Mexican Drug Cartels and Terrorists: Have They Really Teamed Up?
Or is that just a national security urban legend?
No one has to convince me that Islamic terrorists can infiltrate America’s land borders pretty much any time they want. I’ve traveled all over the world documenting the means, methods, and routes Muslim immigrants use to breach U.S. borders from homelands they share with true blue terrorists. If economic or political refugees from state sponsors of terror can do it as often as government capture data shows, so too can suicide bombers.
But in the rarefied genre of this sort of national security/immigration reporting, a durable notion keeps popping up that never fails to stimulate to frenzy in certain circles but which, at least to my mind, comes close to qualifying as alarmist canard. It is that Islamic terrorist organizations have teamed up with Latin American drug gangs like MS-13 or Mexico’s powerful cartels. This, it is believed, can only spell doom — and boom — for America.
The latest offering comes in a March 27 article by journalist Sara A. Carter in the Washington Times. It quotes an array of mostly anonymous U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and military intelligence sources darkly hinting that Hezbollah and Mexico’s drug cartels are working hand in glove. The evidence offered? Hezbollah has traveled on cartel-controlled routes to smuggle operatives and contraband into the U.S. The piece quotes Michael Braun, a recently retired assistant administrator and DEA chief of operations, who concludes: “They work together. They rely on the same shadow facilitators. One way or another, they are all connected.”
The piece doesn’t flat out declare evidence of a cartel/terror alliance. But it certainly leaves readers with the implication that one exists. My reporting over the years has shown that no such alliance between drug lords and terrorist groups has been validated. Well-placed federal sources and recent Homeland Security Department threat assessments say it has never been so. And even without those, such an alliance makes no sense for either group.
As for the Sara Carter story about Hezbollah, the terror group’s movement along cartel-controlled routes is most likely unavoidable happenstance being made into something more. But this is not evidence of “growing ties with Mexican drug cartels” or collusion. Yet judging by reactions to the story, readers are left with the impression that the drug lords are going to help terrorists attack America.
At the very least, this story and many others like it imply that Hezbollah operatives cannot move through Mexico without cartel endorsement or knowing enablement of Hezbollah goals and ideology. This is a notion that is disproved in interviews I’ve had with Middle Easterners who simply hired the nearest coyote smuggler hanging around the local taco stand. Even in this era of rigorous cartel occupation of routes, I question whether they are taking bureaucratic pains to micromanage the workaday coyote smuggling.
The Carter story does nothing to add any validity to the canard of a drug gangs/terrorist alliance. Over the years, I’ve dealt with counter-terrorism officials who’ve worked in Mexico and are in the know. All of them say the double bad boy alliance canard, where objectives are mutually known and supported, is patently unfounded. It’s possible that Carter’s anonymous government sources know something my anonymous sources in other agencies do not. Carter is correct that the cartels control routes and Hezbollah does operate illegal contraband businesses throughout Latin America. But not one of my sources will connect them. One former FBI agent who spent years working counter-terrorism intelligence inside Mexico after 9/11 sent me an unsolicited email regarding Carter’s story, saying: “I disagree in principle with the Hezbollah/drug cartel linkages but people ’sell’ this junk intel to elevate their programs and increase their budgets.”
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Todd Bensman is an investigative reporter based in San Antonio. He can be reached at todd.bensman@gmail.com.
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11 Comments
1. dan: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.”
Apr 8, 2009 - 6:13 am 2. Niko:i seem to recall the US working with Bin Laden and Hussain as well as Noriega, etc.
Apr 8, 2009 - 6:40 am 3. urbanleftbehind: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.
Apr 8, 2009 - 8:34 am 4. Jailguard: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.
Apr 8, 2009 - 9:00 am 5. urbanleftbehind:#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.
Apr 8, 2009 - 9:19 am 6. aztecpiper: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.
Apr 8, 2009 - 1:15 pm 7. Horace Wells:If this was a big threat, the Islamic terrorists could have infiltrated a full army with heavy weapons and logistical support since 2001.
Apr 8, 2009 - 1:52 pm 8. Alex: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.
Apr 8, 2009 - 9:19 pm 9. Jailguard:urbanleftbehind
Apr 9, 2009 - 12:49 am 10. GlassTon: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.
Apr 10, 2009 - 12:23 am 11. urbanleftbehind:#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.
Apr 10, 2009 - 7:08 am