On jumpy Israel-Lebanon frontier, a quiet drug war

Police here believe the trade, worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year, is controlled in large part by Hezbollah, and call it "narco-terrorism."

In the nighttime bust caught on camera last September, Ben Ish's men netted 55 kilograms of heroin, 10 of hashish, $650,000 in cash, and both drug mules. Hopes of repeating that success, and a sense that the smuggling here is more than just crime, have brought them back to this wooded hill in the middle of a biting Galilee night.

"We know that it's not just criminal activity - here there's always the aspect of national defense. We're helping the country's security," said Ben Ish, whose black knitted cap hid a shaved head. He spoke as his men slipped batteries into night-vision goggles at headquarters ahead of the night's ambush, their four green-painted M-16s resting on a beat-up sofa.

Israeli police say Hezbollah, the dominant power in the towns and villages of south Lebanon, takes a cut of the trade and uses the money to fund operations and recruit agents inside Israel, one of them an Israeli army colonel now in jail for trading secrets for drugs and cash.

Information freely changes hands between guerrillas and smugglers, police say. The hard-to-see spots along the fence where Hezbollah ambushed and captured Israeli soldiers twice in the past decade were previously used as drop points for drugs.

To drive home the point that Israeli addicts and dealers are helping Hezbollah's war against their own country, a government anti-drug ad last year portrayed the group's leader, the bearded cleric Hassan Nasrallah, emerging grinning from a bong like a genie from a bottle.

The security forces of the Lebanese government, in which Hezbollah wields veto power, say they are trying to combat the smuggling. A Hezbollah spokesman in Beirut refused to comment on the allegations that the group is involved in the drug trade.