Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Breaking Bad, Jihad-Style

These days practically every jihadi terrorist group, including ISIS, is up to its neck in the drug trade:
Indeed, as U.S. law enforcement agencies now acknowledge, narcoterrorism is the face of 21st-century organized crime. Far-flung groups like Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, Hamas, Al-Shabab in Somalia, and Boko Haram in Nigeria are two-headed monsters: hybrids of highly structured global drug-trafficking cartels and politically motivated Islamic terrorists. Increasingly, the sale of narcotics is the first-line of financing for acts of terror; the March 11, 2004, coordinated train bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people cost relatively little—an estimated $70,000—and were financed through the sale of hashish and ecstasy. Al-Qaeda spokesmen immediately claimed responsibility for the bombings.

ISIS, perhaps the greatest current threat to stability in the Middle East, is also engaged in narcoterrorism. Counter-narcotics experts tell me that ISIS now receives a sizable amount of its revenue through narcotics, specifically through drugs manufactured at labs they’ve seized in the Syrian city of Aleppo. These are former legitimate pharmaceutical manufacturing plants, containing the chemicals and equipment necessary to make high-grade, Breaking Bad-style methamphetamine that can then be distributed throughout the Middle East and Europe.  

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