8
8
0
On April 24, one of Brazil’s largest cartels, the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), orchestrated a sophisticated heist across the Paraguayan border, dispatching dozens of gangsters equipped with automatic weapons, grenades, anti-aircraft guns, security vans, and speedboats to attack the local police headquarters as a diversion, then rob $8 million from the vault of a private security firm. It was the sort of military-type operation that Brazilian and Colombian security officials were hoping to prevent back in January, when they convened in Manaus — the capital of Amazonas, Brazil’s sprawling northwestern state — to share intelligence in light of evidence that the PCC was diligently recruiting members of the recently disbanded Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the alumni of which are revered for their tactical experience and heavy-weapons expertise. The PCC’s “heist of the century,” as the local media called it, revealed a new level of complexity in South America’s cross-border drug wars, the latest evidence that a public security crisis was developing beneath the slow burn of Brazil’s panoramic political corruption investigation and prolonged recession. Nowhere is that crisis more apparent than in the country’s prisons, where it has been taking shape for years.
Smoke turned to fire in the country’s prisons during the first two weeks of 2017, when at least 130 detainees were massacred by fellow inmates. The spate of prison rebellions began on New Year’s Day in Manaus, a city on the banks of the Amazon, where homegrown syndicate Familia do Norte (FDN) controls one of the world’s most vital arteries for cocaine trafficking — and the region’s chronically overcrowded prison system. On the first morning of 2017, more than 184 pretrial detainees escaped the Instituto Penal Antônio Trindade (IPAT), one of three private prisons nested on a remote road north of the city. The syndicate coordinated the mass jailbreak to divert attention from a higher-security facility up the road, where fellow FDN inmates held guards hostage for more than 17 hours while gang members executed dozens of their rivals, sharing the images on social media as military police helicopters circled overhead. One local news network broadcasted cell-phone video of prisoners shuffling among a pile of decapitated bodies, some of which they threw over the prison walls.
“The scene inside the prison is terrible,” said Pedro Florêncio, the state secretary of prisons, at a news conference the following day. “It’s shocking to see how brutal a person can be.”
Florêncio — who was dismissed from his post by Amazonas State Gov. José Melo on Jan. 13 as the crisis intensified — at first characterized the rebellion as an impromptu gang fight between the Amazon’s FDN and the rival PCC, Brazil’s most highly structured cartel that was born in the prisons of São Paulo. By the end of the week it was evident that the FDN attack was a proxy battle between warring drug syndicates elsewhere in Brazil, organized in coordination with Rio de Janeiro’s Comando Vermelho, which broke off its fragile alliance with the PCC in mid-2016. In the aftermath, conflict among cartels has spread to other prisons, resulting in the massacre of 33 inmates in nearby Roraima state the same week in an apparent PCC reprisal, and the death of 26 inmates during a Jan. 14 riot in Rio Grande do Norte. The attacks have drawn northern Brazil deeper into an escalating national war in the deadliest episode of prison violence since 111 prisoners were killed — 102 by military police — during the notorious Cirandiru riot in São Paulo in 1992.
Violent crime in Brazil is endemic, fueled by crushing income inequality, military police who treat citizens like enemy combatants, and narco-corruption that leaches money and distorts justice at every level of the system. The latest prison crisis focuses the heat of those social ills through the magnifying glass of the nation’s long-neglected prisons, where Brazil’s most pressing problems have been left to fester since the era of the military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1964 to 1985. Increased prosperity since then has done little to reduce the homicide rate; in 2012, according to a U.N. report, Brazil’s 64,000 homicides rivaled the death toll of the Syrian civil war. Since 2000, the country’s prison population has doubled to become the fourth largest on the planet, with more than 622,000 detainees in a system designed to hold 371,000. While Brazil’s incarceration rate is less than half the U.S. rate, according to data from the World Prison Brief, 36 percent of inmates are pretrial detainees, compared with 21 percent in the United States. As a consequence, the system groans along at 157 percent capacity, compared with 102 percent for the United States, which itself is no model for sustainable incarceration practices.
While Brazil’s embattled President Michel Temer initially dismissed the first riot in Manaus as “a dreadful accident,” the bloody aftershocks spurred his administration to accelerate the release of its national public security plan, which focuses on three prongs: reducing homicides and violence against women, modernizing the prison system, and combating international organized crime. Soon after, intelligence officials from across the country met with the minister of justice in Brasilia to discuss coordination efforts. Temer has proposed building 30 new prisons, including prefabricated facilities that can be operational within a year. Yet while he has assured state governments that federal forces will support prison security operations — and some federal funding has been unlocked — there is no constitutional guarantee of federal support to states for public-security efforts. At a time when unemployment is sky high and new austerity measures are sparking nationwide strikes by teachers, police, and other public workers, the well-being of prisoners has taken a back seat to the economic woes of everyday Brazilians, opening the door for cartels like the FDN and PCC to consolidate their power.
The inmates are running the asylum
“This is a problem in every Brazilian state,” Florêncio, the secretary of prisons, said when I interviewed him in April 2016 while investigating the beheading of another prisoner at IPAT. “Criminal organizations dominate the prisons. The police fight criminals, catch them, and incarcerate them, but that’s easy. Once they are inside, the bosses can create the same environment they had on the street. They have access to women, they have access to drugs, they have access to cell phones to send commands back to the city,” he said. “That’s how they transform their cells into offices of crime.”
The overstrained prison system is plagued by violence, contraband, and escape attempts, magnified by corruption at every level. In January 2016, investigators from the National Secretary of Human Rights visited four prison units in Manaus, observing that inmates are “basically self-governing” in an atmosphere ripe for rebellion. The government watchdogs warned of broken infrastructure and severe crowding, compounded by low morale and high turnover among prison staff. They discovered inmates — in particular those from weaker criminal factions — crowded into makeshift spaces, ostensibly to be kept safe from their enemies. Armed with handmade weapons capable of breaking walls and cutting bars, and enabled by a state all too willing to defer to private prison management, the FDN was free to torture and kill rivals — arguably with more liberty than they would have on the street.
During one visit to IPAT in May 2016, the private prison management company Umanizzare went to great lengths to demonstrate the integrity of their operations, but the show tour only served to highlight the contrast between its marketing efforts and the grim realities within the walls of their prisons. Operations manager Wilson Ramos and seven other staff members walked me through their elaborate, four-stage security inspection, which was clearly no match for good, old-fashioned looking the other way. More than 2,300 illicit objects, including knives, firearms, tools, narcotics, and precision scales, were seized in Manaus prisons in 2016 — and that’s just what was caught. The same security review also discovered nine tunnels leading under state prisons, channels for escape and contraband like the knives and pistols used in the New Year’s Day rebellion.
