Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

*** For Washington, concerns to the south as well.  The 15 September release of the US State Department’s annual blacklist of countries ranked as major producers or transit routes for illegal narcotics re-emphasizes the level to which the countries of Latin America are riddled with criminality.  In particular, the inclusion of Belize and El Salvador for the first time on the blacklist, which means that all Central American countries are now blacklisted, highlights the increasing presence of Mexican gangs in the region through which 90% of US-bound cocaine transits.

The crisis in Mexico hardly needs rehearsing.  The country is not a failed state, but it does have the potential to become one.  In 2010, nearly 12,000 people were killed by gangsters, which isn’t far short of the 15,000 soldiers that the Soviet Union lost in Afghanistan over 10 years from 1979-89.  And, as the 100% blacklisting of Central America shows, the problem of Mexican gangsterism is spreading.  Out of 22 countries on the US blacklist, 17 come from Latin America.  And out of the list of three countries deemed to have “failed demonstrably” to have met its counter-narcotics obligations, two are Latin American: Bolivia and Venezuela (the third is Myanmar).

None of the Southern Cone countries is included on the blacklist, but Brazil is causing other concerns.  It is half way through a 2-year stint as a rotating member of the United Nations Security Council, and it has not impressed the US with its performance, particularly over Libya, prompting the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, to note that Brazil’s performance on the UNSC has allowed the US to “learn a lot and, frankly, not all of it encouraging”.

*** India to review Chinese interest in northeast insurgent groups.  On 15 September, Nechal Sandhu, the director of the Indian Intelligence Bureau, told a three-day conference of senior police officers that there is “fresh evidence of intrusive interest of China in the affairs of Indian insurgent groups [in the northeast] which need to be reviewed at the earliest”.

*** Militarization of Nigeria.  According to military sources in Nigeria, the country is experiencing its biggest deployment of soldiers in peacetime.  A senior military officer says: “There is an unprecedented deployment of troops in not less than 10 states to contain sectarian violence in the north, militancy in the Niger Delta, and kidnappings in the southeast.”

Separately, General Carter Ham the head of the US’s Africa Command, has warned about growing linkages between three African Islamist groups, including Nigeria’s Boko Haram.  The other two are Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and al-Shahaab in Somalia.  Ham said: “Each of those three independently presents a significant threat not only in the nations in which they principally operate but regionally...”  He said increased collaboration was being “voiced most clearly” between AQIM and Boko Haram.