Tuesday January 26, 2010
New Study on Ecuador's Growing Role with the FARC and Transnational Crime
My colleague at the International Assessment and Strategy Center Glenn Simpson and I just published a major new study on Ecuador's growing role as a sanctuary for the FARC and Mexican drug trafficking organizations and the regional implications of these developments.
Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa is a member of the Hugo Chávez-led Bolivarian Revolution, and has had an extraordinary political trajectory. The Belgian and U.S.-educated economist is often said to be "Chávez Lite," because he has not implemented some of the more aggressively-authoritarian measures of the other Bolivarian states.
But, as we document in "Ecuador at Risk: Drugs, Thugs and Guerrillas and the Citizens' Revolution," the FARC in Colombia, having been cleared from the center of the country, are increasingly relying on the Ecuador-Colombia border as a vital resupply region. The camp of senior FARC commander Raúl Reyes, killed in a Colombian attack on March 1, 2008, was in Ecuadorean territory.
Now, the FARC and Mexican drug cartels use Ecuador as a neutral meeting ground, further developing ties that strengthen both groups. Major FARC cocaine laboratories, as well as R&R camps, remain on the Ecuadorean side of the border.
In addition, Correa has developed relationships with Iranian banks under U.S. and U.N. sanction, a move that will help allow Iran to avoid international financial sanctions.
This is the second paper in our series on the effects of the Bolivarian Revolution. The first one, "Into the Abyss: Bolivia Under Evo Morales and the MAS," can be found here.
Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa is a member of the Hugo Chávez-led Bolivarian Revolution, and has had an extraordinary political trajectory. The Belgian and U.S.-educated economist is often said to be "Chávez Lite," because he has not implemented some of the more aggressively-authoritarian measures of the other Bolivarian states.
But, as we document in "Ecuador at Risk: Drugs, Thugs and Guerrillas and the Citizens' Revolution," the FARC in Colombia, having been cleared from the center of the country, are increasingly relying on the Ecuador-Colombia border as a vital resupply region. The camp of senior FARC commander Raúl Reyes, killed in a Colombian attack on March 1, 2008, was in Ecuadorean territory.
Now, the FARC and Mexican drug cartels use Ecuador as a neutral meeting ground, further developing ties that strengthen both groups. Major FARC cocaine laboratories, as well as R&R camps, remain on the Ecuadorean side of the border.
In addition, Correa has developed relationships with Iranian banks under U.S. and U.N. sanction, a move that will help allow Iran to avoid international financial sanctions.
This is the second paper in our series on the effects of the Bolivarian Revolution. The first one, "Into the Abyss: Bolivia Under Evo Morales and the MAS," can be found here.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH
Monday January 25, 2010
The Consolidation of Bolivarian Authoritarianism and Terrorist Ties
As Jackson Diehl writes in today's Washington Post, Hugo Chávez's version of the Bolivarian Revolution is in a deep crisis.
He is enough of a crisis that his pulled force RCTV off the air for refusing to carrying his endless and inane speeches en toto, even though they take hours of air time. Not that there is even the appearance now of freedom of the press, but the price to Chávez's already-sullied international image will be high.
However, I am not sure I share Diehl's optimism that the system is on its way to collapse. It would be in a normal world, but given Chávez's clear willingness to profit from the expanding cocaine trade through Venezuela, he has more of an economic slush fund to draw that could allow him to limp along and keep a deeply inefficient system running.
More evidence of Chávez's ties to terrorist groups is now in hand. The FARC and much smaller (though still declared Marxist) ELN (Ejército de Liberación Nacional - Army of National Liberation) have reached a ceasefire in order to stop killing each others' troops in the field.
The three meeting to reach an agreement of the two designated terrorist organizations were held in Venezuelan territory to discuss a truce, and were ultimately sign an agreement to jointly confront the Colombian government
Among the points discussed were how to bring the ELN more fully into the FARC's primary umbrella front group, the Movimiento Continental Bolivariano. The MCB publicly held its most recent plenary session in Caracas in December, and named senior FARC commander Alfonso Cano to its directorate.
