Explained: How Hezbollah built a drug empire via its ‘narcoterrorist strategy’

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Hezbollah is accused of exploiting the disarray in Syria by producing drugs in the war-torn country before exporting them for financial gain. Counter-narcotics agencies have recently foiled several smuggling operations. (AFP)
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Supporters of the Shiite Hezbollah movement drive in a convoy in Kfar Kila on the Lebanese border with Israel on Oct. 25, 2019. (Photo by Ali Dia / AFP)
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Lebanese Hezbollah Leader Hassan Nasrallah is cheered by his supporters as he speaks through a giant screen in Beirut's southern suburb. (AFP file photo)
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A Saudi anti-narcotics officer arranges a display of Captagon pills and pomegranates shipped from Lebanon. (SPA file photo)
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Captagon pills are exposed from a crushed pomegranate fruit that was part of a fruit shipment from Lebanon to Saudi Arabia. (SPA file photo);
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Updated 03 May 2021
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Explained: How Hezbollah built a drug empire via its ‘narcoterrorist strategy’

  • Discovery of amphetamines in two consignments has compelled Kingdom to ban import of fruit and vegetables from Lebanon
  • The pills may have originated in Syria, where drug production exploded during the war in areas under Assad regime control

DUBAI: Lebanese fruits and vegetables are no longer welcome in Saudi Arabia after the Kingdom’s vigilant port authorities foiled an attempt to smuggle narcotics inside pomegranates.

Last month, Jeddah Islamic Port’s customs officers seized more than 5 million Captagon pills expertly hidden in a pomegranate consignment from Lebanon. Separately, amphetamine pills stashed in a pomegranate shipment from Lebanon were seized in Dammam’s King Abdulaziz Port.

The Kingdom responded to the incident by banning the import and transit of fruits and vegetables coming from Lebanon.

Waleed Al-Bukhari, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Lebanon, disclosed that there had been attempts to smuggle more than 600 million pills from Lebanon during the past six years.

Deploring the economic impact of the drug bust and import ban, Michel Moawad, a Lebanese politician who resigned from parliament in protest over the Aug. 4, 2020, Beirut blast, said that farmers and legitimate importers are “today paying the price because of Captagon smugglers.”

“What are we gaining by exporting missiles, militias and drugs?” he said. “What are our interests when we are hostile to Arabs and the international community, when we go fight in Yemen and other places?”

When Moawad demanded that Lebanon’s “soil must remain totally sovereign, without security strongholds, illegal weapons, missiles, military training camps for Houthis and no Captagon factories,” he did not have to explicitly name Hezbollah.

The failed attempt to smuggle the amphetamine pills into Saudi Arabia is most likely linked to the Iran-aligned Shiite group with an active military wing, an unnamed source told the Independent Persian.

The source pointed to Hezbollah’s reputed association with the smuggling of drugs, including Captagon pills manufactured in Syria, a charge the group strenuously denies.

The source added that Hezbollah, by virtue of its authority over both “legal and illegal” border checkpoints between Syria and Lebanon, has unchecked control over all drug-related operations.

Hezbollah officials and politicians have yet to comment on the accusations.




Captagon pills recovered by saudi anti-narcotics officers from a pomegranate shipment from Lebanon are put on display. (SPA)

Lebanese security officials have arrested four people so far on suspicion of being connected with the seized cargo. Local news media reports speculated that the pomegranates came from Syria via either the Al-Masnaa border checkpoint or the northern border crossing of Al-Aboudeyye.

After the certificate of origin was changed from Syrian to Lebanese, the consignment was shipped to Saudi Arabia through Beirut’s port, which lacks scanning devices for detecting drugs. The Independent Persian cited the source as saying “the Captagon was produced in Syria, transported to Beirut then consigned to the Kingdom.”

Earlier in April, Greek authorities seized more than four tons of cannabis hidden in a shipment of dessert-making machines heading from Lebanon to Slovakia in the country’s main port of Piraeus, following a tip from the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Greece’s authorities said that the street value of the drugs was estimated at $4 million and that Saudi Arabia’s drug enforcement agency assisted them in the case.




Supporters of the Shiite Hezbollah movement drive in a convoy in Kfar Kila on the Lebanese border with Israel on Oct. 25, 2019. (Photo by Ali Dia / AFP)

In January, the BBC aired a documentary that showed Italian police burning 85 million amphetamine pills, weighing 14 tons, that had been seized in June 2020. Italy’s financial crimes police said that the contraband came from the Syrian port of Latakia.

