Key points
- Published in 2019 by the Italian investigative journalist Maria Zuppello (Paesi Edizioni), with a preface by the analyst Emanuele Ottolenghi (Foundation for Defense of Democracies), the book is one of the first to document the intertwining of Islamist radicalism and organised crime in Latin America.
- Thesis: Latin America is neither marginal nor a mere sanctuary, but a functional space in the economy of global terrorism - at once a « cash dispenser » (financing through cocaine) and a « blind spot » (concealment, logistics, false documents).
- Groups that are enemies elsewhere - Shiite Hezbollah, the Islamic State and Sunni Al-Qaeda - cooperate de facto there because the dominant logic is not ideological but economic: this is « narcoterrorism ».
- The book proceeds through a country-by-country investigation (Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Ecuador, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Bolivia, Peru), after a foundational chapter on Hezbollah and the « Tri-Border Area ».
- A teeming book, rich in named cases and judicial sources - but whose allegations, the author admits, rest in some cases on anonymous intelligence sources and remain « difficult to corroborate ».
1. Presentation of the book and its author
Maria Zuppello is an Italian journalist and researcher based in South America, a specialist in terrorism and organised crime. Tropical Jihad was published in 2019 by Paesi Edizioni, in the « Machiavelli » collection. The exact reference of the original is: Maria Zuppello, Il Jihad ai Tropici. Il patto tra terrorismo islamico e crimine organizzato in America Latina, Paesi Edizioni (coll. Machiavelli), Rome, 2019. The book presents itself as the fruit of several years of research and fieldwork and aims, according to its prefacer, to be « a significant starting point » on a long-taboo subject.
The preface is signed by Emanuele Ottolenghi, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (Washington), who places the book in the wake of a pioneering Italian study (« Sahara, mafia desert and jihad ») and sums up its contribution: to reveal « the close ties between the local mafia and the funders of Islamic terrorism », police officers, judges, customs officers and local political leaders guaranteeing « the permanence both of the ideology and of the illegal trade ». Zuppello adds her own narrative preface, which sets the tone: a « journey between jihadism and transnational organised crime », from the port of Santos - from which nearly 80% of Latin American drugs bound for Europe are said to depart - to the geography of coca, the « bitcoin of the modern era » whose proceeds « can finance anything, from presidential campaigns to jihad » (the global illicit drug market being estimated by the UNODC at more than 320 billion dollars a year).
2. The thesis: Latin America, « cash dispenser » and « blind spot » of global jihad
The core of the argument lies in an image: Latin America fulfils two complementary functions for international terrorism. First a financing function - « cocaine is to the Islamists what heroin is to the Taliban » - ; then a concealment function, the Caribbean or Brazilian beaches being « the last place one would imagine as a hideout for jihadists ». Hence the image, coined by the author, of the « caipirinha jihadists ».
The demonstration rests on a reversal: on the subcontinent, ideologically opposed organisations lay down their weapons and share the same « dirty cake ». Zuppello sees in it an « alliance unthinkable elsewhere » between Shiites (Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy) and Sunnis (Al-Qaeda, then the Islamic State), united not by faith but by « the sharing of illicit advantages » and by « trafficking across a hostile and unknown nature » (impenetrable forest, implacable desert). One word sums it up: « narcoterrorism », coined in the 1980s by the Peruvian president Belaúnde Terry regarding the Shining Path.
A second thread runs throughout the book: the « red-green alliance » between the Bolivarian left and Islamism, welded by « resistance to American imperialism ». The Tehran-Caracas axis is said to have opened the door of the region to Iran, the Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah, with Venezuela becoming a « hub » for Iranian agents; the author links to this matrix Chávez and Maduro, but also Morales, Correa, the Castros and Lula da Silva.
3. Methodology and sources
The book belongs to investigative journalism. Zuppello draws on abundant material: reports from the U.S. State Department and Treasury (« specially designated narcotics trafficker » designations, OFAC terrorist lists), congressional hearings (Roger Noriega, Robert Pittenger), DEA investigations (« project Cassandra », operation « Titan »), the work of Italian anti-mafia magistrates (Nicola Gratteri, DIA), testimonies from former officials (ex-DEA Michael Braun, Admiral Kurt Tidd of Southcom), local judicial files (Brazilian operations « Hashtag », « Mendaz », « Atila »), and numerous press sources. To this is added genuine fieldwork - the author describes, for example, her investigation in Desaguadero, an Andean border village at 3,800 metres altitude.
The structure is clear: after the foreword and the preface, a foundational chapter (« In the beginning, there was Hezbollah ») sets the frame, then twelve country chapters apply the same grid - Muslim community and foreign funding, networks of the crime-terrorism nexus, named cases, operations and seizures.
4. Architecture - a tour of the continent
« In the beginning, there was Hezbollah »
The founding chapter retraces the implantation of the « Party of God » at the end of the 1980s, « just after the failed attempt by the PLO » and Gaddafi's friendship with Venezuela. Its pivot is the « Tri-Border Area » (Brazil-Argentina-Paraguay), 2,500 km² at the confluence of the Paraná and the Iguaçu, rich in a dense Arab and Lebanese community, a « no man's land » where Hezbollah « planned and financed » the two Buenos Aires attacks (Israeli embassy, 1992; AMIA, 1994) and where Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed are said to have gone in 1995. The journalist sets out the financial mechanics: cocaine as Hezbollah's « currency » (Michael Braun speaks of « the most sophisticated money-laundering system ever seen »), the « Business Affairs Component » (BAC) of its External Security Organization, the relays with the Colombian (FARC), Mexican (Los Zetas) and Brazilian PCC cartels, up to the unprecedented alliance - revealed by the Italian operation « Stammer » (2017) - between Hezbollah and the Calabrian 'ndrangheta.
