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Terror From Skies as Mexican Cartel Attaches Bomb to Drone by Stephen Dinan - Washington Times

Mexican police discovered four men carting a kamikaze drone equipped with an IED and a remote detonator last week, in what analysts say is an example of cartels figuring out how to weaponizing UAVs.

The disturbing development is a manifestation of something top American security chiefs warned Congress about earlier this year, when they said they feared terrorists would begin to use drones to attack targets within the U.S.

Drug cartels had already been turning to drones to smuggle their product into the U.S., and had begun using IEDs in their turf struggles — but now at least cartel appears to have put the two technologies together, according to Mexican reports analyzed by Small Wars Journal.

“A weaponized drone/unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)/unmanned aerial system (UAS) with a remotely detonated IED allows for a precision strike to take place against an intended target,” Robert Bunker and John P. Sullivan, the authors of the new analysis, wrote…

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Mexican Cartels Set to Use Drones Carrying Explosives in U.S. – Fox News

Mexican police reportedly pulled over four men driving a stolen pick-up truck and discovered a drone carrying an explosive device in the vehicle, leading some analysts to fear drug cartels may have figured out how to arm the devices to attack opponents -- including those inside the United States.

Federal police discovered the drone attached to the IED last week during a traffic stop in Guanajunto, where several cartels are known to operate, including the Sinaloa Cartel, Small Wars Journal reported.

Besides the drone, police found phones, an AK-47 and ammunition. An improvised explosive device was taped to the drone, 3Dr Solo Quadcopter, that could reportedly be detonated with a remote control. It was not clear if the four men were a part of any criminal group. The drone had a range of about half a mile, but modifications would have allowed it to fly farther…

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The Drug Enforcement Administration's 2017 National Drug Assessment, DEA-DCT-DIR-040-17, October 2017, 182 pp has been released. It contains sections on transnational criminal organizations (pp. 1-15) as well as gangs (pp. 17-23) in addition to its focus on domestic illicit drug use patterns and some information provided on illicit finance. The document is available at: https://www.dea.gov/docs/DIR-040-17_2017-NDTA.pdf

Latin America’s Socialist-Islamist-Narco-Terrorist Alliance by Clifford D. May - Washington Times

At the U.N. last week, President Trump had harsh words for the “socialist dictatorship” that has impoverished Venezuela. He railed against “Islamist extremism” and “radical Islamic terrorism,” the former a supremacist ideology, the latter a weapon being used to mass-murder Muslims, Christians Yazidis, Jews and Hindus. He took note, too, of the threat posed by “international criminal networks” that “traffic drugs, weapons, people.”

What may not have occurred to Mr. Trump or most of his audience: the extent to which these evils are now being combined.

No one personifies this poisonous cocktail better than Tareck El Aissami, Venezuela’s 43-year-old vice president. Mr. El Aissami comes from a Lebanese-Syrian family with ties to Shia jihadi groups in Iraq. He also has been linked to a list of South American drug traffickers. Despite that, or perhaps because of it, he was appointed to the No. 2 government job in January by Venezuela’s dictator, President Nicolas Maduro.

One month later, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Mr. El Aissami, saying he “played a significant role in international narcotics trafficking.” At least some of his assets — estimated at around $3 billion — were frozen.

Investigators also revealed that he had issued hundreds of Venezuelan passports to members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and to operatives of Hezbollah, Iran’s Lebanon-based international terrorist proxy. That may be one of the reasons Mr. Trump on Sunday added Venezuela to the list of countries from which immigrants and visitors should be restricted.

Penetrating Latin America has been an Iranian and Hezbollah project for decades. They have been recruiting allies and agents in the Lebanese Shia diaspora communities, setting up “cultural centers” and mosques, establishing media outlets and “educational” institutions, sending missionaries to preach and convert, and selecting individuals for indoctrination and training in Iran…

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