The West Africa-South America drug route * How to build perpetual revolution to pay for guns on yet another continent.
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The West Africa-South America drug route
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
* How to build perpetual revolution to pay for guns on yet another
continent.
The West Africa-South America drug route
===>>> http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?ID=18702
Image: Dulue Mbachu, ISN
West Africa is becoming a new transit point for drugs from South
America on their way to European markets, Dulue Mbachu reports from
Benin for ISN Security Watch.
By Dulue Mbachu in Cotonou, Benin for ISN Security Watch (28/02/08)
Centuries after ships sailed with slaves from the Gulf of Guinea to
South America as part of a triangular trade with Europe, increasingly
large numbers of ships are heading in the opposite direction in a
reverse triangular trade with another cargo: cocaine destined for
Europe.
The latest evidence is the interception of a Liberian-registered hip,
Blue Atlantic, by the French navy some 550 kilometers off the West
African shore on 31 January. The ship was found to be carrying 2.4
tonnes of pure cocaine. It was one of the biggest seizures made in the
Atlantic waters of West Africa following increased patrols by European
navies in recent years.
French and Liberian security officials believe the cargo was destined
for Nigeria and would have been a major score for the traffickers had
the ship not developed mechanical problems just as it was completing
the Atlantic passage. Distress calls by the ship's all-Ghanaian crew
were intercepted by the French navy, which then located and took the
ship to Liberia, whose flag it was flying.
West Africa becomes a major transit point
With security tight in other global cocaine-trafficking routes, West
Africa has become a major transit point for cocaine from
South America destined for Europe. Officials of the United Nations
Office for Drugs and Crimes (UNODC) and regional law enforcement
authorities are concerned that the traffickers are not only fuelling
corruption and social vice, but also
threatening regional security.
"We've noticed increased figures of cocaine trafficking in the
region," Bagmar Thomas, a senior official of UNODC in West Africa,
told ISN Security Watch. "We're seeing patterns where countries that
didn't figure before are becoming involved."
From 1998 to 2003, annual cocaine seizures in Africa averaged 0.6
metric tonnes a year, a tiny proportion of global seizures, according
to a UNODC document on cocaine trafficking published in October 2007.
However, the figures have been rising steadily since then, increasing
five-fold by 2006.
Data collected for the first nine months of 2007 indicated a
significant jump to a record 5.7 metric tonnes of cocaine seized in
the region, with a street value of nearly US$500 million. Out of this
figure, 99 percent came from West Africa, comprising seizures in
Senegal, Mauritania, Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde and Benin.
"And this is probably only the tip of the iceberg because the lack of
seizure reports from neighboring western African countries does not
necessarily mean the absence of trafficking in these countries, but
more likely the deficiency of law enforcement capacities," concludes
the UNODC report.
For the drug dealers on both sides of the southern Atlantic, West
Africa has become a major depot where cocaine is stored until the time
is opportune to move it into Europe or even North America. Cocaine
originating in Colombia, Bolivia or Peru is often shipped out through
Brazil or Venezuela, according to law enforcement information cited by
the UN report.
The drugs are either flown in small planes to West Africa and are
known to have landed in Guinea Bissau and Mauritania. Larger
quantities are put in ships that sail into West African waters where
they are met by smaller vessels that receive the drugs and move them
inland through porous shores.
Once in West Africa the drugs have to take either one of two routes
into Europe. Those landing in places like Cape Verde, Senegal and
Mauritania follow traditional hashish smuggling routes, using fast
boats to move north of Morocco into Europe. Other traffickers use
couriers who ingest or conceal the drugs in their luggage, using
commercial flights to take them into Europe.
The use of commercial flights for trafficking is identified by the
UNODC report as the mainstay of Nigerian drug gangs. Often many drug
couriers are put on the same flights as a deliberate tactic to swamp
and overwhelm law enforcement officials at the airports.
In one dramatic incident cited in the report, authorities in The
Netherlands arrested 32 drug couriers who had landed on the same plane
at the Amsterdam airport in December 2006. They had all left Guinea
Bissau on a flight that took them through Casablanca, Morocco, and of
the number, 28 were Nigerians.
