Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 Hegemony Core Brovero/Verney/Hurwitz

Narco-Terrorism Rise Now – Latin America

Narco-terrorism is on the upswing – drug trafficking is funding groups like Hezbollah and Al Qaeda

(Vanessa, 12/2011, Foreign Policy Research Institute, “The New Nexus of Narcoterrorism: Hezbollah and Venezuela,” http://www.fpri.org/enotes/2011/201112.neumann.narcoterrorism.html, accessed 7/9/13, IC)

Besides its sponsored terrorist groups, Iran also has a growing direct influence in Latin America, spurred by three principal motivations: 1) a quest for uranium, 2) a quest for gasoline, 3) a quest for a base of operations that is close to the US territory, in order to position itself to resist diplomatic and possible military pressure, possibly by setting up a missile base within striking distance of the mainland US, as the Soviets did in the Cuban Missile Crisis. FARC, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda all have training camps, recruiting bases and networks of mutual assistance in Venezuela as well as throughout the continent.

I have long argued that Latin America is an increasing source of funding for Middle Eastern terrorism and to overlook the political changes and security threats in the region with such geographic proximity to the US and its greatest source of immigrants is a huge strategic mistake. It was inevitable that South American cocaine traffickers and narcoterrorists would become of increasing importance to Hezbollah and other groups. While intelligence officials believe that Hezbollah used to receive as much as $200 million annually from its primary patron, Iran, and additional money from Syria, both these sources have largely dried up due to the onerous sanctions imposed on the former and the turmoil in the latter.

A recent New York Times front-page article (December 14, 2011) revealed the extensive and intricate connections between Hezbollah and South American cocaine trafficking. Far from being the passive beneficiaries of drug-trafficking expats and sympathizers, Hezbollah has high-level officials directly involved in the South American cocaine trade and its most violent cartels, including the Mexican gang Los Zetas. The “Party of God’s” increasing foothold in the cocaine trade is facilitated by an enormous Lebanese diaspora. As I wrote in my May 2011 e-note, in 2005, six million Muslims were estimated to inhabit Latin American cities. However, ungoverned areas, primarily in the Amazon regions of Suriname, Guyana, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil, present easily exploitable terrain over which to move people and material. The Free Trade Zones of Iquique, Chile; Maicao, Colombia; and Colón, Panama, can generate undetected financial and logistical support for terrorist groups. Colombia, Bolivia, and Peru offer cocaine as a lucrative source of income. In addition, Cuba and Venezuela have cooperative agreements with Syria, Libya, and Iran.

Some shocking revelations into the global interconnectedness of Latin American governments and Middle Eastern terrorist groups have come from Walid Makled, Venezuela’s latter-day Pablo Escobar, who was arrested on August 19, 2010 in Cúcuta, a town on the Venezuelan-Colombian border. A Venezuelan of Syrian descent known variously as “El Turco” (“The Turk”) or “El Arabe” (“The Arab”), he is allegedly responsible for smuggling 10 tons of cocaine a month into the US and Europe—a full 10 percent of the world’s supply and 60 percent of Europe’s supply. His massive infrastructure and distribution network make this entirely plausible, as well as entirely implausible the Venezuelan government did not know. Makled owned Venezuela’s biggest airline, Aeropostal, huge warehouses in Venezuela’s biggest port, Puerto Cabello, and bought enormous quantities of urea (used in cocaine processing) from a government-owned chemical company.

After his arrest and incarceration in the Colombian prison La Picota, Makled gave numerous interviews to various media outlets. When asked on camera by a Univisión television reporter whether he had any relation to the FARC, he answered: “That is what I would say to the American prosecutor.” Asked directly whether he knew of Hezbollah operations in Venezuela, he answered: "In Venezuela? Of course! That which I understand is that they work in Venezuela. [Hezbollah] make money and all of that money they send to the Middle East." A prime example of the importance of the Lebanese diaspora in triangulating amongst South American cocaine and Middle Eastern terrorists, is Ayman Joumaa, a Sunni Muslim of the Medellín cartel with deep ties with Shiites in the Hezbollah strongholds of southern Lebanon. His indictment made public on Tuesday “charges him with coordinating shipments of Colombian cocaine to Los Zetas in Mexico for sale in the United States, and laundering the proceeds” (NY Times, Dec. 14, 2011).

