From Diaspora to Drug Ring: How Hezbollah Built Its Colombian Base

OilPrice.com ^ | 01/13/2026 | Mathew Smith

[thegagline]

➡️ Hezbollah established a presence in Colombia by leveraging the large Lebanese diaspora and the country's civil conflict, initially for recruitment and fundraising before expanding into a vast transnational criminal network.

➡️ The group's operations are primarily financed by cocaine trafficking, forging a key transactional alliance with FARC and FARC dissident groups in exchange for arms, training, and money laundering facilities.

➡️ Hezbollah's deep criminal nexus in Colombia, bolstered by Iranian ties and a weak security apparatus, increases its capacity to conduct hybrid warfare and carry out asymmetric attacks against U.S. and Israeli interests.

Lebanon’s brutal civil war triggered waves of emigration to South America, with large diasporas settling in Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and Colombia. Hezbollah initially built networks in those communities to buttress recruitment and finances. The U.S.-designated terrorist group then expanded into South America’s illicit economies, building relationships with transnational criminal syndicates and illegal armed structures to boost its finances. This increased Hezbollah’s capability to wage asymmetric warfare against the United States and Israel, but at the same time destabilized South America’s volatile southern cone and northern Andes. ***

Soaring cocaine output is already financing the expansion of recruitment, along with the acquisition of arms and equipment by criminal structures in Colombia. By June 2025, it was estimated that there were nearly 22,000 members, including armed combatants and auxiliaries, of illegal armed groups in Colombia. This represents a roughly 45% increase over mid-June 2022, when Colombia’s current President, Gustavo Petro, took office. This is behind a sharp uptick in violence in recent years, mainly in Colombia’s remote southern regions and along the border with Venezuela. ***

---

TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: cocaine; columbia; drugs; hezbollah; muslims; narcotics; terror; terrorism; terrorista; terrorists

[thegagline]

The inexorable nexus between illegal drugs and terrorism can’t be denied. And in some quarters, there are claims that the CIA reaps the benefits of a similar nexus.

[montag813]

But “Comedian Dave Smith,” a total expert on world affairs said on X that it is “Zionist lies” that Hezbollah is operating in South America. Tucker had him on twice, so I know he is an expert. I am so confused!

[thegagline]

Tucker has many provocative guests who say many stupid things that are indeed provocative. Unfortunately, news and commentary have embraced the Weekly World News model of outlandish journalism. But unlike the Weekly World News, it isn’t funny or interesting.

[Organic Panic]

Islam. The gift that never stops giving.

[Republican Wildcat]

Well, if you don’t like false information being presented as credible, that just means you are “afraid of free speech”, dontcha know?