Double assassination

The amount of tax revenue collected in Colorado on legal marijuana sales in just the first two months of 2014 was $6.17 million.
The primary problem with drugs is that they are illegal and/or state-controlled. This counter-evolutionary control by the state, of substances that we take for other than nutritional purposes, is the root cause of virtually all the problems that people are concerned about in connection with drugs, drug abuse and drug-related crime. 

Sure, all drugs have potential problems if abused. But we are human beings, and able to make judgements about these things, and treat them with respect and caution - just as we must with our food, our driving and our sex. Cannabis, magic mushrooms, peyote, opium, coca leaf extracts and alcohol were all legal at the end of the 19th century, when only alcohol was regarded as a major social problem. A century later, we find that alcohol is the only consciousness-altering drug that remains legal.

It should not surprise us that young people, especially, seek to experiment with drugs that alter or enhance their perception of life, and that youths and adults seek a drug-granted respite from the predictability of everyday life. There's a menu full of options out there to choose from but all of our choices are channelled towards alcohol. The biggest cause of alcoholism is, perhaps, the difficulty in obtaining safer, non-addictive and less befuddling alternatives, cannabis in particular. During the 1990's alcohol consumption reduced amongst Europe's youth, together with football hooliganism, as a wider selection of drugs became available.

It seems a reasonable desire for people to find some means to get “out of their heads” from time to time - to take a totally different perspective on life. Perhaps some new perspectives on life are needed in the world today and the attraction to drugs is evolution trying to happen. 

We should be pleased that today's generation is avoiding the trap of alcohol addiction, together with the anti-social behaviour, depression, trivia worship and middle-age burnout that abusers risk. Used sensibly, alcohol can be a beneficial drug that enhances and maintains our health and well-being. Alcohol has a well-earned place in our culture but that place should not be defended by state legislation and turned into a drug monopoly.

Drugs are an integral part of our culture and, as most of us learned in school, drugs often formed the core of the early business which brought the world's differing cultures into trade with each other. These products of trade included tobacco, alcohol, opium, tea, coffee, chocolate, cocaine and sugar. We could almost regard pepper and spices as virtual drugs to the taste buds of the bland European palate of the mid-millennium. The glorious history of trade in the civilized world relied upon civilization's search for new and diverse drugs and sensory input.

Legal Meth Ad

People have always sought to include drugs in their diets for many non-medical reasons: whether to stay awake longer, or to fall asleep quicker; whether to drown their sorrows or to better understand them; whether to enjoy a banter in the bar with friends, or have mystic communication with a tree; whether to explore their dark side or say hello to the God within. 

Some drugs are not an escape from “reality” but a gateway to exploring the very nature of reality. Even the humble drug tea was first discovered by Buddhist monks who valued it to help them stay up all night meditating in order to get high. One could imagine how dismayed they would be at the level of tea abuse taking place in modern Britain.

Getting happy, loving, insightful, bursting with positive energy, able to dance all night or just chilled out, are all definitely nice things to do and I say boo to the prigs who claim that these valuable experiences are invalid when we make use of a drug to assist us in getting to a desired state of mind. 

Let them keep drinking their instant coffee, using one-hour film processors, flying across the world in hours instead of weeks. Let them eat their frozen dinners, sliced pre-baked bread and take-away fast food, working on computers that can do millions of calculations per second. Let them tune into instant escape from reality on a multitude of TV channels. 

But accessing happiness, peace, boundless energy or deep feelings of love quickly and without great expense? Oh no, this must be done the long way through years of grief and hard work; or purchased, if we are to believe the advertising, when you select the right brand of auto-mobile  sanitary towel or soft drink.

Cannabis is the most risk-free illegal drug in existence, with a recognized safe history going back thousands of years. It is a much happier and safer alternative to alcohol without the effect of making users befuddled and arrogant. If someone's reaction to cannabis is likely to impair their ability to drive, they realize that they are not safe behind a wheel, and that driving[3] is the last thing they want to do in that condition - unlike the drunk who is convinced that he can take on the whole world with total competence. As far as I know, there is no statistical data linking cannabis consumption with actual dangerous driving.

