In recent months, a series of attacks, fortunately thwarted by police operations, have highlighted the advances and threat of Islamic radicalism from Hezbollah and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Latin America. Although their religious ideologies differ, these extremist groups share a common ground in the region on certain issues, including an increase in anti-Semitism following the crisis in the Middle East, an anti-Western vision, the recruitment of locals to commit attacks, and proselytizing in indigenous communities.
In addition, both groups engage in illicit activities to finance their terrorist operations. This dynamic often leads them to interact with local organized crime, resulting in mutual reinforcement.
Recruiting locals
According to Emanuele Ottolenghi, Iran and Hezbollah expert at think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the Brazilian Federal Police’s Operation Trapiche, which in November 2023 foiled a series of Hezbollah attacks against Jewish communities in Brazil, highlighted a new strategy of the Iranian proxy, namely the recruitment of locals to carry out attacks.
Another example is that of Fábio Samuel da Costa Oliveira, 20, who was sentenced to seven years in prison in July 2024 for terrorism and co-opting minors for attempting to recruit teenagers from São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro into ISIS, Brazilian news site Metrópoles reported. During his sentencing it was revealed that he and a friend, both radicalized on the internet, were prepared to carry out attacks against the Israeli and the U.S. embassies in Brazil.
In Argentina, in August, authorities dismantled a local jihadist network in the Mendoza province. The group, Argentine daily Clarín reported, used social networks and messaging apps to share ISIS propaganda and prepare attacks against Jewish targets in the region.
“The big difference is that the locals recruited by Hezbollah so far have no ideological involvement with the terrorist organization, unlike the young people who are radicalized by ISIS,” Rashmi Singh, professor of International Relations at the Pontifical Catholic University (PUC) of Minas Gerais, Brazil, told Diálogo.
In his recent report The Hezbollah Terrorist Plot in Brazil, Ottolenghi points out that the recruitment of locals is “a change in Hezbollah’s strategy” to destabilize, offloading possible criminal responsibility onto third parties. “With episodes of anti-Semitism on the rise around the world, a successful attack could have been disguised as a hate crime plotted by local extremists rather than one orchestrated by Hezbollah,” Ottolenghi wrote.
Iran has also preferred to hire local mercenaries for the past three years. “In 2021, three Azerbaijani nationals attempted to assassinate Iranian dissident Masih Alinejad in New York. That same year, an Iranian operative recruited two Colombian criminals to target Israeli and U.S. businessmen and diplomats,” Ottolenghi said.
In October 2023, Peruvian National Police Colonel Max Anhuamán, then head of the Anti-Terrorism Directorate (Dircote), said that the series of political protests going on at the time had been infiltrated by young Peruvians radicalized in Iran. Col. Anhuamán, Argentine news site Infobae reported, pointed to Edwar Quiroga Vargas, a Peruvian indigenous activist, as being the recruiter of these youths.
Quiroga Vargas, according to Ottolenghi, “converted to Shiite Islam and studied for three months in Iran with Mohsen Rabbani.” Rabbani is the mastermind of the 1994 terrorist attack against the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) in Buenos Aires, where 85 people died and hundreds were injured. Back in Peru, Quiroga Vargas founded Inkarri-Islam, the first Shiite cultural center in the country.
“Inkarri-Islam perfectly encapsulates the Iranian strategy of fusing traditional indigenous teachings with revolutionary Shiite Islam. By juxtaposing similar narratives, like Shiite Muslims’ belief in the return of the Mahdi, with indigenous myths such as the return of the Inca, Quiroga built his cultural center a facade of legitimacy while pursuing a radical agenda on Iran’s behalf,” Ottolenghi said.
In Brazil, a network of Salafists, followers of the same ideology that ISIS adheres to, was also recently discovered in the state of Amazonas, Metrópoles reported. The group was converting indigenous youths and taking them to Turkey.
“What emerges from this story is that the dramatic level of poverty in the Amazon region is being exploited and the fact that these indigenous communities are completely disenfranchised and do not receive adequate education from institutions. It is exactly the same model that was used in Afghanistan and Pakistan when young people were recruited for jihad in madrassas or Islamic schools,” Singh told Diálogo.
