The U.S. news media has been almost completely entranced by the pontificating and posturing at the conventions of its two major political parties the past week or so. This has prevented them from covering the fact that events overseas demonstrate that the global Jihadist movement is NOT on its heels and NOT on the run. Nor is it contained.
First, on Thursday, 21 July, a British airman narrowly escaped an abduction at knifepoint outside Royal Air Force Station Marham. That particular base is home to a RAF squadron of Tornado bombers that deployed to the Middle East and conducted air strikes against the Islamic State.
The RAF airman was jogging along a road near the base when he was accosted by two men driving a vehicle along the same road. Fortunately, he was able to fight off his attackers who then fled. The attackers were described as “Asian,” which is a horribly misleading British media euphemism for Middle Eastern or Pakistani/Indian, and NOT Oriental as most people associate with the term Asian today.
The British military has been on alert for an attack against personnel inside the UK since Fusilier Lee Rigby was beheaded outside Woolwich barracks, in southeast London by two Jihadis.
There are now reports that the vehicle driven by the two attackers was observed making “dry runs” near the base before the attempted snatch operation.
Jihadi communiques have mentioned this type of attack repeatedly and the Islamic State and Al Qaeda have both issued calls for attacks on military personnel in the West and for attacks using knives and other edged weapons.
Then, on the same day, it was announced that Brazilian authorities had arrested 10 people in an apparent plot to carry out an Islamic State-inspired attack on the upcoming Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro.
The group of ten were described as a “disorganized cell” that was communicating with each other online to plan attacks. The Brazilian federal police moved in on the Jihadis when they began to make plans to purchase firearms.
While the media has sought to downplay the significance of this development, it should be pointed out that 10 “disorganized” people with firearms can create a lot of death and destruction.
The federal police are concentrating their monitoring on the infamous “tri-border” region that we have covered before. This is a nearly lawless region with a large Muslim population which has been known to be a haven for HAMAS, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda members in the past.
The lawless “Tri-Border Area” in South America
In a related development, a Brazilian Jihadist group calling itself “Ansar al-Khilafah Brazil” pledged allegiance to the Islamic State last week as well, signaling an intention to target the Olympics, which are defended by 85,000 police and military personnel.
In addition, the SITE Intelligence Group reports that Jihadists have been broadcasting advice for individual Jihadis via social media and mobile devices to carry out attacks during the Olympics, including the use of toy drones.
As if all this was not enough, the world’s attention then swung to Germany, where a series of 4 attacks has initiated that country into the group of Western nations targeted directly by individual Jihadi attacks.
The first attack came on 19 July in the form of an axe attack on train passengers, not unlike the Jihadi attack in Queens, New York in October 2014:
The attacker in Germany was a 17-year old Afghan refugee. Three people were injured in the attack and the Afghan Jihadi was shot dead by German police.
Riaz Khan Ahmadzai, who attacked passengers on a German train on 19 July
But the Jihadi violence was not over in Germany. Even before the next attack however–and we believe that this is significant–the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade issued a travel advisory for Germany, warning that the threat of terrorism in Germany “remains high and further attacks are likely.”
What did the Australians know that the rest of the world was ignoring?
Within a few hours of the Australian bulletin, the news broke that shots had been fired at a shopping center in Munich.
After much initial confusion, it was discovered that a German-Iranian had killed 9 innocent victims and wounded 16 others with a pistol.
German authorities are still trying to distance this attack from any Jihadist motive, but their efforts are almost sure to fail. Multiple witnesses claim they heard the shooter shout “Allah u Akbar” during the course of the attack. The fact that the shooter was unknown previously to German security and intelligence services and was not a member of a known terrorist group is of no comfort whatsoever in this new age of individual Jihad.
Moreover, there is some evidence to indicate that the Germans are just plain wrong about the shooter, one Ali Sonboly.
Munich Shopping Mall Shooter’s Facebook Page
Note that the image above prominently features the Turkish flag, not the Iranian flag and at least one observer makes the point that Sonboly was probably Syrian, not Iranian…
Again in Germany, yesterday, 24 July, a Syrian refugee carried out a machete attack outside a kebab restaurant in Reutlingen, Germany. Once again, German officials downplayed any possible Jihadist motive in the attack, which left a 45 year old Polish woman dead. But the fact that it occurred in the midst of a rash of similar attacks and that it involved an edged weapon, something the Islamic State has specifically recommended in communiques, is beyond merely suspicious. Reports linking the two romantically do not explain the other two individuals the Syrian wounded in the attack.