Like prison administrators the world over, Florêncio lamented the lack of sheer physical space to house inmates and provide social services. Yet building more prisons enriches private prison operators without addressing the key underlying causes: A nightmarishly tangled judicial system with a chronic shortage of public defenders. A system overwhelmed by offenders in prison for drug-related charges, many of them nonviolent. A system staffed by underresourced, overworked, poorly paid employees — prone to low morale and chronic turnover, susceptible to bribes and intimidation.
Worst practices
Brazilian officials are eager to point out that the United States faces many of the same problems, but Brazil can stand to learn from the errors of the world’s leader in mass incarceration before it doubles down on drug enforcement and prison expansion. In the United States, expanding the prison system strengthened prison gangs, rather than weakened them, and the states with the largest prison systems — California and Texas — have a disproportionately large presence of organized gangs that control drugs and crime beyond the prison walls. In the United States, the free-market impulse to privatize incarceration has resulted in lax oversight and egregious human rights violations. Although only 3 percent of Brazilian prisons are private, almost 40 percent are privately run in Amazonas, where the prison population has doubled since 2010 in response to a crackdown on drug trafficking.
Brazil’s private prison-management lobby is eager for the corrections system to emulate the United States in its effort to modernize failing prisons, but as local, state, and federal governments reel from the findings of sprawling, ongoing corruption investigations, the country needs desperately to crack down on big prison contracts that have little oversight. The family-owned Pamas consortium — a joint venture between private prison companies LFG and Umanizzare, which allegedly donated campaign funds to Gov. José Melo in 2014 — controls the private prisons of Amazonas. Those contracts are under investigation for possible fraud and price gouging, though the companies defend their pricing on the basis that their operations costs are higher than average in the remote region, and the governor claims that the state awarded the contracts through legal means.
The state and Umanizzare would have the public believe that inmates are acquiring new skills at IPAT’s “Nuclear Learning Center,” designed to train 30 students to become either firefighters or plumbers once they leave. But on the day of my visit, the facility was devoid of books or desks. Nobody could seem to find the keys to the classrooms. At the exit of the empty room, a handwritten sign read: Don’t just throw your papers on the floor.
“We have to transform these people into good citizens, to reeducate them, to reintegrate them to society, to return them better than when they entered,” Florêncio said, “but that vision is almost utopian.” Asked to identify the resources he needs most, he answered without hesitation: “Today the most important priority is food, absolutely.”
During a tour of the IPAT kitchen, the Umanizarre handlers slipped on hairnets (for my benefit) while the staff turned meat on the grill and stirred an enormous pot of stew, boasting of the 3,000 meals they serve each day, including special fare for Christmas and Thanksgiving. Florêncio cited prison food as the leading cause of rampant gastrointestinal illness in the system.
That day, I interviewed guards and operations managers over lunch in the staff cafeteria. “A lot of Brazilians don’t have enough respect for how serious the security situation is here, for how we’re working,” Ramos said, digging into a slab of beef with a metal knife and fork. Staff keep their own sets of metal cutlery in little pouches in a secure locker area to make sure not a single scrap of metal reaches the hands of prisoners, though it’s not unusual for Brazilian prisoners to be shanked or decapitated with metal cutlery. “We’re having some success,” Ramos said. “I stand by the system. I stand by my state.”
The staff seemed surprised when I dug into my plate of rice, beans, spaghetti, and a little cup of Coke.
“How do you like the monkey meat?” one guard asked — and old joke about prison food in Brazil.
“We’re just playing around,” another guard said. “It’s beef. Really.”
Praying for a crime wave
No matter what’s in the stew, the prisons are broken, and they’re only one shard of a fundamentally broken justice system in Brazil. Organized crime is growing — and so is the stark inequality that leaves too many young men with few ways to make a decent living. The allures of cartel life are magnified in the Amazon, so close to the world’s cocaine, so far from the rest of the world. Even youngsters who try to walk a righteous path face an early, often violent introduction to the justice system. Crime offers a brotherhood that seems stronger and more secure than the aloof state. On social media, those who escaped during the recent riots were folk heroes, and on the streets of Manaus, vendors sell DVDs of cell-phone footage of the riots, FDN vs. PCC, the pop culture incarnation of a cartel war that is staining the national fabric. Since the New Year’s massacre, the FDN has been taunting the PCC in funk songs posted on YouTube. Police in Manaus arrested a group of PCC members on a mission to kill the family of one of the FDN’s leaders.
A strain among Brazil’s elites seems more confident than ever that tough cops and hard time are the only cures for the scourge. After the first wave of riots, Temer’s National Youth Secretary Bruno Júlio gave voice to that view: “I’m pretty conservative. I’m a cop’s son, right? There should be more killings. There should be one massacre per week.” Although he abruptly resigned, his sentiment toward prisons — and the young men of color who mostly fill them — is not all that unusual among the law-and-order crowd.
“These were no saints,” Amazonas Gov. José Melo, who was recently under investigation for election fraud, said of the riots. “These were murderers, rapists.”
No saints, perhaps, but men with families who pray for them. Every weekend on visitation days, hundreds of women and children in Manaus crowd into northbound buses, lumbering along BR-174 to the unassuming prison road beyond the landfill. On one of my visits to IPAT just before Christmas 2015, a few prisoners punted soccer balls around the main yard, searching the new arrivals for familiar faces. Vendors in the parking lot huddled under the shade of canvas tents, hawking Coke, water, and chips to the thirsty pilgrims who arrived up the gentle slope carrying birthday cakes, homemade Christmas ornaments, and newborn children. For these families, the question was not whether the prison was public or private, fair or corrupt, or whether the guards felt secure in their pensions. The question was whether their loved ones would ever come home again, and if they would still be the men their families remembered.
Smoke turned to fire in the country’s prisons during the first two weeks of 2017, when at least 130 detainees were massacred by fellow inmates. The spate of prison rebellions began on New Year’s Day in Manaus, a city on the banks of the Amazon, where homegrown syndicate Familia do Norte (FDN) controls one of the world’s most vital arteries for cocaine trafficking — and the region’s chronically overcrowded prison system. On the first morning of 2017, more than 184 pretrial detainees escaped the Instituto Penal Antônio Trindade (IPAT), one of three private prisons nested on a remote road north of the city. The syndicate coordinated the mass jailbreak to divert attention from a higher-security facility up the road, where fellow FDN inmates held guards hostage for more than 17 hours while gang members executed dozens of their rivals, sharing the images on social media as military police helicopters circled overhead. One local news network broadcasted cell-phone video of prisoners shuffling among a pile of decapitated bodies, some of which they threw over the prison walls.
“The scene inside the prison is terrible,” said Pedro Florêncio, the state secretary of prisons, at a news conference the following day. “It’s shocking to see how brutal a person can be.”