European law enforcement records cited by UNODC show that West
Africans account for 90 percent of all Africans arrested for drug
trafficking. The largest percentage (44 percent) were Nigerian
passport-holders, followed by those from Cape Verde (25 percent) and
Ghanaians (8 percent).
Crackdown in Nigeria
Since the mid-1980s Nigeria has been a noted transit center for
cocaine from South America and heroine from Asia. The situation
prompted not only diplomatic pressure from western countries to crack
down on the illicit trade, but culminated in the stationing of US Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA) operatives in Nigeria to carry out
joint operations with their local counterparts.
The crackdown in Nigeria forced many local drug gangs to move and set
up shop in other West African countries where law enforcement is more
lax, according to officials of the Nigerian Drug Law Enforcement
Agency (NDLEA).
Favorite destinations for some of the Nigerian gangs include Benin,
Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau, Guinea and
Senegal, said confessed traffickers interviewed during official
investigations in London, Lagos (Nigeria) and Cotonou (Benin).
In Cotonou, a Nigerian who gave his name as Goddy, said he first began
trafficking in heroin as a student in India in the late 1980s. In late
1999, after his return to Nigeria, he traveled to Brazil and Venezuela
and made contacts with South American drug dealers who began shipping
the drugs to him in Nigeria.
"I had to move to Cotonou a few years ago with increasing pressure
being mounted by the NDLEA and the US agents on our business," Goddy
told ISN Security Watch.
Those who moved with him include a team of associates specializing in
crushing cocaine bars and tying them into little balls that can be
swallowed by couriers or in the concealment of drugs in false bottoms
of bags, shoes and any articles that could provide concealment, Goddy
said.
"It is not easy for the drug traffickers to go through Nigerian
airports anymore, that's why they're going to other countries," NDLEA
spokesman Mitchell Ofoyeju told ISN Security Watch. "But they have
enormous resources at their disposal, and once you discover one tactic
they adopt another."
In poor countries such as Guinea Bissau, not only are law enforcement
resources lacking, but law enforcement officials are easily corrupted
and bought off by drug gangs.
When an aircraft carrying cocaine was seized after it landed at a
military air strip in Guinea Bissau last year, the arrested dealers
were able to bribe officials and escape before they could be brought
to trial.
Security concerns
In Nigeria, security experts fear the drug trade is coalescing with
the arms trade, worsening an already volatile situation in the Niger
Delta, where violent unrest has evolved into insurgency.
The delta's porous estuaries have carried not only smuggled guns but
also smuggled narcotics, security sources say. Inevitably, some of the
proceeds from the drugs trade are being used to buy guns, and
similarly, funds from gun-running are also making their way into the
drugs business, amid signs that some of the armed gangs kidnapping for
ransom are motivated by drug
habits.
"We are certainly faced with a major drug problem in this city [Port
Harcourt]," Abel Wiltshire, a security consultant for oil companies in
Nigeria told ISN Security Watch. Port Harcourt, the country's main oil
industry center, has experienced some of the worst violence in the
Niger Delta.
Several reasons account for West Africa's growing role in cocaine
trafficking, according to Denis Destrebecq, who prepared the UNODC
report. One is the growing successes against traffickers by law
enforcement agencies in the Caribbean and Europe,
especially in Spain, where seizures in 2005 were 45 percent of the
total in Europe.
Another reason is the advantageous location of West Africa in relation
to Europe and South America, with relatively short distances between
West Africa and South America.
"Finally, Western African countries are perceived as having a
permissive working environment for drug traffickers due to widespread
corruption and poor law enforcement structure," Destrebecq said in the
UN report told ISN Security Watch.
"Many countries in the region face difficulties in controlling their
territory and administering justice, and are plagued by corruption.
Dulue Mbachu is a correspondent for ISN Security Watch based in
Nigeria. He has reported Nigeria for international media outlets
including The Washington Post and the Associated Press.
Related ISN Publishing House entries
Cocaine Smuggling through Africa is an "Enormous Problem"
Trans-American Security: What's Missing?
Comment on this story > Earlier news
* How to build perpetual revolution to pay for guns on yet another
continent.
