The Islamic State’s propaganda magazine says the terrorist group could purchase a nuclear weapon in Pakistan and smuggle it through Latin American trafficking networks and into the United States through its “porous border,” the same way “‘illegal’ aliens in America” arrive.
This “sum of all fears for Western intelligence agencies” scenario is “infinitely more possible today than it was one year ago,” claimed the article in Dabiq, which was published late May.
“Drug shipments from Columbia [sic] bound for Europe pass through West Africa, so moving other types of contraband from East to West is just as possible,” postulates the article.
After transportation through Central America, “It’s just a quick hop through a smuggling tunnel and hey presto, they’re mingling with another 12 million ‘illegal’ aliens in America with a nuclear bomb in the trunk of their car.”
“If not a nuke, what about a few thousand tons of ammonium nitrate explosive?” the article asks.
Drug cartels in Latin America are already working with African Al Qaeda and the Islamist Maghreb group, according to Gen. John Kelly, who testified at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in March. Kelly also said Islamic terrorist groups have the knowledge and know-how to exploit Latin America’s smuggling networks and potentially import weapons of mass destruction.
The Islamic State begged its followers to infiltrate the U.S. through the southern border last year, and while there’s no evidence this has happened yet, Kelly said he is “deeply concerned that smuggling networks are a vulnerability that terrorists could seek to exploit.”
In October 2014, Kelly outlined an almost identical scenario to the one Dabiq published, saying illegal drugs from South America could move “through West Africa, up the Maghreb and into Western Europe,” Breitbart reported.
Kelly said it would take “a lot of money to allow [the weapon] to flow,” but eerily, in perhaps a hat-tip to Kelly, the article stated:
“The Islamic State has billions of dollars in the bank, so they call on their wilayah [province] in Pakistan to purchase a nuclear device through weapons dealers with links to corrupt officials in the region.”
