As the political and humanitarian tumult in Venezuela unfolds, analysts say illicit activities by Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in the South American country could be disrupted.

Since the beginning of the crisis in January, many observers have been wondering about the future of the Lebanese militant group and its activities in Venezuela, particularly with growing U.S. sanctions on the Venezuelan government.

For years, the government of embattled President Nicolas Maduro has maintained a close relationship with Hezbollah and its benefactor, Iran, which has empowered Hezbollah financially, analysts say.

U.S. officials have been warning about Hezbollah’s growing presence in Venezuela and elsewhere in Latin America.

“People don’t recognize that Hezbollah has active cells — the Iranians are impacting the people of Venezuela and throughout South America,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a recent interview with Fox Business Network.

“We have an obligation to take down that risk for America,” he said.

​U.S. sanctions

Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, has been increasingly targeted by U.S. sanctions in the past few months.

In October 2018, the Department of Justice named Hezbollah as one of the top five transnational criminal organizations in Latin America.

In an attempt to step up efforts to prevent Hezbollah’s illicit activities in the Western Hemisphere, the U.S. hosted a conference last December. It was attended by senior officials of 13 U.S. partners across the Americas who discussed threats posed by transnational terrorist groups.

Analysts charge that recent U.S. sanctions against several key Hezbollah figures could ultimately harm the group’s financial operations in Venezuela and elsewhere in Latin America.

Hezbollah’s financiers “have integrated themselves into [the Venezuelan] government in a variety of different ways,” said Phillip Smyth, a research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “Everyone is kind of getting a cut from the apparatus.

“So, it wouldn’t shock me if there are reverberations down to Hezbollah’s finance network. The way [the U.S.] Treasury has done this is they’ve targeted certain individuals that are kind of key brokers of the Hezbollah money, so it will have its effect,” he told VOA.

Analysts say the relationship between the Venezuelan government and Hezbollah is largely centered on a strategic partnership between Venezuela and Iran, which provides Hezbollah members, facilitators, financiers and fixers with the ability to covertly move people, money and material. 

Iran’s “proxy Lebanese Hezbollah maintains facilitation networks throughout the region that cache weapons and raise funds, often via drug trafficking and money laundering,” U.S. Southern Command’s Adm. Craig Faller told the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee during a hearing last month.

The convergence of Hezbollah’s networks in Venezuela has created an environment that enables the Shiite group to move large amounts of money in illicit revenue, using gold refineries in the Middle East and financial hubs in Central and South America and the Caribbean, according to the Center for a Secure Free Society, a Washington-based research organization that has extensively researched Hezbollah’s activities in Latin America.

​Vast network

Some experts believe that Hezbollah has built a vast network that is made up of mostly underground Syrian-Venezuelans who facilitate movement for the group’s members in the Middle East and Latin America.

“Hezbollah is already helping Maduro through an established transregional network between Lebanon, Syria and Venezuela,” said Joseph Humire, executive director of the Center for a Secure Free Society.

“The main reason for Hezbollah supporting the Maduro regime is the same reason it protects the Bashar al-Assad government in Syria — to protect the logistical network Iran needs to export its revolution,” he told VOA.

Since the outbreak of Syria’s civil war in 2011, Iran and Hezbollah have been playing a major role defending the Syrian president against the rebel forces.

“In the case of Syria, it’s for the land bridge to Lebanon, and in the case of Venezuela, it’s the air bridge to Latin America,” Humire added.

Smyth of the Washington Institute echoed a similar analysis of the entangling relationship between Venezuela and Hezbollah.

“If you look at certain representatives that Venezuela has put in the Middle East as diplomatic staff, a lot of them are full-fledged Hezbollah supporters and are linked in a variety of ways to Hezbollah networks,” Smith said.

​The role of Hugo Chavez

Hezbollah’s activities in Venezuela flourished during the term of former President Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013 and was succeeded by Maduro.

“The presence of Hezbollah expanded during the time of [former Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad, who opened the doors for Iranian and Lebanese businesses [and] facilitated trade for them in Venezuela through a cemented friendship he developed with Chavez,” a Tehran-based journalist, who worked in Latin America for years, told VOA. He requested anonymity for security reasons.

He added that many multimillion-dollar business ventures were established in those years.

“Lebanese businessmen work with Hezbollah because it’s a lucrative business, but some of them do it because their business interests in Lebanon could be under threat if they refuse to cooperate with Hezbollah in Venezuela,” the Iranian journalist added.

