AFP photo
By
Ricardo Swire
Caribbean national security counterterrorism sections will have to move apace to plan for further “fall out” from the embattled Venezuelan president’s evident marriage to Hezbollah. Such strategic partnership gives the middle-eastern terrorist organization a connection to powerful South American criminal syndicates and trafficking cartels. The Lebanon headquartered Shiite Muslim militant organization has capitalized on the Venezuelan president’s anti-American foreign policy.
2018 Caribbean intelligence data pinpointed Venezuela as a regional oasis for Hezbollah and Iran. On Thursday January 24, 2019 Hezbollah broadcasted the following statement, via satellite from Al Manar in Lebanon, “Everyone knows America’s objective is not to defend democracy and freedom, according to Washington, but to appropriate the resources of the country and punish all states that oppose American hegemony.” Both America and Israel recently designated the group as a top transnational organized crime threat.
On January 25, 2019 Hezbollah’s chief of the parliamentary block, aka “Loyalty to the Resistance,” met with Venezuela’s Ambassador to Libya. Hezbollah routinely finances terrorism through Latin American money, earned from links with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico. Additionally Hezbollah mines and exports Venezuelan gold, courtesy of a former Venezuelan Interior Minister, in concert with an ex-vice president. The senior politician is accused of selling Venezuelan identity cards, passports, visas and providing citizenship to shady Middle-Easterners and international terrorists. The official documents were dispensed from the Venezuelan Embassy in Baghdad.
Venezuelan “Blood Gold” is extracted from the Amazon, refined and supplied to cross border underworld markets. Several Venezuelan-Iranian corporate joint ventures are established in Caracas that include tractor, cement and auto factories. Such alliance is embodied in the Colombian businessman who imports food on behalf of Venezuela’s government Local Storage & Production Committees (CLAP).
Reports identified Margarita Island, in the Caribbean Sea just north of Venezuela, as one Hezbollah drug trafficking and money laundering base. Evidence shows how the Shiite Muslim militant organization conducts training for the Venezuelan president’s private “para-police aka “The Colectivos.” Regional security officials are mindful of high calibre firearms that haemorrhage from Venezuela’s military armoury and arrive on Caribbean islands via Trinidad and Tobago, Haiti and Jamaica.
Ricardo Swire
Ricardo Swire is the Principal Consultant at R-L-H Security Consultants & Business Support Services and writes on a number of important issues.
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