August 21, 2002, 9:00 a.m.
IRA + PLO
=Terror.

By Rachel Ehrenfeld
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-ehrenfeld082102.asp

Following the Israeli incursion into Jenin earlier this year, Paul Collinson, a British explosives expert working with the Red Cross, identified hundreds of explosive devices found there and noted that "the pipe bombs I found in Jenin are exact replicas of ones I found in Northern Ireland." The Daily Telegraph quoted a U.S. government official as saying in response: "If there was clear and convincing evidence that the IRA has been training Palestinians in bomb-making techniques, then we are facing a grave and grievous situation for the IRA — it would surely lead to a reassessment of whether the IRA should be put on the designated list of terrorist organizations with a global reach."

The incident came on the heels of a shooting spree of ten Israelis with a bolt-action rifle, perpetrated by a single sniper who left his rifle behind. This technique was also identified as a Irish Republican Army (IRA) trademark.

But the IRA's connections are not limited to the Middle East or the Palestinians. On April 24, 2001, the House of Representatives Committee on International Relations published the findings of its investigation into IRA activities in Colombia. Their report clearly demonstrated a longstanding connection with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), mentioned at least 15 more IRA terrorists who have been traveling in and out of Colombia since 1998, and estimated that the IRA had received at least $2 million in drug proceeds for training members of FARC.

A more recent report, published in May by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress, identified Hezbollah, Hamas, and a number of other Middle Eastern terrorist organizations as active in Colombia and the Triborder Region (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Venezuela).

Last week, President Alvero Uribe declared a state of emergency in Colombia as a result of mortar attack by FARC terrorists during his inauguration. This attack killed 21 people and injured 60 more, and was followed by further attacks resulting in more than 100 people dead. Colombian law-enforcement sources have confirmed that the bombing techniques used by FARC are identical to those used by the Irish Republican Army.

The IRA/FARC connection was first made public on August 11, 2001, following the arrest in Bogota of two IRA explosives and urban-warfare experts and of a representative of Sinn Fein (the IRA's political wing) who was known to be stationed in Cuba and on the payroll of the Cuban Communist party. The three had explosive traces on their clothes and luggage, but claimed they were in Colombia to advise the FARC on their "peace talks" with the government. The false travel documents they carried, however, raised doubts about their peaceful intentions. Since then, the violent attacks of the FARC have escalated, at a cost of hundreds of lives — of civilians as well as military personnel.

President Uribe's decision to rid Colombia of the FARC follows years of attempts by previous governments to appease the narco-terrorists. The "Land for Peace" initiative — handing over almost half the country to the FARC in order to bring them to the negotiating table — was encouraged by both the European Union and the Clinton administration. The EU went as far as to invite FARC terrorists to Europe and send them diplomatic delegations, thus giving them legitimacy and political power. The more the former Colombian government and the Europeans appeased the terrorists, the bolder the terrorists became. Similar appeasement towards Palestinian terrorists groups, including financial aid and "Land for Peace" initiative, by the EU and the Clinton administration, had similar disastrous effect in the Middle East.

The Department of State for many years has designated the FARC as a foreign terrorist organization. Before 9/11, U.S. officials were quoted as calling it "the most dangerous international terrorist group based in the Western Hemisphere." Only in late June — and over French and Swedish objections — did the EU add FARC to its terrorist list, still omitting the second-largest narco-terrorist groups, the Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional (ELN) and Hezbollah.

Students of terrorism can easily trace the IRA's connections to the PLO and its numerous factions back to the 1970s and 1980s, when IRA and PLO operatives trained together in Libya and the Bekaa Valley. Today, IRA involvement is ongoing in Colombia, where al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad factions — to name a few — are engaged in illegal arms and drug trafficking and money-laundering. Recent revelations about al Qaeda training methods has been also identified as carrying some of the IRA's trademarks. If the EU and the Bush administration would unify their terrorist lists with "global reach" to include all terrorist organizations — including the IRA, Hezbollah, all Palestinian terror organizations, and the ELN — we might then have a better chance to win the war on terrorism.

