The narco-terrorism connection - Eurad

Anders Ulstein, Eurad

(03.06.10) Historically there is nothing new in the link between terrorism and other crime. Groups like Red Army Faction, the Red Brigades or the IRA were frequently involved in bank robberies in the past. However, the new link between illicit drugs trade and terrorism (and human trafficking) is about more than financial motives and evidence of a closer link, even cooperation, is slowly emerging.

A common interest

Drugs trafficking and international terrorism has at least five features in common, they rely extensively on networks often across large geographic areas where people, goods and money are shipped. Networks also facilitate command, control and communications. Another important feature is their need to handle large amounts of money, whitewash and transfer across countries and continents. A third common feature is their brutality. In Mexico’s cartel war, it is not uncommon to find beheaded victims; al Qaeda style. Fourth, they both thrive in lawless areas. Five, they both tend to establish private armies with a need for training, camps and military hardware.

Obviously – groups with such features cannot be dealt with by a regular police force. Such groups call for international counter operations and international intelligence sharing and cooperation at many levels. In the EU, for example, the recent Stockholm program is an attempt to address issues such as terrorism, drugs trafficking, money laundering, trafficking of human beings as a cluster of security related issues. Pooling Member State's law enforcement capabilities on specific drugs and routes will be a first concrete operational answer. See story here.

Closer to home

Perhaps the most worrying and more recent aspect of what is described as narco-terrorism is the establishment of a link between these two branches of international crime on the borders of Europe (North/West Africa and Middle East) and the USA (Mexico and the Andes region).

The scale of cooperation in these areas is probably not yet very common, but the mere prospect of terrorists accessing the trafficking routes that extends from lawless areas in West Africa and South America in to the hearth of European and US cities is probably worrying the security apparatus in both continents.

East Africa – Europe/North America

So called failed states or lawless areas attracts international crime. One of the most conspicuous cases is Somalia where pirates groups now offer their services to international drug traffickers that need protection en route from Asia to Europe. They also smuggle foreign fighters for the Somali terrorist group Al-Shabaab, according to Bruno Schiemsky, a former Chairman of the UN Somalia Monitoring Group.

Somali terrorist groups such as Al-Shabaab have been involved in smuggling Khat to Europe and North-America for many years. Ironically, Al-Shabaab has banned the use of Khat in the parts of Somalia they control. The profit from Khat sales is financing the operations of Al-Shabaab in Somalia, intelligence services in Europe believe.

The Somali immigrant presence is considerable in parts of Europe, such as in The Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden, as well as in the USA. As many as 1 million Somalis live abroad and they are known to provide financial support for the warring factions back home. In Denmark it has been known for some time that Al-Shabaab is actively recruiting. In 2009 a Danish citizen of Somali descent set off a suicide bomb in Mogadishu that killed 22 including three government ministers.

A 2007 report from the Canadian government's Integrated Threat Assessment Centre says "some part of the proceeds involved in the global khat trade possibly finances terrorism" (National Post). The al Qaeda linked Somali terrorist group Al Ittihad Al-Islam has been identified as being very active in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), and has been operational in Ontario since the late 1990’s. The group has been implicated in smuggling Khat into Canada and the United States.

There is an increase in large-scale smuggling of Somalis into the United States through Latin America. Taken together with several incidents of Somali nationals with connections with terrorist group such as the al Shabaab that have been identified in Mexico it presents a new and surprising development.

In an indictment filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas on March 3, 2010, a Somali named Ahmed Muhammed Dhakane was charged with operating a large-scale alien-smuggling ring out of Brazil responsible for smuggling several hundred Somalis and other East Africans into the United States, The indictment alleges that the persons Dhakane’s organization smuggled included several people associated with al-Itihaad al-Islamiya (AIAI), a militant group linked to al Qaeda that was folded into the Supreme Islamic Courts Council (SICC) after the latter group’s formation (Source: www.Stratfor.com)

Middle East

Many have pointed at a likely involvement of Hezbollah in the drugs trade (cannabis and opium) in the Bekaa valley in Lebanon. It has been suggested that Hezbollah may be involved with the laboratories in Lebanon producing coca from coca paste and heroin from opium. The opium being produced locally but the coca paste originating from the Andes region.

However it is unclear how directly they are linked with the production and manufacturing, but hardly anything happens in that part of the Lebanon without the approval of Hezbollah. Officially they deny any involvement in drugs, citing religious reasons. Recent uncovering of Hezbollah drug operations together with the Columbian terrorist group and drug cartel FARC and several cases of involvement in drugs smuggling in Europe suggests otherwise.

