[Maria Zuppello, Il Jihad ai Tropici. Il patto tra terrorismo islamico e crimine organizzato in America Latina. Paese Edizioni. Roma, 2019. 215 p.]

review / Emili J. Blasco

We usually link jihad with the Middle East. If anything, also with the African Sachel, opening the map to the west, or with the border of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, opening it to the east. However, Latin America also has a place in this geography. It has it as a place for financing the terrorist struggle - cocaine is a business that Islamists take advantage of, as happens with heroin in the specific case of the Taliban - and also as a space in which to go unnoticed, off the radar (the Caribbean or Brazilian beaches are the last place that would be imagined as a hiding place for jihadists).

Jihad in the Tropics, by Italian researcher Maria Zuppello, deals precisely with that lesser-known aspect of global jihadism: the caipirinha jihadists, to put it graphically, to emphasize the normality with which these radicalized elements live in the Latin American context, although they are criminal networks more sinister than the name might suggest.

Zuppello's research , which is subtitled "the pact between Islamic terrorism and organized crime in Latin America", deals with various countries, although it is in Brazil where the author locates the main connections with the rest of the region and with the international Structures of different jihadist groups. In particular, she points out the link between the religious leader Imran Hosein, who propagates Salafist doctrines, and the attack against the conference room of the Bataclan parties in Paris, since his preaching had a special responsibility in the radicalization of one of the terrorists, Samy Amimour. Zuppello also analyzes the cross-contacts of the Brazilians who were arrested in 2016 in the Hashtag operation, in the final stretch of the preparation for the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games.

Zuppello's book begins with a presentation to position by Emanuele Ottolenghi, researcher who works at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank. Ottolenghi is an expert on Hezbollah's presence in Latin America, on which he has written numerous articles.

In that presentation, Ottolenghi highlights the partnership established between jihadist elements and certain levels of the Latin American left, especially the Bolivarian left. "Extremist messages differ little from the rhetoric of the radical left's anti-imperialist revolution, deeply rooted for decades in Latin America," he says. This explains "the appeal of the Islamic revolution to descendants of the Incas in the remote Andean community of Abancay, a four-hour drive from Machu Picchu, and to Cuban and Salvadoran revolutionaries (now dedicated to spreading Khomeini's word in Central America)."

For Ottolenghi, "the central topic of the red-green alliance between Bolivarians and Islamists is the so-called resistance to U.S. imperialism. Behind this revolutionary rhetoric, however, there is more. The creation of a strategic alliance between Tehran and Caracas has opened the door to Latin America for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah. Venezuela has become a hub for Iran's agents in the region".

Illicit trafficking generates millions of dollars of black money that is laundered through international circuits. The "Lebanese diaspora communities" in areas such as La Guaira (between Venezuela and Colombia), Margarita Island (Venezuela), the free trade zone of Colon (Panama) and the Triple Border (between Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina) are important in this process.

Precisely that Triple Border has been the usual place to refer to when talking about Hezbollah in Latin America. The attacks occurred in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994 against the Israeli Embassy and the AMIA, respectively, had their operative origin there and since then, the financial links of that geographic corner with the Shiite extremist group have been frequently documented. Since the arrival of Hugo Chávez to power, there was a convergence between Venezuela and Iran that protected the obtaining of Venezuelan passports by Islamist radicals, who also took over part of the drug trafficking business as Chávez himself involved the Venezuelan state in the cocaine business.

The convergence of interests between organized crime networks in the region and jihadist elements raises the question, according to Zuppello, of whether "Latin America will end up being the new cash machine for global jihadist financing", or even "something else: a hideout for fleeing foreign fighters or a new platform for attacks, or both".

One of the specific aspects to which Zuppello refers is the halal sector and its certifications, which is growing exponentially, causing concern among counter-terrorism authorities in various countries, who accuse the sector of concealing terrorist financing and money laundering. The halal meat trade has provided cover for dozens of Iranian meat inspectors, who have permanently settled in the region.

Investigations such as the one conducted in Jihad in the Tropics have led to 2019 for the first time several Latin American countries agreeing to recognize Hezbollah as a terrorist group .