TRINIDAD & TOBAGO ARE NOW JIHAD HOTSPOTS
BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS
SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2018/10/trinidad-and-tobago-is-now-a-jihad-hotspot; republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
According to the Trinidad and Tobago Ministry of Tourism: “The islands offer rich history, culture, biodiversity, and lodging with views ‘to die for,’” but there are other unappealing features that have come to characterize the nation. It has the highest Islamic State recruitment in the Western Hemisphere, was the site of the only jihadist uprising in the Western Hemisphere, and is only three miles off the coast of Venezuela.
Shia groups like Hezbollah, along with its sponsor the government of Iran, have long held criminal and intelligence footholds throughout South America….This has included Venezuela
With Trinidad being a breeding ground for jihadists so close to the US, Donald Trump called the Trinidad Prime Minister in February 2017 to discuss terrorism, returning Islamic State jihadis and other security challenges.
Some positive news, if Trinidad authorities are serious beyond the customary posturing of political leaders:
In November 2017, the Trinidad and Tobago National Security Council approved a national counterterrorism strategy, and has shared intelligence with the United States.
“Terror in Paradise: Trinidad and Tobago Is Now a Jihad Hotspot,” by Todd Bensman, PJ Media, October 8, 2018:
The Ministry of Tourism for the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago hosts a website extolling the many exquisite charms of the “true Caribbean” to be found there. The islands offer rich history, culture, biodiversity, and lodging with views “to die for.”Of late, though, a diaspora of Trinidad and Tobago emigres have preferred the views in Syria and Iraq, and the company of Islamic terrorist group ISIS. At least 130 of T&T’s 1.2 million citizens left their white and turquoise shorelines to fight with vicious Islamists half a world away. How did that happen? “Entire families went,” including at least 42 children, according to findings in a recent study by UK professor Simon Cottee of Kent University.While the answer to how this pocket of Islamic terror developed is complex, now that ISIS is territorially defeated and its thousands of surviving foreign terrorist fighters are dispersing to all points, a more pressing question has arisen. What will T&T returnees and their sympathizing community do next without a pressing, defined cause like promulgating an ISIS caliphate?The United Kingdom, which governed the tourist-heavy islands until their independence in 1976, has this to say on its “Foreign travel advice” website:Terrorists are very likely to try to carry out attacks in Trinidad & Tobago. Attacks could be indiscriminate, including in crowded spaces and places visited by foreigners.Closer to American interests and overland smuggling lanes to the U.S. Southern border, the United States and some of its allies in Latin America are worried about T&T, too.Shia groups like Hezbollah, along with its sponsor the government of Iran, have long held criminal and intelligence footholds throughout South America, as I explained in a recent update on the subject. This has included Venezuela and its offshore island of Marguerite, about 150 nautical miles from Trinidad.But Sunni extremists like ISIS? That’s a newer upward trend, as I wrote recently when recounting a suspected plot by local ISIS sympathizers in Suriname, just around the coastal bend, to kill the U.S. ambassador in the former Dutch colony. Sizeable communities of South and Southeast Asian Muslim communities live in Suriname, Guyana, and Panama. A steady stream of migration from the Middle East dates to the early 2000s, attracted by free-trade zones in the region, according to the Jamestown Foundation and other sources. Visa-free travel is allowed throughout the Caribbean.Trinidad & Tobago is a hotspot fitting the profile. Only about five percent of its population is Muslim, according to the CIA’s World Factbook. But this five percent are causing outsized global security concern. A hardline Sunni Islamist mosque and its imams have been accused of ginning up all kinds of trouble for decades. In 1990, a Muslim organization known as Jamaat al Muslimeen attempted a coup against the government. More than 40 Islamist insurgents stormed Parliament, taking the prime minister and most of his cabinet hostage for six days. In 2007, members of Jamaat al Muslimeen were tied to a plot to bomb New York’s JFK airport; one of its members was sentenced to life in prison.The dark cloud has persisted, but U.S. security appears to be on top of the situation.Earlier this year, troops with the U.S. Army’s Southern Command participated in anti-terror raids helping to capture four “high value targets” allegedly plotting to attack the annual “Carnival” celebrations. In 2017, Southern Command’s Admiral Kurt Tidd said: “Some of the individuals who left Trinidad-Tobago” have shown up “on film engaged in terrorist acts” and have committed murders in Syria. Even the New York Times couldn’t ignore the developing threat from T&T’s jihadists, posting a story in 2017 citing American officials who fear “that Trinidadian fighters could return from the Middle East and attack American diplomatic and oil installations in Trinidad, or even take a three-and-a-half hour flight to Miami.”….
