Hezbollah in League with Latin American Drug Gangs
Hezbollah has jumped in league with drug trafficking groups operating in South America’s “Tri-Border Area,” a lawless region which bridges the frontiers of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, a new report by the Israeli think-tank, the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Research (BESA).
The Tri-Border Area (TBA) has long been a haven for
organized crime and terrorist groups. In fact, as far back as 2003, a report by
the U.S. library of Congress, noted that even then, not only Hezbollah, but
Al-Qaida, Hamas and several other Islamist groups had strong presences in this
region.
“Over the past decades, Hezbollah has built a well-oiled,
multibillion-dollar money-laundering and drug-trafficking machine in Latin
America that cleans organized crime’s ill-gotten gains through multiple
waypoints in the Western hemisphere, West Africa, Europe, and the Middle East,”
the BESA report said.
Traditionally, Hezbollah used the TBA’s illicit economy more
as a hub for money-laundering, rather than cocaine trafficking but that has
begun to change years ago when a high ranking Hezbollah agent was reported
visiting the area, according to Al Arabiyah.
Local media said that the agent, Nasser Abbas Bahmad, had
established smuggling networks to move massive amounts of cocaine, as much as
12 tons at time, before authorities detected and dismantled them. Bahmad
capitalized on Paraguay's place as one of the world's foremost exporters of
charcoal to move so-called “black cocaine” disguised as charcoal briquettes, a
common practice among smugglers.
The Lebanese militia is no stranger to drug smuggling. For
centuries, Lebanon’s Beqaa valley has been one of the Middle East’s major
marijuana producers. The Levantine country has courted with other narcotics as
well, almost barrelling into an international incident with Saudi Arabia when a
massive shipment of the amphetamine, Captagon, was found in a shipment of Lebanese
produce.
Hezbollah has long used members of the TBA’s Lebanese
immigrant population, most of whom arrived in the early 20th century when Latin
America saw an influx of immigrants from the former Ottoman Empire, to
establish a financial empire through which to launder both their own illicit
funds and that of allies they acquired in organized criminal groups around the
world.
Over time, however, it became clear that cocaine trafficking
was no longer just something that Hezbollah only dabbled in.
“Hezbollah’s shipments of cocaine were not a small sideshow
by loosely affiliated individuals but a multibillion dollar, worldwide
operation orchestrated by top officials within Hezbollah’s inner circle,” BESA
explained.
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