The dead victim of the machete attack in Germany on 24 July 2016
Fortunately a good samaritan driving a BMW ran over the machete wielder before he could make his escape.
Then, just hours after the machete attack, an Islamikaze bomber set off an IED outside a music festival in Ansbach, Germany, killing himself and injuring 15 others. Once again, the attacker was a 27-year old Syrian refugee. He had tried to gain access to the music festival but was refused admission. He then set off his bomb. Had he been able to get into the music festival, casualties would almost certainly have been greater.
This time the German officials could not deny the Jihadist motive. A search of the man’s living quarters and belongings uncovered a video in which he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and the Islamic State’s media arm, Islamic State Amaq, confirmed the attack as a martyrdom operation carried out by an Islamic State soldier in response to its calls to target the Western coalition fighting against it.
Germany is still on edge and its Interior Ministry has ordered increased security for airports and train stations (but not music festivals or restaurants evidently).
If all this was not enough, the most horrific Islamic State attack of all came on the 23rd of July in Kabul, Afghanistan, where 3 Islamikaze bombers attacked a protest killing 80 and wounding 236…
We can only hope that the elected leaders here in America recognize the frenetic pace of Jihadi activity worldwide and realize their duty to make defeating Jihad the number 1 national priority.
With so many Jihadist threats metastasizing around the world, it’s getting tough to keep track. There are more Jihadists fighting in more countries than ever before. Here are just a few examples:
The Islamic State
HAMAS/Islamic Jihad in Israel
Boko Haram in west Africa
Al Shabaab in east Africa
Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
Al Qaeda on the Indian Subcontinent
The Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan
Lashkar e Taiba in India and Pakistan
Hezbollah in Lebanon
Jemaah Islamiyah in Malaysia and Indonesia
Jamaat–ul–Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB)
Ansar al Sharia in Libya
Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines
Not long ago, America’s attention was focused on our porous southern border when thousands of unaccompanied minors were flooding across at an orchestrated invitation signaled by President Obama. That story seems to have been largely forgotten, except by people in border states.
Now, however, with President Obama’s unilateral executive action on illegal immigration, the border will likely come back into focus.
When the Mexican border was the top of the news, it served as a reminder that our southern border is almost completely unsecure. And there have been some reminders mixed in about the potential for a terrorist threat from south of the border, such as James O’Keefe of Project Veritas wading across the Rio Grande dressed like Osama Bin Laden.
But the Jihadist threat from south of the border is not new. It has been discussed since before 9/11. The Jihadist threat on the southern border is real and it is multifaceted.
For instance in May 2001, former Mexican National security adviser and ambassador to the United Nations, Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, reported, that ‘Islamic terrorist groups are using Mexico as a refuge.’
Adolfo Aguilar Zinser
There is no way to estimate how many jihadists may already have crossed into the U.S. from Mexico. But the time to play politics with the border issue is long past. The shallow sloganeering and race-baiting that have dominated the national debate about border controls should be recognized as what they are: hindrances to sane and sensible national defense measures.
SIA-OTMs
OTM is an acronym for illegal aliens who are ‘Other Than Mexican’ — SIA stands for ‘Special Interest Aliens’ from 34 terrorist nations like Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen.
Special Interest Alien Countries of Origin
Mexicans trying to enter the U.S. illegally are often simply processed at the border and sent back. But Mexico won’t allow us to send citizens from other countries back through Mexico, and under U.S. law, they’re entitled to a formal deportation hearing. The immigration service lacks beds to hold them, so the vast majority of OTMs are released from custody and asked to voluntarily return for their court date.
In 2005 alone, there were estimated to be 71,000 such OTM fugitives.
From 2008-2010, an estimated 180,000 OTMs (Other Than Mexicans) were believed to have crossed the border illegally. In that same period, 1,918 “Special Interest” OTMs were apprehended on the border. It is generally believed that for every illegal alien apprehended at the border, there are several who elude border security and are not apprehended.
