Terrorism, Homeland Security & Government Projects

Foreign Aid and the Fight Against Terrorism and Proliferation: Leveraging Foreign Aid to Achieve U.S. Policy Goals
Testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs
by Douglas Farah

Published on July 31st, 2008
There is growing recognition that there is no purely military solution in the fight against terrorism, whether the use of this tactic is driven by religion (radical Islamism), ideology and nationalism (Tamil Tigers), control of natural resources or “honey pots” (multipronged wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo, recent wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia) or a mixture of these elements (The FARC in Colombia, Taliban in Afghanistan, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the janjaweed in Sudan). Our approach to combating terrorism, and the aid we give, is often limited by our confinement to dealing with individual states as entirely separate entities. But this is an increasingly unsustainable.

Money Laundering and Bulk Cash Smuggling: Challenges for the U.S.-Mexico Border
by Douglas Farah

Published on June 19th, 2009
Bulk cash smuggling across the U.S.-Mexico border cannot be viewed in isolation. Rather, the process of illegally moving large quantities of dollars across the border must be viewed as part of the movements in a larger pipeline that flows across the northern tier of South America, through Central America and Mexico and into the United States. The pipeline, fed by many smaller feeder lines, moves products both north and south, and the a significant portion of the violence in Mexico today, as well as among the maras in Central America, revolves around disputes over control of portions of that pipeline, its plazas and branches. The primary goods flowing northward are cocaine, human traffic, gang members hired by the drug cartels as enforcers, and marijuana. The primary products moving south are large amounts of cash generated from the illicit activities, stolen cars and other goods, and weapons. It is important to understand that all of these products move through the same basic architecture and rely on many of the same facilitators to enable the flow of goods and services.

Iran in Latin America: An Overview
in Iran in Latin America: Threat or Axis of Annoyance?
by Douglas Farah

Published on June 1st, 2009
There is considerable debate over the level of threat posed by Iran's expanding diplomatic, trade and military presence in Latin America, and its stated ambition to continue to broaden these ties. These new alliances are causing deep concern not only in the United States, but also in Europe and parts of Latin America. Others view the relations as an unthreatening and natural outgrowth of a rapidly changing, multi-polar world. There are points of agreement and divergence among different camps, as well as larger issues that must be addressed in order to come as close as possible to obtaining a full picture what Iran's interests and intentions imply.

Confronting Drug Trafficking in West Africa
Tesimony Before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
by Douglas Farah

Published on June 23rd, 2009
The movement of drugs, particularly cocaine, through West Africa is the product of several developments in the overall drug trade, and the consequences are already devastating, as shown by the new wave of political instability and the creation of the continent's first true "narco-states." As the trafficking grows, so will the havoc wreaked on weak states in West Africa--many of which are only now emerging from decades of chaos and unspeakable violence and are ill prepared to face the new challenges.

Honduras Breaks a Paradigm in Latin America
by Margarita M. Montes

Published on July 11th, 2009
The removal of President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales from power by the Honduran army on Sunday, June 28, has put an end to a paradigm in Latin American contemporary political history. For the first time since the end of the Cold War, an army removes a legally and democratically elected President to restore the rule of law, not to break the rule of law, as it used to be in the past.

Transnational Drug Enterprises: Threats to Global Stability and U.S. National Security from Southwest Asia, Latin America and West Africa
Testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
by Douglas Farah

Published on October 1st, 2009
What we are seeing in the era of globalization, is that flexible criminal and terrorist pipelines -- where key facilitators are vital to the operations of both sets of actors -- are highly adaptable and forward thinking. These pipelines or recombinant chains of actors and commodities now have the ability to move goods, both licit and illicit, around the globe to wherever the environment is most hospitable and tolerant. While by far the most lucrative commodities in the pipeline are cocaine and heroin, the same pipelines serve weapons traffickers, human smugglers, fraud and contraband.

Iran In The Western Hemisphere
Oral Testimony Before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs
by Douglas Farah

Published on October 27th, 2009
I believe the growing influence of Iran is a significant threat to the United States and is an under-reported part of the equation that is driving the instability and uncertainty in Latin America, from the crisis in Honduras to the rapidly-closing space for democratic freedoms in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and elsewhere where the Bolivarian revolution has gained a foothold.

Who is the Imam Consulted by the Ft. Hood Assassin?
A Look at the Terrorist Ties of Anwar al-Aulaqi and the Radicalization Process
by Susan Schmidt

Published on November 9th, 2009
Anwar al-Aulaqi, the former imam of mosques in Falls Church and San Diego who was a spiritual advisor to two of the 9/11 hijackers is suspected of involvement in terrorist plots directed at the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and other parts of the world, according to U.S. counterterrorism officials. Aulaqi, a U.S. citizen who was imam at Virginia’s Dar al Hijrah on 9/11, moved to Yemen a few months after the attacks. Audiotapes and transcripts of his lectures on waging jihad against the West have been discovered in the password protected computer files of numerous suspects arrested in bombing plots in Europe and North America. He pronounced suspected Fort Hood slayer Nidal Hasan "a hero" and "a man of conscience" in an internet blog posting Monday.

Ecuador at Risk: Drugs, Thugs, Guerrillas and the Citizens Revolution
by Douglas Farah, Glenn R. Simpson

Published on January 24th, 2010
New Spanish language translation available.  The changing internal situation in Colombia and the expanding influence of the Mexican drug cartels have, over the past three years, helped turn Ecuador into an important and growing center of operation for transnational organized criminal gangs. This poses a significant threat not only to the Ecuadoran state but all of Latin America and the United States.

U.S. Identifies Russian ‘Nexus’ of Organized Crime
Main Justice
by Glenn R. Simpson

Published on February 10th, 2010
After two years of research, the U.S. intelligence community has formally concluded that the governments of Russia and other Eurasian states actively collaborate with organized crime groups. The finding was made public in a little-noticed section of an annual survey of national security threats released on Feb. 2 by Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair. There is an “apparent growing nexus in Russian and Eurasian states among government, organized crime, intelligence services, and big business figures,” said the report, unveiled at a hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The language fingering Russia is an unusually direct identification by the U.S. of what analysts view as a growing menace to U.S. national security.