Illicit activities
In addition to recruitment, another similarity between Hezbollah and ISIS has to do with illicit activities, among those money laundering through cryptocurrencies. Recently in Brazil, in the second phase of Operation Trapiche, police uncovered a multimillion-dollar laundering network set up by Hezbollah through tobacco shops. According to investigations, the bank accounts opened by Hezbollah’s members to hide part of the proceeds of e-cigarette smuggling were part of a multi-million-dollar scheme managed by Brazilian criminals, which laundered billions of reais through cryptocurrencies.
Cryptocurrencies represent a vulnerable link, which is also increasingly exploited by various ISIS branches. For example, the attack on Moscow’s Crocus City Hall in Russia on March 22, in which more than 140 people were killed, was financed with cryptocurrencies independent Russian investigative news site iStories reported.
“In other parts of the world we are seeing ISIS branches and members raising cryptocurrencies online. So it’s likely that these expanded Latin American networks are able to increase their fundraising that way. ISIS also participates in illicit markets. Many of its members bypass trade routes and exploit them, and this could become a growing trend in Latin America,” Lucas Webber, senior threat intelligence analyst at Tech Against Terrorism, a United Nations-backed international initiative to combat internet-based terrorist activities, and a researcher at The Soufan Center, an independent, non-profit center that researches global security challenges, told Diálogo.
In her article, The Financial Future of the Islamic State, Jessica Davis, president of Insight Threat Intelligence, an organization that investigates illicit financing and international security, warns that “Islamic State supporters might raise funds individually for the group […]. Because of the dispersed nature of this network, most people sending funds are unknown to law enforcement and security services, which makes stopping the movement of money in advance of attacks or incidents challenging.”
The case of Trinidad and Tobago
It is no coincidence that the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago, which is debating the regulation of cryptocurrencies, issued an alert in 2019. “Transactions with virtual currencies are subject to a high degree of anonymity. For this reason, there is the potential for misuse to carry out criminal activities, including money laundering or terrorist financing,” states the alert from the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago.
The largest number of foreign fighters per population in the Western Hemisphere, at least 130, left these Caribbean islands to fight in the ranks of ISIS. Most of them died in combat or are in camps in Syria and Iraq.
However, Islamic extremism continues to grow in Trinidad and Tobago. “The islands are a nest of radical ideas, especially related to the Islamic State. The Shiite community strongly believes that the rise of this type of radicalism is the reason for the departure of the Iranians,” Sanjay Badri-Maharaj, an advisor to the Ministry of National Security and a member of the Trinidad and Tobago Defence Force Commissions Board, told Diálogo.
The islands had been in the crosshairs of the AMIA bombing investigation by Argentine Prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who was assassinated in 2015. In his 2013 report on Iranian terrorist networks in Latin America, Nisman warned of Trinidad and Tobago’s central role in Iran’s terrorist projects. On Trinidadian Kareem Ibrahim, sentenced to life in prison alongside Abdul Kadir for attempting to blow up New York’s JFK airport in 2007, Nisman wrote that the man “was directly linked to the Iranian regime, which provided him with financial support and was also linked to Yasin Abu Bakr, the founder and leader of the Jamaat al-Muslimeen terrorist group,” which attempted a violent coup in the islands in 1990, which was unsuccessful.
“While Jamaat al-Muslimeen and some of its offshoots were major criminal forces in their own right, there are now new Islamist-inspired criminal gangs that pose a major challenge to the entire region such as Unruly ISIS,” Badri-Maharaj told Diálogo about the Trinidadian gang.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) 2024 report, Caribbean Gangs, Drugs, Firearms, and Gang Networks in Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago, “186 gangs with approximately 1,700 suspected members were reported across the country in 2023. Almost all street gangs are organized into larger groups.”
The fact that citizens of Trinidad and Tobago do not require visas to travel to the rest of the Caribbean carries the risk that the radical threat, also exacerbated by the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, could spread to other countries in the region.
Groups such as ISIS and ISIS-KP, active in South and Central Asia and now expanding into the West as well, are ideologically opposed to Hezbollah and Iran. “However, they are benefiting from this conflict and hostile sentiments throughout the Muslim world regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And they are using this to increase their recruitment, propaganda production, and fundraising,” Webber told Diálogo.