It has become increasingly common for Muslims in Mexico to change their Islamic surnames to Hispanic sounding names to facilitate moving across the border. Apologists claim this is simply to avoid discrimination.
Perhaps not coincidentally, there has been a noticeable proliferation of Salafist mosques in Latin America since the early 1990s and an increasing proselytization campaign on the part of Wahhabi and Saudi-funded nongovernmental organizations like the World Assembly for Muslim Youth (WAMY). It is worth mentioning that WAMY’s U.S. operations were shut down by the Justice Department due to the organization’s massive material support for Jihad.
The Jihadi-Cartel Relationship
Drug cartels have been involved in trafficking Al Qaeda, Al Shabaab and Hezbollah operatives into the US.
99.9 percent of the time, the media line is that 99.9 percent of the people crossing our Southern border are just poor innocents looking for work and a meager wage. Evaluated in the most simplistic terms, this is of course, partly true. But the more complex reality isn’t that simple or sanitary.
The majority of border crossers are NOT economic immigrants.
An examination of anecdotes about general enforcement conditions on the U.S.-Mexican border paint a picture that indicates that America has not taken the steps necessary to defend itself from Jihadi infiltration.
For instance, there are severe constraints on border enforcement personnel. The Border Patrol is forbidden from patrolling on federal land, opening large swathes of territory by default. Demoralized Border Patrol officers also report receiving instructions to avoid detaining and processing illegal aliens.
Against these constraints, our border and immigration enforcement personnel are going up against a robust, sophisticated alliance of drug cartels and Jihadis.
Cartels are buying real estate on both sides of the border to set up staging areas and camps. The cartels employ high-tech comm gear superior to that in the hands of US law enforcement. Cartels and “coyotes” employ scouts and snipers on the high ground along trafficking routes—as far north as Phoenix.
Border enforcement personnel report that the Mexican army has in fact provided surveillance and cover fire FOR traffickers on more than one occasion.
Arizona ranchers are afraid to use their cell phones in the open because cartel snipers might think they are calling in reports to law enforcement and kill them. Even U.S. law and border enforcement personnel are careful about using communications gear in the open on the southern border. It is believed that the cartels have snipers and scouts on the high ground all the way to Phoenix.
Anecdotal Evidence of Jihadi Activity on the Southern Border Over the Years
In an infamous YouTube video, a Muslim cleric in Kuwait, Abdullah al-Nafsi, in a sermon in his mosque said that “there is no need for airplanes and planning; one man with the courage to carry a suitcase of anthrax through the tunnels from Mexico to the United States could kill 330,000 Americans in one hour.”
In June 2004, the US Border Patrol arrested 77 “Middle Eastern” men attempting to cross the border from Mexico illegally.
In October 2004, US intelligence officials received reports that 25 Chechans had illegally crossed into Arizona from Mexico.
In December 2004, a Bangladeshi Muslim named Fakhrul Islam, was arrested crossing the southern border from Mexico in the company of the Central American gang MS-13.
MS-13 members
In January 2005, two Hamas operatives, Mahmoud Khalil and Ziad Saleh, were arrested as part of a criminal enterprise in Los Angeles. Both had entered the U.S. after paying a smuggler $10,000 each to take them across the border.
In September 2007, Texas’ top homeland security official, Steve McCraw, told the El Paso Times that terrorists with ties to Hezbollah, Hamas and Al Qaeda had been arrested crossing the Texas border with Mexico in recent years.
In November 2007, the FBI issued an advisory about a plan by jihadists in league with Mexican drug lords to cross the border via underground tunnels and attack the intelligence training center at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, twenty miles from the border with Mexico. “The Afghanis and Iraqis,” one official explained, paid the Mexicans $20,000 or “the equivalent in weapons” for their help in getting into the U.S., and “shaved their beards so as not to appear to be Middle Easterners.”
In February 2008, three Afghanis were arrested at an international airport in India for traveling on forged Mexican passports.
A 2010 GAO report detailed the ease with which WMD might be smuggled across the southern border. In a simulation exercise conducted by intelligence and law enforcement agencies, in three states, investigators were able to cross undetected, successfully simulating the cross-border movement of radioactive materials or other contraband into the United States.
ISIS?
Most recently, the possibility that ISIS terrorists could be exploiting our southern border has been raised. While this possibility absolutely exists, this aspect of the threat is still in the realm of the theoretical.