As if Africa was not sufficiently corrupt... Read & weep...jt
The West Africa-South America drug route
===>>>
<http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?ID=18702>http://
www.isn.ethz.ch/
news/sw/details.cfm?ID=18702
Image: Dulue Mbachu, ISN
West Africa is becoming a new transit point for
drugs from South America on their way to European
markets, Dulue Mbachu reports from Benin for ISN
Security Watch.
By Dulue Mbachu in Cotonou, Benin for ISN Security Watch (28/02/08)
Centuries after ships sailed with slaves from the
Gulf of Guinea to South America as part of a
triangular trade with Europe, increasingly large
numbers of ships are heading in the opposite
direction in a reverse triangular trade with
another cargo: cocaine destined for Europe.
The latest evidence is the interception of a
Liberian-registered ship, Blue Atlantic, by the
French navy some 550 kilometers off the West
African shore on 31 January. The ship was found
to be carrying 2.4 tonnes of pure cocaine. It was
one of the biggest seizures made in the Atlantic
waters of West Africa following increased patrols
by European navies in recent years.
French and Liberian security officials believe
the cargo was destined for Nigeria and would have
been a major score for the traffickers had the
ship not developed mechanical problems just as it
was completing the Atlantic passage. Distress
calls by the ship's all-Ghanaian crew were
intercepted by the French navy, which then
located and took the ship to Liberia, whose flag
it was flying.
West Africa becomes a major transit point
With security tight in other global
cocaine-trafficking routes, West Africa has
become a major transit point for cocaine from
South America destined for Europe. Officials of
the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crimes
(UNODC) and regional law enforcement authorities
are concerned that the traffickers are not only
fuelling corruption and social vice, but also
threatening regional security.
"We've noticed increased figures of cocaine
trafficking in the region," Bagmar Thomas, a
senior official of UNODC in West Africa, told ISN
Security Watch. "We're seeing patterns where
countries that didn't figure before are becoming
involved."
From 1998 to 2003, annual cocaine seizures in
Africa averaged 0.6 metric tonnes a year, a tiny
proportion of global seizures, according to a
UNODC document on cocaine trafficking published
in October 2007. However, the figures have been
rising steadily since then, increasing five-fold
by 2006.
Data collected for the first nine months of 2007
indicated a significant jump to a record 5.7
metric tonnes of cocaine seized in the region,
with a street value of nearly US$500 million. Out
of this figure, 99 percent came from West Africa,
comprising seizures in Senegal, Mauritania,
Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde and Benin.
"And this is probably only the tip of the iceberg
because the lack of seizure reports from
neighboring western African countries does not
necessarily mean the absence of trafficking in
these countries, but more likely the deficiency
of law enforcement capacities," concludes the
UNODC report.
For the drug dealers on both sides of the
southern Atlantic, West Africa has become a major
depot where cocaine is stored until the time is
opportune to move it into Europe or even North
America. Cocaine originating in Colombia, Bolivia
or Peru is often shipped out through Brazil or
Venezuela, according to law enforcement
information cited by the UN report.
The drugs are either flown in small planes to
West Africa and are known to have landed in
Guinea Bissau and Mauritania. Larger quantities
are put in ships that sail into West African
waters where they are met by smaller vessels that
receive the drugs and move them inland through
porous shores.
Once in West Africa the drugs have to take either
one of two routes into Europe. Those landing in
places like Cape Verde, Senegal and Mauritania
follow traditional hashish smuggling routes,
using fast boats to move north of Morocco into
Europe. Other traffickers use couriers who ingest
or conceal the drugs in their luggage, using
commercial flights to take them into Europe.
The use of commercial flights for trafficking is
identified by the UNODC report as the mainstay of
Nigerian drug gangs. Often many drug couriers are
put on the same flights as a deliberate tactic to
swamp and overwhelm law enforcement officials at
the airports.
In one dramatic incident cited in the report,
authorities in The Netherlands arrested 32 drug
couriers who had landed on the same plane at the
Amsterdam airport in December 2006. They had all
left Guinea Bissau on a flight that took them
through Casablanca, Morocco, and of the number,
28 were Nigerians.
European law enforcement records cited by UNODC
show that West Africans account for 90 percent of
all Africans arrested for drug trafficking. The
largest percentage (44 percent) were Nigerian
passport-holders, followed by those from Cape
Verde (25 percent) and Ghanaians (8 percent).
