The situation of Islamist radicalism in Latin America

Executive summary

Maria Zuppello's central argument is that Latin America is neither a marginal land nor a mere sanctuary for global jihadism, but a functional space integrated into the economy of international terrorism: at once a “cash dispenser” (financing) and a “blind spot” (concealment, retreat, preparation of attacks).

Six findings structure her demonstration:

• A two-headed but convergent threat. Hezbollah (Iran's Shiite proxy) and the Islamic State (ISIS, Sunni) are ideologically opposed, yet in Latin America they share the same ground: a rise in antisemitism since the Gaza war, an anti-Western outlook, the recruitment of locals and proselytising in Indigenous communities.
• A strategic turning point: recruiting “locals”. Operation Trapiche (Brazilian federal police, November 2023) revealed a new Hezbollah method: subcontracting attacks to local recruits with no ideological commitment, in order to dilute responsibility and pass off an attack as an antisemitic hate crime.
• A model of proselytising on social vulnerabilities. In Peru (the Inkarri-Islam centre) as in the Brazilian Amazon, the networks exploit the poverty and marginalisation of Indigenous communities - an “Afghanistan/Pakistan model” transposed to the Andes and the rainforest.
• Financing backed by organised crime. Laundering through cryptocurrencies, smuggling (e-cigarettes, tobacco), cocaine trafficking, the halal sector: the sinews of war run through a de facto alliance with Latin American criminal organisations.
• Long-standing geographic bridgeheads. The Tri-Border Area (Brazil-Paraguay-Argentina) remains the historic epicentre of Hezbollah financing; Trinidad and Tobago provides the hemisphere's largest contingent of foreign fighters per capita; Chavista Venezuela has served as an Iranian “hub.”
• A legal vacuum and a political obstacle. Only five of the thirty-three countries of Latin America and the Caribbean have designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation. Brazil has not, and President Lula's anti-Israeli stance is presented by the author as an aggravating factor.

1. General framework: a “tropical” jihad

Zuppello's starting point, as summarised in the review of her book Il Jihad ai Tropici (2019), is a shift of perspective. Jihad is spontaneously associated with the Middle East, the African Sahel or the Afghanistan-Pakistan-India zone. Yet Latin America, too, occupies a place in this geography - but in a particular way.

The region plays two complementary roles there. First a financing role: cocaine is to the Islamists what heroin is to the Taliban, a resource from which they profit. Then a concealment role: the Caribbean or Brazilian beaches are “the last place one would imagine as a hideout for jihadists.” Hence the image, coined by the author, of the “caipirinha jihadists”: radicalised elements living with apparent normality in the Latin American context, yet embedded in criminal networks more sinister than the nickname suggests.

The book's subtitle - “the pact between Islamic terrorism and organised crime in Latin America” - condenses the argument. Brazil is identified as the pivot of connections with the rest of the region and with the international structures of the various jihadist groups. Zuppello documents in particular the link between the Salafist preacher Imran Hosein and the radicalisation of Samy Amimour, one of the terrorists of the Bataclan attack (Paris, 2015), as well as the ramifications of the Brazilians arrested during Operation Hashtag, on the eve of the Rio Olympic Games (2016).

The question she raises is twofold: will Latin America become “the new cash dispenser of global jihad”? Or “something else: a hideout for foreign fighters on the run, or a new platform for attacks - or both”?

2. Recruitment: from the diaspora to the “locals”

2.1 Recruiting local citizens (Hezbollah and ISIS)

According to Emanuele Ottolenghi (Foundation for Defense of Democracies), cited by the author, Operation Trapiche - which, in November 2023, thwarted a series of Hezbollah attacks against Jewish communities in Brazil - brought to light an unprecedented strategy by the Iranian proxy: recruiting “locals” to carry out the attacks. The logic is explicitly described as a change of doctrine: outsourcing criminal responsibility onto third parties.

“With the multiplication of antisemitic episodes around the world, a successful attack could have been disguised as a hate crime hatched by local extremists, rather than an operation orchestrated by Hezbollah.” - Emanuele Ottolenghi (Foundation for Defense of Democracies)

This outsourcing is nothing new on the Iranian side: as early as 2021, three Azerbaijani nationals attempted to assassinate the dissident Masih Alinejad in New York; the same year, an Iranian agent recruited two Colombian criminals to target Israeli and American businessmen and diplomats.

