A local shrine festooned with the body parts of Zeta hit-men

The question sounds alarmist, but has concerned international law-enforcement agencies in recent years, as countries such as Guinea-Bissau,Guinea, Ghana, Benin and Nigeria have emerged as major transshipment points for the global trade in cocaine and heroin.

According to Monterrey's Milenio daily, organized crime-related violence has claimed over 60,000 lives in Mexico and 25,00 missing during the six-year presidency of Felipe Calderon, including 10,485 so far this year.

The volume of narcotics flowing through West Africa has been growing since the late 1990s, when customs agencies and police began interdicting an increasing percentage of the drugs traffic fromLatin America to Europe, thus creating demand for new routes. Traffickers needed more secure and effective ways into a rapidly expanding European market; and weak governance, corruption and poverty made several West African countries ideal candidates.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) warned in 2008 that: 'The former Gold Coast is turning into the Coke Coast.' Today the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the European Union (EU) and the US African Command (AFRICOM) also consider the region an important narcotics hub. Cocaine and other drugs come to West Africa from South America to be shipped on mainly towards Europe. The bulk of opiates from Afghanistan and Pakistan, arriving via East Africa, are cut and packaged in the region before being sent to the United States. Criminal groups have sprung up to participate in this trade, and the funds from it are rumoured to finance insurgent groups, including al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The UNODC estimates that at least 50 tonnes of cocaine passes through West Africa a year, but almost any type of illegal drug can be found in the region, including cannabis, heroin and locally produced amphetamines and methamphetamines. Cutting agents are widely available; it is estimated that the purity of Colombian and Venezuelan cocaine deteriorates from 80% to 12% while it transits through countries such as Ghana, Benin or Nigeria. Afghan and Pakistani heroin goes from 90% purity on arrival to 16% on departure.

Fertile ground
Porous borders and a lack of communication between different countries' police and customs services make the entire region attractive to drugs traffickers, but conditions in several individual countries have proved particularly inviting.

Guinea Bissau, West Africa's first narco-state, is one of the world's poorest, its legitimate economy relying on the export of cashew nuts and a few other agricultural products. The country is particularly appealing to drugs smugglers because of the uncontrolled archipelago of islands off its coast that makes detection of shipping difficult. Lebanese involvement in the Latin American–African drugs trade and a strong Lebanese presence in the capital, Bissau have led to the presumption that the trade is a source of funds for Hezbollah However, criminals are involved in other illicit activities across the region, from the production of methamphetamines through bogus pharmaceutical companies to diamond smuggling in Liberia and Sierra Leone, and oil theft in Nigeria.

The 2009 assassination of Guinea Bissau's President Joao Bernardo Vieira may or may not have been drugs related, but he was thought deeply involved in the cocaine trade and drug-enforcement agencies had complained about his failure to crack down on narco-trafficking. The 2010 reappointment of Admiral Jose Bubu Na Tchuto as the country's naval chief was criticised by the EU and the US, which had earlier designated him a drug 'kingpin' and frozen his assets.

Until 2008, when President Lansana Conté died, neighbouring Guinea was also described as a narco-state. The late president's eldest son had long been at the centre of a drug-trafficking ring and confessed to as much on state television in 2009. The situation has now improved, as most South Americans involved in the drugs trade have moved to Burkina Faso and Benin. Yet, Guinea remains an attractive drugs hub as one of the most corrupt West African countries.

In places such as Ivory Coast a mixture of political chaos, badly resourced and trained law-enforcement officials, high unemployment and other social issues has meant an increase in the number of those who see drugs as a viable source of income as well as those who have fallen into the trap of addiction. This convenient combination has been exploited by Latin American traffickers who are now seen in greater numbers in the country.

Mauritania is another convenient transit point, with direct flights to Latin America and easy routes into Morocco and Algeria, along which both Mauritanian-grown cannabis and Latin American cocaine travel towards Europe. An extensive network of drug-fuelled corruption among the judiciary and law enforcement facilitates this process. Mauritania is infamous for human trafficking and some of these victims are used by gangs for the distribution of drugs.

Elsewhere, containers of narcotics from Latin America have reportedly travelled unchecked through Ghanaian ports to Burkina Faso, where they were again overlooked by local custom officials, who assumed the consignment had already undergone controls when it had first reached African shores. Radar off Africa's Atlantic coast is patchy, and at least ten aircraft suspected of ferrying drugs were found in the Sahara Desert between 2006 and 2009. The UNODC said a burnt-out Boeing 727 discovered in Mali in 2009 had been carrying drugs from Venezuela.

Stuffed pineapples and front companies
Drugs normally arrive in West Africa in bulk shipments and are stored in warehouses before being shipped onwards in smaller consignments (100-200 kilograms at most) by lorry, bus, car, motorcycle or even bicycle. Galician fishermen are usually involved in facilitating the transit into Europe. The use of human mules is also widespread, as is the practice of concealing drugs in African crafts, cosmetics and even pineapples.

The notion that West African narcotics networks are less sophisticated than their counterparts in Latin America is becoming less true as criminal groups have evolved, especially in Nigeria, Senegal and Guinea. Often they use legitimate businesses as both a source of seed capital and cover for illicit trade. The groups are non-hierarchical, lacking a formal centre or head, making it hard for law-enforcement agencies to eradicate them. Networks include semi-independent business units, often relying on family ties rather than on tribal links.

Such criminal gangs have rapidly expanded the scope of their business, becoming traders in their own right rather than simply acting as couriers. This shift was made possible by their accepting drugs rather than money as payment for services – perhaps up to a third of the total volumes they received. This enabled them to view West Africa not simply as a transit point but also as a consumer market; local law-enforcement officials on the ground have told the IISS that this is already producing a growing number of addicts. The networks have also looked beyond the region. Nigerian groups were the first to begin managing their own share of the trade and now have members operating in countries as far afield as Germany, Britain, the Philippines, Turkey, the US and Australia. They are regarded as the prototype of a West African model of criminal network, which favours one-off transaction-based joint ventures rather than long-standing relations – in contrast to, say, the Italian mafia and Japanese Yakuza.

Another Mexico?
If the problem is not tackled effectively, international law-enforcement officials based in the region fear that West Africa could become another Mexico within three to five years. Mexico, like West Africa, became a conduit for drugs after other routes were effectively closed off by interdiction, and other parallels can be drawn. Both regions have areas in which the central government has little or no control and where the police do not venture. Two examples in West Africa are Accra's slums and – even before the recent civil war – northern regions of Ivory Coast; these are ideal areas for traffickers and other criminals to operate and hide, where they can amass considerable local power and influence. Drug barons are often able to provide local communities with services that the state cannot supply, for instance building infrastructure and churches and providing support for the poor. As in Mexico, many West African law-enforcement agencies and judicial systems are inherently weak and open to corruption.

Gang rivalries have become more evident as more drugs have been shipped through West Africa. After Mexican officials visited Ghana in 2009 with gruesome pictures of drug-cartel violence in their country, Accra was concerned enough to begin cooperating more closely with international law-enforcement agencies.

However, the region has not yet seen the levels of drug-related violence experienced in Mexico, and two things may ultimately prevent West Africa from going that way. Firstly, its gang culture is different. West African gangs tend to come together for merely opportunistic reasons, whereas membership in Mexico is much more tied into a broader social identity. Secondly, there is still time to act before West African gangs feel the need to resort to violence to protect their turf. Most traffickers are still unarmed; even in Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown, the two Nigerian gangs controlling the city's trade have not taken up arms to fight each other.

Stemming the flow
The multilateral West Africa Coast Initiative (WACI) – involving UNODC, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the UN Department of Peacekeeping and other partners – is designed to support the ECOWAS regional action plan on drug trafficking, through capacity building, law-enforcement cooperation and the strengthening of the criminal justice system starting from four key countries: Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea- Bissau, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

The UNODC has also developed the Airport Communication Project (AIRCOP), in cooperation with Interpol and the World Customs Organisation. Funded by Canada and the European Commission, and also in line with the ECOWAS regional action plan, this is intended to strengthen communication and encourage intelligence sharing at airport and police level between Brazil and seven West African states, namely Nigeria, Togo, Cape Verde, Ghana, Mali, Ivory Coast and Senegal. From the moment it was launched in late 2010 there were plans to widen it to other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

To succeed, such initiatives need the active involvement of local West African agencies and require that international partners cooperate with, rather than direct, their local counterparts. However, many such drugs crackdowns are undermined by corrupt officials. Although Ghana is often described as a West African success story, a 2009 American Embassy cable revealed by Wikileaks claimed that Ghana's then president, John Atta Mills, was aware that 'elements of his government' were 'already compromised' and that officials at Kotoka airport tipped off drug traffickers about Operation Westbridge.

Some of these law-enforcement initiatives have also created what is known in counternarcotics circles as a 'balloon effect', in which the problem is simply displaced (i.e. as one area is squeezed, the problem expands into another). Pouring significant resources into countries such as Ghana has improved local law-enforcement capacity and, arguably, boosted local political willingness to combat trafficking and corruption. Ghana is the West African country where cocaine is least available and most expensive; here a kilo costs approximately €22,000 as opposed to €7,000–8,000 in Guinea Bissau. However, neighbouring Burkina Faso and Togo have seen an increase in the traffic and abuse of illicit drugs over the past five years. According to Togolese counternarcotics officials, an estimated 30% of drugs transiting the region go through Togo. Burkina Faso's customs agency destroys more than 100 tonnes of cocaine every year, but this is believed to represent only a small fraction of the drugs circulating the country.

Potential for destabilisation
West Africa's drug problem should not be exaggerated. The region is not a homogeneous block, which complicates any attempt to compare it to Mexico. Drugs have arguably worsened security problems in the region, rather than giving rise to them. However, the drugs trade has the potential to further destabilise fragile countries which are prone to corruption and are in many cases still in the midst of post-conflict transition.

So far, most international support has been directed to improving law enforcement training and equipment, as well as border control. An important part of dealing with the problem, however, lies in education, rehabilitation, alternatives to prohibition and helping governments to foster alternative livelihoods for their people.

In a significant expansion of the war on drugs, the United States has begun training an elite unit of counter narcotics police in Ghana and planning similar units in Nigeria and Kenya as part of an effort to combat the Latin American cartels that are increasingly using Africa to smuggle cocaine into Europe.

The growing American involvement in Africa follows an earlier escalation of anti drug efforts in Central America, according to documents, Congressional testimony and interviews with a range of officials at the State Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Pentagon.

Some specialists have expressed scepticism about the approach. Bruce Bagley, a professor at the University of Miami who focuses on Latin America and counter narcotics said that what had happened in West Africa over the past few years was the latest example of the "Whac-A-Mole" problem, in which making trafficking more difficult in one place simply shifts it to another.
"As they put on the pressure, they are going to detour routes, but they are not going to stop the flow, because the institutions are incredibly weak -- I don't care how much vetting they do," Professor Bagley said. "And there is always blow-back to this. You start killing people in foreign countries -- whether criminals or not -- and there is going to be fallout."

Yes, it may be possible to push trafficking out of one broken West African nation. But why? What's the point? So we can chase it to the next country? The very fact that Western Africa has become a significant stop on the global trade route is evidence in itself of the failure of the drug war, a failure that won't be straightened out by doubling down on the same strategy. Indeed, drug traffickers are in Africa as a direct result of U.S. pressure on trading routes first in the Caribbean, and then in South and Central America.

Lessons From History
The spraying was part of Operation Condor, a joint Mexican-American venture aimed at eradicating Mexican pot that had been going on since 1975. General José Hernández Toledo, fresh from the 1968 student massacres in Mexico City, led 10,000 soldiers into the hills of Sinaloa, Durango, and Chihuahua. "Tons of drugs were destroyed, production was reduced, prices rose, but drugs continued to flow into the American market, although in lesser quantity of Mexican origin.

The action had several consequences. One, a rise in the price of pot in the United States, was intended. Others weren't. The growth of domestic marijuana farming might have eased pot shortages slightly during the '70s, but the industry was hardly the high-tech, high-efficiency bud-producing machine it is today. The encouragement of a shift from pot to cocaine importation among drug smugglers was a much more significant development in the short term. Coke, more valuable by weight and with a less detectable odor, was more profitable and much easier to move. A minor player in the coke trade in the '70s, Mexico would a decade later come to rival the Caribbean. By the late '90s, it would dominate the industry.

As domestic pot production began to take off in Northern California, the quality of home-grown marijuana available to Americans was steadily improving and U.S. pot farming was allowed to expand with near impunity.Neither California Gov. Jerry Brown nor the Carter administration was particularly concerned with going after West Coast growers. Brown smoked pot himself,

The DEA, for its part, had no clue of how much marijuana was being grown in the United States. In 1984, the agency estimated that domestic annual production was 2,100 metric tons and represented only 12 percent of total consumption. Government officials "were still screaming about all these dynamite, super strength strains of Mexican marijuana. The American marijuana market, however, remained dependent on imported and outdoor herb, which are both susceptible to shortfalls. Pot grown outdoors is harvested in the fall--meaning that, by summer, supply would be depleted nationwide. Combined with foreign eradication efforts, these seasonal shortages helped open the door for cocaine, as users substituted an available drug for an unavailable one.

Federal survey data show that coke use among 18- to 25-year-olds doubled from 1977 to 1979. By the end of the decade, 40 percent of Americans in that age bracket admitted to trying the drug. "If present trends go unchecked," prophesied a 1979 DEA report, "a vast new youth market for the substance could be opened. Carter's own top drug-policy official, Bourne, saw little danger in it, writing in a 1976 article that coke "is probably the most benign of illicit drugs currently in widespread use. At least as strong a case could be made for legalizing it as for legalizing marijuana. Short acting--about 15 minutes--not physically addicting, and acutely pleasurable, cocaine has found increasing favour at all socio-economic levels in the last year."

In July 1981, Time magazine illustrated its cover story "High on Cocaine" with a shot of a martini glass filled with coke. "Whatever the price, by whatever name, cocaine is becoming the all-American drug," the piece suggests. Today, in part precisely because it is such an emblem of wealth and status, coke is the drug of choice for perhaps millions of solid, conventional and often upwardly mobile citizens--lawyers, businessmen, students, government bureaucrats, politicians, policemen, secretaries, bankers, mechanics, real estate brokers, waitresses."
A snort in each nostril and you're up and away for 30 minutes or so. Alert, witty and with it. No hangover. No physical addiction. No lung cancer. No holes in the arms or burned-out cells in the brain. Instead, drive, sparkle, energy. If it were not classified (incorrectly) by the Federal Government as a narcotic, and if it were legally distributed throughout the U.S. (as it was until 1906), cocaine might be the biggest advertiser on television."

Reagan redoubled efforts at curbing imports, further militarized drug policy, and brought about mandatory-minimum sentences for minor drug offences.

"Drugs are bad, and we're going after them. As I've said before, we're taking down the surrender flag and running up the battle flag. We're going to win the war on drugs."
In 1980, the FBI's Uniform Crime Report lists fewer than 100,000 arrests for heroin and cocaine, which are tabulated together. By 1989, that figure had jumped to more than 700,000.

But the first battle Reagan would fight in his war was against marijuana, which required laying siege to the once-ignored base of liberal resistance, Northern California. His Campaign Against Marijuana Production began in the harvest season of 1983. U-2 spy planes and military helicopters flew over the Golden State looking for green crops.The DEA reported seizing 64,579 plants at an estimated value of $130 million. Federal-law-enforcement figures marched in the streets chanting, "War on Drugs! War on Drugs!" The 1984 haul was three times larger. Nationally, pot plant seizures rose from about 2.5 million in 1982 to more than 7 million in 1987.
Unsurprisingly, such sustained effort drove up the price of marijuana.

The DEA closely tracks drug prices and purity, although it doesn't often make the data available publicly. It did so most recently in 2004, and the numbers include a startling, if misunderstood, observation. "The marijuana price trends...are not highly correlated with trends in prices of other drugs over time," the report reads. "While the price of powder, heroin, and, to a lesser extent, crack were falling during the 1980s, the average price of marijuana generally rose." An eighth of an ounce of pot in 1981 was going for $25. It stayed roughly the same in 1982. By 1986, it was up to $53, and it hit a high of $62 in 1991, a 150 percent rise over 10 years. Coke, meanwhile, become much more affordable. It cost nearly $600 a gram in 1982. As Reagan directed resources toward the pot battle, coke's price began to tumble. By 1989, it was down to $200 a gram, cheaper in real terms than it had been during the last national coke binge a century earlier. At the same time, average purity nearly doubled.

Clearly, the price trends are highly correlated, but the correlation is a negative one: In the '80s, price increases in marijuana drove demand toward other drugs. The war on drugs hard, soft, or otherwise helped persuade pot smokers to put down the bong and pick up the pipe, the mirror, or the needle. Pot smoking plummeted under Reagan The use of other drugs either stayed the same or increased as people started looking for a different cheap high. Reported use of inhalants nearly doubled, from 4 to 7 percent between 1981 and 1987. Cocaine, heroin, and meth use also rose in the '80s.

The use of other drugs either stayed the same or increased as people started looking for a different cheap high. Reported use of inhalants nearly doubled, from 4 to 7 percent between 1981 and 1987. Cocaine, heroin, and meth use also rose in the '80s. Heroin dropped in price by a third between 1981 and 1988. By 1996, it had dropped by two thirds. The price of crack was falling, as well. The DEA started tracking it only in 1986, around the time the drug's use became widespread. Its price fell by about half over the next five years. In rural areas, the price of meth fell by a quarter from the early '80s to the middle of the decade. The stated goal of U.S. drug policy is to lower demand by increasing price. Reagan's drug war did precisely the opposite.

While the president focused on pot in California, cocaine was exploding in Florida. Miami was the perfect base for large-scale drug smuggling, The Carter administration had pulled back on the effort to overthrow or assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro. The move left South Florida with an idle army of well-trained, mostly Cuban-American adepts of dark arts that would become valuable in the coke business: how to acquire and use weapons, how to hide money, how to surreptitiously pilot planes and boats. A speedboat could zip through any one of the Everglades' hundreds of little waterways to find a hidden place to unload or dock elsewhere along Florida's more than 3,000 miles of coastline. That was mostly unnecessary throughout the '70s, however, because smugglers could dock at almost any marina, back up a truck, and drive off. Interdiction was not a major concern.

The banking industry had been banged up by the recession, and it was glad to have the influx of capital brought by the cocaine biz. The Economist reported that 44 Miami banks were given international charters in 1982, compared to 10 in 1978. Another 36 foreign banks opened branches in Miami during that period. At least 40 city banks refused to report cash deposits of more than $10,000, as required by law, throughout the '70s and into the '80s. And at least four banks, authorities estimated, were bought and controlled by drug dealers. As their trade spread across the country, dealers found still other banks eager to deal in cocaine cash.

By the late '80s, a few banks had begun to come under suspicion as their money laundering became too blatant. But the penalties were so laughably small that even when the banks did get caught, they often still benefited from the transaction. A Beverly Hills branch of the American Express Bank was caught laundering $100 million belonging to Juan Garcia Abrego, operator of a notorious cartel with close connections to the then Mexican government. In a 1994 congressional hearing, Chairman Henry Gonzalez, a Texas Democrat, noted that the $950,000 fine--less than 1 percent of the laundered cash--meant that the bank still profited from the exchange. Citibank, which since the 1950s had been the most active U.S. financial institution in Mexico, was in a perfect position when cocaine trafficking moved from the Caribbean westward. Mexican playboy Raul Salinas was discovered to have laundered hundreds of millions through Citibank. His brother, President Carlos Salinas, a prominent ally in the U.S. drug war, was estimated to have made off with some $5 billion himself.

In two and a half years of investigation beginning in 1986, Sen. John Kerry's committee looking into links between the CIA and the Contras also turned up ties between drug cartels and the banking industry. One hearing involved the Medellin cartel's top accountant, Ramon Milian Rodriguez, who'd been busted laundering billions through New York-based bank First Boston. A committee member suggested that he "must be very clever" to have cleaned up so much cash. "Well, First Boston paid a fine of $25,000 and I'm doing 42 years," Rodriguez responded. "Who do you think is cleverer?"

Carter and Reagan, for different reasons, had both ignored cocaine as it grew in popularity in the late '70s and early '80s. The market had become so flooded that the price of a gram of coke plummeted from $600 in 1982 to $400 in 1984. The coke industry pulled itself out of this apparent death spiral through an innovation that helped it reach thousands of new consumers: crack. Cheap and packing a quick punch, crack was the perfect $5, five-minute escape. It began to spread throughout the nation, especially in poor African-American communities.
The introduction of the new drug came, predictably, with violence, as rival organizations struggled to control territory and competition. Miami in the late '70s and early '80s was mirrored by Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and New York in the mid-'80s. Murders committed by African-Americans surged beginning in 1984, rising from just over 30 per 100,000 people to more than 50 in the early '90s, according to Justice Department statistics. Coke use steadily fell throughout the late '80s and leveled off toward the end of the decade. It's stayed fairly flat since, although the DEA sporadically claims big victories in disrupting supply.

The most recent chest-pounding began in August 2007. Drug Czar John Walters began making the press rounds, Walters came with a small staff and a stack of glossy pages making the case that the war on drugs was being won. Prices for cocaine, he said according to a person in the meeting, were rising fast. That can only mean a decline in supply, he explained.

Congress was in the midst of a debate over a controversial $1.4 billion aid package intended to help Mexico wage its own drug war. The drug czar, however, had a credibility problem: In the past, he'd pointed to several other price increases and supply drops that quickly reversed themselves and left him and the media looking silly. USA Today finally took the bait, making the price increase its lead story in a September paper. From there, word spread that there was a shortage of coke out there.

The administration gave itself the credit, citing increased Mexican cooperation, Colombian eradication efforts, and a number of high-profile seizures for the alleged supply downturn. "Drug kingpins are having a harder time moving illegal drugs and chemicals and pocketing the illicit proceeds because they are up against the full-court press of sustained, joint initiatives by a historic three-way partnership among Colombia, Mexico, and the United States," said DEA Administrator Karen P. Tandy at a press conference staged in Colombia when the numbers were officially released.

When the DEA was asked for price data for the years 2005 and 2006 the agency declined to provide it. When a request was filed under the Freedom of Information Act we were told in a letter that there was no "public benefit" to releasing the data. So did the DEA really have the cocaine cartels in retreat? Quite the opposite, actually: Coke exporters were simply finding more lucrative markets than the economically stricken United States.

Producers are "not going to see a significant impact [from a decline in American consumption] because they've seen huge increases in demand, and therefore profit, from Europe," André Hollis, who was the senior counternarcotics adviser to Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld from 2001 to 2003, told me. Just a few years prior, he explained, Americans were doing about five times more blow than their Old World fellows. Today, coke-consumption levels in the United States and Europe are roughly equal. It's hard to confirm his claim statistically. But United Nations surveys have shown rapid rises in cocaine use in Western European countries during the '00s. And press accounts from across Western Europe have talked about a continental coke binge similar to America's in the '80s

True, the U.S. government can point to a number of high-profile seizures, including one that landed more than 20 metric tons of coke in Mexico. Tighter border enforcement as a result of efforts to curb terrorism and immigration have likely played a small role in shrinking the American coke trade, too. But the biggest factor is probably the rise of the euro and the concomitant decline of the dollar, which has made it less profitable to sell cocaine to Americans. "The euro has replaced the dollar in the Western Hemisphere as the currency of choice among these traffickers, which is an extraordinary shift," said Karen Tandy, head of the DEA, at an anti-narcotics conference in April 2007 in Spain. "As cocaine use has declined in the U.S. dramatically, in the European market it has risen." Officials at the conference said that a kilogram of coke that would fetch $30,000 in the United States was worth $50,000 in Europe--and the dollar has fallen further against the euro since then. On April 1, 2007, a dollar was worth about 0.74 euros; a year later, it was worth only 0.63 euros. Because of this price differential, it's now a theoretically profitable enterprise to smuggle cocaine out of the United States.

Donald Semesky, the DEA's chief of financial operations, has noted that 90 percent of the 1.7 billion euros that were registered as having entered the United States in 2005 came through Latin America, "where drug cartels launder their European proceeds." As the cocaine market has shifted, use along its new trade routes has grown. A UN report notes increases in use not only in South and Central America but also in Africa, where seizures jumped ten-fold from 2003 to 2006 and then doubled again between 2006 and 2007.

West African nations, which make Colombia and Mexico look like models of transparent governance, have become important stopping-off points for coke traffickers on the way to Europe. Out of work African youth make cheap foot-soldiers and drug runners with expensive equipment and weaponry have little to fear from airports barely electrified and cops cars. with empty gas tanks. "Africa is under attack," warned the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime executive director Antonio Maria Costa in a Post op-ed in 2008. "States that we seldom hear about, such as Guinea-Bissau and neighbouring Guinea, are at risk of being captured by drug cartels in collusion with corrupt forces in government and the military." From West Africa, the coke heads to Spain and Portugal. Spain, according to the UN, had levels of coke use equivalent to those in the United States for the first time ever in 2006.

From the drug cartels' perspective, the beauty of shifting exports to Europe is that the resulting decline in shipments to the United States does indeed lead to an increased price here. While expanding their business elsewhere, the cartels are getting more money per unit of American product. The ultimate goal of the war on drugs, of course, is to reduce addiction, and there are signs that raising the price of coke hasn't done it among hardcore users. Up-to-date data is tough to come by, but some cities have begun drug-testing folks who get arrested. In D.C., where the practice began in 1984, a little more than 40 percent of arrestees tested positive for cocaine in January 2007. That percentage barely budged as the price rose.

