[Cincinatus' Wife]

General: Islamists find Latin America funds - fastest-growing religion in Latin America*** Latin America is becoming a major fundraising base for radical Islamic groups in the Middle East, which are getting between $300 million and $500 million a year from various criminal networks in the region, a top U.S. military commander told The Herald. Gen. James T. Hill, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees U.S. military relations in Latin America, said much of this money comes from drug trafficking, arms dealing and other illegal activities. He said the funds are sent abroad from several Latin American areas with large Middle Eastern populations, such as the triple frontier between Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil, and Margarita island off the coast of Venezuela.

''The fastest-growing religion in Latin America today is Islam,'' Gen. Hill said during an interview at his office. ``We think that there are between 3 and 6 million people of Middle Eastern descent in Latin America. There are radical Islamic groups associated with that population that are using it to create lots of money for their organizations.'' Hill said that about ``$300 million to $500 million a year, easily, goes [from Latin America] to groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and Al Gamaat.''***

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Latest U.S. worry: 'ungoverned spaces' in Latin America*** A new security threat is capturing the attention of top Bush administration officials in charge of Latin American affairs: the proliferation of ''ungoverned spaces'' or ''lawless areas'' in the region. I heard these terms for the first time recently, when U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made a passing reference to ''ungoverned zones'' during a speech at a regional meeting of defense ministers in Santiago, Chile, in November. Rumsfeld mentioned such areas as one of several threats to hemispheric security. At the time, I didn't know what he meant, and -- quite frankly -- I didn't care much. I have long given up on trying to keep up with every new term of Pentagon jargon: With its increasingly complicated acronyms and techno-slang, it has become a new language that is almost impossible to understand by normal English-speaking civilians.

A THREATENING WEED But last week, Gen. James T. Hill, head of the U.S. Southern Command in charge of U.S. military relations in Latin America, spent a sizable part of a speech to a Miami security conference talking about the issue, and explaining what it is all about. ''Today, the threat to the countries of the region is not the military force of the adjacent neighbor, or some invading foreign power. Today's foe is the terrorist, the narco-trafficker, the arms trafficker,'' Hill said. ``This threat is a weed that is planted, grown and nurtured in the fertile ground of ungoverned spaces, such as coastlines, rivers and unpopulated border areas.'' In the new U.S. military doctrine, one of the biggest dangers to Latin America no longer comes from foreign armies or urban guerrillas taking over capital cities and expanding their reach to the interior. Rather, it comes from criminal forces occupying empty spaces in jungles, mountains and other remote areas, and expanding their reach from there to big cities and centers of power.

REMOTE FRONTIERS

Among Latin America's biggest ''ungoverned spaces,'' according to U.S. military thinkers, is the triple frontier between Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, which has long thrived on smuggling and is a major fundraising base for Islamic terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah. In addition, the Tabatinga-Leticia corridor on the Brazil-Colombia border, the Lago Agrio area on Ecuador's border with Colombia and the Darien jungle in Panama are places where Colombian drug traffickers, narco-terrorists and arms dealers roam about freely, and often control large territories, U.S. officials say. And Surinam, a small country with a large Middle Eastern community, is becoming a major center of Russian, Turkish, Nigerian and Colombian arms trafficking and drug smuggling rings, security experts say.

According to U.S. officials, the economic crises in most Latin American countries have worsened the problem. Because of weak central governments, military budget cuts and migration of rural middle-classes to the big cities, most countries in the region have spaces with little or no government presence, where international criminal organizations are flourishing. What should be done about it? One proposal that is circulating in U.S. military circles, authored by a U.S. Army War College professor, Col. Joseph R. Nuñez, calls for creation of an elite 6,000-troop ''multinational regional force'' that would help fight trans-national narco-terrorism, and cope with natural disasters and border disputes.***