How to the FARC and ELN support themselves? Primarily through drug trafficking (FARC) and kidnapping and extortion of foreign companies (ELN). Now, Chávez, in return for the safe haven and state support he provides, is able to reap part of the profits these terrorist groups generate.
So, in an ideal world, Chávez would be finished. But he may not be. Perhaps the most important thing, as Diehl noticed, is the growing willingness of other South American leaders to take on Chávez's authoritarism publicly. Like the cancer of not wanting to publicly hold accountable the "Big Men" of Africa (see Mugabe et al), the Latin American democratic nations have tolerated the abuses of Chávez, Ortega, Morales and Correa with an amazing bout of silence and moral cowardice.
Chile's new president Sebastián Piñera, has publicly called out the authoritarian regimes and stated his position that Chile does not view their regimes as the future of the hemisphere. Colombia, Peru, Panama and Honduras have to truck with the Bolivarians and Ecuador seems to be backing away from the once vice-like union with Venezuela.
Ultimately, taking away his international stature will hurt Chávez more than his economic crisis. He has a slush fund for his economy but not for the growing willingness to confront his thuggish regime.
He is enough of a crisis that his pulled force RCTV off the air for refusing to carrying his endless and inane speeches en toto, even though they take hours of air time. Not that there is even the appearance now of freedom of the press, but the price to Chávez's already-sullied international image will be high.
However, I am not sure I share Diehl's optimism that the system is on its way to collapse. It would be in a normal world, but given Chávez's clear willingness to profit from the expanding cocaine trade through Venezuela, he has more of an economic slush fund to draw that could allow him to limp along and keep a deeply inefficient system running.
More evidence of Chávez's ties to terrorist groups is now in hand. The FARC and much smaller (though still declared Marxist) ELN (Ejército de Liberación Nacional - Army of National Liberation) have reached a ceasefire in order to stop killing each others' troops in the field.
The three meeting to reach an agreement of the two designated terrorist organizations were held in Venezuelan territory to discuss a truce, and were ultimately sign an agreement to jointly confront the Colombian government
Among the points discussed were how to bring the ELN more fully into the FARC's primary umbrella front group, the Movimiento Continental Bolivariano. The MCB publicly held its most recent plenary session in Caracas in December, and named senior FARC commander Alfonso Cano to its directorate.
How to the FARC and ELN support themselves? Primarily through drug trafficking (FARC) and kidnapping and extortion of foreign companies (ELN). Now, Chávez, in return for the safe haven and state support he provides, is able to reap part of the profits these terrorist groups generate.
So, in an ideal world, Chávez would be finished. But he may not be. Perhaps the most important thing, as Diehl noticed, is the growing willingness of other South American leaders to take on Chávez's authoritarism publicly. Like the cancer of not wanting to publicly hold accountable the "Big Men" of Africa (see Mugabe et al), the Latin American democratic nations have tolerated the abuses of Chávez, Ortega, Morales and Correa with an amazing bout of silence and moral cowardice.
Chile's new president Sebastián Piñera, has publicly called out the authoritarian regimes and stated his position that Chile does not view their regimes as the future of the hemisphere. Colombia, Peru, Panama and Honduras have to truck with the Bolivarians and Ecuador seems to be backing away from the once vice-like union with Venezuela.
Ultimately, taking away his international stature will hurt Chávez more than his economic crisis. He has a slush fund for his economy but not for the growing willingness to confront his thuggish regime.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH
Wednesday January 20, 2010
Tariq Ramadan To Get U.S. Visa
The Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report broke the story that the U.S. State Department Tariq Ramadan's ban from entering the United States. Ramadan , an influential European leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who was long banned because of alleged ties to terrorist activity.
