(The Guards relied on smuggling to finance their activities and enrich themselves).
Borders are a loose concept in many parts of the Lebanese-Syrian frontier, places where economies have relied on smuggling for generations.
The Haqqani Network, based in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, also relies on smuggling as a key source of finance.
To combat the blockade and a closed commercial border with neighboring Egypt, Gazans relied on smuggling tunnels from Egypt.
The answer, as I have already suggested, is to rely on stealth — to smuggle in plutocrat-friendly policies under the pretense that they're just sensible responses to the budget deficit.
Unlike drug operations, immigrant smuggling networks rely on loosely organized guides.
Unlike narcotics organizations, which are tightly centralized and controlled by powerful dons, immigrant smuggling networks rely on constantly shifting configurations of guides and safe houses from Honduras to Houston and beyond.
Gaza contractors came to rely on getting construction materials that were smuggled in from Egypt through a vast network of tunnels running under the border.
Over the last year, Hamas stopped paying the Palestinian Authority for Israeli-supplied fuel and relied on cheaper fuel smuggled through tunnels beneath the Gaza-Egypt border.
The Gaddafi regime used to rely on some local tribes to control these routes and took advantage of trafficking and smuggling both politically and financially.