The origin of the contraband was initially thought to be Daesh but turned out to be Syria, according to the BBC’s documentary, which alleged that the Syrian regime and its ally, Hezbollah, are deep into the drug trade as a major source of funding.

The size of the haul indicated that the amphetamine pills were manufactured on a very large scale in proper factories, something that was evidently beyond the ability of Daesh given the loss of most of its territory. That left areas under the control of Syrian President Bashar Assad as the likely source of the pills.

The BBC’s report mentioned, however, that Captagon is produced illegally in Lebanon. The Italian authorities did not publicly announce a possible manufacturer of the pills but confirmed that they came from Latakia.

Illegal drug production is believed to have exploded in Syria during the civil war, emerging as a source of much-needed income for the Assad regime. The ruling clique and its foreign allies have used the proceeds from drug trafficking to evade sanctions imposed by the West.




Narcotics like Captagon pills and hashish are considered key sources of income for both Hezbollah and the Syrian regime. (AFP)

Amphetamine in Captagon is also known for its fear-inhibiting and stimulating effects, which have proved useful during protracted firefights in war-torn areas in the Middle East.

In the past few years, authorities in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE and Jordan, among other countries, have seized enormous quantities of Captagon, often in shipments originating in Syria.

In a televised address in January, Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah said that accusations about its involvement in amphetamine production had “no credibility.”

“Our position on drugs, of all kinds, is (clear). It’s religiously banned to manufacture, sell, buy, smuggle and consume. In some cases, the punishment could even be execution, according to Sharia laws,” he said.

However, US and European drugs agencies are convinced that Hezbollah profits from the drug trade. Europol, a European law enforcement agency, issued a report in 2020 cautioning that Hezbollah members were using European cities as a base for trading in “drugs and diamonds” and to launder the profits.

INNUMBERS

  • 10,100 - Hashish packets seized on Syria-Jordan border in 2020.
  • 4.1 million - Captagon pills seized on Syria-Jordan border in 2020.
  • $4 million - Market value of drugs seized by Greece with Saudi help in April.
  • $24 million - Lebanon’s annual fruit & vegetable trade with KSA until the ban.
  • 85 million - Amphetamine pills seized in Italy in June 2020.

In 2018, the US State Department named Hezbollah among the top five global criminal organizations. Reports indicate that Hezbollah’s criminal operations have increased of late in response to Iranian directives to generate income as part of its efforts to dodge US sanctions.

For their part, police in Israel have accused Hezbollah of smuggling hashish into the country.

Lebanon is known to be one of the world’s top producers of cannabis, which is widely cultivated in areas considered strongholds of Hezbollah, notably Baalbek and Hermel.

Opinion

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Last year, the US State Department and Washington’s intelligence community said that there was ample evidence to support claims linking Hezbollah to criminal activities, including drug trafficking, in South America and Europe.

Since 2009, many Lebanese have been sanctioned by the US Treasury for their connection to organized crime, involving drug trafficking and money laundering. Many of those sanctioned were linked to Hezbollah.

Hezbollah has built strong connections with the tri-border area of Paraguay-Argentina-Brazil in South America, home to more than 5 million people of Lebanese origin. Local contacts are believed to facilitate and conceal Hezbollah’s drug-trafficking, money-laundering and terrorist-financing operations in this area.

Antoine Kanaan, editor in chief of Lebanon Law Review, says that there is little doubt that Hezbollah was behind the Captagon found in the consignment of pomegranates that reached Jeddah.

He said that pomegranate is not even commercially produced in Lebanon, adding that it is a secondary fruit crop whose cultivation is "restricted to plots of land as small as private orchards and gardens.




Pomegranates are among Lebanon's major agricultural export to Saudi Arabia. (SPA photo)

By contrast, Syria is well known for its pomegranate production, especially in areas such as Daraa, he told Arab News.

“That means that the pomegranates that went from Lebanon to Saudi Arabia originated in Syria,” said Kanaan, who believes that the Captagon was inserted into the fruits in Lebanon.

The amount of Captagon involved and the ingenuity of the plot confirm Hezbollah’s involvement, or at least consent and profit-sharing, according to Kanaan, who further noted that consensus governs everything in Lebanon, even drugs.

“I believe Hezbollah is the number one Captagon supplier in the region and there’s no way an independent Lebanese trader, or even the Syrian government, would have dared pull this off without involving Hezbollah,” he said.

As to why the drugs were sent to Saudi Arabia, Kanaan said: “It is possible but unlikely that they were headed for (Iran-backed Houthi) fighters in Yemen.”