The lifting of the ban, ordered by Secretary of State Clinton, is a significant victory for the Brotherhood, who has sought to frame the issue of Ramadan's exclusion as one of academic freedom rather one of national security. Ramadan was ecstatic, saying on his blog:
Today’s decision reflects the Obama administration’s willingness to reopen the United States to the rest of the world, and to permit critical debate. Coming after nearly six years of inquiry and investigation, Secretary Clinton’s order confirms what I have affirmed and reaffirmed from day one: the first accusations of terrorist connections (subsequently dropped), then donations to Palestinian solidarity groups, were nothing more than a pretense to prohibit me from speaking critically about American government policy on American soil. The decision brings to an end a dark period in American politics that saw security considerations invoked to block critical debate through a policy of exclusion and baseless allegation. Today I am delighted at the decision.
The truth of the grandson of Hassan al Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, is far more complex, and there is little doubt that, in the end, he is an agent of radicalization rather than peace. A rock star in the European Muslim scene, Ramadan, despite weak academic credentials, has been offered a teaching position at Notre Dame University.
As noted in this extensive review of "Brother Tarik: The Doublespeak of Tarik Ramadan," by French journalist Caroline Fourest, the definitive look at Ramadan's cannon, he is intent on saying one thing to Western audiences while something else to his followers. They often do not match up.
This is typical of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is eager to use the freedoms that would never exist under the caliphate is so desires to create, in order to promote its totalitarian vision. It demands the right to be heard while being unequivocal in its unwillingness to view as equal anyone who does not embrace its view radical Islamism. While it is willing to use the democratic process to achieve its goals, often putting it at odds with militantly violent groups such as al Qaeda, in the end the Brotherhood and Osama bin Laden share an identical vision of what the world should look like under Allah's rule.
In keeping with this, Ramadan's choice of language is also interesting (al Qaeda attacks are "interventions," jihad is entirely peaceful, Anwar Sadat was not assassinated by the Muslim Brotherhood but "executed," etc.) His numerous lies have been exposed exposed, his refusal to condemn stoning as a death sentence well documented and his convenient belief that only Muslims can understand the Koran has been rehashed.
But as Fourest, who did not expect to become convinced of Ramadan's radicalism and duplicity, asks: "Do we have a providential man we can expect to modernize Islam and encourage dialogue between civilizations? The answer is no and it is high time we put an end to our naivete, lest we become accomplices."
The lifting of the ban, ordered by Secretary of State Clinton, is a significant victory for the Brotherhood, who has sought to frame the issue of Ramadan's exclusion as one of academic freedom rather one of national security. Ramadan was ecstatic, saying on his blog:
Today’s decision reflects the Obama administration’s willingness to reopen the United States to the rest of the world, and to permit critical debate. Coming after nearly six years of inquiry and investigation, Secretary Clinton’s order confirms what I have affirmed and reaffirmed from day one: the first accusations of terrorist connections (subsequently dropped), then donations to Palestinian solidarity groups, were nothing more than a pretense to prohibit me from speaking critically about American government policy on American soil. The decision brings to an end a dark period in American politics that saw security considerations invoked to block critical debate through a policy of exclusion and baseless allegation. Today I am delighted at the decision.
The truth of the grandson of Hassan al Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, is far more complex, and there is little doubt that, in the end, he is an agent of radicalization rather than peace. A rock star in the European Muslim scene, Ramadan, despite weak academic credentials, has been offered a teaching position at Notre Dame University.
As noted in this extensive review of "Brother Tarik: The Doublespeak of Tarik Ramadan," by French journalist Caroline Fourest, the definitive look at Ramadan's cannon, he is intent on saying one thing to Western audiences while something else to his followers. They often do not match up.
This is typical of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is eager to use the freedoms that would never exist under the caliphate is so desires to create, in order to promote its totalitarian vision. It demands the right to be heard while being unequivocal in its unwillingness to view as equal anyone who does not embrace its view radical Islamism. While it is willing to use the democratic process to achieve its goals, often putting it at odds with militantly violent groups such as al Qaeda, in the end the Brotherhood and Osama bin Laden share an identical vision of what the world should look like under Allah's rule.
In keeping with this, Ramadan's choice of language is also interesting (al Qaeda attacks are "interventions," jihad is entirely peaceful, Anwar Sadat was not assassinated by the Muslim Brotherhood but "executed," etc.) His numerous lies have been exposed exposed, his refusal to condemn stoning as a death sentence well documented and his convenient belief that only Muslims can understand the Koran has been rehashed.
