Well, it is a day I had long predicted would never occur, but I have never been happier to be wrong. A Thai appeals court today ruled the Russian weapons merchant Viktor Bout could be extradited to stand trial in the United States.

Bout not only supplied the Taliban and the FARC in Colombia, both designated terrorist organizations. He also helped arm some of the most murderous regimes and groups in Africa (Charles Taylor, Mubut Sese Seko the RUF, UNITA etc.) and the genocidal regime in Sudan. These actions are detailed in my book, with Stephen Braun, Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes and the Man Who Makes War Possible (Wiley 2007).

Bout should be extradited in about a week, although the Russian government has already made clear it will do what it can to slow the process even further. There is, under Thai law, no further appeal allowed of this ruling.

Bout's extradition request is based on an elaborate and successful operation by the DEA's Special Operations Division, where informants posed as representatives of the FARC seeking to buy weapons to fight in Colombia, and specifically to kill Americans. Bout took the bait and arrived in Bangkok March 2008 with a laptop full of pictures of the toys he could deliver to them, including unmanned drones, RPGs and the promise of surface-to-air missiles.

When he finished his presentation and sales pitch he was arrested by Thai police, having said more than sufficient to build a case. He then spent the next 2.5 years fighting extradition to the United States, where similar cases, using similar tactics, have led to quick convictions.

Bout must be understood in the context in which he emerged as a singularly important purveyor of weapons. A gifted linguist and a businessman far ahead of his time, he married an aging Soviet air fleet with access to virtually abandoned stocks of weapons in Soviet bloc and built an empire as a one-stop shop for virtually anything. His ties to Soviet military intelligence, his personal skills in negotiating with some of the world's most brutal thugs, all helped him along the way.

His business sense, and willingness to fly anything licit and illicit (gladiolas, frozen chicken, food relief, AK-47s and RPGs), made him a pioneer in his field.

But he was enabled by a weak or non-existent international legal structure that allowed much of his activity, no matter how morally reprehensible, to remain legally in a gray area. Governments (particularly the U.S, British and French) and the United Nations used his aircraft long after it was known who he was and what types of business he was engaged in.

In the end, although more firmly attached back to the Russian intelligence structure, his willingness to deal with anyone cost him his freedom.

But only because an unusually dedicated, small group of men and women, stretching from the end of the Clinton administration to the Bush and Obama teams, made it happen.

The DEA, NSC, State Department, intelligence community and Pentagon all have members in that tenacious group that simply refused to let the matter go. A tip of the hat to that cadre, many whom I have had the privilege of knowing, for the commitment it took to make this day happen. It took more than a decade, but in the end it seems one of the really bad actors on the international stage, responsible for escalating the carnage in wars the world over, will finally stand trial thanks to your efforts.

My favorite magazine edition of the year just came out: Foreign Policy's Failed State Index.. As always it is full of interesting data points that help one understand how and why state's fail. But this year there is also a ranking of the worst leaders in the world.

What is striking, from my perspective, is that only two Latin American leaders are named: Hugo Chávez, weighing at number 17 of the 23 worst listed, and Raúl Castro at number 21. What is also striking is that their three primary allies outside of Latin America are also among the world's worst: Mahmoud Ajmadinejad of Iran at number 8; Basher al-Assad of Syria (recently jointly bashing Israel and calling for an end to the empire, meaning the United States) at number 12; and China's Hu Jintao, busying buying up all the natural resources he can, at number 10.

Sub-Saharan Africa, of course, has the most of the worst, including my personal favorite, Equatorial Guinea's Teodoro Obiang (number 14), who has hired Lanny Davis and other prominent and once respectable people as lobbyists. Obiang deposed and killed his uncle before assuming power in 1979, and was well-loved for continuing his uncle's heart-warming custom of having his political enemies beaten to death with metal bars in the main stadium while the band played "Happy Days are Here Again."

But back to Latin America: One can tell a great deal about leaders by the company they keep and the alliances they build. Chávez, rather than embracing any government with a liberal democratic form of government, has gone for the most repressive. Not coincidentally, both Syria and Iran are among the world's foremost sponsors of terrorism. Cuba, toying with modest internal reforms, remains a formidably repressive state, and has been busy helping the Bolivarian states implant state of the art internal security apparatuses that are sure to improve their respective repressive capacities.