Florêncio — who was dismissed from his post by Amazonas State Gov. José Melo on Jan. 13 as the crisis intensified — at first characterized the rebellion as an impromptu gang fight between the Amazon’s FDN and the rival PCC, Brazil’s most highly structured cartel that was born in the prisons of São Paulo. By the end of the week it was evident that the FDN attack was a proxy battle between warring drug syndicates elsewhere in Brazil, organized in coordination with Rio de Janeiro’s Comando Vermelho, which broke off its fragile alliance with the PCC in mid-2016. In the aftermath, conflict among cartels has spread to other prisons, resulting in the massacre of 33 inmates in nearby Roraima state the same week in an apparent PCC reprisal, and the death of 26 inmates during a Jan. 14 riot in Rio Grande do Norte. The attacks have drawn northern Brazil deeper into an escalating national war in the deadliest episode of prison violence since 111 prisoners were killed — 102 by military police — during the notorious Cirandiru riot in São Paulo in 1992.
Violent crime in Brazil is endemic, fueled by crushing income inequality, military police who treat citizens like enemy combatants, and narco-corruption that leaches money and distorts justice at every level of the system. The latest prison crisis focuses the heat of those social ills through the magnifying glass of the nation’s long-neglected prisons, where Brazil’s most pressing problems have been left to fester since the era of the military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1964 to 1985. Increased prosperity since then has done little to reduce the homicide rate; in 2012, according to a U.N. report, Brazil’s 64,000 homicides rivaled the death toll of the Syrian civil war. Since 2000, the country’s prison population has doubled to become the fourth largest on the planet, with more than 622,000 detainees in a system designed to hold 371,000. While Brazil’s incarceration rate is less than half the U.S. rate, according to data from the World Prison Brief, 36 percent of inmates are pretrial detainees, compared with 21 percent in the United States. As a consequence, the system groans along at 157 percent capacity, compared with 102 percent for the United States, which itself is no model for sustainable incarceration practices.
While Brazil’s embattled President Michel Temer initially dismissed the first riot in Manaus as “a dreadful accident,” the bloody aftershocks spurred his administration to accelerate the release of its national public security plan, which focuses on three prongs: reducing homicides and violence against women, modernizing the prison system, and combating international organized crime. Soon after, intelligence officials from across the country met with the minister of justice in Brasilia to discuss coordination efforts. Temer has proposed building 30 new prisons, including prefabricated facilities that can be operational within a year. Yet while he has assured state governments that federal forces will support prison security operations — and some federal funding has been unlocked — there is no constitutional guarantee of federal support to states for public-security efforts. At a time when unemployment is sky high and new austerity measures are sparking nationwide strikes by teachers, police, and other public workers, the well-being of prisoners has taken a back seat to the economic woes of everyday Brazilians, opening the door for cartels like the FDN and PCC to consolidate their power.
The inmates are running the asylum
“This is a problem in every Brazilian state,” Florêncio, the secretary of prisons, said when I interviewed him in April 2016 while investigating the beheading of another prisoner at IPAT. “Criminal organizations dominate the prisons. The police fight criminals, catch them, and incarcerate them, but that’s easy. Once they are inside, the bosses can create the same environment they had on the street. They have access to women, they have access to drugs, they have access to cell phones to send commands back to the city,” he said. “That’s how they transform their cells into offices of crime.”
The overstrained prison system is plagued by violence, contraband, and escape attempts, magnified by corruption at every level. In January 2016, investigators from the National Secretary of Human Rights visited four prison units in Manaus, observing that inmates are “basically self-governing” in an atmosphere ripe for rebellion. The government watchdogs warned of broken infrastructure and severe crowding, compounded by low morale and high turnover among prison staff. They discovered inmates — in particular those from weaker criminal factions — crowded into makeshift spaces, ostensibly to be kept safe from their enemies. Armed with handmade weapons capable of breaking walls and cutting bars, and enabled by a state all too willing to defer to private prison management, the FDN was free to torture and kill rivals — arguably with more liberty than they would have on the street.
During one visit to IPAT in May 2016, the private prison management company Umanizzare went to great lengths to demonstrate the integrity of their operations, but the show tour only served to highlight the contrast between its marketing efforts and the grim realities within the walls of their prisons. Operations manager Wilson Ramos and seven other staff members walked me through their elaborate, four-stage security inspection, which was clearly no match for good, old-fashioned looking the other way. More than 2,300 illicit objects, including knives, firearms, tools, narcotics, and precision scales, were seized in Manaus prisons in 2016 — and that’s just what was caught. The same security review also discovered nine tunnels leading under state prisons, channels for escape and contraband like the knives and pistols used in the New Year’s Day rebellion.
Like prison administrators the world over, Florêncio lamented the lack of sheer physical space to house inmates and provide social services. Yet building more prisons enriches private prison operators without addressing the key underlying causes: A nightmarishly tangled judicial system with a chronic shortage of public defenders. A system overwhelmed by offenders in prison for drug-related charges, many of them nonviolent. A system staffed by underresourced, overworked, poorly paid employees — prone to low morale and chronic turnover, susceptible to bribes and intimidation.
Worst practices
Brazilian officials are eager to point out that the United States faces many of the same problems, but Brazil can stand to learn from the errors of the world’s leader in mass incarceration before it doubles down on drug enforcement and prison expansion. In the United States, expanding the prison system strengthened prison gangs, rather than weakened them, and the states with the largest prison systems — California and Texas — have a disproportionately large presence of organized gangs that control drugs and crime beyond the prison walls. In the United States, the free-market impulse to privatize incarceration has resulted in lax oversight and egregious human rights violations. Although only 3 percent of Brazilian prisons are private, almost 40 percent are privately run in Amazonas, where the prison population has doubled since 2010 in response to a crackdown on drug trafficking.
Brazil’s private prison-management lobby is eager for the corrections system to emulate the United States in its effort to modernize failing prisons, but as local, state, and federal governments reel from the findings of sprawling, ongoing corruption investigations, the country needs desperately to crack down on big prison contracts that have little oversight. The family-owned Pamas consortium — a joint venture between private prison companies LFG and Umanizzare, which allegedly donated campaign funds to Gov. José Melo in 2014 — controls the private prisons of Amazonas. Those contracts are under investigation for possible fraud and price gouging, though the companies defend their pricing on the basis that their operations costs are higher than average in the remote region, and the governor claims that the state awarded the contracts through legal means.
The state and Umanizzare would have the public believe that inmates are acquiring new skills at IPAT’s “Nuclear Learning Center,” designed to train 30 students to become either firefighters or plumbers once they leave. But on the day of my visit, the facility was devoid of books or desks. Nobody could seem to find the keys to the classrooms. At the exit of the empty room, a handwritten sign read: Don’t just throw your papers on the floor.
“We have to transform these people into good citizens, to reeducate them, to reintegrate them to society, to return them better than when they entered,” Florêncio said, “but that vision is almost utopian.” Asked to identify the resources he needs most, he answered without hesitation: “Today the most important priority is food, absolutely.”
