Monday, July 21, 2008

Drug Demand in the USA Continues to Invite Terrorism

By Jerry Brewer

Although the sobering wake up call to the U.S. southern border has apparently gone unanswered for the last several years, the message to be played is loud and clear. While a nation hammered out hostilities towards acts of illegal immigration, demanding walls and fences to stop the "people flow," the enemy made end runs around the migrants. The enemies are drug cartels that supply the demand for illicit narcotics, and they are clearly terrorists. The enormous cost of such a "barrier boondoggle" would never justify the means; especially when the terror apparatus knows no limits, nor is it even remotely hindered by border barriers.

Groups pushing for the legalization of drugs relentlessly continue to press for an end to the "war on drugs," claiming that legalization would stop the violence and end the death and destruction. Too, they call the war against drugs useless and highly unsuccessful. However this hedonistic view fails to have the clarity of reality and fact, nor has the focus of the maladies inherent in terror ideology.

Let's examine and separate what is fact from fiction and requires no interpretation, for it is what it is.

Mexican drug cartels are, without question, the most powerful organized criminal organizations of Latin America. A common defensive response to this fact is that "they will go away with drug legalization efforts." The rationale being that the lower prices would drive them out of the business. Secondly, they claim that the "terror" branding of these groups is "big brother's" hype to inflict their own moral standards with their own terrorizing of sorts.

Here is what fiction is not made of. "Islamic terrorist groups are selling arms to Mexican trafficking cartels and collaborating with them to expand revenue via drug sales." The U.S., as many other countries, has been threatened with death and destruction by these terrorist groups now for a couple of decades. Of course, the reality of the actual carnage clearly demonstrates that this is not a figment of anyone's imagination. They refuse to go away until their work is done.

The National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) reports that information and investigation on narcoterrorism has identified ties between Mexican narcotics traffickers and "elements belonging to foreign organizations designated as terrorists." The tri-border confluence with Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil is well represented with ties to the Palestinians by "the majority of Islamic groups." Elements of Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Palestine Liberation Front for the Liberation of Palestine have been linked as associates of narcotrafficking cartels from Mexico.

The carnage that has been seen by Mexico due to the murder and associated violence by the narcotraffickers desperation and vengeance is graphically illustrated by their superior firepower and strategic tactics. Their main mission, as with terrorists, has been the ritual terrifying of communities into submission and maintaining control of their own members.

The murder of over 5,000 people across Mexico in less than two years, including around 500 police officers and senior officials, have been carried out with a myriad of powerful weapons.

Many of these weapons are being seized and linked to origins in Europe and/or the Middle East. These weapons have been described as those "used by Islamic groups that support the Palestinian cause." Assault rifles, anti-tank/aircraft weapons, rocket propelled grenade launchers, bazookas, and similar warlike weapons are being found and confiscated near the violence.

A Department of Justice document dated 9 May 2006 reported terrorist groups "are getting huge amounts of money from the drugs sold to them mainly by the Mexican narcotics dealers." I think the wise and ostensibly astute can and will conclude that the terrorist's rationale is not in providing the "infidels" a pleasurable recreation.

The Central American gangs, such as the Mara Salvatrucha, that have penetrated U.S. cities primarily for the drug trade and "enforcer" duties for the Mexican cartels, along with elements of the former military Kaibiles of Guatemala, are providing the terror to the U.S. by proxy. Their links in collaboration with the Islamic terrorist groups is officially reported. Traditional U.S. law enforcement is currently no match for this level of superior weaponry and advanced military tactics. Recent captures in Mexico of "cartel hit men" resulted in seizures of fragmentation grenades and bulletproof vests, among other superior firepower.

U.S. cities that are main transshipment points for the cartels are in serious jeopardy. The cartels are angry, they are killing all who stand in their way, as well as innocents. Add the Islamic terrorist apparatus to the equation and the math is done for us.

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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.