Crackdown in Nigeria
Since the mid-1980s Nigeria has been a noted
transit center for cocaine from South America and
heroine from Asia. The situation prompted not
only diplomatic pressure from western countries
to crack down on the illicit trade, but
culminated in the stationing of US Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA) operatives in
Nigeria to carry out joint operations with their
local counterparts.
The crackdown in Nigeria forced many local drug
gangs to move and set up shop in other West
African countries where law enforcement is more
lax, according to officials of the Nigerian Drug
Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA).
Favorite destinations for some of the Nigerian
gangs include Benin, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia,
Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau, Guinea and Senegal,
said confessed traffickers interviewed during
official investigations in London, Lagos
(Nigeria) and Cotonou (Benin).
In Cotonou, a Nigerian who gave his name as
Goddy, said he first began trafficking in heroin
as a student in India in the late 1980s. In late
1999, after his return to Nigeria, he traveled to
Brazil and Venezuela and made contacts with South
American drug dealers who began shipping the
drugs to him in Nigeria.
"I had to move to Cotonou a few years ago with
increasing pressure being mounted by the NDLEA
and the US agents on our business," Goddy told
ISN Security Watch.
Those who moved with him include a team of
associates specializing in crushing cocaine bars
and tying them into little balls that can be
swallowed by couriers or in the concealment of
drugs in false bottoms of bags, shoes and any
articles that could provide concealment, Goddy
said.
"It is not easy for the drug traffickers to go
through Nigerian airports anymore, that's why
they're going to other countries," NDLEA
spokesman Mitchell Ofoyeju told ISN Security
Watch. "But they have enormous resources at their
disposal, and once you discover one tactic they
adopt another."
In poor countries such as Guinea Bissau, not only
are law enforcement resources lacking, but law
enforcement officials are easily corrupted and
bought off by drug gangs.
When an aircraft carrying cocaine was seized
after it landed at a military air strip in Guinea
Bissau last year, the arrested dealers were able
to bribe officials and escape before they could
be brought to trial.
Security concerns
In Nigeria, security experts fear the drug trade
is coalescing with the arms trade, worsening an
already volatile situation in the Niger Delta,
where violent unrest has evolved into insurgency.
The delta's porous estuaries have carried not
only smuggled guns but also smuggled narcotics,
security sources say. Inevitably, some of the
proceeds from the drugs trade are being used to
buy guns, and similarly, funds from gun-running
are also making their way into the drugs
business, amid signs that some of the armed gangs
kidnapping for ransom are motivated by drug
habits.
"We are certainly faced with a major drug problem
in this city [Port Harcourt]," Abel Wiltshire, a
security consultant for oil companies in Nigeria
told ISN Security Watch. Port Harcourt, the
country's main oil industry center, has
experienced some of the worst violence in the
Niger Delta.
Several reasons account for West Africa's growing
role in cocaine trafficking, according to Denis
Destrebecq, who prepared the UNODC report. One is
the growing successes against traffickers by law
enforcement agencies in the Caribbean and Europe,
especially in Spain, where seizures in 2005 were
45 percent of the total in Europe.
Another reason is the advantageous location of
West Africa in relation to Europe and South
America, with relatively short distances between
West Africa and South America.
"Finally, Western African countries are perceived
as having a permissive working environment for
drug traffickers due to widespread corruption and
poor law enforcement structure," Destrebecq said
in the UN report told ISN Security Watch.
"Many countries in the region face difficulties
in controlling their territory and administering
justice, and are plagued by corruption.
Dulue Mbachu is a correspondent for ISN Security
Watch based in Nigeria. He has reported Nigeria
for international media outlets including The
Washington Post and the Associated Press.
Related ISN Publishing House entries
<http://www.isn.ethz.ch/pubs/ph/details.cfm?id=32032>Cocaine
Smuggling through Africa is an "Enormous Problem"
<http://www.isn.ethz.ch/pubs/ph/details.cfm?id=46324>Trans-American
Security: What's Missing?