But as Fourest, who did not expect to become convinced of Ramadan's radicalism and duplicity, asks: "Do we have a providential man we can expect to modernize Islam and encourage dialogue between civilizations? The answer is no and it is high time we put an end to our naivete, lest we become accomplices."
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH
Wednesday January 13, 2010
Jihadists and the "Wretched of the Earth"
One of the striking things in the three most recent high profile jihadist attacks -- the "Underpants Bomber," the Ft. Hood assassin and the attacker on the CIA base in Afghanistan -- has been the attackers themselves.
While many studying terrorism have understood that the threat is not from the dispossessed of the earth, but from an educated elite in the semi-Westernized (or completely Westernized) world who radicalize in different ways.
Yet there is still a policy, going back many years and continued now, that aims at a completely different social and economic demographic -- the poor and wretched of the earth who are believed to be angry at the U.S. and the West for its policies in the Middle East.
We spend vast amounts of money to convince one group that we have virtually no way to reach that they should like us, while having little strategy to deal with those who have repeatedly shown themselves to be the greater danger.
Yet we have Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a a doctor who was the son of middle-class, English-speaking Jordanians; Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who grew up in a wealthy Nigerian family and studied at University College London; and Nidal Hasan, who was born in Arlington, graduated from Virginia Tech and did his psychiatric residency at Walter Reed.
One of the chief radicalizing influences in the case of the latter two was Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen who did not rise out of the teeming ghettos or dirt-poor villages, but family that lived in the United States, a country he returned to in order to study at George Washington University.
Perhaps this will put an end to the myth of the poor and wretched jihadist waging a form of religious class struggle.
As Anne Applebaum wrote in the Washington Post, we are seeing a "international jihadi elite" that resembles international elites of the Bolshevik days who were no more working class than the Tsar. As she notes:
These people are not the wretched of the Earth. Nor do they have much in common, sociologically speaking, with the illiterate warlords of Waziristan. They haven't emerged from repressive Islamic societies such as Iran, or been forced to live under extreme forms of sharia law, as in Saudi Arabia. On the contrary, they are children of ambitious, "Westernized" parents who sacrificed for their education -- though they are often people who, for one reason or another, didn't "make it," or didn't feel comfortable, in their respective societies.
What makes this slice of Islamists so difficult to counter is that they move with ease in Western societies, acquire passports or citizenship in countries that do not arouse suspicion, and have no ethical difficulties in hiding their Islamist beliefs if necessary to advance the cause of
How to counter this is something we should spend much more time on than trying to figure out how to get the average Yemeni to embrace Western liberal democracy.
One of the fascinating things to note is the perceived affinity by many of the international jihadists with the radical left or radical right. Defne Bayrak, the wife of al Balawi, wrote a book titled "Bin Laden: Che Guevara of the East," apparently trying to link the two to liberation struggles of the poor. Iran's Ahmadinejad and Venezuela's Hugo Chávez (along with his acolyte, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega) regularly link the authoritarian governments of the Bolivarian revolution with the repressive Muslim revolution of Iran.
On the other side, one of the great deniers of the Holocaust was Ahmed Hubber, a neo-Nazi leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe, and others like him.
It is interesting to note that Hubber, like Chávez and those who claim the mantle of the revolutionary left, was welcomed by Ahmadinejad. Perhaps that is because all three totalitarian tendencies, from the neo-Nazi to the 21st Century Socialism to Islamism, have more in common than any of them would care to recognize.
While many studying terrorism have understood that the threat is not from the dispossessed of the earth, but from an educated elite in the semi-Westernized (or completely Westernized) world who radicalize in different ways.
Yet there is still a policy, going back many years and continued now, that aims at a completely different social and economic demographic -- the poor and wretched of the earth who are believed to be angry at the U.S. and the West for its policies in the Middle East.
We spend vast amounts of money to convince one group that we have virtually no way to reach that they should like us, while having little strategy to deal with those who have repeatedly shown themselves to be the greater danger.
