Hezbollah (64 page)

“Mark my words,” warned Michael Braun, the former head of the DEA’s Special Operations Division, in congressional testimony in summer 2009, “as we speak here today, operatives from al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas—perhaps others—are rubbing shoulders with Latin American and Mexican drug cartels, including the FARC, in West African countries and other places on the [African] Continent.”
¹⁸⁶
Together these illicit actors have become what Braun describes as “hybrid terrorist organizations,” groups that he described from firsthand experience as “meaner and uglier
than anything law enforcement or militaries have ever faced.”
¹⁸⁷
And they have developed mutually beneficial relationships of convenience. In Africa, Braun testified, “they are frequenting the same seedy bars and sleazy brothels, and they are lodging in the same seamy hotels. And they are ‘talking business.’ They are sharing lessons learned, sharing critically important contacts and operational means and methods.”
¹⁸⁸

Adm. James Stavridis, then commander of US Southern Command, noted in 2009 that these syndicates’ expanded presence in West Africa has become their “springboard to Europe.”
¹⁸⁹
In January 2010,
Der Spiegel
reported that in the previous year German authorities had arrested two Hezbollah members with ties to Hassan Nasrallah and other senior Hezbollah officials. The two had trained in Hezbollah camps but were arrested not for terrorist or militant activities but for cocaine trafficking on behalf of the group. The October 2009 arrests followed a pitched investigation that started in May 2008 when customs agents at Frankfurt Airport seized €8.7 million in cash and another half million later at the suspect’s apartment. To their surprise, investigators found traces of cocaine on the bills along with the fingerprint of an infamous Dutch drug kingpin.
¹⁹⁰

A dramatic exposé of the full scope of both the African drug problem and Hezbollah’s role in it appeared in January 2011 when the US Treasury Department blacklisted Lebanese narcotics trafficker Ayman Joumma along with an additional nine individuals and nineteen businesses involved in his drug trafficking and money laundering enterprise. With criminal associates and front companies in Colombia, Panama, Lebanon, Benin, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Joumma’s organization was truly transnational. But while his drug ties to South America and his terrorist ties to Lebanon were unsurprising, the African narco-terrorism link—and its direct connection to the United States—was a wake-up call. An extensive DEA investigation revealed that Joumma laundered as much as $200 million a month from the sale of cocaine in Europe and the Middle East through operations located in Lebanon, West Africa, Panama, and Colombia through money exchange houses, bulk cash smuggling, and other schemes.
¹⁹¹

Another prominent Hezbollah operative involved in laundering drug money through Africa is Oussam Salhab, according to US officials. Court documents citing evidence collected during DEA investigations identify Salhab as “a Hizballah operative who, among other things, controls a network of money couriers who have transported millions of dollars in cash from West Africa to Lebanon.” A close associate of his, Maroun Saade—who belongs to the Free Patriotic Movement, a Lebanese Christian group allied with Hezbollah—ran another major drug trafficking organization tied to Hezbollah in Africa. Along with several other defendants, Saade was indicted in February 2011 on narco-terrorism and other charges related to his alleged agreement to sell cocaine to people he believed were affiliated with the Taliban and to transport and distribute Taliban-owned heroin in West Africa.
¹⁹²
In several instances, Saade reportedly bribed officials to close investigations into narcotics trafficking or to obtain the release of money couriers working for Salhab
who were arrested by Togolese authorities for smuggling bulk currency across the border. In one case, in July 2010, Salhab himself was arrested along with one of his couriers, and Saade paid the bribes for their release. In another case, Saade bribed officials to close a narcotics investigation into the activities of Imad Zbib, described in US court documents as “a prominent Hizballah representative in Togo.” According to US officials, Zbib is a close associate of Salhab and has transported loads of two to three metric tons of cocaine from South America to Togo, concealing the hauls in used cars purchased through lots he owns and transporting the drugs to Europe for sale.
¹⁹³

People like Ayman Joumma and Oussam Salhab appear to have been in the right place at the right time. As demand for narcotics increased in Europe and the Middle East, South American cartels started looking for new routes to these growing markets. One route went to Europe through West Africa, and another through Syria and Lebanon. The Middle East route benefited from Hezbollah’s ties to Iran and Venezuela. According to Lebanon’s drug enforcement chief, Col. Adel Mashmoushi, one way drugs were sent to Lebanon was on board the weekly Iran Air flight from Venezuela to Damascus and then overland by trucks to Lebanon. Confirming this route, US officials stressed that “such an operation would be impossible without Hizballah’s involvement.”
¹⁹⁴

