Panamanian authorities recorded the transit of 2,100 people of "interest" to Washington in 2018.

• Of the 8,445 illegal migrants located in Darien (an increase of 20% in two years), 91% were from Asia and Africa, with goal mostly from reaching the US.

• The US Southern Command deployed helicopters in January and February 2019 to improve surveillance capabilities in the dense jungle area.

• Washington's awareness of the presence of AIS in the Central American migrant caravans last autumn prompts it to focus on the Darien Gap.

report SRA 2019 / Alex Puigrefagut[PDF version].

One of the best-known icons on the American continent is the Pan-American Highway: network of roads that runs from Argentina to the United States and even goes as far as Alaska. Between one end and the other, there is only one point where you have to get out of your car: 130 kilometres of dense vegetation between Panama and Colombia, which is truly impassable, even difficult to cross on foot. It is the Darién jungle, which is known as the Darién Gap.

Precisely because it blocks land transit between South America and Central America, it has traditionally been a area with little surveillance of migratory flows. This lack of monitoring, however, has led in recent years to a call effect of illegal immigration, mainly from Asia and Africa, which is of concern to the United States. Many of these immigrants are classified by Washington as Special Interest Aliens (SIAs), as they come from countries that, according to the US, show a tendency to promote, produce or protect criminal organisations, mostly terrorist organisations. If they emerge in Panama, they can easily use Central American migratory routes to the US, as has been denounced in the recent crisis of the caravans that departed from Honduras.

Panama' s National Migration Service recorded the passage through Darién of 8,445 illegal immigrants in 2018 (with December still to be counted), of which 5,400 were from Asia and 2,287 from Africa, which together accounted for 91 per cent of the entire contingent. This is an increase of 20 per cent in two years. Of these, 2,123 were nationals from countries the US sees as a potential terrorist threat: most were from Bangladesh (1,440), but also from Eritrea (418), Pakistan (151), Yemen (34), Somalia (32), Afghanistan (10), Iraq (10), Mauritania (10), Syria (7) and Egypt (2). At the end of 2017, the Panamanian National Border Service detained 26 Yemeni nationals with suspected links to terrorist groups.

This migration flow of people labelled as SIAs by Washington was already alerted in 2016 by the US Homeland Securitydepartment , which sent a memo to US border authorities to be vigilant.

With a focus on Darién, in June 2018 the US and Panama agreed to establish a Joint Migration Task Force (JMTF), goal to ensure more effective and comprehensive coordination to address illegal and uncontrolled immigration in the region. Security authorities from both administrations prioritised action against drug trafficking and other types of organised crime that could pose a threat to the security of both Panama and the US, as well as the region as a whole. In January and February 2019, the US Southern Command used helicopters for transports to improve surveillance facilities in Darién.

USA and Colombia

The main purpose of the JMTF created between the two States is that there can be exchange of information and resources to establish strategic border points and thus combat all subject of organised crime on the southern border of Panama, such as drug trafficking, arms trafficking, human trafficking and above all for the comprehensive monitoring of the possible penetration of illegal migrants considered CIS that may be effectively related to international terrorist organisations. In addition, for the proper functioning of the JMTF, the two governments agreed to meet bilaterally twice a year to effectively supervise and coordinate the border security groups.

Already in 2016, the governments of Panama and Colombia implemented further measures in the Binational Border Security Commission (COMBIFRON) to strengthen the fight against drug trafficking and organised crime, as well as illegal migration. These measures included the creation of two shared surveillance points between the two navies in order to control migratory flows along the border of both countries, especially in the Darién region. The area had historically been a place of influence for Colombian cartels and a rearguard for guerrilla forces, so the peace process with the FARC was an opportunity to seek greater state control.