<http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/letters.cfm?
parent=edit_letter&referrer=/new
s/sw/details.cfm&id=18702>Comment
on this
story >
<http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/relatedarticles.cfm?id=18702>Earlier
news
--
California NORML, 2215-R Market St. #278, San
Francisco CA 94114 -(415) 563- 5858 -
www.canorml.org
PhD in medical geography. Read the section on security if you are
curious why this is posted on a small arms listserv:
The West Africa-South America drug route
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
* How to build perpetual revolution to pay for guns on yet another
continent.
The West Africa-South America drug route
===>>> http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?ID=18702
Image: Dulue Mbachu, ISN
West Africa is becoming a new transit point for drugs from South
America on their way to European markets, Dulue Mbachu reports from
Benin for ISN Security Watch.
By Dulue Mbachu in Cotonou, Benin for ISN Security Watch (28/02/08)
Centuries after ships sailed with slaves from the Gulf of Guinea to
South America as part of a triangular trade with Europe, increasingly
large numbers of ships are heading in the opposite direction in a
reverse triangular trade with another cargo: cocaine destined for
Europe.
The latest evidence is the interception of a Liberian-registered hip,
Blue Atlantic, by the French navy some 550 kilometers off the West
African shore on 31 January. The ship was found to be carrying 2.4
tonnes of pure cocaine. It was one of the biggest seizures made in the
Atlantic waters of West Africa following increased patrols by European
navies in recent years.
French and Liberian security officials believe the cargo was destined
for Nigeria and would have been a major score for the traffickers had
the ship not developed mechanical problems just as it was completing
the Atlantic passage. Distress calls by the ship's all-Ghanaian crew
were intercepted by the French navy, which then located and took the
ship to Liberia, whose flag it was flying.
West Africa becomes a major transit point
With security tight in other global cocaine-trafficking routes, West
Africa has become a major transit point for cocaine from
South America destined for Europe. Officials of the United Nations
Office for Drugs and Crimes (UNODC) and regional law enforcement
authorities are concerned that the traffickers are not only fuelling
corruption and social vice, but also
threatening regional security.
"We've noticed increased figures of cocaine trafficking in the
region," Bagmar Thomas, a senior official of UNODC in West Africa,
told ISN Security Watch. "We're seeing patterns where countries that
didn't figure before are becoming involved."
From 1998 to 2003, annual cocaine seizures in Africa averaged 0.6
metric tonnes a year, a tiny proportion of global seizures, according
to a UNODC document on cocaine trafficking published in October 2007.
However, the figures have been rising steadily since then, increasing
five-fold by 2006.
Data collected for the first nine months of 2007 indicated a
significant jump to a record 5.7 metric tonnes of cocaine seized in
the region, with a street value of nearly US$500 million. Out of this
figure, 99 percent came from West Africa, comprising seizures in
Senegal, Mauritania, Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde and Benin.
"And this is probably only the tip of the iceberg because the lack of
seizure reports from neighboring western African countries does not
necessarily mean the absence of trafficking in these countries, but
more likely the deficiency of law enforcement capacities," concludes
the UNODC report.
For the drug dealers on both sides of the southern Atlantic, West
Africa has become a major depot where cocaine is stored until the time
is opportune to move it into Europe or even North America. Cocaine
originating in Colombia, Bolivia or Peru is often shipped out through
Brazil or Venezuela, according to law enforcement information cited by
the UN report.
The drugs are either flown in small planes to West Africa and are
known to have landed in Guinea Bissau and Mauritania. Larger
quantities are put in ships that sail into West African waters where
they are met by smaller vessels that receive the drugs and move them
inland through porous shores.
Once in West Africa the drugs have to take either one of two routes
into Europe. Those landing in places like Cape Verde, Senegal and
Mauritania follow traditional hashish smuggling routes, using fast
boats to move north of Morocco into Europe. Other traffickers use
couriers who ingest or conceal the drugs in their luggage, using
commercial flights to take them into Europe.
The use of commercial flights for trafficking is identified by the
UNODC report as the mainstay of Nigerian drug gangs. Often many drug
couriers are put on the same flights as a deliberate tactic to swamp
and overwhelm law enforcement officials at the airports.
In one dramatic incident cited in the report, authorities in The
Netherlands arrested 32 drug couriers who had landed on the same plane
at the Amsterdam airport in December 2006. They had all left Guinea
Bissau on a flight that took them through Casablanca, Morocco, and of
the number, 28 were Nigerians.
