 For some time now, the Shiite terror organization Hezbollah has been involved in drug trafficking. American officials have long known of ties between Hezbollah, Colombian and Mexican drug cartels, ties that earn it hundreds of millions of dollars per year. In August 2008, for example, U.S. and Colombian investigators dismantled an international cocaine smuggling and money-laundering ring made up of members of a Colombian drug cartel and Lebanese members of Hezbollah.
Previously, the DEA had also targeted a Hezbollah drug trafficking ring in the Tri-Border region of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. According to Michael Braun, former administrator and chief of operations at the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Hezbollah relies on “the same criminal weapons smugglers, document traffickers and transportation experts as the drug cartels. U.S. counterterrorism officials have been keeping a close eye on links between Hezbollah and the drug cartels, worried that al-Qaeda could also make use of the drug trafficking routes between the U.S. and Mexico to send its operatives across the border to carry out terror attacks on American soil. If this weren’t enough cause for concern, a weekend report in the German magazine Der Spiegel has established a clear link between Hezbollah, the European drug trade and the illegal transfer of funds from Germany directly to that terror group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah. The report says that German police have arrested four Lebanese Nationals (all members of the same family) at Frankfort Airport who were found to be carrying millions of dollars in their carry-on-bags. Later, two other relatives were subsequently arrested, and under questioning admitted that they had sent money back to Lebanon to Hezbollah’s leadership. German police suspect that the two had trained in Hezbollah training camps in Lebanon. Although the link with South American drug cartels has long been known, this is the first time that a direct Hezbollah link with the European drug trade has been demonstrated, although one has been suspected for quite some time due to increased cultivation of drugs in Lebanon. In fact, a 2009 United Nations report by that organization’s Office on Drugs and Crime says that: [Lebanese] farmers in the Bekaa Valley (once the center of the Middle East’s largest hashish industry), appear to be resuming cannabis cultivation, as well as other drugs. This is a disturbing development. During the Lebanese civil war, the drug trade generated nearly $500 million a year in revenue, which was about 15% of Lebanon’s economy at the time. That money was a huge source of revenue for Hezbollah and other militias, also bringing enormous benefit to Syria and Iran, the primary providers of weaponry to Hezbollah. The links between Islamic terrorism and drug trafficking are real and are growing, and in countries such as Lebanon–where government control is weak–Hezbollah has become a state-within-a-state, and the drug trade has become a source of funds for the procurement of its arms and matériel. A fact, which has not gone unnoticed by Hezbollah, is that terrorism does not operate without money; and the drug trade is making them a lot of it. NewsReal Blog 
 German police suspect the Lebanese militant group, Hezbollah, of using drug trafficking in Europe to fund part of its activities, German magazine Der Spiegel reported on Saturday.According to the report published on the magazine's website, German police arrested two Lebanese citizens living in Germany last October after they transferred large sums of money to a family in Lebanon with connections to Hezbollah's leadership, including the Shiite group's Secretary General, Hassan Nasrallah. Suspicion was first raised in May 2008, when police found 8.7 million Euros in the bags of four Lebanese men at the airport in Frankfurt. Police searched the men's apartment in Speyer, Germany, and found an additional half a million Euros. According to the report, police suspected the men were selling cocaine in Europe and sending the profits back to Lebanon. The report added that the two suspects went through training at a Hezbollah camp. The suspects deny the charges against them. ( more)
 WASHINGTON — Three accused Al Qaeda associates taken to New York on Friday are charged with plotting to ferry drugs through the Sahara desert to raise money for terror attacks — evidence of what prosecutors say is a dangerous, growing alliance between terror chiefs and drug lords. The arrests mark the first time U.S. authorities have captured and charged Al Qaeda suspects in a drug trafficking plot in Africa. The three suspects — believed to be in their 30s and originally from Mali — were arrested by local authorities in Ghana earlier this week and turned over to U.S. agents. They arrived in the United States early Friday morning, officials said, and were ordered held without bail after a brief court appearance later in the day in which they did not enter pleas to charges of narcoterrorism conspiracy and conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists. Michele Leonhart, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said the case shows a "direct link" between Al Qaeda and drug traffickers. The U.S. has long been concerned about close ties between militants and the heroin trade in Afghanistan. But the African case appears to show an expansion of both Al Qaeda's illegal activities around the globe and American efforts to curtail black market deals that funnel cash to spur terror operations. The four-month investigation was also the third time in recent years that the U.S. has targeted transnational suspects in an elaborate sting using informants posing as South American narcoterrorism operatives. U.S. attorney Preet Bharara said the charges show "the emergence of a worrisome alliance between Al Qaeda and transnational narcotics traffickers.