Cannabis is a drug and use can turn to abuse and lead to reduced focus and motivation; this is a risk that is easier for a pot user to deal with when it occurs than it is for an alcohol user. And when it does occur, it is usually when cannabis is taken in combination with the addictive drug, tobacco. You are more likely to hear pure smokers talk about getting high, and tobacco mixers about getting stoned.

The range of drugs referred to as psychedelics all have their original roots and inspirations in natural substances that our species has used for millennia in the search for altered consciousness and greater understanding of the nature of God and the universe. The state bans these substances for the same reason that they issue passports and control which borderlines we cross. Psychedelics are the travelling drugs - they do not, generally speaking, work by stimulating or reducing urges or inhibitions. They are not addictive, have a very high lethal dose, if any, and account for barely a handful of fatalities per annum.

They take us into a different place - we travel to other dimensions, or see new dimensions in the world around us. In many ways the familiar world we live in, with brick houses, plumbers, parliaments, radios, cars, roads, suits, restaurants and so forth is but one channel on the set of all possible channels. Because this is the 'reality' we have created within the world around us we are tuned to it to such a degree that we can easily become oblivious to the deeper nature of the vast Universe that encompasses the little fleck of matter in space which we call Earth.

Psychedelics are not taken as an 'escape' from this world but as a ticket to see it from a different perspective, even from a different dimension. It is hard to emerge from this voyage without developing a realization, amongst many others, that those 'in power' are possessed of a narrow vision fuelled primarily by the desire to stay in power. Their viewpoint is of one channel only - the one that represents the status quo in whatever country they control - and their efforts to fine-tune this channel to a micro degree can often appear ludicrous. Thus, these drugs reveal clearly that “the emperor has no clothes” and must be prohibited at all costs.

		Mushrooms in the Selva Pascuala cave in Spain

Many of the psychedelics grow naturally on this planet and have been utilised from the early days of our species along with the other gifts of the Earth that we use to feed, clothe and heal ourselves. Their popularity, and their undeserved illegalisation, has led to a growth in man-made alternatives such as LSD, Ecstasy and 2CB; substances which are themselves routinely banned as soon as it becomes apparent that yet another means to acquire a passport has been found, another door opened. Unlike experiences with tobacco, alcohol, chocolate or heroin, you rarely find cannabis or psychedelic users who continue to take these drugs whilst professing a constant desire to quit taking them. Psychedelics should always be treated with respect - and are fully capable of giving their own stern reminders when this is not done.

Not all drugs are as safe and non-addictive as cannabis. Some, like heroin, cocaine and controlled pharmaceuticals, carry serious risks and can create dependency and addiction. These are routinely made illegal in the belief that this will reduce consumption. The evidence could not be more to the contrary. Both the organised drugs dealers and police forces grow in strength and stand to make more money or preside over bigger budgets in an illegal drugs climate. Products are sold without identification, industry controls, manufacturer name, usage instructions, safety cautions, or any buyer's guarantee or maker's liability. In a free market, the legal liabilities for makers of crack cocaine could be a lot more frightening and inhibiting than the ineffective drugs squad.
In a free and informed drugs market fewer would choose the dangerous drugs, and the evidence in the UK and Holland supports this, as the majority of drug users choose the far less toxic cannabis and psychedelics. Many of these users have sampled drugs such as heroin, crack cocaine, amphetamines or alcohol and simply not become regular users. People are able to make intelligent choices and when they are enjoying life they are naturally interested in preserving their own, and act accordingly. Yet the state steadfastly refuses to let us exercise our own judgement in drug use. We live in a world where if you choose to make up your own mind about what you do with it, you can go to jail - for your own good of course.