During a tour of the IPAT kitchen, the Umanizarre handlers slipped on hairnets (for my benefit) while the staff turned meat on the grill and stirred an enormous pot of stew, boasting of the 3,000 meals they serve each day, including special fare for Christmas and Thanksgiving. Florêncio cited prison food as the leading cause of rampant gastrointestinal illness in the system.
That day, I interviewed guards and operations managers over lunch in the staff cafeteria. “A lot of Brazilians don’t have enough respect for how serious the security situation is here, for how we’re working,” Ramos said, digging into a slab of beef with a metal knife and fork. Staff keep their own sets of metal cutlery in little pouches in a secure locker area to make sure not a single scrap of metal reaches the hands of prisoners, though it’s not unusual for Brazilian prisoners to be shanked or decapitated with metal cutlery. “We’re having some success,” Ramos said. “I stand by the system. I stand by my state.”
The staff seemed surprised when I dug into my plate of rice, beans, spaghetti, and a little cup of Coke.
“How do you like the monkey meat?” one guard asked — and old joke about prison food in Brazil.
“We’re just playing around,” another guard said. “It’s beef. Really.”
Praying for a crime wave
No matter what’s in the stew, the prisons are broken, and they’re only one shard of a fundamentally broken justice system in Brazil. Organized crime is growing — and so is the stark inequality that leaves too many young men with few ways to make a decent living. The allures of cartel life are magnified in the Amazon, so close to the world’s cocaine, so far from the rest of the world. Even youngsters who try to walk a righteous path face an early, often violent introduction to the justice system. Crime offers a brotherhood that seems stronger and more secure than the aloof state. On social media, those who escaped during the recent riots were folk heroes, and on the streets of Manaus, vendors sell DVDs of cell-phone footage of the riots, FDN vs. PCC, the pop culture incarnation of a cartel war that is staining the national fabric. Since the New Year’s massacre, the FDN has been taunting the PCC in funk songs posted on YouTube. Police in Manaus arrested a group of PCC members on a mission to kill the family of one of the FDN’s leaders.
A strain among Brazil’s elites seems more confident than ever that tough cops and hard time are the only cures for the scourge. After the first wave of riots, Temer’s National Youth Secretary Bruno Júlio gave voice to that view: “I’m pretty conservative. I’m a cop’s son, right? There should be more killings. There should be one massacre per week.” Although he abruptly resigned, his sentiment toward prisons — and the young men of color who mostly fill them — is not all that unusual among the law-and-order crowd.
“These were no saints,” Amazonas Gov. José Melo, who was recently under investigation for election fraud, said of the riots. “These were murderers, rapists.”
No saints, perhaps, but men with families who pray for them. Every weekend on visitation days, hundreds of women and children in Manaus crowd into northbound buses, lumbering along BR-174 to the unassuming prison road beyond the landfill. On one of my visits to IPAT just before Christmas 2015, a few prisoners punted soccer balls around the main yard, searching the new arrivals for familiar faces. Vendors in the parking lot huddled under the shade of canvas tents, hawking Coke, water, and chips to the thirsty pilgrims who arrived up the gentle slope carrying birthday cakes, homemade Christmas ornaments, and newborn children. For these families, the question was not whether the prison was public or private, fair or corrupt, or whether the guards felt secure in their pensions. The question was whether their loved ones would ever come home again, and if they would still be the men their families remembered.
Brazil Has Become a Gangland
Posted from foreignpolicy.com
Manaus
Correctional Officer
South America
Posted >1 y ago
Responses: 5
4
4
0
The drug cartels in Mexico will probably want to start doing about the same thing.
(4)
(0)
4
4
0
SSgt Robert Marx good day, thanks for this interesting read and share of the most interesting.
(4)
(0)
3
3
0
To be honest, I would have modified the title to Brazil continues to have significant problems with border control and narco-terrorist activities like its neighbors Bolivia, Peru and Columbia have for decades.
The steep Andes mountains on the western border and the jungles on the northern border are difficult to control effectively.
Images: geographic-map-of-Latin-America; 2017-05-01 Mexican Drug Routes and Area of Influence
"Criminal Networks: A Gateway for Terrorists
by Devin M. Henry
Journal Article | May 1, 2017 - 9:39am
Introduction
Over the past 15 years, United States National Security has revolved around deterrence of transnational threats and near-peer competitors. The continued ideological influence of Middle Eastern terror networks and their ability to change U.S. National Security has left the Geographic Combatant Command regions lacking the necessary resources and effectiveness to combat their respective issues. The U.S. Southern Command has a tremendous bearing on the U.S. National and domestic security efforts based on proximity and the nature of threats to the U.S. borders.
The SOUTHCOM region is comprised of the Caribbean islands, Central and South America. Most of the countries are developed or developing but also have their share of security issues adversely affecting U.S. security and interests. Latin America’s security problems are linked to the massive amount of trafficking in drugs, persons and weapons to the U.S. and globally at a pandemic rate. The center issue is the rise of drug cartels with massive influence in the SOUTHCOM region. The largest cartels come from Mexico with drug production primarily located in Columbia, Venezuela and Central American countries used as launch points to ship or fly commodities globally. However, the larger issue for U.S. national security is not just the war on drugs but the use of drug trafficking, financial operations and influence that could be used to support transnational terror organizations. Migrating Mexican drug cartels and their influence, left unchecked, threaten stability in SOUTHCOM’s area of responsibility as well as U.S. national security by creating networks in which criminal elements and transnational terrorist groups can join forces to disrupt U.S. and Latin American security efforts.
U.S National Security Efforts in Latin America
In the National Security Strategy for 2015, the President of the United States and his National Security advisors identified vital elements to national security; reinforce Homeland Security and combat the persistent threat of terrorism[i]. Although both issues are broad in nature, they clearly define and can arguably be the key components for continuing the wars and conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan and the prevention of other large-scale terror attacks against the U.S. In 2016, SOUTHCOM Combatant Commander Admiral Kurt W. Tidd identified several security environment concerns that affect SOUTHCOM, which are transnational organized crime, foreign terrorists’ fighters, Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah, regional stability and Russia and China engagements[ii]. These concerns help shape and develop how Admiral Tidd conducts and executes joint and interagency operations in support of U.S. and Latin American national security and interests. Admiral Tidd’s top three security environment concerns at the macro level are individual problems, however as the problems narrow to the different countries or regions, it’s clear that transnational organized crime, foreign terrorist fighters, and influence from Iran and Hezbollah are all interconnected and global issues. Admiral Tidd stated that the principle challenge remains transnational criminal networks, which are well-organized, well-financed, well-armed and technologically advanced.[iii] The issue with these organizations goes much deeper than just drug distribution. The concern is the ability to make and transport illegal commodities in unlimited amounts whereby disrupting U.S. National Security. The second issue is the concern by the triple threat posed by foreign terrorist fighters. These fighters have the ability to move globally as well as influence and inspire others to commit terrorist attacks abroad further affecting security. Lastly, a majority of these foreign fighters have well-documented ties to transnational terrorist groups and non-state actors.