Governor Rick Perry of Texas discussed it recently, as did the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dempsey.
Joshua Katz, an Army veteran and former CIA operations officer who served as Senior Policy Advisor to the Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee said it is “very, very, true” that ISIS may have crossed the southern border.
General Dempsey’s comments are much more significant. Dempsey said that ISIS was an immediate threat due to open borders and immigration issues. General Dempsey was actually referring to Europe, but…he could have easily been talking about the US.
Al Qaeda on the Southern Border
The Al Qaeda threat in Latin America has been well documented:
On June 30, 2004 it was announced by the Honduran Security Ministry that high-ranking Al Qaeda operative Adnān Shukrī Jumaʿah (Adnan Gulshair el Shukrijumah) had been in Honduras during the previous month meeting with members of the MS13 street gang. He is also believed to have conducted surveillance of the Panama Canal. He is still one of the most wanted terrorists in the world. ( He happens to be the son of an Imam from Miramar, FL incidentally)
Adnan Gulshair el Shukrijumah
In July 2004, a woman named Farida Goolam Mohamed Ahmed was arrested at a Texas airport boarding a flight to New York after she either walked or swam across the Mexican border into Texas. According to the Washington Post, she was connected to a Pakistani terrorist group and was believed to be ferrying instructions to U.S.-based Al Qaeda operatives.
Farida Goolam Mohamed Ahmed
In November 2004, captured Al Qaeda Egyptian Jihadist Sharif al-Masri told US interrogators that Al Qaeda sought to exploit the US’s porous southern border and possibly smuggle radiological material across it from Mexico.
Sharif al-Masri
In February 2005, Porter Goss, the director of central intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that Al Qaeda had considered infiltrating the United States through the Mexican border.
In February 2005, Adm. James M. Loy, the deputy secretary of homeland security testified before Congress that intelligence “strongly suggests” that Al Qaeda operatives have considered using the Mexican border as an entry point. Admiral Loy cited recent information from investigations and detentions as the basis for his concern about the Mexican border. He added, “Several Al Qaeda leaders believe operatives can pay their way into the country through Mexico and also believe illegal entry is more advantageous than legal entry for operational security reasons.”
Also in 2005, FBI Director Robert Mueller’s congressional testimony indicated that “there are individuals from countries with known Al Qaeda connections who are changing their Islamic surnames to Hispanic-sounding names and obtaining false Hispanic identities, learning to speak Spanish and pretending to be Hispanic.”
In November 2005, Texas Congressman John Culberson described on national TV how an Iraqi al-Qaeda operative on the terror watch list was captured living near the Mexico-Texas border.
Al Shabaab on the Southern Border
The east African Jihadist organization Al Shabaab has been discovered to have a footprint in Mexico. They are receiving Mexican language and cultural assimilation training, have been discovered to have a relationship of convenience with the Mexican drug cartels, and have been smuggling their operatives into the United States to raise money and to recruit members to their cause:
In 2010, a man named Ahmed Muhammad Dhakane allegedly secreted “hundreds of people” — including Somalis believed to be associated with Al Shabaab — into the United States. Prior to arriving to Congress, Congressman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) worked as chief of counterterrorism in the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Western District of Texas — part of the Lone Star State that borders with Mexico. McCaul’s statement on this incident is chilling: “To this day we do not know where those 300 Somalis are … We do know they are in the United States.”
Ahmed Muhammad Dhakane
In May 2010, the DHS sent an alert to Texas law enforcement to be on the lookout for a suspected member of Al Shabaab suspected of entering Texas from Mexico.
In June 2010, Mexican Marines raided a house occupied by an Al Shabaab member in Mexico City, uncovering a large cache of explosives reportedly to be used in an attack on the US embassy, which was less than a mile away.
Hezbollah on the Southern Border
The Iranian-backed Shia Jihadist terrorist group Hezbollah is probably the biggest threat on the southern border:
In February 2001, Mahmoud Kourani (the brother of Hezbollah’s security chief in southern Lebanon) came across the border from Tijuana into California in the trunk of a car, after bribing a Mexican embassy official in Beirut to get a visa. He eventually settled in Dearborn, Michigan. Kourani had received training in weapons, intelligence, and spycraft in Iran.
