For decades the no man’s land where Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay meet has been a den of smugglers, gun runners and South American rebels. With little policing from far-away capitals and corrupt local officials, illegal trade of all kinds flourished. Tens of thousands of Lebanese were attracted to the area after their country sank into a brutal civil war in the 1970s. They became traders and formed a tight knit community that spans the border between Ciudad del Este and neighboring Foz do Iguacu, Brazil. Today they say they are mainstream Muslims, but authorities claim that among their ranks are the holy warriors of Al Qaeda, Hamas and Hizbullah. They use the region to recruit for their jihads and to finance terrorist acts in the Middle East and Latin America, says Washington. The United States had worried about the ungoverned region for years, but “since September 11, it has become the only item on the agenda,” says Mark Davidson, first secretary of the U.S. Embassy in the Paraguayan capital, Asuncion.
The notoriety is scaring off tourists, long drawn to the area by the world-renowned Iguazu waterfall. As a result, the economy is crumbling. Streets that once buzzed until the wee hours are now largely deserted by 4 in the afternoon. Locals are incensed. “The allegations against us that have been broadcast worldwide are false,” says Laura Galante de Meskin, Paraguayan coordinator of a movement to protect the region’s reputation. “There are no terrorists here.” Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, on an official visit to the United States last week, declared the tri-border area “safer than London.”
Maybe not. The 300,000 residents of Foz, for example, have seen 210 murders so far this year. With drugs passing through the region by the ton and assault rifles available locally for as little as $120, that is little surprise. Brazilian authorities reckon that more than $6 billion a year in illegal funds is laundered in the area. Across the “International Friendship Bridge” connecting Brazil and Paraguay, document checks are rare. Amid the crawling lines of traffic, vans brazenly unload consignments of cigarettes and electronics onto the pavement to be transported past Customs agents by local smugglers. And drivers change their license plates to match the country they’re entering. All of which helps explain the area’s attraction to bad guys of all stripes. Says Roberto Salvador Ontivero, head of the antiterrorist unit in Puerto Iguazu, Argentina, the third city in the tri-border zone, “Terrorist activity the world over is funded by other crimes.”
Direct links to Islamic terror groups are hard to prove. But that hasn’t stopped widespread press speculation about the goings-on in the border badlands and reports of ominous links to bin Laden. Recycling old information and unsubstantiated rumors to play up the terrorist angle has been a sure way to grab headlines around the globe. But what do we really know? U.S. counterterrorism officials are fairly certain that tens of millions of dollars have been raised in the region for Hamas and Hizbullah. There also are suspicions of Al Qaeda cells in the tri-border area, but that applies to Detroit, Michigan, too.
More concretely: Argentine officials suspect that Hizbullah operatives in the tri-border area carried out two bomb attacks in Buenos Aires–on the Israeli Embassy in 1992 and the AMIA Jewish welfare center in 1994, between them claiming more than 100 lives. The trial started in September of 20 suspects alleged to be local accomplices in the AMIA attack. In response to pleas from Washington after September 11, local police forces arrested two dozen Arabs, but most were released without any charges. A raid earlier this year on the offices of Assad Barakat, a Lebanese businessman, found videos defending Hizbullah suicide bombers and evidence of transfers of $50 million to Lebanon. Mohamed Mokhles, who lived in Foz in 1998, was arrested in Uruguay in 1999, accused of attacks on tourists in Luxor. Barakat has disappeared and Mokhles is fighting extradition to Egypt. But none of the men has been tied to Al Qaeda, and despite local intelligence reports that Mokhles might be linked to bin Laden, even U.S. officials admit there is no concrete evidence. Still, says Davidson, “one of the things we have learned is how little we know.”
There is better evidence that the local Lebanese community at least provides funding to extremist groups, particularly Hizbullah. The numbers are hard to estimate, since much of the flow of cash consists of legitimate transfers to family members back in Lebanon. Authorities also suspect that local mosques act as recruiting centers and collection agencies for the group. But Sheik Mounir Fadel, spiritual leader of Ciudad del Este’s main mosque, who Argentine security forces say is a senior Hizbullah member, denies that he is involved in any political activity. “What I preach is peace, moral values and obligations,” he says. “If I discover any sort of terrorist activity, it is my duty to denounce it to the authorities. Those who come from outside with that sort of aim do more damage to us than anyone else.”
Still, Hizbullah–put on Washington’s list of terrorist groups two weeks ago–is widely respected in the local Arab community for driving the better-equipped Israeli Army out of Lebanon last year. Sheik Fadel echoes the voice of many local Lebanese when he says, “Hizbullah is like the Resistance movement of Charles de Gaulle that liberated his country from occupation.” Most local Lebanese say Hizbullah has not launched any attacks outside the Middle East, although, according to one source with contacts to Hizbullah supporters in the region, even they admit that the highly atomized nature of the organization means they cannot be certain that none of their members was involved in the attacks against the Buenos Aires Jewish community, for instance.
It’s understandable that the search for Islamic extremists has focused attention on the area’s 20,000-strong Arab community. But the real problem, say local security officials, is the corruption of domestic authorities, especially in Paraguay–where the family of the local state governor, for example, is believed to own about 40 clandestine airfields. “It is going to be hard for them to investigate the people they do business with,” observes one law-enforcement source.
What is certain is that most of the local Lebanese fled civil war in their homeland and are not interested in reliving the violence in South America. While some may have been persuaded, willingly or not, to contribute to the radical Islamic cause, few have any apparent affinity with Muslim ideologues. That has not protected them from the local police. Under U.S. pressure, Paraguayan authorities have made about two dozen arrests since September. But they have kept only eight suspects in custody, mostly for immigration or tax offenses.
Local Muslims are not waiting to be snared in the growing net of suspicion. The accusations of terrorism and the swarm of reporters and intelligence agents have prompted many Arabs to relocate. Destinations include Iquique, Chile; So Paulo; or Encarnacion, close to the Argentine border in southern Paraguay. Those involved in illegal activities are choosing Pedro Juan Caballero on the northern border with Brazil, renowned for its potent marijuana crops and nonexistent policing.
The danger for the United States is that its crackdown risks alienating former supporters who have nothing to do with terrorism. Alex Hammoud, a leading Lebanese businessman and director of the local Paraguayan-American Chamber of Commerce, points out that “many local Arabs travel to the U.S. or send their children there to study… We love the U.S. and what it stands for. We are being blamed for something that has nothing to do with us.” As a result, in one troubled corner of Latin America, the United States is losing hearts and minds.
