There’s an article in today’s edition of YaLibnan, entitled “Lebanese Drug Trade: Multiple Ethnicities and Political Rivalries” by Ghassan Karam that mentions Armenians vis-à-vis the drug trade inLebanon 

The article is the 8th installment of the book: The Lebanese Connection: Corruption, Civil War, And The International Drug Traffic by Jonathan Marshall a fellow at Stanford Studies In Middle Eastern And Islamic Societies And Cultures. 

The book is described as a scholarly account of the Lebanese drug trade based on previously classified documents of The DEA and otherUSdrug related agencies. Karam says that the book is banned inLebanon. 

Here’s the excerpt from the book:  

There was another ethnic group that played a relatively substantial role in the promotion and distribution of Lebanese drugs although its role has also been underreported. Many seem surprised when the Armenian role is mentioned but in retrospect this appears to be a natural development. When the Armenians were forced to flee the Turkish massacres many came to Lebanon, Syria, Greece, France, Panama and the US. The resulting ethnic gangs in each of these locations acted as bridge heads for Lebanese drugs. 

One Lebanese Armenian, Hagop Kevorkian, was a major drug and foreign exchange runner and a partner of the notorious Sami Khoury while many of the Marseille heroin labs were reputed to be owned by ethnic Armenians. This drug role was eventually helped by the political structure that emanated among the Lebanese Armenian community. 

The Tashnaq, an anti communist party, received help from the CIA; the SAVAK in the 1960’s and was able to transform the Beirut branch of the party into a policy setting organization for the rest of the world. Both the Tashnaq and its counterpart the Huchaq tried to avoid being sucked into the Lebanese internecine civil war But that was not to be.  ASALA; Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia, attacked the World Council of Churches in Beirut for encouraging Armenians to emigrate to North America. ASALA also had strong relationships with Syria, PLO and Abu Nidal. As a result the Tashnaq had to respond to this leftist challenge by forming the Justice Commandos Against Armenian Genocide (JCAG). 

But as expected such organizations require substantial funding and both were drawn to the easy revenue from drugs. The significant drug activities can best be seen through the numerous arrests that were done by the Swedish, Danish and the French police against drugsmugglers that were Lebanese Armenians. Noubar Soufian of JCAG was the most notorious and was arrested by the NY police in 1981 for smuggling Lebanese heroin to the US. Noubar Soufian managed to get back to Beirut where he became a significant arms smuggler for the Phalange and the Armenians in exchange for heroin.