Devil’s duo: FARC and Al Qaeda

New details have emerged on the long known transactions between South American drug cartels and Al Qaeda’s North African affiliate. Marxist FARC guerrillas have been named specifically again. From Magharebia earlier this month (h/t El Grillo):

AQIM partners with Colombian drug cartel

By Walid Ramzi in Algiers for Magharebia – 05/12/2014

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and other Sahel terrorist groups are working with Colombian drug cartels, according to figures released by the United Nations.

Leaders of AQIM have met several times in the Sahel region with representatives of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), International Business Times reported on Sunday (November 30th).

“Narco-jihadists” transport cargo by road through a triangle that includes the west of Libya, Niger, southern Algeria, Mali, and eastern Mauritania, the report said.

The newspaper cited statistics from the United Nations indicating that the Maghreb branch of al-Qaeda had received huge sums of money from such gangs, amounting to 15% of each gramme of cocaine sold by smugglers.

Drug dealing and smuggling, together with ransoms from kidnapping, are key sources of terror financing in the Sahel, an Algerian security source told Tout sur l’Algerie on Sunday.

Smugglers pay terrorist groups to provide secure passage of their drug convoys, from desert to coast, before the contraband is transported to Europe through organised crime networks…