Hezbollah extorting gem profits, U.S. says

By EDWARD HARRIS
The Associated Press

BEN CURTIS / AP Legal diamond dealer Samba Sabali, 76, weighs the diamonds of miners and prospective sellers in Koidu, Sierra Leone, earlier this month. The government estimates its legal exports of diamonds have soared from $1.4 million in 1999 to $76 million last year.

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More than 100,000 Lebanese live in West Africa, where they have made up the core of the merchant class for more than a century and have long handled much of the diamond business. Many Lebanese retain strong business, cultural and family ties to their homeland.

Lebanon-based Hezbollah fought a guerrilla war against Israeli troops in south Lebanon over almost two decades, until the Israelis pulled out in 2000. Today the border is tense but mostly quiet; Hezbollah remains armed and hostile to Israel.

The movement is also known for the bombings of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 and of the U.S. Embassy annex in Beirut in 1984 — earning it a slot on the U.S. State Department's list of terror groups. Until the Sept. 11 attacks, Hezbollah was estimated to have killed more Americans than any other terror group.

In recent years, Hezbollah is alleged to have funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Palestinians' Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, funding attacks that have killed civilians in Israel.

Hezbollah also has political and charity wings and funds the building of schools, clinics and mosques. Its social programs help win the group support among Lebanese at home and abroad, as does its reputation among many Lebanese as a defender of Arabs against Israel.

Only 6,000 Lebanese are thought to remain in Sierra Leone after this country's 1991-2002 war for control of the eastern diamond fields surrounding Koidu, West Africa's richest-known deposits.

West Africa's so-called blood diamonds helped to buy arms and fighters in insurgencies that roiled the region in the 1990s.

With the end of fighting and the advent of an industry-backed certificate of origin program, Sierra Leone estimates its legal exports of diamonds have soared from $1.4 million in 1999 to $76 million last year.

The U.S. Embassy in Sierra Leone says $70 million to $100 million worth of rough gems still are smuggled out of the country each year.

It is largely because of the illegal trade that Hezbollah can extract cash by threats, beatings and destruction of property, analysts say. Victims, many of whom may have business dealings they do not want exposed, have little legal recourse.
 
"They're (Hezbollah) asking for contributions and they're going to use the culture card and the nationality card," says Joseph Melrose, former U.S. ambassador to Sierra Leone. "Will they use threats? Sure."

The amount of money is huge: in December 2003, an airliner that crashed off Benin had a courier on board carrying $2 million in Hezbollah-bound funds, diplomats and news reports said.

One of Sierra Leone's top diamond exporters denied any ties to Hezbollah.

"This is a lie. There's never been any connection between these people and Hezbollah," said Kassim Basma, who was born in Sierra Leone to a Lebanese family. "For me, I couldn't support them. For what? To cause myself problems?"

Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy says stepped up enforcement in South America drove some Hezbollah activists to West Africa.

As a result, the group's illegal fund-raising efforts in the region — including protection rackets and threats — could be on the rise, said Levitt, a former FBI agent. "As we crack down on one part of the world, things will crop up elsewhere," he said.

In Koidu, indigenous Sierra Leoneans make up only about 35 of the roughly 200 legal diamond buyers, said Prince Saquee, chairman of the Diamond Dealers Association. Most of the rest are Lebanese, he said.

Among Koidu's burned-out, bullet-pocked buildings, hundreds of diamond buyers run heavily guarded storefronts with signs emblazoned with enormous, glittering cut diamonds.

Alex Yearsley, of London-based Global Witness, alleges that the CIA and FBI long had tried to publicly minimize links between conflict diamonds and Islamic militant groups, including al-Qaida.

The U.S. security agents feared exposure of their own longtime links with Charles Taylor, the ousted Liberian leader who played a main role in West Africa's insurgencies and blood diamond trade, Yearsley said. Taylor received CIA payments until January 2001, Yearsley claimed in a telephone interview.

The fate of West Africa's diamonds ultimately bridges faiths and rivalries: Sold by the Lebanese merchants, many of the gems are brokered via Jewish or Israeli traders in Antwerp, Belgium, and Tel Aviv, ending up in the United States.

"To us, we don't see Christian or Muslim or Jew," Basma said. "We're businessmen."