As terrorists diversify into drugs, however, they provide us with more opportunities to incapacitate them and cut off the funding for future acts of terror." Authorities say the men are associates of Al Qaeda's North African branch, and told DEA informants that Al Qaeda could protect major shipments of cocaine in the region, driving the drugs by truck through the Sahara desert before eventually bringing them to Spain. A criminal complaint unsealed Friday charges that Oumar Issa, Harouna Toure, and Idriss Abelrahman worked with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb. Court papers say Toure and Abelrahman at one point claimed the profits from the drug business "will go to their people to support the fight for 'the cause'." Court papers say the DEA infiltrated the group by using informants posing as supporters of Colombia's rebel army, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which the U.S. government considers a terrorist organization. More at FoxNews
 KABUL — The U.S. on Monday agreed to hand out millions of dollars in development aid to provinces in Afghanistan that have eliminated or reduced the production of opium poppies, the raw ingredient in making heroin. The poppy crop in Afghanistan, which produces 90 percent of the world's supply of opium, is linked to corruption, addiction and a drug trade that bankrolls the Taliban insurgency. Curbing the cultivation of poppies is the goal of a U.S. program that has doled out $80 million since 2007. That includes the $38.7 million (26 million euros) the U.S. announced it is giving to 27 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces that either reduced poppy cultivation by more than 10 percent or became poppy-free this year. "Illicit narcotics is a very serious problem with exports around the world, but we need to recognize that they do grave harm to Afghan society as well," said E. Anthony Wayne, development director at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. "The narcotics trade also feeds corruption, hindering Afghanistan's ability to build strong, democratic institutions and good governance. Narcotics also fuels the insurgency. "Afghanistan has one of the highest addiction rates in the world, harming tens of thousands of people, damaging families and communities, limiting economic opportunity and depriving future generations the opportunity to make a better life." In a separate program, the U.S. has opened 16 drug treatment clinics around the nation, and another 10 are expected in the next few months. Determining which provinces will get the money is based on the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime opium survey, which reported poppy cultivation decreased 22 percent this year. The money, which is administered by the Afghan Ministry of Counternarcotics, has been used in the past to provide farm machinery, dig irrigation canals, and build public buildings such as schools, clinics and stadiums. More at FoxNews
 AHMED Wali Karzai, the brother of the embattled Afghan president and a suspected drug trafficker, has been on the CIA payroll for most of the past eight years.
The US spy agency pays Karzai for a variety of services, The New York Times reports, such as fielding recruits for an Afghan paramilitary force operating at the CIA's direction in and around his home city of Kandahar, a Taliban stronghold.
He also helps the CIA contact and sometimes meet Taliban followers.
Karzai, who is said to have ties to Afghanistan's lucrative illegal opium trade, has a "wide-ranging" relationship with the CIA, the Times said, citing US officials.
On top of helping the agency operate the paramilitary group that targets suspected violent militants - the Kandahar Strike Force, Karzai is also paid for allowing the CIA and US Special Operations forces to rent a large compound outside Kandahar that once served as the home of Taliban founder Mullah Omar.
"He's our landlord," a senior US official told the newspaper.
The CIA has declined to comment.
Karzai denied receiving CIA payments or playing any role in the booming opium trade that helps fund the Taliban-led insurgency.
"I don't know anyone under the name of the CIA," he told the newspaper. "I have never received any money from any organization. I help, definitely. I help other Americans wherever I can. This is my duty as an Afghan."
The report came amid increasingly tense ties between President Barack Obama's administration and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, long a darling of the West but whose legitimacy has been shaken by a fraud-marred first round of elections in August.
A run-off has been set for November 7.
Some US officials argued that relying on Ahmed Wali Karzai undermines Washington's efforts to help develop an effective and reliable Kabul government that can stand on its own.
"If we are going to conduct a population-centric strategy in Afghanistan, and we are perceived as backing thugs, then we are just undermining ourselves," Major General Michael Flynn, the top US military intelligence official in Afghanistan, told the daily.
While some US officials said Karzai was likely linked to drug trafficking, others said the intelligence was inconclusive.