Thanks to its support networks on both sides of the Atlantic, Hezbollah has a natural advantage vis-à-vis Latin American drug kingpins looking to transport their product to or through Africa. The only Spanish-speaking country on the African continent is Equatorial Guinea, and even the Portuguese dialect spoken in Angola differs from that spoken in Brazil. Long active as cargo aggregators, Lebanese merchants—including those with ties to Hezbollah—are well placed to use their existing logistical machinery to facilitate the movement of other products. From a trafficking perspective, it matters little whether the product being moved is frozen chickens, cigarettes, gasoline, or drugs.
¹⁹⁵

With several notable exceptions, Hezbollah has primarily relied on its formal and informal networks of operatives and supporters in Africa for just this kind of financial and logistical support, not as a preferred location for terrorist operations. The decision may seem counterintuitive given the lax law enforcement and gross corruption that plague so much of the continent. Moreover, the cost of getting caught red-handed engaging in operational activity in Africa, in addition to being unlikely, would be minimal since the region lacks many political or economic heavyweights to make Hezbollah pay the price for carrying out operations on their soil. Yet Africa presents Hezbollah financial and logistical opportunities few other areas can offer. Recognizing this, Hezbollah has preferred not to jeopardize its position on the continent unless presented with particularly attractive (and relatively low-risk) opportunities. Kidnapping operations, as well as cases like the Hezbollah network disrupted in Egypt in spring 2009, fall into this latter category.

Another reason Hezbollah may not have carried out more operations in Africa may be the influence of the larger Lebanese West African community. In an assessment
considering the prospects for Hezbollah terrorism in Africa, the CIA considered that “the vast majority of Lebanese in West Africa—many of whom are prosperous members of the business community—reportedly would oppose terrorist activity by their countrymen out of fear that local governments would respond with a crackdown against the entire Lebanese community.”
¹⁹⁶
Hezbollah itself appears to have become increasingly self-constrained as Africa has grown ever more important as a cash cow feeding the group’s coffers through mostly illicit funding channels. Such calculations undoubtedly factor into Hezbollah operational planning considerations. All the same, for more than twenty years, the group has balanced its sometimes competing interests toward achieving a variety of financial, logistical, and sometimes operational purposes.

Hezbollah has balanced similarly competing needs and influences in deciding how and when to operate in other places around the world as well, including in its own Middle Eastern backyard. In recent years, this balancing act has manifested itself most blatantly in the exposure of Hezbollah’s activities in Iraq.

1.
Author interview with senior Israeli counterterrorism official, Tel Aviv, November 16, 2004.

2.
Ibid.

3.
Author interview with Israeli official, Washington, DC, December 2003; also reported in Ellis Shuman, “Mossad Warns: Hezbollah Planning to Kidnap Israelis in Africa,”
Israel Insider
, October 27, 2003.

4.
Shuman, “Mossad Warns.”

5.
Author interview with senior Israeli counterterrorism official, Tel Aviv, November 16, 2004.

6.
Shuman, “Mossad Warns.”

7.
Author interview with US intelligence official, Washington, DC, July 2003.

8.
Author interview with senior Israeli counterterrorism official, Tel Aviv, August 4, 2009.

9.
Amos Harel, “Officials: Hezbollah Planning Attack on Israelis in Africa,”
Haaretz
(Tel Aviv), August 4, 2008.

10.
Itamar Eichner, “Israel Foils 5 Attempted Abductions by Hizbullah,”
Ynetnews
(Tel Aviv), September 2, 2008.

11.
Barak Ravid, “Israelis in Europe Warned of Hezbollah Kidnap Threat,”
Haaretz
(Tel Aviv), April 23, 2009; “Technical Glitch Stopped Terror Attack in Sinai,”
Jerusalem Post
, September 23, 2009.

12.
United Nations, Office on Drugs and Crime, Flemming Quist, Senior Law Enforcement Advisor for Africa, “Is Africa under Attack?” 2011.

13.
Rex Hudson, “Lebanese Businessmen and Hezbollah in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Symbiotic Relationship,” US Library of Congress, Federal Research Division, September 2010. For further discussion on corruption, see Elizabeth Blunt, “Corruption ‘Costs Africa Billions,’”
BBC News
, September 18, 2002; “Africa Tops World Corruption Ranks,”
Voice of America News
, October 26, 2010.