Transnational Organized Criminal Threats
Transnational organized crime in Latin American can be linked to the brutal drug cartels from Mexico. Since the early 2000s, Mexican drug cartels have begun to migrate from Mexico through Central America and in many drug production areas in South America. Many routes are used to traffic drugs, weapons and people to and from cartel operation centers. The most popular city is Ciudad Juarez, the murder capital of the world located in the Mexican and U.S. border[iv]. These major trafficking routes have become a highway for undesirables and products that have had significant effects on the population in both the U.S. and Latin America.
The deadliest drug cartel is the Sinaloa Federation which has been responsible for mass murders and atrocities throughout Mexico and Central America. By many accounts, the Sinaloa Federation once led by the infamous Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman controlled approximately 40-60% of the country’s trafficking network, with earning around 3 million dollars[v]. Since the rise of the Sinaloa Federation, there have been several spin-off transnational criminal organizations that have come to power regionally and globally in the drug trade. The lethality, complexity, and technologically advanced networks have made the cartels extremely dangerous for the U.S. and Latin America.
Migrating Mexican Cartels
In the past ten years, the war on drugs has not prevented the Mexican cartels from migrating to Latin American countries. As the Mexican cartels move further south in search of ungoverned spaces to advance their empire, an argument is made that the cartels are in search of not only land but viable partners and associates to build and influence a global network. As the cartel’s power and influence grow so does, their reach trans-regionally with goals of future global dominance through the drug trade.
The cartel’s intentions are not to control countries or push an ideology that could potentially incite violence in Latin American. Their primary purpose is to sell illegal goods, build an empire and make money; the end user is irrelevant. This makes cartels extremely dangerous as their goals can create significant issues and concerns for Latin American security and SOUTHCOM’s efforts to defeat the networks. Mexican drug cartels have migrated and settled in the jungle regions of Guatemala and Honduras as well as urban areas in Costa Rica, the Caribbean, and South America further embellishing their criminal network to support their global pathways and influence. Admiral Tidd addresses this issue in his posture statement to Congress; he states that Southern Command lacks the intelligence to identify, monitor drug cartels activities, which would assist in understanding these networks and the resources necessary to disrupt, degrade and dismantle them.[vii] This issue has a cause for concern especially with the rise of foreign non-state actors and threats to national security.
Cartels to Terrorists: Global Influence
Transnational criminal organizations in recent years have gained the confidence in partnership, financing and illegal trafficking with terrorist organizations abroad. This identified correlation is tied to Admiral Tidd’s concern over foreign terrorist fighters entering Latin American countries. Additionally, partner nations lack the infrastructure to monitor the travel of personnel traffic from state-supported and non-state supported insurgents.[viii]
In the last three years, as the rise of ISIS has dominated most of the Middle East and their ideology have spread globally, SOUTHCOM’s area of responsibility has not been exempt from their propaganda. As early as 2012, drug cartels have been courting terror networks from several countries to include Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Africa and Afghanistan in hopes to move drugs from Mexico and Latin America to Africa, Europe, and the Middle East for enormous profit.
The largest group to have links with drug cartels has been Hezbollah a Lebanese terrorist group responsible for several terror attacks. Hezbollah has historical ties to Latin America and has continued to maintain connections to organized criminal networks. Latin America’s unpredictable environment has become a breeding ground for extremism[ix]. Lebanese terror organization in collaboration with Mexican and Latin American cartels have expanded the drug trade and financial network across to the Middle East. Hezbollah’s financial operations are thriving in Latin America, according to former DEA operations chief Michael Braun, Hezbollah is moving tons of cocaine to Europe and has developed the most sophisticated money laundering system.[x]
The U.S. security concern comes with limited but credible intelligence that highlights drug smugglers efforts to sneak immigrants from the Middle East and South Asia straight to the doorstep of the U.S.[xi] This is a significant concern for the U.S. Furthermore, this is evident by U.S. Immigration officials. Who have identified several Middle Eastern men being smuggled through Latin America, by way of a Brazilian-based network, that connected the smuggled persons to a Mexican cartel, who guided them to the U.S. border[xii]. However, the greater concern is the number of Lebanese nationals living in Latin America especially in Brazil. Although the recruiting drive for Hezbollah has not happened to date, an estimated 7 million Shia Muslims may be a cause for future concerns.
Just as the Iranian-backed Lebanese supported Hezbollah found a home in Latin America through a courtship with Mexican drug cartels and other criminal organizations. The fear of terrorist networks such as Al Qaeda, Taliban, Islamic State (ISIS) and cartels joining forces is a significant challenge to SOUTHCOM security and stability. The current major threat globally is ISIS and the spread of terror and extremism which could threaten Latin American security efforts. SOUTHCOM theater strategy has allowed them to develop systems, influence partners and gain insights on how to illuminate, dismantle and disrupt networks and transnational terrorist organizations ability to operate freely. What is clear is that a new approach is needed as Latin American countries debate alternatives to the U.S. war on drugs[xiii].
Counter Argument
Some can argue that there is minimal evidence that drug cartels have partnered with terror organizations. The major divide between the groups is the ideology. Drug cartel’s function solely for profit and territorial control not jihads, they understand that pressure over drug wars is manageable. However, pressure from world powers based on terrorism is a different matter. This fundamental difference is the reason why cartel networks avoid risky business with transnational terror organization war against the U.S. Many could argue that extremism is bad for the regional drug business, however, could it produce enormous profit globally for cartels. But the fact remains that cartels and terrorists share a common vision of exploiting the seams that the U.S and other coalition countries cannot cover. Additionally, the well-established criminal networks provide the architecture and jet stream for terrorists to move undetected through SOUTHCOMs region to establish a seam in which terror attacks can be planned and executed on U.S or coalition soil.
Recommendations
SOUTHCOM should focus on the network rather than the war on drugs. In a recent visit to the Naval War College, Admiral Tidd explained that the war on drugs has not diminished the demand for drugs, or lessened the distribution; therefore, the war is on the networks in which they operate.[xiv] To attack the networks, one recommendation is SOUTHCOM should include inter-agency experts to advise and assist partner nations in developing the capacity to attack terrorist or transnational criminal networks. The critical capabilities to concentrate on would be intelligence gathering through drone, human intelligence, targeting process and execution once the target is identified. The second recommendation is the development and implementation of partner nations cyber capability, cell phone and network hacks and bank account monitoring as this will increase the host country’s ability to conduct disruption operations regionally which will eventually lead to global network disruption. The last recommendation is to grow SOUTHCOM’s area by bringing Mexico into the SOUTHCOM AOR due to the level of influence in the Latin America, thus, U.S. Northern Command should operate the internal portion of the U.S. plus the border of Mexico to Mexico City, allowing NORTHCOM to focus on drugs, displaced persons, migration and terrorist activities from Mexico to the U.S. border. Due to the migration of Mexican drug cartels into Central and South America, this may leverage partner coordination and seamless intelligence sharing with more organizations and more manageable sectors which will increase the reach and disruption efforts of SOUTHCOM partners.