To sustain its paramilitary force, the Iran-backed Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah movement export drugs to countries it considers non-allies, such as Saudi Arabia. (AFP file photo)

Brig. Gen. Adel Machmouchi, a former chief of antinarcotics department at Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces, said that the drug bust in Jeddah has exposed Lebanon as one of the countries that does not cooperate with international drug-enforcement bodies.

In a TV interview over the weekend, he suggested that the Lebanese ministries and security bodies concerned should have “better and closer control” over areas — in Bekaa Valley and northern Lebanon — where illegal farming and production of drugs takes place.

He said that the government should transform those illegal businesses into legitimate, productive projects.

Machmouchi said that punishments “are not harsh enough to curtail crimes of producing, trafficking and smuggling drugs,” and should be made harsher to act as a deterrent.

He claimed there are about 20 factories used to produce Captagon pills in Lebanon. “Lebanese antinarcotics bodies should (join forces) with counterparts in Saudi Arabia and other GCC countries to be able to combat this crime and halt the process of using Lebanon as a launchpad to smuggle drugs,” Machmouchi said.


Israeli military says Lebanese prohibited from moving south to several villages

Updated 40 min 47 sec ago
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Israeli military says Lebanese prohibited from moving south to several villages

  • Israel opened fire on Thursday toward what it called ‘suspects’ with vehicles arriving at several areas in the southern zone

DUBAI: Lebanese residents are prohibited from moving south to a line of villages and their surroundings until further notice, Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee said on X on Friday.
Israel said it opened fire on Thursday toward what it called “suspects” with vehicles arriving at several areas in the southern zone, saying it was a breach of the truce with Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah, which came into effect on Wednesday.
Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah in turn accused Israel of violating the deal.
“The Israeli enemy is attacking those returning to the border villages,” Fadlallah told reporters, adding “there are violations today by Israel, even in this form.”
The Israeli military also said on Thursday the air force struck a facility used by Hezbollah to store mid-range rockets in southern Lebanon, the first such attack since the ceasefire took effect on Wednesday morning.
In his recent post, Adraee called on Lebanese residents to not return to more than 60 southern villages, saying anyone who moves south of the specified line “puts themselves in danger.”
The Lebanese army earlier accused Israel of violating the ceasefire several times on Wednesday and Thursday.
The exchange of accusations highlighted the fragility of the ceasefire, which was brokered by the United States and France to end the conflict, fought in parallel with the Gaza war. The truce lasts for 60 days in the hope of reaching a permanent cessation of hostilities.


Iraq tries to stem influx of illegal foreign workers from Pakistan, other nations

Updated 29 November 2024
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Iraq tries to stem influx of illegal foreign workers from Pakistan, other nations

  • The Iraqi labor ministry says the influx is mainly from Pakistan, Syria and Bangladesh, also citing 40,000 registered immigrant workers
  • Authorities are trying to regulate the number of foreign workers as Iraq seeks to diversify from the currently dominant hydrocarbons sector

