Blood Profits

by Vanessa Neumann

  In the 1990s, I watched huge empty buildings go up all over Caracas after Venezuela and Colombia signed a free trade agreement and the US clamped down on banking transactions between Colombia and the US to stop the flow of money to and from Colombia’s cartels. The cartels used the Venezuelan banking system instead, as a pass-through to the US system. The banks then funded construction that was not needed in order to launder the Colombian drug money. It worked until sixteen banks caught in the net failed, wreaking havoc in the Venezuelan financial system.

  The layering of smuggling people with networks involved in narcotics produces network connectivity in other ways, too. When Chinese triads smuggle Chinese migrants into Mexico’s Pacific Coast, they pass through areas that are under the control of the Juárez and Gulf cartels, while those entering Mexico from Central America use routes controlled by Los Zetas. The Chinese triads therefore developed a greater collaboration with the Juárez, Gulf, and Los Zetas cartels,10 reflected in the greater sourcing of precursor chemicals for narcotics from China and, on the return trip, greater distribution back into China of the products of these cartels.

  SMUGGLING AS THE NODE IN THE CRIME-TERROR PIPELINE

  The interactions among gangs, transnational criminals, and terrorists are complex and ever-changing. Gangs have shifting alliances with a broad array of players, including insurgents, warlords, terrorists, transnational criminals, and, importantly, governments (that use them to maintain some level of plausible deniability regarding aggressive illicit or covert actions) as well as “any other state or non-state actor that might require the services of a mercenary gang organization or surrogate to coerce radical change in policy and or government.”11 In other words, a foreign government, terrorist group, cartel, or major business interest could hire a gang to commit acts of violence that appear random or “gang-related” but are really used to cause a mayor to resign, stop an investigation, change the outcome of an election by frightening the voters, or other political outcomes.

  The major cartels are “the big four” (Juárez, Gulf, Sinaloa, and Tijuana, all of whom operate in the north), but there are signs of a fourth generation in the instability continuum of gangs: Los Zetas have become a cartel in their own right, and have launched an aggressive expansion strategy into areas as far south as Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador—overlapping traditional gang territory, particularly of the Mara Salvatruchas, with whom they are now in business.

  The complex relation of gangs and other criminal organizations to the state is illustrated by their geographic distributions and differences, in response to local conditions of both market and governance. For instance, the gang situation is markedly different in the north, along the US-Mexico border, than it is in the south, along the Guatemala-Belize border. Nevertheless, there is a clear and formidable gang presence throughout Mexico, where gangs intimidate and kill everyone from entertainers to journalists to teachers to bureaucrats to candidates for political office to current political officeholders, and anyone else who may not be sympathetic to their causes or are an obstacle to their control.12

  Simultaneously and overlapping this territory, the Central American Mara Salvatrucha 13 and Mara Salvatrucha 18 gangs (commonly referred to as “the Maras”) have made significant inroads into Mexican territory and appear to be working as mercenaries for, and sometimes competing effectively against, Mexican criminal organizations and gangs. In the south along the Belize-Guatemala borders, the Maras have gained control of illegal immigrants and drug trafficking movement north through Mexico into the United States. Between the northern and southern borders, an ad hoc mix of up to fifteen thousand members of the various Mexican gangs and Central American Maras are reported to be operating in more than twenty of Mexico’s thirty states.

  Additionally, members and former members of the elite Guatemalan Special Forces (Kaibiles) are being recruited as mercenaries by the Zetas. Former foot soldiers recruit foot soldiers of their own:13 Los Zetas were originally Mexican Special Forces who were recruited by the Sinaloa cartel before forming their own cartel.

  The history of the Mara Salvatrucha gang illuminates the impact of geopolitical pressures and diaspora movements on the spread of violence and criminality. “Mara Salvatrucha,” commonly referred to as MS-13, means “Salvadoran gang” and was formed in Los Angeles in the 1980s by refugees from war-torn El Salvador. The gang is believed to have between fifteen hundred and three thousand members, most of whom are between the ages of sixteen and eighteen. The “13” is believed by experts to come from the thirteenth letter of the alphabet: M, for “Mara.”

