Posted on 11/03/2001 5:23:32 AM PST by callisto
Radical Muslim terrorist groups have established bases in Latin America and the Caribbean and are poised to direct their jihad at U.S. businesses, military personnel and civilians throughout the region, security experts and intelligence sources tell Insight. These fundamentalists also may be positioned to stage more attacks against the U.S. mainland like those of Sept. 11.
Of particular concern is the possibility that terrorist "sleepers" already have used lax immigration procedures in countries such as Argentina to launder their identities and slip undetected into the United States. U.S. authorities in Buenos Aires frantically are trying to ascertain the whereabouts of tens of thousands of Argentines who entered the United States under a visa-waiver program instituted by Bill Clinton at the insistence of Argentina's then-president Carlos Menem. As former CIA director James Woolsey tells Insight: "I certainly wouldn't put it past al-Qaeda to use Latin America as a route to place its assets in the United States."
Some 6 million people of Muslim descent live in Latin America. Brazil plays host to more than one-fourth of that number; 700,000 live in Argentina, which also is home to the region's largest Jewish population; and there are strong faith-based Muslim communities in Venezuela, Colombia, Paraguay, Chile, Peru, Honduras and Bolivia. While practicing a different religion in a largely Roman Catholic bastion, Muslims have lived for generations in the region, with the majority tracing their roots to Syria and Lebanon. Recent immigration and a reawakening by Latin Muslims to their faith also has created links to radical Islamic groups.
Antiterrorism experts say extremist cells tied to Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network are operating in Argentina, Ecuador, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Uruguay. Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez — whose inner circle includes nationalist military officers who fulminate against a purported "Zionist-NATO" conspiracy — has embraced Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi in recent visits to Iraq and Libya.
Qaddafi historically has maintained close ties both to the far left and the far right in the region and is known to have established networks throughout the Caribbean, Suriname, Guyana and the West Indies. Bin Laden's rise to fame has allowed him to take over some of those organizations, experts say. In September, officials from Dominica, Grenada and St. Vincent traveled to Tripoli and reported promises for more than $21 million in loans, debt relief and grants. Senior Nicaraguan officials have accused Qaddafi of providing funds for the campaign of Sandinista presidential candidate Daniel Ortega, who visited him earlier this year, in the Nov. 4 election.
In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, the Organization of American States passed a resolution offering security cooperation in support of the United States. But regional realities are sobering. Budgetary and manpower constraints have meant that virtually all the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean — Cuba, with an extensive internal and external intelligence network, is the exception — appear unprepared to deal with the Islamic-terrorist challenge. Police and intelligence agencies are underfunded and their members undertrained and underequipped.
The sorry state of Latin American police and security forces, says Miguel Diaz, a former CIA official and director of the South America Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based think tank, "makes it almost indispensable for the region's governments to work with the United States. None of the countries of Latin America have any foreign-intelligence expertise except for Cuba — so really they are starting from scratch."
One of the most vexing problems, security officials say, is the so-called "Triple Frontier" border area shared by Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, long a cauldron of multibillion-dollar illegal enterprises such as drug smuggling, money laundering and international weapons trafficking. More than a half-million people live in the area, including 23,000 of Lebanese descent. In early October, Francis Taylor, director of the State Department's Office of Counterterrorism, warned that Islamic extremist organizations, including Hezbollah and Hamas, were both fund raising and proselytizing there. Other U.S. sources say local Muslims also provide a haven for extensive money-laundering operations for extremist groups, with much of the funds repatriated to Lebanon.
Since Sept. 11, the Triple Frontier has come to resemble Casablanca during World War II, with local intelligence and law-enforcement agencies being joined by a number of U.S. counterparts, as well as Israel's Mossad and the German and Spanish secret services. Both Brazil and Argentina have stepped up surveillance efforts in the area, with support from the FBI and the CIA. Paraguay, too, has promised to help, but rampant corruption within its security services and ongoing political turmoil makes its real contribution negligible, analysts say.
Another source of concern is Chavez. On Nov. 1, the Bush administration recalled U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela Donna Hrinak after Chavez held up pictures of dead Afghan children on Venezuelan TV, describing it as a "slaughter of innocents." U.S. intelligence sources say they believe Chavez has been lending support to Colombia's left-wing guerrilla insurgency. Chavez counts among his international followers nationalist military men of various ideological persuasions, including Argentine "Painted Faces" officers loyal to Mohammed Ali Seineldin, a former colonel who worked as an adviser to Panama's one-time dictator, Manuel Noriega.