— Rachel Ehrenfeld, director of the Manhattan-based Center for the Study of Corruption and The Rule of Law, is the author of Narco Terrorism and Evil Money, and is working on a new book, Funding Evil: Follow the Money Trail, to be published in 2003

IRA International Terror Network behind Mountbatten Slaying
http://www.ict.org.il/spotlight/det.cfm?id=114

According to a former IRA operative, a world-wide network of terror was behind Lord Mountbatten's assassination in 1979. Mountbatten, appointed Supreme Allied Commander in Southeast Asia during World War II, was killed along with two other people when his fishing boat in Donegal Bay, Ireland, was blown up by an IRA bomb.

Former IRA official, Sean O'Callaghan, told Britain's Sunday Telegraph that the IRA received 2 million pounds from Syria for the hit. He mentioned the involvement of the Russian military intelligence, Libya and the PLO--the details of which are not yet known. The motivation of the countries behind this operation is also speculative. But it is clear that the IRA had been attempting to establish links with the Syrians and the PLO since the 1970s.

O'Callaghan was a member of the IRA since the age of fifteen. He recently revealed to the viewers of a British television program that he switched sides after his extended service as head of the IRA's Southern Command. He became a double agent, relaying the activities of the IRA to the British authorities. After serving a commuted eight-year prison sentence for the murder of two people, he is now an outspoken opponent of the IRA.

Sources: CNN, Sunday Telegraph, Reuters

THE WORLD'S LARGEST DRUG FIELD -- (BY DENNIS EISENBERG) (Extension of Remarks - July 27, 1990)
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1990_cr/h900727-syria.htm

[Page: E2519]

---

HON. ROBERT K. DORNAN

in the House of Representatives

FRIDAY, JULY 27, 1990

* Mr. DORNAN of California. Mr. Speaker, for some time now I have been trying to educate my colleagues on the brutal nature of the Assad regime in Syria. Syria is a state sponsor of terrorism. Syria's Armed Forces occupy large areas of Lebanon, thus denying the Lebanese people chance at true political reconciliation. The Syrian Government also runs drugs out of the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, which is the issue I want to address today.

* Mr. Dennis Eisenberg has written an article on Syrian drug-running which appeared recently in The World and I magazine. The title of the article says it all: `The World's Largest Drug Field.' Mr. Eisenberg describes the poppy and cannabis fields that cover this part of Lebanon. He describes the connection between the Syrian drug-runners and the Irish Republican Army, an organization too many people in this country are willing to apologize for. He describes how Assad's younger brother, Rifaat, was the chief of a vast network smuggling opium and heroin to North America and Europe in diplomatic pouches.

* I urge all my colleagues to read this article. I am sure it will open some eyes. I would then invite my colleagues to join me in cosponsoring my bill H.R. 2797, which would impose a trade embargo on the gangster state Syria:

(BY DENNIS EISENBERG)

As the U.S. government cracks down on the Colombian drug traffic, Lebanon's lush Bekaa Valley has emerged as the largest `killing field' on the globe. Already producing 80 percent of the world's cannabis, its farmers have now planted a record acreage of poppies to cope with the growing demand for the even more profitable heroin.

Hundreds of acres of fruit orchards, wheat fields, and vineyards of the Bekaa Valley--known in Roman times as the breadbasket of the world--have been uprooted to make way for the intensive cultivation of crops in eager demand by international drug dealers.

The Syrian government, which invaded the area to `bring law and order,' is an active partner with local merchants and raked in an estimated $1 billion last year. This money was desperately needed, as the Syrians have to pay off their vast debts to the Soviet Union before Moscow will supply any more sophisticated missiles, fighter planes, and other weapons for President Hafez Assad's 800,000-strong army.

Syrian troops not only guard the poppy and cannabis fields to prevent theft and ensure that supplies are not sold to competing bidders, but they also intervene to settle disputes between rival terrorist gangs, who have their own drug estates and transportation networks to Scandinavia, France, Finland, Holland, Belgium, and West Germany. Yasser Arafat's PLO (known locally as the `poppy lovers' organization') uses its links
with the Irish Republican Army (IRA) to rake in massive profits from sending drugs via Holland to its network of agents in Britain, West Germany, and Ireland for international distribution. Terror groups today spend far more time as merchants of death selling drugs than carrying out violent attacks for their cause.