 Off a major desert highway that connects Egypt's capital to the coastal city of Alexandria, drug users gather at a hidden exit to score heroin, free from the prying eyes of the authorities. Yasser, 25, has to drive 20km on the Alexandria highway to ensure his almost daily supply. One sharp turn to the left puts him on the series of unpaved roads that take him to his dealer. Upon arriving, he finds a man dressed in Bedouin clothing armed with a rifle guarding two cars, one of which has an open trunk filled with bricks of heroin. Yasser parks his car alongside 10 others packed with young men sharing syringes. He knows the meeting point is temporary. "The place where dealers and users meet changes every month or so, and when they do, people learn of these new meeting points by word of mouth ... so this stuff [heroin] is really not that hard to find," he says. Yasser represents the growing number of Egyptian youth who have fallen prey to drug abuse; he began using heroin three years ago. According to Egypt's National Council on Fighting and Treating Addiction (NCFTA), at least 8.5 per cent of the country's population, or six million people, are addicted to narcotics.
The majority of them are between 15 to 25 years old and the number of users is growing rapidly. "I can't physically function without it," Yasser says, describing the drug rush as a pervasive warm and pleasurable feeling. But the sensation is temporary and comes at a price. Shortly afterwards, he will succumb to the usual symptoms heroin addicts experience during withdrawal - nausea, itching, constipation and emotional emptiness. "If I didn't take it, I would spend all day aching in bed, increasing my doses to avoid the pain that came with withdrawal... and besides, it's not like I had to travel that far to obtain my supply anyway," he says. Yasser tried his best to hide his addiction from family and close friends, but it was only a matter of time before they found out. His parents grew suspicious of his unusual sleeping patterns and one too many trips to the bathroom to crush and sniff the drug. They surprised him with a drug test that came out positive. Read more here,,,, Source: Al Jazeera (English)
Taliban commanders are engaged in a bloody succession contest for control of their late leader Baitullah Mehsud's £25 million fortune, Pakistani security sources have claimed. By Dean Nelson in New Delhi and Emal Khan in Peshawar
 Mehsud, who took the Taliban's jihad into the heart of Pakistan's major cities with suicide bomb attacks, is believed to have been killed last week in a US drone attack on his father-in-law's home in south Waziristan. Pakistani government officials and some Taliban sources said Mehsud, his father-in-law, wife, brother and seven of his fighters had been killed in the attack in the remote village of Zagara. Tribal rivals said 40 of Mehsud's fighters had also died in the attack. Reports of a violent struggle to seize control of his empire emerged over the weekend after a pro-government Taliban leader claimed two rival commanders had been killed in a shootout at a meeting of senior figures to choose his successor. According to Haji Turkistan Betani, Wali Rahman and Hakimullah Mehsud, were killed at the meeting in the Sra Rogha district of South Waziristan, while the group's notorious head of its school of suicide bombers, Qari Hussein, was seriously injured. Betani's account was challenged yesterday by a respected local journalist who told The Daily Telegraph that Wali Rahman had called him on Sunday evening to deny there had been a clash in the meeting. Alamgir, a Pushto-language journalist for a Peshawar-based radio station, said Rahman had denied Hakimullah Mehsud had been killed, but declined to comment on the fate of Baitullah Mehsud. Hakimullah's failure to issue his own statement has fuelled a widespread belief that, despite Rahman's denial, he is dead, while Taliban sources say the two men had been bitter rivals before Baitullah Mehsud's death. "It is purely the question of succession that has caused the fighting between the two commanders," said one senior tribal leader. "They are just like a gang. Religion doesn't allow kidnapping, and smuggling of narcotics or arms, but they are doing it all the same," he added. Sources close to the local Taliban leadership said Wali Rahman will now be the favourite to take control of Baitullah Mehsud's vast fortune. They said Mehsud had built a vast financial empire on drug and weapon smuggling, donations from al-Qaeda and wealthy Arabs. Haulage and transport bosses paid substantial "tolls" while wealthy businessmen from Waziristan living in other Pakistani cities were warned their relatives would be beheaded if they did not pay up. Source: Telegraph H/T: JihadWatch
By Rachel Ehrenfeld "The fight against drugs is actually the fight for Afghanistan," said Afghan President Hamid Karzai when he took office in 2002. Judging by the current situation, Afghanistan is losing. To win, the link between narcotics and terrorism must be severed. That is the necessary condition for a successful strategy to undermine the growing influence of al-Qaida, the Taliban and radical Muslim groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is all about money--more precisely, drug money. The huge revenues from the heroin trade fill the coffers of the terrorists and thwart any attempt to stabilize the region. Though not traded on any stock exchange, heroin is one of the most valuable commodities in the world today. While a ton of crude oil costs less than $290, a ton of heroin costs $67 million in Europe and between $360 million and $900 million in New York, according to estimates based on recent Drug Enforcement Administration figures. Read more ...Source: Forbes
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For some time now, the Shiite terror organization Hezbollah has been involved in drug trafficking. American officials have long known of ties between Hezbollah, Colombian and Mexican drug cartels, ties that earn it hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
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