Monday,
July 14, 2008
Mexican Drug Cartels & Islamic Radicals Working Together
By J. Jesús Esquivel, Proceso
[Translation] *
ˇ According to a U.S. government intelligence report obtained by Proceso, Hamas, Hezbollah and other radical Islamic groups have become associates of the Mexican
drug trafficking cartels: they are furnishing them weapons and helping them to distribute drugs in Europe and the Middle East. Ahead of time, DEA and Justice Department officials told this weekly that "in coming
days" they will conduct an operation in the border area shared by Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay – where the radical
Islamic groups have settled – that will show their ties with the Mexican drug traffickers.
Washington – Islamic terrorist groups are selling arms to Mexican drug trafficking
cartels and collaborating with them in order to distribute narcotics in Europe and the Middle East.
This is one of the conclusions in the report titled "Accomplishments, Fiscal Year 2007," done by the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), an agency of the U.S. Department of Justice.
"Information
from intelligence and investigations on narcoterrorism that we have carried out identifies ties between Mexican narcotics
traffickers, [and] those of the Philippines and Colombia, with elements belonging to foreign organizations designated as terrorists
by the [U.S.] Department of State," the NDIC document indicates. Based on information
from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),
the NDIC document emphasized: "The results of 74 investigations of narcoterrorism that have been carried out by the Special
Operations Division of the DEA document that Islamic groups present on the common border of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay
launder money, sell arms and traffic drugs of the main Mexican criminal organizations."
Narcoterrorism
The document
indicates that the majority of the Islamic groups represented in South America are tied to the Palestinians, and that they
use their earnings gained from relationship with narcotics traffickers from Mexico and the rest of Latin America to finance
their causes.
It identifies
the groups Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestine Liberation
Front, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine as the Arab associates
of narcotrafficking cartels from Mexico.
"Groups
like Hezbollah and Hamas," it states, "have trafficked large amounts of heroin and cocaine in Europe and the Middle East sold
to them by narcotics traffickers of Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Brazil."
And it
adds: "Furthermore, these terrorist groups have established multimillion [dollar] contracts in order to sell weapons to Mexican
and Colombian narcotics traffickers," that are commercialized by "criminal providers from Yemen, Kuwait, Syria, Argentina,
Brazil and Bulgaria."
A NDIC
official told Proceso, regarding the contents of the intelligence document: "In
the last five or six years the drug cartels of Mexico have been positioned as the most powerful criminal organizations of
Latin America. And since they now have an intercontinental reach in the transfer
of narcotics, the Middle Eastern terrorist groups have not wanted to lose the opportunity to [make] money from them."
"There
is a great deal of talk about weapons used by the main cartels of Mexico coming from the United States, but what is seldom
mentioned is that many of these, seized from narcotics traffickers by Mexican authorities, are made in Europe or the Middle
East and that they are the type used by Islamic groups that support the Palestinian cause," the NDIC official who asked for
anonymity as his comments referred to an intelligence document that has not been declassified said.
That
document notes: "A link of cooperation between Mexico's organized crime and southern Philippines area drug traffickers, and
elements of the terrorist organizations Adu Sayyaf and Jamayah Islamiyah, was also identified."
The NDIC
document does not identify the Mexican drug trafficking cartels related with the radical Islamic groups directly or indirectly. However, a Justice Department official consulted by this weekly said that it would
deal with the Gulf, Sinaloa, [and] Arellano Félix cartels, as well as The Zetas. A
DEA spokesman confirmed for Proceso that it deals with "three or four main cartels"
that operate in Mexican territory.
"Right
now we cannot name them (the cartels), because in coming days we will conduct an operation in South America (on the common
border of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay) against Hezbollah due to its relationship with South American and Mexican narcotics
traffickers," said the DEA spokesman who also asked for anonymity due to this being an ongoing investigation.
Words
to the wise
Since
the 1970s, U.S. agencies began to warn that Islamic groups established in South America were dedicated to arms trafficking
in the area. However, in the past five years Mexican drug traffickers have become
their main clients.