The main problem in the Darién challenge in recent decades, according to some observers, was the passivity shown by Colombia, which gradually decreased patrolling and land control of its part of the border, leaving Panama with limited resources in the face of criminal groups, which led to a considerable increase in the illegal trafficking of drugs, arms and people along the border. This Colombian passivity was mainly due to the fact that the transit of illegal migrants did not create migratory pressure on Colombia, as the flows were towards the northern part of the continent. Although today both countries pay attention to the Darién, control of the area is still deficient, partly because maritime security is prioritised over land security, especially in the case of Colombia.

Central American caravans

The illegal passage through the Darién of people Washington considers "of interest" because they come from countries that may foment terrorism is part of international routes to the southern border of the United States. Ample evidence sample that the Darién Gap has become a strategic point for regional and US security.

The presence of individuals labelled as SIAs was at the centre of the discussion on the various migrant caravans that in autumn 2018 departed from Central America - emerging in Honduras and increasing in size as they passed through El Salvador and Guatemala - and headed for the US-Mexico border. According to the US think-tank Center for a Secure and Free Society (SFS), these caravans involved individuals from outside Central America, from the Middle East, Asia and Africa, some of whom entered the label of SIA. According to agreement with SFS, these individuals had a privileged attention in the development of the convoys, which could even indicate collusion between SIA networks and certain Central American migration channels. The same centre found that Guatemalan officials detected no less than 157 irregular migrants from other continents, at least 17 of whom were of "special interest" to the US because they came from countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh and Eritrea.

It is difficult to establish how many people with profile SIAs actually transit through Central America to the US, as their identities are falsified in order to go unnoticed during their journey. On the other hand, the US president exaggerated the state of alarm over the large Central American caravans, because even if there were grounds for the alert, it should not be forgotten that the vast majority of Special Interest Aliens who enter the US and who are highly dangerous because of their direct connections to terrorism arrive by air and not by land. According to an explanatorystatement of the US Homeland Security department , average of ten people on the "terrorist watch list" are apprehended every day (3,700 in the last fiscal year), although few of them enter through the US-Mexico border.

AMERICAN REGIONAL SECURITY, report 2019

The report American Regional Security (ARS) that we are launching has the purpose to address annually the most recent threats to the security of American countries. It deals with a space that is largely the security region of the United States, so that many aspects transcend the national sphere and become a geopolitical consideration. The security of the Western Hemisphere is therefore also the concern of the European Union or Spain, which have an interest in stability and prosperity on the other side of the Atlantic. Our SRA is a radar-like sweep of the most significant issues that have occurred in this field over the past year.

Open the full PDF of the report [pdf. 19,7MB] [pdf. 19,7MB

summary EXECUTIVE[PDF version].

The present global geopolitical tension is being played out in the near abroad of the three major powers. This term applies specifically to the space that was once part of the USSR and now surrounds Russia: the Kremlin's foreign policy is aimed both at securing its influence in these areas and preventing some of them from becoming the pawns of others. But such a struggle, like the one occurring in Ukraine or the Baltic republics, is also taking place in China's near abroad: the East and South China Seas. And similarly, albeit with less drama, the geopolitical game has also reached that near abroad of the United States, which goes beyond the backyard of the Greater Caribbean and could extend at least as far as the Equator.

Over the past year the security region of states has fully entered this new phase of acute geopolitics. This is due in particular to Russia's increased presence in the region, especially in Venezuela, where economic aid has in recent months given way to a succession of military gestures that defy the US. Furthermore, the agreement signed by Cuba to install a Glonass station, the Russian satellite navigator, raises the possibility that Moscow may once again want to use the island for intelligence work, as in the Cold War. Similar suspicions exist regarding a station already opened in Managua, where a Russian-run police academy has also been viewed with suspicion by the Pentagon.

Alongside such Russian activity in the region, Washington sometimes places China's activity in the region. While not seeking to anger the US, as can be attributed to the Kremlin's desire to reciprocate the pressure it has received in Ukraine, Beijing's commercial moves are perceived by the Americans as unfriendly. This is especially true in Central America, where in a few years China has been displacing the peculiar influence of Taiwan, which in 2018 lost the support of El Salvador and the Dominican Republic. Throughout the year, various US authorities expressed discomfort with China's position-taking in the Panama Canal area. Moreover, after a 2016 with hardly any loans to Venezuela and a blank 2017, Beijing granted in 2018 a 5 billion dollar loan to the Chavista regime (now 67.2 billion dollars).

