Hezbollah builds a Western base
From inside South America's Tri-border area, Iran-linked militia targets
U.S.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17874369/By Pablo Gato and Robert Windrem
NBC News
Updated: 2 hours, 36 minutes ago
CIUDAD DEL ESTE, Paraguay - The Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia has taken
root in South America, fostering a well-financed force of Islamist radicals
boiling with hatred for the United States and ready to die to prove it,
according to militia members, U.S. officials and police agencies across the
continent.
From its Western base in a remote region divided by the borders of Paraguay,
Brazil and Argentina known as the Tri-border, or the Triple Frontier,
Hezbollah has mined the frustrations of many Muslims among about 25,000 Arab
residents whose families immigrated mainly from Lebanon in two waves, after
the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and after the 1985 Lebanese civil war.
An investigation by Telemundo and NBC News has uncovered details of an
extensive smuggling network run by Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim group founded
in Lebanon in 1982 that the United States has labeled an international
terrorist organization. The operation funnels large sums of money to militia
leaders in the Middle East and finances training camps, propaganda
operations and bomb attacks in South America, according to U.S. and South
American officials.
U.S. officials fear that poorly patrolled borders and rampant corruption in
the Tri-border region could make it easy for Hezbollah terrorists to
infiltrate the southern U.S. border. From the largely lawless region, it is
easy for potential terrorists, without detection, to book passage to the
United States through Brazil and then Mexico simply by posing as tourists.
They are men like Mustafa Khalil Meri, a young Arab Muslim whom Telemundo
interviewed in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay's second-largest city and the
center of the Tri-border region. There is nothing particularly distinctive
about him, but beneath the everyday T-shirt he wears beats the heart of a
devoted Hezbollah militiaman.
"If he attacks Iran, in two minutes Bush is dead," Meri said. "We are
Muslims. I am Hezbollah. We are Muslims, and we will defend our countries at
any time they are attacked
Hezbollah builds a Western base
From inside South America's Tri-border area, Iran-linked militia targets
U.S.
By Pablo Gato and Robert Windrem
NBC News
Updated: 2 hours, 36 minutes ago
CIUDAD DEL ESTE, Paraguay - The Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia has taken
root in South America, fostering a well-financed force of Islamist radicals
boiling with hatred for the United States and ready to die to prove it,
according to militia members, U.S. officials and police agencies across the
continent.
From its Western base in a remote region divided by the borders of Paraguay,
Brazil and Argentina known as the Tri-border, or the Triple Frontier,
Hezbollah has mined the frustrations of many Muslims among about 25,000 Arab
residents whose families immigrated mainly from Lebanon in two waves, after
the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and after the 1985 Lebanese civil war.
An investigation by Telemundo and NBC News has uncovered details of an
extensive smuggling network run by Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim group founded
in Lebanon in 1982 that the United States has labeled an international
terrorist organization. The operation funnels large sums of money to militia
leaders in the Middle East and finances training camps, propaganda
operations and bomb attacks in South America, according to U.S. and South
American officials.
U.S. officials fear that poorly patrolled borders and rampant corruption in
the Tri-border region could make it easy for Hezbollah terrorists to
infiltrate the southern U.S. border. From the largely lawless region, it is
easy for potential terrorists, without detection, to book passage to the
United States through Brazil and then Mexico simply by posing as tourists.
They are men like Mustafa Khalil Meri, a young Arab Muslim whom Telemundo
interviewed in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay's second-largest city and the
center of the Tri-border region. There is nothing particularly distinctive
about him, but beneath the everyday T-shirt he wears beats the heart of a
devoted Hezbollah militiaman.
"If he attacks Iran, in two minutes Bush is dead," Meri said. "We are
Muslims. I am Hezbollah. We are Muslims, and we will defend our countries at
any time they are attacked
===========
Straight shot to the U.S.
U.S. and South American officials warn that Meri's is more than a rhetorical
threat.