Narco-Terrorism Rise – Venezuela

Venezuela is facilitating Iranian-funded narco-terrorists – lifting visa requirements for Iranians means terrorists can easily access Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, and Panama

Shinkman, U.S. News & World Report national security reporter, 4/24

(Paul D., 4/24/13, U.S. News & World Report, “Iranian-Sponsored Narco-Terrorism in Venezuela: How Will Maduro Respond?” http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/04/24/iranian-sponsored-narco-terrorism-in-venezuela-how-will-maduro-respond?page=2, accessed 7/9/13, IC)

At a conference earlier this month, top U.S. military officers identified what they thought would be the top threats to the U.S. as it draws down from protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Gen. James Amos, commandant of the Marine Corps, was unequivocal about a largely unreported danger:

"Narco-terrorism just on our south border: [it is] yet to be seen just how that is going to play out in our own nation, but it is an issue and it is something that our nation is going to have to deal with."

"Colombia is doing particularly well, but there is an insurgency growing," Amos continued. "They have been fighting it, probably the greatest success story in this part of the world."

The commandant's remarks came a week before the April 14 election where Venezuelans chose a successor to the wildly popular and charismatic Hugo Chavez, who died March 5. Amos indicated the outcome of this election would define much of future relations between the U.S. and Venezuela, located on a continent that has rarely appeared on America's foreign policy radar in the last decade.

Experts, analysts and pundits could not have predicted the election outcome: The establishment's Nicolas Maduro beat reformer Henrique Capriles by a margin of roughly 1 percent. Chavez's hand-picked successor inherited the presidency, but he would not enjoy a broad public mandate to get a teetering Venezuela back on track.

The situation in the South American nation remains dire amid skyrocketing inflation, largely due to Chavez's efforts to nationalize private industry and increase social benefits.

Maduro's immediate attention after claiming victory was drawn to remedying widespread blackouts and food shortages.

One expert on the region says the new leader may need to tap into a shadow world of transnational crime to maintain the stability his countrymen expect.

"Venezuela is a really nice bar, and anybody can go in there and pick up anybody else," says Doug Farah, an expert on narco-terrorism and Latin American crime.

He compares the country to the kind of establishment where nefarious actors can find solutions to a problem. Anti-American groups can find freelance cyber terrorists, for example, or potential drug runners can make connections with the FARC, the Colombian guerilla organization, he says.

"Sometimes it creates a long-term relationship, and sometimes it creates a one-night stand," says Farah, a former Washington Post investigative reporter who is now a senior fellow at the Virginia-based International Assessment and Strategy Center.

Under Chavez, Venezuela also created strong ties with Cuba, which for decades has navigated treacherous financial waters and desperate economic straits, all while dodging U.S. influence. But the help Venezuela receives is not limited to its own hemisphere.

Farah produced a research paper for the U.S. Army War College in August 2012 about the "growing alliance" between state-sponsored Iranian agents and other anti-American groups in Latin America, including the governments of Venezuela and Cuba.

This alliance with Iran uses established drug trade routes from countries in South and Central America to penetrate North American borders, all under a banner of mutual malevolence toward the U.S.

The results of this access are largely secret, though security experts who spoke with U.S. News believe the attempted assassination of the Saudi Arabian ambassador in Washington, D.C.'s Georgetown neighborhood was carried out by Iranian intelligence operatives.

"Each of the Bolivarian states has lifted visa requirements for Iranian citizens, thereby erasing any public record of the Iranian citizens that come and go to these countries," wrote Farah of countries such as Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia and Panama.

He also cited Venezuelan Foreign Minister David Velasquez who said, while speaking at a press conference in Tehran in 2010, "We are confident that Iran can give a crushing response to the threats and sanctions imposed by the West and imperialism."

AT – Latin American Terrorism Impact

No terrorism in Latin America – Hezbollah hasn’t had an attack in over two decades

Weitz, Hudson Institute Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Political-Military Analysis, 11

(Richard, 11/9/11, Project Syndicate, “Where are Latin America’s Terrorists,” http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/where-are-latin-america-s-terrorists-, accessed 7/9/13, IC)

WASHINGTON, DC – The Colombian army’s killing of Alfonso Cano, head of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), will not eliminate that country’s largest guerrilla group anytime soon. But it does partly illustrate why international terrorism has not established a major presence in Latin America. Local security forces, bolstered by generous American assistance, have made the region a difficult place for foreign terrorists to set up operational cells – and other conditions also help to make Latin America less vulnerable.

