This report republished with attribution to Strategic Forecasting, Inc. at www.stratfor.com.

Venezuela: Documenting the Threat

By Fred Burton

With another election under his belt, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez appears destined to remain in power until at least 2013 -- and, if his attempts to amend the constitution to abolish term limits succeed, perhaps even longer. Obviously, so long as Chavez -- one of the most colorful and strident leftist leaders in Latin America -- remains in power and touting the appeals of his Bolivarian Revolution, there will be no appreciable change in the tenor of U.S. relations with Caracas.

One of the more serious sticking points in the relationship in recent years has been the role Venezuela plays in fueling illegal immigration into the United States. A House subcommittee report released in October -- titled "A Line in the Sand: Confronting the Threat at the Southwest Border" -- noted that U.S. military and intelligence officials believe Venezuela is emerging as "a potential hub of terrorism in the Western Hemisphere" because "the Venezuelan government is issuing identity documents that could subsequently be used to obtain a U.S. visa and enter the country." The theme and tone of the congressional report are similar to those struck by the State Department's principal deputy coordinator for counterterrorism, Frank Urbancic Jr., who testified before Congress in July on the topic: "Venezuela: Terrorism Hub of South America?"

Washington has very real cause to be concerned in this regard. For years, Venezuela has been one of the most significant ports of entry into the Americas for aliens from other parts of the world -- including many "special interest" aliens from countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan -- due to lax visa laws and a culture of official corruption. However, any true assessment of Venezuela as a security threat to the United States must be kept separate from the political issues related to Chavez and his purposely annoying anti-U.S. rhetoric. For one thing, Venezuela's role as a transit point for aliens being smuggled into the United States predates Chavez and his leftist regime. For another, the Venezuelan president would incur unnecessary risk to his position and his country if he were to knowingly assist jihadists planning a strike on U.S. soil. More to the point, the jihadists would gain nothing from fostering such a relationship either.

As it stands, there is plenty of opportunity for illegal immigrants and more sinister types of criminals to transit Venezuela -- and obtain Venezuelan identity documents there -- without any government assistance whatsoever.

Venezuela as Hemispheric Gateway

Since long before Chavez came to power, Venezuela has served as an important portal for people seeking to immigrate illegally into the United States -- and as a hub of activity for the criminal smuggling organizations that make billions of dollars in assisting them. Large numbers of Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis and immigrants from other Asian and South Asian countries routinely can be seen passing through Caracas on their way to the "promised land."

With this, as with other types of illicit smuggling, precise figures as to the scope of the problem simply do not exist. However, figures from the U.S. Border Patrol can begin to shed light on at least some aspects of the situation: In 2005, the Border Patrol apprehended about 1.2 million illegal aliens -- 165,000 of whom were from countries "other than Mexico" (known as OTM aliens). Of those 165,000, a tiny fraction -- about 650 -- were labeled as coming from "special interest countries," meaning those the intelligence community believes could be exporters of terrorism.

There are two important points to bear in mind when considering such figures. First, they obviously refer only to the number of apprehensions -- a figure that the Border Patrol believes represents only 10 percent to 30 percent of the actual number of people who attempt to cross the U.S. border illegally each year. Second, immigrants with enough cash to purchase travel documents from a secondary country (such as Venezuela, in this case) are far more likely to enter the United States in some way other than sneaking over the border under cover of darkness.

Certainly, Venezuela is not the only landing port in the Americas for OTM aliens from other regions; they might access the region via other countries such as Guatemala, Belize, the Dominican Republic and Mexico. However, Venezuela is known as a major transit hub, and an entire industry has developed in Venezuela around the practice of illegal alien smuggling. There is an "underground railroad" of sorts that begins in Caracas and stretches along the various air, land and sea routes used to move migrants into the United States. This network consists of facilitators, document vendors, pilots, bus and truck drivers, sea captains, small hotels, money exchanges, restaurants and stores that all cater to illegal immigrants.