On the ISIS side, radicalisation occurs mainly through the internet. Zuppello cites the case of Fábio Samuel da Costa Oliveira, 20, sentenced in July 2024 to seven years in prison for terrorism and the enlistment of minors: with a friend, radicalised online, he was planning attacks on the Israeli and American embassies in Brazil and was trying to recruit teenagers from São Paulo and Rio. In Argentina, in August 2024, a local jihadist network was dismantled in Mendoza province, using social media and messaging apps to spread ISIS propaganda and prepare attacks on Jewish targets.

A key analytical distinction, drawn by Rashmi Singh (Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais): “The big difference is that the locals recruited by Hezbollah have, so far, no ideological commitment to the organisation, unlike the young people radicalised by ISIS.” Hezbollah buys operatives; ISIS converts militants.

2.2 Proselytising in Indigenous communities

The second front of recruitment targets Indigenous populations, on the fertile ground of poverty and marginalisation. Two case studies structure the argument.

Peru and the Inkarri-Islam centre. In October 2023, Colonel Max Anhuamán, then head of Peru's counter-terrorism directorate (Dircote), stated that the political demonstrations of the time had been infiltrated by young Peruvians radicalised in Iran. He named as recruiter Edwar Quiroga Vargas, a Peruvian Indigenous activist who, according to Ottolenghi, “converted to Shiite Islam and studied for three months in Iran under Mohsen Rabbani” - the mastermind of the AMIA bombing (Buenos Aires, 1994, 85 dead). Back in Peru, Quiroga Vargas founded Inkarri-Islam, the country's first Shiite cultural centre.

“Inkarri-Islam perfectly embodies the Iranian strategy of fusing traditional Indigenous teachings with revolutionary Shiite Islam. By juxtaposing similar narratives - the Shiite belief in the return of the Mahdi and Indigenous myths such as the return of the Inca - Quiroga gave his centre a façade of legitimacy while pursuing a radical agenda on behalf of Iran.” - Emanuele Ottolenghi

The Brazilian Amazon. A network of Salafists - the same ideology as ISIS - was recently discovered in the state of Amazonas: it was converting young Indigenous people and taking them to Turkey. Rashmi Singh sees in it the reproduction of a proven pattern:

“What stands out is that the dramatic level of poverty in the Amazon is exploited, and that these Indigenous communities are completely deprived of rights and receive no adequate education from institutions. This is exactly the model used in Afghanistan and Pakistan when young people were recruited for jihad in madrassas.” - Rashmi Singh (PUC Minas Gerais)

3. Illicit financing and the nexus with organised crime

For Zuppello, the pillar of the jihadist presence in Latin America is financial. Hezbollah and ISIS converge there once again around illicit activities, foremost among them laundering through cryptocurrencies.

3.1 Laundering, cryptocurrencies and smuggling

The second phase of Operation Trapiche uncovered a multi-million-dollar laundering network set up by Hezbollah through tobacco shops. The bank accounts opened by its members to conceal part of the profits from e-cigarette smuggling were part of a scheme run by Brazilian criminals, laundering billions of reais through cryptocurrencies.

The use of crypto-assets is presented as a vulnerable link exploited also by the various ISIS branches - the attack on the Crocus City Hall in Moscow (22 March 2024, more than 140 dead) was thus financed in cryptocurrencies. Lucas Webber (Tech Against Terrorism; The Soufan Center) extends the reasoning:

“In other parts of the world, we see ISIS branches and members raising cryptocurrency online. It is therefore likely that these expanded Latin American networks could increase their fundraising in this way. ISIS also takes part in illicit markets (…), which could become a growing trend in Latin America.” - Lucas Webber (Tech Against Terrorism / The Soufan Center)

Jessica Davis (Insight Threat Intelligence) underlines the operational difficulty that results: the dispersed nature of these networks means that “most of the people sending funds are unknown to security services, which makes it very hard to stop money movements ahead of an attack.”