Gen. antonio indjai

When the army ousted the president here just months before his term was to expire, a thirst for power by the officer corps did not fully explain the offensive. But a sizeable increase in drug trafficking in this troubled country since the military took over has raised suspicions that the president’s sudden removal was what amounted to a cocaine coup.

“People say I'm a drug trafficker," said Gen. Antonio Injai, right, the army chief of staff. "Anybody who has the proof, present it!”

The military brass here has long been associated with drug trafficking, but the coup last spring means soldiers now control the drug racket and the country itself, turning Guinea-Bissau in the eyes of some international counter narcotics experts into a nation where illegal drugs are sanctioned at the top.

“They are probably the worst narco-state that’s out there on the continent,” said a senior Drug Enforcement Administration official in Washington, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize his work in the region. “They are a major problem.”

Since the April 12 coup, more small twin-engine planes than ever are making the 1,600-mile Atlantic crossing from Latin America to the edge of Africa’s western bulge, landing in Guinea-Bissau’s fields, uninhabited islands and remote estuaries. There they unload their cargoes of cocaine for transshipment north, experts say.

The fact that the army has put in place a figurehead government and that military officers continue to call the shots behind the scenes only intensifies the problem.

The political instability continued as soldiers attacked an army barracks on Oct. 21, apparently in an attempt to topple the government. A dissident army captain was arrested on an offshore island on Oct. 27 and accused of being the organizer of the counter-coup attempt. Two critics of the government were also assaulted and then left outside the capital.

From April to July there were at least 20 landings in Guinea-Bissau of small planes that United Nations officials suspected were drug flights — traffic that could represent more than half the estimated annual cocaine volume for the region. The planes need to carry a one-and-a-half-ton cargo to make the trans-Atlantic trip viable, officials say. Europe, already the destination for about 50 tons of cocaine annually from West Africa, United Nations officials say, could be in for a far greater flood.

Was the military coup itself a diversion for drug trafficking? Some experts point to signs that as the armed forces were seizing the presidency, taking over radio stations and arresting government officials, there was a flurry of drug activity on one of the islands of the Bijagós Archipelago, what amounted to a three-day offloading of suspicious sacks.

That surreptitious activity appears to have been simply a prelude.

“There has clearly been an increase in Guinea-Bissau in the last several months,” said Pierre Lapaque, head of the regional United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime for West and Central Africa. “We are seeing more and more drugs regularly arriving in this country.”

Mr. Lapaque called the trafficking in Guinea-Bissau “a major worry” and an “open sore,” and, like others, suggested that it was no coincidence that trafficking had spiked since the coup.

Joaquin Gonzalez-Ducay, the European Union ambassador in Bissau, said: “As a country it is controlled by those who formed the coup d’état. They can do what they want to do. Now they have free rein.”

Ibraima Papa Camara

The senior D.E.A. official said, “People at the highest levels of the military are involved in the facilitation” of trafficking, and added: “In other African countries government officials are part of the problem. In Guinea-Bissau, it is the government itself that is the problem.”

United Nations officials agree. “The coup was perpetrated by people totally embedded in the drugs business,” said one official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the political environment here.

The country’s former prosecutor general, Octávio Inocêncio Alves, said, “A lot of the traffickers have direct relationships with the military.”

The civilian government and the military leadership that sits watchfully in its headquarters in an old Portuguese fort at the other end of town reject the United Nations drug accusations.

“People say I’m a drug trafficker,” said Gen. Antonio Injai, the army chief of staff, raising his voice in an interview. “Anybody who has the proof, present it! We ask the international community to give us the means to fight drugs.”

Mr. Gonzalez-Ducay, the ambassador, responded, “I can’t believe that the one who controls the drug trafficking is going to fight the drug trafficking.”

Relaxed and wearing a colourful two-piece outfit and gold chains, General Injai sat under a giant kapok tree surrounded by uniformed aides. He laughed when asked whether he was the real power in Guinea-Bissau and blamed the deposed prime minister, Carlos Gomes Jr., for provoking the coup through his military alliance with Angola.

In 2010, the United States government explicitly linked the country’s military to the drug trade: the Treasury Department declared as drug kingpins both the ex-chief of the navy, Rear Adm. Bubo Na Tchuto, and the air force chief of staff, Ibraima Papa Camara, and froze whatever assets they may have had in the United States.

Now, however, American officials are making overtures to the transitional government, despite other Western embassies’ hands-off approach to protest the military’s continued meddling in politics. General Injai expressed appreciation for the American position, and called the United Nations special representative here a “bandito.”

Russell Hanks, the American diplomat responsible for Guinea-Bissau, said: “You will only have an impact on this transition by engagement, not by isolation. These are the people who came in to pick up the pieces after the coup.” Mr. Hanks is based outside the country because the United States closed its embassy here during the civil war in 1998.

Officials point to several indicators, besides the increase in plane flights, to show that Guinea-Bissau has become a major drug transit hub.

They cite photographs of a recently well-cleared stretch of road in a remote rural area near the Senegal border, complete with turning space for small planes. The clearing was created under the supervision of military authorities, officials say. They also note mysterious absences of fuel at the tiny international airport in the capital, presumed stolen by traffickers.

Four months before the coup, a plane, with the aid of uniformed soldiers, landed in a rural area in the centre of the country, which is the size of Belgium, said João Biague, head of the judicial police. The landing took place not far from General Injai’s farm.

Mr. Biague heads what is nominally the country’s anti-drug agency, though he made it clear that he and his staff are largely powerless to practice any form of drug interdiction despite receiving frequent tips about small planes landing from abroad. “The traffickers know we can’t do much,” he said.

The agency is so starved of funds that he does not have money to put gas in its few vehicles, Mr. Biague said. Paint is peeling on the outside of the judicial police’s two-story colonial building downtown, and mold blackens the ground-floor pilasters. It is allocated $85 a week from the country’s Justice Ministry.

“The agents we have in the field want to give up because they have nothing to eat,” Mr. Biague said.

In the last three years, there have been more than a half-dozen unsolved political assassinations here, including of the longtime president and the former army chief of staff, as well as at least two coup attempts, besides the successful coup. Nobody has been successfully prosecuted, though drugs were linked to many of them.

Rear Adm. Bubo Na Tchuto

Last month, the justice minister of the transitional government warned opposition politicians not to speak publicly of “cases that don’t concern them,” under threat of criminal penalty.

This week, the repression appeared to tighten. General Injai threatened journalists with death if they asked questions about the assassination of the former president, and he warned that there would be many arrests as a result of the counter-coup attempt.

There is remarkably little public talk of the unsolved political killings or of the country’s relations with the drug business. There have been no demonstrations; no discussion in the Parliament, shut down since July; no news conferences.

“A country that’s not capable of discussing its own problems — it’s not a country, it’s not a state,” said Mr. Alves, the former prosecutor general.

Jackie Selebi

South African police, co-operating with their Brazilian counterparts, are attempting to end a cocaine smuggle operation which has involved container loads of drugs, some of which were destined for the British market. The case underlines the importance of South Africa as a transit-point in the international drugs trade.

The key suspect is a Cuban exile, Nelson Yester-Garrido, who fled to South Africa in 1997 from the United States. He was wanted for attempting to buy a Soviet-era submarine to smuggle industrial quantities of cocaine into America.

The story had all the elements of a spy-thriller, complete with fast cars, expensive properties a racy life-style and plenty of dead bodies. The only difference is that it was not fiction. The United States attempted to have Yester-Garrido extradited.

“[Yester-Garrido] and this group were negotiating for the purchase of a Russian diesel submarine for Columbian drug suppliers, who intended to use it to transport cocaine to the west coast of the US and Canada,” one affidavit said. That attempt was foiled, and with the American police on his trail, Yester-Garrido fled to South Africa.

Glen Agliotti

There he is alleged to have continued his drugs dealing, leading to his arrest in August 2010. Chris Els, of the South African Police, told the New Statesman that the investigation is continuing, since those involved are still plying their trade. “They won’t stop,” he said. Brazilian authorities are holding eight suspects in an operation that was co-ordinated with the South African authorities. “The Brazilian end is still being sorted out,” said Warrant-Officer Els.

The South African arrests took place in a raid during which 166 kilos of cocaine were seized at the port of Ngqura, near Port Elizabeth. The drugs were found hidden in the metal pillars of a container transporting used cooking oil.

According to Officer Els, the container only one of a number being used by the smugglers, some of which had slipped past the authorities. “A further three to four containers are still outstanding,” he said.

The British link was revealed in what was probably the most high-profile conviction since the end of apartheid. South Africa’s most senior law enforcement officer, Jackie Selebi, the National Police Commissioner was convicted of corruption and sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment in 2010.

Nelson Yester-Garrido

Selebi had been a trusted associate of President Thabo Mbeki. He became the first African to hold the post of president of Interpol, amid much publicity. Selebi was found guilty of accepting cash in brown paper bags from a known drugs trafficker, Glen Agliotti. Selebi and Agliotti used to meet almost daily at the Brazilian coffee shop in Sandton, a plush Johannesburg suburb. Among those sharing their table was Yester-Garrido.

In Johannesburg, Yester-Garrido became close to Wingate-Pearse, an importer and exporter in the clothing trade, and to his business partner, Mazzotti, who rose in the rag trade from street hawker to “brand consultant”. These men, in turn, were close to Agliotti, several sources who knew them said, and company records confirm.

Café Society
The association between the men was most visible in their regular lunches at the Sandton City branch of the Brazilian, where, said one person who knew them at the time, they “lorded it” over the coffee bar. Though Yester-Garrido denied through a lawyer even knowing Agliotti, one source specifically remembered both of them joining in the lunches.

From those lunches sprang at least three business enterprises: the close corporation Tradefirst 1095, which sources sympathetic to the men claim was a vehicle to invest in an IT business, and partnerships in two Sandton City clothing boutiques, Fubu Collection and DKNY.

In Tradefirst, Agliotti, Mazzotti and Wingate-Pearse were among seven partners.

The partners in Fubu included Mazzotti, Wingate-Pearse and their wives—sisters Analisa Mazzotti and Donatella Wingate-Pearse—as well as Agliotti’s former wife, Vivien, with whom he has remained close.

Adriano Mazzotti

DKNY was backed by members of the same group, with Donatella Wingate-Pearse and Analisa Mazzotti as the public faces.

Was there more than lunch and designer brands between the rag-traders, Agliotti and Yester-Garrido?

Two sources who knew the coffee-club group have claimed their activities were far from innocent. One said simply: “They did [trafficked] drugs.”

Another claimed detailed knowledge of how clothing imports were used for illegal business. The source described how bales of imported second-hand clothing were brought to a bonded warehouse—a government-licensed facility where in-transit wares are stored pending re-export—where Yester-Garrido would identify certain bales to be removed illegally.

These, the source claimed, contained concealed drugs, though he had not seen them himself. Wingate-Pearse and Mazzotti reject these claims. The source claimed that Agliotti’s role was to arrange police protection through Selebi.

Selebi has declined repeatedly to answer to specific allegations, but has issued broad denials of criminality—or of even knowing of Agliotti’s alleged crimes.

DKNY

Agliotti now stands accused of using his mastery of the import-export game to subvert customs procedures and to facilitate the smuggling of drugs and contraband cigarettes. When the Scorpions raided him last year the search warrant authorised them to confiscate “documents that will indicate the existence of imported and or exported containers containing amongst other [things] clothing, engine parts, ceramic tiles, alcohol and tyres”, as well as waybills and customs clearance documents.

In the so-called Paparas trial, set down to start in October, he is accused of being the “Landlord” responsible for a R200-million shipment of hashish and marijuana.

Two sources sympathetic to Wingate-Pearse and Mazzotti denied they had done business with Yester-Garrido. However, one confirmed Agliotti had done customs clearing for Wingate-Pearse.

On April 23 2002, police, executing an Interpol warrant issued by US authorities, arrested Yester-Garrido near his upmarket Sandhurst, Johannesburg, home. At the time he was driving a Mercedes registered to Wingate-Pearse. Some of Wingate-Pearse’s business documents were found at his home.

Chris Couremetis

And when Yester-Garrido appeared in court in drawn-out extradition proceedings, evidence was presented that he had multiple identities and passports, including one bearing his photograph, but Wingate-Pearse’s personal particulars.

The two sympathetic sources denied that Mazzotti and Wingate-Pearse knew at that stage of Yester-Garrido’s true identity and fugitive status. One denied the documents indicated a business relationship: Yester-Garrido had acted only as a translator for Wingate-Pearse in Angolan dealings, the source claimed.

Wingate-Pearse’s lawyer said the alleged passport was a photocopy, which proved nothing, and that until Yester-Garrido’s arrest his client had known him only as Antonio Lamas. “His true identity was never disclosed.”

After Yester-Garrido’s arrest, the heat was turned up on the Wingate-Pearse and Mazzotti families, culminating in an April 2005 Sars raid on 20 or more premises associated with them.

Legal authorities said “a large quantity of smuggled second-hand clothes” and R1-million in cash had been found. Wingate-Pearse denies that his activities were illegal.
Mazzotti and Wingate-Pearse appear to blame Agliotti for Yester-Garrido’s arrest and the raids on their premises.

The sources sympathetic to them said there was a strong suspicion that Paul Stemmet—another key figure in the Selebi-Agliotti saga—was initially involved in the Cuban’s arrest. Stemmet’s security firm, Palto, freelanced for police under Selebi’s orders, while maintaining close relations with Agliotti. However, a senior police source denied Stemmet’s involvement.

Gangland Boss Beeka

One source said the arrest was completed by Superintendent Tallies Taljaard of the police organised crime unit—previously identified by the M&G as a police headquarters officer who acted as Palto’s paymaster. Taljaard also made a later affidavit, which Sars used in obtaining warrants for the raids on the Wingate-Pearses and Mazzottis, the M&G has established.

It is no secret that Agliotti acted as a police informer in the past. Wingate-Pearse’s lawyer confirmed his client had been “aware that Agliotti was a police informer, but did not consider the possibility that this may have led to any investigations”.

It is not uncommon for criminals, particularly in the drug trade, to seek informer status, as it can be manipulated to target competitors—and conceivably innocent parties—while buying indemnity for themselves.

It was during the Selebi trial that documents were produced, indicating the route into Britain.

UK Customs and Excise had contacted the South African police seeking information about Agliotti. He was accused of trafficking "significant quantities of cocaine to the UK" in association with others. The drugs, hidden in a container of furniture, would be flown from Venezuela to Angola and then driven by road to South Africa. According to the information, a dummy run had been conducted via Tilbury in 2004. Three "clean" containers would precede a further three "dirty" containers, which would be packed with drugs. A British associate; "Baldy John" was named in the document, complete with his address and mobile phone numbers.

Unfortunately for UK Customs and Excise, the docket was passed from Selebi to Agliotti, who shared it with Yester-Garrido. Agliotti subsequently turned state evidence, helping to convict the Police Commissioner, and escaped prosecution.

Open season of killing hoodlums

The South African police are currently searching for a number of others involved in the current cocaine shipment. These include Shane Paul Bhatti, who has lived in both Zambia and Zimbabwe. Warrant-Officer Els says he has spoken to Bhatti, who was considering handing himself in for questioning.

Lolly Jackson

But the murder of an associate, Chris Couremetis, who was gunned down at a wedding, has left Bhatti fearing for his life. The murder had all the hallmarks of an assassination, with Couremetis, known locally as "Mr Cocaine", killed by two men armed with an AK-47 and a 9mm handgun, as he got out of his Porsche Cayenne. Chris Couremetis was gunned down at a lavish wedding at the Cradle of Humankind by professional hitmen in a similar fashion to that of Cape Town gangland boss Beeka. In both instances a motorbike was used in the attacks, and both gangsters were prominent figures in the same international underworld circles.

Couremetis was on his way to alleged Cuban drug lord Nelson Pablo Yester-Garrido’s house in Morningside for the celebrations of his and his Italian girlfriend’s baby shower when he was ambushed. The last text messages on the 35-year-old Greek’s cellphone were to Yester-Garrido, saying he was on his way. Nelson Yester-Garrido, who was allegedly found with a gun belonging to Couremetis, was questioned at the time.

Yuri “The Russian” Ulianitski

Yuri “The Russian” Ulianitski died in a hail of bullets as he was leaving a restaurant with his family in Milnerton, Cape Town. “The Russian”, one of the city’s most feared crime bosses, owned The Castle strip club and was out on bail on charges of conspiracy to kidnap, possession of illegal firearms and drugs and other offences when he died. His daughter, Yulia, 4, also died and his wife, Irina, was wounded. The late-night ambush happened while Ulianitski was driving in a black Audi Q7 4x4.

Lolly Jackson, controversial strip club franchise boss and money launderer, was gunned down on May 3 at the house of a friend, George “The Baker”, in Kempton Park. His body was riddled with 15 bullets fired from a .22 calibre firearm.

The man suspected of killing Jackson, Cypriot George Louka, allegedly contacted former Gauteng Crime Intelligence boss Joey Mabasa within minutes of the murder. Mabasa and two of his senior colleagues were the first police officers to arrive at the murder scene. Jackson’s neighbour in upmarket Bedfordview, Krejcir, and three associates also arrived on the scene Louka fled to Cyprus.

Krejcir was sentenced in absentia in the Czech Republic to six-and-a-half years imprisonment for tax fraud and reportedly investigated on charges of conspiracy to murder, counterfeiting, extortion and abduction – is a flamboyant man, given to ostentatious displays of wealth and power.

krejcir radovan

In recent weeks his links to a coterie of controversial South African businessmen and underworld figures has been in the spotlight.

He arrived in South Africa in 2007 and was arrested at OR Tambo international airport on an Interpol “red notice” while travelling with a Seychelles passport, issued in the name Egbert Jules Savy. An application for his extradition was unsuccessful.

Krejcir, who has applied for political asylum, has since ensconced himself in South Africa. He holds court at the Harbour Fish Market restaurant in the Bedford Centre, usually with one of his two Porsches, a Lamborghini Murcielago, a Ferrari Spider or a Mercedes parked in a private, roped-off bay near the front door. He has free reign of the restaurant.

One corner of the outside patio is shielded with bullet-proof glass, installed at Krejcir’s expense after he discovered that a “Russian hit team” had been sent to South Africa by the Czech government to snatch or kill him and planned to position snipers in a block of flats across the road from the restaurant.

Renowned German Porsche converter Uwe Gemballa disappeared in February 2010 soon after he arrived at OR Tambo International Airport. In October, his body, wrapped in cellophane, was found in a shallow grave near Atteridgeville, Pretoria West. In a most unusual way for the South African judiciary, Thabiso Mpshe, 28, was arrested, tried and convicted within a day and sentenced to 20 years.

It is extraordinary that he was arrested in the morning, and a day later started his jail term. Two men who were allegedly involved in kidnapping Gemballa from the airport are awaiting trial.

At the time of his coming to South Africa, Gemballa was involved in deals with Krejcir and Jackson. They aimed to set up a branch of Gemballa’s Porsche conversion business in South Africa. Though never seen again, Gemballa contacted his wife, Christiane, the day after he arrived in South Africa, asking her to urgently transfer €1m (R9.5m) into his bank account, as he had incurred unforeseen expenses. This was the last she heard from him.

Gemballa was facing investigations by the German authorities into alleged tax evasion and money laundering. It was alleged at the time that Gemballa’s much sought after sports car conversions were used to smuggle foreign currency into South Africa.

Gemballa had contacted Jerome Safi, a Krejcir associate, about the deal before he arrived in the country.

The funding, of up to R100-million, was going to come from Krejcir and slain Teazers boss Lolly Jackson.

In September 2010 Mpye led investigators to Gemballa's body. He also pointed out the house in Edenvale, Johannesburg, where Gemballa was held before being suffocated.

The house was rented to Krejcir's financial manager, Savov, who claimed he was out of the country at the time and denied Gemballa was killed at his home.A former business associate turned rival of Krejcir's, gold-refinery owner Juan Meyer, publicly claimed the Czech was using cars imported from Gemballa to smuggle cash into South Africa. Meyer claims that he overheard an angry telephone exchange between them about money owed to Krejcir in September 2009. The phone conversation related to a Porsche imported in September 2009 and the fact that, when it arrived, the cash it was supposed to contain was missing.

In his affidavit, Meyer stated: "Radovan said that if Gemballa did not pay, he would get trouble." Krejcir has denied that he ever mentioned Gemballa's name to Meyer.

Krejcir denied involvement in Gemballa's kidnapping and murder. "I saw Gemballa once in my life for a couple of minutes at a car show in Prague in 1995.

"This is…the first and last time I saw him, not only saw him, even talked to him. But maybe it is the reason why I want to kill him, because I saw him 15 years ago?"

South Africa became an important element in the global illicit drugs trade at the end of apartheid. Border controls were reduced as the authorities fighting against the African National Congress evaporated. As the Vienna-based UN Office on Drugs and Crime report for 2012 put it:

The subsequent end to decades of international isolation also increased South Africa’s exposure to transnational drug trafficking, which led in turn to increased domestic illicit drug use. Traffickers also took advantage of the country’s good infrastructure and South Africa emerged as a transit hub for cocaine shipments from South America destined for Europe, as well as for heroin shipments from Afghanistan and Pakistan destined for Europe.
International drugs syndicates from the Italian Mafia to the Chinese Triads found a safe haven for their operations. South Africa was used to trade in everything from rhino horn to abalone and marijuana. Some of these networks had been established well before Nelson Mandela took over the presidency. Others were linked to the ANC’s operations in exile.

Repeated attempts to extradite organised crime bosses from South Africa have failed. South Africa’s strict protection of human rights has proved a serious obstacle, preventing alleged criminals from facing justice in other jurisdictions. Vito Palazzolo, a convicted Mafia banker, who was involved in the 1970s pizzeria opium smuggling made famous in the film The French Connection lived happily in South Africa and Namibia since the 1980s. It was only when he went to Thailand to visit his son that he was finally arrested and extradited to the Italy, where he has already been convicted.

Britain’s Serious Organised Crime Agency, SOCA, is well aware of these activities. While they would not comment on the documents from the Selebi case or the operations of Yester-Garrido, they did issue this statement. “SOCA remains alive to established and emerging organised crime threats. Understanding and tackling the efforts of criminals to traffic class A drugs towards Europe and the UK, including via the African continent, is an ongoing priority, and we work with partner agencies domestically and internationally to protect the UK public from the impact of the Class A drugs trade."

UPDATE Feb 2013
Drug charges against Yester-Garrido dropped. The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) on Friday said the reason charges were withdrawn against a controversial former Cuban intelligence officer is because no one was available to translate Brazilian official documents into English. Nelson Yester-Garrido was arrested in 2010 in connection with a massive cocaine bust.

He was also previously arrested at his home in Hyde Park in northern Johannesburg following the circulation of an Interpol warrant stating he was wanted in the United States on drugs smuggling charges.

NPA spokesperson Tshepo Ndwalaza said, “We are not in a position to confirm when the charges will be brought back.

“We are sure that as time goes on we will be able to reinstate the charges when we have done the necessary preparations.”

The transnational cocaine illicit trade has considerably expanded over the past generation and a notable trend that has emerged since the beginning of this century is the use of the Balkan countries as a main hub for the transfer of the narcotic to other European markets.

This trend was directed due to a combination of economic and political circumstances and it will likely continue in the future. The worldwide turnover of the cocaine contraband is difficult to be estimated accurately, with figures up to 500 billion USD. The majority of these ill gains are “laundered” eventually through the legal international banking and finance system, whilst the influence of the cocaine cartels is all-encompassing internationally and in the Balkans in particular due to the sheer amount of capital they generate.

Montenegro is a major transit hub for cocaine trade where Latin American criminal networks cooperate with Southern Italian “Mafia” groups and Albanian and “Yugoslavian” drug kingpins.

Cocaine is being transported via small and mid-sized vessels, often used just for one voyage and incorporated in offshore tax heavens owned by maverick ship owners. Numerous cases have proved the link between the transfer of cocaine from mostly Colombia, Panama and Venezuela to Montenegro through Western African ports in Senegal, Nigeria, Guinea and Sierra Leone.

Each year it is estimated that up to 1,000 tons of cocaine (first product) is being produced in Southern America, with an initial price up to 10,000 USD per kilo. In the European metropolises the drug is distributed for up to 1.5 million Euros per kilo after its been cut 4 or 5 times, thus offering immense profits for all intermediates involved. For a country of 600,000 people such as Montenegro the influence of cocaine wholesale transporters and distributors can be significant.

The ports of Lisbon, Malaga, Marseilles, Palermo, Napoli, and Bari are often used as destination hubs or as intermediate routes. The same networks make use of the “airport route” of Milano, Paris, Amsterdam, London, Madrid, Istanbul, Frankfurt, Rome and Vienna. The proliferation of tourist destinations, low budget airlines and peripheral international airports, as well as the border-free Schengen zone agreement has greatly assisted in the cocaine trade in Europe.

Europol has noted since the early 2000′s the formation of stable transport routes in the Balkans for the re-distribution of the drug to other markets, as well as, for the increased local consumption. The existence of well-formed organized crime networks previously or currently involved in human trafficking, heroin trade and tobacco contraband, provided ample human resources, experienced in dealing with the shadowy world of illicit organized activities. Moreover the lax in border controls in the region between Montenegro, Kosovo, Albania and Bosnia due to the recent political history, and the widespread corruption in customs and border controls, was also another strong impetus.