As a whole, alien smuggling is a multibillion-dollar industry. Some immigrants from Asia are thought to pay tens of thousands of dollars for their passage to the United States -- a price sufficiently high that alien smugglers have plenty of cash on hand to make bribes and "gifts" that help to lubricate the routes of passage. The money goes to immigration inspectors, visa clerks -- and to politicians who can be persuaded not to pass or seek the enforcement of laws against alien smuggling in critical "transit" countries.

This kind of government corruption was established in Venezuela long before Chavez came to power -- and government workers with a capitalistic bent have continued these practices, despite the socialistic ideals of the Bolivarian Revolution.

Mapping the Process

Alien smugglers naturally coalesce around would-be emigrants in a home, or "sending," country. These smugglers can be grouped into two types of businesspeople: those who promise direct immigration from the sending country to the United States and those who use indirect routes involving transit countries (routes that often end with immigrants crossing by land over the U.S.-Mexican border). Those who offer the direct route typically charge a much higher fee for their services, since the overhead involved in the type of fraud required (such as paying an American consular officer to issue a genuine U.S. visa) is considerable. Therefore, entering the United States from a transit country such as Venezuela commonly is seen as the "discount" route.


Obtaining travel documents is an important part of the smuggler's services on several legs of the process. For instance, many smugglers help their passengers apply for passports. Would-be immigrants have legitimate rights to such passports but frequently are illiterate and cannot complete the application forms without assistance. Alternatively, alien smugglers might use counterfeit passports, genuine but altered passports or even genuine passports that are fraudulently obtained from the transit country. However, genuine passports from the sending country are generally the cheapest, easiest and safest.

The next step in the process -- after gathering passports and the crucial down payments from the customers -- frequently is obtaining visas for the transit country. This is not always a requirement: For instance, Chinese citizens do not need visas to enter Venezuela as tourists, but the residents of many other "sending" countries do. Once the smuggler has visas in hand, he can move his load of aliens to the first transit country in the Americas. This is a critical passage, and often the longest leg of the journey.

From that point, movements become more difficult to track. Alien smuggling is a fluid process that shifts frequently, following the path of least resistance. If an operation that takes aliens over the U.S. border into Arizona is shut down, the smugglers are likely to divert to another crossing -- perhaps over the border into Texas or via sea into Puerto Rico or Florida. In other words, once the aliens arrive in their first transit country, they could end up leaving it for several different destinations, using different modes of transportation. Therefore, the smugglers often will not worry about obtaining visas for the second transit country until the last minute, lest they waste their money pursuing an obsolete route.

Once the path of the second leg has been determined, alien smugglers either will set about securing visas from the requisite embassy within the first transit country or -- as is often the case -- express mail the immigrants' passports to a third country to be stamped if they have a friendly visa clerk on the payroll there. Therefore, it is not unusual for a batch of Pakistani passports to be mailed or hand-carried from Caracas to a place like San Salvador, where Guatemalan visas can be obtained, if the smugglers are having problems getting them issued at the Guatemalan Embassy in Caracas.

While waiting for their visas, the immigrants are put up in small hotels and boarding houses. Transit countries are rife with such establishments. Hotels in places such as Caracas and Guatemala City are often filled with Chinese, Indian, Pakistani or Afghan immigrants making their way illicitly to the United States.

Of course, not all alien smugglers go to the trouble of obtaining visas for every transit country. This is particularly true of smugglers who take their immigrants over land borders, where security is far more porous than it is at international airports. It is often easier (and cheaper) to bribe border guards, convincing them to look away while a bus or truck of aliens passes by their checkpoint.

A Jihadist Precedent

Clearly, there is a great deal of corruption in the "socialist worker's paradise" of Bolivarian Venezuela. Alien smugglers, including those whose clientele might include terrorist operatives, can use this to their advantage, and need not rely on a left-leaning or anti-U.S. government for assistance, as a 1993 case in Nicaragua illustrated.

