Why indeed?
A very informative article in the Wall Street Journal sheds some light on the situation -- if you can read between the lines:
Mexican academic Edgardo Buscaglia estimates there are 200 counties in Mexico -- some 8% of the total -- where drug gangs wield more influence behind the scenes than the authorities. With fearsome arsenals of rocket-propelled grenades, bazookas and automatic weapons, cartels are often better armed than the police and even the soldiers they fight. The number of weapons confiscated last year from drug gangs in Mexico could arm the entire army of El Salvador, by one estimate. Where do most of the weapons come from? The U.S.
Rocket-propelled grenades, bazookas and automatic weapons did not come from gun dealers in the US. If these are US-made, then they were exported to a foreign government, and from there diverted somehow to Mexican cartels.
A TV station in the capital of Texas, Austin, recently offered some information on how that city is being impacted by the drug-related violence, and by the drug trafficking. In the story was an interesting nugget of information:
[DEA agent Greg] Thrash said La Familia, the Gulf Cartel and Sinaloa have combined forces against Los Zetas. Thrash said according to authorities in Mexico, the cartels are using military grade munitions from China and Russia, as well as American rifles and weapons first sold to other governments and resold to the cartels.
Military grade munitions from China and Russia? American rifles first sold to other governments?
Well, that's were Kalashnikovs and AR-15's come from.
(Oh, and notice in the picture the lever-action rifle with the scope. That probably did come directly across the border.)
For years now, Russian organized crime is known to have been involved in Mexican drug trafficking. What's interesting, though, is that it is not just the Russians involved. Here are excerpts from Mexican drug cartels and terrorists are recruiting for more fighters to train as soldiers by Michael Webster, April 16, 2008:
Mexican drug cartels are now advertising for young men to step up and come and join their ranks to fight the Mexican army. The ads and banners premise those who join will make good money have food and a place to stay even while in training. The Journal has learned that this same type of advertising is planned for Juarez, TJ and other Mexican border cities.
Mexican drug cartels according to recent press reports have military style training camps on and near the border with the United States. These training camps are for military-style killers. Federal authorities say these camps have Afghanistan and other middle eastern instructors who teach the latest military fighting tactics that are utilized in Iraq and Afghanistan by the Islamic radicals that are fighting and killing American and allied troops in those countries. Mexican officials admit they know of special training camps in the Mexican states of Tamaulipas and Michoacan, where newly recruited Zetas take intensive six-week training courses in weapons, tactics and intelligence gathering.
Iran is believed providing at least some of the money for this recruiting and training program. The training camps are teaching hit and run guerilla techniques. Cells of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) have sent their seasoned veterans to oversee the training of the new troops and to direct the war against the Mexican government on behalf of the Mexican Cartels. Trained fighters from al-Qaida, Hizballah (Party of God) Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement) and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have been seen in Mexico and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has reported cells from these terrorist organizations are believed here in the U.S. as well, according to a well placed CIA operative.
Whoa - Islamic terrorists along the border?
We have known that they have been active farther south...
But along the US-Mexican border??
The Mexican government first realized that Islamic radical militants were already starting to infiltrate the country in statements by high-ranking Mexican officials prior to and following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks indicated "that Islamic extremist organizations has sought to establish a presence in Mexico".
[snip]
Remarks made by Mexican public officials indicate the real possibility that al Qaeda cells are present in Mexico and could potentially attempt to cross the U.S. southwest border to conduct additional attacks.
The former director of Mexico´s Center for Intelligence and National Security (Centro de Inteligencia y Seguridad Nacional—Cisen), Eduardo Medina Mora, remarked that the possibility of an al Qaeda attack against the United States launched from Mexico "could not be ruled out."
National Migration Institute (Instituto Nacional de Migracion—INM) official Felipe Urbiola Ledezma made more alarming statements during remarks to the press, Urbiola said, "We have in Mexico people linked to terrorism and we are constantly observing unusual immigration flows...[people connected to] ETA, Hizbollah and even some with links to Usama Bin Laden."
Connections not just to Islamic militants, but to Al Qaeda and to Sheikh Osama "Public Enemy Number One" bin Laden!
Other terrorist and criminal groups are in Mexico including the Russian mafia groups such as the Poldolskaya, Mazukinskaya, Tambovskaya, and Izamailovskaya have been detected in Mexico. The Moscow-based Solntsevskaya gang is also reported to be present in the country, as are other mafia gangs from Chechnya, Georgia, Armenia, Lithuania, Poland Croatia, Serbia, Hungary, Albania, and Rumania. Their major activities include drug and arms trafficking, money laundering, prostitution, trafficking in women from Eastern and Central Europe and Russia, alien smuggling, kidnapping, and credit card fraud.
Drug-, arms-, and human-trafficking -- including women for forced prostitution (that's what happens to ladies from Central and Eastern Europe and Russia) -- where have we seen this mixture before?
Reforma, a leading Mexican newspaper, reported that U.S. intelligence agencies had detected a partnership between the Tijuana-based Arellano-Felix Organization (AFO) and Russian mafia groups based in southern California.