  The gang network spread across the United States as the immigrants migrated in search of work. Aside from their own traditional criminal activity, they are now also the enforcers of and distributors for the illicit trafficking of foreign terrorist organizations. MS-13 is made up of cliques (clicas) with names such as the Sailors, Normandy, Peajes, Uniones, and Fultons, and work through a partnership called La Hermandad (The Brotherhood) across the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia. Evidence points to these Mexican drug cartels using American gangs as their foot soldiers. There are thirty thousand gangs in America, with a million gang members in them,14 and everyone is making money.

  The US Drug Enforcement Administration estimates that $322 billion is generated annually by the global drug trade.15 With such a large amount of money at stake, it is no surprise that there is a giant illicit business straddling the US-Mexico border, over which seven major cartels and some forty subsidiary groups (all with a significant presence in the United States) fight. There are over 280 US cities in which organized crime activity is dominated by a Mexican cartel; and the cartels have associates in more than a thousand American cities.16 The important synergies between terrorists and criminals drive them to overcome their different ideological and financial goals and to collaborate through Central America and across the US Southwest border.

  FLATTENING TO ADAPT

  Mexican drug trafficking organizations have followed the same playbook as jihadis since 2001. They have morphed from hierarchical structures, topped by hard-to-capture kingpins and bound by familial ties, into loose and adaptable networks that outsource certain aspects of trafficking, making them flatter, more nimble, and harder to disrupt.17 With the command-and-control system being dispersed and alliances being mainly of a temporary nature, the intelligence community identifies these networks as “flat” and “adaptive.” They are flat because the hierarchy is shielded from view by disparate cells that interact as equals. They are adaptive because alliances can shift quickly in response to enforcement threats or simply for a better return on investment.

  Los Zetas, who have earned a reputation for brutality by gunning down thousands of Mexicans in the ongoing battle for drug smuggling routes to the United States, now control much of the illicit trade of moving migrant workers toward the US border, experts say. They have brought a cold know-how, using tractor-trailer trucks to carry ever-larger loads of people and charging high prices, as much as $30,000 per head for migrants from Asia and Africa who seek to get to the United States. They have also brought an unprecedented level of intimidation and violence to the human smuggling trade. Los Zetas or their allies often kidnap and hold for ransom migrants who try to operate outside the system. If relatives do not send payment, the migrants are sometimes executed and dumped in mass graves, or might be pressed into jobs with the criminal group.

  The ascendancy of Los Zetas in migrant smuggling, formerly the preserve of relatively small independent operators known as “coyotes,” who’d smuggle groups of twenty or fewer migrants north, has transformed the business. Mexican officials report regularly finding tractor-trailer trucks loaded with as many as 250 migrants in their holds. The heavily armed drivers, who travel with escort vehicles, make payoffs to police and immigration officers at the various checkpoints along their route. Aside from the classic plata o plomo paradigm, there is another form of bribery: every month at least one of the smuggled illeg
al immigrants is given as a slave to the cartel or to the gang capo, for her to be used as a prostitute by the recipient or his friends, or to be sold to others. Unlike a kilo of cocaine, a woman can be resold many times.

  GROWING TIES BETWEEN CRIMINALS AND TERRORISTS AT THE SOUTHWEST BORDER

  Retail-level distribution of drugs from Mexican drug trafficking organizations is handled by smaller drug trafficking groups and gangs under the direct or indirect control of the Mexican cartels. The drugs cross the Mexican border through underground tunnels, in concealed compartments in passenger vehicles, or commingled with legitimate goods in tractor-trailers. Increasingly, drugs such as cocaine and methamphetamine are dissolved in liquids until they reach distribution points near the border (a big one is in Phoenix, Arizona). Lookouts are placed on elevated locations across the border desert to supervise the shipments and to communicate through advanced radio communications that evade law enforcement surveillance. Unmanned aerial vehicles—drones—are also used. Then the shipments are broken down into smaller units and sent to more distant distribution points such as New York City, Chicago, or Millville, Indiana.18