Thessaloniki

The Colombian Cartels in the Balkans cooperates with the Italian N’dragetta, the Kosovo Albanian mafia and intermediates from Montenegro, Greece, Romania and Albania. The focal ports from where the shipments arrive are: Bar, Durres, Vlore, Thessaloniki and Piraeus.

The importance for the Colombians concerning the Balkans is it's proximity to the big Western European markets (Italy, Germany, UK, France, Portugal). The corrupted public sector and the existence of very powerful criminal groups that agree to use their countries as bases for the export of this drug.

Outline
Merchant ships load cocaine from Columbia, Venezuela and arrive at the aforementioned ports. Then the “product” is packaged and stored in warehouses and then the “product” is divided, a percentage remains in the home market and the remainder travels via trucks, commercial trains or vessels onward to Western Europe.

Lastly the Colombian cartels have a very strong base in Spain and in the Netherlands, where Balkan groups also operate and communication lines between them are established in these territories, before decisions for the shipments are being made.

The bulk of the cocaine arriving in ports of Montenegro is destined for European markets and the local Balkan ones. The Kosovo territory plays an important role because shipments are often gathered there and then are distributed in the north from Bosnia or Serbia to Croatia and Hungary and then to Western-Central Europe.

Other shipments travel to the South through Albania and Greece and then to Western Europe mainly through vessels. Lastly there is the route from Greek ports up North via the Balkans towards central Europe.

Joca Amsterdam

Europe is certainly a prime destination for Latin American cocaine traders, for two reasons. One is the rise of Euro against the Dollar since 2003. The latter is the currency used in all Americas, so the smugglers earn a harder currency (The Euro) which they exchange for Dollars thus increasing their financial strength. The second reason is the unification of Europe and the non-existent border controls in an area of almost 500 hundred million people that created over the past decade tremendous opportunities for all kinds of organized illegal activities. The police authorities in many European countries proved ineffective to deal with this kind of situation.

Balkan Cocaine Trade
In July 2011 169.8 kilos of cocaine was confiscated in the port of Thessaloniki, originating from Bolivia. The Greek and Serbian authorities were involved in the interception and surveillance of the international smuggling network of Darko Simovic, Serbian national, aged 51 years old who has arranged the shipment. Thirteen people were arrested regarding the case. The shipment was coming under the cover of a soya cargo. Three people appeared to claim the cargo and were subsequently arrested, which subsequently revealed their accomplices. The price of that shipment was worth over 25 million Euros.

Darko Saric

According to Serbian authorities, Darko Šarić was leader of powerful Balkan criminal organization which had been trafficking cocaine from South America via West Africa through the Balkans, Italy and Slovenia to Western Europe and had was making around billion euros each year. Šarić also, pocketed 30 millions Euro when he sold Serbia's leading distribution company ŠTAMPA SISTEM to the German media concern WAZZ.

Darko Šarić was virtually unknown outside criminal circles until October 2009 when more than 2 tons of cocaine was seized near the Uruguayan coast. A list of Šaric companies shows that he laundered money by investing in hotels in Serbia,property and cigarette smuggling. Šaric also controlled other companies in Serbia and Montenegro which were involved in various activities, from media and construction to kindergartens and night clubs. Darko Šarić fled before he was arrested, but some of his associates now live in Montenegro where the government has so far not acted to arrest them and extradite them to countries where they are wanted. Darko Šarić's real assets in Serbia have been seized by the state but he still allegedly has property in Montenegro.

In January 2012 the Greek police arrested four Montenegrin citizens in Athens involved in a massive money laundering case on behalf of the cocaine cartel run by the Serbian-Montenegrin national Darko Saric. The four were in their 20′s studying as a cover in Greek private colleges while they were involved in laundering Saric’s funds received from the Latin American cartels. In their premises in a wealthy Athenian suburb evidence was found implicating them in a 20 million Euros laundering scheme over the last three years. Hundreds of thousands of Euros were also found in cash along with valuable luxury items and expensive real estate.

Damjan Dudić and Srdana Dudić

Rodoljub Radulović, 63, is among the leadership of Šarić’s criminal enterprise, controlling shipping routes in South America and Europe and running transactions through proxies and shell companies in the Cayman Islands, Serbia, and the Americas. Argentinian prosecution records and Greek police statements obtained by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project show that Radulović and Šarić are targeted by British investigators, the U.S. DEA and South American prosecutors.

Citing a confidential report received from the British Serious Organized Crime Agency, Argentinian investigative files provide details of the drug operation and alsoreveal that they tracked a string of Serbians and other nationals of the former Yugoslavia who operated out of Argentina. The Argentine documents span from April, 2009 until March of 2010 and include confidential correspondence between South American and Serbian police, passport information and surveillance. The reports show that Šarić, a fugitive suspected of operating a large international drug ring, travelled from Brazil to Argentina by airplane and automobile in 2007 and 2008. He apparently used a Slovenian and Slovakian passport.

Rodoljub Radulović

The records also say Šarić and Radulović disguised their smuggled cocaine on ships carrying legal cargo such as sugar and cement. The ships are listed as the Verti and the Golden is registered in Liberia. In total, the reports show at least eight men from the Balkans participated in the smuggling, including one who Argentine investigators said was a missionary for the Serbian Orthodox Church.

Rodoljub Radulović never had much trouble making friends, partners or money. He built a business reputation by building companies in Russia, Austria, the United States and elsewhere, and arrived back in Belgrade in the early 2000s ready to deal. He bragged openly about his success in the U.S., attracting Balkan partners who helped him build a banana import business, hotels, a casino, and real estate holdings.

Investigators and prosecutors in Greece, KOLING headquarters - place where Radulovic registered his companies South America and elsewhere are or have investigated Radulović and fugitive drug trafficker Darko Šarić as leaders of a sprawling and lucrative cocaine cartel , according to investigative records obtained by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). Šarić who was indicted in Belgrade in 2010 and remains a fugitive, and Radulović, who has been charged in Greece but nowhere else, could not be reached for comment.

Dudić

Today, two of his Balkan business partners are dead. One was a drug middleman shot to death in broad daylight in a Montenegrin café, the other committed suicide under crushing debt. Radulović’s whereabouts are unknown. An OCCRP investigation of court documents, police reports, investigative filings and property records from five countries reveals Radulović’s alleged drug activities were happening as he built connections with several prominent people, including:

Milomir Joksimović, owner of more than 100 companies and friend of imprisoned mob leader Joca Amsterdam
Bogdan Rodić, part of a retail dynasty who is a partner of Radulović in a €1.2 million building in the town of Pančevo
Dragan Dudić, accused drug trafficker and the owner of Port Risan, a seaport near Kotor in Montenegro. Radulović turned virtually all of his assets over to Dudić in 2006, and Dudić was gunned down four years later.
Maksut Ćatović, who produced many famous Serbian movies including ‘’Underground.’’ He also brought stars such as Luciano Pavarotti, Madonna, Sting, Metalica and AC/DC to
play in Belgrade
Milan Zukanović, who operated real estate and construction businesses for two decades until last month when he shot himself in the head
Slavko Despot, an exclusive importer of Cuban cigars
Andrija Krlović, Šarić’s lawyer who was indicted last year for money laundering
Tennis and TV production

Milomir Joksimović

Radulović formed relationship with an Ecuadorian company that is one of the world’s largest producers of bananas and pineapples, and in 2002 he established the company Bana King in Serbia to ship and sell produce, according to business partners and company records. The deal boosted Radulović ’s reputation in Serbian business circles.

Radulović established Bana King with two prominent Serbs, Milomir Joksimović, known as Miša Omega, and Slavko Despot, a leading importer of Cuban cigars, business registry records show.Joksimović was also a friend to feared and brutal crime figure Sreten Jocić, aka Joca Amsterdam, and was a guest on Jocić’s 45th birthday on Oct. 27, 2007, according to 2009 testimony at Jocić’s trial in Belgrade. Jocić is in jail for ordering a murder and is awaiting trial for the assassination of Croatian journalist Ivo Pukanić.

Slavko Despot, Radulović’s other partner in Bana King, is the owner of Julieta, one of Serbia’s largest importers of Cuban cigars, and owns Casa de Habano in Serbia and Bosnia and Julieta, a restaurant in Belgrade. Julieta Company is owned by the offshore company Alpha Management Consultants LLC based in Delaware , which is owned by Despot who also has power of attorney over it.

Goran Soković in Red

Then last year, Greek police arrested two of Dudić’s children and charged them with laundering drug money for Šarić and Radulović.

OCCRP has obtained documents in Belgrade showing that at the time of his murder, Dudić was under investigation in Serbia where he was seen as one of leaders of cocaine
smuggling network. A special prosecutor in Serbia told OCCRP that the investigation opened in January 2010 and lasted until his death.

Exclusive police documents obtained by OCCRP shows that Dudić was considered an
Dragan Dudić integral part of Šarić’s gang: ‘’Dudić, along with Šarić Darko, Soković Goran, Vujanović Željko and several unknown persons, organized this crime group,’’ the document
said.

In June, 2009, three years after he took control of Radulović ’s company, Dudić provided €265,000 in cash to buy a yacht that was supposed to be used in drug trafficking, according to records of the investigation. In October, 2009, Argentina police intercepted the yacht off the coast of Uraguay and seized more than two tons of cocaine.

The Saric group arranged another cocaine shipment from Argentinathis time through the vessel “Zlatni lav” which was carrying 200 kilos of cocaine. The vessel and the cocaine were confiscated in Italy after a coordinated effort of several European police authorities and the DEA. The group along with associates from the America’s and Europe were found also to have set several four offshore entities which funnelled 20 million Euros into their accounts between March 2009 and April 2010.

In March 2011 200 kilos of cocaine were seized in Durres port in Albania, the shipment had used Spain as an intermediate stop. Subsequently the operation resulted in the seizure of one ton of cocaine and 160 kg of hashish in an international police operation led by the Spanish Civil Guard and coordinated by Europol.

In May 2011 the Greek special tax service and DEA managed to confiscate 290 kilos of cocaine in Thessaloniki being sent via a vessels supposedly transferring wood from Paraguay. Nineteen people from various Balkan countries were arrested whilst the organizer was an Argentinian woman, operating on behalf of a cartel in Buenos Aires.

Yacht 'Maui'used for smuggling 2 tons of cocaine

In July 2012 the Greek police in Thessaloniki managed to confiscate 168 kilos of cocaine and arrest two Spanish nationals, one Portuguese and one Bulgarian hotel owner. They were responsible for importing the shipment and were extremely careful of not being spotted by changing hotels each night and using pre-paid mobile phones originating from Poland. They used taxis and public transport for their movements in the region while waiting for their shipments. According to the Greek police , the DEA had informed them that Colombian citizens were actually in Thessaloniki the previous days arranging for the transfer, being very careful not to get tracked and eventually they managed to get away presumable by venturing North and evading surveillance, unlike their accomplices.

In general since 2007 the Balkan police authorities have scaled up their efforts to confiscate large amounts of cocaine, although the flow is actually growing judging by the figures of the health authorities on addiction levels across the region and similar findings across Europe. Despite the modernization of police methods, training and cooperation with international authorities, the lure of quick profits and the existence of large customer base, provides no optimism for a solution on the issue in the near future.

Moreover the increased consumption of cocaine in the Istanbul metropolis by an affluent upper middle class and the introduction of this drug to Russia in even larger quantities may actually increase Balkans importance for the cocaine cartels, as an ideal geo-economic hub for this illicit trade. Lastly the complexity of organized crime activities in the Balkan region has further increased with the involvement of American cocaine cartels, making global organized crime interpersonal connections even stronger. Thus it can be safely assumed that nowadays heroin traffickers, using the “Balkan route”, Colombian cartels and a nexus of corrupted officials from Greece to Croatia, form a formidable network of persons known to each other, with access to great amounts of capital and ability to influence local decision makers, as well as, international power centres be it economic or political ones.

Colombian Cement
Organized crime and cement often go together, but in Guinea Bissau this happens in an untraditional way. The cement importing and sales company, SOMEC, was salvaged by Colombian Juan Pablo Camacho, a convicted drug trafficker who spent five years in prison in Miami on drug trafficking charges. He and his partner, Luis Fernando Ortega Mejia, bought the company that had been ruined in 1998 by Guinea Bissau’s civil war.

Camacho and Mejia were both detained in September 2006 in the biggest bust the country had ever seen. The Judiciary Police seized firearms, ammunition, grenades, laptops, 674 kilos of cocaine and $39 million in various currencies. Unusual, for a cement company. Carmelo Vasquez Guerra, a Venezuelan, was the DC9’s pilot who was said to have “escaped” from the airport while his airplane was being seized,
and four other members of his crew were arrested.

But Bissau isn't the only country to arrest Vasquez Guerra for the presumably major offense of flying box-car sized loads of cocaine, only to be forced--or persuaded--to let him go. It's happened in Mexico. and Mali, where he was released under mysterious and unexplained circumstances.

The Colombians, were also able to walk away. The cocaine and money were stored in the treasury vaults, for safekeeping. The next day, the army seized both the drugs and the cash, and the evidence vanished. No evidence, no case. The Colombians were freed, thanks to Carlos Lopes Correira and Armando Mango, the same lawyers who defended Augusto Bliri.

Camacho denied every accusation and said that his wife and five children, who were still in Bogotá, would soon arrive in Bissau and that he planned to live there for the next few years. The Colombians are said to have left the country since, skipping bail, but the suspicion is that they still trade drugs, through a local network.

The Bissau-Conakry Strategy
Several years ago, two long-friends met in Guinea Conakry to talk about some business opportunities. They were Lasana Conte and Joao Vieira, the presidents of Guinea Conakry and Guinea Bissau. It was 2006 and cocaine trafficking in West Africa was at a development stage.

President Lasana Conte proposed that his counterpart Nino Vieira come on board, and then easily convinced him to allow Latin American traffickers to use Guinea Bissau as point of transit for their business. The profits would be huge, the risks minimal.

In late December 2008, Conte died, after almost forty years of dictatorship. A few hours after his death, a bunch of soldiers seized power in a coup d’etat. According to this new, untried military junta that has ruled Conakry since the coup, the overall goal is to clean up the country from corruption and extirpate cocaine trafficking — and to do so before the next scheduled elections, in 2010.

On February 26th, three days before Viera was killed, Lasana Conte’s oldest son Ousmane was arrested by the military on drug charges. He confessed on national television his involvement in drug trafficking, admitting his ties with some Colombian partners.

Ousmane Conte’s trial was broadcast on TV because the junta is trying to convince the Guinean people that they’re doing something necessary for their country, something good. It is a sort of propaganda. But according to some analysts at the UN Office of Drug Control, this is really a strategy to put the South American traffickers out of the game — to open a new era of African drug trafficking organized by Nigerians and Guineans, in cooperation with Guinea Bissau and Conakry armies.

The vacuum left by the double assassination of Vieira and Tagme and the situation in Conakry opens a new scenario in West Africa. The big plan is to transform the whole region into a sort of traffickers’ paradise, a dangerous plan that may seriously destabilize West Africa, leading to new conflicts in a region that is trying to heal from bloody civil wars from the past decade in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Ivory Coast.

Crack and Prostitution, Cocaine’s other Face
I drive through Reno, Bissau’s poorest slum, heading to Justino’s house. He’s 16 and a crack addict. Justino started to smoke quisa, as they call crack in Bissau, one year ago with his sister, Sadia. Now they both spend the whole day smoking the drug. Since they started, their old lives vanished. Justino lost his job and Sadia began to sell her own body. It’s 10 a.m. when I park my car in front of their house. Sadia waits by the door, holding her cachimbo, the crack pipe that has become her best friend. All around the house it’s garbage, rotten water and pigs.

This sounds like any other crack story, but there’s a difference: We are in Guinea Bissau, a place where crack was totally unknown until traffickers decided three years ago to target this country.

Sadia’s eyes are lost into the emptiness that surrounds her life. She waits for her brother to bring the drug. He comes with a friend and they immediately start smoking. I sit on the house floor with them. Sadia stretches out on a mattress while Justino and his friend feed the pipe; they start the ritual, which lasts at least 40 minutes.
They completely ignore me. They ignore everything but the cachimbo. Their entire lives revolve around the drug.

The situation in Bissau is particularly sad. There is no prevention, no rehabilitation. The issue is so new that there is no data available. It’s impossible to say how many people are lost in crack addiction. And mostly, there is no consciousness among the people about the long-term effects of this plague.

I meet Sadia and her group of friends at Baiana’s, at night. They are all prostitutes, all crack addicts. They spend most of the time waiting for a client to take them to a brothel. At one point a white, brand new, four-wheel-drive Toyota parks in front of the restaurant. On the doors, the Portuguese flag and the logo from the Cooperacion Portuguesa. The driver and his friend sit to drink some beers when Nadi and Tusha, two of Sadia’s friends, join the men. They will leave a few minutes later, on the jeep.

Prostitution in Bissau is not for locals. Nobody can afford to pay a prostitute, and in the local culture, women cannot refuse a man. All the clients are foreigners. Sometimes sailors from anywhere, but mostly people who work for NGOs, the UN or Embassy employees. Almost every night I shared a coffee with Nadi, Tusha, Sadia, Fatima, Carolina and other prostitutes. They are somewhat proud of their work, and they see crack addiction as a minor issue. Smoking a cigarette or doing quisa – it’s just the same, to them.

They all dream of going to Europe – to Spain or Portugal or Italy. Nadi has a daughter who lives in Spain. She had the child with a Spanish businessman who used to travel to Bissau often: she doesn’t live with her child but says she is happy all the same, for the 250 Euros per month she receives from the father. At least she has monthly revenue.

Nuno (an alias name) is a Portuguese sailor. He used to work on a ship but was forced to stay in Bissau after he fought with the captain. He asked his family to send him money to come back, but then got lost into alcohol. He’s a usual client of the girls and he has AIDS. He’s always drunk and spends his nights at the Baiana before heading off with two or three girls. The alarming issue is that none of the prostitutes that I met use condoms.

Since cocaine arrived in Bissau crack has spread, prostitution has increased and so has HIV-AIDS. Drug trafficking has destroyed the precarious political stability of Guinea Bissau and destroyed the lives of thousands of people. They are paying the price of Europe’s voracious appetite for coke.
Marco Vernaschi

West Africa’s perfect global positioning between South America and Europe, and its endemic corruption, poverty and disorganisation, have made it the new drug hub. And drug money is used to fund politics.

A Boeing 727 from Venezuela carrying an estimated five to nine tonnes of cocaine landed at Tarkint, near the city of Gao in northeast Mali, in November 2009. It unloaded and made a failed take-off attempt, and then was set alight. The drugs were never recovered. An investigation revealed that a Lebanese family and a Mauritanian businessman who had made a fortune from Angolan diamonds were among the backers of the enterprise.

How could such a large plane carrying so much cocaine freely enter a region that, although desert, was neither uninhabited nor ungoverned? A French specialist who wishes to be anonymous claims that a government minister and highly placed people in the army and intelligence services with connections to the former president, Amadou Toumani Touré (ATT), were involved, as were some members of parliament from the north of the country.

The source said: “It’s a sensitive subject. It goes to the heart of power. When ATT’s regime collapsed, high-ranking officers in the Malian army and intelligence who had links with the drugs trade found themselves totally de legitimised That’s one reason why the enlisted men and the junior officers took part in the March 2012 coup. The higher ranks had a collection of cars that the entire military budget couldn't have bought. Drug trafficking brought major benefits: it helped with elections and real estate deals were financed through money laundering operations.

Ousmane Conté

Many politicians came to arrangements with the traffickers. If an over-eager soldier stopped a convoy, he’d get a call from someone higher up telling him to let it through. It happened on the border with Guinea in the time of intelligence , the Guinean president’s son, who was arrested for drug trafficking. ATT turned a blind eye to it. He let things slide. The Malian regime was one of the most corrupt in West Africa.”

Simon Julien , a French specialist on the Sahel, has described the situation of competition in northern Mali before 2012, where some had access to drug money and others didn't The regime attempted to quell Tuareg rebellions by giving generous funding from drug money to groups opposed to the Tuaregs of the N’Fughas mountains. This backfired. The resultant influx of arms from Libya and of Islamist fighters accelerated the partition of Mali. The part that drug money has played in the destabilisation of the whole sub-region should not be underestimated.

In the Nigerian capital, Lagos, the first illegal lab for producing amphetamines and methamphetamine was dismantled in June 2011. In Cape Verde in October 2011, 1.5 tonnes of cocaine were seized on a beach on the island of Santiago. In June 2010, two tonnes of white powder were found in a prawn-fishing storage facility in Gambia. And in April 2011 in Cotonou, 202kg of heroine were found in a shipping container from Pakistan apparently bound for Nigeria. Cannabis, the only locally produced illegal drug, remains the most common, but it is for local consumption only. Synthetic drugs — cocaine and heroine — are for Europe, Japan or China.

Major drug hub
Since 2004, West Africa has become a major hub for cocaine trafficking, storage and distribution. It caters for between 12% and 25% of European demand: 21 tonnes out of 129 in 2009, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The region offers international drug traffickers a range of competitive advantages: its strategic position between producer and consumer countries; cheap logistics and labour; slack controls and weak law-enforcement; endemic and low-cost corruption; a general climate of impunity.

Midway between South America and Europe, this new staging post receives products from the world’s top cocaine producers, Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. It supplies Europe, the second-biggest cocaine market in the world, with a value estimated at $33bn in 2012 (just $4bn less than North America). Cocaine is the second most commonly used drug in Europe after cannabis, with over four million users in 2008, under 1% of the population.

Caught with 2,475 kg of coke in Senegal

This lucrative trade is considered by international organisations such as the UNODC and the International Narcotics Control Board as a major factor in West Africa’s instability. The economic crisis, and the policies imposed by the IMF and the World Bank, have eroded the legitimacy of most states in the region. Everything had its price even before the arrival of cocaine; but international criminals handling huge sums of money have made matters worse.

“Transnational organised criminals take a commercial approach: they look for the low-risk, high-return option. Traffickers are after the best routes — where corruption, combined with their tactics, which range from death threats to murder, will give them freedom of movement,” says Pierre Lapaque, UNODC director in West Africa. The cocaine trade is comparable in value to oil or arms trafficking; it’s extremely profitable. In 2012 the UNODC in Dakar (Senegal) calculated that the sale of around 30 tonnes of cocaine generated $1.2bn profit, more than $500m of which was laundered and spent locally. By comparison, last year Guinea-Bissau (a major transit point for drugs) had a budget of just $237m.

Cocaine is a high value-added product: it sells for $2,700-4,000 per kilo in its production zones, over $13,000 on the Atlantic coast, $16,000 in the capitals of the Sahel, $24,000-27,000 in the cities of North Africa, and between $40,000 and $60,000 in Europe, according to the anonymous expert quoted above. These are wholesale prices for a product whose purity diminishes along the supply chain.

Deals, and fallings out
For West African police, customs officers and judges, the battle against trafficking is almost impossible: the gulf between their resources and the traffickers’ is vast. The police in Guinea-Bissau sometimes cannot put petrol in their patrol vehicles. That crushes even the most enthusiastic determination, and criminals exploit ethnic and cultural networks, strong diasporas (of Nigerians, for example), language communities and other interests. Most often, a small group of individuals come together for a couple of “jobs”, then separate, link up again — or kill each other.

Narco subs heading for Africa?

The networks of drug routes are as many and shifting as the exporters, importers, intermediaries, forwarding agents and helpers. All itineraries and all modes of operation are valid: they juxtapose and join up for greater effectiveness and profit. It’s a chain. From South America to Africa and on to Europe, a single package of cocaine may travel by plane, car and ship. As sea transport is the most common form in the world, the trans-Atlantic cocaine trade makes considerable use of it. But “in the last two or three years, more and more twin-engine planes have been landing in West Africa on abandoned airstrips, or making low-altitude drops,” Lapaque says. “The loads are then picked up by teams on the ground. Trafficking by sea and using ‘mules’ hasn't stopped. Between 2006 and 2008, fishing boats were more common. Now it’s containers.”

The shortest route from South America to Africa follows the 10th parallel of latitude; it’s used every day by thousands of freighters, fishing boats, sailing boats and cruise ships. European and US law enforcement have made large drugs seizures on “Highway 10”. Containers with cocaine concealed inside are mainly brought ashore in the international ports of Lagos or Lomé (Togo). Fishing boats offload their illegal cargo on to other smaller boats along quiet stretches of coastline, in mangrove swamps or inlets on West Africa’s Atlantic coast.

Nigerian traffickers favour mules, who carry the drugs in small packets or capsules of powder in their luggage, clothes or wigs — or in their stomachs. Their point of entry is usually an international airport, such as Dakar or the Malian capital, Bamako, not always by scheduled flight. Cocaine changes its hiding place and form in the course of its journey: it may be pure or cut, in bars, in demijohns, powdered or liquid, in a sports bag or hidden inside frozen fish. The powder that arrives in West Africa is stored and repackaged, and then transported to European markets, usually via the trans-Sahel-Sahara route through Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Chad to Libya and Egypt. Even Moroccan hashish follows this ancient route.

Trans-Sahel-Sahara
The arrival of groups such as MUJAO (the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa), AQIM (Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb) and Ansar Dine in northern Mali has had consequences for the drugs trade. AQIM and MUJAO exact tolls from cocaine convoys that cross their territory and, for a price, supply protection . Only a modest amount of AQIM’s income comes from drugs — hostage-taking is much more lucrative — but MUJAO makes more. Contrary to expectations, the division in Mali hasn’t made the trade easier. “A weak state presents an opportunity for traffickers, but a completely disorganised territory is dangerous,” the Sahel specialist told me. “Without reliable support from the army or the police, or from local and national politicians, the security of cocaine consignments can’t be guaranteed. Even if you have struck deals with all the jihadist and MNLA (National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad) groups in the north, you still risk being ripped off.”