Conclusion
Latin America plays a key strategic role in the U.S. national security efforts but also have a significant role in global security. SOUTHCOM focused issues of transnational criminal organizations, foreign terrorist fighters and Iran and Hezbollah influence, are critical not only to the war on drugs and trafficking but is essential in defeating the networks that tie each of them together. This is seen in the spread of drug cartels influence, their links to terrorist groups and operations in Central and South America. SOUTHCOM Commander Admiral Tidd, has the proper vision of implementing Joint Interagency Task Forces to attack networks that thrive in the ungoverned spaces in the region. Through developing host nation partnerships and fostering intelligence sharing, will increase SOUTHCOMs ability to detect and disrupt transnational criminal networks that threaten U.S. and Latin American national and regional security efforts.
Selected Bibliography
Foreign Military Studies Office. “Mexican Drug Cartel Areas and Influence.” accessed 16 September, http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/OEWatch/201312/Mexico-Facilities-target.html.
Keshavarz, Alma. “Iran and Hezbollah in the Tri-Border Areas of Latin America: A Look at the “Old TBA” and the “New TBA.” Small Wars Journals, accessed 25 September, http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/iran-and-hezbollah-in-the-tri-border-areas-of-latin-america.
McGee, Nicole. Mexico, “Drug Trafficking Organizations, Realism, and Human Security.” Portland University. Vol 7; Issue 1, Article 15, accessed 17 September, http://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1126&context=mcnair.
Obama, Barack. POTUS. “National Security Strategy.” February 2015, accessed 20 September, https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/2015_national_security_strategy.pdf.
Park, Madison. CNN. “Mexico’s Most Notorious Drug Cartel.” accessed 19 September, http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/18/americas/mexican-drug-cartels/.
Taylor, Guy. “Hezbollah moving “tons of cocaine” in Latin America, Europe to finance terror operations.” Washington Times, accessed 20 September, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jun/8/hezbollah-moving-tons-of-cocaine-in-latin-america.
Tidd, Kurt W. “Southern Command Posture Statement, Before the 114th Congress Senate Arms Committee.” Accessed 10 September, http://www.southcom.mil/newsroom/documents/SOUTHCOM_POSTURE_STATEMENT_FINAL_2016.pdf
Tidd, Kurt W. Naval War College Lecture of Opportunity-SOUTHCOM. 22 September 2016.
End Notes
[i] Barack Obama, POTUS, National Security Strategy, (February 2015), accessed 20 September, https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/2015_national_securi....
[ii] Admiral Kurt Tidd, Southern Command Posture Statement, Before the 114th Congress Senate Arms Committee, (March 2016), Accessed 10 September, http://www.southcom.mil/newsroom/Documents/SOUTHCOM_POSTURE_STATEMENT_FI....
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Nicole McGee, Mexico, Drug Trafficking Organizations, Realism, and Human Security. Portland University 7; Issue 1, Article 15, accessed 17 September, http://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1126&conte....
[v] Madison Park, CNN, Mexico’s Most Notorious Drug Cartel, accessed 19 September, http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/18/americas/mexican-drug-cartels/.
[vi] Foreign Military Studies Office, Mexican Drug Cartel Areas and Influence, accessed 16 September, http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/OEWatch/201312/Mexico-Facilities-target....
[vii] Admiral Kurt Tidd, Southern Command Posture Statement, Before the 114th Congress Senate Arms Committee, Accessed 10 September, http://www.southcom.mil/newsroom/Documents/SOUTHCOM_POSTURE_STATEMENT_FI....
[viii] Ibid.
[ix] Alma Keshavarz, Iran and Hezbollah in the Tri-Border Areas of Latin America: A Look at the “Old TBA” and the “New TBA”, Small Wars Journals, accessed 25 September, http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/iran-and-hezbollah-in-the-tri-borde....
[x] Guy Taylor. Hezbollah moving “tons of cocaine” in Latin America, Europe to finance terror operations, Washington Times, accessed 20 September, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jun/8/hezbollah-moving-tons-of-....
[xi] Ibid.
[xii] Ibid.
[xiii] David Huey, The US war on drugs and its legacy in Latin America, The Guardian, accessed 18 September, https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/201....
[xiv] Admiral Kurt W. Tidd, Naval War College Lecture of Opportunity-SOUTHCOM. 22 September 2016.
http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/criminal-networks-a-gateway-for-terrorists
LTC Stephen C. LTC Greg Henning LTC Ivan Raiklin, Esq. Capt Seid Waddell Capt Tom Brown CW5 (Join to see) SGM David W. Carr LOM, DMSM MP SGT MSG Andrew White SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL SFC William Farrell SSgt Robert Marx SSgt (Join to see) TSgt Joe C. SGT John " Mac " McConnell SP5 Mark Kuzinski SPC (Join to see) SrA Christopher Wright Cpl Joshua Caldwell
The steep Andes mountains on the western border and the jungles on the northern border are difficult to control effectively.
Images: geographic-map-of-Latin-America; 2017-05-01 Mexican Drug Routes and Area of Influence
"Criminal Networks: A Gateway for Terrorists
by Devin M. Henry
Journal Article | May 1, 2017 - 9:39am
Introduction
Over the past 15 years, United States National Security has revolved around deterrence of transnational threats and near-peer competitors. The continued ideological influence of Middle Eastern terror networks and their ability to change U.S. National Security has left the Geographic Combatant Command regions lacking the necessary resources and effectiveness to combat their respective issues. The U.S. Southern Command has a tremendous bearing on the U.S. National and domestic security efforts based on proximity and the nature of threats to the U.S. borders.
The SOUTHCOM region is comprised of the Caribbean islands, Central and South America. Most of the countries are developed or developing but also have their share of security issues adversely affecting U.S. security and interests. Latin America’s security problems are linked to the massive amount of trafficking in drugs, persons and weapons to the U.S. and globally at a pandemic rate. The center issue is the rise of drug cartels with massive influence in the SOUTHCOM region. The largest cartels come from Mexico with drug production primarily located in Columbia, Venezuela and Central American countries used as launch points to ship or fly commodities globally. However, the larger issue for U.S. national security is not just the war on drugs but the use of drug trafficking, financial operations and influence that could be used to support transnational terror organizations. Migrating Mexican drug cartels and their influence, left unchecked, threaten stability in SOUTHCOM’s area of responsibility as well as U.S. national security by creating networks in which criminal elements and transnational terrorist groups can join forces to disrupt U.S. and Latin American security efforts.
