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Hizbollah: Better and More Dangerous than Al-Qaeda?

© Bryan Dietzler

Although Al-Qaeda is making big news these days following its attacks on targets in Saudi Arabia, what might be a more dangerous and deadlier terrorist group is lurking in the shadows right here in America. This group, known as Hizbollah or the "Party of God" has recently been rushed to the forefront of terrorism concerns and may now pose more of a threat to the security of the United States at home than any other terrorist organization. Recently, there was some chilling insight into just how involved Hizbollah is in the mainland United States and just how unsafe we might really be.

First, lets look at some background information on Hizbollah and who they are and what they stand for. Hizbollah came into being in the early 1980's after the Iranian government sent several religious and military personnel into Lebanon to train recruits for a sustained fight against the Israeli occupation there. Probably the most notable attack on American interests, by Hizbollah, came when they detonated explosive laden vehicles in front of the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, killing over 200 U.S. soldiers. They are also responsible several aircraft hijackings and have launched many attacks against Israeli forces occupying parts of southern Lebanon. Therefore they are at least partially responsible for helping to keep peace a distant hope in that part of the world.

The full story of Hizbollah and its existence is quite long but very interesting and perhaps something that I could cover at another time. Overall, they are a well organized and highly influential force in Lebanon and most recently, it has been discovered, they are making their presence know in the United States. It has been let out recently, that members of this terrorist group have been active in the United States for quite some time, virtually right under our noses. These terrorists have come up with a unique scheme to raise money to buy weapons and they are using one of the simplest yet highly desirable things possible to do this. They have simply used cigarettes.

I was very surprised when I read about how Hizbollah had managed to finance their weapons program using American cigarettes. What they would do is purchase the cigarettes in North Carolina, where the tax on cigarettes is just $.50 a carton and then ship them up north to Detroit. The tax on a carton of cigarettes in Detroit is $7.50. The scheme they used to make money is very obvious, selling the cigarettes just a little under the normal price in Detroit, in turn making a lot money to buy weapons. Hizbollah fighters then sent this money to a group in Canada, which purchased the weapons for shipment into Lebanon for use against the Israeli occupation. This was a very well planned scheme based on something so simple that no U.S. government agency found out until well after it had been carried out.

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