- 14:00
After introducing ATMs, easy-access loans, and clandestine counters scattered throughout the alleys of Beirut’s southern suburbs, al-Qard al-Hassan (AQAH), Hezbollah’s financial arm, has taken its operations a step further: direct gold trading. Gold bars, coins, and jewelry are reportedly now being offered to the Shiite community, turning gold into a tool for bypassing sanctions and generating liquidity.
What began in the 1980s as a small microcredit “association” has gradually evolved into a stand-alone institution that manages cash deposits, issues loans without oversight, sets up its own makeshift ATMs, and operates an informal transfer network.
All of these operations run without any official banking status. Today, gold has become a natural extension of this model: an economic, social, and political tool. In a country where deposits are frozen, the state is nearly paralyzed, and the dollar dominates every transaction, gold serves as a tangible and reassuring safe haven. For AQAH, it is above all a way to secure fresh dollar liquidity, essential for funding Hezbollah’s networks. Unlike bank transactions, gold leaves a minimal paper trail, moves easily, and strengthens a strategic reserve beyond scrutiny. “It’s the ideal tool for a sanctioned organization,” says a banking compliance expert. “Hard to trace, easy to liquidate,” he explains.
Supply Networks
The origins of these gold stocks remain deliberately opaque. Multiple sources point to several supply channels: some of it is sourced from jewelers in the southern suburbs of Beirut or the Beqaa Valley, long linked to AQAH. Another likely passes through Syria, where a parallel gold market, backed by Iran, has flourished since sanctions were tightened. A third channel involves recycling a portion of the gold that borrowers have deposited with AQAH over the past twenty years as loan collateral.
The phenomenon is drawing growing interest among Shiite families, weakened by the financial crisis and the fallout from regional conflicts. For them, gold has become a safe haven, a tangible asset able to withstand inflation and monetary instability. In practice, it functions as a “parallel currency,” its value set by the local market and community demand, independent of official regulations.
The trend is raising concern in financial circles. AQAH’s expansion into the gold trade further erodes the deposit base of Lebanese banks and strengthens a parallel, self-contained, community-based economy operating beyond state oversight. According to a former banker, “If AQAH continues on this path, we will soon have two distinct financial systems: one official, in ruins; the other community-based, solid, protected, and backed by a militia.”
From a political standpoint, the situation is delicate. The Lebanese government is avoiding any direct confrontation with Hezbollah, while Washington monitors closely, aware that this parallel market complicates sanctions enforcement. The expanding role of gold could push the United States to extend sanctions to players in the precious metals market, though such a move risks damaging an already fragile sector of the economy.
For Hezbollah, the gold trade is more than a revenue source: it represents a form of parallel sovereignty. One bar at a time, the militia is consolidating an independent financial system, striving to sustain itself despite the collapse of the official economy, ongoing regional tensions, and the damage AQAH has suffered in its conflict with Israel.
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