US eyes jungle as terror threat grows

The shadows of South America are under new scrutiny from the media and the government. Could al-Qaeda be operating from a secret base in Brazil? Timothy Pratt investigates

  IT is a notion that has gripped the US media: Middle Eastern extremist groups, including al-Qaeda, are reported to be creating a new terror base in the jungles of South America.

And despite a US State Department spokesman telling the Sunday Herald that 'the US has no information that al-Qaeda is present anywhere in Latin America', he admitted that investigating terrorism was 'a major component' of a recent visit by a department official to the so-called triple-frontier region where Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina meet.

Deputy director for counter- terrorism Brigadier General Jonathan Cofer met with officials from the three countries on December 18, and the State Department offered the governments $1 million to strengthen their intelligence-gathering and abilities. 'Future visits are absolutely planned,' added the source.

Terrorism experts agree that the area has all the ingredients of a global hotspot. 'The concept of having international terrorist groups in Latin America is consistent with the region,' says Timothy C Brown, chair of international studies for the Sierra Nevada College in Nevada and a former US diplomat in several Latin American countries during three decades. Brown says he has heard reports in the region of groups including Hizbollah, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and Hamas, as well as Spain's ETA, 'since at least the 1960s and 1970s'.

Brown, who acted as a liaison between presidents Reagan and Carter and the anti-communist Contras of Nicaragua, has written extensively on guerrilla movements in Latin America. He recalls an incident in Managua, Nicaragua, during the early 1990s in which a bomb exploded at what he described as a safe house for terrorist groups. He says that, in the investigation that followed, documents linked to the PLO, ETA and the IRA were found.

The region currently under American scrutiny has long been a centre for Arabic expatriates: up to 15,000 are understood to live there . Myles Frechette, a 35-year American foreign service veteran who enjoyed a stint as consul in S‹o Paulo, Brazil, recalls being in the state of Parana when Iranian Shi'ite leader Ayatollah Khomeini died in 1989. 'I was in a small town in Brazil, and I remember being surprised to find three mosques full of Muslim Arabs mourning the death of Khomeini,' he says.

The area is also widely known for its leaky borders. 'This is of great concern, because we know there have been people from a variety of Middle Eastern countries coming through for a long time,' says Frechette. 'Most of the Middle Eastern people in the area are peaceful and industrious, but terrorists may be hiding among them.'

Douglas Unger, the author of several books on the region and of a forthcoming article on the guerrilla movements that combated Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner across the three borders from the 1960s to the 1980s, echoes the former consul's description of the area. 'The region is full of pirates and smugglers, and is sort of a catch-all for immigrants, many of whom are shady,' he claims.

Unger, a Pulitzer Prize-nominee whose last novel, Voices From Silence, was based on the thousands who disappeared under Argentina's dictatorships in the 1970s, also says the region would be an easy place to hide terrorist training facilities. Such camps are rumoured to exist north of Brazil's Igua?u Falls .

'It's possible to be a fringe group here and not be noticed,' he says. 'If you go back to the ongoing history of guerrilla activities, it's always been going on -- so why would it be a surprise that a group of Arabs is training when you have 50 years of this kind of thing?'

It has been suggested that left-leaning governments in Venezuela and Brazil will help create a safer haven for anti-US groups such as al-Qaeda -- but neither diplomat agrees.

Brown believes Latin governments have too much to lose by not at least giving the appearance of cracking down on terrorism: 'There may be sympathies among the left for anti-American ideals, but they understand which side their bread is buttered on.'

Frechette adds: 'President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has been accused of sympathies to the FARC [a Colombian guerrilla army] and he's done some foolish things, but I don't think he has sympathies for Middle Eastern groups. Brazilian President-elect Lula is left of centre, but he is also nationalist and interested in helping Brazilians, and is trying to confront the problem of violence tied to drugs in his country. I have no reason to believe he is in the least bit sympathetic to Arabic terrorists.

'And in today's post-September 11 atmosphere, if there was anything serious going on there, the US would be johnny-on-the-spot.'

But the challenge, of course, will be finding out about something serious before it happens. As State Department official Francis Taylor said in a speech to leaders from Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina only three months after the September 11 attacks of 2001: 'We are worried ... not by the things we see, but by the things we do not see.'

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