European police first stumbled on this trade when Scotland Yard special units, in cooperation with the Dutch Narcotics Squad, unearthed a haul of 300,000,000 pounds' worth of top-grade `Lebanese Gold' transported from Lebanon in two freighters chartered by the PLO. Earlier, and six-man PLO squad led by one of Arafat's chief aides, Ali Mahmoud Buro, was arrested at Heathrow Airport after customs men found a 150-kilogram cache of Bekaa Valley cannabis in their luggage.

Following up on these leads as well as information from Western intelligence services operating in the Middle East, Scotland Yard detectives recently cracked down on a vast IRA-PLO money-laundering operation. The IRA was using British banks and other financial organizations to purchase arms with their drug profits for terrorist operations in Ireland, Britain, Germany, and France.

An intelligence source told me: `Most of the IRA and Arab terror group leaders spend far more time and energy today buying legal businesses under registered company names and stashing money away in their private banking accounts than fighting for `freedom and liberation.'

Experts say the drug trade is worth $6 billion a year to Lebanon. The street value in Western cities is a staggering $150 billion.

As no one in Lebanon even pretends to try to stop the growth of cannabis and poppies, three-quarters of the 4,280-square-kilometer Bekaa Valley is cultivated with these two crops. The Muslim farmers in the eastern and central valleys of the Bekaa, especially in the town of Manara, have concentrated on the easy-to-grow cannabis weed to provide Western marijuana and hashish users with their needs. Poppies, which are the source of opium before it is converted into heroin, require greater skill in care and extraction and until recently have been planted near the homes of local peasants.

Farmers have discovered, however, that heroin is a far more profitable crop. They have been helped by the Syrians, who supplied them with mobile laboratories transported in army trucks. As a result, peasants can plant poppies among cannabis fields even in the mountains of the Bekaa to increase their profits. Heroin from the Bekaa is considered to be superior even to the best quality Turkish-produced drug.

Masterminding the entire operation in the Bekaa today is Gen. Ghazy Kenaan, chief of Syrian military intelligence. He keeps a particularly close eye on the intensely cultivated Hermel district located next to the Syrian area, recognized as the home of the highest quality `Lebanese Gold' cannabis. To oblige the large North American market for a black `pot' product, the crop from here is mixed with oil to create just the right color demanded by both Canadian and U.S. dealers.

The overall godfather of the Lebanese drug trade was, until recently, Assad's ambitious younger brother, Rifaat. The CIA has revealed that the 54-year-old Rifaat was chief of a vast network smuggling opium and heroin to North America and Europe in diplomatic pouches. Israeli army intelligence reports that Syrian army helicopters are used to speed up the international distribution of Rifaat's evil trade by flying processed drugs out of Damascus to Europe and North America.

An international playboy with seven wives, dozens of mistresses, and 17 known children, Rifaat has amassed a vast fortune from the drug business. Western intelligence agencies have details of frequent meetings between Rifaat and terrorist leader Abu Nidal as well as with Arafat's PLO chiefs. Because Rifaat was suspected by his brother of planning to depose him, he was sent into temporary exile--to live in immense luxury in his heavily guarded villa on the French Riviera.

The heroin now being shipped all over the world is produced throughout the entire Bekaa Valley, particularly in Baalbek, Hermel, Hellanyeh, Niha, Abbasyeh, Barqa, Iaat, Zarazeer, and Kuddam. Even tiny villages are producing more than 70 kilograms a year, with the total output having doubled to 2,500 kilograms since 1985. Dealers are hoping to double this quantity yet again with this spring's bumper crop. During the height of the season, the entire marketplace in Baalbek is one vast wholesale drug supermarket, with truckload after truckload piled high with the golden weed and processed opium wending its way westward to the country's ports.

