Mexican Drug Cartels and Terrorists: Have They Really Teamed Up?
I have to wonder if he’s right in implying that Carter’s DEA and military intelligence sources are keeping this canard alive to shore up political support for funding.
Indeed, other Carter stories asserting the drug gang/terrorist alliance always seem to come from DEA or Defense Department sources. These people would indeed stand to gain the increased budgets and manpower they propose every year — the lifeblood of their bureaucracies — if enough people with influence in Congress decide to take their intelligence claims to heart.
The other main problem with the drug-gang/terrorist alliance claim is that it’s illogical, especially if you know anything at all about the sociology of either group or the way cross-border smuggling typically works. It’s possible that Hezbollah has come up with something worth horse-trading with the drug lords that none of us can even fathom.
But drug syndicate leaders tend to be pretty smart bureaucrats themselves. They understand they would invite a thorough militarization of the border should a terrorist they helped smuggle into the country actually blow something up. One source went so far as to tell me drug cartel operatives were among his best snitches when it came to Arab travelers. They rat them out with regularity for fear they could hurt business.
Nothing could be worse for the drug business. Moving tons of dope certainly pays better than any check Osama bin Laden could write. Hezbollah is a highly insular religious group that wouldn’t risk compromising its organizational plans by inviting hunted drug cartel operatives into its lair, especially since they tend to often be captured and interrogated. Notice how there has never been a single court case on either side of the border that has divulged anything about the two groups collaborating since 9/11. Surely some document would have come out by now. Plus, as I’ve already mentioned, Middle Easterners don’t need drug cartels to cross the border. Even in the case of Salim Boughader Mucharrafille — whom Carter accurately notes moved hundreds of paying Lebanese through Mexico and over the U.S. border (including a now-convicted Hezbollah operative) — no evidence was ever found of serious cartel involvement. I’ve interviewed Iraqis who made it across the American frontier after paying a couple of thousand bucks to complete strangers who work as coyote smugglers, where any cartel link would be superfluous.
But don’t just take my word for it. The same government officials whom Carter quotes recently produced a 38-page document called the Homeland Security Threat Assessment. Produced by DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis when George W. Bush was still in office, it’s a 2008-2013 outlook on the national security threats America faces at home and abroad. Evidently, the OIA has also heard the legend of a drug lord/terrorist partnership.
The threat assessment explains that Hezbollah is definitely capable of infiltrating operatives through American borders on missions against “symbolic or military targets.” And it even credits Hezbollah as “the group most capable of conducting a bombing campaign” on American soil. But the assessment flatly discounts any significant alliance between cartels and terrorists:
Mexican drug and alien smuggling organizations have little incentive to risk their lucrative operations by facilitating terrorists across the border.
It then goes on to explain the unlikelihood of any Islamic extremist group allowing outsiders in on the whereabouts of its operatives or attack plans. Page 24 states:
Human smuggling networks operate well-established transit routes into the United States that terrorists seeking illicit entry could exploit. To avoid the use of human smuggling intermediaries and heighten operational security, extremists may establish criminal smuggling organizations more directly under their control.
That doesn’t mean Hezbollah can always move around Mexico without possibly paying “taxes” to a cartel. But that’s a far cry from partnership, endorsement of anti-American goals, or material support for them. If terrorist groups like Hezbollah prefer to keep their big terrorist plots in the family, it’s unlikely that Latin American drug runners who worship El Muerto rather than Allah are ever going to fit in.
I hope I’m right.
i’d say, for purposes of US security, there is an “alliance” if they can contact and pay each other to use each other’s assets. i doubt there are many islamists among the mexican drug cartels; i doubt there’re many hezbollah agents with latino gang tats. so what? if X says to Y, “you can get my semi-truck into New Mexico and park it at 12345 taladaga dr. outside phoenix, az between April 2 – 4 if i pay you $25,000? and Y says, “yes,” what more matters, even if X is three persons removed from a hezbollah handler?
but as always, you folks look too low. if we’re talking about strategic weapons here, we are not talking about “hezbollah.”
i seem to recall the US working with Bin Laden and Hussain as well as Noriega, etc.