It is surprisingly easy to move across borders in the Triple Frontier, where
motorbikes are permitted to cross without documents. A smuggler can bike
from Paraguay into Brazil and return without ever being asked for a
passport, and it is not much harder for cars and trucks.
The implications of such lawlessness could be dire, U.S. and Paraguayan
officials said. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, chairman of the House
Intelligence Committee, said Hezbollah militiamen would raise no suspicions
because they have Latin American passports, speak Spanish and look like
Hispanic tourists.
The CIA singles out the Mexican border as an especially inviting target for
Hezbollah operatives. "Many alien smuggling networks that facilitate the
movement of non-Mexicans have established links to Muslim communities in
Mexico," its Counter Terrorism Center said in a 2004 threat paper.
"Non-Mexicans often are more difficult to intercept because they typically
pay high-end smugglers a large sum of money to efficiently assist them
across the border, rather than haphazardly traverse it on their own."
Deadly legacy of a lawless frontier
Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Tri-border has become a
top-level, if little-publicized, concern for Washington, particularly as
tension mounts with Iran, Hezbollah's main sponsor. Paraguayan government
officials told Telemundo that CIA operatives and agents of Israel's Mossad
security force were known to be in the region seeking to neutralize what
they believe could be an imminent threat.
But long before that, U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies
regarded the region as a "free zone for significant criminal activity,
including people who are organized to commit acts of terrorism," Louis
Freeh, then the director of the FBI, said in 1998.
Edward Luttwak, a counterterrorism expert with the Pentagon's National
Security Study Group, described the Tri-border as the most important base
for Hezbollah outside Lebanon itself, home to "a community of dangerous
fanatics that send their money for financial support to Hezbollah."
"People kill with that, and they have planned terrorist attacks from there,"
said Luttwak, who has been a terrorism consultant to the CIA and the
National Security Council. "The northern region of Argentina, the eastern
region of Paraguay and even Brazil are large terrains, and they have an
organized training and recruitment camp for terrorists."
"Our experience is that if you see one roach, there are a lot more," said
Frank Urbancic, principal deputy director of the State Department's
counterterrorism office, who has spent most of his career in the Middle
East.
A mother lode of money
Operating out of the Tri-border, Hezbollah is accused of killing more than
100 people in attacks in nearby Buenos Aires, Argentina, during the early
1990s in operations personally masterminded by Hezbollah's military
commander, Imad Mugniyah.
Mugniyah is on the most-wanted terrorist lists of both the FBI and the
European Union, and he is believed to work frequently out of Ciudad del
Este.
For President Bush and the U.S.-led "war on terror," the flourishing of
Hezbollah in the Western Hemisphere demonstrates the worrying worldwide
reach of Islamist radicalism. In the Tri-border, Hezbollah and other radical
anti-U.S. groups have found a lucrative base from which to finance many of
their operations.
Smuggling has long been the lifeblood of the Tri-border, accounting for $2
billion to $3 billion in the region, according to congressional officials.
Several U.S. agencies said that Arab merchants were involved in smuggling
cigarettes and livestock to avoid taxes, as well as cocaine and marijuana
through the border with Brazil on their way to Europe. Some of the proceeds
are sent to Hezbollah, they said.
Many Arabs in the Tri-border openly acknowledge that they send money to
Hezbollah to help their families, and the man in charge of the local mosque
in Ciudad del Este, who asked not to be identified by name, declared that
Shiite Muslim mosques had "an obligation to finance it."
But the U.S. government maintains that the money ends up stained with blood
when it goes through Hezbollah, which is blamed for the bombings of the U.S.
Embassy and the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, in the 1980s, as well as
the kidnappings of Americans, two of whom were tortured and killed.
Patrick M. O'Brien, the assistant secretary of the Treasury in charge of
fighting terrorist financing, acknowledged flatly that "we are worried."
"Hezbollah has penetrated the area, and part of that smuggling money is used
to finance terrorist attacks," he said.
===========
In Paraguay, looking the other way
The biggest obstacle in the U.S. campaign to counter Hezbollah close to home
is Paraguay, whose "judicial system remains severely hampered by a lack of
strong anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism legislation," the State
Department said in a "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report.
