Monday, February 11, 2008

State Involved Terrorism Threatens Hemispheric Stability

By Jerry Brewer

While followers of world news track the bouncing balls of partisan lead stories, the astute devotees of stability issues in the Western Hemisphere are gaining clearer visions. Such is the case of destabilizing issues in Latin America that have been reaching boiling points over the last decade. With Middle Eastern terrorism as the popular theme of world crisis, a more sinister enemy of architects of mayhem are hard at work in the southwestern hemisphere, and they pose a very clear and present danger to North America.

Trying to stop this terrain tsunami at any border with walls or fences is the height of insanity. Spending billions of US dollars on papier-mâché described as "securing our borders" is further evidence of that form of lunacy. Is this just an exaggerated statement by those against the proposed strategy or rationale for the border barriers? Perhaps we can collectively help lawmakers decide on how to spend those wasted dollars, set priorities, and decide which greater threats exist.

Let’s do the homework.

In September 2007, in Havana, Cuba, leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) nations met and made speeches at their 14th conference. Although the conference's main theme was how to develop backward economies and societies, it was reported by sources that "three groups of intelligence experts" were off in a well-protected corner room discussing their leader's hostile rhetoric and slogans, and discussing covert action against democracies. This smorgasbord of clandestine espionage experts consisted of intelligence officers and civilian officials on the staffs of the rulers of Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba, "with ties to underground and terrorist organizations."

At the conclusion of the NAM conference, the Iranian and Venezuelan teams moved their talks to Caracas, on September 17 and 18, where President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran continued his talks with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

What is surprising is that although Iran's Islamic revolutionary leaders have cooperatively maintained close ties and mutual assistance with Cuba since they came to power in 1979, Fidel Castro has declined to give Iranian agents a free hand for espionage and subversion against the United States. In 2003 Castro admonished Iranian diplomats residing in Cuba for installing "jamming equipment" against television programs relayed from the US through satellite to Iran. Castro made the Iranian diplomats evacuate their farm and remove the equipment.

Castro did not have a change of heart. He had previously launched his terrorist war against the US in 1958, against what he described as the "US presence in Latin America."

After taking power in 1959-60, Castro and his chief of clandestine operations, Che Guevara of Argentina, began to export Cuba's armed revolution to Panama, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua. Cuba's intelligence service, known as the General Directorate of Intelligence (DGI), was born in 1961. Cuba began to organize guerrilla training programs and a "Liberation Directorate” for the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. This group also trained and funded African revolutionaries.

Was this terrorist threat to the hemisphere the sole act of a Latin American revolutionary?

By the end of 1966, under the supervision of the Soviet KGB intelligence service, more than a dozen international guerrilla training camps were established. One of the terrorist graduates was the Venezuelan Ilich Ramirez Sanchez (known as "Carlos the Jackal").

Argentina got into the act in 1978, when the military intelligence Unit 121 regime sent undercover operatives to Mexico to spy on activists. Today the tri-border area of Argentina has their strategic attention, and the head of Argentina's intelligence service, SIDE, recently traveled to Washington to garner support for a new terrorist offensive launched from South America against Middle Eastern terror cells in the region. An Arab population of around 20,000 Syrians and Lebanese are within the area. Potentially hostile elements of these operational cells have been spotted on Margarita Island, Venezuela since the 1990s.

Sinister espionage is alive and well in the hemisphere. Ciudad del Este, in Paraguay, has been described as the Casablanca of Latin America – "a regional center of international intrigue."

On the Mexican front, President Felipe Calderon is waging war against drug cartels and professionally trained paramilitary terrorists known as “the Zetas," deadly and ruthless groups that are well-armed with incredible weaponry.

US law enforcement is currently no match for these elite groups of transnational terrorists. Reportedly many are now residing in US cities, and there is a fear of more to come. Law enforcement and fences have been no match. The police are simply outgunned and without comparable training.

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Jerry Brewer, the Vice President of Criminal Justice International Associates, a global risk mitigation firm headquartered in Miami, Florida, is a guest columnist with MexiData.info.  He can be reached via e-mail at Cjiaincusa@aol.com.