Mahmoud Kourani
In December 2002, Salim Boughader was arrested for smuggling 200 Lebanese, including Hezbollah operatives, across the border from Tiajuana into California. Boughader had previously worked for Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV satellite network.
Salim Boughader
In April 2006, FBI Director Robert Muller announced that the Iranian-backed Hezbollah had succeeded in smuggling operatives across the Mexican border into the U.S. Mr. Muller claimed the FBI had dismantled the smuggling ring, identified the people who had been smuggled in and “addressed” them. Or at least “addressed” those we knew about. Or something.
In July 2010, Mexican authorities announced that they had broken up a Hezbollah network operating in their country.
An indictment was handed down on August 30, 2010 by the Southern District Court of New York that showed a connection between Hezbollah and the drug cartels that violently plague the U.S.-Mexico border. In short, a well-known international arms dealer was trying to orchestrate an arms-for-drugs deal in which cocaine from FARC – the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which works with Mexican drug cartels to take cocaine into America – would be traded for thousands of weapons housed by a Hezbollah operative in Mexico.
Michael Braun, a former Drug Enforcement Administration chief of operations, has even been quoted as saying, “Hezbollah relies on the same criminal weapons smugglers, document traffickers and transportation experts as the drug cartels. … They work together; they rely on the same shadow facilitators. One way or another, they are all connected.”
In February 2012, Braun testified before Congress that Hezbollah, had developed strong, sophisticated relationships with Mexican drug cartels: “And by developing those relations it provided them with the ability to operate far from home in our neighborhood and on our doorstep.”
In September 2012, three members of Hezbollah–including a US citizen named Rafic Mohammad Labboun Allaboun–were arrested in Merida, Mexico and turned over the US authorities. Allaboun was carrying a fake passport identifying him as a citizen of Belize at the time of arrest. Once a prominent Muslim leader in Northern California, Labboun spent over two years in prison for credit card fraud. Authorities suspected that the $100,000 in credit card fraud was linked to Hezbollah’s money laundering activities.
Fake Belize passport used by Hezbollah terrorist Rafic Mohammad Labboun Allaboun arrested in Mexico
What all this adds up to is that the American people are being sold a bill of goods.
President Obama claims that he is taking unilateral executive action to “reform” immigration, but the reality is that the most pressing need for true reform is border security and there has been no action on that issue whatsoever.
This is despite the fact that there is a true national security threat on the southern border. Our Jihadist enemies have openly discussed this vulnerability and have already exploited it in documented cases. Pundits like Geraldo Rivera who go on national television and declare that there has never been a single credible report of a terrorist threat on the southern border are either ignorant or dishonest.
The American people are right to be concerned about the vulnerability of our porous, undefended borders. Open borders in the age of global Jihad are insanity.
There is mounting evidence that the global Jihadist insurgency is fully entrenched in the USA.
Note that it makes little difference if the perpetrators are members of a previously known terrorist organization (such as Al Qaeda or Hezbollah) or are lone actors. Actually, it DOES make a difference. It is difficult to combat a shadowy organization like Al Qaeda, but it is far more difficult to combat lone wolf actors. Al Qaeda may be difficult to infiltrate and gather intelligence on, but how do we “infiltrate” a lone Jihadist?
This is symptomatic of a revolutionary Jihadist subculture metastasizing within the American Muslim community, especially within some of its mosques and organizations. This revolutionary subculture has produced an atmosphere in which Jihadis are inspired to act violently on their own, as well as part of organizations.
This is a very dangerous and volatile situation.
Over the last 12 months alone, we have been provided with a stack of evidence of the Jihadist insurgency inside America. Americans have largely ignored this evidence, or at least failed to “connect the dots.” Seemingly completely unrelated cases do in fact have common threads: they are acts of Jihad. And these are not in actuality isolated incidents, but rather are linked by a common ideology that animates and motivates Jihadis everywhere….it’s only some that respond with actual, overt violent action, but many others are inspired to support passively, with words only, or financially. This is a global movement with a unified core ideology and doctrine rooted in Islam.