That’s why the traffickers have decided to move their business to neighbouring Niger. “Networks are taking shape in Arlit and Agadez [in Niger]. More and more traffickers are moving there from Mali,” said a politician from Niger.

In spite of its instability, Guinea-Bissau is one country that has not yet caused the drug traffickers to flee: 15th in the Failed States Index 2012 (just after Nigeria), it is a major hub for cocaine in West Africa. In 2007 the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) estimated that between 800 and 1,000kg of cocaine entered the country by air every night. Ports, airports and even islands have been leased to traffickers with the knowledge of the government, who have abdicated responsibility to the army.

“In almost all cases in 2006-07 that involved the seizure of one to two tonnes of cocaine, there was no prosecution. And in the few exceptions, no sentence was handed down,” a French specialist in the country said. “In Guinea-Bissau, trafficking results from a deal between the army and civil authorities.”

What Can We Do?

After a period of calm that had lasted since 2008, European anti-drugs agents noticed the arrival of cocaine consignments measured by the tonne in early 2012 — again with the complicity of the (often senior) military. Planes touch down on landing strips in the heart of the country, and sometimes on roads. “The army sees to logistics and protection for the planes: runways, fuel, storage. They don’t take part in organising the trade or reselling the product: they’re just a service provider,” the specialist said.
Top-level alliances
To operate this trade, the international cocaine traffickers, especially the South Americans, forged top-level alliances with Guinea-Bissau’s civil and military leaders. Carlos Gomes Júnior (“Cadogo”), the country’s former prime minister arrested in the April 2012 coup, was suspected of covering up this trade and profiting from it. “Suspicions about Gomes date back to 2008, when a boat disappeared along with its cargo. He was accused of being behind it. The case got shelved,” the analyst recalls. “Not everything is drugs-related,” Lapaque points out, “but it always has to be taken into account.”

In 2011, the chief of staff, Antonio Indjai, neutralised his rival, Rear Admiral José Americo Bubo Na Tchuto, then head of the navy, and took control of the ports. “Bubo” features on the US’s international drugs trade wanted list; he was freed in the 2012 coup but seems to be currently out of action. It seems that the army’s chief of staff, who is close to Gomes Junior, gave his support to the coup only at the last moment, realising that he was better off with the military, a group of clans who pick their own leader.

The April 2012 coup wasn't just caused by the cocaine trade: there had also been accusations of electoral fraud, historical tensions between politicians and the military, communitarian claims by the Balante (the main ethnic group in the army) and calls for greater recognition for Bissau, the autonomous capital. Fear of reform of the security sector planned by Gomes Junior caused particular alarm: the military opposed it, as it would have forced many of them into unemployment or retirement, with minimal guarantees (tiny pensions, unconvincing retraining schemes). After the April coup, the drug trade went quiet due to the level of disorder, a trend seen after every serious disruption.

Cocaine has become an important new revenue source for some West African elites — just as cannabis has become an alternative cash crop for the continent’s peasants — but its impact on national conflicts needs to be put in context. Drug money feeds conflicts, but it isn't the prime motivating factor. Control of the traffic and territories was at the heart of the rivalries and score-settling between Indjai and “Bubo” in Guinea-Bissau, and the Tuaregs and the other peoples of northern Mali before 2012. But for those in the military or politics who hold power in Guinea-Bissau, and for the Islamist fighters who are flocking to Mali, and the new rulers in Bamako, the drugs trade is a tool for pursuing political objectives.

Misappropriation of funds at the highest levels of society in West Africa is not limited to the cocaine trade. Drugs get particular attention because of their health consequences and impact on Europe; they push into the background the instability caused by oil smuggling in eastern Nigeria, which is deemed more socially acceptable. They also allow states to justify repressive policies that target street dealers and addicts, while demonstrating complete inertia over economic and social development.

In early 2008, an official at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security sent a report to his superiors detailing what he called "the most significant development in the criminal exploitation of aircraft since 9/11."

The document warned that a growing fleet of rogue jet aircraft was regularly criss-crossing the Atlantic Ocean. On one end of the air route, it said, are cocaine-producing areas in the Andes controlled by the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. On the other are some of West Africa's most unstable countries.

The report was ignored, and the problem has since escalated into what security officials in several countries describe as a global security threat.

The clandestine fleet has grown to include twin-engine turboprops, executive jets and retired Boeing 727s that are flying multi-ton loads of cocaine and possibly weapons to an area in Africa where factions of al Qaeda are believed to be facilitating the smuggling of drugs to Europe, the officials say.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has been held responsible for car and suicide bombings in Algeria and Mauritania.

Gunmen and bandits with links to AQIM have also stepped up kidnappings of Europeans for ransom, who are then passed on to AQIM factions seeking ransom payments.

The aircraft hopscotch across South American countries, picking up tons of cocaine and jet fuel, officials say. They then soar across the Atlantic to West Africa and the Sahel, where the drugs are funneled across the Sahara Desert and into Europe.

An examination of documents and interviews with officials in the United States and three West African nations suggest that at least 10 aircraft have been discovered using this air route since 2006. Officials warn that many of these aircraft were detected purely by chance. They caution that the real number involved in the networks is likely considerably higher.

Alexandre Schmidt, regional representative for West and Central Africa for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, cautioned in Dakar this week that the aviation network has expanded in the past 12 months and now likely includes several Boeing 727 aircraft.

"When you have this high capacity for transporting drugs into West Africa, this means that you have the capacity to transport as well other goods, so it is definitely a threat to security anywhere in the world," said Schmidt.

The "other goods" officials are most worried about are weapons that militant organizations can smuggle on the jet aircraft. A Boeing 727 can handle up to 10 tons of cargo.

The U.S. official who wrote the report for the Department of Homeland Security said the al Qaeda connection was unclear at the time.

The official is a counter-narcotics aviation expert who asked to remain anonymous as he is not authorized to speak on the record. He said he was dismayed by the lack of attention to the matter since he wrote the report.

"You've got an established terrorist connection on this side of the Atlantic. Now on the Africa side you have the al Qaeda connection and it's extremely disturbing and a little bit mystifying that it's not one of the top priorities of the government," he said.

Since the September 11 attacks, the security system for passenger air traffic has been ratcheted up in the United States and throughout much of the rest of the world, with the latest measures imposed just weeks ago after a failed bomb attempt on a Detroit-bound plane on December 25.

"The bad guys have responded with their own aviation network that is out there everyday flying loads and moving contraband," said the official, "and the government seems to be oblivious to it."

The upshot, he said, is that militant organizations -- including groups like the FARC and al Qaeda -- have the "power to move people and material and contraband anywhere around the world with a couple of fuel stops."

The lucrative drug trade is already having a deleterious impact on West African nations. Local authorities told Reuters they are increasingly outgunned and unable to stop the smugglers.

And significantly, many experts say, the drug trafficking is bringing in huge revenues to groups that say they are part of al Qaeda. It's swelling not just their coffers but also their ranks, they say, as drug money is becoming an effective recruiting tool in some of the world's most desperately poor regions.

U.S. President Barack Obama has chided his intelligence officials for not pooling information "to connect those dots" to prevent threats from being realized. But these dots, scattered across two continents like flaring traces on a radar screen, remain largely unconnected and the fleets themselves are still flying.

THE AFRICAN CONNECTION
The deadly cocaine trade always follows the money, and its cash-flush traffickers seek out the routes that are the mostly lightly policed.

Beset by corruption and poverty, weak countries across West Africa have become staging platforms for transporting between 30 tons and 100 tons of cocaine each year that ends up in Europe, according to U.N. estimates.

Drug trafficking, though on a much smaller scale, has existed here and elsewhere on the continent since at least the late 1990s, according to local authorities and U.S. enforcement officials.

Earlier this decade, sea interdictions were stepped up. So smugglers developed an air fleet that is able to transport tons of cocaine from the Andes to African nations that include Mauritania, Mali, Sierra Leone and Guinea Bissau.What these countries have in common are numerous disused landing strips and makeshift runways -- most without radar or police presence. Guinea Bissau has no aviation radar at all. As fleets grew, so, too, did the drug trade.

The DEA says all aircraft seized in West Africa had departed Venezuela. That nation's location on the Caribbean and Atlantic seaboard of South America makes it an ideal takeoff place for drug flights bound for Africa, they say.

A number of aircraft have been retrofitted with additional fuel tanks to allow in-flight refueling -- a technique innovated by Mexico's drug smugglers. (Cartel pilots there have been known to stretch an aircraft's flight range by putting a water mattress filled with aviation fuel in the cabin, then stacking cargoes of marijuana bundles on top to act as an improvised fuel pump.)

Ploys used by the cartel aviators to mask the flights include fraudulent pilot certificates, false registration documents and altered tail numbers to steer clear of law enforcement lookout lists, investigators say. Some aircraft have also been found without air-worthiness certificates or log books. When smugglers are forced to abandon them, they torch them to destroy forensic and other evidence like serial numbers.

The evidence suggests that some Africa-bound cocaine jets also file a regional flight plan to avoid arousing suspicion from investigators. They then subsequently change them at the last minute, confident that their switch will go undetected.

One Gulfstream II jet, waiting with its engines running to take on 2.3 tons of cocaine at Margarita Island in Venezuela, requested a last-minute flight plan change to war-ravaged Sierra Leone in West Africa. It was nabbed moments later by Venezuelan troops, the report seen by Reuters showed.

Once airborne, the planes soar to altitudes used by commercial jets. They have little fear of interdiction as there is no long-range radar coverage over the Atlantic. Current detection efforts by U.S. authorities, using fixed radar and P3 aircraft, are limited to traditional Caribbean and north Atlantic air and marine transit corridors.

The aircraft land at airports, disused runways or improvised air strips in Africa. One bearing a false Red Cross emblem touched down without authorization onto an unlit strip at Lungi International Airport in Sierra Leone in 2008, according to a U.N. report.

Late last year a Boeing 727 landed on an improvised runway using the hard-packed sand of a Tuareg camel caravan route in Mali, where local officials said smugglers offloaded between 2 and 10 tons of cocaine before dousing the jet with fuel and burning it after it failed to take off again.

For years, traffickers in Mexico have bribed officials to allow them to land and offload cocaine flights at commercial airports. That's now happening in Africa as well. In July 2008, troops in coup-prone Guinea Bissau secured Bissau international airport to allow an unscheduled cocaine flight to land, according to Edmundo Mendes, a director with the Judicial Police.

"When we got there, the soldiers were protecting the aircraft," said Mendes, who tried to nab the Gulfstream II jet packed with an estimated $50 million in cocaine but was blocked by the military.

"The soldiers verbally threatened us," he said. The cocaine was never recovered. Just last week, Reuters photographed two aircraft at Osvaldo Vieira International Airport in Guinea Bissau -- one had been dispatched by traffickers from Senegal to try to repair the other, a Gulfstream II jet, after it developed mechanical problems. Police seized the second aircraft.

FLYING BLIND
One of the clearest indications of how much this aviation network has advanced was the discovery, on November 2, of the burned out fuselage of an aging Boeing 727. Local authorities found it resting on its side in rolling sands in Mali. In several ways, the use of such an aircraft marks a significant advance for smugglers.

Boeing jetliners, like the one discovered in Mali, can fly a cargo of several tons into remote areas. They also require a three-man crew -- a pilot, co pilot and flight engineer, primarily to manage the complex fuel system dating from an era before automation.

Hundreds of miles to the west, in the sultry, former Portuguese colony of Guinea Bissau, national Interpol director Calvario Ahukharie said several abandoned airfields, including strips used at one time by the Portuguese military, had recently been restored by "drug mafias" for illicit flights.

"In the past, the planes coming from Latin America usually landed at Bissau airport," Ahukharie said as a generator churned the feeble air-conditioning in his office during one of the city's frequent blackouts.

"But now they land at airports in southern and eastern Bissau where the judicial police have no presence."

Ahukharie said drug flights are landing at Cacine, in eastern Bissau, and Bubaque in the Bijagos Archipelago, a chain of more than 80 islands off the Atlantic coast. Interpol said it hears about the flights from locals, although they have been unable to seize aircraft, citing a lack of resources.

The drug trade, by both air and sea, has already had a devastating impact on Guinea Bissau. A dispute over trafficking has been linked to the assassination of the military chief of staff, General Batista Tagme Na Wai in 2009. Hours later, the country's president, Joao Bernardo Vieira, was hacked to death by machete in his home.

Asked how serious the issue of air trafficking remained for Guinea Bissau, Ahukharie was unambiguous: "The problem is grave."

The situation is potentially worse in the Sahel-Sahara, where cocaine is arriving by the ton. There it is fed into well-established overland trafficking routes across the Sahara where government influence is limited and where factions of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb have become increasingly active.

The group, previously known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, is raising millions of dollars from the kidnap of Europeans.

Analysts say militants strike deals of convenience with Tuareg rebels and smugglers of arms, cigarettes and drugs. According to a growing pattern of evidence, the group may now be deriving hefty revenues from facilitating the smuggling of FARC-made cocaine to the shores of Europe.

UNHOLY ALLIANCE
In December, Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, told a special session of the UN Security Council that drugs were being traded by "terrorists and anti-government forces" to fund their operations from the Andes, to Asia and the African Sahel.

"In the past, trade across the Sahara was by caravans," he said. "Today it is larger in size, faster at delivery and more high-tech, as evidenced by the debris of a Boeing 727 found on November 2nd in the Gao region of Mali -- an area affected by insurgency and terrorism."

Just days later, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration officials arrested three West African men following a sting operation in Ghana. The men, all from Mali, were extradited to New York on December 16 on drug trafficking and terrorism charges.

Oumar Issa, Harouna Toure, and Idriss Abelrahman are accused of plotting to transport cocaine across Africa with the intent to support al Qaeda, its local affiliate AQIM and the FARC. The charges provided evidence of what the DEA's top official in Colombia described to a Reuters reporter as "an unholy alliance between South American narco-terrorists and Islamic extremists."

Some experts are skeptical, however, that the men are any more than criminals. They questioned whether the drug dealers oversold their al Qaeda connections to get their hands on the cocaine.

In its criminal complaint, the DEA said Toure had led an armed group affiliated to al Qaeda that could move the cocaine from Ghana through North Africa to Spain for a fee of $2,000 per kilo for transportation and protection.

Toure discussed two different overland routes with an undercover informant. One was through Algeria and Morocco; the other via Algeria to Libya. He told the informer that the group had worked with al Qaeda to transport between one and two tons of hashish to Tunisia, as well as smuggle Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi migrants into Spain.

In any event, AQIM has been gaining in notoriety. Security analysts warn that cash stemming from the trans-Saharan coke trade could transform the organization -- a small, agile group whose southern-Sahel wing is estimated to number between 100 and 200 men -- into a more potent threat in the region that stretches from Mauritania to Niger. It is an area with huge foreign investments in oil, mining and a possible trans-Sahara gas pipeline.

"These groups are going to have a lot more money than they've had before, and I think you are going to see them with much more sophisticated weapons," said Douglas Farah, a senior fellow at the International Assessment Strategy Center, a Washington based security think-tank.

NARCOTIC INDUSTRIAL DEPOT
The Timbuktu region covers more than a third of northern Mali, where the parched, scrubby Sahel shades into the endless, rolling dunes of the Sahara Desert. It is an area several times the size of Switzerland, much of it beyond state control.

Moulaye Haidara, the customs official, said the sharp influx of cocaine by air has transformed the area into an "industrial depot" for cocaine.

Sitting in a cool, dark, mud-brick office building in the city where nomadic Tuareg mingle with Arabs and African Songhay, Fulani and Mande peoples, Haidara expresses alarm at the challenge local law enforcement faces.

Using profits from the trade, the smugglers have already bought "automatic weapons, and they are very determined," Haidara said. He added that they "call themselves Al Qaeda," though he believes the group had nothing to do with religion, but used it as "an ideological base."

Local authorities say four-wheel-drive Toyota SUVs outfitted with GPS navigation equipment and satellite telephones are standard issue for smugglers. Residents say traffickers deflate the tires to gain better traction on the loose Saharan sands, and can travel at speeds of up to 70 miles-per-hour in convoys along routes to North Africa.

Timbuktu governor, Colonel Mamadou Mangara, said he believes traffickers have air-conditioned tents that enable them to operate in areas of the Sahara where summer temperatures are so fierce that they "scorch your shoes." He added that the army lacked such equipment. A growing number of people in the impoverished region, where transport by donkey cart and camel are still common, are being drawn to the trade. They can earn 4 to 5 million CFA Francs (roughly $9-11,000) on just one coke run.

"Smuggling can be attractive to people here who can make only $100 or $200 a month," said Mohamed Ag Hamalek, a Tuareg tourist guide in Timbuktu, whose family until recently earned their keep hauling rock salt by camel train, using the stars to navigate the Sahara.

Haidara described northern Mali as a no-go area for the customs service. "There is now a red line across northern Mali, nobody can go there," he said, sketching a map of the country on a scrap of paper with a ballpoint pen. "If you go there with feeble means ... you don't come back."

TWO-WAY TRADE
Speaking in Dakar this week, Schmidt, the U.N. official, said that growing clandestine air traffic required urgent action on the part of the international community.

"This should be the highest concern for governments ... For West African countries, for West European countries, for Russia and the U.S., this should be very high on the agenda," he said.

Stopping the trade, as the traffickers are undoubtedly aware, is a huge challenge -- diplomatically, structurally and economically.

Venezuela, the take-off or refuelling point for aircraft making the trip, has a confrontational relationship with Colombia, where President Alvaro Uribe has focused on crushing the FARC's 45-year-old insurgency. The nation's leftist leader, Hugo Chavez, won't allow in the DEA to work in the country.

In a measure of his hostility to Washington, he scrambled two F16 fighter jets last week to intercept an American P3 aircraft -- a plane used to seek out and track drug traffickers -- which he said had twice violated Venezuelan airspace. He says the United States and Colombia are using anti-drug operations as a cover for a planned invasion of his oil-rich country. Washington and Bogota dismiss the allegation.

In terms of curbing trafficking, the DEA has by far the largest overseas presence of any U.S. federal law enforcement, with 83 offices in 62 countries. But it is spread thin in Africa where it has just four offices -- in Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt and South Africa -- though there are plans to open a fifth office in Kenya.

Law enforcement agencies from Europe as well as Interpol are also at work to curb the trade. But locally, officials are quick to point out that Africa is losing the war on drugs.

The most glaring problem, as Mali's example shows, is a lack of resources. The only arrests made in connection with the Boeing came days after it was found in the desert -- and those incarcerated turned out to be desert nomads cannibalizing the plane's aluminium skin, probably to make cooking pots. They were soon released.

Police in Guinea Bissau, meanwhile, told Reuters they have few guns, no money for gas for vehicles given by donor governments and no high security prison to hold criminals.

Corruption is also a problem. The army has freed several traffickers charged or detained by authorities seeking to tackle the problem, police and rights groups said.

Serious questions remain about why Malian authorities took so long to report the Boeing's discovery to the international law enforcement community.

What is particularly worrying to U.S. interests is that the networks of aircraft are not just flying one way -- hauling coke to Africa from Latin America -- but are also flying back to the Americas.

The internal Department of Homeland Security memorandum reviewed by Reuters cited one instance in which an aircraft from Africa landed in Mexico with passengers and unexamined cargo.

The Gulfstream II jet arrived in Cancun, by way of Margarita Island, Venezuela, en route from Africa. The aircraft, which was on an aviation watch list, carried just two passengers. One was a U.S. national with no luggage, the other a citizen of the Republic of Congo with a diplomatic passport and a briefcase, which was not searched.

"The obvious huge concern is that you have a transportation system that is capable of transporting tons of cocaine from west to east," said the aviation specialist who wrote the Homeland Security report.

"But it's reckless to assume that nothing is coming back, and when there's terrorist organizations on either side of this pipeline, it should be a high priority to find out what is coming back on those airplanes."

The radical Islamist groups who operate in the Sahara, the Sahel and in the West Africa regions finance their military activities with money from drug trafficking. They have negotiated agreements with Latin American cartels to transport drugs through the areas they control intended for the European market. With their focus on attacking Islamic terrorism, the governments of the European Union have neglected the drug trafficking phenomenon in the African Continent. Experts warn that narcos, jihadists and corrupt politicians could consolidate into an "explosive coalition" in the region.

Konstantin Yaroshenko

"The struggle against Islamic terrorism has so absorbed the attention of Western leaders that their battle against drug trafficking has moved to a secondary plane. It's a pity. Perhaps the chaos that took Mali to the edge of collapse and provoked French military intervention, as well as the ever more devastating role that drug trafficking plays in the Sahel and West Africa regions will make them rethink their priorities," declares Alain Rodier.

A former officer with French intelligence services, Rodier carried out several missions in Afghanistan in the 1980's and since then, he follows closely the evolution of Al Quaeda. An expert in transnational organized crime and Islamic terrorism, author of a book on Chinese Triads, another on Iran and two more on Al Quaeda, Rodier is chief of research with the French Centre of Intelligence Research (CF2R: Centre Francais de Recherche sur le Renseignement).

Ayman Joumaa

He explains to the reporter: "During the last decade, Latin American cartels created new routes in Africa to transport cocaine and synthetic drugs to Europe and, to a lesser degree, to the United States. All of the continent is affected by drug trafficking, from South Africa to the Magreb countries. Independent research centres --like the CF2R and specialized institutions within the UN or in the European Union -- tried to alert the politicians. They weren't successful.

"It didn't take long to see the results. The drug trafficking gangrene infected the majority of the West Africa governments and established contact with radical Islamic groups. Today, we are faced with a new, very explosive phenomenon; "narco jihadists."

Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, former special representative of the UN Secretary General in West Africa, Somalia and Burundi, and who for two years has presided over the Centre for Security Strategies in the Sahel and the Sahara -- a private organization with headquarters in Mauritania--, shares Rodier's concerns.

Arrested

In an interview on February 3 last year with Christophe Champin, a Radio France International specialist on drug trafficking in Africa, Abdallah stated: "I think that by focusing so much on the problem of terrorism, there is a risk of underestimating the gravity of the drug trafficking problem. What surprises me is that Western intelligence services are aware of everything, but they seem to be interested only in terrorism."

The African Trampoline
Jihadist combatants are not the only ones talking with Latin American drug traffickers in Africa, and above all in the Sahel-Sahara and West Africa zones. This is shown by reports from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and specific reports from institutions like the Research and Information Group for Peace and Security (GRIP, Groupe de Recherche et d'Information sur la Paix et la Securite, an independent centre based in Brussels), or the Carnegie International Foundation.

Experts realize that, while cocaine consumption has stabilized in the United States, it is growing exponentially in Europe. According to their calculations, in 1998, demand in the United States was four times greater than in Europe, but in 2009, both were almost the same, with 157 tons in the U.S. and 123 (tons) in Europe.

Arrested

They also point out that, while most of the cocaine continues to "travel" directly by boat from Latin America to Europe, since the start of this century drug traffickers are increasingly using the African continent to warehouse and redistribute the drug.

Georges Berghezan, GRIP researcher, explains in the introduction to his report "Panorama of Cocaine Trafficking in West Africa," published last June:

"During the course of this last decade, cocaine trafficking established itself as an extremely important illegal activity in Africa. The crises that are shaking Mali and Guinea-Bissau demonstrate its potential to destabilize. The impact is due to the involvement of the security forces' high commands, of members of the ruling elite, of armed groups that pursue military or simply criminal objectives. All these actors are connected directly or indirectly with an army of professional drug traffickers disguised as "economic operators."

He specifies: "After arriving by boat or by air from Latin America, the largest share of the cocaine quickly leaves West Africa on its way to Europe. Drug traffickers multiply the itineraries and the modes of transportation. Up until 2009, transporting cocaine was the "speciality" of the countries on the Atlantic coast.

"But after the year 2000, it was concentrated on the countries of the Sahel, like Mali, where there are immense deserts difficult to patrol, weak and corrupt central governments and a myriad of small armed groups looking for revenues to control ever larger territories.

"In that context, it is the traffickers who benefit from the disintegration of the Libyan State. They obtain cheap weapons and take advantage of a lack of border controls," emphasizes Berghezan, then he launches into a case by case analysis of the impact of Latin American drug trafficking on the 15 countries of the Economic Community of West African States.

Devastating
He starts with Nigeria, the most populated country in Africa (162 million inhabitants). In 2006, authorities in that country confiscated 14 tons of cocaine in the port of Lagos that came from Peru hidden in sacks of cement. Four years later, in July 2010, 450 kilos of cocaine were confiscated, also in Lagos. They arrested a Nigerian customs official and two Chinese businessmen. The boat had left Chile and made stops in Peru and Belgium. Last year, the Nigerian National Drug Law enforcement Agency -- advised by the DEA -- seized 110 kilos of cocaine from a boat that came from South America.

But the zones of influence of the Nigerian cartels, who negotiate detailed agreements with their Latin American counterparts -- the reports consulted by the reporter never mention the names of these mafias -- reach beyond the borders of their own country.

Berghezan emphasizes: "The two principal poles for the arrival of cocaine in West Africa are the Gulf of Benin and the maritime zones along the coasts of Guinea and Guinea-Bissau. In these two areas, it is the Nigerian cartels who rule and who collect the major share of the three billion dollars ($3,000,000,000.00) generated by drug trafficking in all of Africa."