3.2 The Lebanese diaspora, halal and the historic circuits

The review of the 2019 book documents the historical depth of these circuits. Illicit trafficking generates millions of dollars of dirty money laundered through international circuits, with a central role played by the “Lebanese diaspora communities” established in La Guaira, on Margarita Island (Venezuela), in the Colón free-trade zone (Panama) and in the Tri-Border Area.

Zuppello also stresses the halal sector and its certifications, growing exponentially, which the counter-terrorism authorities of several countries suspect of serving as a cover for terrorist financing and laundering. The halal meat trade is said in particular to have served as a cover for dozens of Iranian meat inspectors durably installed in the region. These investigations helped several Latin American countries to recognise Hezbollah, for the first time in 2019, as a terrorist group.

4. The Iranian connection and the Tri-Border Area

4.1 The Tehran-Caracas axis and the “red-green” alliance

In his preface to Zuppello's book, Ottolenghi highlights the partnership between jihadist elements and certain sectors of the Latin American left, in particular the Bolivarian left. The extremist message, he writes, “differs little from the anti-imperialist revolutionary rhetoric of the radical left, deeply rooted for decades in Latin America.”

This is the foundation of the “red-green alliance”: its unifying theme is “resistance to American imperialism.” The analysis holds that the creation of a strategic alliance between Tehran and Caracas opened the door of the region to Iran, the Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah, with Venezuela becoming a “hub” for Iranian agents. Since Hugo Chávez came to power, the Venezuelan-Iranian convergence is said to have facilitated the obtaining of Venezuelan passports by Islamist radicals, who are also said to have taken part in the cocaine trafficking in which the Venezuelan state itself is said to have been involved.

4.2 The Tri-Border Area: the historic financial epicentre

The Tri-Border Area (Brazil-Paraguay-Argentina) is the obligatory reference whenever Hezbollah in Latin America is at issue. The Buenos Aires attacks - the Israeli embassy (1992) and AMIA (1994) - had their operational origin there, and since then the financial ties of this geographic “corner” with the Shiite group have been abundantly documented.

The Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman, murdered in 2015, had in his 2013 report on Iranian terrorist networks warned of the central role of Trinidad and Tobago in Iranian projects, and established the link of the Trinidadian Kareem Ibrahim - sentenced to life for the attempted attack on New York's JFK airport (2007) - with the Iranian regime and with Yasin Abu Bakr, founder of the Jamaat al-Muslimeen group (author of an attempted coup in the Antilles in 1990).

4.3 Operation Trapiche: Iran's “hand” behind Hezbollah

The March 2024 article deepens the Iranian dimension of Trapiche. According to Brazilian federal police documents obtained by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, the two masterminds wanted by Interpol - Mohamad Khir Abdulmajid (a naturalised Brazilian of Syrian origin) and Haissam Houssim Diab (Lebanese) - had solid ties to the Charitable Islamic Cultural Centre of Brasília (CCBIB), a Shiite centre funded by Iran since 2019. Abdulmajid was its main promoter in 2019, while remaining absent from the official structure - a stepping back analysed as deliberate.

The clerical chain is at the heart of the argument. The centre's statutes were inspired by a project of Sheikh Mohammed Sadeq Maadel (Moaddel Ebrahimi), long the right-hand man of Bilal Mohsen Wehbe - designated in 2010 by the U.S. Treasury as “Hezbollah's main representative in South America, responsible for overseeing the group's counter-intelligence in the Tri-Border Area.” A report by the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (Reichman University) argues that Ebrahimi could belong to Hezbollah's clerical hierarchy, or even to its new External Relations Department (FRD), making him not a mere spiritual guide but possibly a “handler” linking Tehran to Shiite communities worldwide.

5. Hezbollah: the operational interlocking with drug trafficking

The March 2024 article details the financial architecture of the Brazilian plan. Unable to honour the sums promised to their recruits, Diab and Abdulmajid - small traders of the local Shiite diaspora, moreover related to each other - led the police to wonder about the origin of the funds.

The answer points to Hezbollah's internal organisation: the External Security Organization (ESO), in charge of international attacks, is said to have financed the Brazilian plot through its subsidiary, the Business Affairs Component (BAC), which oversees drug trafficking and laundering to fund terrorist activities, arms purchases and support for fighters' families.

