Al Qaeda and FARC: BFF?
source: http://blogs.current.com/news/2010/01/05/al-qaeda-and-farc-bff/
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- afitzgerald
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Three West African men accused of ties to al Qaeda were extradited to New York in December on drug trafficking and terrorism charges.
It was the first time U.S. authorities established a link suggesting al Qaeda is funding itself in part by providing security for drug smugglers in West Africa.
"As suggested by the recent arrest of three alleged al Qaeda operatives, the expansion of cocaine trafficking through West Africa has provided the venue for an unholy alliance between South American narco-terrorists and Islamic extremists," Bergman said in an interview over the weekend.
In a week when it's all Al Qaeda all the time (this is what, the third time I've written about them already and it's only Tuesday?) the DEA doesn't want to be left out. We've seen before that Africa is the new transit line for cocaine to Europe (as Christof Putzel reported in Vanguard: Cocaine Mafia) and we've seen a few more connections this week between Africa and Al Qaeda. But if the US government is right on this - could it be a potentially dangerous alignment of militant groups? Joshua Keating at FP Passport is skeptical:
...[A]s I noted last month, the three men arrested (whose self-proclaimed links to al Qaeda have yet to be proven) last month, were not caught making a deal with FARC, they were making a deal with an undercover DEA agent that they thought was representing FARC. The ringleader of the group, Harouna Toure, did boast to the agent about smuggling "two tons of hashish to Tunisia" and the "human smuggling of Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Indian subjects into Spain," but these wouldn't involve South American naro-terrorists. Is there any other evidence that FARC and al Qaeda are actually taking advantage of the "venue" they've been provided?
Keating also pointed out that Matthew Cordell of UN Dispatch gave an awesome name to the whole affair: FARQaeda. Now, that's catchy.
FROM THE NEWS BLOG: http://blogs.current.com/news/2010/01/05/al-qaeda-and-farc-bff/
SOURCES: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE6034L920100104
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/01/05/how_worried_should_we_be_about_fa...
http://undispatch.com/node/9370
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goldcoastfayah
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The three suspects were arrested by DEA agents posing as FARC rebels in Ghana West Africa. Basically the believed to be Malian Al Qaeda operatives offered to move the undercover agents cocaine for a fee of 4,200 per key across North Africa by mini bus. The DEA agents gained the trust of the operatives by using a Lebanese informant posing as an extremist hostile to Israel and the west. Check out the bbc article for more depth http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8422010.stm.
Now this does not prove a direct connection between FARC and AL Qaeda but you would have to be out of your right mind not to think that West African smugglers have direct connections with South American Cocaine cartels. Al Qaeda controls most smuggling activity in Mali and North Africa. Therefore if any FARC or other narco-funded syndicates wanted to smuggle drugs through North Africa they would have to deal directly with Al Qaeda. Recently a plane crashed in Mali thought to have originated from Venezuela believed to have been carrying 10 tons of cocaine. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8364383.stm
- 2 years ago
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goldcoastfayah
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Reedalmighty
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"unholy" was probably the worst possible adjective to use.
could turn into a PR nightmare.
- 2 years ago
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Reedalmighty
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Betico
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i call bullshit.
- 2 years ago
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Betico
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samthesixth
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While defending DynCorp's crop eradication program in South America, the State Department, in 2006, was saying there was a link between the two. They later reversed their claim.
- 2 years ago
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samthesixth
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cztheday
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While I would have a hard time believing that FARC drug smugglers needed security provided by Al Qaeda operatives, I have no difficulty at all believing that FARC would find any significant new distribution channel attractive or that Al Qaeda would accept "product" from ANY source so long as the price was right to allow profitable resale. However, I don't think Al Qaeda would find Columbia to be a very hospitable place in which to conduct operations. In the highly unlikely event FARC attempted to facilitate such a thing, FARC would indeed come to its final, bloody end.
- 2 years ago
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cztheday
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extblues
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cztheday:
It depends on which branch of Al Qaeda your talking about. Middle and near eastern affiliates might not need to deal with FARC simply because they have their own distribution and intelligence networks in place and have no need to complicate matters by dipping their respective fingers in yet another region of the world with its own unique problems.
African branches on the other hand might find a much warmer reception considering Latin America's past relationships with certain "revolutionary" movements in the region (...think Cuba and Angola back in the '60's and '70's).
Then again, to add even more weirdness to the situation, if the rumors about a Chavez/Hamas relationship are true, Bin Laden could very well be hiding in the mountains north of Bogotá rather than in Tora Bora.
- 2 years ago
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extblues