Two years ago, Chavez sparked a controversy when he sent a letter addressed "Dear compatriot" to Venezuelan-born revolutionary Carlos the Jackal, whose real name is Illich Ramirez Sanchez. Carlos, once hunted by Western security services as one of the world's most wanted terrorist masterminds, is serving a life sentence in France for the 1975 murder of two French secret agents.
In early October, during a visit to Paris, Chavez provoked another firestorm of criticism by suggesting that Carlos' human rights were not being respected. Several senior Venezuelan officials added fuel to the fire by appearing to question whether Carlos — believed to be responsible for some 80 killings carried out in support of Palestinian and other revolutionary causes — was a terrorist. In an interview with El Universal, a Caracas newspaper, Carlos said he supported bin Laden's "revolutionary, anti-imperialist" war and felt "solidarity" toward Chavez' self-styled "Bolivarian revolution."
In the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago, a radical Islamic organization, Jamaat-al-Muslimeen, has come under increased scrutiny. On Sept. 19, a man with ties to the Trinidadian organization believed to be linked to bin Laden pleaded guilty in a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., federal court to unlawful possession of a machine gun. Federal officials say that Keith Andre Gaude, who was detained in a U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) sting operation, came to Florida to buy as many as 60 AK-47 assault rifles and 10 MAC-10 submachine guns with silencers.
In 1990, Jamaat-al-Muslimeen staged a coup attempt in Port-of-Spain. The prime minister and eight Cabinet members were held hostage for four days, and 23 people died in bombings at the police headquarters, the state TV station and the Parliament building.
In Buenos Aires, U.S. officials anxiously are trying to establish the whereabouts of those tens of thousands of Argentines who entered the U.S. under the visa-waiver program, but for whom there is no documentation of their having returned to Argentina. During the Cold War, Argentina was an important way station for Eastern Bloc agents, particularly East Germans, who sought to change their identities as they made their way to the United States. They did so by acquiring the birth certificates of dead Argentines, a retired FBI counterintelligence specialist tells Insight.
The visa-waiver program instituted in the mid-1990s made a valid passport all that was required for travel to the United States. Senior U.S. law-enforcement officials say that, under Menem, "a lot of people made big bucks" by procuring phony passports through the Argentine Federal Police. U.S. sources in Buenos Aires say they are concerned about a number of fraudulent passports that have been traced to repeated trips from the Middle East to Miami and New York via Buenos Aires.
Menem, currently under house arrest outside of Buenos Aires for his alleged role in an international arms-smuggling ring, has had an ambiguous relationship with Iran, Syria and Libya. In 1986, following the U.S. bombing of Tripoli in retaliation for Libyan-sponsored terrorist attacks against U.S. targets in Europe, then-provincial governor Menem called for the expulsion of Frank Ortiz, the U.S. envoy to Buenos Aires. His 1989 heterodox presidential campaign, supported by Seineldin and former left-wing guerrillas close to Middle Eastern terrorist organizations, reportedly received millions of dollars from Qaddafi.
During his 10 years in office Menem, whose parents migrated to Argentina from Syria, presided over the rehiring of military and police officials with neo-Nazi sympathies to the country's security forces and intelligence services, say his critics. Menem also picked a Syrian-army colonel who barely spoke Spanish to be customs overseer at Buenos Aires' Ezeiza International Airport — a major hub for smuggling in South America.
Following the Sept. 11 attacks, the trial of several Argentine policemen accused of complicity with a 1994 bombing by Islamic terrorists against a Jewish community center began in Buenos Aires. The attack left 85 people dead. It came just two years after the Israeli embassy in Argentina also was leveled. In September 2001, Argentina's law-enforcement minister, Ramon Mestre, linked the attacks to Menem's "promises to the Muslim world, which he did not honor."
One senior U.S. law-enforcement source familiar with the investigation of the community-center bombing called the trial a joke, adding: "Those in the know understand that complicity for the attack reaches pretty high up into Menem's inner circle."
Martin Edwin Andersen, a senior research analyst for Freedom House, is author of a 450-page history of the Argentine police to be published next March in Buenos Aires.