With growing pressures on Maduro’s government, some analysts say it is unlikely that he would sever ties with Hezbollah.

“Ideologically speaking, [Maduro] has thrown his lot in with groups like Hezbollah and with the Iranians. They have the same motivations, which are anti-American,” analyst Smyth said.

“These are the allies [Venezuelan government officials] have. I seriously doubt that they would cut [these allies off] as a signal to the U.S. … I think they’re in this for good,” he added. 
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U.S. President Donald Trump declared the end of the Islamic State terror group’s self-declared caliphate Friday, saying the terror group had been “100 percent defeated” — a claim that was quickly refuted by U.S.-backed forces on the ground.

Trump made the announcement following a briefing from Acting Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan aboard Air Force One en route to Florida. Trump then showed reporters onboard a map with no IS presence in Syria.

“The territorial caliphate has been eliminated in Syria,” added White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders.

At its height in 2014, IS ruled over large swaths of Syria and Iraq, boasting dual capitals in Raqqa, Syria, and Mosul, Iraq.

Since then, the U.S.-led international coalition, along with partners on the ground, have rolled back the terror group’s hold.

The very last territory under IS control — a couple of scraps of land in the northeastern Syrian town of Baghuz — began to slip through the terror group’s grip for good late Thursday into early Friday, after the U.S.-led coalition launched a new wave of airstrikes targeting the remaining IS-held positions.

But shortly after Trump’s announcement, SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali told VOA’s Kurdish Service he could not confirm IS’s defeat, as his forces were still engaged with IS fighters in Baghuz and that additional airstrikes were being carried out as he spoke.

“Heavy fighting continues … to finish off whatever remains of ISIS,” Bali tweeted later, using an acronym for the terror group.

Earlier Friday, SDF officials warned that despite the series of airstrikes that began late Thursday night, several hundred IS fighters were still battling U.S.-backed forces in Baghuz.

Both SDF and coalition officials have also been wary that unknown numbers of IS fighters could still be lurking in trenches and in a complex system of caves and tunnels.

The tunnels, which are thought to run for at least two kilometers, helped hide tens of thousands of IS fighters and their families through much of the early part of the SDF offensive. And officials said there are indications certain tunnels may even extend into neighboring Iraq.

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said just within the past day or so U.S.-backed forces encountered a group of more than 300 IS fighters in one of the caves and had to call in airpower.

The SDF has been wary of declaring victory over IS in Baghuz, pointing to numerous predictions of the terror group’s ultimate demise over the past several months that all proved to be premature.

But Trump has repeatedly predicted IS’s demise, telling reporters just this past Wednesday the caliphate would be “gone by tonight” even though fighting persisted.

“For political reasons, he wants to declare victory,” said Heritage Foundation Middle East analyst Jim Phillips. “I think his statements are aimed at a domestic, American audience.”

As well as that message may be received by Trump’s supporters, however, there are deep-seeded concerns that mistaking the collapse of the caliphate with the end of IS could be costly.

“The same conditions that led to the rise of ISIS and before that to the rise of al-Qaida in Iraq are still present in the region,” said Phillips, adding the U.S. likely will need to “remain poised to intervene with air power, perhaps with commandos.”

U.S. defense and intelligence officials are likewise concerned.

“We view this as a strategic shift,” a senior defense official said. “This is really that transition point, that inflection point from ISIS holding physical control of an area to something that comes after.”

The biggest worry: upwards of 60,000 people, including more than 5,000 IS fighters, who have surrendered or been captured since the SDF and coalition launched their final assault last month.

“These folks are unrepentant,” the official said. “The seeds for a future caliphate, or certainly a persistent clandestine insurgency, exist in these large numbers of people who … are looking to reposition for future perpetuation of ISIS in some form or fashion.”

U.S. officials also warn that most of the group’s senior leadership, including self-declared caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, remain at large, commanding at minimum “tens of thousands” of fighters and supporters across Syria and Iraq.

And even in the face of imminent defeat, IS’s true believers remain defiant.

“Those who are bewildered and think that our caliphate is over … we will say that it’s remaining and expanding,” a fighter from Baghuz, identifying himself as Abu al-Harith al-Ansari, said in a video released Thursday and translated by the SITE Intelligence Group.

“The banner has been elevated, and the Ummah, whose sons are racing to martyrdom, does not know defeat,” he said.

Patsy Widakuswara and the VOA Kurdish service contributed to this report.
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