Talk About Lending a Hand - Even The Bad Guys Are Doing It
El Chapo's Daughter Distributing Aid With Dad's Name & Image on Boxes

How terrorist groups and gangs are responding to the coronavirus crisis

It’s not just governors and presidents who are leading the fight against coronavirus — drug dealers, mobsters and terrorists are also battling the bug.

In regions of the globe controlled by shadowy underworld organizations — from Central American narco-strongholds to remote Middle Eastern areas — deadly thugs are doing things like enforcing social distancing and making people wear hand sanitizer.

“A weak pandemic response from a formal government creates an opportunity for the violent group to earn legitimacy in the eyes of the public,” University of Maryland political scientist Jori Breslawski wrote in The Conversation. “Violent groups often take actions to gain legitimacy in order to gain support from civilians living under their rule as well as potential supporters abroad.”

They may have another, simpler motive, too — keeping their own families safe from the deadly contagion, Breslawski said.

MEXICAN DRUG LORDS - Iván Archivaldo Guzmán, 36, and Jesús Alfredo Guzmán, 37 – known as “Los Chapitos, or “Little Chapos” — have heavily armed henchmen roaming the streets of the state capital of Sinaloa to enforce a curfew, the paper says.

Their sister, Alejandrina, and several other cartels have also tried to win over despairing locals — shown in videos handing out coronavirus relief packages to the needy in an apparent PR campaign.

BRAZILIAN GANGS - Drug gangs in Rio de Janeiro that have been over-running some of Brazil’s most dangerous favelas have also been enforcing strict curfews, reports there say.

ITALIAN MAFIA - Never one to miss out on an opportunity, the Mafia has been exploiting Italy’s devastating outbreak to prove it still runs the show — by hiring the newly unemployed workers as foot soldiers, crime experts say.

La Cosa Nostra is also stepping in with its hefty cash supplies to support companies facing bankruptcy, in exchange for part ownership, according to author Roberto Saviano, who says liquidity is now “the center of everything” in the wake of the crisis.

MS-13 - Latin America’s most feared gang, MS-13, has also joined the fight, enforcing curfews in areas of El Salvador where police often fear to go.

ISIS - After years of urging its terrorists to attack major European cities, ISIS is now telling them to steer clear due to the coronavirus — as well as handing out safety guidance to would-be jihadis.

The “healthy should not enter the land of the epidemic and the afflicted should not exit from it,” the group wrote in its al-Naba newsletter, the Sunday Times of London reported.

AL QAEDA - TALIBAN - The group has also conducted door-to-door temperature checks and distributed hand sanitizer, even bragging about setting up public health information teams and even quarantine centers, Foreign Policy noted.

HEZBOLLAH - The Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah said it would mobilize 25,000 people including frontline medics to help confront the coronavirus in Lebanon. “It is a real war that we must confront with the mindset of a warrior,” Sayyed Hashem Safieddine, head of the executive council of the Shi’ite group designated a terrorist organization by the US. nypost.com