You bet they do. And every initiative they undertook said this. Their goal-to divide us. The unification of our nation that has taken place due to the terrorist attack is the the ONE THING they fear most.
They have worked so hard to diversify and alienate us into groups suspicious of one another. They have worked to garner votes by killing the spirit of our nation thru forcing victem status on some and encouraging suspicion and hatred . They are very bad people. Intent on power and wealth through WHATEVER means possible and have been able to depend on the many major media outlets to help them wage gain their ends.
The INS was a joke....they smashed it. Remember when, at our NUCLEAR labs, like Los Alamos, the KLINTONS agreed that NO ONE WAS ABLE TO WEAR THEIR TITLES on their security badges because such titles might OFFEND those of lower rank? These people nearly crushed our nation while touting great economic prowess and the PRESS helped them to cover what was going on under the veneer of a great economy. These terrorist goons came to us WHEN THE CLINTONS WHERE RUNNING THE SHOW.
They should be called to responsibility before congress to EXPLAIN the lax INS procedures, including the lax export procedures, the move to take vetting from our dept of defense and move it to congress, the SELLING of commerce plane seats, etc and forced to explain their horrendous actions. IMMEDIATELY.
Freedom House is a highly respected organization:
Freedom House is a clear voice for democracy and freedom around the world. Founded nearly sixty years ago by Eleanor Roosevelt, Wendell Willkie, and other Americans concerned with the mounting threats to peace and democracy, Freedom House has been a vigorous proponent of democratic values and a steadfast opponent of dictatorships of the far left and the far right.Non-partisan and broad-based, Freedom House is led by a Board of Trustees composed of leading Democrats, Republicans, and independents; business and labor leaders; former senior government officials; scholars; writers; and journalists. All are united in the view that American leadership in international affairs is essential to the cause of human rights and freedom.
Over the years, Freedom House has been at the center of the struggle for freedom. It was an outspoken advocate of the Marshall Plan and NATO in the 1940s, of the U.S. civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, of the Vietnam boat people in the 1970s, of Poland's Solidarity movement and the Filipino democratic opposition in the 1980s, and of the many democracies that have emerged around the world in the 1990s.
Freedom House has vigorously opposed dictatorships in Central America and Chile, apartheid in South Africa, the suppression of the Prague Spring, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda, and the brutal violation of human rights in Cuba, Burma, China, and Iraq.
It has championed the rights of democratic activists, religious believers, trade unionists, journalists, and proponents of free markets. In 1997, a consolidation took place whereby the international democratization training programs of the National Forum Foundation were incorporated into Freedom House.
Today, Freedom House is a leading advocate of the world's young democracies, which are coping with the debilitating legacy of statism, dictatorship, and political repression. It conducts an array of U.S. and overseas research, advocacy, education, and training initiatives that promote human rights, democracy, free market economics, the rule of law, independent media, and U.S. engagement in international affairs.
Freedom House is a non-profit, nonpartisan organization that relies upon tax-deductible grants and donations under Section 501(c)(3) of the IRS code. Major support has been provided by:
The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation The Byrne Foundation
The Carthage Foundation The Eurasia Foundation
The Ford Foundation The Freedom Forum
Grace Foundation, Inc. Lilly Endowment, Inc.
The LWH Family Foundation National Endowment for Democracy
The Pew Charitable Trusts Sarah Scaife Foundation
The Schloss Family Foundation Smith Richardson Foundation, Inc.
The Soros Foundations The Tinker Foundation
Unilever United States Foundation, Inc. US Agency for International Development
US Information Agency
The listing of organizations sounds like a catalog of socialist-pushing leftists.
NEVER FORGET! THE CLINTONS ARE TO BLAME FOR 911!
When you have this coming from a neo-liberal source, you have to take notice.
How the proud Argentine military, which was always intensely Catholic in the official sense, allowed this to happen is beyond me.
How this rich country is allowing itself to be turned into a Third World hellhole is also beyond me. But then, I have the same question of us.
O, BTW, why are illegal Muslim aliens still here?
Bill and ugh Hillary are the lowest.
Now that I said it I feel better.
This is all their fault and more and more article out there are starting to prove it!When I saw Insight Mag. saying this, I figured if they will acknowledge this much you just have to know there's so much more to tell that they're not saying.
Correct.
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