In February last year, Antoine Kassis checked into the Windsor Golf Hotel & Country Club, a Victorian-style resort an hour north of Nairobi. Wearing an ill-fitting hooded sweatshirt, with gray stubbles and baggy eyes, he didn’t look like a typical upscale tourist.
The disheveled 58-year-old, who went by Tony, was a cousin of the recently deposed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. He had traveled to Kenya planning to meet a supposed arms inspector from a Colombian rebel group and complete a $14 million deal to import 500 kilos of cocaine to Syria in return for military-grade weapons supplied by Iran and Russia.
Kassis didn’t know the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency had been watching him for two years. As he waited in a cafe, U.S. agents accompanied by Kenyan police approached him. Two months later he was extradited to the U.S., ending a lengthy sting operation.
On June 19, Colombians elected former Marxist guerrilla Gustavo Petro as their next president. A close ally of Venezuelan socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro, Petro has pledged to confiscate and redistribute the country’s wealth. His win—along with the recent wave of victories by far-left candidates across Latin America—highlights the need for the United States to reengage with its neglected southern neighbors, or risk their falling into the grip of socialist rulers for decades to come.