A dangerous but widely accepted belief is that Latin America is staying at the margin of Islamic terrorism. After all, it is difficult to imagine that these groups may have the capacity to operate in the region due to the geographic remoteness and the majorly Christian population.
However, the fact that we do not see terrorist attacks daily – or at least with the same frequency as in Europe – in Latin American cities, does not imply that there is no presence or influence of some irregular groups in the region, especially the Lebanese militia Hezbollah.
So far, Latin America has been the region with the least number of terrorist attacks in the world, which has produced most governments and institutions in the region to underestimate the jihadist phenomenon as they regard Islamic terrorism as a very distant threat without any impact on their daily lives. Nevertheless, the fact that the presence of these groups is not actively manifested is precisely their biggest strength: If nobody suspects at all, it is possible to easily and freely operate without real risks throughout the entire region. Additionally, it is worth noticing that most Latin countries have no valuable experience nor the intelligence agencies required to effectively combat the threat of global terrorism.
Latin American resentment against the continuous US interventions in the region during the Cold War (such as the Condor Plan) has facilitated the acceptance of any anti-Israel and anti-American initiative. Also, it is necessary to consider that times has changed, and a face-to-face figure (like an Imam in a mosque) is no longer needed for an efficient indoctrination and radicalization as the main recruitment mechanism nowadays are the social networks.
A report published by the British Institute of Defense denounced the existence of hundreds of “exotic jihadists” from Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Brazil, Honduras, Trinidad and Tobago, Peru, Mexico and Venezuela that actively joined the ISIS military forces in Iraq and Syria, which shows that Latin American countries could be an unexpected fertile ground for the proliferation of terrorist activities.
Unlike Europe, the main threat of Islamic terrorism against the American continent is not the realization of terrorist attacks or the constitution of new radical cells, but the powerful links that these groups are building with the cartels and drug trafficking organizations in the region. It is well known that terrorist groups and drug traffickers often use the same intermediaries to obtain arms, contraband products and money laundering to sustain its illegal activities.
There are numerous allegations that Lebanese group Hezbollah has extensive operations in Venezuela and the so-called “Triple Border Zone” between Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina. Hezbollah is not a conventional movement trapped fanatically by its own ideology, on the contrary, its leaders are highly pragmatic as they know the global geopolitical situation and use it in their favor. For the leaders of the group, there is no any ideological contradiction in publicly promoting Islamism, honesty and family values to consolidate the self-called “Axis of Resistance” against Israel –constituted by Lebanon, Syria and Iran- while secretly appealing to drug trafficking, smuggling and money laundering to establish its complex financing networks.
To understand the expansion of Hezbollah, it’s worth taking into account that the main objective of the group is to seize the power of the Lebanese Republic, which has lead them to the internationalization and expansion of its operations in a passive scenario such as Latin America, due to the necessity of establishing reliable sources of financing to sustain the social programs and intense propaganda they need to survive in the intense and unstable Lebanese political scene.
Masters of disguise
Hezbollah means “Party of God” in Arabic. It is a controversial movement formed during Lebanon’s civil war with the support of Iran and Syria, with the main objective of leading the “Islamic resistance” against the Israeli military intervention of 1982. Once the Lebanese conflict ended in 1990, all the militias and irregular armed forces agreed to disarm, except Hezbollah, which 29 years later continues to exist as one of the most popular and powerful armed groups in the Near East.
The particularity of this movement is its ambiguity, dynamism, and pragmatism: On one hand, it is a political party with seats in the Lebanese Parliament, but at the same time it operates as an informal militia parallel to the State. In addition, it has its own television channel (Al-Manar) where they freely transmit in 5 languages all the campaigns and social plans, they carry out in the Lebanese territory to guarantee popular support.
Hezbollah has managed to project itself before the Arab people as a legitimate, tolerant, protective, humanist, but especially efficient movement of resistance against the so-perceived threats of Israel and US Imperialism. By the execution of free health care and education campaigns, Hezbollah has covered many of deficiencies and inefficiencies of the Lebanese government, one of the most corrupt in the world according to Transparency International.
The main threat of Hezbollah is its enormous ability to disguise itself and to adapt into political reality: On 2009, the movement redefined its radical ideology and original objectives of establishing an Islamic Republic in Lebanon to replace it with a “new majority and secular democracy”. In this way, the group ceased to be a purely Islamic movement to now fully incorporate members of all religions who wish to unite under the umbrella of the organization to act politically and militarily against the Israeli threat.
Despite attempts to shed its radical past, the movement is still regarded as a terrorist group by the United States, Israel, the European Union, and most of the Arab League countries, however, Hezbollah has a fair popular, economic – and presumably military – support of Iran, Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen and Syria, where Hezbollah’s members are seen as legitimate “protectors” of the Arab people against the continuous threats from the West, whether real or perceived.
Hezbollah’s silent activities in the region
There are numerous complaints in the region that accuses the group of conducting illegal activities: Carlos H. Benítez, director of the Secretariat for the Prevention of Terrorism and Investigation in Paraguay, stated that “there are suspicions that elements of Hezbollah based on the Triple Frontier (between Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil) are involved in drug trafficking “
On August 19, 2010, the Syrian-Venezuelan businessman Walid Makled was captured in Colombia, from where he declared accusing the Venezuelan government of maintaining close ties with Iran, Syria and the Hezbollah group since Hugo Chávez came to power. “Hezbollah is in Venezuela. They work, they make money that they send to the Middle East“. The Venezuelan journalist Patricia Poleo –now in exile- confirmed that information and denounced that the current vice-president of the country, Tarek Al-Aissami, is in charge of directing the operations in favor of the terrorist group in the region.
An investigation led by the Brazilian magazine Veja ensured that the Venezuelan embassy in Damascus “maintains a network that produces and distributes authentic Venezuelan passports and visas that were supplied to terrorists to hide their true identities”. This accusation was confirmed to CNN by Misael López, a former adviser of the Venezuelan embassy in the Republic of Iraq, who assured that the Venezuelan government not only illegally sells its identity documents in Syria, but throughout the whole Middle East.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also declared that “Cubans, Russians, Iran and Hezbollah are in Venezuela” after a new report by the Center for a Secure to Free Society was presented in the United States Capitol. The report contained evidence that directly accuses the Venezuelan regime to turn their country into the strategic center of its anti-western allies to receive and send members of this organization.
The weakness of security agencies, high corruption, the anti-imperialist sentiment in many sectors of Latin American population, the existence of highly permeable borders and the existence of numerous criminal allies such as mafias and drug trafficking groups have meant that Latin America has become an area of special interest for the Hezbollah group, which makes it a silent threat to the United States, Canada and the entire region.