This crazy attitude has embroiled most of the world in a virtual Third World War under the guise of America's internationally exported War on Drugs. Whole economies have been ravaged, and vast sums are spent each year from our taxes and confiscated from our citizens, while the numbers imprisoned worldwide must equal the annual casualties of a great ongoing war. This Third World War does not defend us from some great Evil threatening society and serves no useful purpose but to fatten the coffers of those waging it - from the countless worldwide bureaus, agencies and police forces, to the ever-expanding prison industry and makers of testing apparatus.

Perhaps the zeal with which this new war is waged reflects the state's own dependency on the massive tax revenues it raises from the approved drugs, and hinges on its cosy, centuries-long relationship with distillers, tobacco companies and the pharmaceutical industry - the biggest drug dealers in the world.

Another prime stimulus to this war arises from religious bigots who fear that personal revelations of brotherhood and oneness with the Universe might not be in strict accordance with church teachings, and could thus bypass the need for a priesthood to interpret these higher matters for us.

The casualties of this war on drugs are many and varied. Most obvious are the hundreds of thousands of our world's citizens who are locked up, at our expense, for indulging or trading in alternatives to the standardized 'OK by the USA' drugs - substances such as alcohol, tobacco, Prozac, prescription sedatives, coffee and cola drinks that must be the only mood or mind-altering fare available to the world. Though it is openly acknowledged that the majority of illegal drug shipments do get through to their markets, the casualties and costs continue to mount with no benefit for society.

Another level of casualties in this war evolves from the distortion of the natural market, which drives people to take more dangerous drugs than they would choose in a free market. The laws banning cannabis cultivation and use carry more responsibility for the growth of crack cocaine than do all the cocaine barons of Columbia and the CIA. They also carry responsibility for solvent related deaths, teenage alcoholism, madness from Datura (Jimson weed), and other aspects of the drug problem than does any other single factor. Though there is justified outrage at the probable part played by the CIA in the introduction of crack cocaine to America's inner cities, the statistics would suggest that the War on Drugs itself is the largest causative factor of America's downhill slide into dangerous drug abuse.

According to NIDA research for the USA, tobacco and alcohol kill twice as many people in a week as do all illegal drugs combined in a year. Unlike alcohol and tobacco, cannabis is neither addictive nor credited with any deaths per annum. And how can we ignore the millions made dependent upon prescribed pharmaceuticals with damaging, often lethal side-effects, excluding them altogether from the “drug problem” statistics?

This war has clogged courts and jails worldwide with drug cases. The U.S.A. has 2.8% of its adult population (5% of adult males) in jail. This is the highest incarceration rate in the world and three times the world average. America's  forfeiture laws against drug users now routinely provide budgeted income to local state agencies as they seize valuable property, boats and businesses of people accused of being in the drugs trade - before their cases have even been tried in court! Even when proven innocent, it is difficult, costly and time-consuming to recover forfeited property. It seems evident that the War on Drugs creates far more problems than drugs ever posed on their own.

Like the American Prohibition of alcohol in the 1920's this surreptitious World War Three has no chance whatsoever of success. As we know from history, the effect of Prohibition was to double the overall level of alcohol consumption and increase deaths from badly-made alcohol. Prohibition gave the Mafia a very successful start in life, and a database of almost every club, bar or place of entertainment in the USA. The whole effort was an excellent example of the “terminal tool bag” in action.

We do have a problem with young people taking drugs as well as with middle aged and elderly people. It is a very serious problem that is getting worse. For some reason, though, the perception of this problem is focused entirely on the very small range of drugs which are being used illegally. Why do we ignore the vast problems faced by those who are using drugs prescribed by doctors, and whose lives are messed-up and sometimes destroyed as a result either of doctor error, their own abuse of the prescribed stocks, or just years of being addicted to synthetic pharmaceuticals with known side-effects? These can only be obtained through controlled channels but these channels translate into a multi-billion dollar industry throughout the world - the real drugs trade.