Yet we have Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a a doctor who was the son of middle-class, English-speaking Jordanians; Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who grew up in a wealthy Nigerian family and studied at University College London; and Nidal Hasan, who was born in Arlington, graduated from Virginia Tech and did his psychiatric residency at Walter Reed.
One of the chief radicalizing influences in the case of the latter two was Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen who did not rise out of the teeming ghettos or dirt-poor villages, but family that lived in the United States, a country he returned to in order to study at George Washington University.
Perhaps this will put an end to the myth of the poor and wretched jihadist waging a form of religious class struggle.
As Anne Applebaum wrote in the Washington Post, we are seeing a "international jihadi elite" that resembles international elites of the Bolshevik days who were no more working class than the Tsar. As she notes:
These people are not the wretched of the Earth. Nor do they have much in common, sociologically speaking, with the illiterate warlords of Waziristan. They haven't emerged from repressive Islamic societies such as Iran, or been forced to live under extreme forms of sharia law, as in Saudi Arabia. On the contrary, they are children of ambitious, "Westernized" parents who sacrificed for their education -- though they are often people who, for one reason or another, didn't "make it," or didn't feel comfortable, in their respective societies.
What makes this slice of Islamists so difficult to counter is that they move with ease in Western societies, acquire passports or citizenship in countries that do not arouse suspicion, and have no ethical difficulties in hiding their Islamist beliefs if necessary to advance the cause of
How to counter this is something we should spend much more time on than trying to figure out how to get the average Yemeni to embrace Western liberal democracy.
One of the fascinating things to note is the perceived affinity by many of the international jihadists with the radical left or radical right. Defne Bayrak, the wife of al Balawi, wrote a book titled "Bin Laden: Che Guevara of the East," apparently trying to link the two to liberation struggles of the poor. Iran's Ahmadinejad and Venezuela's Hugo Chávez (along with his acolyte, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega) regularly link the authoritarian governments of the Bolivarian revolution with the repressive Muslim revolution of Iran.
On the other side, one of the great deniers of the Holocaust was Ahmed Hubber, a neo-Nazi leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe, and others like him.
It is interesting to note that Hubber, like Chávez and those who claim the mantle of the revolutionary left, was welcomed by Ahmadinejad. Perhaps that is because all three totalitarian tendencies, from the neo-Nazi to the 21st Century Socialism to Islamism, have more in common than any of them would care to recognize.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH
Friday January 8, 2010
The Intelligence Conundrum in Terrorism Cases
My former colleague and friend David Ignatius offered some valuable insights into the problems in the intelligence community that highlight one of the most difficult aspects to deal with:How to gather the right information and get it to the right people? And why isn't the counter-intelligence capabilities of non-state armed actors taken seriously?
The first problem has been building for some time and is likely to get worse before it gets better. Volume rather than quality is often a driving force in intelligence collection, because no one ever wants to be the one that did not report an important link. So everything, from mundane to serious, and the vast majority in between, is not only put into the system but often is left to the highest levels to sift through. This renders the entire process inefficient, because no one can sort through the volume of information flowing in and make intelligent decisions.
As Ignatius noted:
"The problem is that the system is clogged with information. Most of it isn't of interest, but people are afraid not to put it in," explains one agency veteran. The Counterterrorism Center is supposed to review more than 120 databases; senior officials there are supposed to process 10,000 to 12,000 pieces of information a day; large stations can receive several thousand cables a day. No wonder the real threats get lost in the noise.
What has the solution? Much of it is cultural and revolves around leadership. When people are afraid of making mistakes and work avoid them, rather than to a job and find solutions, you get a machine that performs with technical efficiency but with a minimum threshold for risk. Too much risk, of course, also leads to problems, but we are not close to that at this point.
Having spent years as a foreign correspondent, I liken what I see to a reporter abroad, with a good or bad editor back home (and I have had both.) The good ones provided guidance on what would be of interest but trusted the people in the field to do their job and cover issues largely based on the correspondent's initiative and evaluation of what was important.
