To Combat Illegal Immigration, Trump Should Target Latin America’s Hezbollah-Narco Nexus
BY EMANUELE OTTOLENGHI, JOHN HANNAH
DECEMBER 23, 2016 - 3:49 PM
President-elect Donald Trump staked much of his successful campaign on stopping illegal immigration. Yet the flow of migrants is symptomatic of a much larger danger to U.S. security that is rapidly gathering on our southern doorstep. Across the region, violent drug cartels and Islamic terror networks increasingly cooperate, with the assistance of corrupt political elites. This toxic nexus is fueling both the rising threat of global jihadism and the collapse of law and order across Latin America that is helping drive drugs and people northward into the United States. Developing a strategy to combat this growing risk to the American homeland needs to be a priority of the Trump administration. And one of its primary targets should be Iran’s most deadly proxy, the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah.
Hezbollah’s involvement in Latin America’s drug trade is significant and expanding. The group — often referred to as the “A-Team” of international terrorism — has formed partnerships with several of the region’s most notorious crime syndicates, including Mexico’s Zetas, Columbia’s FARC, and Brazil’s Primeiro Comando de la Capital. Evidence indicates that Hezbollah has ties throughout the illicit narcotics supply chain. U.S. sanctions, as well as court cases in the United States and overseas, have targeted Hezbollah-linked operatives acting as logistics and financial service providers, traffickers, drug barons, distributors, and, most recently, suppliers of precursor chemicals used to refine cocaine. It seems only a matter of time before Hezbollah-run drug labs emerge, too — the kind that have long been at the center of the group’s operations in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/12/23/...h-nacro-nexus/
