Hezbollah: One Man's Freedom Fighter Is Another Man's Drug Cartel (Updated)

According to Hezbollah, when it come to murdering non-Muslims everything is permitted, even things that normally are supposed to be forbidden to Muslims.

That first became clear in October 2005, when Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, Director of the American Center for Democracy testified before the House of Commons in Ottawa:

Concerning illegal drugs, since the mid-1980s Hezbollah has used illicit drugs as a major funding source and weapon against the west. An official Iranian fatwa ruled: “We are making these drugs for Satan America and the Jews. If we cannot kill them with guns, so we will kill them with drugs.” ...In Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, Hezbollah controls approximately 13,000 acres that produce at least 300 tons of hashish annually, most of which is exported to Europe. This high-quality Lebanese hashish grosses Hezbollah $180 million annually. Hezbollah-run laboratories, refining tons of heroin, are estimated to bring in some $3 billion annually.

Things are different 25 years later: they're worse According to The Washington Times:

Hezbollah is using the same southern narcotics routes that Mexican drug kingpins do to smuggle drugs and people into the United States, reaping money to finance its operations and threatening U.S. national security, current and former U.S. law enforcement, defense and counterterrorism officials say.

The Iran-backed Lebanese group has long been involved in narcotics and human trafficking in South America's tri-border region of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil. Increasingly, however, it is relying on Mexican narcotics syndicates that control access to transit routes into the U.S.

Hezbollah relies on "the same criminal weapons smugglers, document traffickers and transportation experts as the drug cartels," said Michael Braun, who just retired as assistant administrator and chief of operations at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

...His comments were confirmed by six U.S. officials, including law enforcement, defense and counterterrorism specialists. They spoke on the condition that they not be named because of the sensitivity of the topic.

So now we have Hezbollah on the doorstep of the US. Maybe we can get an idea of how Israelis feel--or at least we could if the danger was made known. Douglas Farah wrote last year:

I have been traveling, but am somewhat surprised at how little attention the recent multi-country drug bust firmly tying Hezbollah to Latin American drug trafficking structures has received.

This is the clearest publicly-available case that shows how organized criminal groups and terrorist organizations are broadening and strengthening their links. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), responsible for several significant busts recently, led this one too.

The operation has been underway for several years, and has yielded a trove of information on Hezbollah’s ties to the Lebanese diaspora in Latin America, and the money ring that stretches through Venezuela, Panama, Guatemala, Hong Kong, the United States, Europe and Lebanon. The size of the network, the ability to function across religious and ethnic lines, and ability of all groups to profit from the criminal enterprise should give one pause.

Apparently the only pause has been in the availability of the information of the breadth of the growing danger. The Washington Times has examples of Hezbollah penetration into the US:

Although there have been no confirmed cases of Hezbollah moving terrorists across the Mexico border to carry out attacks in the United States, Hezbollah members and supporters have entered the country this way.

Last year, Salim Boughader Mucharrafille was sentenced to 60 years in prison by Mexican authorities on charges of organized crime and immigrant smuggling. Mucharrafille, a Mexican of Lebanese descent, owned a cafe in the city of Tijuana, across the border from San Diego. He was arrested in 2002 for smuggling 200 people, said to include Hezbollah supporters, into the U.S.

In 2001, Mahmoud Youssef Kourani crossed the border from Mexico in a car and traveled to Dearborn, Mich. Kourani was later charged with and convicted of providing "material support and resources ... to Hezbollah," according to a 2003 indictment.

A U.S. official with knowledge of U.S. law enforcement operations in Latin America said, "we noted the same trends as Mr. Braun" and that Hezbollah has used Mexican transit routes to smuggle contraband and people into the U.S.

The reason Hezbollah has not done worse appears to be because the terrorist group currently sees the US the way a parasite sees its host:

While Hezbollah appears to view the U.S. primarily as a source of cash - and there have been no confirmed Hezbollah attacks within the U.S. - the group's growing ties with Mexican drug cartels are particularly worrisome at a time when a war against and among Mexican narco-traffickers has killed 7,000 people in the past year and is destabilizing Mexico along the U.S. border.

But when Hezbollah decides it wants more, the US will face the prospect of a Hezbollah presence, much as South America faces today:

Western anti-terrorism agents have expressed concern about an increasing Hezbollah presence in South America. The militia is accused of two major anti-Jewish bombings in Argentina in the 1990s. In June, the U.S. Treasury Department designated two Venezuelans of Lebanese descent, one a diplomat, as Hezbollah financiers and supporters.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's alliance with Iran raises fears that his country could become a base for Hezbollah activity, said U.S. and Israeli anti-terrorist officials who spoke anonymously because of the issue's sensitivity. Venezuela has strongly denied any links to terrorist activity.

This is why the Israel-Hezbollah war was so important, and its conclusion so disappointing--a point apparently lost on the Obama administration. UPDATE: And yet John Brennan, the Deputy National Security Adviser for Counterterrorism, of all people doesn't seem to see this:

It would not be foolhardy, however, for the United States to tolerate, and even to encourage, greater assimilation of Hezbollah into Lebanon's political system, a process that is subject to Iranian influence....The best hope for maintaining this trend and for reducing the influence of violent extremists within the organization as well as the influence of extremist Iranian officials who view Hezbollah primarily as a pawn of Tehran is to increase Hezbollah's stake in Lebanon's struggling democratic processes."

Is Brennan looking to assimilate Hezbollah into the US political system as well? Crossposted on Soccer Dad

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