The Venezuelan crisis is not only generating friction between the three main powers, but is also a source of insecurity for the surrounding countries. The space that Maduro's government has continued to give to Colombian guerrillas has contributed to the fact that 2018 can be considered the year of consolidation of the criminal activity of FARC dissidents, at partnership with the ELN, a guerrilla group that is still active as such and is also increasing its radius of action in Venezuela. The last year also saw a strengthening of the ELN, which, following the failure of its negotiations with the government, carried out an attack in Bogotá in January 2019, causing 21 deaths. FARC dissidents numbered around 2,000 at the end of 2018, including demobilised elements returning to arms as well as new recruits. Their coca production activity, concentrated in southwestern Colombia, spilled over into violence across the border with Ecuador in 2018, in part because of the activity of "el Guacho", a former FARC member eventually killed by Colombian security forces.

The worsening of the Venezuelan status , on the other hand, has reduced surveillance at sea, increased corruption of maritime authorities and coastal municipalities, and pushed the inhabitants of these localities to seek livelihoods. As a result, episodes of piracy off the coasts of Venezuela and its eastern neighbours have increased markedly. In a single attack in April 2018 in Surinamese waters, fifteen Guyanese fishermen were killed, while the authorities of Trinidad and Tobago decided to create an elite air unit to combat these actions.

It is not the only special alert in Trinidad and Tobago. The outflow of ISIS jihadists that is resulting from the pacification of Syria has put both Washington and Port of Spain on guard against the possible return to the Caribbean country of those who went to fight in the Middle East. Trinidad and Tobago was the nation that sent proportionally the most fighters to Syria: a total of 130, out of a population that may reach two million, of whom barely five per cent are Muslim. Authorities arrested four suspected jihadists in February 2018 for planning an attack on the capital's carnival. Urged by the US, which fears the spread of Trinidadian extremists in the region, the island government developed a new counter-terrorism strategy in 2018.

International success in ending the ISIS 'caliphate' thus shifts the risk to other parts of the world. The Trump Administration's pressure on Iran may also be encouraging greater Hizbollah activity in certain enclaves of South America - such as the TBA - to compensate for the reduction in funding that could result from the effectiveness of US sanctions on Tehran. In any case, 2018 saw a revival of the White House's interest in disrupting the drug trafficking, money laundering and smuggling networks carried out by Hezbollah operatives in Latin America: the Justice department reconstituted a specific research unit and the State department labelled group, already classified by the US as a terrorist organisation, as a transnational criminal organisation. Last year also saw a leap in the cooperation of the three TBA countries - Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay - which led to the arrest of Assad Ahmad Barakat, a major Hizbollah financial operator, and some 15 members of his clan.

While migration issues are constantly topical in the Americas, 2018 can be described as "the year of the caravans", due to the various marches that left Honduras for the US border and which met with a harsh response from the Trump Administration. One of the controversial aspects was the denunciation of the possible use of these marches by alleged Islamic extremists in order to reach the US unnoticed. What is certain is that Washington has been paying attention to the Central American route of people from other continents.

Thus, in 2018 it agreed to help Panama increase control of the Darién crossing, a jungle region on the border with Colombia where almost 9,000 migrants were located that year, 91% of them Africans and Asians. Of these, 2,100 entered the US grade as 'persons of concern' (from Bangladesh, Eritrea, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, among other countries).

The region has also seen some progress, such as halting the rise in opioid overdose deaths in the United States, an epidemic that set a record high in 2017. Throughout 2018, the eradication of poppy crops in Mexico, whose B increase in heroin production had pushed up consumption in the US (mixed with the synthetic fentanyl, mostly also coming through Mexico), and greater legislative and sanitary control by the US authorities, seem to show signs that the problem has stopped growing.