There is nothing subtle about the aims of the Venezuela-Iran-Syria axis. As Chávez stated while hosting al-Assad stated on his first trip to Latin America earlier this week, after declaring the "Syria-Venezuela axis" to be of "strategic importance":

Arab civilization and our civilization, the Latin American one, are being summoned in this new century to play the fundamental role of liberating the world, saving the world from the imperialism and capitalist hegemony that threaten the human species. Syria and Venezuela are at the vanguard of this struggle.

It would, of course, be interesting to see how many Syrians would stay "liberated" in Syria if they could freely leave, and how many other people acquainted with the regime would choose that sort of emancipation.

In return Al-Assad praised Chavez for standing up to the United States.

“There are few politicians who are courageous to speak out when it’s necessary,” he said. “Chavez has projected the image of a resistant Venezuela.”

Both Chavez and al-Assad defended Iran's right to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

'We believe that all countries have this right,' said al-Assad. 'It's part of our basic principles that all states have the same rights.'

It is easy to believe this is all theater with few real ramifications for the rest of the world. But all three countries (Venezuela, Syria and Iran) are going for nuclear technology. Syria has already tried to build a North Korean-style reactor, only to have it obliterated by Israel, and did so outside the world's nuclear regulatory framework. Iran has now been sanctioned four times by the United Nations for its lack of transparency. Chávez has vowed to build a "nuclear village" with the help of the major nations in violation of international agreements.

When you add oil money to the mix, and the presence of the FARC and Hezbollah as primary non-state actors at the disposal of the world's worst leaders, the danger should be self-evident.

There is still significant debate within the U.S. government and among members of the national security establishment over the level of threat posed by Iran's growing presence and the increasing presence of Hezbollah that this presence brings.

So the arrest of a suspected Hezbollah fundraiser with an outstanding US arrest warrant in the Tri-border area is another important indicator of just how deep this relationship has now become.

Moussa Hamdan is the latest in a long line of suspected Hezbollah financiers who have been arrested in and around Ciudad del Este, the main hub of the Tri-border (where the borders of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay meet near Iguazu Falls) region. U.S., European and Latin American investigations have traced tens of millions of dollars from the region back to Hezbollah in Lebanon, using the formal and informal money remittance systems. Hezbollah operatives in the 1994 AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires have been documented as having used Ciudad del Este as their base while planning their attack on a Jewish target, operating under orders from Iran.

The Tri-border has historically been a smuggling and black market center for the Southern Cone of Latin America, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit profits. That is not new. What changed over the past 15 years is the importance of the region as a financial hub for terrorist groups, from Hezbollah to the FARC in Colombia to Hamas.

So Hezbollah and other terrorist groups have an expanded playing field. Venezuela is friendly territory, Ecuador is hospitable and the Tri-Border network gives them access to Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, none of which want to acknowledge there is a problem.

The key factor in looking at this expanding territory is the expanding networks that develop among groups operating there, and their ability to cross pollinate and help each other logistically and financially. It also creates new areas in which to move illicit goods, and those goods are likely not to simply be cocaine and knock off watches.

There is another little tidbit pointed out by a blog reader that goes to the network aspects. It turns out that Dror Feiler, an outspoken Swedish-Israeli musician who was a main organizer of the flotilla to Gaza, is also on the editorial board of ANNCOL (Agencia de Noticias Nueva Colombia or New Colombia News Agency), a key part of the FARC's external propaganda machine.

(Yesterday it featured, with no hint of irony, a piece on the humanitarian treatment that the FARC affords its hostages, with no mention of the years they spend in captivity with chains around their necks, little food and deprived of freedom. It also sought to portray the recent hostage rescue by the COlombian military as a "humanitarian release" by the FARC. Etc. Etc.)

Does that prove Mr. Feiler is a FARC member or a terrorist? No. But it does prove that these networks overlap and occupy key players in strategic locations. And that is what makes them dangerous.

It has been an unprecedented week of drug busts and designations designed to slow the criminal-terrorist nexus in Africa, mostly through cocaine supplied by the FARC in Colombia through air shipments originating in Venezuela.

We have, in the past day, seen a major cocaine ring linked to the FARC in Liberia dismantled, the son of (now dead) dictator Lansana Conte designated a drug kingpin in Guinea (Conakry), and the designation of a major drug kingpin in Mozambique.