  Associations between the Mexican cartels and the gangs who do their distribution inside the US are heavily based on geography and familial ties. The purpose is wealth generation: everyone makes money from the association. Arizona’s gangs have wholesale-level drug contacts with the Mexicans. In California, the Mexican Mafia prison gang acts as an intermediary: it controls Southern California’s Hispanic criminal street gangs, but has a long history with the Mexican cartels operating the Tijuana-California corridor. In Texas, you have the Texas Syndicate, the Texas Mexican Mafia, and a gang called the Tango Blast, which further breaks down into cliques, including the Houstones, Orejones, Vallucos, La Capirucha, D-Town, and West Texas Tangos, all of whom have strong working relationships with the Mexican drug cartels Los Zetas, the Gulf Cartel, and the Knights Templar.19

  There are several case studies of documented instances of drug trade networks working with terrorist networks on America’s Southwest border.20 These connections and cooperations can be viewed as driven by a particular need or skill set to benefit either the terrorist or the criminal organization in question. Although there have been no confirmed cases of Hezbollah moving terrorists across the Mexico border to carry out attacks in the United States, many experts think Hezbollah members and supporters have entered the country this way.

  This seems plausible: as far back as 2003 nearly sixty thousand illegal aliens designated as other-than-Mexican, or OTMs, were detained21 along the US-Mexico border. In May 2012, the Los Angeles Times reported that intelligence gleaned from the 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound indicated that he sought to use operatives with valid Mexican passports who could illegally cross into the United States to conduct terrorist operations. Authorities think that Al Qaeda terrorists hope to take advantage of a lack of detention space within the Department of Homeland Security, which has forced immigration officials to release non-Mexican illegal aliens back into the United States rather than return them to their home countries. Fewer than 15 percent of those released appear for immigration hearings.

  TERRORISTS, DRUGS, AND DIASPORAS

  Despite assertions by the Mexican government that no Middle Eastern terrorist has been found attempting to cross the US-Mexico border, there have been several cases verified by US authorities of just that. For example, in 2001 Mahmoud Youssef Kourani crossed the border from Mexico in a car and traveled to Dearborn, Michigan. Kourani was later charged with and convicted of providing “material support and resources … to Hezbollah,” according to a 2003 indictment.22

  Kourani was able to travel to Mexico from Lebanon through what is known as the “Lebanon-Tijuana Pipeline.” He paid a $3,000 bribe to a Mexican consulate official in Beirut in order to get a Mexican entry visa. This allowed him to travel from Lebanon to Mexico, where he was able to connect with the human smuggling operation. He was then smuggled across the Southwest border on February 4, 2001, in the trunk of a car. While in the US, Kourani was reportedly involved in fund-raising for Hezbollah, and sent the group around $40,000. According to US Attorney Jeffrey Collins, Kourani is accused of conspiring with his brother, Haidar Kourani, chief of military security for Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, to provide support for the group.23

  Then there is the case of Adnan el-Shukrijumah. El-Shukrijumah was born in Guyana on August 4, 1975, the firstborn son of Gulshair el-Shukrijumah, a forty-four-year-old radical Muslim cleric, and his sixteen-year-old wife. In 1985 Gulshair migrated north to the US, where he assumed duties as the imam of the Farouk mosque in Brooklyn, which raised millions for the jihad and served as a recruiting station for Al Qaeda.

  In 1995 the Shukrijumah family moved to Miramar, Florida. It was there that Gulshair became the spiritual leader of the radical Majid al-Hijah mosque and where Adnan became friends with José Padilla,24 who planned to detonate a radiological bomb in midtown Manhattan along with Mandhai Jokan, who was convicted of attempting to blow up nuclear power plants in southern Florida, and a group of other homegrown terrorists. In April 2001 Adnan spent ten days in Panama, where he reportedly met with Al Qaeda officials to assist in the planning of 9/11. He also traveled to Trinidad and Tobago.