Since 2004, a draft bill to strengthen money laundering laws has been
stalled in the Paraguayan legislature, and the government of President
Nicanor Duarte has introduced no draft legislation of its own.
Hampering reform efforts is an endemic reluctance in Paraguay to acknowledge
the problem.
Interior Minister Rogelio Benitez Vargas, who supervises the national
police, claimed that Hezbollah-linked smuggling was a relic of the 1980s.
Today, he said, the Triple Frontier is a safe and regulated "commercial
paradise."
But authorities from the U.S. State and Treasury departments to Interpol to
the front-line Paraguayan police agencies all paint a different picture.
Eduardo Arce, secretary of the Paraguayan Union of Journalists, said the
government was widely considered to be under the control of drug traffickers
and smugglers.
Without interference, thousands of people cross the River Parana every day
from Paraguay to Brazil over the Bridge of Friendship loaded with products
on which they pay no taxes. As police look the other way, he said, some
smugglers cross the border 10 to 20 times a day. Earlier this year,
Telemundo cameras were present as smugglers in Ciudad del Este loaded trucks
headed for Brazil. They could have been laden with drugs or weapons, but no
authorities ever checked.
Direct link to Iran alleged
José Adasco knows better than most why Hezbollah has the region in a grip of
fear.
In 1992 and 1994, terrorists believed to be linked to Hezbollah carried out
two attacks against Jewish targets in Buenos Aires, the Argentine capital.
In the first, a car bomb exploded at the Israeli Embassy, killing 29 people.
Two years later, a suicide bomber attacked the Argentine Israelite Mutual
Association, a Jewish community center, killing 85 more.
Adasco, who represents the Jewish association, has never been able to forget
that day and the friends he lost.
"Really, to see the knocked-down building, [to hear] the screams, the cries,
people running - it was total chaos. Chaos, chaos. It is inexpressible," he
said.
An investigation by Interpol and the FBI found not only Hezbollah's
involvement, but Iran's, as well. The Argentine prosecutor's office said the
Iranian president at the time, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, ordered the
attack to retaliate against Argentina for suspending nuclear cooperation
with Iran.
A warrant for Rafsanjani's arrest remains outstanding, and the prosecutor's
office continues its investigation 13 years later.
Hezbollah tells its story
Alberto Nisman, the Argentine district attorney leading the investigation,
said the connection between the Hezbollah attack and the Tri-border is
unquestionable. Among other things, he said, the suicide bomber passed
through the area to receive instructions.
In the intervening years, Hezbollah has spread throughout Latin America.
On their Web page, local Hezbollah militants in Venezuela call their fight
against the United States a "holy war" and post photographs of would-be
suicide terrorists with masks and bombs. There are also Web sites for
Hezbollah in Chile, El Salvador, Argentina and most other Latin American
countries.
"The Paraguayan justice [ministry] and the national police have found
propaganda materials for Hezbollah" across the hemisphere, said Augusto
Anibal Lima of Paraguay's Tri-border Police.
And it is not only propaganda. In October, homemade bombs were left in front
of the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela, which is next to a school.
Police arrested a student carrying Hezbollah propaganda in Spanish. One of
the pamphlets showed a picture of children and said, "Combat is our highest
expression of love and the only way to offer a healthy and uncorrupted
world."
Caracas police were able to detonate the bombs safely. Police Commissioner
Wilfredo Borras said they appeared to be "explosive devices made to make
noise and publicity" - very different from what would be used if the United
States attacked Iran.
"In [the] United States, there are many Arabs - in Canada, too," said Meri,
the Hezbollah member who spoke with Telemundo. "If one bomb [strikes] Iran,
one bomb, [Bush] will see the world burning.
"... If an order arrives, all the Arabs that are here, in other parts in the
world, all will go to take bombs, bombs for everybody if he bombs Iran."
Pablo Gato is a correspondent for Telemundo. Robert Windrem is an
investigative producer for NBC News.