KARBALA: Rami, a Syrian worker in Iraq, spends his 16-hour shifts at a restaurant fearing arrest as authorities crack down on undocumented migrants in the country better known for its own exodus.
He is one of hundreds of thousands of foreigners working without permits in Iraq, which after emerging from decades of conflict has become an unexpected destination for many seeking opportunities.
“I’ve been able to avoid the security forces and checkpoints,” said the 27-year-old, who has lived in Iraq for seven years and asked that AFP use a pseudonym to protect his identity.
Between 10 in the morning and 2:00 am the next day, he toils at a shawarma shop in the holy city of Karbala, where millions of Shiite pilgrims congregate every year.
“My greatest fear is to be expelled back to Syria where I’d have to do military service,” he said.
The labor ministry says the influx is mainly from Syria, Pakistan and Bangladesh, also citing 40,000 registered immigrant workers.
Now the authorities are trying to regulate the number of foreign workers, as the country seeks to diversify from the currently dominant hydrocarbons sector.
Many like Rami work in the service industry in Iraq.
One Baghdad restaurant owner admitted to AFP that he has to play cat and mouse with the authorities during inspections, asking some employees to make themselves scarce.
Not all those who work for him are registered, he said, because of the costly fees involved.
Some of the undocumented workers in Iraq first came as pilgrims. In July, Labour Minister Ahmed Assadi said his services were investigating information that “50,000 Pakistani visitors” stayed on “to work illegally.”
Despite threats of expulsion because of the scale of issue, the authorities at the end of November launched a scheme for “Syrian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani workers” to regularise their employment by applying online before December 25.
The ministry says it will take legal action against anyone who brings in or employs undocumented foreign workers.
Rami has decided to play safe, even though “I really want” to acquire legal employment status.
“But I’m afraid,” he said. “I’m waiting to see what my friends do, and then I’ll do the same.”
Current Iraqi law caps the number of foreign workers a company can employ at 50 percent, but the authorities now want to lower this to 30 percent.
“Today we allow in only qualified workers for jobs requiring skills” that are not currently available, labor ministry spokesman Nijm Al-Aqabi told AFP.
It’s a sensitive issue — for the past two decades, even the powerful oil sector has been dominated by a foreign workforce. But now the authorities are seeking to favor Iraqis.
“There are large companies contracted to the government” which have been asked to limit “foreign worker numbers to 30 percent,” said Aqabi.
“This is in the interests of the domestic labor market,” he said, as 1.6 million Iraqis are unemployed.
He recognized that each household has the right to employ a foreign domestic worker, claiming this was work Iraqis did not want to do.
One agency launched in 2021 that brings in domestic workers from Niger, Ghana and Ethiopia confirms the high demand.
“Before we used to bring in 40 women, but now it’s around 100” a year, said an employee at the agency, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity.
It was a trend picked up from rich countries in the Gulf, the employee said.
“The situation in Iraq is getting better, and with salaries now higher, Iraqi home owners are looking for comfort.”
A domestic worker earns about $230 a month, but the authorities have quintupled the registration fee, with a work permit now costing more than $800.
In the summer, Human Rights Watch denounced what it called a campaign of arbitrary arrests and expulsions targeting Syrians, even those with the necessary paperwork.
HRW said that both homes and work places had been targeted by raids.
Ahmed — another pseudonym — is a 31-year-old Syrian who has been undocumented in Iraq for the past year and a half.
He began as a cook in Baghdad and later moved to Karbala.
“Life is hard here — we don’t have any rights,” he told AFP. “We come in illegally, and the security forces are after us.”
His wife did not accompany him. She stayed in Syria.
“I’d go back if I could,” said Ahmed. “But life there is very difficult. There’s no work.”


Gaza journalists win video award for ‘powerful’ war coverage

Updated 29 November 2024
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Gaza journalists win video award for ‘powerful’ war coverage

  • Belal Alsabbagh and Youssef assouna were presented the “News” award for their work on the devastating conflict set off by last year’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel
  • The prize has been awarded since 1995 in memory of video journalist Rory Peck, who was killed in Moscow in 1993, to highlight the work of freelance video journalists

LONDON: Gaza video correspondents Belal Alsabbagh and Youssef Hassouna on Thursday won a Rory Peck award for their “powerful” coverage of the brutal war in the Palestinian territory for Agence France-Presse.
The prize has been awarded since 1995 in memory of video journalist Rory Peck, who was killed in Moscow in 1993, to highlight the work of freelance video journalists.
Alsabbagh, 33, and Hassouna, 47, were presented the “News” award for their work on the devastating conflict set off by last year’s October 7 attack on Israel.
“Belal and Youssef’s work is remarkable for its range of emotions, we understood the dreadful scale of destruction in their drone shots and in the relentless attack,” the jury said in a tribute.
“This is visual reporting of the highest order. It’s not just a checklist of breaking news events, but powerful storytelling with empathy, courage and talent,” it added.
Among the heart-wrenching images entered in the contest were sequences of a man desperately searching for a relative in the debris after a strike, a woman howling in grief over a body in a hospital and Gaza residents queuing for food.
Alsabbagh, who left Gaza in April with his wife and daughter, was in London for the ceremony. In September, he was also awarded a prestigious Bayeux-Calvados prize for war correspondents.

This October 12, 2024 photo shows videographer Belal AlSabbagh (2nd left) and four other Palestinian media practitioners during the award ceremony as part of the 2024 edition of the “Prix Bayeux Calvados-Normandie of the war correspondents” in Bayeux,  France. (AFP)

“Despite my overflowing joy tonight, I have a heavy heart because members of my family and friends are still in Gaza, facing hunger, fear and still facing bombs,” said Alsabbagh, who has worked for AFP since 2017.
Hassouna, who has contributed to AFP since 2014 and is still in Gaza, has had to move home 10 times since the start of the war.
He has been one of the key independent video journalists working for AFP during the conflict.
“Everybody at AFP is tremendously proud of Belal and the work of his colleagues in Gaza. This award is a deserved recompense for his excellent journalism under seemingly impossible conditions,” said AFP global news director Phil Chetwynd.
“This prize rewards the courage of Belal and Youssef whose images for AFP showed television stations around the world the reality of the conflict in Gaza and the consequences for its civilian population,” said Guillaume Meyer, deputy news director for video and audio.
“I am very happy that their commitment and the quality of their work in incredibly difficult conditions has been recognized,” Meyer added.
“The Rory Peck award gives a precious support to freelance journalists without whom we could not work in numerous countries,” he said.
This is the sixth time since 2014 that an AFP correspondent has won a Rory Peck prize.
Among this year’s three finalists was Luckenson Jean, a freelancer for AFP covering the crisis in Haiti, where armed gangs have run amok.