Diab's criminal connections are precisely traced: a link with the Lebanese trafficker Akram Abed Ali Kachmar (raid in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, 2017); attachment to the trafficking network run by the Hezbollah financier Ali Issa Chamas (sentenced to 42 months in Miami for cocaine trafficking to the United States, then again in Paraguay); telephone links with exchange bureaus including Chams Exchange, sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury in 2019 for laundering narco-dollars among some ten countries; contacts with Sobhi Fayad, a Hezbollah financier in the Tri-Border Area, sanctioned as early as 2006.

6. Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean: an underestimated hotbed

Zuppello devotes a specific section to Trinidad and Tobago, which an adviser to the Ministry of National Security, Sanjay Badri-Maharaj, describes as “a nest of radical ideas, especially linked to the Islamic State.”

The striking fact: these Caribbean islands provided the largest number of foreign fighters per capita of the entire Western hemisphere - at least 130 people who went to swell the ranks of ISIS, most of them killed in combat or detained in the camps of Syria and Iraq. Extremism nonetheless continues to grow there.

The author highlights three regional risk factors. First, the emergence of new criminal gangs of Islamist inspiration (such as “Unruly ISIS”), which take over from the historic Jamaat al-Muslimeen. Then, the density of the gang phenomenon: according to the 2024 UNODC report, 186 gangs and about 1,700 presumed members were recorded in the country in 2023, almost all integrated into larger structures. Finally, the absence of a visa requirement for Trinidadians travelling in the rest of the Caribbean, which raises the risk of a regional spread of the threat, exacerbated by the conflict in the Middle East.

Zuppello finally notes a strategic paradox: ISIS and ISIS-KP, ideologically opposed to Hezbollah and Iran, “nonetheless benefit from this conflict and from hostile sentiments in the Muslim world regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which they use to increase their recruitment, propaganda and fundraising” (Lucas Webber).

7. Al-Qaeda in Brazil and the Tri-Border Area: the historical depth

The February 2022 article documents the oldest foothold: that of Al-Qaeda. On 22 December 2021, the U.S. Treasury added to its terrorist list a Brazilian network of individuals and companies linked to Al-Qaeda: Haytham Ahmad Shukri Ahmad Al-Maghrabi (a naturalised Egyptian, settled in Brazil in 2015, presented as one of the network's first members and a liaison agent with Ahmed Mohammed Hamed Ali, head of Al-Qaeda's paramilitary operations for Afghanistan, involved in the 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya); Mohamed Sherif Mohamed Awadd (arrived in 2018, involved in the printing of counterfeit money); and Ahmad Al-Khatib (a sheikh of Lebanese origin, in Brazil for 32 years, president of the NGO “Livro Aberto” aiding Syrian refugees).

The Al-Khatib case illustrates the “double game” of facilitators. Sanctioned by Washington as a financial facilitator of Al-Qaeda, he was also investigated (without being charged) by the Brazilian justice system in Operation Hashtag - the pro-Islamic State network dismantled in 2016 before the Rio Games, on an FBI alert. In the Telegram group “Defenders of Sharia,” members cited him among the rare “religious authorities” in Brazil sharing their vision and supporting ISIS. He denied any involvement (“Al-Qaeda doesn't even exist in Brazil; these people from the United States have a Hollywood imagination”).

Zuppello draws from this a major analytical conclusion: in Latin America, many individuals work for several terrorist organisations at once, even though these groups fight each other elsewhere in the world.

“For Islamist extremists, Latin America serves as a cash dispenser for jihad - a place to finance terrorist activities, move cocaine and operators for possible attacks on American soil, and launder money. This explains the double role of these facilitators, available to rival groups. They have no reason to fight each other; on the contrary, it is more advantageous to collaborate and share the Latin American illicit market.” - Maria Zuppello

The article recalls the historical milestones (reported with caution by the author): the 2011 congressional testimony of Roger Noriega linking Sheikh Khaled Taky El Din to Hezbollah's network in the Tri-Border Area and mentioning the presumed hosting of bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in 1995; the diaries of Abu Zubaydah (2002) mentioning a Paraguayan number (Ali Nizar Dahroug, accused of having sent ten million dollars to finance Al-Qaeda and Hamas); the Hezbollah financier Assad Ahmad Barakat, with presumed links to bin Laden; or Khaled Hussein Ali, presented as the head of Al-Qaeda's online propaganda branch (Jihad Media Battalion) from Brazil. The author specifies that several of these elements - including bin Laden's visit to Foz do Iguaçu - remain “difficult to verify.”