In March 1993, shortly after the bombing of the World Trade Center, U.S. federal agents executed a search warrant at the address listed on the driver's license of Mohammed Salameh, the Palestinian jihadist who rented the van used in the bombing. Living at the address was Ibrahim Elgabrowny, an Egyptian who attempted to assault one of the agents executing the search warrant. Upon arresting him, the agents found a packet of Nicaraguan identity documents in Elgabrowny's jacket pocket.

The documents -- birth certificates, passports, cedulas (national identity cards) and driver's licenses -- had been issued under innocuous names, but all bore the photos or names of Elgabrowny's cousin, El Sayyid Nosair, his wife Karen and their three children. At the time of this discovery, Nosair already had been sentenced to a prison term for a conviction related to the 1990 assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane, but investigators had not yet learned of a plan his cohorts had been working on to free him from New York's Attica prison. Had those plans been carried out, fraudulent identity documents for Nosair and his family clearly would have become useful.

Initially, there was suspicion that the Sandinista government of Nicaragua had knowingly assisted the militants in issuing the documents. Certainly, the Sandinistas had offered citizenship to hundreds of militants from Marxist groups such as ETA, the Italian Red Brigades, the Tupamaros and Montoneros of South America and even Middle Eastern Marxists such as the PLO CQ. The Sandinistas also maintained close relations with Libya (whose embassy in Managua dwarfed that of the United States) and Iraq, and received large quantities of cash from Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gaddhafi through their "special ambassador to the Middle East" -- Palestinian militant George Hallaq.

However, an exhaustive U.S. government investigation determined that the documents found in Elgabrowny's possession had been issued in a very different way from those knowingly issued to militant groups by the Sandinistas. In this case -- and much to the disappointment of some U.S. politicians, who had hoped somehow to tie the Sandinistas in with the bombing plot in New York -- it was just plain old fraud. But from an operational standpoint, this was perfectly logical. There was no reason for the militants involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing to have incurred the security risks involved in taking the Sandinistas into their confidence. And making it obvious that they were obtaining documents for Nosair would have been a clear indication that they were laying plans of some kind for his freedom.

Conclusion

Nothing in this argument is intended to deny the aid and support that the Venezuelan government knowingly provides to members of Marxist groups from Colombia and other states, thus contributing to security risks in the region. Nor is there any denial that al Qaeda and other Islamist groups, such as Hezbollah, have a history of operations (financial and otherwise) in Latin America. However, there is no sincere argument to be made by national security conservatives in the United States that Chavez himself poses a threat to the United States by knowingly aiding and abetting jihadists. The premise might be tempting for policy wonks, should Washington (which has been prone to ignoring Chavez while focusing on weightier matters like Iraq) come to the end of its patience, but the logic of the situation simply would not support it.

If one has the right connections, it is relatively easy and inexpensive to purchase genuine Venezuelan birth certificates, cedulas and passports on the street in Caracas. These same documents can be purchased almost as easily (though at higher prices) through document vendors in places like Brooklyn, Miami, London, Beijing, Karachi or Madrid. As a result, there doubtless are many "special interest" aliens -- and perhaps even some actual terrorist operatives -- who are transiting through Venezuela and who might obtain legitimate Venezuelan identification documents. In this case, the "right connections" need not be wired into the political system at all.

Two stories jumped out at us this morning.  In New Zealand, a Muslim is complaining of anguish and humiliation after being politely escorted off of a plane and missing his flight to a religious conference.  The staff became suspicious after he spent 10 minutes in the bathroom before takeoff (performing ablution, he says) in preparation for prayers.

Meanwhile, just up the road in Pakistan, two Christian woman and her 13-year-old daughter were inconvenienced as well.  They were kidnapped and tortured for three months, in an effort to persuade them to convert to the Religion of Peace.

To most people, the first incident is relatively trivial.  A lot of travelers (Muslim and otherwise) have missed flights or endured humiliation at airport security gates since 9/11, and we have only Muslims to thank for it.  The torture of a child and two women is far more serious.

