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.