Although the civil war in Lebanon is theoretically one between various Christian and Muslim sects, there is close cooperation between all groups when it comes to the mind-boggling profits being made from the drug business. The local trades are mostly Christian Lebanese who buy entire harvests from one Muslim village after another. In return for `protection' by Syrian soldiers in areas controlled by Damasus, they hand over half their profits to officers working under Kenaan.

I was told by an intelligence source: `The entire Lebanon is really a country of 24 fiefdoms, each one ruled by its own Mafia chief whose wealth and power spring from the drug trade. The Lebanese civil war is really about who controls the best cannabis and poppy fields as well as ports from where to export the drug harvest. It also explains why the Syrian government refuses to withdraw from the Bekaa and has even strengthened its vast armies stationed there.

`Those Lebanese who refused to play ball with the Syrian occupiers soon learnt the error of their ways,' he added. `Some were shot and others had their entire stock of cannabis and heroin `confiscated.' So lucrative has this trade become that there is now rivalry between the various Syrian intelligence agencies and lower rank army officers who also want a share of the loot. Several shooting incidents have taken place and even some highranking officers have been shot or court-martialed.'

To establish order, the crack 25,000-strong Syrian presidential guard, called Defense Brigades of the Revolution--created by Rifaat and considered still loyal to him--was sent from Damascus to take over control of the Bekaa Valley drug business.

[Page: E2520]

U.S. satellite photographs supply proof of this by the number of tanks and heavy artillery platforms in the midst of cannabis and poppy fields. The tents of Syrian army units are pitched in every village and farm of eastern Lebanon.

Foreigners or international drug traffickers trying to penetrate the area in an effort to make local deals with farmers are turned back or arrested by the guards of Kenaan's agents. U.S.-made tractors and other agricultural equipment supplied by the Syrians to villagers have speeded up harvesting during the past two years. One reason for this is the growing value of the Bekaa Valley as the world's major source of this modern scourge in Britain and other Western countries. This is particularly true as the governments of other suppliers, such as Burma and Thailand, under American pressure, have been trying to cut down and destroy poppy fields.

American officials, armed with satellite pictures, sent a special delegation to Damascus 18 months ago to ask Assad to destroy drug crops in Bekaa Valley areas under his control. Hoping to get economic aid from the United States, Syria saw to it that some cannabis fields were ploughed under, with television cameras proudly recording the event. But as one official told me: `Go back there today and you will see the poppy and cannabis flourishing better than ever.'

In January, two members of Syrian military intelligence were sentenced to eightyears' imprisonment in Paris for drug trafficking. Mohammed Fartuzi and Ahmed Ali were caught after trying to smuggle eight tons of cannabis by ship from the Syrian-controlled Lebanese port of Tripoli to France. Evidence was accepted that the former Syrian military attache in Paris and a senior Syrian army commander directed the smuggling of Lebanese drugs to Europe.

There is one handle on this, however. The Syrians are desperately anxious to establish closer ties with the United States, since Damascus faces a deepening economic crisis. Syria's major ally, the Soviet Union, is in upheaval and refuses to supply its Middle East ally with credit to purchase the modern weapons it craves in order to achieve its goal of military parity with Israel.

Two years ago, when pressure was exerted by Washington, the Syrians made cosmetic efforts to burn at least some of the drug fields. And this was at a time when the Syrian-Russian relationship was at its fruitful peak.

With the United States able to supply proof garnered by satellite pictures and on-the-ground intelligence, it will be very difficult for the Syrians to brush off demands to cease their drug export business, particularly as U.S. economic aid is needed to save the country from economic collapse. It is up to the United States to apply this leverage in a constructive way.

END

Provisional Irish Republican Army, The Provos
http://www.ict.org.il/inter_ter/orgdet.cfm?orgid=34

The following information is based on "Patterns of Global Terrorism" - US State Dept.

This group is a radical terrorist group formed in 1969 as clandestine armed wing of Sinn Fein, a legal political movement dedicated to removing British forces from Northern Ireland and unifying Ireland. The organization has a Marxist orientation, and is organized into small, tightly knit cells under the leadership of the Army Council.