Brazil, an essential hub for European jihad
This is the most developed chapter of the book. The author follows the Trinidadian preacher Imran Hosein (who came to São Paulo in 2014, to Recife 48 hours before the Bataclan in 2015) and his role in the radicalisation of Samy Amimour, one of the Bataclan terrorists; the passage through São Paulo of the « Aveiro cell » (Tazi, el-Hanafi, Boukal) linked to the Paris and Brussels attacks; and above all the operation « Hashtag » (July 2016), the first operation against an Islamic State cell in Latin America, dismantled on the eve of the Rio Games. The author minutely restates its protagonists - Brazilian converts, young and from modest backgrounds, knowing little about Islam but ready for armed jihad - and the more seasoned figures (Ahmad al Kathib, Mohamad Mounir Zakaria). She finally documents the criminal side: the PCC and the Comando Vermelho, the Ponta Porã border, and the « halal-cocaine » networks (cocaine concealed in halal-meat shipments at the port of Santos, the El Bouchi/Minerva Foods affair).
Colombia, Venezuela: coca and the narco-state
Colombia, the world's leading producer of cocaine and « homeland of Pablo Escobar », is presented as an « inexhaustible cash dispenser »: the Saudi-Qatari mosque of Maicao, conversions among the Wayuu Indians, the Shiite community of Buenaventura trained in Qom, the presence of Jamaat al-Tabligh and the IHH, but also the trajectory of the FARC (« the quintessential example » of narcoterrorism) and their dissidences, not to mention the documented ties between Colombian cartels, the 'ndrangheta and Hezbollah (operation « Titan », 2008; the financier Chekry Harb). Venezuela occupies a central place: a narco-state of the « Los Soles » cartel, the expulsion of the DEA (2005), the axis with Iran and Syria, the network of Tareck El Aissami (issuing thousands of passports), figures of Hezbollah (Ghazi Nassereddine), Margarita Island turned into a training base, and even the stay in Venezuela of the Al-Qaeda theoretician Abu Musab al-Suri.
Trinidad and Tobago: the hotbed of foreign fighters
The chapter devoted to this Caribbean archipelago is one of the most striking: Trinidad and Tobago provided the largest contingent of foreign fighters in the Western hemisphere per capita - some hundred departures for Syria since 2015, out of 1.3 million inhabitants. The author shows the entrenchment of an extremism blending the legacy of Malcolm X's movement, Al-Qaeda jihadism and recent Salafism, the role of the Islamic State's magazine Dabiq, the figure of the fighter Shane Crawford and the foiled plot against the 2018 carnival.
Mexico, Argentina, Paraguay and the peripheries
Mexico is seen as the gateway to the United States: cartels (Sinaloa, Los Zetas, Jalisco), training camps linked to Hezbollah, human trafficking, and the emblematic case of Ayman Joumaa - an illustration, via operation « Cassandra », of a Hezbollah become « the Cosa Nostra on steroids ». Argentina, the only country on the subcontinent struck by proven Islamist attacks (Israeli embassy 1992, AMIA 1994), concentrates the gravest facts: the prosecutor Alberto Nisman, murdered in 2015 on the eve of his testimony against President Cristina Kirchner, the role of Iran and of Mohsen Rabbani, the figure of the arms trafficker Monzer al-Kassar. Paraguay - and its city of Ciudad del Este, the « South American Casablanca » where laundering is said to reach half the national GDP - harbours the Barakat clan and the matrix of the 2000 Al-Qaeda-Hezbollah « meeting ».
The shorter chapters complete the picture. Ecuador (open-borders policy under Correa, migratory corridor, the Seham al Salkhadi affair linked to the Bataclan); Uruguay (the « Switzerland » of laundering, hosting former Guantanamo detainees, including Abu Wa'el Dhiab); Chile (singular ties with British Salafism, the ports of Iquique, a Shiite community funded by Iran); Bolivia (« narco-state », the expulsion of the DEA in 2008, Iranian presence, « flags of convenience » intercepted in the Mediterranean with cargoes bound for ISIS); and finally Peru and the « new Andean tri-border » (Chile-Peru-Bolivia), less visible, which Hezbollah is said to be moving into in turn.
5. CERIF commentary
The contribution. Tropical Jihad has the considerable merit of having broken new ground, as early as 2019, on a terrain that Francophone research almost entirely ignored. Its central intuition - the economic and logistical convergence of doctrinally enemy groups, around cocaine trafficking - is solid and illuminating; it offers a coherent reading grid to a mass of scattered facts. The strength of the book lies in its documentary density: each assertion rests on a named case, a police operation, a Treasury designation, a trial. The restatement of the « model » of the Tri-Border Area and of Brazil's pivotal role is particularly convincing.
The limits. The book belongs to investigative journalism, not to social science, and must be read as such. The main methodological reservation lies in the heterogeneity of the evidence: judicially established facts (convictions, sanctions, seizures) sit alongside allegations that the author herself judges « difficult to corroborate » - foremost the presumed visits of bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to the Tri-Border Area -, without the boundary between the two always being clear.
Scope. This reservation does not invalidate the book: it specifies its use. Tropical Jihad is worth reading as an inaugural cartography and as a reservoir of leads - not as a closed demonstration. It documents convincingly that Latin America has become a shared infrastructure of transnational crime where Islamism finds financing and refuge.
Dr. Florence Bergeaud-Blackler
Anthropologist, Research Fellow at the CNRS (HDR)
Founding President of CERIF - Centre Européen de Recherche et d'Information sur le Frérisme
cerif.eu