety of bad possibilities.
First off, crime can be a major source of funding for terror groups, allowing them to increase their procurement of weapons and equipment, as well as their online and real-world recruitment.
Criminal groups, experts in smuggling and illicit border crossing, have a lot to offer terror groups seeking to infiltrate the US.
Additionally, the crime groups themselves, always on the lookout for combat experienced collaborators, could gain by utilizing militants and their fighting skills gained while in far-off conflict areas.
Hopefully the recent international forum in Buenos Aires will be a wake-up for Latin America on this issue. The US and its friends in the Western Hemisphere have tools, both military and financial, to address the jihadi-crime nexus.