The most successful pharmaceutical drugs are those such as steroids, beta blockers and antihistamines which do not cure, but instead create a life-long habit for the user, often translating to hundreds or even thousands of pounds a month. These drug dealers openly lobby and encourage the state to pass laws controlling and restricting the alternative healing industry in the sale of herbal and other natural medicinal remedies. Even the deadly killers alcohol and tobacco are usually blinkered out of the vision when the vast majority talk about “the drug problem.”
While acknowledging the dangers posed by some illegal drugs, I point out that the unnecessary suffering and destruction meted out by the 'authorized' drugs trade is clearly the greater problem, despite being managed by trained people in white coats and slick PR professionals. More people will almost surely die from mis-applied or mis-prescribed pharmaceuticals in a month, probably even in a week, than from the so-called “drug problem” in a year. The statistics are not released and possibly not even tallied.


Prohibition Through The Ages

16th Century - Coffee banned in Egypt and supplies of coffee burned - use spreads rapidly

17th Century - The tsar of Russia executes tobacco users

c.1650 - Tobacco prohibited in Bavaria, Saxony, Zurich; the Ottoman sultan zealously executes smokers to no avail.

1736 - The Gin Act fails to halt consumption in England.

1845 - New York bans the public sale of liquor - repeals law two years later.

 1875-1914 - 27 states and cities ban opium smoking-consumption increases sevenfold.

1914 U.S. - Congress passes Harrison Narcotics Act controlling opium and coca derivatives.

1914-1970 - Congress passes 55 laws to strengthen Harrison Act

1918 - Special Committee studies Harrison Act effects - widespread smuggling and increased use of narcotics - and calls for stricter enforcement.

1919 - Prohibition laws ban alcohol consumption in USA - consumption doubles.

1919-1933 - Use of marijuana, ether, and coffee increases.

1924 - U.S. Congress bans heroin completely-and heroin replaced morphine in blackmarket

1937 - First U.S. Federal law passed against marijuana use.

1949 - Law enforcement crackdown on non-prescription barbiturates - use increases 800% from 1942-1969.

1958 - Soviets raise alcohol prices 23% to reduce consumption - policy fails.

1959 - Concerted campaign against glue sniffing begins - causes "a boom in cocaine smuggling" by 1969.

1962 - The FDA stops legal production of LSD - LSD use skyrockets by 1970.

1965 - Amphetamine use crackdown further stimulates importation of cocaine.

1968 - Campaign against marijuana use among troops in Vietnam prompts growing heroin use.

1969 - New York city arrests 9000 more for drug use with no impact on drug availability & use.

1971 - All-out campaign against heroin use in Vietnam fails.

1971 - 900 pounds of heroin seized in New York City has no impact on price.

1971 - President Nixon declares drugs "America's public enemy No.1"

1972 - U.S.A. passes a $1 Billion anti-drug bill.

1973 - Rockefeller passes another tough anti-drug bill in New York

1973 - President Nixon declares "We have turned the corner on drug addiction in America."

1973 - Singapore sets death penalty for drug trafficking - a few years later a drug official admits that "Heroin seems to be more widely used than ever."

1977 - Bar Association concludes that Rockefeller Bill has had no effect on heroin consumption.

1980 - 300,000 youths in Malaysia estimated to be using illegal drugs.

1987 - Malaysia's 12-foot high security fence along border with Thailand fails to stop drug traffic.

1987 - Soviets increase penalties against moonshining in bid to lower alcohol use.

1987 - Soviet legal alcohol production down 30%; moonshining up 40%; home-made wine production up 300%; 200,000 prosecuted for illegal home brewing.

1988 - U.S. Senate adds $2.6 billion to federal anti-drug efforts.

1989 - Ronald Reagan declares victory in War on Drugs as being his major achievement

1989 - U.S. Secretary of State reports that the global war on narcotics "is clearly not being won."

1990-1997 - America exports its war on drugs worldwide - drug consumption increases worldwide. How long must this continue???

