An interesting contrast is this brief from Middle East Newsline from yesterday
U.S. DOES NOT FIND HIZBULLAH ACTIVITY IN TRI-BORDER AREA
The United States has determined that Hizbullah does not operate insurgency cells in South America. U.S. officials said the CIA and other intelligence agencies have closely monitored the so-called tri-border area of South America for traces of Hizbullah activity. The area is where Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil meet. “The sense that we have is that there are few areas where certain specific groups in the Middle East like Hizbullah have contacts and raise money, probably lots of money,” a senior U.S. defense official said. “Do they have active terrorist cell operations here? No, we haven’t seen evidence of that.”
The senior official said the United States has been closely monitoring the tri-border area in cooperation with its South American allies. The official said the countries themselves have been cooperating in halting any Islamic insurgency activities in the area.
“Now, those countries are collaborating with each other and cooperating with us very, very closely to monitor this and what we are finding is a lot of illegal activity, some of this geared toward raising money,” the official said. The U.S. assessment confirmed an assertion by Argentina that it has not found any Hizbullah insurgency activity in the tri-border area. The area has a large Shi’ite community and U.S. officials had expressed concern that Hizbullah and Al Qaida could be cooperating in launching attacks against the United States.
Hizbullah was said to have deployed Shi’ite agents from the tri-border area to bomb the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 and the Jewish community center in that city two years later. The two attacks killed more than 100 people.
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