Terrorists and Gangs Hysteria
There is a lot of buzz on websites about the possible links between al-Qaeda and Central American gangs. I wrote about it myself a few weeks ago and expressed my doubts about such links.
Some of the recent speculation comes out of this story in the Brownsville Herald that a Bangladeshi national named "Islam" was picked up with a group of 13 other illegal immigrants, and one of the other border crossers was a Mara Salvatrucha gang member. Some people are now making the enormous logical leap to conclude this shows cooperation between the gangs and Islamic terrorists.
A bit of sanity was injected in this article by Carlos Mauricio Pineda Cruz, a former Salvadoran diplomat, writing in the Terrorism Monitor on the Jamestown Foundation web site. Cruz takes seriously the reports that al-Qaeda figures may have been spotted in Honduras, but notes that there are several reasons that make such an unholy alliance unlikely:
As an example of how hysterical some of the speculation over this topic has become, I saw one commenter in a forum assert that, since the article by Pineda Cruz was picked up and republished on a Turkish web site, it was proof that this was part of an al-Qaeda disinformation campaign to lull the US to sleep about the threat south of its border.
Some of the recent speculation comes out of this story in the Brownsville Herald that a Bangladeshi national named "Islam" was picked up with a group of 13 other illegal immigrants, and one of the other border crossers was a Mara Salvatrucha gang member. Some people are now making the enormous logical leap to conclude this shows cooperation between the gangs and Islamic terrorists.
A bit of sanity was injected in this article by Carlos Mauricio Pineda Cruz, a former Salvadoran diplomat, writing in the Terrorism Monitor on the Jamestown Foundation web site. Cruz takes seriously the reports that al-Qaeda figures may have been spotted in Honduras, but notes that there are several reasons that make such an unholy alliance unlikely:
"Firstly the Maras are not a centralized organization; on the contrary they are a highly de-centralized transnational criminal network. In short they do not have the central decision-making mechanisms to establish a relationship with a sophisticated, non-indigenous organization like al-Qaeda.
Secondly the Maras do not have an anti-American agenda. ...
Thirdly the Maras are a public and widely known organization, which makes them unlikely partners for an ultra-secretive network like al-Qaeda. ...
Finally, although the U.S.-Mexico border is vulnerable to penetration – a reality underscored by the many migrants that cross it every day – this fact alone does not make it the first choice of entry to the U.S. for al-Qaeda. The very fact that the border is vulnerable to penetration means that it is subject to constant surveillance by a multitude of U.S. agencies, including the intelligence community.
As an example of how hysterical some of the speculation over this topic has become, I saw one commenter in a forum assert that, since the article by Pineda Cruz was picked up and republished on a Turkish web site, it was proof that this was part of an al-Qaeda disinformation campaign to lull the US to sleep about the threat south of its border.
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