Structure
They have several hundred fighters and thousands of supporters and sympathizers amongst the Irish Catholic population. The group is led by Sinn Fein, and is a legal political movement organized into several small cells led by the Council. They receive financial support and aid from sympathizers in the U.S., and have received arms and training in Libya and from the PLO. Similarities in operations suggest links to the ETA.

Activities
The IRA used bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, extortion, and robberies. Before its 1994 cease-fire, its targets included senior British Government officials, British military and police in Northern Ireland, and Northern Irish Loyalist paramilitary groups. Since breaking its cease-fire in February 1996, IRA's operations have included bombing campaigns against train and subway stations and shoppping areas on mainland Britain, British military and Royal Ulster Constabulary targets in Northern Ireland, and a British military facility on the European Continent.

http://www.israelinsider.com/views/articles/views_0378.htm

From West Belfast to the West Bank
By David Vance May 8, 2002

An examination into the horrific murder of 13 IDF soldiers in Jenin has
indicated that Palestinian terrorists are being trained by the Irish
Republican Army (IRA) in the construction of deadly booby trap bombs.

Paul Collinson, a former British Royal Engineers bomb disposal expert
now working for the Red Cross in the Jenin camp, asserts that the Irish
terrorist group has probably been exporting its deadly expertise to the
Palestinian killers that infest Jenin. The 200+ booby trap devices he
has subsequently examined in Jenin are "identical in every detail to
those encountered in Northern Ireland."

Tellingly, the former soldier believes that as well as the technological
similarity between Palestinian booby traps and IRA booby traps, the
street conflict tactics used by Palestinian terrorists in Jenin mirror
those used by the IRA in the streets of Belfast. Luring soldiers into
alleyways where concealed booby trap bombs can be placed to cause
maximum carnage was a favorite IRA strategy. Palestinians now use this
tactic against the IDF. It looks like they have been trained in the
lethal ways of urban terror.

Just as disturbing is the revelation that Mossad has asked British
security agencies to check on the movements of known IRA killers to help
identify a sniper who shot dead seven soldiers and three civilians in 25
minutes - using 25 bullets from a bolt-action rifle. The IRA has used
such specialized assassins for years to murder British soldiers. All
such convicted killers were released from prison in 1998 and 1999 under
the terms of the Irish peace process.

The similarity between the Palestinian movement led by Yasser Arafat,
and the Sinn Fein/IRA movement led by Gerry Adams, are legion. Both
organizations talk peace but wage war. Both organizations are fawned
over by the EU and UN, and both can do no wrong in the eyes of the
international political elite. Both organizations can be confident of
getting a sympathetic media hearing, even as their victims lie bleeding
to death in the streets. Both organizations share one other important
dimension. Arafat seeks the end of the State of Israel whilst Adams
seeks the end of the Northern Ireland as a part of the British state.

How can accommodation be reached when one party to a dispute has such an
immutable objective? Where, in the words of Winston Churchill, is the
point of compromise between a fireman and an arsonist?

If the war against terrorism is to mean anything then it must mean that
all groups who threaten and use violence must be brought to justice.
That should include all those from the West Bank to West Belfast.

Coming hot on the heels of the IRA's implication in training Colombian
terrorists by the Washington Congressional Committee chaired by Henry
Hyde, the central role played by the IRA in international terrorism is
becoming clear.

Yet this is the one terrorist organization that has escaped any censure
post-Sept 11th. Indeed President Bush has subsequently welcomed Gerry
Adams into the White House. The appeasement policies introduced by
Clinton have not been derailed by the new Bush administration, though a
more careful scrutiny is taking place. Presumably the Irish-American
vote remains a consideration.

In the meantime, Israeli soldiers die at the hands of IRA trained
Palestinians. In Colombia, Government soldiers die at the hands of IRA
trained FARC terrorists. In Belfast, democracy dies whilst such people
have their prime apologists seated in Government.

Perhaps the UN fact-finding mission to Jenin might like to investigate
the links between Palestinian and Irish terrorists in that area. They
may want to examine the evidence of the terrorist devices employed
against the IDF. That way, they may actually reveal a few facts about
what really happened in Jenin that hitherto have been very carefully
obscured.