"The
most notable change is that now the Islamic groups located in South America work as drug distributors in Europe and the Middle
East for the Mexican narcotics traffickers. Moreover, we have information that
Mexico's cartels pay [for] arms that the terrorist groups sell with drugs (heroin, methamphetamines and cocaine)," said the
DEA spokesman.
On January
30, 2006, Michael Brown, chief of operations of the Federal Antidrug Agency, told the Western Hemisphere Affairs subcommittee
of the U.S. House of Representatives that since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, federal agencies [have] intensified
their investigations into the presence of Islamic terrorist groups in South America, and that as a result they discovered
that they had ties with the narcotrafficking organizations in the region.
Brown
explained that the Islamic groups earn large amounts from this, and he gave examples: "An investment of US$6,000.00, to buy
a kilogram of cocaine from Mexican or Colombian drug traffickers, could yield a minimum profit of US$30,000.00 from the sale
of this drug in Spain (…), US$110,000.00 in Hungary or Israel, and up to US$150,000.00 in Saudi Arabia."
Other
intelligence documents from the Department of Justice, copies of which Proceso
also obtained, show that Mexican narcotics traffickers made their first contacts with Islamic radical groups, like Hezbollah,
at the beginning of this decade, this through the intermediation of Colombian, Brazilian [and] Peruvian drug dealers, as well
as members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
"The
tripartite border (of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay) is used as the central point for the trafficking of cocaine that is
taken to Europe and other regions of the world. Groups like Hezbollah and Hamas
are getting huge amounts of money from the drugs sold to them mainly by the Mexican narcotics dealers," according to one of
the documents from the Department of Justice, dated May 9, 2006.
With
respect to the weapons that the Islamic groups sell to the Mexican narcotics traffickers, the NDIC intelligence report shows
that these come from the Middle East and Europe. They first arrive in South America. Subsequently, the "criminal contacts of the Islamic groups" and "their Lebanese agents"
– who are found throughout the continent, but with "ample concentration in Central America" – transport them to
Mexico by "air, land and sea."
"They
sell them all kinds of weapons, from the most elementary to equipment to shoot down helicopters or destroy tanks (…)
like those that Hezbollah or Hamas use in order to attack the Israeli Army in the Occupied Territories of Palestine or in
Lebanon," the document indicates.
"We also
have evidence that Central American gangs, like the Mara Salvatrucha of El Salvador, are also collaborating with the Islamic
terrorist groups in the transportation of weapons and munitions that have Mexico as their final destination," stated the earlier
mentioned Justice Department official. One of the documents from that U.S. government
agency points out that the political atmosphere favoring leftists in South America, that tends to be at odds with the foreign
policy of President George W. Bush, is exploited by groups like Hamas and Hezbollah that have found a kind of refuge on the
common border of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, as well as a center of transnational operations both to sell arms to Mexico
and to traffic in drugs to Europe and Asia. For their part, according to said
document, almost inadvertently Mexican drug traffickers [are] indirectly financing terrorist acts that radical Islamic groups
commit against Israel.
"The
operation against Hezbollah that we will make public in coming days will offer into evidence the clear relationship that exists
between narcotics trafficking and the Islamic groups, but above all it will show Latin American governments the huge current
criminal potential of organized crime organizations of the region. Particularly,
it will show Mexican authorities that these (Islamic) organizations are a great threat to the national security of their country,
the United States, and even some South American countries," concluded the Justice Department official.
——————————
* The Proceso translation[s], from English to
Spanish of information in the National Drug Intelligence Center report cited in the article (translated above into, and back into, English), take
poetic license. Some of the quotes are used in altered context; others are disjointed
excerpts put together with added text in an order other than that presented in the NDIC report; and some quotes tie in referenced Mexican criminal organizations whereas they do not appear
in the aforementioned report.
——————————
Edited
translation; from Proceso Magazine #1652, June 29, 2008, Mexico City; MexiData.info translation