  The following month, he obtained an associate’s degree in computer engineering from Broward Community College. During this time, he managed to amass passports from Trinidad, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and Canada. On May 27, 2004, Adnan was spotted at an Internet café in Tegucigalpa (the capital of Honduras), from where he made calls to friends in Canada and the United States. At his table were Mara Salvatrucha leaders from Panama, El Salvador, Mexico, and Honduras. Officials from the Department of Homeland Security have asserted that el-Shukrijumah is known to have crossed the US-Mexico border at least twelve times, proving the synergistic effectiveness of the crime-terror pipeline.

  The pattern in Central America repeats in several places around the globe. Migrants flee desperation and violence in Syria, Sudan, and Venezuela and are vulnerable to indenture into slavery. The flow of people away from violence and toward a better life often tracks the flow of goods to a richer market: in the world of illicit trade, humans are just one more commodity to be sold to the wealthy American or European. I have come to understand how trafficking in one good piggybacks on the trafficking of other goods (might as well fill that empty space on the truck) and how networks connect through the flow of money.

  There are also “push” and “pull” factors. Migrants are pushed by violence and wars and poverty (often resulting from violence and wars and corruption) to find a better life elsewhere. If they are traveling to destinations that are pulling, with a demand for narcotics or counterfeits or prostitution or cheap labor, the conditions are ripe for people to be smuggled as just one more object from which to make money. Awaiting them at their destinations are not only vast human misery but serious threats of violence.

  The answer, however, does not lie in opposing immigration, but in rooting out its cause: end the demand for illicit goods and support good governance and the rule of law in people’s home countries. After all, the migrants would rather stay at home with their families and prosper, if only we would stop funding and profiting from their misery.

  7

  Khans, Bags, and Triads

  LAND OF THE GREAT KHANS

  From Guatemala City I hopscotched the globe to the other side: the US Department of Defense was sending me to be a speaker at a seminar on countering transnational threats (the smuggling of goods and people) in Central Asia. Geographically, Mongolia is East Asia, but ethnically it is considered Central Asia. Like all aspects of group identity or black market cross-border trade, it’s complicated. The trip would steepen my learning curve.

  From Mongolia I would go to China, to give me a different perspective on illicit financial flows and development, and how they are impacted by Western consumers. China is the world’s second-largest economy, run by a Communist P
arty that oversees a hegemonic capitalism, as it backs its companies to compete aggressively around the world. Its military, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), oversees an aggressive cyber-attack and hacking operation for the strategic advantage of China’s industries. China is also the world’s largest source of counterfeits. It all combines to create what pundits call “China, Inc.”

  Mongolia, on the other hand, is only really known to most as the home of the Mongols and their conqueror kings, Genghis and Kublai Khan, who conquered the known world with sheer kill-them-all brutality from the backs of sturdy little horses. Mongolia is large, landlocked, and mostly empty, except for lots of horses, yaks, and gold. It is completely surrounded by Russia and China. Everything about Mongolians reflects the combination: they physically look similar to the Chinese, but their architecture looks Soviet. In the main square, their idols stand on pedestals inscribed in Mongolian, which is written phonetically using the Russian Cyrillic alphabet.

  Despite being rich in minerals and having only three million people, Mongolia exhibits all the signs of the resource curse and corruption. The resource curse (sometimes called “the paradox of plenty”) is the statistical tendency of countries rich in natural resources (like oil or gold or diamonds) to be less economically developed (have many more poor people) and less democratic than countries with fewer natural resources. The explanation is simple: it doesn’t take management competence to dig a hole in the ground and put what comes out onto a boat and sell it. The international market is more than happy to buy it; there is little transparency from either the government or the foreign companies in joint ventures, both of which pay and take bribes as they like. The money rarely gets reinvested into the country’s infrastructure, beyond that needed to get the commodity in question, or spread around to the broader economy. Innovation is hampered because the government puts all its efforts into selling the commodity, not stimulating any other economic activity it does not control. Once you have traveled to a few of these countries, the signs are familiar. But I had to get there first.