U.S National Security Efforts in Latin America
In the National Security Strategy for 2015, the President of the United States and his National Security advisors identified vital elements to national security; reinforce Homeland Security and combat the persistent threat of terrorism[i]. Although both issues are broad in nature, they clearly define and can arguably be the key components for continuing the wars and conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan and the prevention of other large-scale terror attacks against the U.S. In 2016, SOUTHCOM Combatant Commander Admiral Kurt W. Tidd identified several security environment concerns that affect SOUTHCOM, which are transnational organized crime, foreign terrorists’ fighters, Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah, regional stability and Russia and China engagements[ii]. These concerns help shape and develop how Admiral Tidd conducts and executes joint and interagency operations in support of U.S. and Latin American national security and interests. Admiral Tidd’s top three security environment concerns at the macro level are individual problems, however as the problems narrow to the different countries or regions, it’s clear that transnational organized crime, foreign terrorist fighters, and influence from Iran and Hezbollah are all interconnected and global issues. Admiral Tidd stated that the principle challenge remains transnational criminal networks, which are well-organized, well-financed, well-armed and technologically advanced.[iii] The issue with these organizations goes much deeper than just drug distribution. The concern is the ability to make and transport illegal commodities in unlimited amounts whereby disrupting U.S. National Security. The second issue is the concern by the triple threat posed by foreign terrorist fighters. These fighters have the ability to move globally as well as influence and inspire others to commit terrorist attacks abroad further affecting security. Lastly, a majority of these foreign fighters have well-documented ties to transnational terrorist groups and non-state actors.
Transnational Organized Criminal Threats
Transnational organized crime in Latin American can be linked to the brutal drug cartels from Mexico. Since the early 2000s, Mexican drug cartels have begun to migrate from Mexico through Central America and in many drug production areas in South America. Many routes are used to traffic drugs, weapons and people to and from cartel operation centers. The most popular city is Ciudad Juarez, the murder capital of the world located in the Mexican and U.S. border[iv]. These major trafficking routes have become a highway for undesirables and products that have had significant effects on the population in both the U.S. and Latin America.
The deadliest drug cartel is the Sinaloa Federation which has been responsible for mass murders and atrocities throughout Mexico and Central America. By many accounts, the Sinaloa Federation once led by the infamous Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman controlled approximately 40-60% of the country’s trafficking network, with earning around 3 million dollars[v]. Since the rise of the Sinaloa Federation, there have been several spin-off transnational criminal organizations that have come to power regionally and globally in the drug trade. The lethality, complexity, and technologically advanced networks have made the cartels extremely dangerous for the U.S. and Latin America.
Migrating Mexican Cartels
In the past ten years, the war on drugs has not prevented the Mexican cartels from migrating to Latin American countries. As the Mexican cartels move further south in search of ungoverned spaces to advance their empire, an argument is made that the cartels are in search of not only land but viable partners and associates to build and influence a global network. As the cartel’s power and influence grow so does, their reach trans-regionally with goals of future global dominance through the drug trade.
The cartel’s intentions are not to control countries or push an ideology that could potentially incite violence in Latin American. Their primary purpose is to sell illegal goods, build an empire and make money; the end user is irrelevant. This makes cartels extremely dangerous as their goals can create significant issues and concerns for Latin American security and SOUTHCOM’s efforts to defeat the networks. Mexican drug cartels have migrated and settled in the jungle regions of Guatemala and Honduras as well as urban areas in Costa Rica, the Caribbean, and South America further embellishing their criminal network to support their global pathways and influence. Admiral Tidd addresses this issue in his posture statement to Congress; he states that Southern Command lacks the intelligence to identify, monitor drug cartels activities, which would assist in understanding these networks and the resources necessary to disrupt, degrade and dismantle them.[vii] This issue has a cause for concern especially with the rise of foreign non-state actors and threats to national security.
Cartels to Terrorists: Global Influence
Transnational criminal organizations in recent years have gained the confidence in partnership, financing and illegal trafficking with terrorist organizations abroad. This identified correlation is tied to Admiral Tidd’s concern over foreign terrorist fighters entering Latin American countries. Additionally, partner nations lack the infrastructure to monitor the travel of personnel traffic from state-supported and non-state supported insurgents.[viii]
In the last three years, as the rise of ISIS has dominated most of the Middle East and their ideology have spread globally, SOUTHCOM’s area of responsibility has not been exempt from their propaganda. As early as 2012, drug cartels have been courting terror networks from several countries to include Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Africa and Afghanistan in hopes to move drugs from Mexico and Latin America to Africa, Europe, and the Middle East for enormous profit.
The largest group to have links with drug cartels has been Hezbollah a Lebanese terrorist group responsible for several terror attacks. Hezbollah has historical ties to Latin America and has continued to maintain connections to organized criminal networks. Latin America’s unpredictable environment has become a breeding ground for extremism[ix]. Lebanese terror organization in collaboration with Mexican and Latin American cartels have expanded the drug trade and financial network across to the Middle East. Hezbollah’s financial operations are thriving in Latin America, according to former DEA operations chief Michael Braun, Hezbollah is moving tons of cocaine to Europe and has developed the most sophisticated money laundering system.[x]
The U.S. security concern comes with limited but credible intelligence that highlights drug smugglers efforts to sneak immigrants from the Middle East and South Asia straight to the doorstep of the U.S.[xi] This is a significant concern for the U.S. Furthermore, this is evident by U.S. Immigration officials. Who have identified several Middle Eastern men being smuggled through Latin America, by way of a Brazilian-based network, that connected the smuggled persons to a Mexican cartel, who guided them to the U.S. border[xii]. However, the greater concern is the number of Lebanese nationals living in Latin America especially in Brazil. Although the recruiting drive for Hezbollah has not happened to date, an estimated 7 million Shia Muslims may be a cause for future concerns.
Just as the Iranian-backed Lebanese supported Hezbollah found a home in Latin America through a courtship with Mexican drug cartels and other criminal organizations. The fear of terrorist networks such as Al Qaeda, Taliban, Islamic State (ISIS) and cartels joining forces is a significant challenge to SOUTHCOM security and stability. The current major threat globally is ISIS and the spread of terror and extremism which could threaten Latin American security efforts. SOUTHCOM theater strategy has allowed them to develop systems, influence partners and gain insights on how to illuminate, dismantle and disrupt networks and transnational terrorist organizations ability to operate freely. What is clear is that a new approach is needed as Latin American countries debate alternatives to the U.S. war on drugs[xiii].
