POLITICS-MERCOSUR: Iguazu’s Triple Border Turns into ‘Powder Keg’

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 22 2001 (IPS) - The arrest Friday of 17 Paraguayans of Arab origin alleged ties to terrorist organisations has aggravated the existing tensions along the three-way border shared by Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay in the Iguazú Falls area.

Sixteen of the suspects, who are included on a list that Interpol (International Police) reportedly provided to the Paraguayan authorities, were detained in the Paraguayan town of Encarnación, on the Argentine border, and either had no identifying papers or held false documents, according to the authorities.

The other detainee is Abdul Bari Mridha, a shop owner and 14- year resident of Ciudad del Este, located on the three-way border. Two other people wanted by the authorities are believed to have fled that city for the neighbouring Foz de Iguaçú, in Brazil.

Agents of the Paraguayan police’s special force were deployed wearing masks and armed for war, witnesses of the operations in Ciudad del Este told IPS. The police actions included raids of several homes and businesses.

Paraguay’s Prosecutor General, Marcos Alcarraz, took part in the operations. “The triple border may be serving as a financial support for terrorism,” he stated.

Following the terror attacks on New York and Washington last week – and even before Friday’s arrests – news of the presence of presumed terrorists and of US military personnel in Paraguay had made the area into a focal point of international tensions.

The Friendship Bridge, which unites Brazil and Paraguay over the Paraná River, has been blockaded several times in recent days, either by Paraguayan protesters demanding the jobs held by Brazilians in their country, or by Brazilians fighting to keep their jobs on the Paraguayan side of the border in Ciudad del Este.

The area has become “a powder keg,” Luis Carlos Kossar, technical adviser to the Municipal Chamber of Foz de Iguaçú, told IPS.

Reports on the actions of US forces in Paraguay, and on Washington’s pressure on the Argentine and Brazilian governments to monitor the Arab community in the area are already hurting the local tourist industry, which centres on the natural wonder of Iguazú Falls.

Washington reportedly sent the authorities of the three countries a list of 22 members of the large Arab communities of Foz de Iguaçú and Ciudad del Este who are suspected of belonging to international terrorist networks.

A man of Arab origins and another from Bangladesh were detained Friday morning in Ciudad del Este by Paraguayan police sent from Asunción.

Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, along with Uruguay, have comprised the Southern Common Market (Mercosur), since 1991.

Business in Ciudad del Este, the main source of income and jobs in the region, had already suffered a sharp decline as a result of the depreciation of the currency in neighbouring Brazil, where most shoppers come from. A crackdown on contraband also took a heavy economic toll on the area.

The low prices of merchandise in Ciudad del Este enticed 3.2 million buyers across the border in 1994, but this year just 700,000 people are expected to make the trip. The reduced number of jobs available in retail are being disputed by Brazilians and Paraguayans in a conflict that grows more violent each day.

The prosperity that the area enjoyed during the construction of the Itaipú hydroelectric dam from 1975 to 1985 – an installation shared by Paraguay and Brazil – caused a demographic boom as the total population on the three sides of the border jumped from 60,000 to 700,000, says municipal authority Kossar.

It also attracted a new wave of Arab immigrants, mostly Lebanese, though the Arab presence in the region dates back many more years and is “integrated and diluted” within the local multi-ethnic culture, at least on the Brazilian side of the border, explained Reda Soueid, a merchant from Lebanon who is a naturalised Brazilian and has lived in Foz de Iguaçú for 23 years.

Informal estimates put the Arab population of Foz at around 12,000, while another 7,000 are believed to live in Ciudad del Este, though Soueid stressed that these numbers are mere speculation, and that many descendants of Arab immigrants have intermarried with other ethnic groups in the area so such lines are now blurred.

Meanwhile, a Brazilian police officer, who requested anonymity, said the triple border area potentially favours the presence of terrorists.

Argentines, Brazilians and Paraguayans “can circulate freely” in an area extending 30 km from the shared border, and in Paraguay it is easy to obtain documents, whether official or falsified, and to purchase weapons, he said.

The agent cited the example of a group of Arabs living in Paraguay who had presented themselves as Colombians, and carried documents from the Colombian city of Barranquilla, “but they could barely speak Spanish,” he pointed out.

These conditions cause constant tensions and concern along the three-way border, said the police officer, who confirmed the existence of a list of terrorist suspects sent by the United States, but that there was still no concrete evidence of their involvement in international terrorist networks.

He also stressed that he does not believe the region could be the centre of international terrorism.