Latin American Cocaine Link To Al Qaeda A ‘Global Threat’

US intelligence and the UN say Communist guerrillas in Latin America are using narcotics to help finance Al Qaeda-linked groups in North Africa. The security officials say the trade poses a “global security threat. ”

A report, obtained by the Reuters news agency, which was originally written for the US Department of Homeland Security, was ignored, according to Defenceweb. The official wrote in the overlooked report in early 2008 that the trans-Atlantic drug trade posed:

"The most significant development in the criminal exploitation of aircraft since 9/11."

A growing fleet of “rogue aircraft” including jet aeroplanes as large as Boeing 727s, but including executive jets and turbo-prop aircraft, is regularly crossing the Atlantic Ocean, the report says. The air route links cocaine-producing areas in the Andes Mountains controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and Al Qaeda-linked groups in Africa’s desert regions such as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM.) The UN Office on Drugs and Crime’s Regional Representative for West and Central Africa, Alexandre Schmidt, says the expanding aviation network now includes Boeing 727 aircraft, which can carry up to 10 tons. Schmidt said:

"When you have this high capacity for transporting drugs into West Africa, this means that you have the capacity to transport as well other goods, so it is definitely a threat to security anywhere in the world.”

The US official, who wrote the original report, speaking on condition of anonymity, said:

"You've got an established terrorist connection on this side of the Atlantic. Now on the Africa side you have the Al-Qaeda connection and it's extremely disturbing and a little bit mystifying that it's not one of the top priorities of the government."

He added:

“Since the September 11 attacks, the security system for passenger air traffic has been ratcheted up in the United States and throughout much of the rest of the world, with the latest measures imposed just weeks ago after a failed bomb attempt on a Detroit-bound plane on December 25.”

But the security expert argues the strategy has failed:

"The bad guys have responded with their own aviation network that is out there everyday flying loads and moving contraband, and the (US) government seems to be oblivious to it."

The official argues that Al Qaeda and FARC, as well as similar groups, now have the:

"Power to move people and material and contraband anywhere around the world with a couple of fuel stops."