Not all drug traffickers come out unharmed from their activities. On of them, Nigerian Chigbo Peter Umeh, was arrested in Liberia in the middle of negotiations to send several tons of cocaine to the United States. He was extradited to that country, were he was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Also, Berghezan points out that the Nigerians are particularly active in Italy, where they have agreements with the Calabrese mafia, the Peter Umeh

Ndrangheta.

The seizure of large quantities of drugs in Benin shows that that country, like the others in the region, has been infected with the drug trafficking gangrene. The numbers are eloquent: 100 kilos of cocaine seized at the home of a former Minister of Finance and Economics in 2006; 350 kilos confiscated from a drug trafficker from Ghana in 2007; 200 kilos seized from a Pakistani cargo ship in the port of Cotonu and 400 kilos a few weeks later in the same port.

Togo is not far behind: In October, 2008, 500 kilos of cocaine were seized near the port of Lome and eight Colombians were arrested and extradited to the United States.

It worries the GRIP researcher that high ranking officers in the Togo armed services, including relatives of President Faure Gnassingbe are involved in drug trafficking. At least, that's what WikiLeaks documents show.

The same problem affects Ghana, whose inertia in the face of drug trafficking was also revealed by confidential communications leaked by WikiLeaks. Little is known about what is happening in Senegal. Alassane Ouattara (who came to power in April of 2011 with the support of France and UN forces) seems determined to combat the local consumption of drugs. In August, 2012, he announced the seizure and incineration of two tons of cocaine, without providing more details.

Sierra Leone also seems to attract Latin American drug traffickers, as shown by the 2007 seizure -- by Venezuelan authorities -- of 2.5 tons of cocaine hidden in a private aircraft that made an unauthorized landing at the Lungi airport. The network of drug traffickers arrested included six Colombians, a Cuban with a Togo passport and a Mexican. Three Colombians, the Cuban and the Mexican were extradited to the United States.

The airplane carried Venezuelan Red Cross registry and had taken off from the Colombia-Venezuela border.

Guinea is a special case. In December, 2008, after the death of President Lansama Conte, who was overthrown by Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, the scope of the complicity between the former president, his family, high ranking police, armed forces and customs officials and drug trafficking was revealed to the public.

However, in February, 2008, the French Navy and the DEA intercepted a Panamanian cargo ship, El Junior, when its crew -- made up of Greek, Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau sailors-- was throwing more than three tons of cocaine packed into107 boxes into the sea. The operation was carried out thanks to the cooperation between the French intelligence services, the DEA and Greek authorities. The Greek shipper of the El Junior, Nikolaus Karnilakis, was given a life sentence in Greece.

Often described as the first African "narco-state" or as a mafioso State, Guinea-Bissau is a poor country whose swampy coasts shelter a multitude of small islands in the Bissagos Archipelago. Since 2005, it is obvious that Latin American and Nigerian drug traffickers are taking advantage of that country's decadence to establish bases of operation there.

A not very exhaustive list of the quantities of cocaine seized gives an idea of the true scope of the trafficking: 700 kilos in 2005; 600 kilos, then two tons more in 2007; 500 kilos in 2008...

In 2007, while the DEA was reporting that each night between 800 and a thousand kilos of cocaine enter Guinea-Bissau exclusively by air, it became known that that country's authorities had leased port facilities, airports and several islands to drug traffickers.

That same year, a UN report brought the incident before the Security Council. It was analyzed for seven minutes then forgotten. On March 2, 2009, President Joao Bernardo Vieira was hacked to death with a machete. Everything seems to indicate, according to Berghezan, that drug traffickers caused his death.

The situations in Gambia, Cabo Verde, Mauritania, Niger and Burkina Faso are also worrisome, as is the involvement of the Frente Polisario in drug trafficking. [The Frente Polisario is an African national liberation group.--un vato]

But Mali breaks records. The airport in Bamako is full of "mules" controlled by Nigerian cartels. In addition, the annals in Africa will always memorialize the case of the half-incinerated Boeing 737 found in 2009 near the city of Gao. The aircraft had left Venezuela and made a clandestine landing in Mali. It is estimated that it could have transported about seven tons of cocaine, which disappeared before the airplane went up in flames.

The UNODC mentions two other "strange" flights: The case of the Beechcraft BE 300, also from Venezuela, which landed on the frontier between Mali and Mauritania at the end of January, 2010. That same day, the arrival of a second airplane carrying cocaine was detected near the city of Timbuktu.

Afterwards, there was talk about a third airplane that had transported four tons of cocaine in the Kaynes region on the border with Guinea, and of a last aircraft that landed close to the frontier with Niger. In these latter two cases, regional public officials had received the aircraft.

At the close of this edition, Rodier informed the reporter that on Monday, (February) 4, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) police arrested seven drug traffickers who were transporting synthetic drugs and cocaine from Brazil via the following route: From airports in Punta Negra and Maya Maya (Congo-Brazzaville) to Johannesburg (South Africa), then to the (airports) in Kinshasa and Luano (DRC). The criminals were arrested along with their alleged accomplices: immigration and police officials.

All the cases mentioned in our reports are merely the visible parts of an immense iceberg," concludes Rodier. "There's an urgent need to gauge the problem adequately and to prevent the consolidation of that explosive coalition between drug traffickers, jihadists and corrupt politicians in Africa. The future of that continent and the security of Europe are at risk."

The al-Qaeda commander Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who shot to prominence after the bloody Algerian gas plant hostage crisis, has reportedly been killed by Chadian soldiers in Mali.
The death of Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the jihadist mastermind behind the Algerian gas plant siege in January, could have dangerous repercussions for French hostages held by Islamist militants, experts have warned.

The lives of the 15 French hostages held in Africa, and especially those of seven captured in northern Mali who may be being used as human shields, could be seriously endangered if the jihadist leader is confirmed dead.
A statement by the armed forces read out on national television in Chad said:

"On Saturday, March 2, at noon, Chadian armed forces operating in northern Mali completely destroyed a terrorist base. ... The toll included several dead terrorists, including their leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar."

Only the day before, Chad's president, Idriss Deby, said his soldiers had killed another al-Qaeda commander Adelhamid Abou Zeid in a different raid in the same area.
A statement by the armed forces read out on national television in Chad said:

Analysts said the death of two of al Qaeda's most senior commanders in the Sahara region would mark a significant blow to Mali's Islamist rebellion.

"Both men have extensive knowledge of northern Mali and parts of the broader Sahel and deep social and other connections in northern Mali, and the death of both in such a short amount of time will likely have an impact on militant operations," said Andrew Lebovich, a Dakar-based analyst who follows al Qaeda in the region. Western and African countries are worried that al-Qaeda could strengthen ties with African Islamist groups like al Shabaab in Somalia and Boko Haram in Nigeria, and use it as a base to launch international attacks from.

A new report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC) warns that the production of methamphetamine is a "growing concern" for West Africa. The report, which addresses many forms of transnational crime in the region, also suggests that recent gains in the fight against cocaine trafficking may have been overstated.

Much of the methamphetamine produced in West Africa is headed for East Asia, though South Africa is a major secondary market. Two methamphetamine laboratories were detected in Nigeria in 2011 and 2012.

The report says that while the flow of methamphetamine out of West Africa is relatively new, the income it generates is “remarkably high.”

Pierre Lapaque, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime representative for West and Central Africa, says methamphetamine is attractive to West African drug producers because it is so easy to make.

“It’s easy to prepare," he said. "You can do that in your kitchen, if you wish. You go on the Internet, you get the recipe and you cook. As long as you have the good ingredients you can cook it easily.”

West Africa has long been a notorious hub for cocaine trafficking. Because of its location and weak law enforcement institutions, the region is a convenient stopping point for cocaine produced in South America and intended for sale in Europe.

The trafficking has further weakened state institutions in some countries, and the U.N. report says "cocaine-related corruption has clearly undermined governance in places like Guinea Bissau."

The new report notes that the flow of cocaine in West Africa peaked in 2007 at 47 tons, but decreased to 18 tons by 2010 in response to efforts to combat maritime and air shipments. However, the report also says that there is debate about whether the flow of cocaine has actually decreased, or whether “traffickers have simply found less detectable ways of moving the drug.”

Lapaque said that data has been limited since 2010, but that officials believe the trafficking of cocaine is now back up to between 30 and 35 tons.

“The problem is that the region is still facing the same problems - the problem of governance, the problem of rule of law, the problem of corruption," Lapaque said. "Things have improved, but they haven’t dramatically improved, so there is room for improvement.”

He said it was important to target the traffickers rather than particular types of shipments. He said this was because criminal networks are often involved in many different forms of illegal shipments - from drugs to arms to illegal migrants.

"If for example you open a container here, you open one ton of cocaine," Lapaque said. "That’s brilliant - you have stopped one ton of cocaine. But if 20 tons are going through another channel and you haven’t dismantled the criminal network that was actually sending this one ton of cocaine, you are just digging in the sea. You finish the day exhausted, and at the end of the day you haven’t achieved anything."

Intermediaries along West African smuggling routesare often paid in product. To turn expensive high-grade cocaine into a profit-making drug in one of the world's poorest regions, traffickers are transforming the white powder into crack cocaine, Lapaque said.

In some cities, a dose of the highly addictive drug - commonly produced by mixing cocaine with readily available baking soda - sells for as little as 200 CFA francs (26 pence).

Drug of the future
While cocaine smuggling through the region has existed for a decade, destabilising weak governments and their faction-rife militaries from Guinea-Bissau to Democratic Republic of Congo, a new drug is on the rise.

Cheap and easy to produce using widely available chemicals, methamphetamine - or meth - is emerging as a preferred narcotic for West Africa-based international traffickers and local distributors.

"This is unfortunately the future of organised crime in the region because it's so easy to produce your own cooked methamphetamine at home," Lapaque said.

"There is poor control of precursor chemicals coming into the region ... When you have the recipe, you can pretty much prepare any kind of synthetic drug."

An estimated 3,000 methamphetamine couriers travelled from West Africa to Asia in 2010, carrying with them drugs parcels worth about $360 million (237 million pounds), he said.

In the two years that followed, two meth labs were discovered in Nigeria. The region is also a supplier of methamphetamine to South Africa.

"There's such a big market in East Asia - Japan, Malaysia, Thailand - that when you see that the profit (increases) 10 times when it's exported from here and lands on the streets of Tokyo, the criminal networks quickly identify that as a good criminal niche."

Cocaine Cartels Target Japan's Vast Wealth
What you do see in the newspapers is that the movement of cocaine from Latin America into Japan - some of it by way of Hawaii, some directly from Colombia and Bolivia - is growing from a trickle to a steady flow. Last year, police seized 68 kilograms, or 150 pounds, of cocaine. While that's hardly enough to raise eyebrows in the United States - a single bust in Los Angeles two years ago netted 20 tons - it was five times more than the 30 pounds captured in 1989.

But that increase doesn't begin to describe the worsening situation. A senior police official acknowledged that authorities miss far more cocaine than they find and many more users and traffickers are at large than the 93 arrested last year.

``I estimate that last year at least 100 times more cocaine came into Japan than we seized,'' said Toshihiro Shibasaki, superintendent of the Drug Enforcement Division. ``That means there was at least 6,800 kilos (15,000 pounds, or 7.5 tons). And there are at least 10,000 users and dealers.''

As recently as two years ago, only a handful of Japanese, mainly actors and musicians, were thought to use cocaine. Today, it's apt to be college students and young executives.

``Since we've achieved all the material wealth we've ever dreamed of, we're now looking for other pleasures,'' said Konuma.

``Drugs help fill that need - and cocaine, in particular, is seen by young Japanese as the height of fashion.''

Others say deterioration of traditional family life, with its rigid controls, is contributing to the rising popularity of cocaine and other illicit drugs.

``In a Japanese family, it's too difficult for a parent to admit that his or her beloved child is on drugs,'' said Osamu Isohata, a newly cured speed, or amphetamine, addict. ``So they close their eyes and keep it quiet.''

Some experts say that the likelihood of a drug epidemic is enhanced by the Japanese propensities for tobacco, alcohol and prescription medicines, which are consumed at rates higher than in nearly any other country.

Police also attribute the rising tide of coke in part to tighter enforcement measures in the United States, the world's largest cocaine consumer.

``Japan seems to be a new target of foreign drug smugglers in countries such as Colombia,'' said the nation's top law-enforcement officer, National Police Agency Superintendent Ryoichi Suzuki.

In a recent report, the Justice Ministry said that ``it cannot but be admitted that an omen is emerging that cocaine will spread in Japan.'' A Western drug-enforcement agent noted that Japan, as one of the wealthiest countries in the world, has become as irresistible to international drug traffickers ``as a light bulb is to moths.''

Young Japanese, in particular, with money burning holes in their pockets and purses, are prepared to pay more for cocaine than users in other countries. A single gram of coke brings about $540 in Tokyo, as much as six times its street worth in New York, according to the Drug Enforcement Division's Shibasaki. At that rate, the current cocaine traffic in Japan is worth in excess of $367 million, he estimated.

``Young Japanese travel abroad more than anyone else,'' said Kondo who, since recovering from his own addiction to speed, has been running the Drug Addiction Rehabilitation Center, the only privately funded facility of its kind in Japan. ``While they're in Honolulu, or L.A., Katmandu or Sydney, they enjoy coke and other drugs at what they consider cheap prices. They come home with a taste for these things.''

During a recent trip of his own to Honolulu, he was arrested on an immigration charge, Kondo said. While in jail, he said, ``I met these Japanese guys who told me they'd been running coke into Japan for the Mafia. They said they had been doing it for 10 years, but traffic was really picking up lately, because the kids want it.''

At the moment, said Kondo, most young Japanese use various forms of speed, because it's more readily available, occasionally augmenting it with cocaine. The so-called ``awakening'' property of speed appeals to workaholic Japanese, who consume legal, stimulant-laced ``health drinks'' from vending machines at a mind-boggling rate and then wind down each night with prodigious quantities of alcohol.

For years, particularly since the end of World War II, most illicit drug abuse in Japan has concentrated on speed. Widespread use of stimulants began during the war, when the government passed the drug out to munitions factory workers to boost productivity.

Later, yakuza gang members used stimulants to stay awake for marathon gambling sessions. The yakuza passed the drugs on to prostitutes in brothels they operated. Eventually, the drugs made their way to students, who needed to stay awake for days and nights of intensive studying. Now these young people are entering the job market and carrying their habits with them.

Police say there are 200,000 to 600,000 speed addicts and 2 million more casual users in Japan, which has a population of 120 million.

A historic meeting of Latin America's leaders, to be attended by Barack Obama, will hear serving heads of state admit that the war on drugs has been a failure and that alternatives to prohibition must now be found.

The Summit of the Americas, to be held in Cartagena, Colombia is being seen by foreign policy experts as a watershed moment in the redrafting of global drugs policy in favour of a more nuanced and liberalised approach.

Otto Pérez Molina, the president of Guatemala, who as former head of his country's military intelligence service experienced the power of drug cartels at close hand, is pushing his fellow Latin American leaders to use the summit to endorse a new regional security plan that would see an end to prohibition. In the Observer, Pérez Molina writes: "The prohibition paradigm that inspires mainstream global drug policy today is based on a false premise: that global drug markets can be eradicated."

Mexico's president, Felipe Calderón, has called for a national debate on the issue. Last year Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia's president, told the Observer that if legalising drugs curtailed the power of organised criminal gangs who had thrived during prohibition, "and the world thinks that's the solution, I will welcome it".

One diplomat closely involved with the summit described the event as historic, saying it would be the first time for 40 years that leaders had met to have an open discussion on drugs. "This is the chance to look at this matter with new eyes," he said. US vice-president, Joe Biden, has acknowledged that the debate about legalising drugs is now legitimate.

Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former president of Brazil and chairman of the global commission on drug policy, has said it is time for "an open debate on more humane and efficient drug policies", a view shared by George Shultz, the former US secretary of state, and former president Jimmy Carter.

Do We Need A Fresh Perspective?
Decriminalisation of drug possession does not lead to increase in drug use, a new report has found. Now new research from Release, a UK drug policy organisation, illustrates how countries that have already taken the brave step of changing their drugs policies are not experiencing adverse effects.

The study (A Quiet Revolution: Drug Decriminalisation Policies in Practice across the Globe) reviews the evidence in 21 countries that have adopted some form of decriminalisation, from the Netherlands to Estonia, Australia to Mexico, Uruguay to Portugal.

Drug prohibition in various forms has been in place for over 100 years now, its historical roots traceable back to the temperance movement. This punitive criminal justice-led approach, premised on the understandable but simplistic concept that drugs are a threat, therefore we must fight them, and thence that drugs are bad, therefore we must prohibit them, was enshrined as global policy under the UN single convention on drugs 1961.

For a policy that has the very specific aim of creating a ‘drug-free’ society, criminalising drug production, supply and possession has been a remarkable failure on its own terms. Consistently under the legislation, use and related harms have risen, drugs have become cheaper and more available, and illicit production has easily met the growing demand.

Worse still, this policy approach, (one that we must remember is fantastically and increasingly expensive), has delivered a series of catastrophic consequences associated with the sprawling international illicit trade controlled by violent criminal entrepreneurs, now turning over in the region of $300 billion each year.

On the global front this prohibition-fuelled crime has placed an intolerable burden on all tiers of the world criminal justice system. The prisons crisis - with over half of prisoners inside for drug, or drug-related offending – being the most high profile, but the same stress being carried through the police, courts and probation systems.

The vast sums generated by the illicit trade, particularly in producer and transit countries, are frequently used to corrupt state institutions, police, judiciary, and politics, as well as providing a ready source of funding for armed insurgency (fuelling civil war in Colombia for example) and terrorism (most obviously the Taliban) that can in turn become a very real threat for developing countries in Africa.

A historical stumbling block in the debate has been the fact that no clear vision of a post prohibition world has been available. The question ‘how would it work?’ has thus been met with a lack of clarity, with myths and misrepresentations filling the void. Transform Drug Policy Foundation argues the choice is clear; drug markets can remain in the hands of organised criminals and street dealers or they can be controlled and regulated by the government.

There is no third option under which there are no drugs in society. Therefore we must choose the policy approach that delivers the best outcomes from our limited criminal justice and public health resources; in terms of minimising harms associated with drug production supply and use. The evidence from the failure of prohibition demands that we meaningfully explore the options for legal regulation.

After the War on Drugs considers the menu of options for controls over products (dosage, preparation, price and packaging), vendors (licensing, vetting and training requirements), outlets (location, outlet density, appearance), who has access (age controls, licensed buyers) and where and when drugs can be consumed. It then rationally explores options for different drugs and different using populations to suggest the regulatory models that will deliver the best outcomes on key health and well being indicators. Lessons are drawn from successes and failings with alcohol and tobacco prohibition, as well as controls over pharmaceutical drugs and other risky products and activities that are regulated by government.

Moves toward legal regulation of drug markets would naturally be phased in cautiously over a number of years, with close evaluation and monitoring of impacts and any unintended consequences. A flexible range of regulatory tools would also be applied differentially across the spectrum of products, with the more restrictive controls deployed for more risky drugs or drug preparations, and, less restrictive controls for lower risk products. If implemented intelligently such an approach holds the potential to not only reduce harms associated with patterns of consumption as they currently exist but, in the longer term to encourage patterns of use to move towards safer products, safer behaviours, and safer using environments – the precise opposite of what has happened under prohibition.

Five basic models are proposed; medical prescription and supervised using venues for the highest risk drugs and most problematic users; a specialist pharmacist sales model, combined with named/licensed user access and volume sales rationing for mid-risk drugs, such as amphetamines, powder cocaine, and ecstasy; various forms of licensed retail, and licensed premises for sale and consumption (familiar with pubs and Dutch-style cannabis coffee shops); and unlicensed sales for the least risky products such as caffeine drinks, or coca tea.

Has Drug War Driven Mass Incarceration?
The United States leads the world in the rate of incarcerating its own citizens with 2.2 million people currently in the nation's prisons or jails -- a 500% increase over the past thirty years.. The U.S. locks up more of her own people than any other country on earth, including China which has four times our population, or in human history.

Over the past 23 years, California constructed roughly one new prison per year, at a cost
of $100 million each, while it built only one new public college during the same period.
Nationwide, spending on prisons has risen six times faster than spending on higher education.

Largely casualties of the "war on drugs," and vigorously promoted at the federal level by the "drug czar" and a $15 billion annual budget, the number of incarcerated Americans has quadrupled since 1980. Approximately half a million people are in prison or in jail for a drug offence today, compared to around 41,000 in 1980. Four out of five drug arrests are for simple possession,80% for marijuana. Most people in state prison for drug offences have no history of violence.

At the end of 2007, more than 7 million Americans were behind bars, on probation, or on
parole, many whose initial violation of the drug laws spiralled into a life of crime. This is a level of mass incarceration unprecedented in history. And despite the fact that surveys show that whites are just as likely to use illegal drugs as blacks, one out of every 14 black men was behind bars in 2006, compared to one in 106 white men.

For private business, 'prison labour is like a pot of gold. No strikes. No union organizing. No health benefits, unemployment insurance, or workers’ compensation to pay. No language barriers, as in foreign countries. New leviathan prisons are being built on thousands of acres of factories inside the walls.

Prisoners do data entry for Chevron, make telephone reservations for TWA, raise hogs,
shovel manure, make circuit boards, limousines, water beds, and lingerie for Victoria’s
Secret — all at a fraction of the cost of free labour.

Some of the companies that use prison labor are IBM, Motorola, Compaq, Texas Instruments,
Honeywell, Microsoft, and Boeing. But it is not only the hi-tech industries that reap the profits of prison labor. Nordstrom department stores sell jeans that are marketed as “Prison Blues,” as well as t-shirts and jackets made in Oregon prisons. The advertising slogan for these clothes is “made on the inside to be worn on the outside.” Maryland prisoners inspect glass bottles and jars used by Revlon and Pierre Cardin, and schools throughout the world buy graduation caps and gowns made by South Carolina prisoners.

As the biggest irregular army in Colombia, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia - FARC) operates in various regions of the country in search of resources to fund their 50-year-old war against the government. The FARC is the oldest and most important guerilla group in the Western Hemisphere. It has long financed its political and military battle against the Colombian government by kidnapping, extortion and participating in the drug trade on various levels.

In spite of a concerted effort by the Colombian government, with close to $8 billion in US assistance, the rebel group still operates in 25 of Colombia's 32 provinces and is estimated to have aproximatley 8,000 guerrillas in its ranks.

The FARC’s roots can be traced back to the outbreaks of violence that afflicted rural Colombia following the assassination of the populist leader of the Liberal Party, Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, in Bogota on April 9, 1948. The assassination touched off a sectarian struggle, first in Bogota and later in the countryside, which started out as a battle between the country’s two chief parties, the Liberals and Conservatives. The violence, which became known as "La Violencia," would leave close to 200,000 dead during the next 15 years.

Alfonso Cano

The rebel group adopted the name Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia in 1966, and began a slow, steady rise. The growth of the illegal drug market helped. In the mid-1970s, the guerrillas changed their bylaws and began collecting taxes from the numerous marijuana growers in the south of the country. They later expanded that mandate to include coca leaf plantations. During the same period the FARC began kidnapping en masse and extorting large and small businesses. In the early 1980s, the FARC began taxing cocaine laboratories that operated in their areas of influence.

The FARC is a complex group with a well defined structure and line of command. It's organizational structure has evolved throughout the years as a result of a process of adaptation to the main challenges of the internal conflict. Ostensibly hierarchical, the geography and size of Colombia has made it nearly impossible for the central command, known as the Secretariat, to exercise control over the whole organization, which is broken up into fronts, with the exception of various special forces units that tend to roam where they are most needed or to carry out a special operation. The FARC has a vast support network of logistical experts in bombing, transportation, kidnapping, arms trafficking, food storage, etc., and manages militia groups in the cities.

There is much discussion about whether this structure and modus operandi constitute a "cartel," or a criminal organization. While it is true that parts of the FARC traffic in illegal drugs in increasing quantities, kidnap, extort, and partake in other criminal activities that undermine their mission, their overall structure, recruitment, modus operandi and purpose remain centred in political rather than financial returns.

In recent years, the rebel group has suffered numerous setbacks. In November 2011, FARC’s top commander, Alfonso Cano, 63, was killed by the armed forces near a rebel camp in the remote south-western part of the country. In peace talks in Havana in 2013, Colombia's FARC guerrillas called on the Colombian government to consider legalizing coca cultivation. the FARC called for the creation of a "land bank" of unused or underused areas that could be distributed to landless peasants and for a more democratic method of rural planning. The land would include "latifundia," or large rural estates, confiscated from drug traffickers. The proposal marks a retreat from the previous FARC position that called for the seizure and redistribution of all latifundia.

FARC negotiator Tanja Nijmeijer

The rebel’s chief negotiator, Ivan Marquez, proposed that small amounts of coca, poppy and marijuana cultivation be legalized as part of a land reform initiative in the Latin American nation.

"We need to reorientate the use of land toward sustainable agricultural production,"

According to the Bogota daily El Tiempo Colombia’s leftist FARC rebels smuggle U.S.-bound cocaine via Venezuela, Panama and the Pacific, citing unnamed U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration sources.

The information was obtained from documents found on the computer belonging to Edgar Tovar, commander of the 48th Front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, who was killed by the army.

An unnamed police expert told El Tiempo that the 48th Front stockpiles cocaine in Putumayo, bordering Ecuador and Peru, the 30th Front protects the shipments all the way to Cañon de Garrapatas, in the north-western province of Choco, and the 57th Front moves the drugs into neighbouring Panama.

