Israel Matzav

Lebanon's drug trade

If this article had been published on Wednesday, I would have asked the IDF about it. It seems that Hezbullah is back in the drug business.

[O]n a recent visit by the AP, acres of cannabis were seen growing behind concealing stands of tall corn stalks, and farmers spoke openly of the fortunes they are making off the plants.

The Lebanese government, long preoccupied with violent political clashes in the country, has begun striking back by plowing up fields.

It's hard to pin down independently what role Hezbollah plays in the trade, but the flat, green Bekaa Valley, with its sunny Mediterranean climate and terrorism-filled history, is a Hezbollah stronghold.

The accusation is that Hezbollah, given its strong presence in the Bekaa and its unmatched influence there, is heavily involved in the trade, though indirectly, for ideological reasons, said Bilal Saab, a Lebanon expert at the University of Maryland. However, there is no independent evidence of this involvement.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah strongly denies Israel's charge of narcoterrorism. In a speech last month, he claimed the Israelis were trying to put a political spin on what in his view is simply a drug operation run by Lebanese drug dealers in collusion with Israeli border guards.

Israeli police say that based on evidence gathered from interrogating busted traffickers, nothing happens on the Lebanon-Israel border without Hezbollah's consent.

Aram Nerguizian, an expert at the U.S.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., says Hezbollah has enough financial support without depending on drug money, but uses the drug trade to gather intelligence on the Israeli military.

Shamai Golan, a spokesman for Israel's Anti-Drug Authority, agrees the main goal is to gather intelligence information, but also to weaken Israeli society.

Last year his agency ran an advertising campaign featuring an image of Hezbollah leader Nasrallah wafting out of a smoky pipe with the slogan: At the end of every joint sits Nasrallah ... Drug users are lending a hand to the next terror attack.

The IDF actually talked to us about the drug trade from Syria but not from Lebanon. The IDF's chief intelligence officer for the Golan told us that the IDF cannot completely stop the drug trade from Syria there. He said that while they have all kinds of electronic trip wires and fences, there are farmers on the Syrian side who know the terrain better than the IDF does. Often, the Syrians will throw drugs to a contact on the Israeli side of the fence and the drug dealers will throw the money over the fence to them. The IDF's fear is that one day something much worse than drugs will be thrown over the fence.

Hezbullah doesn't need to throw anything over fences. They have the divided town of Ghajr, which I plan to address more fully in another post when I can get to it. For now, suffice it to say that the Lebanese have access to the northern half of the divided town, and the townspeople have access to Israel. Many of them own restaurants in Kiryat Shmoneh (which is nearby) and hang around the mall there. Are Lebanese drugs being marketed to Israel through Kiryat Shmoneh? This report sure makes it sound like they are.

Read the whole thing.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:49 PM