2013 - DRUG WAR STILL GOES ON

Disclaimer: Readers are advised to avoid all illegal drugs and to only ever ingest those substances that have been approved by or prescribed by a government-approved doctor. Then you will be a happy, healthy bunny.

West Africa’s perfect global positioning between South America and Europe, and its endemic corruption, poverty and disorganisation, have made it thenew 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 heroin— 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, the UK tops the chart in EU consumption rates. Prevalence of drug use in UK for 15-34 age group was Cocaine 7.7%, Ecstasy 7.3% and Meth 11.9%.

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.

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.

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 are John Zabaneh, his nephew Dion Zabaneh, and a“close associate” named Daniel Moreno. described by U.S. officials as “critical figures” with ties to Colombian suppliershave 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 millimetre 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. 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 air plane — 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.

Arthur Young

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 amount of tax revenue collected in Colorado on legal marijuana sales in just the first two months of 2014 was $6.17 million.

Enforcing marijuana laws costs the taxpayers an estimated $10 billion annually

If these same principles were applied to Africa could we expect to create a comparable income which could be used by our governments to fund effective social programmes. Maybe, lets see how the U.S look at weed.

Regardless of your feelings about legalizing marijuana, it's hard to deny that legal weed would be a bonanza for cash-strapped states, just as tobacco and alcohol already are. With Colorado and Washington starting to tax and regulate recreational weed sales, and medical marijuana legal in 18 other states, we can finally start to put some hard numbers on the industry's value.

Colorado dispensaries generated about $14 million in sales in January alone

Numbers like:
$1.53 billion: The amount the national legal marijuana market is worth, according to a Nov. 2013 report from ArcView Market Research, a San Francisco-based investor group focused on the marijuana industry.

$10.2 billion: The estimated amount the national legal marijuana market will be worth in five years, according to that same ArcView report.

 $98 million:The total tax revenue that Colorado could reap in the fiscal year that begins in July, according to a recent budget proposal from Gov. John Hickenlooper.
$40 million:The amount of marijuana tax revenue Colorado is devoting to public school construction.

7,500-10,000:The estimated number of marijuana industry jobs that currently exist in Colorado, according to Michael Elliott, the Executive Director of the Marijuana Industry Group, a trade association that advocates for responsible marijuana regulation.
Marijuana growers account for $14 billion a year in sales in California

$190 million: The amount in taxes and fees legal marijuana is projected to raise for the state of Washington over four years starting in mid-2015, according to the Economic and Revenue Forecast Council, an independent agency that advises 

the state government on the budget and tax revenue.

$142.19 million: The estimated size of the medical marijuana market in Arizona in 2014, according to the ArcView Market Research report, up from $35.37 million last year. Arizona has a record 80 medical pot dispensaries currently open, with more expected to open this year, according to AZMarijuana.com.

$17.4 billion:The estimated total amount that marijuana prohibition costs state and federal governments every year, according to a 2010 study by Harvard University economist Jeffrey Miron.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        In Mexico over the last 23 Months there have been 41,000 murders and 125,879 executions in the last 8 years, all related to drugs that are illegal. Each year, hundreds of thousands of people around the world die from preventable drug-related disease and violence. Millions of users are arrested and thrown in jail. Globally, communities are blighted by drug-related crime. Citizens see huge amounts of their taxes spent on harsh policies that are not working.

But despite this clear evidence of failure, there is a damaging reluctance worldwide to consider a fresh approach. The Global Commission on Drug Policy is determined to help break this century-old taboo.

We cal on governments to adopt more humane and effective ways of controlling and regulating drugs. We recommended that the criminalization of drug use should be replaced by a public health approach. We also appealed for countries to carefully test models of legal regulation as a means to undermine the power of organized crime, which thrives on illicit drug trafficking.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               There is, at last, some evidence of change. Officials from Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico and Uruguay have assumed the lead in initiating reforms to drug policy in their own countries. These efforts have had knock-on effects across the neighbourhood.

