Al Qaeda might have teamed up with Latin American drug cartels to help them use West Africa as a safe path to traffic cocaine all the way into Europe, the commander of the U.S. Southern Command said, implying that this particular business deal helps the terrorist organization raise "a lot of money" and "fund a lot of their projects."
Al Qaeda is known to operate from West Africa, Breitbart reported.
"We know that the cocaine that flows out of Bolivia and Peru, the number one and number two producer, feeds the cocaine habit around the world," said U.S. Marine Gen. John Kelly, commander of Southcom, during a speech delivered to an audience at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. "So we know that much of the cocaine that moves through West Africa, up the Maghreb and into Western Europe - al Qaeda and al Qaeda affiliates take a fair share, some amount of money, we don't know how much, but a lot of money to allow it to flow. We know that some of the [cocaine] money that comes out of the United States is laundered into the coffers of Hezbollah."
The Latin American cartel operations in West Africa are "literally funding al Qaeda," Gen. Kelly said, quoting France's version of the DEA.
On the other side of the global trafficking deal, international organizations such as the Sinaloa and Zetas Mexican cartels seal the illicit drug trade.
"Sydney, Australia is awash in cocaine as the expression goes. So is New Zealand," explained the general. "There is cocaine being sold on the streets of Beijing and all of this, in one way or another, is handled by what are now international businesses called cartels - Sinaloa, Zeta, things like that. So the whole world is connected in terms of illicit trafficking of everything.
Meanwhile, there have been unsubstantiated reports of an emerging collaboration between Islamic State militants, also known as ISIS, and Mexican drug cartels.
"We now know that it's a security problem. Groups like the Islamic State collaborate with drug cartels in Mexico who have clearly shown they're willing to expand outside the drug trade into human trafficking and potentially even terrorism. They could infiltrate our defenseless border and attack us right here in places like Arkansas," Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said last month while speaking at a tele-town hall, according to the Washington Post.
