Brazil Political and Business Comment - Terrorist Attacks: Bali... Mombasa... Rio?

Brazil is a perfect soft target for Moslem extremists since it represents everything they hate. First of all, it is one of the largest Christian countries in the world, with the biggest Roman Catholic community. One of the most distasteful aspects of Osama Bin Laden´s rhetoric is his hatred for other religions, particularly Christianity and Judaism. For him and his kind, Christians and Jews are “infidels” even though, like Moslems, they are all “people of the Book” i.e. they have the same origins. The fact that Brazil is an easy-going place where people of every race and religion live in harmony, combined with its hedonistic lifestyle, are other negative points in the eyes of fanatics like Bin Laden.

The Rio carnival or New Year celebrations would be the ideal target for Bin Laden, who applauded the attacks on innocent tourists in Bali and Tunisia. Not only is the Carnival the precursor to one of the main Christian feasts, Easter, but it also brings tens of thousands of foreign tourists, mainly Europeans and Americans, to Brazil. The streets of cities like Rio, Salvador and Recife are packed for days and police resources are stretched. For people who plotted sophisticated attacks like those on September 11 or against the US ship, the Cole, setting off bombs during the Carnival would not be difficult.

One hopes that the Brazilian authorities have taken all this into consideration and we will see tighter security for the next Carnival and New Year celebrations in Rio. However, I would not bet on it. Recently I went to São Paulo international airport to meet a friend arriving from Europe. The flight was one of four international flights to arrive very early on a Sunday morning at roughly the same time. While I waited at the arrival area I did not see a single policeman or any other uniformed member of a security force. The only people in “uniform” were porters. I saw two people enter the supposedly out-of-bound customs area unchecked.

The lackadaisical approach to security could have implications beyond the horrors of any kind of attack. It could easily lead to a worsening of relations with the US and other countries. There are already many Americans who feel that the Brazilian response to the events of September 11 was weak. There are also suspicions about Lula among some influential, right-wing commentators. One recent article, which appeared in the Washington Times, outraged Brazilians by accusing Lula of being an extremist revolutionary who could be planning to set up an “axis of evil” in Latin America, along with Cuba´s Fidel Castro and Venezuela´s erratic president, Hugo Chavez. This article, incidentally, was not written by some inarticulate rabble-rouser but by an academic, Constantine C. Menges who is a senior fellow with the Hudson Institute and a former member of the US National Security Council.

Threat from Three Frontiers Region?

There has also been a lot of interest in the international media in the so-called Three Frontiers region around the south-western town of Foz de Iguaçu where Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina meet. As well as being an area of outstanding natural beauty, which attracts many foreign tourists, this region is a centre of smuggling and corruption. Tens of thousands of people cross the borders every day, most of whom are blatantly transporting goods without paying customs duties. There are occasional crackdowsn but security is generally very lax. Some years ago, I crossed and recrossed the Paraguay border three times in three days without showing a passport or being asked for one.

There is a large Arab (and Chinese) community, made up mainly of Lebanese merchants in Foz and the Paraguayan town of Ciudad del Leste. There is nothing new about this, since the Lebanese and Syrians have been coming to Brazil for a century and are present almost everywhere. Most of these immigrants were Christians fleeing the Moslem Ottomans. However, there were also some Moslems among them, and, during the Lebanese civil war in the 70s and 80s, many new immigrants came to Brazil in search of a more peaceful life. For some time now, there have been suspicions by the US and Israel that this region has become a base for Moslem extremists.

Attacks on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires and a Jewish community centre, which killed over 100 people, are said to have been planned in this region. In these cases the finger was pointed at the Iranian government rather than the kind of Moslem terrorists who have emerged more recently.

However, just as Indonesia was criticised for not taking claims of terrorist groups operating in its territory seriously, so would Brazil if the worst came to the worst. It must be obvious to this and the next government that any kind of terrorist event in Brazil will lead to accusations by the US and other countries that Brazil is soft on terrorism and has done nothing to curtail extremist activities in the Foz de Iguaçu region.

Brazilians are Also Victims of Terrorism

This may seem unfair to Brazilians but it is a fact. It is up to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva when he assumes office shortly to state clearly that it takes terrorism seriously and is doing what it can to prevent terrorist acts being planned from or happening in Brazilian territory. The government could start by making public declarations of condemnation of terrorists attacks, show it is willing to co-operate actively in the fight against terrorism and tighten up security at airports and other soft targets. At the time of writing this article the body of a young Brazilian who was killed in the Bali blast is due to arrive back in the country. There were also Brazilian casualties in the attacks on the US. This shows that Brazilians are as much at risk from terrorism as foreigners.