Illegal drug trade in Lebanon
The economic and political upheaval in Lebanon, as delineated in a study by the Euro-Gulf Information Center, has driven Hezbollah, wherein narcotics serve as a notable revenue stream, to intensify its involvement in the drug economy.
[1][2] While a portion of the harvest remains in Lebanon to serve to around 40,000 local drug users, about three-quarters are smuggled to Egypt, Israel, Europe, and North America.
While information is scant, Marshall asserts that this early “black economy" played a significant role in Lebanon's economic development and rise to prominence as a regional trading hub.
In 1976, Syrian military took control over the Bakaa valley and by 1982, under the watchful eye of Syria's occupying army, marijuana fields covered nearly 90 percent of the region.
According to Fawwaz Traboulsi, in his book "Culture et commerce de drogue au Liban", secret laboratories were reportedly processing not only heroin but also Colombian cocaine, contributed to the expanding narcotics market in Lebanon.
[6] Toward the end of the civil war, the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics Matters defined Lebanon as the "key processing transshipment center in the Middle East for opiates, with the emergence of about one hundred from 1985 to 1987.
"[4] In the 1980s, Syria, which had a significant military presence in Lebanon, particularly in the Beqaa Valley, played a central role in controlling and benefiting from the drug trade according to the Washington Post.
The Syrian military's engagement extended from extortion of money from drug growers to independent smuggling of significant amounts of hashish and heroin to the West.
[7] Despite efforts to address the issue, the continuing inability of the government to effectively control Lebanon's drug-producing Beqaa Valley, coupled with its ongoing struggle to close illicit Captagon factories across the country, allows for the persistent occurrence of drug trades.
Later that month another revelation was made by Saudi authorities at the port of Jeddah revealing another major drug bust, seizing an estimated 14 million Captagon pills.
Daqou was turned over to the Lebanese army because of official allegations for establishing a Captagon laboratory in the area and overseeing a smuggling network sending pills to Greece and Saudi Arabia.
Reports show that during the period 2009–2014 the world's largest producer of cannabis resin continues to be Morocco, followed by Afghanistan and, to a lesser extent, Lebanon, India and Pakistan.
[7] A draft report on the Ministry of Public Health's (MoPH) website titled "Inter-Ministerial Substance Use Response Strategy for Lebanon 2016–2021" claims that "increasing amounts of heroin are also being illegally cultivated in the Bekaa."
The report adds that the extensive drug flow challenges European authorities attempts for dismantling trafficking networks and preventing the distribution of prohibited substances.
In addition, trafficking by commercial air and maritime transport is generally associated with smaller volumes, but a wider variety, of illicit drugs.
Although sources say their involvement in the drug industry dates back to the 1990s, several years after armed Lebanese Shiite factions united under the Hezbollah banner to fight Israel.
[13] In this period, the organization, facing financial pressures due to sanctions and political crises in Lebanon, turned to the illicit drug trade as a significant revenue source.
In November 2011, The Lebanese drug lord, Ayman Joumaa, was arrested in the United States following allegations he was smuggling cocaine and laundering money that benefitted Hezbollah.
As much as $200 million a month was laundered through his network, which included criminal associates and corrupt businesses in Colombia, the United States, Mexico, Panama, Venezuela, and Lebanon.
[14] The document claims that Hezbollah's activities in recent years is a result of the involvement of Iran, specifically by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Quds Force.
Venezuela considered a close Hezbollah ally according to the report helped them launder hundreds of millions of dollars a year and smuggle narcotics to the United States and even European markets.
Europol 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.
[15] The DEA claimed to have uncovered an international drug trafficking industry worth millions of dollars linking Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, with Latin American cartels.
[15] A statement released by the agency claims that members of the militant group have been arrested by the DEA on suspicion of using money from the sale of cocaine in the United States and Europe to buy weapons in Syria.
Hezbollah cooperated with the South American cartel and trafficking drugs within the Triple Frontier (where Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay meet) manufactured along the Syrian-Lebanese border.
[16] A senior FDD fellow, Emanuele Ottolengi, stated that "Over the past decades, Hezbollah has built a well-oiled, multibillion-dollar money-laundering and drug-trafficking machine in Latin America that cleans organized crime’s ill-gotten gains through multiple waypoints in the Western hemisphere, West Africa, Europe, and the Middle East.