Hezbollah may have sufficient financing from Iran. Their involvement with drugs may therefore be of a more strategic nature. However recent Hezbollah drug operations in Europe and the Andes may suggest that the terrorist group has financial motives too.

In its report “Digest of Terrorist Cases” the UNODC (United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime) refers to an INTERPOL report that describes one particular terrorist organization of the Middle East that is active in drugs smuggling.

“It has been well established by many law enforcement agencies that money gained from drug trafficking is a major part of the financial resources of a Middle Eastern separatist organizations that engages in violent attacks against civilians. This organization not only collects so-called “revolutionary taxes” from narcotics traffickers and refiners to finance its operations, but is also directly involved in transporting and marketing narcotics in Europe. According to a report from the concerned Government in 2008, the Department of Anti-Smuggling and Organized Crime of its National Police conducted three operations and seized 50 kg of heroin in cases involving this organization.

INTERPOL’s criminal database currently has over 100 cases showing this organization’s involvement in drug trafficking. A specific example is a case in a European country conducted since 2006 following the arrest of two members of the organization who tried to exchange euros at a foreign exchange office. Traces of heroin and cocaine on the notes led to further investigation and the arrest of 13 members of the violent separatist organization, who were charged with membership in a terrorist organization and financing of terrorism. In 2009 an operation in a North African country led to the arrest of four suspected terrorists. The investigation revealed links between the terrorist activities of the particular terrorist cell and trafficking in drug and in motor vehicles stolen abroad.”

It is somewhat puzzling that UNODC does not name the group in question. It is well known that the Hezbollah, the likely organization in question, has been implicated in drugs smuggling in Europe on several occasions. Recently, German police this winter arrested two Lebanese nationals for drugs smuggling. The two had direct relations with Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader.

Latin-America - USA

In addition to the Somali-Andean-Mexican connection discussed above there are other evidences of links between terrorist groups and drug groups in Latin-America.

In a speech by David Johnsen, Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs published at the web site of the US State Department he describes how they in 2008 uncovered how FARC and Hezbollah cooperated in an effort to smuggle cocaine and whitewash the proceeds.

According to Micheal Braun who just retired as assistant administrator and chief of operations at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Hezbollah works together with Mexican drug cartels, they rely on "the same criminal weapons smugglers, document traffickers and transportation experts as the drug cartels” in Mexico and South-America. See article in Washington Times.

Adm. James G. Stavridis, commander of U.S. Southern Command and the nominee to head NATO troops as Supreme Allied Commander-Europe, testified before the House Armed Services Committee that the nexus between illicit drug trafficking  - "including routes, profits, and corruptive influence" and "Islamic radical terrorism" is a growing threat to the U.S.

“He noted that in August, "U.S. Southern Command supported a Drug Enforcement Administration operation, in coordination with host countries, which targeted a Hezbollah-connected drug trafficking organization in the Tri-Border Area” [between Argentina, Peru and Paraguay], according to the Washington Times article.

There have been several Hezbollah-FARC connections uncovered over the last years. These should perhaps not be surprising given the fact that Iran, Hezbollah’s funder, is nurturing close bonds with Venezuela, the country that is believed to have close relations with FARC.

Hezbollah is not a newcomer in the region. In 1992 and 1994 it committed two terrorist acts against Israeli targets, first the Israeli Embassy and then later the Jewish cultural centre in Buenos Aires. At least one of the suicide bombers entered through the so called Tri-Border Area.

Even Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the brain behind 9/11 may have spent time in the TBA at some point. This is only one of several indications that al Qaeda has a presence in this particular lawless area. John Boote and Professor Louise Schelly at the George Mason University writes in an article that “with its porous borders, weak government institutions, and rampant corruption, the TBA has become a haven for transnational criminals and has also been used as a region in which criminals and terrorist networks interact and work together.”

The road from TBA to the inner cities of the USA is perhaps long but the drug cartels have the know-how and network needed to transport items such as explosives and people.

West and North-Africa

A new and troubling connection is brewing in West-Africa between drug smugglers and terrorist networks. Increasingly cocaine is shipped from the Andes region via Venezuela and West-Africa to Europe. These African countries with their weak government infrastructures and poverty are fertile ground for corruption, and a haven for organized crime.