In 2013, the Organization of American States (OAS) issued a landmark report on drug policy proposing alternative forms of drug regulation. The findings of the Global Commission resonated across Europe as well. Many European states serve as a model for a health-oriented approach to drug policy. In several countries, evidence-based prevention, harm reduction and treatment are endorsed -- in sharp contrast to solely repressive approaches adopted in other parts of the world.

Drug policy reform is going viral. Other regions are joining the debate about new and progressive ways of dealing with drugs.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       For example, in New Zealand, proposals are being drafted to regulate synthetic drugs. In West Africa, where drug trafficking and organized crime is threatening democracy and governance, brave leaders have launched a West African Commission on drug trafficking and its consequences.

Even the United States, among the staunchest of all prohibitionist states, is enacting new approaches to drug policy. For the first time, a majority of Americans support regulating cannabis for adult consumption. And in the states of Colorado and Washington, new bills were approved to make this a reality. There are signs that these experiences could multiply further still.

All countries will have an opportunity to review the international drug control regime in a few years' time. The special session of the United Nations General Assembly in 2016 will provide a great opportunity for an honest and informed debate on drug policy. We hope that this debate will encourage drug policies that are based on what actually works in practice rather than what ideology dictates in theory.

“The facts speak for themselves. It is time to change course,” said Kofi Annan, Chair of the Kofi Annan Foundation and convenor of the West Africa Commission on Drugs (chaired by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, of Nigeria), which presented wide-ranging recommendations for drug policy reform earlier this year. “We need drug policies informed by evidence of what actually works,
rather than policies that criminalize  drug use while failing to provide access to effective prevention or treatment. This has led not only to overcrowded jails but also to severe health and social problems.”

“We can’t go on pretending the war on drugs is working,” said Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group. “We need our leaders to look at alternative, fact-based approaches. Much can be learned from successes and failures in regulating alcohol, tobacco or pharmaceutical drugs. The risks associated with drug use increase, sometimes dramatically, when they are produced, sold and consumed in an unregulated criminal environment. The most effective way to advance the goals of public health and safety is to get drugs under control through responsible legal regulation.”

 “As several European countries became aware of the harms caused by repressive drug policies, they adopted harm reduction and innovative treatment strategies like needle exchange, substitution therapies, heroin prescription and safe consumption rooms, as well as the the decriminalization of drug consumption and possession for personal use”, said former Swiss president Ruth Dreifuss. “Such lifesaving and safety enhancing measures represent only half of the way to dealing responsibly with drugs in our societies. Regulating the whole chain, from the production to the retail of drugs, allows to rollback criminal organizations,secure quality standards and protect people’s life, health and safety.”

Taking Control makes seven major recommendations, which can be summarized as follows:

– Put health and community safety first through a fundamental reorientation of policy priorities and resources, from failed punitive enforcement to proven health and social interventions.

– Ensure equitable access to essential medicines, in particular opiate-based medications for pain.

– Stop criminalizing people for drug use and possession – and stop imposing “compulsory treatment” on people whose only offence is drug use or possession.

– Rely on alternatives to incarceration for non-violent, low-level participants in illicit drug markets such as farmers, couriers and others involved in the production, transport and sale of illicit drugs.

– Focus on reducing the power of criminal organizations as well as the violence and insecurity that result from their competition with both one another and the state.

– Allow and encourage diverse experiments in legally regulating markets in currently illicit drugs, beginning with but not limited to cannabis, coca leaf and certain novel psychoactive substances.

-Take advantage of the opportunity presented by the upcoming UNGASS in 2016 to reform the global drug policy regime.