The selection process was rigorous to make sure the person in the field was worthy of such trust. If a reporter went out to the bush and something happened far away and he couldn't get there (as happened with me more than once) it was viewed as an acceptable risk to get original stories from isolated places. If the trust proved ill-founded, the person could be recalled and that was it.
The bad ones tried to micro-manage coverage, rewrite stories to serve their preconceived ideas of what was happening and kept correspondents running to try to match every story in the New York Times, The Boston Globe and everyone else. The result was the correspondent was tied town in the capital because he/she had to worry more about what other people wrote and what the editor wanted than to about actually learning, acquiring and writing good information based on a broad understanding.
The IC needs more good editor types: Those who can pick good people and trust them to run within broad guidelines clearly understood. This will mean that there is more risk and individual accountability. It will also mean that somethings may be missed. But it beats the odds of someone figuring out what of the thousands or millions of unconnected bits floating around should be connected.
On the al Qaeda counter-terrorism issue, I think we are largely still blinded by idea that these non-state actors, because they have few resources and are generally low-tech, are stupid. They are not. They study, they plan and run operations against their enemy - us. And they are good at it. That is why Europeans and Americans are being recruited intensively. They don't fit any profile in terms of looks or language. They probe defenses, plan patiently and strike when they can. it is time to take them as seriously as we take state actors from China, Russia and elsewhere. If we don't we will pay a high price.
The first problem has been building for some time and is likely to get worse before it gets better. Volume rather than quality is often a driving force in intelligence collection, because no one ever wants to be the one that did not report an important link. So everything, from mundane to serious, and the vast majority in between, is not only put into the system but often is left to the highest levels to sift through. This renders the entire process inefficient, because no one can sort through the volume of information flowing in and make intelligent decisions.
As Ignatius noted:
"The problem is that the system is clogged with information. Most of it isn't of interest, but people are afraid not to put it in," explains one agency veteran. The Counterterrorism Center is supposed to review more than 120 databases; senior officials there are supposed to process 10,000 to 12,000 pieces of information a day; large stations can receive several thousand cables a day. No wonder the real threats get lost in the noise.
What has the solution? Much of it is cultural and revolves around leadership. When people are afraid of making mistakes and work avoid them, rather than to a job and find solutions, you get a machine that performs with technical efficiency but with a minimum threshold for risk. Too much risk, of course, also leads to problems, but we are not close to that at this point.
Having spent years as a foreign correspondent, I liken what I see to a reporter abroad, with a good or bad editor back home (and I have had both.) The good ones provided guidance on what would be of interest but trusted the people in the field to do their job and cover issues largely based on the correspondent's initiative and evaluation of what was important.
The selection process was rigorous to make sure the person in the field was worthy of such trust. If a reporter went out to the bush and something happened far away and he couldn't get there (as happened with me more than once) it was viewed as an acceptable risk to get original stories from isolated places. If the trust proved ill-founded, the person could be recalled and that was it.
The bad ones tried to micro-manage coverage, rewrite stories to serve their preconceived ideas of what was happening and kept correspondents running to try to match every story in the New York Times, The Boston Globe and everyone else. The result was the correspondent was tied town in the capital because he/she had to worry more about what other people wrote and what the editor wanted than to about actually learning, acquiring and writing good information based on a broad understanding.
The IC needs more good editor types: Those who can pick good people and trust them to run within broad guidelines clearly understood. This will mean that there is more risk and individual accountability. It will also mean that somethings may be missed. But it beats the odds of someone figuring out what of the thousands or millions of unconnected bits floating around should be connected.
On the al Qaeda counter-terrorism issue, I think we are largely still blinded by idea that these non-state actors, because they have few resources and are generally low-tech, are stupid. They are not. They study, they plan and run operations against their enemy - us. And they are good at it. That is why Europeans and Americans are being recruited intensively. They don't fit any profile in terms of looks or language. They probe defenses, plan patiently and strike when they can. it is time to take them as seriously as we take state actors from China, Russia and elsewhere. If we don't we will pay a high price.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH