Hezbollah builds a Western base

[Aptrgangr]

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: 9:29 a.m. ET May 9, 2007

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.

Hezbollah builds a Western base - Nightly News with Brian Williams - MSNBC.com

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Islam Luring More Latinos - Prayers Offer a More Intimate Link to God

[Arthur Gordon Pym]

American propaganda. Are the USA maybe preparing a whole-scale invasion of the South America????

[Menydh]

I heared from a friend that there is a large community of Middle Easterners (not sure if Muslims) in Ciudad del Este.

Still, what they can do from a country like Paraguay is a mistery to me. Paraguay is a landlocked country with probably the highest rates of corruption in all of Southern America.

I wonder if this has something to do with the fact that the U.S. has lost the grip in Southern America, with most countries in the region today being hostile in varying levels to the U.S.

[Arthur Gordon Pym]

Originally Posted by Mynydd

Still, what they can do from a country like Paraguay is a mistery to me. Paraguay is a landlocked country with probably the highest rates of corruption in all of Southern America.

They are probably preparing an invasion of the USA from Paraguay.

[Aptrgangr]

Originally Posted by Prometheus

American propaganda.

Thanks for your reminder, without you we all here would fall prey to the evil American propaganda...
Anyway, propaganda means a message that is used to influence other peoples' opinions, and since any information influences more or less we all here post in fact propaganda.

Originally Posted by Prometheus

Are the USA maybe preparing a whole-scale invasion of the South America????

No, the USA is incapable and not willing to do this, nevertheless the Muslim threat growing in whole America may not be understimated.

Originally Posted by Mynydd

I heared from a friend that there is a large community of Middle Easterners (not sure if Muslims) in Ciudad del Este.
Still, what they can do from a country like Paraguay is a mistery to me. Paraguay is a landlocked country with probably the highest rates of corruption in all of Southern America

My aunt and her husband lived in Paraguay, one cousin of mine still has property there.
About 20 years ago Alfredo Stroessner opened the doors for thousands of Midle Eastern immigrants, Muslims from Lebanon, Palestinia and Syria mostly.They mostly settled down in Porto Stroessner, today's Ciudad el Este. Those Muslims control much of the business there, not to mention there are good contacts to the drug-mafia and organized crime. For them it is easy to recruit lot's of men for their private militias. Same happens in Brazil.

Originally Posted by Mynydd

I wonder if this has something to do with the fact that the U.S. has lost the grip in Southern America, with most countries in the region today being hostile in varying levels to the U.S.

Indeed, the USA is loosing "grip" everywhere, which does not mean something friendly and usuful for us replaces the vakuum left. Look at Venezuela's Chavez, he more and more comes close to teh regime in Teheran, whilst he is ranting against White people as such. The Catholic church is loosing grip in Latin America too by the way...

More propaganda, worth being read anyway!
Paraguay-U.S. Post-Stroessner Relations - Council on Hemispheric Affairs
History of Jihad against the Latin America in the our times
Organización Islámica para América Latina

[Arthur Gordon Pym]

Originally Posted by Aptrgangr

Thanks for your reminder, without you we all here would fall prey to the evil American propaganda...

No, thanks you. Without you we wouldn't know what the latest pieces of American propaganda say, so we would be denied amusement.

Originally Posted by Aptrgangr

Anyway, propaganda means a message that is used to influence other peoples' opinions, and since any information influences more or less we all here post in fact propaganda.

Yes, and there is successful and unsuccessful propaganda.

[Menydh]

Originally Posted by Aptrgangr

My aunt and her husband lived in Paraguay, on ecousin of mine still has property there.
About 20 years ago Alfredo Stroessner opened the doors for thousands of Midle Eastern immigrants, Muslims from Lebanon, Palestinia and Syria mostly.They mostly settled down in Porto Stroessner, today's Ciudad el Este. Those Muslims control much of the business there, not to mention there are good contacts to the drug-mafia and organized crime. For them it is easy to recruit lot's of men for their private militias. Same happens in Brazil.

Actually, I've heared of the US recruiting "militia" in Paraguay against the cartels around Southern America.

What you must understand about Paraguay is that it is the most "stable" country in the area. Admittedly this sounds like a joke. And it is in fact a joke. By "stable" I mean that whoever leads the next coup d'etat there, it is the leader and five more around him that change. Everything else remains pretty much the same.

Indeed, the USA is loosing "grip" everywhere, which does not mean something friendly and usuful for us replaces the vakuum left. Look at Venezuela's Chavez, he more and more comes close to teh regime in Teheran, whilst he is ranting against White people as such.

The US as a lesser evil? Tell me more about it, please!

The Catholic church is loosing grip in Latin America too by the way...

The Catholic Church has lost the grip even with itself.

[Menydh]

Originally Posted by Mynydd

Actually, I've heared of the US recruiting "militia" in Paraguay against the cartels around Southern America.

What you must understand about Paraguay is that it is the most "stable" country in the area. Admittedly this sounds like a joke. And it is in fact a joke. By "stable" I mean that whoever leads the next coup d'etat there, it is the leader and five more around him that change. Everything else remains pretty much the same.

Ah.. this also means that the problem, if it was such and the US wanted to "solve" it, is easily solved with a few dollars. Not that they don't know it already as it's been CIA's common practice there.

So, do you still believe that it is a cause for publishing it as an alarm of world public concern?

[Aptrgangr]

Originally Posted by Mynydd

Actually, I've heared of the US recruiting "militia" in Paraguay against the cartels around Southern America.

That's no secret. They fund "counter guerilla troops" etc. for decades, if not centuries.

Originally Posted by Mynydd

What you must understand about Paraguay is that it is the most "stable" country in the area. Admittedly this sounds like a joke. And it is in fact a joke. By "stable" I mean that whoever leads the next coup d'etat there, it is the leader and five more around him that change. Everything else remains pretty much the same.

I live in a highly corrupt republic, it is not me to judge over Latin American countries.

Originally Posted by Mynydd

The US as a lesser evil? Tell me more about it, please!

Where did you read I consider the USA as lesser evil? Quote me please.
I explain you how I see it with a typical situation in my town. There is a strong Turkish gang (Turkish Power Boyz) that often fights with a Moroccan gang, when not doing this both rob Germans since they are easy preys as retarded, weak and pathetic pacifists. Now, which side do I take when Turks and Moroccans fight against each other here? None? I am against both.
That's the situation with the Muslims, no matter how much they harm the USA, the same degree is done to my country.

Originally Posted by Mynydd

The Catholic Church has lost the grip even with itself.

Not my business. May the allmighty have a grip.

Originally Posted by Mynydd

Ah.. this also means that the problem, if it was such and the US wanted to "solve" it, is easily solved with a few dollars. Not that they don't know it already as it's been CIA's common practice there.

If it was this easy they surely would have done. But Muslim gangs can not be infiltrated, agents fail the foreskin test etc.

Originally Posted by Mynydd

So, do you still believe that it is a cause for publishing it as an alarm of world public concern?

I have no idea, if it was the purpose it failed, since no word is lost here about this issue in the media. The multiculturalists do their best to present Islam as peaceful and desirable religion. Nevertheless it is interesting, my opinion is the Occidental civilization does not deserve to live when it is not willing and capable do defend against the Islamic disease that was brought to us via the multicultural disease.