Terrorism, Homeland Security & Government Projects

Money Laundering and Bulk Cash Smuggling: Challenges for the Mérida Initiative
Working Paper Series on U.S.-Mexico Security Cooperation
by Douglas Farah

Published on November 30th, 2010
It is widely accepted that cutting off the flow of money from the sale of cocaine in the United States to the Mexican drug trafficking organizations is one of the most efficient ways to decrease the power of the cartels. Without the cash influx there would be less money for corruption and the purchase of weapons, and cash seizures directly take away what the drug traffickers want most -- profits from their illicit activities. On both sides of the border the smuggling of bulk cash and money laundering tied to the billions of dollars in profits is not just viewed as a problem for Mexico, but as a significant security threat to the United States.

Organized Crime in El Salvador: The Homegrown and Transnational Dimensions
Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars
by Douglas Farah

Published on February 1st, 2011
When El Salvador's brutal civil war ended in a negotiated settlement in 1992 after 12 years and some 75,000 dead, it was widely hoped that the peace agreements would usher in a new era of democratic governance, rule of law, and economic growth. Yet today El Salvador is a crucial part of a transnational “pipeline” or series of overlapping, recombinant chains of actors and routes that transnational criminal organizations use to move illicit products, money, weapons, personnel, and goods. The results are devastating and wide-ranging in the Massachusetts-sized country, and are a key part of the crisis of governance and rule of law crippling the Central American region and Mexico.

Harvard for Tyrants
Foreign Policy
by Douglas Farah

Published on March 4th, 2011
Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi is well known now for the abuses he has inflicted on his own people during more than four decades of brutal rule in Libya, but few remember the vast campaign of carnage and terrorism he orchestrated across West Africa and Europe when he was at the height of his powers.  Nor are his more recent alliance with Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and his long-standing relationship with Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua -- both of whom are busy trampling their constitutions and moving toward dictatorship -- well understood. The ties that bind Qaddafi to some of the world's most repressive regimes and armed movements began in the 1980s, when he was regarded as one of the premier terrorist threats in the world. Flush with oil money, Qaddafi orchestrated a training campaign for those who became the most brutal warlords in much of Africa, a legacy that has left the region crippled and unstable today.

Terrorist-Criminal Pipelines and Criminalized States: Emerging Alliances
Prism 2, No. 3
by Douglas Farah

Published on June 1st, 2011
On July 1, 2010, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York unsealed an indictment that outlined the rapid expansion of operations of transnational criminal organizations and their growing, often short-term strategic alliances with terrorist groups. These little-understood transcontinental alliances pose new security threats to the United States, as well as much of Latin America, West Africa, and Europe.

Confronting the News: The State of Independent Media in Latin America
A Report to the Center for International Media Assistance
by Douglas Farah

Published on June 28th, 2011
Freedom of expression and of the press in much of Latin America are under sustained attack by numerous authoritarian governments in the region, as well as non-state armed actors such as drug trafficking organizations and paramilitary groups. These attacks have made Latin America one of the most dangerous places in the world in which to be a journalist. Overall, the region, with the exception of the Caribbean, has suffered an almost uninterrupted deterioration of press freedoms over the past five years, reaching its lowest point since the military dictatorships of the 1980s.

Hezbollah in Latin America: Implications for U.S. Security
Testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security
by Douglas Farah

Published on July 7th, 2011
Today the U.S. faces a significant and growing threat in the Western Hemisphere: the presence of Hezbollah and its primary sponsor, the government of Iran, with its full arsenal of intelligence and specialized military units of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Qods Force. The threat is not limited to the region and the Homeland alone, but more broadly its aims include an ability to hold the U.S. at risk in terms of exercising options in other theatres, most specifically with respect to Iran, Syria and the Middle East, including Israel.

Transnational Criminal Threats in El Salvador: New Trends and Lessons From Colombia
Published by the Western Hemisphere Security Analysis Center of Florida International University, Miami, Florida
by Douglas Farah

Published on September 7th, 2011
Since El Salvador’s civil war formally ended in 1992 the small Central American nation has undergone profound social changes and significant reforms. However, few changes have been as important or as devastating as the nation’s emergence as a central hub in the transnational criminal “pipeline” or series of recombinant, overlapping chains of routes and actors that illicit organizations use to traffic in drugs, money, weapons, human being, endangered animals and other products.

Narcoterrorism And the Long Reach of U.S. Law Enforcement
Testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade
by Douglas Farah

Published on October 12th, 2011
Over the past month Central American counter-narcotics intelligence forces began unraveling a massive money movement operation that included – for the first time in their experience – a mixing of funds from Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTOs); Chinese Triads; Russian transnational criminal organizations and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia—FARC), a designated terrorist entity and cocaine exporter.

Islamist Cyber Networks in Spanish-Speaking Latin America
Published by the Western Hemisphere Security Analysis Center of Florida International University, Miami, Florida
by Douglas Farah

Published on September 1st, 2011
Despite significant concern among policy, law enforcement and intelligence communities in the United States (U.S.) over the possible spread of radical Islamist thought throughout the world as part of a global jihad movement, there has been little investigation into the growing cyber networks in Latin America that promote strong anti-Semitic and anti-U.S. messages. This paper offers an overview of that network, focusing on the structure of Shi’ite websites that promote not only religious conversion but are also supportive of Iran—a designated State-sponsor of terrorism--,its nuclear program, Hezbollah and the ―Bolivarian revolution‖ led by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and his allies in Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua. There is also a smaller group of Sunni Muslim websites, mostly tied to the legacy organizations of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The U.S.‐Caribbean Shared Security Partnership: Responding to the Growth of Trafficking and Narcotics in the Caribbean
Testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
by Douglas Farah

Published on December 15th, 2011
Drug trafficking routes and networks are like water running downhill, they will always seek the path of least resistance. And, like a balloon, when pressure is applied in one area the displaced operations pop up in another. The $139 million, two-year Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI), in anticipation of the pressure being applied in Mexico and Colombia, is aimed at making it simultaneously more difficult to traffic cocaine and other illicit drugs through the Caribbean. But there are several significant roadblocks for the CBSI achieving its goals, in addition to the traditional issues of corruption, weak institutions, lack of rule of law, and lack of resources to fight traffickers who are well-resourced. and have multiple unguarded points of entry across the region. They cannot be addressed outside of the broader regional context of Latin America. The two most significant roadblocks are: the growing political and economic influence of Venezuela in the region; and the continuing existence of large offshore financial centers offering multiple services to a broad array of transnational criminal organizations.