Lebanon

Lebanon is a Middle Eastern country bordered by Syria and Israel. Once known as the “Switzerland of the East” because of its calm, prosperity, and strong tourism and banking industries, the lengthy Lebanese Civil War from 1975 to 1990 did considerable long-term damage to the economy, infrastructure, and international goodwill. However the tightly regulated banking system was one of the few in the developed world to weather the global financial crisis of the 21st century with no ill effects. In 2009, for instance, Lebanon's tourism industry was more prosperous than it had ever been, and the country experienced 9 percent economic growth despite a worldwide recession.

The same banking laws that insulated Lebanon from the recession have made the country an attractive haven for money launderers, as what few monitoring procedures that are in place are insufficient and easily bypassed; the usual complicated body of law resulting from legislatively closing one loophole after another simply has not developed in Lebanon. Colombian cocaine cartels and Turkish heroin cartels both traffic their goods through the country while laundering their money. The trafficking networks also make use of Lebanese expatriates living abroad in North and South America, West Africa, and Europe.

Lebanon is a significant producer of marijuana and especially hashish, and in some parts of the country the growers are well-established enough to command their own private militias, which Lebanese authorities will tend to simply avoid rather [Page 466]than confront directly. In such places, marijuana is grown so openly and in such abundance that it can be smelled by passing motorists before the fields are even in sight. This is especially true in Bekaa, in the north, where old clans still possess greater power in practice than the Lebanese government. In 2009 four soldiers were killed and another wounded in a Bekaa Valley city, when gunmen the government identified as local hashish and heroin traffickers fired on an army truck, using both firearms and a rocket-propelled grenade. At least some of the Bekaa clans that produce drugs have strong ties to international cartels, trafficking their hashish to Morocco and Europe. Many of these groups began their drug trade during the civil war, when the government lacked the resources and attention span to do much about them. Though Lebanon has been politically stable now longer than it was at war, the drug growers had 15 years to establish their power, and have been unwilling to part with it.

Combating drugs falls to the military, the Drug Control Office of the Ministry of the Interior, and local police. The government's campaign against marijuana growing has received international assistance, though a crop substitution program was handled badly in the late 1990s, when $300 million was pledged and meant to be available in order to make loans to farmers so they could afford to switch to other crops—and only $3 million of it showed up. Though that was enough to help some farmers, many of whom converted to fruit and vegetable growing, which forced them to compete with cheap imported goods, it left most of them unassisted.

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