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by Adam Fosson
“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.” —Hezbollah fatwa (religious ruling) issued in the 1980s.
In 2004, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s lieutenant arrested an individual for selling knockoff designer items such as Gucci handbags and Prada shoes out of his clothing store. While booking the individual, the officer noticed a large tattoo with an Arabic symbol on the man’s arm. It turned out to be the symbol for Hezbollah. ....
Counterfeit consumer items, tobacco smuggling and the more sinister trade in narcotics are all sources of income for foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs).
Business-minded jihad
The connection between many FTOs and either transnational organized
crime groups (TOCGs) or global drug trafficking organizations has increased over time, and FTOs themselves have become more involved in criminal and trafficking activities.
Currently, the relationship consists largely of TOCGs providing terrorists with logistical support. However, both sides have a common financial interest, as though two corporations were merging. Though they may have nothing in common ideologically, they enjoy financial and logistical benefits. For Al Qaeda in particular, which used to rely on money transfers and deposits to move money, the global crackdown on financial pipelines means that it must turn to commerce to raise the capital it needs.
“Terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and Hezbollah are becoming hybrids: one part terrorist group, one part drug trafficking. It’s all about the money,” ....The narco-terrorist homelands
“When your job takes you into the swamp to hunt snakes, you’ll have opportunities to kill or capture some crocs as well—because they live and multiply in the same, nasty surroundings.”
—Michael Braun, chief of operations, DEA ....
Operation Smoke Screen
FTOs don’t just use illegal narcotics. Between the mid-1990s and the early 2000s, Hezbollah used an extremely advanced cigarette smuggling operation in the United States to raise millions of dollars.
Operation Smoke Screen consisted of a multi-agency task force in a 1995 episode near Charlotte, NC, and illustrated the nature of the system, which involved a cell of 25 people.....
The cells not only smuggled cigarettes but also engaged in bank scams, bribery, credit card fraud, identity theft, immigration fraud, tax evasion and money laundering. They used over 800 different bank accounts to conceal the money trail back to Lebanon and the TBR.
Analysis
This notion of a hybridization of FTOs and TOCGs has given birth to newly forming organizations that have the potential to become more dangerous as they gain more skill sets. By merging multiple entities or applying their respective strengths, they stand to improve their capabilities.
As Braun specifically stated: “Policymakers do not get it.” The policies of US law enforcement departments around the country are not adapting to respond to these changes.
For example, on June 3 the state of New York decided to raise cigarette taxes yet again, giving New York the nation’s highest cigarette tax.
In an April 29 reportreleased by Rep. Peter King (R-NY) and the minority staff of the US House Committee on Homeland Security, Tobacco and Terror, a clear connection between cigarette smuggling and terrorist financing was made, yet New York authorities still pressed ahead to raise taxes, but not to more aggressively fight illicit cigarette smuggling—which is the real cause of the loss of millions of dollars in tax revenue.
Braun further elaborated on this notion of state and federal agencies working together, telling HSToday, “Whose primary mission [of protecting the United States] is it? Law enforcement, military, intelligence? It’s all of the above.” For instance, he pointed out that the DEA has briefed the military more in the past 18 months than in the last 30 years.
For its part, the military has acknowledged that the counterterror/counter-smuggling mission is a long-term fight in which it will long be involved. This was acknowledged recently with re-establishment of the US Fourth Fleet, whose ships, planes and submarines will operate in the Caribbean Sea and Central and South America. As the Navy announcement put it: “These assets will conduct varying missions, including a range of contingency operations, counter narcoterrorism and theater security cooperation activities.” This also suggests direct Navy support of the DEA’s missions of countering narcoterrorism in the operational theater of the Southern Command, which is responsible for South America.
For American law enforcement officers, combating the financing of terrorist organizations through smuggling starts at street level. Whether using their general training of observation and noting anything out of the ordinary to handing information up the chain of command that can be turned into intelligence, it has to start somewhere. For example, even in a town as small as Chesterfield, Va., routine traffic information is passed on to state fusion centers for analysis and possibly federal action.
The number one priority of training local and state law enforcement should be to try to “ingrain law enforcement officers into Islamic culture and/or communities, something they do not receive enough of even today,” observed Fromme. Furthermore, he pointed out, there is still too much of the “there are no terrorists here” mentality at the local and tribal level of law enforcement agencies around the country.
With terrorist organizations evolving and changing at rapid rates, the mission of law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the United States must adapt as well. The DEA has seen major changes in its mission both at home and abroad, where it is the federal agency with the largest international presence.
There has been a great deal of improvement in intelligence sharing among federal agencies and state, local and tribal authorities; however, there is always room for additional improvement. In order to stay ahead of innovative and asymmetric adversaries such as Hezbollah and Al Qaeda, American initiatives must evolve and expand to collect and share information both internally and abroad.
After all, a smuggled cigarette can do much more damage than just cause cancer.
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