14.
Douglas Farah, “Hezbollah’s External Support Network in West Africa and Latin America,” International Assessment and Strategy Center, August 4, 2006.

15.
US CIA, “Lebanese in Sub-Saharan Africa.”

16.
Ibid.

17.
Lansana Gberie, “War and Peace in Sierra Leone: Diamonds, Corruption and the Lebanese Connection,” Occasional Paper no. 6, Partnership Africa Canada, International Peace Information Service, Network Movement for Justice and Development, November 2002; US CIA, “Lebanese in Sub-Saharan Africa.”

18.
Gberie, “War and Peace in Sierra Leone.”

19.
Farah, “Hezbollah’s External Support Network in West Africa and Latin America.”

20.
Didier Bigo, “The Lebanese Community in the Ivory Coast: A Non-native Network at the Heart of Power?” in Hourani and Shehadi, eds.,
The Lebanese in the World
, 1992.

21.
US CIA, “Lebanese in Sub-Saharan Africa.”

22.
Ibid.

23.
Gberie, “War and Peace in Sierra Leone.”

24.
Bigo, “Lebanese Community in the Ivory Coast.”

25.
US CIA, “Lebanese in Sub-Saharan Africa.”

26.
Norton,
Amal and the Shi’a
, 106.

27.
US CIA, “Lebanese in Sub-Saharan Africa.”

28.
Hudson, “Lebanese Businessmen and Hezbollah in Sub-Saharan Africa.”

29.
Jacque Neriah, “Iran Steps Up Arming Hizbullah Against Israel,”
Jerusalem Issue Briefs
10, no. 21 (January 10, 2011), Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

30.
US CIA, “Lebanese in Sub-Saharan Africa.”

31.
US CIA, “Iranian Support for Terrorism in 1987.”

32.
Edward Cody, “Hijacker Kills Plane Passenger; Gunman Captured by Crew in Geneva,”
Washington Post
, July 24, 1987.

33.
Craig Whitlock, “Hijacker Sought by U.S. Released,”
Washington Post
, December 21, 2005; US CIA, “Prospects for Hizballah Terrorism in Africa.”

34.
Frances Williams, “Hizbollah Hijacker Gets Life,”
Independent
(London), February 25, 1989.

35.
US CIA, “Prospects for Hizballah Terrorism in Africa.”

36.
Cody, “Hijacker Kills Plane Passenger.”

37.
Ibid.; US CIA, “Prospects for Hizballah Terrorism in Africa.”

38.
Cody, “Hijacker Kills Plane Passenger”; US CIA, “Prospects for Hizballah Terrorism in Africa.”

39.
Ibid.

40.
“Swiss Give Life Term to a Lebanese Man in a Fatal Hijacking,”
New York Times
, February 25, 1989.

41.
Williams, “Hizbollah Hijacker Gets Life.”

42.
“Lebanese Hijacker Freed after 17 Years in Prison,”
New York Times
, October 18, 2004.

43.
“Switzerland Deports Convicted Hijacker Back to Native Lebanon,” Swiss Radio International’s Swiss information website, October 17, 2004, obtained via BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, October 17, 2004.

44.
US CIA, “Prospects for Hizballah Terrorism in Africa.”

45.
Ibid.; US Department of the Treasury, “Treasury Targets Hizballah Network in Africa,” press release, May 27, 2009.

46.
US CIA, “Shootdown of Iran Air 655.”

47.
US CIA, “Middle Eastern Terrorism: Retrospect and Prospect.”

48.
US CIA, “Former Consul Arrested for Selling Passports.”

49.
US CIA, “Lebanon’s Hizballah.”

50.
“Israeli Embassies under Security Threat–Envoy,”
Nigeria Daily News
, August 5, 2008.

51.
Statement of Douglas Farah,
Fighting Terrorism in Africa
.

52.
US Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service,
Hezbollah: Background and Issues for Congress
.

53.
“Final Report Accident on 25 December 2003 at Conomou Cadjehous Aerodrome (Benin) to the Boeing 727-223 Registered 3X-GDO Operated by UTA (Union des Transports Africains),”
Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses
(BEA, France) December 15, 2010. The report caveats these numbers, noting “some doubts remain as to the total number of passengers.” The 138-seat plane reportedly had more than 160 people on board. See “Mysterious Passengers, Loads of Cash Puzzle Investigators into Christmas Crash,”
Naharnet
(Lebanon), January 8, 2004.