It is not difficult to go back and research examples of Jihad in America over the course of a calendar year, such as 2011. What follows is a list of incidents, cases, actions, statements and plots which point to a Jihadist insurgency in our midst: (Keep in mind that insurgencies are 80% civilizational/political and 20% violent/militant.):
According to the Lebanese news website, the Beirut Observer, the Jihadist terrorist organization Hezbollah is planning to attack Western targets. The site based its report on information obtained by a “Western intelligence agency” that intercepted message traffic to that effect.
The Observer reported that unnamed Western intelligence officials think that Hezbollah plans to attack Western targets, based on unusual movement of suspected Hezbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guards operatives.
The article claimed that the goal of the attack would be to distract global public opinion from indictments expected to be handed down by a special UN tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
Rafik Hariri
It has been widely speculated that the UN tribunal will accuse Hezbollah members of involvement in the huge bomb attack on Hariri’s motorcade.
According to the Israeli news site Haaretz, earlier this week Israel’s counter terrorism bureau issued a warning that terrorists intended to carry out attacks against Israelis and Jewish targets abroad, specifying India, Thailand, Greece and Turkey as areas where an attack could take place. It is not known if the Israeli bulletin is related to the report on Hezbollah from the Beirut Observer.
Al Qaeda is known to be active in Turkey, where anti-Israeli sentiment has been on the rise for some time as Islamists expand and consolidate their political power. In addition to Hezbollah, Al Qaeda or other Turkish Jihadist groups could be motivated to attack Israeli or Jewish targets in Turkey.
Of course, India has been inflicted with a virtual menagerie of Jihadist terrorist groups, both domestic and from neighboring Pakistan. Lashkar-e-Taiba pulled off the spectacular Mumbai attacks targeting Jewish targets, but it is far from the only group operating in India, any of which could be prompted to attack Israeli or Jewish targets in India, either of their own volition or in the service of allied organizations.
Thailand has been wracked by a Jihadist insurgency for years in its southern regions. The Thai Jihadists are somewhat of an enigma and their ties to other Jihadist groups are unclear, but Thailand is an enormously popular tourist destination for Israeli and European tourists.
There is known to be Al Qaeda activity in Greece and Al Qaeda operatives have been apprehended there.
What all this adds up to is we could be talking about one threat or two distinct threats, one reported by the Beirut Observer from Hezbollah and another from Israeli authorities from unnamed terrorists in the four nations mentioned.
The possibility of Hezbollah launching attacks against the West in either Europe or the US has long been a deep concern for national security and counterterrorism practitioners. Hezbollah has been in existence for a decade longer than Al Qaeda and has been amply funded and equipped by Iran. Hezbollah is a much larger organization than Al Qaeda and is known to have cells, operatives and sympathizers spread throughout the world, including Asia, Europe and North and South America. Hezbollah has been referred to as the “A” team of Jihadist terrorism and Al Qaeda the “B” team. In fact Hezbollah trained Al Qaeda terrorists in Sudan during the 1990s.
Hezbollah is uniquely qualified to carry out terrorist attacks in the West. Such an attack would certainly not be unprecedented.
Hezbollah is believed to have carried out two bomb attacks in Argentina against the Israeli embassy in 1992 and at a Jewish Community Center in 1994. More than 120 innocent civilians were killed in those attacks. The attacks are also believed to have been carried out with Iranian support.
This makes sense since Hezbollah receives funding, arms and training from Iran, especially through Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
An example of suspicious Iranian activity in support of possible terrorist strikes occurred in New York back from 2002 to 2006 when members of the Iranian UN mission were repeatedly caught by the NYPD for conducting obvious reconnaissance of New York landmarks and subways.
We can be sure that, when and if Hezbollah or Iran decide to strike in the West, the targets were already selected and prepped by operatives in place long before the attack occurs.
Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., recently sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security asking it to form a task force to investigate growing ties between Hezbollah and the drug cartels as well as growing evidence of a Hezbollah presence in Mexico.
Myrick says Farsi tattoos have been found on members of drug gangs in U.S. prisons. Farsi is the native language of Iran. She also raised concerns over Hezbollah’s training of Mexican cartels in making car bombs and in sophisticated tunneling techniques used in its war against Israel.
If the cartels are able to smuggle drugs and people into the U.S., it has not escaped the attention of groups like Hezbollah and al-Qaida that they are also capable of smuggling other things into the U.S. — like trained terrorists or the makings of a dirty bomb.
Terror Trends Bulletin 