The Role That Cigarette Smuggling Has In Funding Islamist Violence In Africa

Source: UNODC 2009. Credit: Observer graphics

How Cigarette Smuggling Fuels Africa's Islamist Violence -- The Guardian

Contrabrand tobacco is a $1bn trade in north Africa, run by extremists including Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who masterminded the attack on the Algerian gas plant. The trade is highly profitable – and very low risk

For many years Mokhtar Belmokhtar was little more than a footnote in the intelligence reports analysing the increasingly muscular presence of Islamist groups in Saharan Africa.

The man whose al-Qaida-inspired Signed in Blood Battalion led the attack on the In Amenas gas plant in Algeria, in which at least 38 people were killed, was considered a relatively unimportant figure in the political ecosystem of the vast region. But Belmokhtar, who fought for the mujahideen in Afghanistan and the Islamist GIA in the Algerian civil war before becoming a commander in the Mali-based al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), was ambitious.

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My Comment: Cigarette smuggling is big business .... I should know because I live across the river from the Indian reservation of Kahnawake, and they have been involved in the illegal cigarette trade for decades. To say that hundreds of millions of dollars are involved each year is an understatement. I myself was approached years ago to get involved in this trade because of my Chinese contacts .... I refused for the simple that I have zero desire to have the RCMP at my door.

In Africa .... I suspect that the numbers run in the multi-billions .... and the Guardian article raises a legitimate question .... what role do the global cigarette companies have in this trade, and are they (with eyes closed shut) helpng to nurture this trade by not asking the obvious hard questions of who is handling the distribution of their cigarettes, and where are these cigarettes ending up..