Drugs, guns and finance: Hezbollah's Latin American offering

In October 2014, a Peruvian counter-terrorism operation thwarted an alleged Hezbollah plot to attack Jewish targets in Lima, once again bringing the threat of Islamist extremism in Latin America back into the spotlight. For years this topic was the subject of considerable hyperbole, especially given the tendency of a number of US politicians and commentators to identify an Iranian-Hezbollah conspiracy behind numerous drug trafficking or money laundering cases involving Latin Americans of Middle Eastern origin. In 2011, Texas governor Rick Perry went so far as to call for the closure of the US-Mexico border to keep alleged Mexico-based Hezbollah agents out of the US. However, the previous analysis focused heavily on the potential threat to US national security, often without examining the effects of Hezbollah’s money laundering and drug-trafficking operations on Latin American internal security. Ties between Hezbollah agents and drug-trafficking criminal and terrorist groups pose real security threats within Latin America that are worthy of independent scrutiny.

Hezbollah’s operations in Latin America have been enabled for decades by, amongst other factors, lawless regions, a large Arab diaspora, alliances with drug trafficking and local terrorist groups, and sympathetic governments. An in-depth 500-page report written in 2013 by an Argentinean prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, cites the well-established presence of Iranian-backed Hezbollah sleeper cells in Chile, Colombia, Brazil, Paraguay and Suriname, stretching back to the 1980s. In recent years, the governments of Venezuela and Cuba have been accused of providing logistical and financial support to Hezbollah, as well as Venezuelan identity documents to a large number of Syrian and Lebanese men linked to Hezbollah. Hezbollah agents in Latin America first demonstrated their capacity to carry out deadly attacks in the early 1990s, bombing the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 and, two years later, attacking the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association building. For two decades, Hezbollah operatives did not carry out another attack in Latin America. However, recent events in Suriname and Peru have stimulated renewed interest in Hezbollah’s militant operations in the region. In 2013, a US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) sting operation led to the arrest of Dino Bouterse, head of Suriname’s counterterrorism agency and the son of Surinamese president, Dési Bouterse, for attempting to supply Hezbollah with rocket launchers, land mines and other weapons to attack US and Dutch targets in Latin America. In October 2014, Peruvian police captured Mohammed Amadar, a Hezbollah operative suspected of planning an attack against Jewish targets in Lima.

These foiled plots, however, are not typical of Hezbollah’s Latin American operations. For the past two decades, the group’s activities have been primarily financial.

The Tri-Border Area (TBA) between Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil is considered the principal base of Hezbollah’s fundraising operations in Latin America. Through a complex system of money-laundering, involving the exchange of counterfeit US dollars for traveller’s cheques, Hezbollah agents in the TBA are believed to launder millions of dollars every year. In the wider region, their fundraising operations have expanded beyond simple money laundering schemes and now include financial ties to a number of criminal and terrorist groups in Latin America. In November 2014, Brazilian Federal Police reported that Hezbollah agents in the TBA are supplying weapons to Brazil’s largest and most powerful gang, the First Capital Command (PCC). In the past, Hezbollah has also been linked to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and the Los Zetas cartel in Mexico. In 2009, Jamal Yousef, a former Syrian soldier with suspected ties to Hezbollah, was accused of planning to supply the FARC with an enormous cache of weapons. In 2011, Ayman Joumaa, a Lebanese national with ties to Hezbollah, was indicted for drug dealing and money laundering on behalf of Los Zetas cartel, including more than 85,000 kilogrammes of cocaine and 850 million USD in drug money. It is likely that Hezbollah’s operations are indirectly financing these criminal and terrorist groups, thereby exacerbating pre-existing security issues in Latin America. Furthermore, reports suggesting that Hezbollah agents in the TBA launder over 100 million USD back to Lebanon every year should provoke further analysis of the global impact of Hezbollah’s Latin American operations.

In this light, commentators and policymakers should look beyond the potential threat posed by Hezbollah operatives to US and Israeli targets and afford greater attention to the impact of Hezbollah’s operations on internal security in Latin America. Hezbollah’s ties to the PCC, Los Zetas and the FARC through drug and arms trafficking operations represent serious security threats that risk prolonging the internal conflict and exacerbating high rates of organised crime across the region. Targeted counter-terrorism operations, particularly in the TBA, would rein in Hezbollah’s capacity to support domestic militant and criminal groups and put significant financial strain on Hezbollah’s operations in Latin America.