European law enforcement records cited by UNODC show that West
Africans account for 90 percent of all Africans arrested for drug
trafficking. The largest percentage (44 percent) were Nigerian
passport-holders, followed by those from Cape Verde (25 percent) and
Ghanaians (8 percent).
Crackdown in Nigeria
Since the mid-1980s Nigeria has been a noted transit center for
cocaine from South America and heroine from Asia. The situation
prompted not only diplomatic pressure from western countries to crack
down on the illicit trade, but culminated in the stationing of US Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA) operatives in Nigeria to carry out
joint operations with their local counterparts.
The crackdown in Nigeria forced many local drug gangs to move and set
up shop in other West African countries where law enforcement is more
lax, according to officials of the Nigerian Drug Law Enforcement
Agency (NDLEA).
Favorite destinations for some of the Nigerian gangs include Benin,
Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau, Guinea and
Senegal, said confessed traffickers interviewed during official
investigations in London, Lagos (Nigeria) and Cotonou (Benin).
In Cotonou, a Nigerian who gave his name as Goddy, said he first began
trafficking in heroin as a student in India in the late 1980s. In late
1999, after his return to Nigeria, he traveled to Brazil and Venezuela
and made contacts with South American drug dealers who began shipping
the drugs to him in Nigeria.
"I had to move to Cotonou a few years ago with increasing pressure
being mounted by the NDLEA and the US agents on our business," Goddy
told ISN Security Watch.
Those who moved with him include a team of associates specializing in
crushing cocaine bars and tying them into little balls that can be
swallowed by couriers or in the concealment of drugs in false bottoms
of bags, shoes and any articles that could provide concealment, Goddy
said.
"It is not easy for the drug traffickers to go through Nigerian
airports anymore, that's why they're going to other countries," NDLEA
spokesman Mitchell Ofoyeju told ISN Security Watch. "But they have
enormous resources at their disposal, and once you discover one tactic
they adopt another."
In poor countries such as Guinea Bissau, not only are law enforcement
resources lacking, but law enforcement officials are easily corrupted
and bought off by drug gangs.
When an aircraft carrying cocaine was seized after it landed at a
military air strip in Guinea Bissau last year, the arrested dealers
were able to bribe officials and escape before they could be brought
to trial.
Security concerns
In Nigeria, security experts fear the drug trade is coalescing with
the arms trade, worsening an already volatile situation in the Niger
Delta, where violent unrest has evolved into insurgency.
The delta's porous estuaries have carried not only smuggled guns but
also smuggled narcotics, security sources say. Inevitably, some of the
proceeds from the drugs trade are being used to buy guns, and
similarly, funds from gun-running are also making their way into the
drugs business, amid signs that some of the armed gangs kidnapping for
ransom are motivated by drug
habits.
"We are certainly faced with a major drug problem in this city [Port
Harcourt]," Abel Wiltshire, a security consultant for oil companies in
Nigeria told ISN Security Watch. Port Harcourt, the country's main oil
industry center, has experienced some of the worst violence in the
Niger Delta.
Several reasons account for West Africa's growing role in cocaine
trafficking, according to Denis Destrebecq, who prepared the UNODC
report. One is the growing successes against traffickers by law
enforcement agencies in the Caribbean and Europe,
especially in Spain, where seizures in 2005 were 45 percent of the
total in Europe.
Another reason is the advantageous location of West Africa in relation
to Europe and South America, with relatively short distances between
West Africa and South America.
"Finally, Western African countries are perceived as having a
permissive working environment for drug traffickers due to widespread
corruption and poor law enforcement structure," Destrebecq said in the
UN report told ISN Security Watch.
"Many countries in the region face difficulties in controlling their
territory and administering justice, and are plagued by corruption.
Dulue Mbachu is a correspondent for ISN Security Watch based in
Nigeria. He has reported Nigeria for international media outlets
including The Washington Post and the Associated Press.
Related ISN Publishing House entries
Cocaine Smuggling through Africa is an "Enormous Problem"
Trans-American Security: What's Missing?
Comment on this story > Earlier news
* How to build perpetual revolution to pay for guns on yet another
continent.
