Reports about Hizballah and other militant Islamic groups operating in the Tri-Border area of South America have been circulating for years, but of course NBC is promoting this as some kind of breaking news: Hezbollah builds a Western base.

CIUDAD DEL ESTE, Paraguay - The Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia has taken root in South America, fostering a well-financed force of Islamist radicals boiling with hatred for the United States and ready to die to prove it, according to militia members, U.S. officials and police agencies across the continent.

From its Western base in a remote region divided by the borders of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina known as the Tri-border, or the Triple Frontier, Hezbollah has mined the frustrations of many Muslims among about 25,000 Arab residents whose families immigrated mainly from Lebanon in two waves, after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and after the 1985 Lebanese civil war.

An investigation by Telemundo and NBC News has uncovered details of an extensive smuggling network run by Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim group founded in Lebanon in 1982 that the United States has labeled an international terrorist organization. The operation funnels large sums of money to militia leaders in the Middle East and finances training camps, propaganda operations and bomb attacks in South America, according to U.S. and South American officials.

(Hat tip: LGF readers.)

UPDATE at 5/9/07 8:05:49 pm:

Here’s a much better, more detailed report from 2002 by New Yorker writer Jeffrey Goldberg: A Reporter At Large: In The Party Of God (Part II). (Hat tip: alec.)

UPDATE at 5/9/07 8:19:55 pm:

Here’s another scary report from last year by LTC Joseph Myers and Patrick Poole: Hezbollah, Illegal Immigration, and the Next 9/11.