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The Border of Terror
Al Qaeda activity in Mexico
Posted: May 8th, 2006 07:13 PM EDT

HENRY MORGENSTERN
Counterterrorism Contributor
Officer.com

I had the honor to speak at the recent SouthWest Homeland Security conference, held in Phoenix, Arizona, and was given the opportunity to draw attention to the situation that states like Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California face on their border with Mexico.

The concern in Washington about terrorist infiltration is nothing new, but recently, an amendment cutting Bush's Iraq request by $1.9 billion to pay for new aircraft, patrol boats and other vehicles, as well as border checkpoints and a fence along the Mexico border crossing near San Diego, widely used by illegal immigrants, was adopted on a 59-39 vote. Most of this is prompted by the leaking of illegal immigrants through the Mexican border, but there are terror concerns. Indeed, the top levels of government see the U.S.-Mexican border becoming a backdoor for terrorists entering the United States. While Al Qaeda infiltration across the nation's southern border has been a constant concern since 9/11, U.S. officials cite recent intelligence giving the most definitive evidence yet that terrorists are planning to use it as an entry point—if they haven't already.

As a result, a number of Republican and Democratic lawmakers—mainly from border states—are pushing to tighten checkpoints and other ways of monitoring the porous 1,400-mile boundary.

Mexico provides a fertile ground for the recruitment of terrorists. Most people see the struggle against illegal immigrants as an economic problem, but could poor Mexican immigrants be terrorists? There is mounting evidence to suggest that in very poor provinces like Chiapas, conversion to the Muslim faith (necessarily practiced by more fundamentalist groups) could lead to more cases like that of Jose Padilla in Miami—of terrorists fitting a wholly different description to the usual Middle Eastern fare. There are women with veils and people chanting "Allah is Great" in San Cristobal de las Casas. The story began around 1994 when two Spaniards, Aureliano Pérez and Esteban López, brought Islamic teachings to a poor neighborhood in the outskirts of San Cristobal de las Casas, the Chiapas capital. This is the same area where the revolutionary Zapatistas came from.

Many of the recent converts were Presbyterians, but there is fertile ground in the predominantly poor and Catholic area for a religious revivalism, a la Hamas in the Palestinian territories. Chiapas has a population of 4 million.

Today, Islamic teachers promote fruitful activities among their flock in three main areas: food, carpentry and textiles. An almost totally self-reliant economy was established, allowing men to practice Islam around the clock, while women—engaged in textile handicrafts—were assured of an independent income that improves the domestic economy. Some 300 Tzotzil Mayans make up the new Islamic community, the first among Latin American indigenous people. They are said to belong to the Sufi tradition, viewed as having a mystical version of Islam.

Besides the possibility of home-grown Mexican Islamic jihadists, there are loopholes in the present system that make the border more dangerous. The policy recently was to separate the large number of illegal Mexican migrants, who are automatically turned back at the borders, from citizens of other countries who are allowed in, pending immigration hearings. These others are referred to as "other than Mexicans," or OTMs, by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). They come from other Latin American countries as well as other parts of the world, many of them designated by the government as countries of "special interest." In 2004, some 44,000 OTMs were allowed into the US.

It is pretty clear that false identities would not be difficult to obtain, making at least a few of these 44,000 potential Al Qaeda operatives. The case of Mahmoud Youssef Kourani, who paid to be smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border in 2001, is a good example. He pleaded guilty to providing material support to Hizbullah and was sentenced to no more than five years in prison.

The most recent sign that terrorists may be thinking of entering the U.S. from the south came from the mastermind of many of the terror attacks in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Last week, U.S. officials revealed that Mr. Zarqawi may be planning to broaden his campaign to include strikes in the U.S—and suggested it would be easy to infiltrate the U.S. through the southern border.

All this points to the necessity to support the states that share a border with Mexico in their efforts at Homeland Security measures that might reduce the risk. Measures that have been proposed are a 700 mile fence, increased aerial surveillance, and CCTV monitoring of the border, as well as increasing patrols. If we continue to ignore this red flag, we may find that it is too late to stop the infiltration—if is not already too late.


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Security Solutions International

Henry Morgenstern is the president of Security Solutions International, a company that represents Israeli know-how in counter-terror training through several highly qualified colleges, security companies and individual presenters. . A U.S. and Israeli citizen who has work experience in the USA, South America, Europe and Israel, he was educated in the United Kingdom and took an honors degree from the University of Cambridge in 1974. SSI's Suicide Terror Training has been attended by over 150 agencies coast-to-coast.