Troops from Senegal, Gambia, Guinea and Burkina Faso train with DEA FAST units July 2012 in Senegal

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.

This means the West African traffickers have grown up, in a way, instead of working as couriers underneath the Latin American cartels. The West African cartels are now shipping cocaine by sea, a safer alternative for traffickers than high-risk smuggling on commercial planes, which can more easily be interdicted by police. Nigerian criminal groups have also moved to take control of cocaine exports in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo, where most of the Africa-bound coke leaves the continent. Latin American gangs are left to sell coke to the locals.

“In the end, the gross volume of drugs transiting the region is less relevant than the way West Africa interacts with it,” according to the report. “It appears a growing share is not merely the property of Latin Americans making use of West African logistic services, but that West Africans are playing an increasingly independent role in bringing the drugs into their region.” The report also notes: ”Over time, Latin American involvement in the region appears to have declined, and so has the average seizure size.”

But it’s not exactly good news, whether or not it reduces profits earned by Latin American cartels. It means West African cartels are likely to grow and become wealthier than ever before. “Unless the flows of contraband are addressed, instability and lawlessness will persist, and it will remain difficult to build state capacity and the rule of law in the region,” the report notes.

The U.N. reached its conclusion using several metrics. Brazilian officials reported increasing control of that country’s cocaine exports by Nigerian gangs. The number of cocaine shipments captured in West Africa is also dropping, but importantly, that doesn't mean cocaine trafficking is actually going down. The report explains how African drug cartels hustle cocaine in smaller amounts of 175 kilos or so, instead of big shipments of multiple tons, which are more characteristic of the Latin American cartels. If the African cartels are taking a bigger role in cocaine, that means there are fewer truly big shipments for European police to intercept, and more little shipments, creating the illusion of trafficking in decline.

The U.N. thinks that might be the case, especially since demand for cocaine in Europe has doubled in the past decade. As demand increased, Latin American drug cartels moved into Africa to use as a staging ground. “For the Latin American traffickers, one of the virtues of using the West African route was its novelty— law enforcement authorities were not expecting cocaine to come from this region,” the report notes. “By 2008, due to the international attention the flow received, much of this novelty had been lost.”

Beyond the cartels’ turf getting stale, the U.N. proposes several other theories. Political and economic crises — including rebellions, wars and coups in 2008 and 2009 — “may have disrupted the channels of corruption that facilitated trafficking through the region.” Before 2009, most of the cocaine being seized in the region was being moved by West African traffickers, but owned by Latin American cartels and abetted by corrupt officials. After large-scale drug busts, and then having cocaine vanish from police custody (and presumably into the hands of West African traffickers), the Latin American cartels“may have concluded that they had been betrayed by the corrupt officials they were sponsoring, and severed relations.”

The African cartels are also cooking meth. According to the report, there’s now evidence of large-scale methamphetamine production in Nigeria, along with trafficking in the region growing rapidly since 2009. Ephedrine, an organic compound used in decongestants and a commonly-used precursor for meth, is loosely regulated in West Africa and hard to track.

Drug traffickers may have also adopted the drug after gaining experience smuggling cocaine for the Latin American cartels in the 2000s — basically, learning the ropes from the pros before going solo. As Walter White from Breaking Bad could tell you, meth has low entry costs compared to cocaine (for one, you don’t have to grow it), and is a good choice for the newly independent drug trafficker. It also helps to be sitting on an in-demand piece of real estate. Mexico’s cartels are similar, with growing meth production and sitting between their supply of yayo in South America — and their demand — in the United States. West Africa’s gangsters are simply doing it for Europe.

Sheryl and Frank Get 20 Years

The trial had the makings of a Hollywood thriller: religion, drugs, bling, working-class whites and SA’s black elite.

Sheryl Cwele, wife of South Africa’s intelligence minister and, her Nigeriansidekick, Frank Nabolisa have been convicted of drug trafficking for recruiting young women to smuggle drugs into the country.

Religion was often evident during the trial and seemed to be a connection between Sheryl and two women she was accused of recruiting to traffic cocaine, Tessa Beetge and Charmaine Moss. The trial also highlighted how SA has been caught up in international drug trafficking – and how white women from resort towns along KwaZulu-Natal’s south coast – usually unemployed and desperate for money – are lured into becoming drug carriers.

Cwele, who is married to minister Siyabonga Cwele in charge of state security, recruited women to act as drug mules in order to smuggle cocaine into South Africa from Turkey and South America, a judge found. She was found guilty of drug trafficking by the Pietermaritzburg High Court.

Judge Piet Koen said it was clear that Cwele and her co-accused Nigerian Frank Nabolisa had worked together to recruit two women to work as agents to transport drugs. The two had pleaded not guilty to dealing or conspiring to deal in drugs, procuring a woman called Charmaine Moss to collect drugs in Turkey, and procuring another woman, Tessa Beetge, to smuggle cocaine from South America.

In a spectacular fail, Cwele had appealed to the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) against her conviction alone, while Nabolisa appealed both his conviction and sentence. The SCA obviously saw nothing new in the case and dismissed their appeals against their convictions. Not only that but the court set aside the sentences imposed by the trial court and replaced them with a sentence of 20 years’ imprisonment for each of them.

Beetge Drug Mule

Beetge, of the KwaZulu-Natal south coast, was arrested when 10kg of cocaine was found in her luggage in Brazil in 2008, and is serving a jail sentence in Sao Paolo.

Charmaine Moss, a professional beauty therapist and former police officer, told the court she met Cwele in 2005 when they both took their children to a choir on the KwaZulu-Natal south coast.

They lost contact and then "bumped" into each other in 2007 at a shopping centre, where Cwele told Moss about a job opportunity overseas. She would be a beauty therapist or a caregiver and earn R25,000 in two weeks, the court heard.

Moss decided against taking the offer when she became suspicious after Cwele introduced her to Nabolisa, who was described as an agent who organised overseas jobs.

Moss, who was told to go overseas and pick up a parcel with unspecified contents, turned down the offer when she suspected something was amiss. She turned State's witness. Cwele promised them a salary of R25,000 for two weeks work.

Moss said in her evidence that Cwele had approached her and mentioned that she had worked overseas a number of times in 2005, but that she now held a permanent position with the Hibiscus Coast district municipality. "Sheryl informed her that she had been contacted again to work overseas and that she had been directed by 'the Lord' in her dream to offer 'work' to her," the judgement states. "When Charmaine showed interest in the offer, Sheryl advised her that a firm in Sandton would secure the work for her and that she would be paid R25 000 for the two weeks that she would be overseas. Her airfare would also be covered."

In conversations with Moss, Cwele referred to arrangements being made for visas and tickets by her "brother Frank". In answer to an inquiry about why her brother was involved, she responded that he was one of the partners in the firm that organised the overseas work. After some delay Moss travelled to Johannesburg, where Nabolisa had taken her to a friend's hotel, which she described as "very scary".

Moss called Cwele and told her that Nabolisa had said she should ask her [Cwele] what she [Moss] was going to do in Turkey, the judgement states.

Sidekick Frank Nabolisa

"Sheryl advised her there was nothing serious, that she should not speak to anyone and that she would be required to bring back a packet for Frank. But by then Moss had already lost interest in the overseas engagement, having decided the previous evening that she would no longer go overseas. Since she knew of the availability of courier services to deliver parcels from one country to another, she became suspicious and decided that she would go back home."

On top of the evidence from Moss, there was drug mule Tessa Beetge's arrest at São Paulo Airport in Brazil on June 13 2008 for drug trafficking, after two packets containing 9.25kg and 1.025 kg of cocaine were found in her luggage. She received a sentence of seven years and nine months' imprisonment, the judgement continues.

Beetge's mother testified that Cwele, a former neighbour had arranged their daughter's trip to Brazil after offering her a job doing administration work overseas. Charmaine Moss, had been told to travel to Turkey and pick up an unspecified parcel, but refused the assignment and instead turned state witness.

The court relied mainly on text messages and emails between Beetge and Cwele to reach its conclusion. In his ruling, Koen said that Cwele was involved in making travel arrangements for the women, and questioned the payment of such a large amount of 25,000 rands ($3,700) for work that required no qualifications.

Siyabonga Cwele has previously said that he had no knowledge of his wife’s drug dealing, and he did not attend court for the verdict. But his wife’s conviction has fuelled calls from opposition politicians for his resignation, and sparked questions about whether she took advantage of his position in government.

Critics have said that if Cwele was unaware of his wife’s drug smuggling, then he should not be in charge of the country's security and intelligence operations, Reuters reports.

Cwele’s accomplice Frank Nabolisa, a Nigerian national, was also found guilty by the High Court in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal province. Judge Piet Koen said that the pair had clearly worked together to recruit the women as drug mules.

Directed by 'the Lord' in Her Dream

Until her trip abroad, Beetge, a divorcée with two young daughters, had been living with her parents at their home in Margate. On hearing that their daughter had been offered some work overseas, her parents accompanied her to meet Cwele at her office to find out more about the job. After trying to call Nabolisa about the travel arrangements, Cwele told the family about her travels overseas and that the reason for her offering the opportunity to Beetge was because she was tired of travelling.

Beetge's mother, Marie Swanepoel, heard from her daughter on Friday June 13 2008. "Tessa reported to her that she had been arrested in São Paulo for drug trafficking," the judgement states. "After she had received the news of Tessa's arrest, Ms Swanepoel called Sheryl, who promised to call her back the next morning. Sheryl indeed called her as promised and told her that the Brazilian embassy would contact her, which never materialised."

The judgement recaps how the mother visited her daughter in prison in Brazil and brought home her cellphone, a SIM card from Peru and another from Colombia, plus a SIM card from South Africa and a suitcase, which was not the one she had left with on her trip.

Swanepoel used her daughter's password and downloaded all the data messages between Cwele and Beetge and handed the evidence to the police. Email correspondence was then obtained by an investigating officer who had visited Beetge in Brazil.

According to the judgment, Cwele's counsel conceded that she knew the business venture that was to involve Beetge was unlawful. While in Peru, Beetge wrote in an email to Cwele that she was waiting for a reply from her and Nabolisa.

"Otherwise, I am still freezing my butt off in Peru, with Frank that is telling me to wait and wait and wait, and then when it's time to go I am ready and they cancel everything again. So has Frank told you when I am leaving??? or don't you know?"

Cwele responded two days later: "Hi Tess, Frank told me about the delay which is for your own good really. I understand you are coming back on Monday/Tuesday? Keep well and avoid people who may end up asking a lot of questions. See you soon, hang in there. Sheryl Cwele."

The judgement states that Cwele recruited Beetge and worked closely with Nabolisa in arranging her return to South Africa. "She even assured Tessa that the delay in her travel arrangements was for her own good, an indication in my view that she had knowledge of the dangers associated with the trip.

"… [S]he knew that Tessa was required to bring back something which it is unlawful to possess. Tessa was thereafter arrested with cocaine in her possession. The inference is irresistible, therefore, that Sheryl knew that the unlawful substance that Tessa was required to bring back was, in fact, cocaine."

Cwele and Nabolisa had both pleaded not guilty to charges including dealing or conspiring to deal drugs, and procuring the two women to smuggle drugs into South Africa. Neither Cwele or Nabolisa chose to testify in court. In the case of Cwele, as she faces her lengthy sentence behind bars, little is known about why she would have become involved in drug dealing.

Drug mule Tessa Beetge is “on top of the world” after only now being informed about the jailing of the pair who recruited her. Beetge, 35, who is serving an eight-year sentence in a Brazilian jail, felt vindicated that Sheryl Cwele and her accomplice, Frank Nabolisa, were in jail, her mother, Marie Swanepoel, said .

“She’s always said it was Cwele and Nabolisa who were behind the whole drug trafficking case and her subsequent arrest

It emerged during that trial that Nabolisa had acquired his South African ID fraudulently after his initial one was withdrawn when he defaulted on maintenance payments to one of two South African women to whom he had been married at different times.

Security Minister Siyabonga Cwele

The conviction is the latest blow to South Africa's security services, coming on the heels of the arrest in March of the police's crime intelligence chief over a deadly love triangle a decade earlier. State Security Minister Siyabonga Cwele has ordered his top three intelligence chiefs to quit.

This follows a row over official protection provided for the minister’s wife during her trial on drug-trafficking charges. State Security ministry spokesperson Brian Dube that Gibson Njenje, the head of the State Security Agency’s (SSA) domestic branch – previously known as the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) – had resigned. He would not comment on “other speculation”.

Njenje’s resignation and its acceptance “with immediate effect” was announced within the agency, which is responsible for domestic and international intelligence, Cwele also asked director-general Jeff Maqetuka and the head of the South African Secret Service – now known as the agency’s foreign branch – Moe Shaik, to leave the agency. They have allegedly refused to quit and have sought legal advice in the past week.

Insiders in the SSA say that the breakdown in trust between the minister and his intelligence chiefs are, among others, as a result of his wife Sheryl Cwele’s drug-trafficking conviction
The catalyst for the showdown was a deep unhappiness within the agency after Cwele allegedly ordered that his wife be afforded intelligence protection for the duration of her trial. She was, insiders claim, transported to and from her trial in official vehicles and protected by intelligence-agency officers.

Sheryl Cwele was afforded full protection for the duration of her trial, even though the agency does not have a VIP protection unit and any protection would have had to be authorised by Njenje himself.

Disgraced former director for health and community services at Hibiscus Coast Municipality and convicted drug dealer, Sheryl Cwele, is now officially divorced from her husband, State Security Minister Siyabonga Cwele. The Witness has established that the divorce, which follows hot on the heels of 50-year-old Sheryl's cocaine trafficking conviction in May this year, was granted by Judge Trevor Gorven in the KwaZulu-Natal High Court in Pietermaritzburg on August 23.

According to the application papers, the minister had “lost all love and affection” for his wife and wished to be divorced from her. Court documents revealed the couple had not lived together as husband and wife since 2000 after getting married in 1985.

This contradicts Cwele’s denial at her bail hearing in February 2010 that she is estranged from her husband. In an apparent bid to allay rumours that they had split up at the time, the minister attended the bail application flanked by his bodyguards. He sat directly behind his wife in the dock, but she did not turn to look at him and he did not speak to her.

This wasn't the first time Sheryl had been found to be corrupt, if you can call being the head of an international drug ring corrupt. In April 2005 results of a forensic investigation into alleged fraud and corruption in the municipality, conducted by the Traditional and Local Government Affairs Department were released. Guess what, Cwele applied for her job after the closing date of November 8, 2002. She had no supporting documents, nothing in her application was certified and her application form wasn't even completed.

This shining beacon of South African politics has twice had her contract renewed, despite the fact that she didn’t meet the department’s competency profiles nor the minimum competency levels specified in the Municipal Finance Management Act regulations, required for officials at her level of seniority. She’s been found guilty of: Fraud, Incompetence, Nepotism, and now Drug trafficking

Convicted drug dealer Sheryl Cwele awoke on Friday morning to a new routine – one she will follow until she qualifies for parole, probably after serving at least half of her 20-year prison sentence.

Prison Life

Cwele, 50, joined other inmates in Westville Prison’s female section on Thursday to start her sentence for drug dealing.

A senior prison official, who asked to remain anonymous, said her day would begin at 5am and end at 3pm, when she would be locked up in her cell. An official told reporters that the former Hibiscus Coast municipality’s director of health services and ex-wife of State Security Minister, Siyabonga Cwele, would be treated like any other offender.

“She will be locked up like rapists, murderers and other common criminals. There will be no special treatment for her,” said the official. The official said that on arrival Cwele was officially booked in, which included having her fingerprints taken. After a body search, Cwele changed into prison uniform – a blue denim skirt and white shirt.

“She started at the prison hospital for a medical check-up, which includes checking that she does not have injuries or illnesses. I’m not sure how long she is going to be at the hospital,” said the official.

Once in the cells, Cwele will start the day with a shower with the other inmates before cleaning her cell. The prisoners then leave their cells to line up on the balcony to be counted before eating a breakfast of brown bread with jam and porridge and a cup of tea.

Today, drug trafficking is the most lucrative branch of organised crime, and within in it cocaine yields the most profits. In 2006, in Spain alone, the authorities seized 50 tonnes of cocaine. Twelve million Europeans have consumed cocaine at least once in their lifetime. In 2007, in Europe there were 3.5 million young and adolescent consumers. In Spain, 3% of the population regularly consumes cocaine. This group accounts for about 20% of all those in Europe who use the drug.

There is a new dimension to the cocaine trafficking bound for Europe, and this requires more attention. After a significant rise in recent years, it is now estimated that nearly 50 tonnes of cocaine pass through West Africa each year before reaching European soil; in other words, one fifth of the cocaine that makes its way into Europe. The fragile States of West Africa are not in a position to take on Latin American organised crime gangs, which are much stronger in terms of resources. The establishment of the illegal drug market in those weak States goes hand in hand with a rise in instability, growing levels of corruption, possible financing of non-governmental armed groups and high incidence of cocaine use.

Drug consumption follows the market laws of supply and demand: the higher the price of the drug, the lower the demand, and consumption drops. Cocaine’s price is high even though its production costs are very low. What keeps prices high are penalisation of trafficking in and consumption of drugs and the control of supply.

This system poses high risks for those working in this illegal market, who make up for this through charging high prices. At the same time, the control regime involves frequent drug seizures, which makes the product more scarce and that also contributes to raising prices. Therefore, any intervention in the chain of creation of added value must be evaluated in terms of the impact it has on prices. Embracing this logic has imminent implications for drug control policy: all measures to control supply, be they repressive, penal or linked to development policy, must be evaluated in light of the effect they have on the final price of cocaine.

Cocaine’s production and marketing chain follows an exponential price curve: the further the cocaine is from the producing country in the commercial chain, the higher its market price will be. For instance, a kilo of high-purity cocaine has a street value of nearly €80,000 in Spain, and that is a conservative estimate. The same kilo in Colombia is worth about €1,200. However, the coca-growing farmer gets no more than €250 for the coca leaves needed to produce that kilo of the drug. Because of this exponential increase in value, potential situations of a shortage of coca leaves or cocaine in the Andean region would not have visible effects on the final price in Europe or on consumption levels. As far as controlling supply is concerned, it is better to intervene in the chain of creation of cocaine’s added value only when the price of the drug is high enough for the shortage to have an effect on that price –far from the producing countries and close to the final consumer. Right now the main coca producer is Colombia, with nearly 100,000 hectares.

The three main coca-growing countries –Bolivia, Peru and Colombia– produced 994 tonnes of pure cocaine[1] in 2007, according to estimates by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The 181,600 hectares used to grow coca leaves in those countries correspond to a surface area nearly three times the size of the city of Madrid. Total coca crops have been growing non-stop since 2003. In 2007, 27% more crops were planted than in 2003; in Bolivia the increase was 5% and in Peru it was 4%. Even though the amount of land used to grow coca is smaller than the estimate for 2001, cocaine production is higher. This is because growing methods are more efficient, and the processes for extracting the drug and refining cocaine are more powerful.

In 2007, 121 tonnes of cocaine were seized in Europe in a total of 72,700 raids. Increasingly, the final transit countries for the cocaine before it reaches Europe are Venezuela and Brazil, followed by Argentina, Ecuador, Suriname and the former colonies and overseas territories of France, the UK and the Netherlands. Other countries of the Caribbean, and, more and more, Mexico, are also cited as stopover countries for South American cocaine bound for Europe.

Venezuela has become a relatively safe haven for Colombian traffickers. Compared to Colombia, Venezuela offers big advantages for cocaine traffickers, thanks to corrupt security forces, a highly permeable and practically uncontrollable jungle border spanning more than 2,000 km, and patchy efforts at crime-fighting. Cocaine is shipped from Venezuela in speedboats and ‘semi-submersible’ vessels to the Lesser Antilles and from there to the US and European markets. An ever-growing amount is shipped directly from Venezuela to West Africa.

Brazil shares with the three main coca-producing countries 7,000 km of border in the Amazon basin, which, because of its topography and vegetation, makes effective control of drug trafficking more difficult. Drug-trafficking rings take advantage of the porous nature of the Amazon region and ship cocaine to Brazil along rivers that are traditional routes for contraband. In this way they dodge stricter controls that are in place at ports and airports in the three coca-producing countries.

The wholesale cocaine trade with Europe is dominated mainly by Colombian organisations that generally work with Spanish distribution networks, although lately they do it more often with Nigerian and Moroccan gangs. Colombian traffickers have shown little interest in the retail trade and street-level dealing. Although in Spain Colombians are frequently identified as drug peddlers, one can assume they have little to do with the wholesale networks operating out of South America.

The Iberian Peninsula is an ideal entry and redistribution point because of abundant trade links with the cocaine-producing region and transit countries, an historical affinity with former Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking colonies, large and well-established networks of emigrants, closeness to Africa and extensive coastlines.

Since 2005 more evidence has emerged that Colombian and Venezuelan gangs were setting up shop in West Africa as a safe haven, turning the region into a beachhead for shipping cocaine to Europe. There are many reasons that explain why the drug business is taking root in the region. In general, a mix of push and pull factors are at play: growing demand for cocaine in EU countries, tighter controls on traditional direct routes between South America and Europe, a declining cocaine market in the US and excellent conditions for setting up markets and undertaking illegal activities in West Africa.

Given the shortfalls in the security forces and rule of law in that region, which is home to some of the world’s poorest countries, the amount of cocaine that is seized is not as representative as in other parts of the globe. One can presume that the real amount of cocaine that is trafficked in the region is a multiple of the volume that is actually seized. The UNODC’s conservative estimate is that every year nearly 50 tonnes of the drug move through West Africa; in other words, one-fifth of the cocaine bound for Europe goes through the region. That is more or less a quarter of the wholesale trade, is worth about US$450 million and ends up in the hands of African middlemen and helpers. Eric Walter Amegan (Middleman)

There is some evidence that in particular Ghana, Guinea-Bissau (which has earned a reputation as Africa’s first narco-state), Guinea, Cape Verde and Senegal have become staging grounds for the largest flows of cocaine headed for Europe.

There has been a significant increase recently in investments by South Americans in some countries of West Africa, such as purchases of real estate or fish- or wood-processing plants. One might assume that the acquisition of this property, possibly designed to mask illegal activities, points to the establishment of lasting structures in the region. This would allow for expansion of drug trafficking in the future.

Mr Untouchable

Eric ''Mika'' Walter Amegan

In 2007, Nouakchott, Mauritania the police intercepted a minibus. On board a cargo of more than 760 kilograms of cocaine. In the vehicle, two Spanish: Miguel Angel Calderon
and his compatriot Juan Carlos Perro, a Mexican, a Saharawi name Bouya Ahmed, the owner of the bus and Ahmedou Mohamed. All were arrested but quickly released.

Investigations lead to a search made in a dwelling belonging to Mohamed Ould Haidalla, the son of Mohamed Ould Khouna Haidalla, an austere lieutenant-colonel in the army, who led Mauritania between 1979 and 1984 uncovered seize 20.8 million ouguiyas (about 70,000 euros) in cash.

Simultaneously, the police managed to get hold of the aircraft used to deliver the cocaine which landed in open country, 125 km north of the city.Two days later police discovered a container at the port of Nouadhibou, inside 820,000 euros and forty satellite phones, which were probably used for earlier deliveries.

Mohamed Ould Haidalla ran a network of 4x4 used to transport the cocaine across the to Sahel to Morocco and the port of Nador where its then sent by cigarette speed boat to Spain, France or Italy. Mohamed Ould Haidalla Agadir, who was arrested in Morocco with 18 kg of cocaine. Another player in the logistics chain is a man named Seydou Kane, a former member of the African Liberation Forces of Mauritania (Flam) who handles shipments with islamist groups.ic.

Mauritanian police also launched an international arrest warrant against the mastermind of the network from Latin America to Europe. A French citizen, Eric Walter Amégan. Eric "Mika" Walter, he only 28 years old, and it is he who is in direct contact with a Colombian national Eduardo who has his own cocaine smuggling gang specializing in routes "Latin-America-West Africa-Europe".

Mohamed Ould Haidalla

The Colombian is, according to the testimony of Walter, assisted by a "Nabil" an Algerian national together wit with a group of Mauritanians including Yahya, Barikallah, Mini and K. Seydou shipped huge container shipments to Europe.

Eric "Mika" Walter was born 31 October 1972 in Paris XIV (France), son of Augustine and Benedict Geoffry, real estate agents, residing in the residence Mangrove Saly, Mbour.
"Mika" was arrested in Senegal in June 2009, eighteen months after the mini-bus incident, immediately, the Mauritanian authorities requested his extradition . But "Mika" clearly had high level connections. According to a French police source, Francis Spizner tenor of the Paris Bar and lawyer several African leaders including Theodore Obiang Nguema intervenes with the Senegalese presidency to prevent the extradition, saying "Mika" risks the death penalty in Mauritania.

Eric Walter Amégan, a Franco-Congolese, actually confessed to Senegalise police is part as the head of an International cocaine network. He gave up names and contacts with which he cooperates, overseas and in Guinea Bissau . In his confession, he participated in the kidnapping and torture of his accomplice Mini Ould Soudani with the help of Sid Ahmed Ould Taya, police officer. He admits that he planned to land in Mauritania, a planeload of drugs from Latin America.

Seydou Kane

Althrough represented by two top notch lawyers, Eric Dupont-Moretti and Jacques Vergès, it would seem that with a full confessuion the fate of "Mika" was sealed, in 11 February 2010 he and six Mauritanian colleagues were sentenced to 15 years in prison.