As if Africa was not sufficiently corrupt... Read & weep...jt
The West Africa-South America drug route
===>>>
<http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?ID=18702>http://
www.isn.ethz.ch/
news/sw/details.cfm?ID=18702
Image: Dulue Mbachu, ISN
West Africa is becoming a new transit point for
drugs from South America on their way to European
markets, Dulue Mbachu reports from Benin for ISN
Security Watch.
By Dulue Mbachu in Cotonou, Benin for ISN Security Watch (28/02/08)
Centuries after ships sailed with slaves from the
Gulf of Guinea to South America as part of a
triangular trade with Europe, increasingly large
numbers of ships are heading in the opposite
direction in a reverse triangular trade with
another cargo: cocaine destined for Europe.
The latest evidence is the interception of a
Liberian-registered ship, Blue Atlantic, by the
French navy some 550 kilometers off the West
African shore on 31 January. The ship was found
to be carrying 2.4 tonnes of pure cocaine. It was
one of the biggest seizures made in the Atlantic
waters of West Africa following increased patrols
by European navies in recent years.
French and Liberian security officials believe
the cargo was destined for Nigeria and would have
been a major score for the traffickers had the
ship not developed mechanical problems just as it
was completing the Atlantic passage. Distress
calls by the ship's all-Ghanaian crew were
intercepted by the French navy, which then
located and took the ship to Liberia, whose flag
it was flying.
West Africa becomes a major transit point
With security tight in other global
cocaine-trafficking routes, West Africa has
become a major transit point for cocaine from
South America destined for Europe. Officials of
the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crimes
(UNODC) and regional law enforcement authorities
are concerned that the traffickers are not only
fuelling corruption and social vice, but also
threatening regional security.
"We've noticed increased figures of cocaine
trafficking in the region," Bagmar Thomas, a
senior official of UNODC in West Africa, told ISN
Security Watch. "We're seeing patterns where
countries that didn't figure before are becoming
involved."
From 1998 to 2003, annual cocaine seizures in
Africa averaged 0.6 metric tonnes a year, a tiny
proportion of global seizures, according to a
UNODC document on cocaine trafficking published
in October 2007. However, the figures have been
rising steadily since then, increasing five-fold
by 2006.
Data collected for the first nine months of 2007
indicated a significant jump to a record 5.7
metric tonnes of cocaine seized in the region,
with a street value of nearly US$500 million. Out
of this figure, 99 percent came from West Africa,
comprising seizures in Senegal, Mauritania,
Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde and Benin.
"And this is probably only the tip of the iceberg
because the lack of seizure reports from
neighboring western African countries does not
necessarily mean the absence of trafficking in
these countries, but more likely the deficiency
of law enforcement capacities," concludes the
UNODC report.
For the drug dealers on both sides of the
southern Atlantic, West Africa has become a major
depot where cocaine is stored until the time is
opportune to move it into Europe or even North
America. Cocaine originating in Colombia, Bolivia
or Peru is often shipped out through Brazil or
Venezuela, according to law enforcement
information cited by the UN report.
The drugs are either flown in small planes to
West Africa and are known to have landed in
Guinea Bissau and Mauritania. Larger quantities
are put in ships that sail into West African
waters where they are met by smaller vessels that
receive the drugs and move them inland through
porous shores.
Once in West Africa the drugs have to take either
one of two routes into Europe. Those landing in
places like Cape Verde, Senegal and Mauritania
follow traditional hashish smuggling routes,
using fast boats to move north of Morocco into
Europe. Other traffickers use couriers who ingest
or conceal the drugs in their luggage, using
commercial flights to take them into Europe.
The use of commercial flights for trafficking is
identified by the UNODC report as the mainstay of
Nigerian drug gangs. Often many drug couriers are
put on the same flights as a deliberate tactic to
swamp and overwhelm law enforcement officials at
the airports.
In one dramatic incident cited in the report,
authorities in The Netherlands arrested 32 drug
couriers who had landed on the same plane at the
Amsterdam airport in December 2006. They had all
left Guinea Bissau on a flight that took them
through Casablanca, Morocco, and of the number,
28 were Nigerians.