As noted by Main Justice, linked above and including a link to the indictment, the son of Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf wore a wire for the DEA while pretending to accept bribes for a shipment worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Fombah Tea Sirleaf, the son or step son of the president, is the head of Liberia's National Security Agency, and participated in "Operation Relentless."

According to the indictment unsealed yesterday, a Nigerian was coordinating two shipments (one of 4,000 kilos and one of 1,500 kilos) on two different aircraft departing from Venezuela. A Colombian, a Ghanaian and a Russian all played roles. The shipment originated with the FARC in Colombia.

That is about as good as summary as one could want of the current state of alliances in the Latin American-West African drug nexus. The FARC to its state sponsor in Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, to the long-standing Nigerian network in West Africa, through a weak and highly corruptible state (Liberia). The traffickers must have been shocked to find an official in Liberia who actually did not take a bribe. Heroes are few and far between in the war on drug corruption, but there were some in this battle.

West Africa is an increasingly important life line for the FARC, Chávez and their allies. Without sanctuary in Venezuela and the ability to move and sell large loads in relatively unguarded regions of the world, the FARC would be a spent force. But the cash influxes allow the terrorist group of kidnappers and thugs, to continue to function and inflict pain not just in Colombia but across the region.

At the same time, Treasury's OFAC division has been ratcheting up it designations in Africa to freeze some of the drug proceeds. Ousmane Conte, the son of Lansana Conte, is already in jail and has admitted to significant drug trafficking, now he assets in the U.S. can be frozen.

Similarly, Mozambican heroin kingpin Mohamed Bachir Suleman, owner of a major shopping centers and other businesses, was designated. "Mohamed Bachir Suleman is a large-scale narcotics trafficker in Mozambique, and his network contributes to the growing trend of narcotics trafficking and related money laundering across southern Africa," said OFAC Director Adam J. Szubin.

The resources dedicated to these operations shows how far up the chain of priorities this trafficking pipeline has become, and how important it is to terrorist networks in our hemisphere. A few good battles won, but the war is far from over.

I have not had time to write much recently, but two recent events point to the increasingly overt ties between the Chávez government and international terrorist organizations.

The first, Chávez's help bring the FARC in Colombia and the Spanish ETA together,, I already discussed at some length here.

New revelations are now being published about Chávez's direct (although repeatedly denied) ties to Hezbollah and other radical Islamist groups. A new book, "El Palestino," by Spanish journalist Antonio Salas documents armed camps in Venezuela where the FARC, Hezbollah, ETA and others all train together.

In the book, which comes out later this week, the author says he posed as a Venezuelan Palestinian interested in jihad and ended up traveling around the world after fabricating a new identity. His employer, Antena 3 of Spain, has released some of the hidden camera video he shot to verify his experience.

According to the book's publicity, "It was in Venezuela that he received his baptism of fire. He found that just around the city of Caracas there are six terrorist training camps. There he learned to shoot every kind of weapon. His time there coincided with the training of members of the FARC, ETA and other groups."

There have long been reports of these camps from credible sources, but video and direct, publicly available documentation and first hand experience has not been. This is in keeping with Chávez's broader goals of creating an alliance of state and non-state actors to wage asymmetrical warfare against the United States. It is, quite likely, the worst of all worlds for the rest of Latin America, and beginnings of the solidifying joint venture that will eventually pose and existential threat to the United States.

Both Chávez, with the FARC, and Iran with its Hezbollah proxy, have the same goal in this endeavor. Each of the proxies has relevant experience and resources the other does not, and both have a long history of adaptation and co-learning from other terrorist groups, regardless of political/theological differences.

Chávez has also made no secret of his desire to spread armed revolution across Latin America to rid the continent of non-Bolivarian governments, or transform the governments to the Bolivarian way.

Hence his support, through the Movimiento Bolivariano Continental, (Continental Bolivarian Movement), to the FARC, the Tupac Amaro movement in Peru, the Mapuches and MIR in Chile, etc. etc.

This support is likely to increase as Chávez's internal situation deteriorates. With the highest homicide rate in the hemisphere, water and electrical rationing, inflation running at more than 30 percent and his popularity in a steady decline, he is likely to be desperate for anything that can give him a boost.

Iran, Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Ecuador have enormous stakes in Chávez's survival, no matter what the cost. So one can expect the region to be roiled by something he cooks up to fabricate a crisis.

The U.S. response so far has been muted to Chávez and his lethal alliances. There are no good options for a response, but it is increasingly clear that the day of reckoning is drawing near.