Counter Argument
Some can argue that there is minimal evidence that drug cartels have partnered with terror organizations. The major divide between the groups is the ideology. Drug cartel’s function solely for profit and territorial control not jihads, they understand that pressure over drug wars is manageable. However, pressure from world powers based on terrorism is a different matter. This fundamental difference is the reason why cartel networks avoid risky business with transnational terror organization war against the U.S. Many could argue that extremism is bad for the regional drug business, however, could it produce enormous profit globally for cartels. But the fact remains that cartels and terrorists share a common vision of exploiting the seams that the U.S and other coalition countries cannot cover. Additionally, the well-established criminal networks provide the architecture and jet stream for terrorists to move undetected through SOUTHCOMs region to establish a seam in which terror attacks can be planned and executed on U.S or coalition soil.
Recommendations
SOUTHCOM should focus on the network rather than the war on drugs. In a recent visit to the Naval War College, Admiral Tidd explained that the war on drugs has not diminished the demand for drugs, or lessened the distribution; therefore, the war is on the networks in which they operate.[xiv] To attack the networks, one recommendation is SOUTHCOM should include inter-agency experts to advise and assist partner nations in developing the capacity to attack terrorist or transnational criminal networks. The critical capabilities to concentrate on would be intelligence gathering through drone, human intelligence, targeting process and execution once the target is identified. The second recommendation is the development and implementation of partner nations cyber capability, cell phone and network hacks and bank account monitoring as this will increase the host country’s ability to conduct disruption operations regionally which will eventually lead to global network disruption. The last recommendation is to grow SOUTHCOM’s area by bringing Mexico into the SOUTHCOM AOR due to the level of influence in the Latin America, thus, U.S. Northern Command should operate the internal portion of the U.S. plus the border of Mexico to Mexico City, allowing NORTHCOM to focus on drugs, displaced persons, migration and terrorist activities from Mexico to the U.S. border. Due to the migration of Mexican drug cartels into Central and South America, this may leverage partner coordination and seamless intelligence sharing with more organizations and more manageable sectors which will increase the reach and disruption efforts of SOUTHCOM partners.
Conclusion
Latin America plays a key strategic role in the U.S. national security efforts but also have a significant role in global security. SOUTHCOM focused issues of transnational criminal organizations, foreign terrorist fighters and Iran and Hezbollah influence, are critical not only to the war on drugs and trafficking but is essential in defeating the networks that tie each of them together. This is seen in the spread of drug cartels influence, their links to terrorist groups and operations in Central and South America. SOUTHCOM Commander Admiral Tidd, has the proper vision of implementing Joint Interagency Task Forces to attack networks that thrive in the ungoverned spaces in the region. Through developing host nation partnerships and fostering intelligence sharing, will increase SOUTHCOMs ability to detect and disrupt transnational criminal networks that threaten U.S. and Latin American national and regional security efforts.
Selected Bibliography
Foreign Military Studies Office. “Mexican Drug Cartel Areas and Influence.” accessed 16 September, http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/OEWatch/201312/Mexico-Facilities-target.html.
Keshavarz, Alma. “Iran and Hezbollah in the Tri-Border Areas of Latin America: A Look at the “Old TBA” and the “New TBA.” Small Wars Journals, accessed 25 September, http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/iran-and-hezbollah-in-the-tri-border-areas-of-latin-america.
McGee, Nicole. Mexico, “Drug Trafficking Organizations, Realism, and Human Security.” Portland University. Vol 7; Issue 1, Article 15, accessed 17 September, http://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1126&context=mcnair.
Obama, Barack. POTUS. “National Security Strategy.” February 2015, accessed 20 September, https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/2015_national_security_strategy.pdf.
Park, Madison. CNN. “Mexico’s Most Notorious Drug Cartel.” accessed 19 September, http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/18/americas/mexican-drug-cartels/.
Taylor, Guy. “Hezbollah moving “tons of cocaine” in Latin America, Europe to finance terror operations.” Washington Times, accessed 20 September, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jun/8/hezbollah-moving-tons-of-cocaine-in-latin-america.
Tidd, Kurt W. “Southern Command Posture Statement, Before the 114th Congress Senate Arms Committee.” Accessed 10 September, http://www.southcom.mil/newsroom/documents/SOUTHCOM_POSTURE_STATEMENT_FINAL_2016.pdf
Tidd, Kurt W. Naval War College Lecture of Opportunity-SOUTHCOM. 22 September 2016.
End Notes
[i] Barack Obama, POTUS, National Security Strategy, (February 2015), accessed 20 September, https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/2015_national_securi....
[ii] Admiral Kurt Tidd, Southern Command Posture Statement, Before the 114th Congress Senate Arms Committee, (March 2016), Accessed 10 September, http://www.southcom.mil/newsroom/Documents/SOUTHCOM_POSTURE_STATEMENT_FI....
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Nicole McGee, Mexico, Drug Trafficking Organizations, Realism, and Human Security. Portland University 7; Issue 1, Article 15, accessed 17 September, http://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1126&conte....
[v] Madison Park, CNN, Mexico’s Most Notorious Drug Cartel, accessed 19 September, http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/18/americas/mexican-drug-cartels/.
[vi] Foreign Military Studies Office, Mexican Drug Cartel Areas and Influence, accessed 16 September, http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/OEWatch/201312/Mexico-Facilities-target....
[vii] Admiral Kurt Tidd, Southern Command Posture Statement, Before the 114th Congress Senate Arms Committee, Accessed 10 September, http://www.southcom.mil/newsroom/Documents/SOUTHCOM_POSTURE_STATEMENT_FI....
[viii] Ibid.
[ix] Alma Keshavarz, Iran and Hezbollah in the Tri-Border Areas of Latin America: A Look at the “Old TBA” and the “New TBA”, Small Wars Journals, accessed 25 September, http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/iran-and-hezbollah-in-the-tri-borde....
[x] Guy Taylor. Hezbollah moving “tons of cocaine” in Latin America, Europe to finance terror operations, Washington Times, accessed 20 September, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jun/8/hezbollah-moving-tons-of-....
[xi] Ibid.
[xii] Ibid.
[xiii] David Huey, The US war on drugs and its legacy in Latin America, The Guardian, accessed 18 September, https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/201....
[xiv] Admiral Kurt W. Tidd, Naval War College Lecture of Opportunity-SOUTHCOM. 22 September 2016.
http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/criminal-networks-a-gateway-for-terrorists
LTC Stephen C. LTC Greg Henning LTC Ivan Raiklin, Esq. Capt Seid Waddell Capt Tom Brown CW5 (Join to see) SGM David W. Carr LOM, DMSM MP SGT MSG Andrew White SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL SFC William Farrell SSgt Robert Marx SSgt (Join to see) TSgt Joe C. SGT John " Mac " McConnell SP5 Mark Kuzinski SPC (Join to see) SrA Christopher Wright Cpl Joshua Caldwell
(3)
(0)
Read This Next
Continue with Facebook 
Continue with Google