But most Muslims won't see it this way.  They feel that their religion is entitled to the highest level of respect from others, even to the point that innocent lives are put at risk by their demand that discretion take a back seat to sensitivity.  Yet, at the same time, these very Muslims couldn't care less about what religious minorities suffer in Islamic countries.

Even though it isn't pleasant to accept, this is the reality of Islam.  At its core, it is a supremacist ideology that is characterized by such distinct and critical lapses of moral perspective.

I do post quite alot of items about Islam and "the religion of peace."  As I have said I want readers to see what is going on as relates to those who say it's not all Muslims.  I have never said it is but with over one billion Muslims in the world how many does it take.  Below is a comment someone named Sid put on my blog.  I was waiting for someone to post a comment of this nature.  Also my answer to Sid is shown below.  I don't believe I am paranoid [even paranoid people have enemies] and the reasons for my fear of Islamists, and Muslim terrorists is shown in my answer to Sid.  Any comments are invited whatever your opinion. 

sid writes:	Thursday, December, 07, 2006 2:35 PM
obsessed
why are you so paranoid and afraid of muslims?
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jevica writes:	Thursday, December, 07, 2006 4:23 PM
Sid
because on 9/11 it was Muslims who flew planes in the towers and Pentagon and killed 3,000 Americans. Since Muslims took over the American embassy in Iran militant Islam has been at war with this country. Around the world Islamists have been attacking Western countries in the name of their religion. The constant words we hear is "it's a religion of peace" we need to hear Muslims speak out against the Islamist killers. Hamas and Hezbollah attacks against Israel must be condemned by all Muslims and Muslim countries. The cover of their religion used for murder and terror should be condemned by those who tell us it's a "religion of peace." Attacks from Spain, London, Bali, were done by Muslims. The USS Cole, American Embassy bombings in Africa, the first attack on the Twin Towers. Is this enough Sid? When someone says they're going to kill you believe them. I hope this answers your question.

Don't you love how Muslim apologists counter categorical charges of religious intolerance by pointing to the tiny enclaves of Christians, Jews and Hindus that have managed to survive persecution and discrimination under centuries of Islamic rule? 

We're guessing that the dhimmis probably don't find this twisted irony so amusing.

The history of dhimmitude is one of financial burden, diminished legal status, religious persecution, forced conversion, relentless social pressure and occasional massacre.  That Muslims now further the exploitation of religious minorities by pretending that they are shining examples of Islamic tolerance is yet another injustice heaped on the courageous remnants of once thriving populations.

And this from people who file civil rights complaints over the mere interruption of a Muslim prayer... (see below)]

In Dearborn, Michigan, a Palestinian woman who came to the United States 17 years ago to "secure her freedom and avoid intolerance" from her native Jordan (where Palestinians do not have the civil rights that they do in the U.S. or Israel) is filing a civil rights complaint because another patron at a fitness center interrupted her praying.

Neither she nor her handlers, the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, seem all that eager to provide details, so we don't know if she was off in a corner, trying to be inconspicuous, or sprawled in the middle of the weight room, creating a hazard for others.  Frankly, it really doesn't matter.  A gymnasium isn't a house of worship.  Nearly every Christian and Jew who regularly prays in public places can also cite incidents of personal harassment, but they don't react with newspaper interviews and lawsuits.

But, of course, Islam isn't like other religions.  It instills the deepest level of self-importance and arrogance, and manifests itself in just this sort of peevish behavior, which is seen across America and Europe, as Muslims reward the benevolence of their Western hosts with petulant complaint, ever-widening demand and even occasional violence.