This is also a region with increased Islamist influence. In a case last year al-Qaeda in the Maghreb was implicated in a FARC’s cocaine smuggling operation to Europe, Peter Pham writes in World Defence Review. Pham refers inter alia to the following statement from the US prosecutors office: “Between September 2009 and December 2009, ISSA, TOURÉ, and ABELRAHMAN, who stated that they were associated with Al Qaeda, conspired to assist purported representatives of the FARC in transporting hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from West Africa through North Africa and ultimately into Spain. […]Today's allegations reflect the emergence of a worrisome alliance between Al Qaeda and transnational narcotics traffickers.” Pham describes Hezbollah’s African network in more detail here.

A recent book published by the UNODC describes the link between illicit drugs and terrorism behind the Madrid train bombing. “The well-recognized profitability of drug dealing allowed the 2004 Madrid train bombers to purchase the explosives for those multiple bombs with drugs and leave € 52,000 and drugs with a street value of € 1.5 million in their apartment.“

According to Spanish police at the time, the drug in question was cannabis from Morocco.  The EU drugs monitoring agency EMCDDA writes in a 2008 report that “there is growing evidence that violent Islamist cells have become involved in the hashish trade both in Morocco and in Spain. Tragically, several major terrorist acts have been funded with hashish money. The two most important so far are the bombing in Casablanca in May 2003, which left 32 people dead; and the train bombings in Madrid in March 2004, that killed 192 people and injured over a thousand” (A Cannabis Reader, 2008).

Perhaps it is this growing link between terrorism and drugs that has caused the Moroccan government to recently crack down on cannabis cultivation. It claims to have eradicated 55% of cultivated land in 2008, something that is yet to be independently verified.

Afghanistan and Central Asia

The connection between the Taliban and the Afghan opium trade is well documented. The UNODC 2008 World Drug Report that estimates the level of drug production in all provinces in Afghanistan shows that those areas with the largest cultivation coincide with Taliban strongholds and the highest intensity of the insurgency.

The Helmand province, the Taliban heartland, is by a large margin producing the biggest share of Afghan opium. 93% of world illegal opium production takes place in Afghanistan. In provinces with relative stability and peace there is virtually no opium production at all (although an increasing cultivation of cannabis).

A large share of the Russian illicit drug market is controlled by various groups of Central Asian origin in addition to Chechen groups, Ekaterina Stepanova at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) writes in an article. Much of the criminal activities of the separatist groups of Chechnya are not related to lllicit drugs. Smuggling of oil, tobacco and alcohol is more common. The link between Islamist groups and drug trafficking is more prominent in the Central Asian republics than in Russia, Stepanoca writes.

The greatest concern to Russia is the rise in organized crime and drug misuse that follows from the increased heroin trade from Afghanistan. However Russia additionally faces a problem with Islamist militancy filtering through from Afghanistan to its restive north Caucasus territories. China too is concerned about what it sees as a rise in Islamic militancy in its ethnic Uyghur minority.

The fear of terrorist activity in the wake of the drugs trade is in this region more an indirect threat in that the drugs trade corrupts societies and risk transform already fragile states of Central Asia into another al Qaeda haven. The Central Asian republics are largely absent from the European and US agendas; the way Afghanistan was before...

Martha Brill Olcott of the Carnegie Endowmenet for International Peace writes that “unless we move quickly to help the Central Asian states better protect themselves from the dangers emanating from Afghanistan-both directly through massively increased assistance to these countries drug interdiction efforts, and indirectly through efforts to end the cultivation of opium poppies in Afghanistan-then these countries could become the breeding grounds for future terrorist networks of global reach in much the same way Afghanistan did.”

Final reflections

The most troubling aspect of the narco-terrorist connection seems to be the way the illegal drug business undermines efforts to pursue political reform and development needed to stem radicalization and the rise of terrorist groups in several already fragile regions of the world. The most worrisome connection between drug trade and terrorism is therefore largely indirect.

However we have seen examples more recently of closer cooperation of the two where they seem to share capacities, and where operations overlap. The extent of this threat is still unclear, it seems. In this nexus should be included human trafficking as well as drugs and terrorism. If this cooperation is developed in a more strategic fashion to weaken government and political stability we may be looking at a totally new dimension in international crime.

Such a “coalition” will not only be able to target weak states. They might be able to and interested in hitting Western countries where extensive human trafficking and drugs trafficking already presents an excellent criminal network tailored for terror operations by political and religious extremists.