We can always plant some COINTEL within Hezbo or other terror groups to inflate their dreams of starting a “rival cartel” in Mexico, or at least going after Chapo Guzman’s (the guy listed in Forbes) ladies. Then I’d like them to start competing severed head to severed head with Sinaloa, Juarez, Gulf et al.
It’s about money period. If Hezbollah, Al Queda, Muslim Brotherhood etc. tried to convert any of those nasty sob’s south of the border they would get sent back to Mecca wihtout heads. The cartels would keep the heads to play soccer.
#4,
So true. In fact it does not surprise me that the State’s Official Vilification of Mexican Drug Cartels comes during a black presidency. Some of Obama’s more underworldly supporters (e.g. Gangster Disciples, Vice Lords, and assorted Middle Eastern and Central Asian drug traffickers) probably want the U.S. military to take out their higher level criminal competition and impune Hispanic ascendancy within the U.S. in way that the R’s always seem so gun-shy to do. Considering the ruin that is becoming the Mexican tourist industry, R’s and to a somewhat lesser extent, conservatives can have the majority Mexican-American vote back without one current illegal getting to the front of the citizenship line.
During Operation Snowcap, we proved that the Sendero Luminosos (Shining Path) worked together with the Colombian Cartel. Much against the State Department’s position. I was there.
If this was a big threat, the Islamic terrorists could have infiltrated a full army with heavy weapons and logistical support since 2001.
Drug trafficking starts at the top of the social ladder; Bank of England, CIA, NSA, Mossad, MI5, etc…until we acknowledge the truth this will never be solved. It is a method for governments and banks to launder profits, generate funds off the books, and create slush accounts.
Drug cartels have always worked with Governments and Bankers, and always will. China was forced into War with England because Bank of England importing Heroin into Shanghai in the mid 1800′s and China tried to end the drug trade.
Nothing has changed, and its insulting to think CIA and NSA and others stopped their involvement with drug cartels after Iran Contra hearings laid out their dirty deeds. They continue with afghanistan heroin, south american coke, golden triangle supply routes, and european organized crime syndicates.
It is huge business generating billions in untaxed and unregulated cash to government agencies and Banks.
urbanleftbehind
while it doesn’t surprise me is their anything on record showing the vicelords supporting Obama and him acknowledging this? The VL always did try to play that “community organizer” angle.
Islamic fighters pass through Mexico unnoticed. The USA is their first target, not the 3rd world. They bring heroin from Afghanistan and bombs from Iran. They will use local criminal gangs when necessary, but their main mission is war against Christians and Jews in the USA. At some time in the future, their war will be waged against Mexico as well.
#9
The VL-Obama link was whispered about early last year during the primaries, next to other rumors such as Obama dealing drugs (being from Hawaii, he was probably an ideal mule on the return trip from Granny’s house). Both the VLs and the GDs are deeply entrenched in traditional Chicago ward politicking. As far as siccing the US military on Mexican cartels, I see the Gangster Disciples as the more likely suspect. They dont front with the “community, united oppressed etc/” BS and tend to be solely black and hate Mexicans as much as the California-based gangs (e.g. Surenos) hate Blacks. In Chicago, its not uncommon for the smaller Latin gangs to have blacks reach mid to upper level management; but the GDs and the Latin Kings are decidely more racially pure.
It is extremely naive to think that Afghan based and Heroin Cartels and FARC work independently in the worlds most lucrative trade.
see
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/world/26wikidrugs.html?_r=1&bl
Is it not apparent now that drug trafficking has corrupted the top officials of many countries, and their respective airports, to the very core? Choose your poison. The mechanisms of delivery neednt go through Mexico.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/26/AR2010122601795.html?hpid=topnews. terrorists can simply substitute a crate of herion for biotoxin and mules will never know what they are smuggling, as if they cant be bought off. We intercepted the printer bomb in the nick of time. A dirty bomb is not unforeseeable.