However on the 15 February 2011, with a presidential pardon from the new president of Mauritania, "Mika's" sentence was reduced from 15 to 10 years with his co defendants
including ex Interpol police chief, Sid'Ahmed Ould Taya, reduced to just 5 years.

More good news for Mika in July 13 2011, Eric Walter and 30 of the 32 defendants were acquitted by the Court of Appeal of Nouakchott, he was released the next day and has not
been seen since.

Sid Ahmed Ould Taya

African middlemen are paid –similar to the interaction between Colombian drug cartels and Mexican associates in the 1980s and 90s– in small amounts of cocaine for their transport, merchandise-delivery and transfer services. These small amounts of what one might call ‘cocaine currency’ tend to be sent to Europe, either through human couriers travelling on commercial flights or through the mail. Most of the African ‘mules’ arrested in European airports come from Guinea, Nigeria, Mali and Senegal. More than half of the airborne drug traffickers are of Nigerian origin, even on flights that do not originate in Nigeria. Nigerian gangs often control street-level drug dealing in Europe. In France, most of the foreigners arrested for offences related to drug trafficking are Nigerian. Compared to other ethnic groups, they stand out because of their flexibility and strong ties among members of their ethnic groups. ‘Mules’ are not normally members of criminal gangs, but rather used by organised traffickers as a ‘means of transport’ in the literal sense: they are loaded up at their point of departure and unloaded when they arrive at their destination.

Eme Ayortor Eme ''A Mule''

In the second procedure, which involves wholesale trafficking, large cargos of cocaine from South America are transferred on the high seas to fishing vessels or speedboats, which have an African crew generally accompanied by a South American supervisor. They take the drugs to a temporary storage facility on the African continent. There, the cocaine is repackaged and sent to Europe aboard yachts, freighters, again fishing vessels or speed boats, mainly to Galicia and the northern coast of Portugal. The Spanish and Portuguese authorities seized 69% of all the cocaine confiscated in Europe in 2006. Whereas Colombian groups have been all but overtaken by Mexican competitors in trafficking to the US, it is Colombians and also Venezuelans that dominate wholesale cocaine trafficking to Africa.

Red Cross False Flag

Aside from maritime traffic, South American drug traffickers use small planes or light aircraft that are re-fitted to endure transatlantic flights that start in Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela or Suriname and end up in illegal airstrips in West Africa. But the spot where the cocaine-laden planes land in West Africa is not always clear, as it is just a moving point for the transfer of the drugs for later maritime shipment. There is some evidence that smaller amounts of cocaine are moved through the interior of coastal states to neighbouring countries, often those which have direct, regular flights to European capitals.

There have also been cases, probably rare ones, in which drugs were shipped from the beaches of the Gulf of Guinea over land to Morocco and from there to Europe, following the classic routes for sneaking in marijuana and contraband. For this reason the capital of Mali, Bamako, has been cited as a major transit point for South American cocaine even though the city is 1,000 km from the coast.

Aside from Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal, probably no State in West Africa is capable of confronting successfully and on its own the organised crime gangs that are settling on their territory. One hundred kilos of pure cocaine, dumped on a beach in Guinea-Bissau, would have a market value in Europe that is equivalent to all the development aid that the country receives in a year. Several hundred kilos of cocaine allegedly arrive weekly to Guinea-Bissau. The US$450 million in drug profits that UNODC estimates stay in the hands of African intermediaries each year are equal to all the foreign direct investment made in Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Mali and Senegal in 2005.

The fragile or failed States of West Africa conduct in a very limited fashion the functions of governance in the areas of security, social policy and legitimacy/rule of law.

In West Africa, cocaine trafficking rings find ideal conditions. It is a perfect geographical prolongation of the coca-producing countries; weak state structures are the norm, with limited territorial control and legal systems with limited scope. Both regions offer certain ‘comparative advantages’ for criminal elements, which encourages the establishment of trans-national black markets and easy creation of illegal added-value.

Due to growing pressure from government anti-drug agencies along traditional smuggling routes, West Africa attracts people involved in the cocaine trade because of the favourable operating conditions it offers. The result of this is a rise in organised crime activities in the region. As the drug trade takes root, consumption of drugs also increases.

This has been observed in many transit countries, where higher demand is fuelled by more abundant supply. This happens in Central America and Brazil, but also in Guinea-Bissau. In many cases the rise in consumption stems from the distribution of ‘cocaine currency’. Besides this, along with drug trafficking what is also expanding is a series of secondary effects such as corruption, violence, money laundering, and trafficking in light and small weapons. The most visible example of this effect has been observed in Mexico, where the conflict with and among drug cartels has claimed more than 60,000 lives since 2006, according to official figures.

According to some estimates, more than 80% of drug-related violent acts stem from the resolution of economic conflicts or criminal elements competing for leadership. Contrary to what one might presume, only a small percentage of drug-related violence stems from people being high on drugs or crimes involving people seeking money to buy them. In West Africa, all it takes is a moderate bribe to neutralise the already weak control that authorities have on their territory, or the police.

The rise in cocaine consumption in Europe
The first anti-drug strategy that the EU adopted for the period 2000-04 was aimed mainly at achieving a ‘considerable reduction’ in consumption and availability of drugs in Europe.[48] This goal has not been met. Consumption of narcotics increased in almost every category of drugs, including cocaine. It is estimated that 12 million Europeans have tried cocaine at least once in their life; in 2007 alone, an estimated 3.5 million adolescents and young adults used the drug. Altogether, nearly 4.5 million Europeans sniff cocaine regularly.

Although the US remains the largest market for cocaine, with an annual import volume of around 450 tonnes, Europe is catching up quickly: whereas the amount of cocaine seized in the US has been on the decline since 1990, at the same time there has been a significant rise in seizures in Europe and West Africa.

This is a clear indication of the growing volume of cocaine making its way into Europe. In the EU, cocaine-related crimes rose 62% between 2000 and 2005. Meanwhile, the increase in Europe is not distributed evenly among EU countries. In Spain, 16,799 cocaine-related crimes were recorded in 2000; but the number soared to 46,200 in 2006. In Spain, Italy and France, cocaine consumption has trebled in recent years and in the UK it has quadrupled. Britain accounts for 26% of Europe’s cocaine consumers, followed by Spain with 24% and Italy with 22%.

How the price of cocaine is set. For the amount of coca leaves needed to produce a kilo of cocaine, an Andean grower receives about €250. That kilo has a commercial value of nearly €1,200 for a middleman in the producer country. That same kilo, while in transit, has a wholesale price of between €12,000 and €15,000.This kilo of relatively pure cocaine, later mixed with additives, sells on the streets of Madrid for €80,000, depending on the purity and the number of doses.

Organised criminals’ ability to evade. Europe’s tools for controlling narcotics are adequate, but it is not clear that they are based on a consistent strategy to block drug trafficking to Europe in a systematic way. Seizures that are just occasional –as opposed to systematic– only contribute to causing drug lords to move their current trafficking routes, and not to cutting them off or decreasing their number over the mid- and long term.

Narco Sub

Drug trafficking rings learn quickly, and are flexible enough to adjust their strategies in response to those of government authorities. Traffickers’ most common way to rebuff increased government efforts is simply to move geographically.

They have sufficient resources, means and networks to shift to alternative routes, with different means of transport and new middlemen. The rise in the commercial value of cocaine in the US, which is highly volatile and does not tend to last more than just a few months, shows the ability of drug rings to adapt to the temporary strategies of government authorities.

With the fall off the Cali and Medellin cartels in Colombia in the 1990s, the hierarchical, pyramid-style structure in drug trafficking is now more the exception than the rule, although it seems this model has re-emerged in Mexico in a big way. The common structure in transatlantic drug trafficking is similar to horizontal networks, with smaller groups that interact autonomously and lack a vertical command structure. Each group tends to handle transactions in one or two of the links in the drug’s production and commercial chain.[119] It is believed that, at most, current drug lords run a coordinating body, as is thought to be the case with the Norte del Valle cartel in Colombia.

These organisational structures are more like a holding company than the legendary figure of an all-powerful overseer. The advantage of this for organised criminals is that these decentralised structures cannot be wiped out with one definitive blow, as happened with Medellin cartel after the death of Pablo Escobar. The individual components of these organisations tend to interact without actually knowing their counterparts or possible bosses. The organisations can easily replace lower-level links, quickly filling holes left by arrests or violence waged by other groups.

As organised crime gangs are skilled at evasion and at finding alternative transit territories and routes in countries with limited or non-existent governance structures, the model for enhanced control of drug trafficking might soon reach its limit

Cape Verde is usually mentioned as an example of a country which in just a few years has improved its ability to monitor its land and sea borders. The State has recovered a certain ability to fight organised crime and impose a high cost for future illegal dealings. The EU and some of its member states have implemented a set of cooperation projects, facilitating material support and technical consulting for Cape Verde.

Nor does it seem right to impose sanctions on some countries, such as Guinea-Bissau, for not acting firmly against drug trafficking. Guinea-Bissau and many of its neighbours do not have the resources necessary for controlling their territory. Sanctions cannot change that, and will only make the situation worse Europe’s institutions and member states should reconsider their international anti-drug policy. Portugal maybe an example of a viable alternative to the current policy.

Globalization hit organized crime over the last decade and now is integral to its most profitable business -- the international narcotics traffic.

Once a regional problem involving a customer base of a few million, and barely a billion dollars in sales, the illegal drug industry is now a worldwide enterprise with tens of millions of hard core consumers spending hundreds of billions on opiates, cocaine and amphetamines and marijuana, as well as other drugs.

The single largest marketplace for illegal drugs continues to be the United States. Although the market has decreased dramatically since its heyday in the mid-80's, close to thirteen million Americans still think nothing about occasionally buying a gram of cocaine, a few hits of ecstasy or a quarter ounce of weed to party with their friends on the weekends.

Imagine a typical weekend in New York City. Experts estimate that at least one percent of the population - 80,000 plus - spends $200 on illicit drugs. That alone would amount to $16 million dollars a week or $832 million a year. And that's just New York.

When the drug money ultimately makes its way into the foreign economy, it is used to pay the salaries of shippers and processors, as well as the bribes that supplement the incomes of government officials on both sides of the border. What keeps the drug industry going is its huge profit margins. Producing drugs is a very cheap process. Like any commodities business the closer you are to the source the cheaper the product.

Processed cocaine is available in Colombia for $1500 dollars per kilo and sold on the streets of America for as much as $66,000 a kilo (retail). The average drug trafficking organization, meaning from Medellin to the streets of New York, could afford to lose 90% of its profit and still be profitable," says Robert Stutman, a former DEA Agent. "Now think of the analogy. GM builds a million Chevrolets a year. Doesn't sell 900,000 of them and still comes out profitable. That is a hell of a business, man. That is the dope business."

Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase & Co., Wachovia (acquired by Wells Fargo in 2009), HSBC Holdings, ING Bank, Standard Chartered, American Express Bank International, Barclays, RBS, Coutts, UBS and not a few others, have a common bond beyond ranking among the largest banks in the world.

All have been accused within the past five years of failing to comply with US anti-money laundering laws — thereby enabling, collectively, hundreds of billions of dollars worth of suspicious transactions to move through the banking system absent adequate monitoring or oversight.

Imagine if you or I were pulled over by the police driving a 40ft container while transporting $800 million in used bills that traced back to drug cartels in Mexico and Columbia suspected of being involved in murder, kidnapping, extortion, prostitution and cocaine trafficking. What are the odds that we would walk away with only a slap on the wrist and a fine?

El Chapo HSBC Happy Customer

But if you’re a big bank, and you’re caught moving money for a major international cartel, you don’t have to worry. You just fork over a monetary penalty, and then raise your fees to make up for it. Yet not one these banks, nor any of their top executives, has been hit with criminal sanctions. No one from the big banks ever goes to jail – These are the proceeds of murder and misery where in Mexico alone over 60,000 people have been killed over the past 6 years in drug related violence. But no one goes to jail.

How much money does a bank have to launder before people go to Prison?
Britain's biggest bank was forced to pay $1.9bn (£1.17bn) fine to settle allegations by US
regulators that it allowed itself to be used to launder billions of dollars for the Sinaloa drug cartel of chapo Guzman and Colombia's Norte del Valle cartel for nearly a decade until 2010.The US department of justice said HSBC had moved $881m for two drug cartels in Latin America and accepted $15bn in unexplained "bulk cash", across the bank's counters in Mexico, Russia and other countries. In some branches the boxes of cash being deposited were so big the tellers' windows had to be enlarged.

Specifically, the government says HSBC failed to monitor over $670 billion in wire transfers from HSBC’s Mexico division between 2006 and 2009 and failed to monitor over $9.4 billion in purchases of U.S. dollars from HSBC’s Mexico unit over the same period. (The Justice Department’s said HSBC’s Mexico division became the “preferred financial institution for drug cartels and money-launderers.”). The agency also adds that HSBC failed to monitor over $200 trillion in wire transfers between 2006 and 2009 from countries that HSBC’s U.S. unit deemed to be “standard” or “medium” risk.

Lord of War Happy HSBC Client

There is a consensus among U.S. Congressional Investigators, former bankers and international banking experts that U.S. and European banks launder between $500 billion and $1 trillion of dirty money each year, half of which is laundered by U.S. banks alone.Over a decade then, between $2.5 and $5 trillion criminal proceeds have been laundered by U.S. banks and circulated in the U.S. financial circuits. Senator Levin's statement however, only covers criminal proceeds, according to U.S. laws.

Wachovia was fined $50m and made to surrender $110m in proven drug profits, but was shown to have inadequately monitored a staggering $376bn through the Casa de Cambio over four years, of which $10bn was in cash. The whistleblower in the case, an Englishman working as an anti-money laundering officer in the bank's London office, Martin Woods, was disciplined for trying to alert his superiors, and won a settlement after bringing a claim for unfair dismissal.

Wachovia was not the first, neither will HSBC be the last. Six years ago, a subsidiary of
Barclays – Barclays Private Bank – was exposed as having been used to launder drug money
from Colombia through five accounts linked to the infamous Medellín cartel. By an ironic twist, Barclays continued to entertain the funds after British police had become involved after a tip-off, from HSBC.

And the issue is wider than drug-money. It is about where banks, law enforcement officers
and the regulators – and politics and society generally – want to draw the line between
the criminal and supposed "legal" economies, if there is one.

Take the top-drawer bank to the elite and Her Majesty the Queen, Coutts, part of the bailed-out Royal Bank of Scotland. On 23 March, the UK Financial Services Authority issued a final notice to Coutts, fixing a penalty of £8.75m for breach of its money-laundering code.

It wouldn't be much of a stretch to insist that drug money laundered by financial giants like HSBC and Wachovia were in fact, little more than “hedges” designed to offset losses in residential mortgage backed securities (RMBS), sliced and diced into toxic collateralised debt obligations, as the 2007-2008 global economic crisis cratered the capitalist “free market.” Evidence suggests that HSBC stepped up money laundering for their drug cartel clients as the hyper inflated real estate bubble collapsed.

Norte del Valle Cartel Drug Money

Royal Bank of Scotland has been fined £5.6m by the Financial Services Authority for failing to adequately screen customers and payments to prevent its banks – RBS, NatWest, Ulster Bank and Coutts – from being used for money laundering.

Standard Chartered PLC agreed to pay $340 million to a New York regulator to settle allegations that the bank broke U.S. money-laundering laws. The bank, which earlier had contested much of the allegations, acknowledged the fine covers all the transactions that the New York regulator alleged were illegal. The bank will acknowledge misconduct related to the $250 billion in transactions.

Barclays, HSBC, NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS – have been linked to money
laundering scam over which some corrupt Nigerian politicians were indicted. Barclays, HSBC and UBS are all members of the Wolfsberg Group, an international body set up in 2000 to try to improve global anti-money laundering procedures.

The Central Bank of Ireland has reprimanded and fined the Dublin-based life assurance arm of Swiss bank UBS after it failed to comply in a timely manner with anti money-laundering legislation introduced in 2010.that allows the bank to admit to wrongdoing and pay a fine without being criminally charged.

In the 1990s, Raul Salinas de Gortari, the brother of former Mexican President Carlos Salinas, tapped US-based Citibank to help transfer up to $100 million out of Mexico and into Swiss bank accounts. Although US authorities investigated the suspicious money movements, ultimately no charges were brought against Raul Salinas or Citibank — a Citigroup Inc. subsidiary. Again, in January 2010, Citigroup popped up on banking regulators’ radar, this time in Mexico, when a Mexican judge accused a half dozen casa de cambios (money transmitters) of laundering drug funds through various banks, including Citigroup’s Mexican subsidiary. Citigroup again, was not accused of violating any laws.

Like any cash rich business, drug trafficking organizations invest in the legitimate economy of their own country and use investment advisers in financial instruments available in the international marketplace. Just before sunset on April 10, 2006, a DC-9 jet landed at the international airport in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, 500 miles east of Mexico City. As soldiers on the ground approached the plane, the crew tried to shoo them away, saying there was a dangerous oil leak. So the troops grew suspicious and searched the jet.

They found 128 black suitcases, packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100 million. The stash was supposed to have been delivered from Caracas to drug traffickers in Toluca, near Mexico City, Mexican prosecutors later found. Law enforcement officials also discovered something else.

The smugglers had bought the DC-9 with laundered funds they transferred through two of the biggest banks in the U.S.: Wachovia Corp. and Bank of America Corp., Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its August 2010 issue.

This was no isolated incident. Wachovia, it turns out, had made a habit of helping move money for Mexican drug smugglers. Wells Fargo & Co., which bought Wachovia in 2008, has admitted in court that its unit failed to monitor and report suspected money laundering by narcotics traffickers - including the cash used to buy four planes that shipped a total of 22 tons of cocaine.

The admission came in an agreement that Charlotte, North Carolina-based Wachovia struck with federal prosecutors in March, and it sheds light on the largely undocumented role of U.S. banks in contributing to the violent drug trade that has convulsed Mexico for the past four years.

Wachovia is just one of the U.S. and European banks that have been used for drug money laundering. For the past two decades, Latin American drug traffickers have gone to U.S. banks to cleanse their dirty cash, says Paul Campo, head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's financial crimes unit.

Miami-based American Express Bank International paid fines in both 1994 and 2007 after admitting that it had failed to spot and report drug dealers laundering money through its accounts. Drug traffickers used accounts at Bank of America in Oklahoma City to buy three planes that carried 10 tons of cocaine, according to Mexican court filings.

If you're caught with a few grams of cocaine, the chances are good you're going to jail.

If it happens repeatedly, you may go to jail for the rest of your life, But evidently, if you launder nearly a billion dollars for drug cartels and violate international sanctions, your company

pays a fine and you go home and sleep in your own bed at night - every single individual

associated with this -Is there a problem with that picture?

Konstantin Yaroshenko

The alleged accomplice of Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for attempted drugs trafficking in the United States, has pleaded guilty in a New York court.

Marcel Acevedo Sarmiento, accomplice to Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko whose 20-year drug trafficking sentence by an American court in 2011 bolstered a diplomatic row between Russia and America, was sentenced to 12 years in prison in a US federal court for conspiracy to import cocaine to the US.

According to the US Attorney’s statement, “Through a combination of privately owned aircraft and maritime vessels, these organizations, predominantly based in Colombia and Venezuela, have transported hundreds of tons of cocaine, worth billions of dollars, to West African countries including Liberia.”

Acavedo was caught up in a conspiracy to fly 4,000 kilograms of cocaine, worth upwards of $100 million to Monrovia, Liberia. The 48-year-old Colombian supplier formerly had the capacity to transport enormous quantities of cocaine to West Africa for distribution to Europe and beyond.

Earlier, the U.S. authorities reported the arrest of another suspect in the case, Jorge Ivan Salazar Castano, who was also awaiting extradition from Spain.

Sarmiento and Castano were charged alongside Yaroshenko and other alleged criminals.

The U.S. Attorney's Office maintained that Yaroshenko agreed to transport four tonnes of cocaine from South America to Africa and then onwards to the United States. He arrived to Liberia in May 2010, allegedly to discuss the cost of his services with his Colombian partners.

$4.5 million one way trip

Yaroshenko was offered $4.5 million for trafficking the cocaine from Venezuela to Liberia and another $1.8 million for trafficking drugs to Nigeria and then to Ghana. From Ghana, part of the drugs were to be transferred to the United States.

Yaroshenko was arrested together with Chigbo Peter Umeh in Liberia in May 2010. They were soon extradited to the United States. Umeh was sentenced to 30 years in prison on July 28, while Yaroshenko was given 20 years behind bars.

Umeh, 42, who is from Nigeria, was a broker who assisted various international narcotics suppliers in shipping numerous tons of cocaine from South America to West Africa, from where the cocaine was transported to Europe or elsewhere within Africa. Salazar Castano, 44, who is from Colombia, was a cocaine supplier based in Colombia and Spain, who, together with his co-conspirators, sent large commercial aircraft containing cocaine from South America to West Africa, as well as smaller, private airplanes that departed from clandestine airstrips in Venezuela. Yaroshenko, 41, who is from Russia, was an aircraft pilot and aviation transport expert who transported thousand-kilogram quantities of cocaine throughout South America, Africa, and Europe.

Since in or about 2007, they have attempted to bribe high-level officials in the Liberian Government in order to protect shipments of vast quantities of cocaine, and to use Liberia as a trans-shipment point for further distribution of the cocaine in Africa and Europe. In particular, they met with two individuals they knew to be Liberian government officials -- the Director and Deputy Director of the Republic of Liberia National Security Agency ("RLNSA"), both of whom (unbeknownst to them) in fact were working jointly with the DEA in an undercover capacity ("UC-1" and "UC-2", respectively).

In seeking to ensure the safe passage of their cocaine shipments, they agreed to make payments to the Director and the Deputy Director of the RLNSA in cash and also in the form of cocaine. The CS advised the defendants that a portion of the cocaine paid to the CS would be transported from Liberia to Ghana, from where it would be imported into New York. They participated in a series of face-to-face meetings, phone conversations, and telephone calls with the cooperating Liberian officials and the CS in connection with at least three different shipments of cocaine that they were trying to transport through Liberia:
(1) a shipment of approximately 4,000 kilograms, which was to be flown from Venezuela to Monrovia, Liberia, and the retail value of which was over $100 million;
(2) a shipment of approximately 1,500 kilograms, which was to be flown from Venezuela to Monrovia, Liberia, on an aircraft originating in Panama;
(3) a shipment of approximately 500 kilograms of cocaine, which was to be transported by a ship from Venezuela to a location off the coast of Liberia. Through these meetings, the defendants all understood that once the cocaine was transported to Liberia, a portion of the shipment (representing the payment to the CS) would be transported into Ghana, from where it would be placed on a commercial flight destined for the United States.

Gabril Kamara

Sierra Leone Connection
Since at least in or about 2007, Gabril Kamara, 40, who is from Sierra Leone, has actively sought to recruit South American drug trafficking organizations to establish operations in various West African countries, including in Liberia, Guinea Conakry, Guinea Bissau, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria. Kamara has made efforts to corrupt and influence Government officials within the West African region in order to establish safe havens for the receipt, storage, and trans-shipment of thousands of kilograms of cocaine. Jalloh, 33, and Sesay, both of whom are also from Sierra Leone, have assisted Kamara with his drug distribution enterprise and with his efforts to corrupt public officials for the benefit of South American drug trafficking organizations.

Kamara, Jalloh and Sesay exchanged a series of emails and telephone calls and held numerous meetings with the CS, the cooperating Liberian officials, and a third Liberian government official who was also working jointly with the DEA in an undercover capacity ("UC-3"), in order to negotiate prices and make specific arrangements for the secure transportation of cocaine from South America through Liberia, including, but not limited to, a 4,000 kilogram shipment of cocaine from Colombia. The CS, who was introduced as UC-1's "partner" and confidante, was present for many of these meetings. In the course of these meetings, the defendants understood that the CS, who was to be paid by the defendants in the form of cocaine, was going to send a portion of his share of the cocaine to Ghana, from where it would be imported into New York aboard commercial flights.

Lansana Conteh

It is believed that Gibril Kamara and a few powerful politicians in Sierra Leone, were allegedly knee deep in the cocaine trade in Sierra Leone, until a plane shipment went afoul in 2008. Gibril was reportedly tipped off by some people in power to escape to Guinea. Some government officials were complicit in his escape and the late Lansana Conteh’s conteh girlfriend was en route to Conakry with a convoy of three luxury SUV vehicles filled with foreign currency and precious metals. The convoy was reportedly stopped at the border and searched; however, word came from Freetown to release the convoy as the late President had threatened force if the said convoy was not released. Later, according to wikileaks the US Cable the scenario was a hoax as it was Gibril Kamara who was been smuggled out of the country. In Liberia, Mr. Gibrill Kamara was rounded up by a group of DEA officials in collaboration with Liberian Security Agents and was whisked to the United States of America-New York where he was detained for trial.

Colombia and Venezuela Connection
Acevedo is an alleged cocaine supplier based in Colombia and Venezuela, who was capable of transporting thousand-kilogram quantities of cocaine from South America to various locations in West Africa, for distribution within Africa and for further distribution to Europe and elsewhere. Acevedo worked in the international drug business with other members of the conspiracy charged in the Indictment, including in connection with a 4,000 kilogram shipment of
cocaine which was to be flown from Venezuela to Monrovia, Liberia, for a retail value of over $100 million.

