The Rise Of Africa's Drug Cartels

Cocaine trafficking routes in West Africa. Illustration: United Nations

Out: Latin American Drug Cartels. In: African Drug Cartels -- Danger Room

For years, West African cocaine traffickers have worked as mules for Latin American drug cartels seeking to smuggle their powder to Europe. But now the mules are going independent — and muscling their former bosses out of some of the world’s most in-demand drug turf.

According to a report released this week by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, West African drug smugglers are playing a more direct role in trafficking the $1.25 billion worth of cocaine moving through the region every year. Most of the region’s cocaine still originates with Latin American cartels like the FARC, but these cartels’ direct involvement in trafficking drugs through Africa to Europe has declined. In their place, West African trafficking groups are building their own narcotics transport and distribution systems, pushing out the Latin Americans, and are now producing their own methamphetamine on a large scale.

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My Comment: Europe is now going to have a taste of the same problems that the U.S. has south of it's border.

Why Al Qaeda In North Africa Turns A Blind Eye To The Cocaine Trade

Revealed: How Saharan Caravans Of Cocaine Help To Fund al-Qaeda In Terrorists' North African Domain -- The Telegraph

Like everywhere else that has fallen under Islamist rule in northern Mali, the city of Gao on the edge of the Sahara is not a place where vice is tolerated. Drinking and dancing are banned, the city's two nightclubs have been burned down, and the only thing that passes for street entertainment is watching citizens being flogged in public for smoking.

Such all-encompassing piety, though, comes to a halt outside the high walls of the gaudy new villas on Gao's outskirts, which stand out amid the shanty towns overlooking the sand dunes.

Nicknamed "Cocainebougou" - which translates as "cocaine town" - the strip of mansions is home to the elite of the city's ancient smuggling community, which has trafficked goods across the Sahara since the 11 century, when Gao was better known than nearby Timbuktu.

Unlike their ancestors' cargoes of spices, salts and silks, the contraband that Gao's smugglers bring in today from Colombia is deemed strictly "haram", or forbidden, by Islam.

Yet the city's ever-zealous Islamist morality police have a good reason for turning a blind eye. For it is thanks to the trans-Saharan cocaine trade that Islamist groups like al-Qaeda have become a power in the region, building up formidable war chests to buy both arms and recruits.

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Previous Post: The Role That Cigarette Smuggling Has In Funding Islamist Violence In Africa

My Comment: Yup .... money trumps religious beliefs almost all the time.

Africa's Growing Drug Problem

(Click Image to Enlarge)
Image from Radio Netherlands

Africa's Drug Problem -- New York Times

On the tarmac of Osvaldo Vieira, the international airport of the West African coastal country of Guinea-Bissau, sits a once-elegant Gulfstream jet, which in the normal course of events would have no reason to land in a country with no business opportunities and virtually no economy. In recent years, however, Guinea-Bissau has emerged as a nodal point in three-way cocaine-trafficking operations linking producers in South America with users in Europe; the value of the cocaine that transits this small and heartbreakingly impoverished country dwarfs its gross national product. The Gulfstream arrived unexpectedly from Venezuela on July 12, 2008, and taxied to a hangar at the adjacent military airbase — where soldiers formed a line and unloaded its contents. The contents, reportedly more than a half-ton of cocaine, vanished. The crew was arrested and released. The army permitted the government to impound the plane only after several days. Since then, the plane has sat in the harsh sun, a reminder of Guinea-Bissau’s helplessness before forces far more powerful than itself.

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My Comment: Among all of Africa's problems .... a drug trafficking problem is the last thing that they need. This article from the NYT is very informative .... read it all.

The Exploding Drug Trade (And Violence) In West Africa

Ousmane Conte, son of Guinea Conakry's late president Lasante Conte, sits in detention at the gendarmerie headquaters in Conakry, Guinea Conacky, Wednesday, March 11, 2008. When the planes loaded with cocaine arrived, Guinea's presidential guard secured the cargo. Drug deals were conducted inside the first lady's private residence, and the drugs were carried to Europe in the country's diplomatic pouch. In their bid to reach Europe, Latin American drug traffickers have found the broken nations along Africa's West coast, easily corrupting their ruling elite. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

In TV Confessions, Curtain Lifted On A Narcostate -- Yahoo News/AP

CONAKRY, Guinea – When the planes arrived loaded with cocaine, it was Guinea's presidential guard that secured the cargo.

Drug deals were conducted inside the first lady's private residence and in the president's VIP salon at the international airport. To avoid detection, cocaine was sent to Europe in the country's diplomatic pouch.

As the people of Guinea sit transfixed before their TV sets, top government officials one after another are confessing to their role in a lucrative international cocaine trade.

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My Comment: I am sure that what we are witnessing is just the tip of the iceberg.