Gen. James T. Hill, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees U.S. military relations in Latin America, said much of this money comes from drug trafficking, arms dealing and other illegal activities. He said the funds are sent abroad from several Latin American areas with large Middle Eastern populations, such as the triple frontier between Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil, and Margarita island off the coast of Venezuela.
''The fastest-growing religion in Latin America today is Islam,'' Gen. Hill said during an interview at his office. ``We think that there are between 3 and 6 million people of Middle Eastern descent in Latin America. There are radical Islamic groups associated with that population that are using it to create lots of money for their organizations.''
Hill said that about ``$300 million to $500 million a year, easily, goes [from Latin America] to groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and Al Gamaat.''***
A Terrorist Regime Waits in the Wings***During the 1990s, the Clinton administration looked the other way as the FARC grew stronger. In 1995, according to a recent Rand study for the Pentagon, it had 7,000 fighters on 60 fronts; five years later, there were 15,000 to 20,000 FARC combatants on more than 70 fronts. The huge increase was financed with money from American cocaine and heroin users, but the Clinton administration reversed long-standing bipartisan policy and drew a distinction between drug traffickers and guerrillas. On condition of anonymity, a senior State Department official assured Insight with a straight face in 1999 that "there is no such thing as narcoterrorists." ***
Most tobacco fields, barley farms, and vinyards are well-governed parts of the world. That should give policymakers a huge hint as to the most effective means of putting an end to these 'ungoverned' zones - including those in our own inner cities...
We have two problems in Panama:
1. Panama doesn’t have the resources to maintain a force in the Darién. So guess who will have to eventually mop up this problem? The United States.
2. Worse, President Moscoso and her government are extremely corrupt. They only care about their own power and all the illegal money they can make while in office. They don’t care about “el pueblo.” The people are just incidental if not a nuisance…Get a load of the following which I’m reading from a newspaper article in front of me (La Prensa). The Panamanian government sent a delegation of 1 to the above conference in Miami. The woman sent to represent Panama is from the Panamanian National Security Council and attended NONE of the sessions. I happen to know what Panamanians do when they go to Miami. They spend all their time shopping. This is how much these so called Panamanian patriots (that’s what they like to call themselves) care about Panama.