In a series of recorded telephone conversations with a confidential source working for the DEA ("the CS"), Acevedo, who claimed to have been involved in the cocaine trafficking business for over 20 years, coordinated efforts to arrange what was ultimately supposed to be a shipment of between 2,000 and 2,500 kilograms of cocaine on a plane from Venezuela to Liberia. Acevedo confirmed to the CS that the cocaine shipment had been protected by the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (the "FARC"), an international terrorist group dedicated to the violent overthrow of the democratically elected Government of Colombia.

On May 29, 2010, Acevedo indicated that Venezuelanauthorities had seized his plane as well as the cocaine that it contained, and had directed him to leave the country. After apprising the CS of the seizure, Acevedo invited the CS to invest 500 kilograms in a new shipment out of Bolivia, which Acevedo understood the CS intended to import into New York. ACEVEDO instructed the CS to wire transfer a $100,000 payment to him, and provided the CS with the relevant bank account information for the transfer.

Acevedo is charged with one count of conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute cocaine, knowing and intending that the cocaine would be imported into the United States.

There are many similarities between a small sovereign nation like Belize and Guinea Bissau in West Africa. A growing number of organized crime which operates largely with impunity, is breeding corruption,threatening the security across a region where the value of drugs present is higher than their national GDPs.

As observed by experts from the UNODC, drug trafficking is best facilitated by the involvement of state officials. No matter if active or passive in their actions, politicians, high-rank military authorities and civil servants can largely smooth the path for the traffickers to operate also blurring the line between the state and the organized crime. The U.S. government has estimated that up to 90% of the 700 metric tons of cocaine headed from South America to the U.S. wends its way through Belize.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control announced it was freezing the assets of three Belize residents alleged to be drug traffickers and “key associates” of a Mexican drug trafficking group lead by Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera ("El Chapo") ,Ismael Zambada García ("El Mayo") and Juan José Esparragoza Moreno ("El Azul").

John Zabaneh

The three suspects targeted Tuesday are John Zabaneh, his nephew Dion Zabaneh, and a“close associate” named Daniel Moreno. described by U.S. officials as “criticalfigures” with ties to Colombian suppliers and allhave been identified as Sinaloa CartelOperatives in Belize.

Belize, scarcely populated and often forgotten, is getting its fair share of drug action. The desolate western portion of the nation, which borders often lawless northern Guatemala, has become a breeding ground for growing drug trafficking organizations in the area. The tourist driven coastal area to the east has become a playground for dollar spending drug lords looking to launder money and relax for a few days. Belize City, the largest city, is seeing an urban struggle between street gangs for drug profits.

According to the Statistical Institute of Belize (SIB), 43 percent of youth aged 14-24 are unemployed, while 46 percent of the total labour force is illiterate. Moreover, only 12 percent of the total labour force has completed high school.

Poor education quality and lack of economic opportunity are variables that push youth into environments of crime. Initiation into a local gang could lead to contract work for Mexican cartels that promise anything a young man could ever want: money; drugs; status; and power. Aside from routine murders and robberies, these same gangs are also responsible for the 2011 raid of the Belize Defense Force (BDF) armoury in Ladyville, taking M-16 and M4 military issue riffles, 9 millimeter handguns, and grenades.

Within the last two years the Zetas have pushed into western Belize, while drug style murders have risen in Belize City from street gangs. The murders of at least 15 people in Belize in just over two weeks, that’s almost one per day, has fuelled concerns that criminal groups are embroiled in inter-gang feuds and/or where groups are competing over lucrative drug-trafficking routes into and out of the country.

There are also signs that police forces are involved with narcotraffickers—especially with Mexico’s Zetas cartel In 2010, police stopped traffic and lit a highway to allow a night landing for a twin-engine Beech craft crammed with $130 million worth of cocaine. The cargo was seized by national authorities with aid from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) after the craft clipped a wing. All of this, unfortunately, presents a golden opportunity for narco traffickers. Belize’s institutions are weak, police corruptible and unemployed population aplenty.

In the coastal town of Punta Gorda, a white, twin-engine airplane — larger than the planes usually used for domestic flights in Belize — landed right in the middle of Southern Highway. The plane had stopped in Belize to refuel, but since its wings were slightly damaged upon landing, the Beechcraft Super King Air wasn't able to take off and the crew abandoned it, police said. The crew left behind a cargo of 2,600 kilograms of Colombian cocaine. Local police said it was the biggest drug bust in Belize’s history.

Recent news reports have stated that the DEA has5 commando style squadsthat have been deployed to Latin American countries to help in fighting drug trafficking organizations. Belize is one of those countries.

Recently the two most prominent gang leaders in the country, Shelton Pinky Tillett and Arthur Young have been killed - after a weekend that rocked the nation to its core and caused widespread panic and public terror.

Shelton Pinky Tillett was not a menacing or aggressive character - but he was considered the boss of the George Street Gaza - the most powerful and dangerous gang in Belize.Around pm he parked his pick-up at the entrance of a petrol station and went inside the store.

When he got back into the vehicle a man described as wearing a dread hat and a mask over his face - came out of a silver pathfinder -armed with a gun- and began firing shots inside the vehicle. According to one eyewitness, at least 13 shots were fired. Both Tillett and his female companion Andrews died just moments after and their bodies were quickly transported to the hospital.

Immediately after that killing the word went out from Police and on the streets that Arthur Young was the masked man who pulled the trigger. Bar none, Young is the most feared man on the streets. At 38, Young had lived longer than anyone expected him to.despite his criminal history, and multitudes of enemies, Arthur young was a genius at re-invention and a master at survival.

On April 6, 2010 he made this statement
"I am in hiding because I heard the police have a charge for me for something I am not involved with."The way I see it right now, if I meet up to the police, if they meet me in a spot I think they are going to try to kill me. The police force is trying to kill me for ever so long. For what, I don't know."

Arthur Young, the leader of Taylor’s Alley Gang was allegedly shot and killed in the pan of a police truck around mid-night on Sunday. According to police, Young resisted arrested and a scuffle ensued, whereby Young was fatally shot by a police officer and according to sources was shot three times, in the chest and the mouth. Young was wanted in connection with the murders of thirty-one year old Shelton “Pinky” August, leader of George Street Gang and twenty-three year old Kamille Andrews.

According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Belize had a murder rate of 39 per 100,000 in 2011, ranking alongside neighbouring Guatemala and Jamaica. The accelerating rate of gang-related murders taking place in 2012 indicates that this trend, far from abating, may be getting worse.

The northern Guatemalan province of Petan, which borders Belize, was the home to the ranch massacre that left 27 workers murdered and decapitated. An estimated 200 gunmen, believed to be Zetas, arrived at the ranch in buses. The Zetas have attacked land owners and local drug lords in a recent power seize in the area. Guatemalan authorities reported that a four-wheel-drive vehicle with Belize license plates had been used by its members and found in the ranch. Police said the diplomatic vehicle had been stolen from a Guatemalan driver assigned to an outpost of the Organization of American States along Guatemala’s border with Belize.

Tons of South American cocaine are believed to be imported through the Belize coast into Mexico. Vessels have been recently given to the Belize coast guard from the United States to help detect and confiscate incoming shipments.

To the south-east of Belize lies Honduras which faces very similar and escalating problems. The coastline is being used to smuggle cocaine inland and towards the United States. Fisherman are known to fish for the "white lobster" (lost floating cocaine packages), as much as for fish.

Belize is facing similar US formed gang problems as other Central American Countries. In Belize the gangs are US Blood and Crip based. While Central American gangs like MS-13 and M-18 recruit a wide range of Latinos, often English speaking and African decent Belizeans are drawn into traditional African-American street gangs like the Bloods and Crips. Belize has had a large numbers of deported criminals from the US who now run the streets looking for criminal profits and way to live.

Back in the US, a Belize immigrant street gang known as the Belizean Bloods was recently cracked down on in the Salt Lake City area. The gang was in the middle of planning to rob a Mexican based DTO operation during the raids. Five men with loaded guns were arrested as part of a multi-city effort to bust the Belizean Bloods gang, which allegedly used fake U.S. passports while shipping cocaine and other narcotics from Belize to the Chicago area and several other cities. The Belizean Bloods narcotics distribution route allegedly included Illinois, Utah, Ohio, Indiana, New York and California.

Drug Trafficking Organization Profiles with Ties to Belize
Los Zetas-Created in 1999 by former special forces deserters who used their skills to work for The Gulf Cartel.

El Mendozas
Based in Guatemala's northern-most province of Peten,next to Belize, the Mendozas mainly ran contraband before becoming one of Central America's drug trafficking organizations (DTOs).

They have sought political alliances with powerful members of the government and strategic alliances with other DTOs in the country. This may have included a short-lived agreement that some called the "Pacto de Peten" between themselves and the Lorenzanas to split the country north from south and push out the rival Leones, who they believed were responsible for stealing much of their merchandise.

According to some Guatemalan sources, they used hired guns to attack the Leones, supposedly bringing in feared Mexican group the Zetas, who in March 2008, assassinated Juancho Leon in the Zacapa province. This strategy, however, backfired, and the Zetas co-opted territory in south-eastern and central Guatemala. Much of the Mendoza clan is thought to have fled, or to be regularly using Belize as a refuge. Nonetheless, they are also believed to have the best contacts in Guatemala’s government, something the Zetas may still lack.

El Lorenzanas
The Lorenzanas are a traditional contraband family, who, over time, became enmeshed in the lucrative drug trade. Despite the capture of the family's patriarch, Waldemar Lorenzana, in April 2011, they still command respect and support mainly in the western states of Izapal and Zacapa.

The Lorenzanas have become crucial players in the cocaine trade, acting as middlemen between Colombian producers to the south and Mexican distributors to the north. Once shipments of cocaine arrive in Guatemala, the Lorenzanas reportedly work with the Sinaloa Cartel to move the drugs into Mexico and, from there, to the United States.

Lorenzana’s criminal empire became so powerful, in fact, that it developed a kind of grassroots following. According to the Prensa Libre, when U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officials raided La Reforma in July 2009 in an effort to locate Lorenzana, hundreds of protesters staged a massive rally in the city to support the family. The protests succeeded in partially interfering with the operation, allowing the kingpin and his family to escape.

In April 2010, the U.S. Treasury froze the assets of Waldemar and his three sons, citing connections with the Sinaloa cartel. A source affirms that some in the family may be using Belize as a respite, waiting for the numerous battles between local and international cartels play out.

Juancho Leon

El Leones
The Leones, who operate along the Eastern border with Honduras and El Salvador, were car thieves and cattle rustlers before entering the drug trade.

Much of their business was via robberies of many Mendoza and Lorenzana cargoes traveling through Zacapa. Once considered one of the most powerful and violent families in Guatemala, the Leones have since gone underground. On March 25, 2008, Zeta gunmen killed 11 members of the Leon clan in Zacapa, including Juancho Leon, one of the group’s leaders.

But the reasons for this battle are not altogether clear. One theory is that the Mendozas and the Lorenzanas schemed to get rid of the Leones using the Zetas, an agreement dubbed the “Pacto de Peten.”Alternatively the massacre could have resulted from a broken Leones-Zetas alliance. In either case, the Leones' power is on the decline, and the Zetas are now thought to control their old turf.

The Gulf Cartel is a criminal syndicate and drug trafficking organization in Mexico, and perhaps the oldest organized crime group in the country. It is currently based in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, directly across the border from Brownsville, Texas. Their network is international, and are believed to have dealings with crime groups in Europe, West Africa, Asia, Central America, South America, and the United States. Besides drug trafficking, the Gulf Cartel operates through protection rackets, assassinations, extortions, kidnappings, and other criminal activities. The Gulf Cartel is known for intimidating the population and for being "particularly violent."

Although its founder Juan Nepomuceno Guerra smuggled alcohol in small quantities to the United States during the epoch of Prohibition, it was not until the 1970s that the cartel was formed and shifted to drug trafficking — primarily cocaine — under the command of Juan Nepomuceno Guerra and Juan García Ábrego.

Old School Abrego is standing as his uncle Jaun N Guerra sits at left

Although it was never proven that he smuggled liquor, arms, tobacco, and even drugs, Juan is considered the "godfather" of the Gulf Cartel. Along with his two brothers Arturo and Roberto, Juan Nepomuceno Guerra started smuggling alcohol into the United States in the 1930s. Soon after the conclusion of the Prohibition, Don Juan, as he was widely known, dedicated himself to another completely different illicit occupation—drug trafficking. Nepomuceno Guerra also amplified his ascendancy through the incorporation of gambling houses, prostitution, human trafficking, and car theft. His nephew, Juan García Ábrego, worked along his tutelage, and slowly began taking over the drug business in the 1970s.

By the 1980s, García Ábrego began incorporating cocaine into the drug trafficking operations, and started to have the upper hand on what was now considered the Gulf Cartel, the greatest criminal dynasty in the US-Mexico border. By negotiating with the Cali Cartel, García Ábrego was able to secure 50% of the shipment out of Colombia as payment for delivery, instead of the $1,500 USD per kilo they were previously receiving. This renegotiation, however, forced Garcia Ábrego to guarantee the product’s arrival from Colombia to its destination. Instead, he created warehouses along the Mexican’s northern border to preserve hundreds of tons of cocaine; this allowed him to create a new distribution network and increase his political influence. In addition to trafficking drugs, García Ábrego would ship cash to be laundered, in the millions. Around 1994, it was estimated that the Gulf Cartel handled as much as "one-third of all cocaine shipments" into the United States from the Cali Cartel suppliers. During the 1990s, the PGR, the Mexican attorney general's office, estimated that the Gulf Cartel was "worth over $10 billion US dollars."

Juan García Ábrego

After the apprehension of García Ábrego in 1996, a power vacuum was left and several top members fought for leadership until Osiel Cárdenas Guillén became the undisputed leader. As confrontations with rival groups heated up, Osiel Cárdenas sought and recruited over 30 deserters of the Mexican Army’s elite Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (GAFE) to form part of the cartel's armed wing. Los Zetas, as they are known, served as the hired private mercenary army of the Gulf Cartel. Nevertheless, after the arrest and extradition of Osiel Cárdenas, internal struggles led to a rupture between the two.

In 1997 the Gulf Cartel began to recruit military personnel whom Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo, an Army General of that time, had assigned as representatives from the PGR offices in certain states across Mexico. After his imprisonment a short time later, Jorge Madrazo Cuéllar created the National Public Security System (SNSP), to fight the drug cartels along the U.S-Mexico border. After Osiel Cárdenas took full control of the Gulf Cartel in 1999, he found himself in a no-holds-barred fight to keep his notorious organization and leadership untouched, and sought out members of the Mexican Army Special Forces to become the military armed-wing of the Gulf Cartel.

His goal was to protect himself from rival drug cartels and from the Mexican military, in order to perform vital functions as the leader of the most powerful drug cartel in Mexico. Among his first contacts was Arturo Guzmán Decena, an Army lieutenant who was reportedly asked by Osiel Cárdenas to look for the "best men possible." Consequently, Guzmán Decenas deserted from the Armed Forces and brought more than 30 army deserters to form part of Cárdenas’ new criminal paramilitary wing. They were enticed with salaries much higher than those of the Mexican Army. Among the original defectors were Jaime González Durán, Jesús Enrique Rejón Aguilar, Miguel Treviño Morales, and Heriberto Lazcano.

The creation of Los Zetas brought a new era of drug trafficking in Mexico, and little did Cárdenas know that he was creating the most dangerous drug cartel in the country. Between 2001 and 2008, the organization of the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas was collectively known as La Compañía (The Company). One of the first missions of Los Zetas was to eradicate Los Chachos, a group of drug traffickers under the orders of the Milenio Cartel, who disputed the drug corridors of Tamaulipas with the Gulf Cartel in 2003. This gang was controlled by Dionisio Román García Sánchez alias El Chacho, who had decided to betray the Gulf Cartel and switch his alliance with the Tijuana Cartel; however, he was eventually killed by Los Zetas.

Once Osiel Cárdenas Guillen consolidated his position and supremacy, he expanded the responsibilities of Los Zetas, and as years passed, they became much more important for the Gulf Cartel. They began to organize kidnappings; impose taxes, collect debts, and operate protection rackets; control the extortion business; securing cocaine supply and trafficking routes known as plazas (zones) and executing its foes, often with grotesque savagery.

In response to the rising power of the Gulf Cartel, the rival Sinaloa Cartel established a heavily armed, well-trained enforcer group known as Los Negros. The group operated similar to Los Zetas, but with less complexity and success. There is a circle of experts who believe that the start of the Mexican Drug War did not began in 2006 (when Felipe Calderón sent troops to Michoacán to stop the increasing violence), but in 2004 in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, when the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas fought off the Sinaloa Cartel and Los Negros.

In 2002, there were three main divisions of the Cartel, all ruled over by Osiel Cardenas and led by: Jorge Eduardo "El Coss" Costilla, Ezequiel “Tony Tormenta” Cárdenas Guillén, and Heriberto “El Lazca” Lazcano. Upon the arrest of the Gulf Cartel boss Osiel Cárdenas Guillen in 2003 and his extradition in 2007, the panorama for Los Zetas changed—they began to become synonymous with the Gulf Cartel, and their influences grew greater within the organization. Los Zetas began to grow independently from the Gulf Cartel, and eventually a rupture occurred between them in early 2010.

It is unclear which of the two — the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas — started the conflict that led to their break up. It is clear, however, that after the capture and extradition of Osiel Cárdenas, Los Zetas had become so powerful that they outnumbered and outclassed the Gulf Cartel in revenue, membership, and influence. Some sources reveal that as a result of the supremacy of Los Zetas, the Gulf Cartel felt threatened by the growing force of their own enforcer group and decided to curtail their influence, but eventually failed in their attempt, instigating a war. In addition, from the perspective presented by the Gulf Cartel, the narco-banners placed by them in the cities of Matamoros, Tamaulipas and Reynosa, Tamaulipas explained that the reason for their rupture was that Los Zetas had expanded their operations not only to drug trafficking, but also to extortion, kidnapping, homicide, and theft. These were actions that the Gulf Cartel disagreed with. Unwilling to stand for such abuse, Los Zetas responded and countered the accusations by posting their own banners throughout Tamaulipas. They pointedly noted that they had carried out executions and kidnappings under orders of the Gulf Cartel when they served as their enforcers, and they were originally created by them for that sole purpose. In addition, Los Zetas mentioned that the Gulf Cartel also kills innocent civilians, and then blames them for their atrocities.

Los Escorpiones, also called Grupo Escorpios, (The Scorpions), was believed to be the mercenary group that protected Antonio Cárdenas Guillén, the former leader of the organization. According to reports by the Mexican government, Los Escorpiones was created by Antonio Cárdenas (Tony Tormenta) and is composed of over 60 civilians, former police officers, and ex-military officials. According to El Universal, there are several music videos on Youtube that exalt the power of this armed group through narcocorridos. After the rupture between the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas (which until then had served as the cartel's armed wing), Los Escorpiones became the armed wing of the entire Gulf organization. The first mention of Los Escorpiones on the media was in 2008, when El Universal wrote an article about some "protected witnesses" from the Gulf Cartel who denounced the alliance between the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel and Los Zetas to the Mexican authorities, and that the Gulf Cartel had created Los Escorpiones to stop and balance the growing hegemony of Los Zetas.

However, his brother Osiel Cárdenas Guillén disapproved the existence of this mercenary group, since he had created Los Zetas, the parallel version of Los Escorpiones, and they had turned against the organization. El Universal reported that Mexican authorities identified the gunmen that where engaging in confrontations with the troops in Matamoros, Tamaulipas as members of the Los Escorpiones group. Along with Antonio Cárdenas Guillén, the following members of Los Escorpiones were killed: Sergio Antonio Fuentes, alias El Tyson or Escorpión 1; Raúl Marmolejo Gómez, alias Escorpión 18; Hugo Lira, alias Escorpión 26; and Refugio Adalberto Vargas Cortés, alias Escorpión 42.The arrests of Marco Antonio Cortez Rodríguez alias Escorpión 37 and of Josué González Rodríguez alias Escorpión 43—the two who were hospitalized after the shootout of 5 November 2010—allowed for the Mexican forces to understand the structure of Los Escorpiones.

Presence in Africa
The Gulf Cartel and other Mexican drug trafficking groups are active in the northern and western parts of Africa. Although cocaine is not grown in Africa, Mexican organizations, such as the Gulf Cartel, are currently exploiting West Africa's struggling rule-of-law caused by war, crime and poverty, in order to stage and expand supply routes to the increasingly lucrative European illegal drug market.

The rupture from Los Zetas left Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sánchez and Antonio Ezekiel Cárdenas Guillén in full control of the Gulf Cartel. However, Ezekiel died in a shooting with the Mexican Marines in Matamoros, Tamaulipas in 2010, and Costilla Sanchez became the sole head of the cartel until his arrest in September 2012. Mario Cárdenas Guillén, brother of both Osiel and Ezekiel, became one of the top lieutenants in the organization after his release from prison in 2007. In addition, within the Gulf Cartel there is believed to be two groups—the Rojos and the Metros. The modus operandi ("mode of operation") of the Gulf Cartel changes whenever the United States attempts to strengthen their domestic policy in reinforcing the borders. When drug trafficking tightens, they usually invest in more sophisticated methods to smuggle drugs, recruit new members, corrupt more officials, seek new ways to remove obstacles that impede the immediate success of the organization, along with many others.

Diego Rastrojo

The Rastrojos were born out of the powerful Norte del Valle drug trafficking organization and rose to become one of the most powerful transnational criminal syndicates in Colombia, but have suffered heavy blows with the capture or surrender of their top leaders.

From 2006 onwards, the Rastrojos left their traditional hub along the Pacific Coast and began operating in more than a third of Colombia’s 32 provinces, rising to become arguably the country's most powerful criminal group by 2008. However, the group's position has slipped since then, with a growing divide between two rival factions, and the fall of three of its main leaders. Javier Calle Serna, alias "Comba," surrendered to the United States in May 2012, and Diego Perez Henao, alias "Diego Rastrojo," was captured the following month. In October 2012, Comba's brother, Luis Enrique, also handed himself to US authorities, leaving the group with no clear leader.

The group is primarily engaged in exporting cocaine to international markets, as well as extortion, gold mining and kidnapping at the local level. The Rastrojos move drugs primarily up the Pacific Coast to Central America and Mexico where they sell it to Mexican drug traffickers, who take it to the United States. They also have control of one of the primary smuggling routes into Venezuela, which is a bridge for cocaine moving towards Europe and northwards into the US on aircraft and go-fast boats.

The Rastrojos' strongholds are primarily in the area where they formed: Valle del Cauca and Cauca provinces along the Pacific coast (see map). They also have a presence in Antioquia, Bolivar, Cesar, Choco, Cordoba, Nariño, Norte de Santander, Putumayo, Santander and Valle del Cauca.

The Rastrojos' other main ally, Daniel Barrera Barrera, alias "El Loco," had struck similar agreements with the FARC in some areas prior to his capture in Venezuela in September 2012. Together the Rastrojos and Barrera obtained a huge competitive advantage, one that also led to strong partnerships with Mexican cartels.

The Rastrojos and Barrera moved cocaine via go-fast boats and semi submersibles from the Pacific side of their operations, and airplanes via the Venezuelan side. There is some evidence that these semi-submersibles may be being replaced by fully submersibles. In July 2010, authorities in Ecuador found a 33-meter submarine capable of moving at least 10 tons of cocaine. On the Venezuelan side, the airplanes appear to fly due north over Venezuelan territory, in order to avoid Colombian radar, until they are close to the Dominican Republic. Then, they head west until they reach Honduras or Guatemala where they land and offload the narcotics which continue their journey north.

Diego Perez Henao, alias 'Diego Rastrojo,' was the military head of the Rastrojos, a criminal syndicate whose reach stretches across Colombia, and into Ecuador and Venezuela. He was captured in Venezuela on June 3, 2012.A longtime hitman who rose through the ranks of the Norte del Valle Cartel (NDVC), Perez specialized in collecting coca in rural areas and setting up laboratories to turn it into cocaine. He soon came the attention of Wilber Varela, one of the leaders of the NDVC. When Varela began a war with a rival member of the NDVC, Diego Montoya, alias "Don Diego," he turned to Perez to set up a private army and named it after his underworld alias, "Rastrojo." In 2002 the Rastrojos were born and Perez led the war against Montoya's private army, called the "Machos," a war which he ended up winning.

Luis Enrique

Javier Calle Serna, alias 'Comba,' has surrendered to US authorities, possibly creating a seismic shift in the Colombian underworld. The details of the agreement between Comba and the DEA may never be known. But the terms were obviously favorable enough for Comba to leave Argentina, where it appears the negotiations took place, and go to the Caribbean island of Aruba. There he surrendered to DEA agents and was flown to New York, according to press reports.

The last known leader of the Rastrojos drug gang, Luis Enrique Calle Serna, has handed himself in to the US, raising the likelihood this once mighty trafficking organization could be seeing its final days. Calle Serna delivered himself to US authorities in Panama on October 2, and was immediately transferred to a New York jail, reported Semana. He had been negotiating with US authorities for some time -- Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos confirmed in February that Calle Serna and his brother Javier, alias “Comba,” were seeking to surrender.

Edison Antonio Pelaez, aka 'Mincho'

According to Colombian National Police, the arrest of kingpin Daniel “El Loco” Barrera on September 18 triggered Luis Enrique's surrender, as El Loco had been responsible for providing the Rastrojos leader with security in Venezuela, where he was living. The police added that following El Loco’s arrest, Luis Enrique contacted his family in Spain to let them know he would surrender, and informed the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) of the decision through his lawyer.

Adriano Mazzotti

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