“We have to sit around and wait 'til we're attacked to deal with this? Hell, that's not even enough anymore. We have been attacked. Three thousand Americans dead on 9/11, and now, five years later, we are debating whether or not we need to defend ourselves. It's absurd. It's frightening that so many lazy, linguini-spined Americans don't get it. It's also dangerous.” “Were it not for Ronald Reagan, the Cold War would still be alive and well today because people like Greenfield and others would be appeasing whatever Soviet leader was alive today.” “Liberals are different, folks. They're socialists, perhaps even some of them further left than that. But they're not fighting for the same things that the rest of us are.” “Anti-Semitism is on the rise. The United Nations is now the main repository for anti-Semitism in the world today. It is sanctioned, it is applauded there, and that is what enables liberals to say that Israel is the problem.” “If Israel is the problem, why do the Islamofascists attack the Hindus in India? Why do the Islamofascists attack the sheiks in Kashmir? Is it Israel that causes them to attack and attempt to reconquer Somalia? Is it Israel that causes them to attack in the Philippines or in Russia? Is it Israel that forced Al-Qaeda to attack Britain and Spain and Bali?” “The Islamofascists would love it if we would abandon Israel, but it's not going to stop them.” “There's no appeasing Islamofascists. But liberals think they're smarter than everybody else, ‘If we would just sit down and talk to these people, let 'em know that we intend them no harm.’ That's why they love military defeats.”

An amazing statement from Indonesian cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir, reflects the narcissistic and uncompromising nature of Islam: "We have shown that Islam can rule the world perfectly for 14 centuries," he says.  What makes this so ridiculous (for anyone familiar with the history of the religion) is the fact is that Islam hasn't even been able to rule itself perfectly since the very moment that Muhammad drew his last breath without leaving a clear line of succession.

The first Caliph, Abu Bakr, spent his only two years of rule in a constant state of war, first against Muslims who wanted out, then against infidels who didn't want in.  The next several Caliphs (two of whom were murdered by fellow Muslims) dealt in their own ways with civil wars, including an armed rebellion by Aisha, Muhammad's widow.  The split between Sunni and Shia finally became permanent with the death of Muhammad's own grandson in a battle against those who went on to become today's Sunni majority.  The sectarian violence that we see in Iraq and elsewhere is the legacy of this schism.

Yes, all religion has its excesses, but it's tough to imagine Jesus' twelve disciples staging assassinations and leading armies against one another over who should be in charge.  Maybe this would have been the case if their leader had spent a little less time encouraging peacemaking and cheek-turning, and more time threatening his followers with hell if they refused his command to "smite the unbelievers above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them" (Sura 8:12).

Bashir himself served time in an Indonesian prison for helping the Bali bombers murder over 200 people in his own Muslim nation, which may lend insight into his standard of perfection.  If it involves a big stack of dead bodies that gets higher each day, then we'd have to agree that Islam's really got it going on.

In a Spiegel interview with Ali Bardakoglu, Turkey's top Muslim dignitary, the cleric is asked about the pope's well-publicized remarks and responds:

A person who says the prophet is the source of violence, and that the Koran is the cause of the aberrations, isn't formulating criticism but rather condemning and insulting Islam.

Of course, no one is saying that Muhammad is the source of all violence past and present, but he is very much responsible for the portion produced by the Islamic world, since it is - and has always been - inspired by his words, ways and traditions.  The evidence is plain for all to see in Islam's holiest of texts.

In his earlier times, Muhammad spoke occasionally of tolerance for unbelievers, but as he gained power, the message changed dramatically.  As a result, the Qur'an has next to nothing to say about peace, tolerance, and universal brotherhood, but is full of verses that incite hatred and violence against those who don't believe in Islam.  More importantly, the later verses abrogate the earlier ones.

The Qur'an's 9th Sura is not just a call to "slay the infidel wherever ye find him" (9:5) but a warning that Allah will torture in hell those who refuse to join the carnage (9:39).  This is consistent with many other Suras and verses, such as (2:216) in which Muhammad orders his reluctant men to fight an aggressive battle even though they don't feel it is right.. hardly the character of a pacifist.

Ali Bardakoglu's words are indicative of the grand charade in which contemporary Muslims tell beleaguered (yet gullible) Westerners exactly what they want to hear in sweeping, superficial statements that are, in fact, contradicted by the underlying details of the Islamic religion.