The United States Drug Enforcement Agency
(DEA) announced
this week the achievement of “significant enforcement activity including arrests targeting
Lebanese Hezbollah’s External Security Organization Business Affairs Component
(BAC).”
If you’ve never heard of this particular mouthful, you’re not
alone; try Googling it and see how many results predate the publication of the
DEA press release.
But no matter. According to the agency, the BAC is “involved in international
criminal activities such as drug trafficking and drug proceed money
laundering,” with the proceeds “used to purchase weapons for Hezbollah for its
activities in Syria.”
With assistance from a host of European countries, the DEA and
U.S. Customs and Border Protection—part of the Homeland Security
Department—have now scored their latest victory in the crusade against the
“dangerous global nexus between drug trafficking and terrorism”: the arrest of
the “top leaders” of the BAC’s “European cell.”
The victorious press release specifies that BAC members “have
established business relationships with South American drug cartels.” Never
mind that the exact same thing can be said of the U.S. government; recent
examples that come to mind include collaborative efforts with Mexico’s
notorious Sinaloa cartel.
A bit further back in time, the United States’ war on leftism in
Latin America provided various opportunities for partnership with the
underworld, with many of the proceeds funneled toward the right-wing Contra
force committed to terrorizing the population of
Nicaragua.
At one point, the Contra supply airline SETCO—owned by top Honduran
drug lord Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros—was known as the “CIA airline.”
But this history, of course, can hardly be contained within the Good-Versus-Evil narrative propagated by the U.S., so we don’t talk about it. READ MORE AT TeleSUR ENGLISH.
But this history, of course, can hardly be contained within the Good-Versus-Evil narrative propagated by the U.S., so we don’t talk about it. READ MORE AT TeleSUR ENGLISH.