 


44,330 Gazans killed in more than 13 months of war

Updated 29 November 2024
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44,330 Gazans killed in more than 13 months of war

  • Medics said Israeli military strikes killed at least 17 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Thursday

GAZA CITY: The Health Ministry in Gaza said on Thursday that at least 44,330 people have been killed in more than 13 months of war between Israel and Palestinian militants.
The toll includes 48 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 104,933 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Medics said Israeli military strikes killed at least 17 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Thursday as forces stepped up bombardments on central areas and pushed tanks deeper in the north and south of the enclave.
Six people were killed in two separate airstrikes on a house and near the hospital of Kamal Adwan in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, while four others were killed when an Israeli strike hit a motorcycle in Khan Younis in the south.

In Nuseirat, one of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic refugee camps, Israeli planes carried out several airstrikes, destroying a multi-floor building and hitting roads outside mosques.
At least seven people were killed in some of those strikes, health officials said.
Medics said at least two people, a woman and a child, were killed in tank shelling that hit western areas of Nuseirat, while an air strike killed five others in a house nearby. In Rafah, near the border with Egypt, tanks pushed deeper into the northern-west area of the city, residents said.
Months of attempts to negotiate a ceasefire have yielded scant progress, and negotiations are now on hold.


Royal Jordanian, Ethiopian Airlines to resume flights to Lebanon, Gulf carriers delay decisions

Updated 28 November 2024
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Royal Jordanian, Ethiopian Airlines to resume flights to Lebanon, Gulf carriers delay decisions

  • Both airlines announce service resumption in coming days, but most foreign airlines remain wary as they monitor stability of truce
  • Lebanon’s ATTAL president says ‘7-8 companies expected to return in coming days’

LONDON: Royal Jordanian, and Ethiopian Airlines have announced the resumption of flights to Beirut following the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah that took effect on Wednesday.

However, most Gulf and European airlines are delaying any immediate return to Lebanese airspace as they monitor the stability of the truce.

Jordan’s flag carrier, Royal Jordanian, will restart flights to Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport on Sunday after halting operations in late August amid escalating hostilities. CEO Samer Majali confirmed on Thursday that services would resume following the ceasefire.

Ethiopian Airlines has also reopened bookings for flights to Beirut, with services scheduled to resume on Dec. 10.

But despite these developments, most international airlines remain cautious.

Fadi Al-Hassan, director of Beirut Airport, told LBCI that Arab and foreign carriers were expected to gradually resume operations in the coming weeks, especially as the holiday season approaches.

However, Jean Abboud, president of the Association of Travel and Tourist Agents in Lebanon, predicted a slower return.

Abboud said in a statement that he expects “the return of some companies within a few days, which do not exceed seven to eight companies out of about 60 companies,” adding that many carriers were eyeing early 2025 to resume operations.

Airline updates

  • Emirates: Flights to and from Beirut remain canceled until Dec. 31.
  • Etihad Airways, Saudia, Air Arabia, Oman Air, Qatar Airways: Suspensions extend until early January 2025.
  • Lufthansa Group (including Eurowings): Flights to Beirut suspended until Feb. 28, 2025.
  • Air France-KLM: Services to Beirut suspended until Jan. 5, 2025, and Tel Aviv until Dec. 31, 2024.
  • Aegean Air: Flights to Beirut from Athens, London, and Milan are suspended until April 1, 2025.

At present, Middle East Airlines remains the sole carrier operating flights to and from Beirut, having maintained operations despite intense Israeli airstrikes near the airport.

The airline serves all major Gulf and European hubs, but flights are fully booked in the coming days as Lebanese expatriates rush to return home following the ceasefire announcement.

The upcoming Christmas season has also driven a surge in demand, offering a glimmer of hope for a country reeling from widespread destruction and an escalating economic crisis.

With the conflict having severely impacted Lebanon’s tourism sector, the holiday season could provide a much-needed lifeline for the struggling economy.

The resumption of additional services is expected to depend on whether the ceasefire holds and the overall security situation stabilizes.