One reason why the FARC has survived repeated blows to its leadership is the support that it receives from various groups, perhaps including government officials, in neighboring Ecuador and Venezuela. Fortunately, this backing appears to have declined in the last year or so, following improvement in Colombia’s relations with these countries.

Another factor contributing to the FARC’s survival has been its transformation over the years from a revolutionary organization into a narco-terrorist group that uses violence to support its criminal operations. Many former terrorist and insurgent groups in the region have undergone similar transformations over the last two decades.

These groups, some with transnational reach, mostly engage in narcotics trafficking, arms smuggling, and kidnapping. At worst, they sometimes employ terrorist tactics (commonly defined as violence that deliberately targets civilians). In Colombia, the FARC and the National Liberation Army (ELN) finance their operations through drug trafficking, kidnapping, and extortion. These groups might kill civilians, but their main targets are the police and security personnel who threaten their activities.

Latin America is distinctive in the recurring and broad overlap of mass movements professing revolutionary goals with transnational criminal operations. The Internet and modern social media are allowing these mass criminal movements to expand their activities beyond kidnapping, extortion, and trafficking in drugs, arms, and people, to include fraud, piracy, information theft, hacking, and sabotage.

Violent mass movements remain in some Latin American countries, but, like the FARC, they are typically heavily engaged in organized crime. Drug cartels and gang warfare may ruin the lives of thousands of innocent people, but they should not be seen as equivalent to the ideological revolutionaries who used to wreak havoc in the region, or to contemporary mass terrorists.

Extra-regional terrorist movements such as al-Qaeda have minimal presence in South America, with little independent operational activity and few ties to local violent movements. At most, the two types of groups might share operational insights and revenue from transnational criminal operations. Hezbollah has not conducted an attack in Latin America in almost two decades. Indigenous organized criminal movements are responsible for the most serious sources of local violence.

Latin America is not a good environment for terrorists – no large Muslim communities and organized crime – their evidence is crying wolf, Latin American governments simply want US funding to combat “terrorism”

Weitz, Hudson Institute Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Political-Military Analysis, 11

(Richard, 11/9/11, Project Syndicate, “Where are Latin America’s Terrorists,” http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/where-are-latin-america-s-terrorists-, accessed 7/9/13, IC)

Latin American countries generally are not a conducive environment for major terrorist groups. They lack large Muslim communities that could provide a bridgehead for Islamist extremist movements based in Africa and the Middle East. The demise of military dictatorships and the spread of democratic regimes throughout Latin America (except for Cuba) means that even severe economic, class, ethnic, and other tensions now more often manifest themselves politically, in struggles for votes and influence.

No Latin American government appears to remain an active state sponsor of foreign terrorist movements. At worst, certain public officials may tolerate some foreign terrorists’ activities and neglect to act vigorously against them. More often, governments misapply anti-terrorist laws against their non-violent opponents. For example, despite significant improvement in its human-rights policies, the Chilean government has at times applied harsh anti-terrorism laws against indigenous Mapuche protesters.

Indeed, Latin American terrorism is sometimes exaggerated, because governments have incentives to cite local terrorist threats to secure foreign support, such as US capacity-building funding. Just as during the Cold War, when Latin American leaders were lavished with aid for fighting communist subversion, governments seek to fight “terrorist” threats at America’s expense.

Ironically, the strength of transnational criminal organizations in Latin America may act as a barrier to external terrorist groups. Extra-regional terrorists certainly have incentives to penetrate the region. Entering the US, a high-value target for some violent extremist groups, from Latin America is not difficult for skilled operatives. Extra-regional terrorist groups could also raise funds and collaborate operationally with local militants.

But Latin America’s powerful transnational criminal movements, such as the gangs in Mexico that control much of the drug trafficking into the US, do not want to jeopardize their profits by associating themselves with al-Qaeda and its affiliates. Supporting terrorism would merely divert time and other resources from profit-making activities, while focusing unsought US and other international attention on their criminal operations.

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