In a separate story, Reforma reported that members of the former KGB-affiliated Kurganskaya group in San Diego had met with AFO operative Humberto Rodríguez Banuelos.
Reforma reported that for at least the last ten years the Russian mafia was supplying Mexican drug traffickers with radars, automatic weapons, grenade launchers, and small submersibles in exchange for cocaine, amphetamines, and heroin. It cited a 1996 sting operation in which undercover DEA agents posing as Russian mafia members sold Carillo Fuentes operatives 300 AK-47s and ammunition in Costa Rica.
So there's where our military-grade weapons are coming from, too -- including radar systems and submarines! Russian capitalism is almost as good as American capitalism! :)
It is well known that the Russian mafia is deeply entrenched in the criminal fabric of the Mexican drug cartels and still today plays an important roll in providing guns and other weapons to the cartels and are purveyors of, drug smuggling, money laundering, prostitution, trafficking in women from Eastern and Central Europe and Russia, alien and terrorist smuggling, kidnappings for ransom.
But, we haven't answered our question from Part 2: Why are our government and our media telling us it is US weapons causing all the death and destruction? Surely they have access to this very same information?
Or, might they have a reason to keep certain aspects of this problem secret...?
From Former FBI Translator Sibel Edmonds Calls Current 9/11 Investigation Inadequate by Jim Hogue, May 7, 2004:
JH: Here's a question that you might be able to answer: What is al-Qaeda?
SE: This is a very interesting and complex question. When you think of al-Qaeda, you are not thinking of al-Qaeda in terms of one particular country, or one particular organization. You are looking at this massive movement that stretches to tens and tens of countries. And it involves a lot of sub-organizations and sub-sub-organizations and branches and it's extremely complicated. So to just narrow it down and say al-Qaeda and the Saudis, or to say it's what they had at the camp in Afghanistan, is extremely misleading. And we don't hear the extent of the penetration that this organization and the sub-organizations have throughout the world, throughout their networks and throughout their various activities. It's extremely sophisticated. And then you involve a significant amount of money into this equation. Then things start getting a lot of overlap -- money laundering, and drugs and terrorist activities and their support networks converging in several points. That's what I'm trying to convey without being too specific. And this money travels. And you start trying to go to the root of it and it's getting into somebody's political campaign, and somebody's lobbying. And people don't want to be traced back to this money.
Part 4.
the trail is so obvious yet most choose to ignore it...excellent piece as always!
ReplyDelete-if you can read between the lines- no pun intended? Are those military patches? So they've been crossing the border too? I wonder who else crosses the border.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Angel! ;)
ReplyDeletePancho, the report that I took the images from can be found here. The image of the patches can be found on page 30.
The report explains (numbers inside dashes are footnotes in the report):
Items have been found by law enforcement officials along the banks of the Rio Grande River and inland that indicate possible ties to a terrorist organization or member of military units of Mexico.-106- A jacket with patches from countries where al Qa’ida is known to operate was found in Jim Hogg County, Texas by the Border Patrol. The patches on the jacket show an Arabic military badge with one depicting an airplane flying over a building and heading towards a tower, and another showing an image of a lion's head with wings and a parachute emanating from the animal. The bottom of one patch read "martyr," "way to eternal life" or "way to immortality."-107-
On January 28, 2006, Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar was asked by a reporter from KGNS television station in Laredo, Texas, about the outcome of the investigation of the jacket. Chief Aguilar responded that the patches were not from al Qa'ida but from countries in which al Qa'ida was known to operate.-108-
According to ICE testimony, on September 8, 2004, ICE agents arrested Neeran Zaia and Basima Sesi. The human smuggling organization headed by Zaia specialized in smuggling Iraqi, Jordanian, and Syrian nationals and was responsible for the movement of more than 200 aliens throughout the investigation.-109- The investigation was initiated when a confidential informant familiar with the organization reported ongoing smuggling activities by Zaia, who had been previously convicted of alien smuggling. Investigative efforts revealed that the aliens were smuggled from the Middle East to staging areas in Central and South America. Once in these staging areas, the conspirators would arrange to smuggle the aliens from these sites into the U.S. or its territories.-110-
Members of Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based terrorist organization, have already entered to the United States across our Southwest border. On March 1, 2005, Mahmoud Youssef Kourani pleaded guilty to providing material support to Hezbollah.-111- Kourani is an illegal alien who had been smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border after bribing a Mexican consular official in Beirut for a visa to travel to Mexico. Kourani and a Middle Eastern traveling partner then paid coyotes in Mexico to guide them into the United States. Kourani established residence among the Lebanese expatriate community in Dearborn, Michigan and began soliciting funds for Hezbollah terrorists back home in Lebanon. He is the brother of the Hezbollah chief of military operations in southern Lebanon.
For years the U.S has been warned about the security implications of its porous Southern border.
ReplyDeleteBush ignored it, now Obama is embracing an even MORE open-border policy!...Or perhaps I should say "PUSHING FOR", as the Bush administration, along with John McCain embraced the same open border policies.
Ironically enough, Mexico's own southern border is patrolled by gun-toting soldiers.
But the difference seems to be that our government is more corrupt than Mexico's.
ReplyDeleteAnd, for all these years, I thought it was the other way around.