8. The legal vacuum and the political obstacle

The common thread of the four texts is the existence of a legal vacuum that guarantees near-impunity. Two illustrations recur insistently.

The non-retroactivity of Brazil's anti-terrorism law. In the Hashtag case, Al-Khatib and two co-defendants (Antônio Andrade, Vitor Barbosa) were not charged “because, despite the abundance of evidence of support for and promotion of the Islamic State, all the recorded conversations predated the entry into force of law 13.260/2016.” Brazil had anti-terrorism legislation only from March 2016, non-retroactive, and a decree validating the UN sanctions against Al-Qaeda and ISIS only from July 2016. Likewise, Khaled Hussein Ali, arrested in 2009, spent only 21 days in prison for want of an applicable charge.

The non-designation of Hezbollah. Only five of the thirty-three countries of Latin America and the Caribbean have officially designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation - Brazil is not among them. Zuppello therefore considers it unlikely that Diab and Abdulmajid, who have taken refuge in Lebanon, will be convicted under Brazilian anti-terrorism legislation.

The political factor. The author links this vacuum to the political situation. She reports, citing the Israelite Federation of the State of São Paulo, a rise in antisemitic incidents in Brazil, which she relates to the statements of President Lula da Silva accusing Israel of “genocide” in Gaza - statements that earned Lula being declared persona non grata by Israel's foreign minister. According to her, “this legal vacuum, combined with Lula's anti-Israeli stance, could create new threats, not only in Brazil but across the whole of Latin America.”

9. Overall assessment and points of vigilance

At the end of this synthesis, Zuppello's argument can be summed up in one formula: Latin America has become a shared infrastructure of transnational terrorism, where groups that are enemies elsewhere (Shiite Hezbollah, Sunni ISIS and Al-Qaeda) cooperate de facto because the dominant logic there is not ideological but economic and logistical.

Four dynamics, according to her work, warrant particular vigilance:

• The terrorism-organised crime convergence, which makes the networks resilient and hard to classify legally (ordinary crime vs. terrorism).
• The outsourcing to local recruits, which blurs the attribution of attacks and exploits the rise of antisemitism as a screen.
• The targeting of vulnerable populations (Andean and Amazonian Indigenous peoples), a transposition of a radicalisation model proven elsewhere.
• The institutional blind spots: legislative gaps, the non-designation of Hezbollah, free Caribbean movement, the opacity of crypto-assets and of untaxed religious donations.

The author recommends, after the Taliban's capture of Kabul (August 2021) which upset the balance, a strengthening of controls not only in the Tri-Border Area but across the whole subcontinent, with particular attention to national and international financial flows and to untaxed religious donations, which largely escape the monitoring of financial institutions.

Primary sources

Maria Zuppello corpus analysed:

• Maria Zuppello, “The Threat of Islamic Radicalism in Latin America”, Diálogo Américas, 21 October 2024.
• Emili J. Blasco (review), “The caipirinha jihadists” - on Maria Zuppello, Il Jihad ai Tropici. Il patto tra terrorismo islamico e crimine organizzato in America Latina, Paese Edizioni, Rome, 2019, 215 pp.
• Maria Zuppello, “Iran Is Connected to Failed Hezbollah Attacks in Latin America”, Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), 13 March 2024.
• Maria Zuppello, “South America's Jihadists: A Look at US-Designated Al-Qaeda Affiliate Networks in Brazil and the Tri-Border Area”, 15 February 2022.

Experts and institutions cited by the author: Emanuele Ottolenghi (Foundation for Defense of Democracies); Rashmi Singh (PUC Minas Gerais); Lucas Webber (Tech Against Terrorism / The Soufan Center); Jessica Davis (Insight Threat Intelligence); Sanjay Badri-Maharaj (Ministry of National Security of Trinidad and Tobago); the late prosecutor Alberto Nisman; International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (Reichman University); UNODC (2024 report on Caribbean gangs); U.S. Department of the Treasury (designations 2006, 2010, 2019, 2021).

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