European law enforcement records cited by UNODC
show that West Africans account for 90 percent of
all Africans arrested for drug trafficking. The
largest percentage (44 percent) were Nigerian
passport-holders, followed by those from Cape
Verde (25 percent) and Ghanaians (8 percent).
Crackdown in Nigeria
Since the mid-1980s Nigeria has been a noted
transit center for cocaine from South America and
heroine from Asia. The situation prompted not
only diplomatic pressure from western countries
to crack down on the illicit trade, but
culminated in the stationing of US Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA) operatives in
Nigeria to carry out joint operations with their
local counterparts.
The crackdown in Nigeria forced many local drug
gangs to move and set up shop in other West
African countries where law enforcement is more
lax, according to officials of the Nigerian Drug
Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA).
Favorite destinations for some of the Nigerian
gangs include Benin, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia,
Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau, Guinea and Senegal,
said confessed traffickers interviewed during
official investigations in London, Lagos
(Nigeria) and Cotonou (Benin).
In Cotonou, a Nigerian who gave his name as
Goddy, said he first began trafficking in heroin
as a student in India in the late 1980s. In late
1999, after his return to Nigeria, he traveled to
Brazil and Venezuela and made contacts with South
American drug dealers who began shipping the
drugs to him in Nigeria.
"I had to move to Cotonou a few years ago with
increasing pressure being mounted by the NDLEA
and the US agents on our business," Goddy told
ISN Security Watch.
Those who moved with him include a team of
associates specializing in crushing cocaine bars
and tying them into little balls that can be
swallowed by couriers or in the concealment of
drugs in false bottoms of bags, shoes and any
articles that could provide concealment, Goddy
said.
"It is not easy for the drug traffickers to go
through Nigerian airports anymore, that's why
they're going to other countries," NDLEA
spokesman Mitchell Ofoyeju told ISN Security
Watch. "But they have enormous resources at their
disposal, and once you discover one tactic they
adopt another."
In poor countries such as Guinea Bissau, not only
are law enforcement resources lacking, but law
enforcement officials are easily corrupted and
bought off by drug gangs.
When an aircraft carrying cocaine was seized
after it landed at a military air strip in Guinea
Bissau last year, the arrested dealers were able
to bribe officials and escape before they could
be brought to trial.
Security concerns
In Nigeria, security experts fear the drug trade
is coalescing with the arms trade, worsening an
already volatile situation in the Niger Delta,
where violent unrest has evolved into insurgency.
The delta's porous estuaries have carried not
only smuggled guns but also smuggled narcotics,
security sources say. Inevitably, some of the
proceeds from the drugs trade are being used to
buy guns, and similarly, funds from gun-running
are also making their way into the drugs
business, amid signs that some of the armed gangs
kidnapping for ransom are motivated by drug
habits.
"We are certainly faced with a major drug problem
in this city [Port Harcourt]," Abel Wiltshire, a
security consultant for oil companies in Nigeria
told ISN Security Watch. Port Harcourt, the
country's main oil industry center, has
experienced some of the worst violence in the
Niger Delta.
Several reasons account for West Africa's growing
role in cocaine trafficking, according to Denis
Destrebecq, who prepared the UNODC report. One is
the growing successes against traffickers by law
enforcement agencies in the Caribbean and Europe,
especially in Spain, where seizures in 2005 were
45 percent of the total in Europe.
Another reason is the advantageous location of
West Africa in relation to Europe and South
America, with relatively short distances between
West Africa and South America.
"Finally, Western African countries are perceived
as having a permissive working environment for
drug traffickers due to widespread corruption and
poor law enforcement structure," Destrebecq said
in the UN report told ISN Security Watch.
"Many countries in the region face difficulties
in controlling their territory and administering
justice, and are plagued by corruption.
Dulue Mbachu is a correspondent for ISN Security
Watch based in Nigeria. He has reported Nigeria
for international media outlets including The
Washington Post and the Associated Press.
Related ISN Publishing House entries
<http://www.isn.ethz.ch/pubs/ph/details.cfm?id=32032>Cocaine
Smuggling through Africa is an "Enormous Problem"
<http://www.isn.ethz.ch/pubs/ph/details.cfm?id=46324>Trans-American
Security: What's Missing?
<http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/letters.cfm?
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