Monday, September 14, 2009
The Mutation of Crime and Terror in Latin America
By Jerry Brewer
Latin American insurgents, narcotraffickers, organized criminals, and revolutionary
ideologists appear to no longer have empirical estrangements. A terrorism nexus continues to slowly come into focus.
Transnational criminal groups and terrorist networks have an ironic need for each other and evidence continues to emerge,
especially in the Western Hemisphere.
As this motley association of misery and destruction merge in many transparent venues,
an overlap of motivation becomes necessary to achieve some common goals. The manner in which these criminal, political,
and ideological fanatics morph and mix within their insurgencies is hard to disguise in anything other than death, violence,
and other extremist behavior. This is how they must be interdicted.
When we speak of the motivating factors within these diverse elements, the common
ingredients are the ability to finance their operational acts, and the armaments to enforce and elicit voluntary
compliance or inflict their verdict of death. Narcotraffickers and associated criminal elements have come to see the
“terrorist” label as somewhat of a glamorization process. This much like many U.S. inner city criminal gangs
that relate to the gangster and mafia movie mystique.
One significant difference from the terrorist is in being driven by diffuse anger
rather than specific anger. However, the anger factor is a non-mitigating issue in a quest for attaining access to the
strength of other networks in the form of weapons, manpower, money laundering, and other tactical expertise. The strength
and power that comes with these joint ventures is therefore obvious from the standpoint of decentralized leadership,
a good and non-threatening nexus between the terrorists and their new counterparts.
Examples of this terrorist and criminal insurgent bonding for material gain
are crime notorious regions such as the tri-border area of Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil, and the blood-diamond conflict
zones in Africa such as Sierra Leone and Liberia. These areas in which criminals and terrorists work side by side and
extend needed cooperation. Resources drive the individual goal achievement, such as the Afghanistan poppy trade in financing
the Taliban. This form of asymmetric warfare provides little risk to the counterparts performing as a whole, and
allows elements to survive separately if one element is interdicted.
There is an error in perspective in many preemptive measures directed against the
terrorists and their criminal counterparts. International terrorism and extremism, especially when motivated and
inspired by radicalized Islamists, becomes an integrated perspective to the criminal and insurgent. Criminals generally
are the targets of police organizations and similar military efforts. Thus they face police strategies, tactics, and
police organizational methods.
The sad and sobering truth is that most North, Central, and South American police
forces are ill-equipped, under-funded, and lack the proper training to handle the continuing growth, sophisticated weaponry,
and strategic tactics and terrorist spy-tradecraft directed against them. There can be no reasonable expectation of
any “police force” to effectively fight terrorists, as well as a criminal element that is rapidly becoming so
well armed, trained, and financed.
This enemy, especially when operating in nexus organized fashion, poses an immediate
and critical threat to a homeland with their bold and resourceful methods. They have clearly and often demonstrated
their intimidation, through kidnapping, torture, and murder. Examples of this nightmare are clear in Mexico against
the narcotraffickers and their hired paramilitary trained assassins.
The U.S. Border Patrol has met them tragically along the U.S. border. The
traffickers, influenced and educated through traditional terrorist modus operandi, have utilized elite transportation networks,
satellite generated electronics, and military tactical cover and concealment strategies. They have adopted compartmentalization
(small cellular groups) as a method of survival and to keep themselves, as well as their contraband, from being infiltrated
or eliminated in total. They exploit every weakness perceived in pursuit of their goals.
The potential to totally destabilize a hemisphere is not farfetched. Weak
economies, scarce resources, and inadequate training and indoctrination for police
to interdict this enemy, without military involvement, is a reality to be faced.
Mexico is a true reminder that the enforcement methods were not prepared for such
an onslaught, and authorities were forced to utilize the power of the military in the face of superior weapons, intimidation,
and internal corruption made possible by the massive wealth and power of the organized criminals.
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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.
