| | |  Editorials | Issues | July 2009 
Mexican Cartels Seek Safety and Friends by Moving South
 Jerry Brewer - mexidata.info
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July 27, 2009
 |  | Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s relentless push and disrupting of the profit making agendas of the Mexican drug gangs has forced many of their operations into Central America. |  | | |
Ajmal Kasab, the only surviving gunman in the Mumbai, India terrorist attack last November that killed around 160 people, told a courtroom that because the media was recording everything, he was told by his handler to “inflict maximum damage, keep fighting, and don’t be taken alive.” Further revelations of this testimony included a history that is very reminiscent of the carnage in Mexico finding its way to points further south.
Kasab [21] described himself as a poor Pakistani who, with a friend, had decided robbery was a way to earn money. They sought military training through Islamic militants to increase their crime skills and eventually became members of the terrorist group known as Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s relentless push and disrupting of the profit making agendas of the Mexican drug gangs has forced many of their operations into Central America. Leading the way are the Zetas, the hired paramilitary and well-armed enforcement cadre chosen by the organized criminal hierarchies. Their costumes of combat include grenades, bullet resistant vests, M-60 machine guns, anti-tank rockets, commando uniforms, and assorted paraphernalia of death and destruction.
The nearly three year offensive by President Calderon’s military against these murdering bandits has forced somewhat of a retreat toward regions in Central America, such as Guatemala, where weak enforcement resistance by authorities is fertile ground for control and corruption. More than “6,000 people were slain in Guatemala in 2008,” in mostly deaths linked to the drug trade.
El Salvador and Honduras have not been immune to this essential insurgency of murdering drug merchants. There is an urgent need to find and control areas in which state institutions are weak and powerless and are recruiting havens for young recruits. These, affected by social alienation poverty, and the lure of easy money. Many of these governments are powerless to resist and easily susceptible to corruption attempts.
The radicalized Islamic movement, not new to Latin America, has roots in the hemisphere from the Tri-Border area (Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil) to Venezuela. Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as others, have used this area for drug trafficking, money laundering, and other forms of fund raising. Via Paraguayan financial institutions, a period from 1999 to 2001 showed extremist groups receiving “between US$50 and US$500 million from Arab residents on the Brazilian side of the border.”
Concerns in Venezuela, on Margarita Island, prompted the Venezuelan government to deny there were “terrorist links” inherent on the resort island. Approximately 4,000 Arab immigrants that are described as primarily of Syrian, Lebanese, and Palestinian descent are residents of the island. Reports and targeted intelligence suggested possible illicit terrorist support activities by Islamic elements. While there has been much media censorship throughout Venezuela under President Hugo Chavez’s rule, the local Margarita Island cable television outlet offers al-Jazeera and other Syrian and Lebanese channels.
Hezbollah Latin America is a Venezuelan based group that claims to not be directly financed or affiliated by Lebanese counterparts. However, they offer their full ideological support to them. A previous Internet web posting stated, “The demon of the North, Israel and its allies, all enemies of Islam and Allah…, Latin Muslims today assume a leading role in the Latin American Jihad against the West, enemy of Islam.” The group once called on supporters to put “low grade explosives in Latin American institutions affiliated with the United States in response to Israel’s military actions in Lebanon.”
Gang activity throughout the Hemisphere, as precursors of revolutionary terrorism, is ripe with the cellular ingredients of violence, corruption, and death through criminal enterprises. Robbery, contract killing, drug trafficking, arms dealing, kidnapping for ransom, and related activities that correlate to terrorism ideology. Missing ingredients, such as non-Muslims not accepted into Islamic terrorist organizations, can be substituted for hatred of the US and free democratic nations.
Mexican organized narcotraffickers have clearly demonstrated their credentials as worldwide instruments of terror through their reign of assassinations, beheadings, and massacres of innocent citizens. Their push deeper into Latin America, into lesser enforcement efforts and resistance, represents clear and intense danger to citizens and free government.
Regional and cross-border cooperation to eradicate lawlessness where it flourishes must be a top priority of governments. This will require strategic and methodical law enforcement, intelligence services, military engagement, political negotiations and policy, and possible economic sanctions to force voluntary compliance against those that are not part of the solution. Limited personnel, equipment, expertise, and other financial resources will necessitate prioritizing necessary results.
Jerry Brewer is C.E.O. of Criminal Justice International Associates, a global risk mitigation firm headquartered in Miami, Florida. His website is located at www.cjiausa.org. |
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