Commission Members

-Kofi Annan, former Secretary General of the United Nations and chair of the Kofi Annan Foundation, Ghana

-Louise Arbour, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Canada

-Pavel Bém, former Mayor of Prague, Czech Republic

-Richard Branson, entrepreneur, advocate for social causes, founder of the Virgin Group, cofounder of The Elders, United Kingdom

-Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former President of Brazil (chair)

-Maria Cattaui,  former Secretary-General of the International Chamber of Commerce, Switzerland

-Ruth Dreifuss, former President of Switzerland and Minister of Home Affairs

-César Gaviria, former President of Colombia

-Asma Jahangir, human rights activist, former UN Special Rapporteur on Arbitrary, Extra judicial and Summary Executions,Pakistan

-Michel Kazatchkine, UN Secretary General Special Envoy on HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and former executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, France

-Aleksander Kwasniewski, former President of Poland

-Ricardo Lagos, former President of Chile

-George Papandreou, former Prime Minister of Greece

-Jorge Sampaio, former President of Portugal

-George P. Shultz, former Secretary of State, United States (honorary chair)

-Javier Solana, former European Union High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy , Spain

-Thorvald Stoltenberg, former Minister of Foreign Affairs and UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Norway

-Mario Vargas Llosa, writer and public intellectual, Peru

-Paul Volcker, former Chairman of the United States Federal Reserve and of the Economic Recovery Board

– John Whitehead, former Deputy Secretary of State, former Co-Chairman Goldman Sachs & Co. and founding Chairman, 9/11 Memorial & Museum

Drugs is a business and if you take away the business 90% of the cartels would vanish. The intelligent business solution would be to regulate drugs, just like pharmaceuticals. Once regulated profits plummet for the cartel forcing them to shift to another product or service. A business problem which is what drugs really is can only be solved with a business solution.

The Sinaloa Cartel a multi-national company with sales and marketing outlets in 54 counties (compared to Barclay Bank, which operates in 51 counties with 48 Million customers ) plus a 35 % world-wide market share in its core product (marijuana), and with more employees than McDonald, perhaps it might be enlightening to business entrepreneurs to study the factors leading to the multinationals success.

According to US investigators, the Sinaloa Cartel has taken control of the US heroin market. Although authorities are closely watching them, the criminal group's product has displaced Colombia's and Afghanistan's from the market, and is also looking to extend its distribution networks into other US states.

According to the DEA, 50 % of heroin sold in the US is produced in Mexico, between 43 and 45  %  comes from Colombia,and the rest from Asian countries. Almost all of it is supplied by Mexican cartels. In an interview, Special Prosecutor Brennan pointed directly to the Sinaloa Cartel as the organization supplying the New York market and the rest of the country.

The most recent report by the Department of Justice (DOJ) indicates that Mexican drug traffickers have a presence in 1,286 cities in the US. In less than 10 years, Mexico has overtaken Colombia and countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan as a leader in the US drug market. Currently, Mexico is the second biggest producer of opium and marijuana in the world, according to the most recent report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

The Federations’s geographical advantage — production facilities close to transportation.  Besides the port of Mazatlán and excellent roads — vastly improved under the Calderón Administration thanks to the new Mazatlán-Durango highway — Sinaloa has airfields (covert and not) offering easy access to their single most important outlet, the United States.

By acquiring facilities in a number of other seaports (Manzanillo, Lazaro Cárdenas, Acapulco and Salina Cruz) within a comfortable distance for logistics has vastly simplified the ability of the Sinaloans to dominate the export market. While there has been a drop in sales lately, due to moves to legalize marijuana in the United States,

If the Sinaloa Cartel was a stock on the Nasdaq its investors would still be seeing a double digit up tick on their investment each week.  Opiates are also in strong demand with strong growth in sales, and with it’s already existing logistics in place, has been easily able to adjust to changing consumer demand.  Ports are not only for export. China and Mongolia provide the base chemicals needed for meth-amphetamine production, and with the Sinaloan’s sales force already in place, there seems to be an unlimited growth ahead for Crystal.

More than geography and product delivery what has been essential to the success of the Sinaloans has been their management structure and successful branding.  Mixing the best of both worlds, the Sinaloan management strategy is to adopt both the Asian business model, with key executive positions held by people related by blood or marriage, with the U.S. and European model of hiring outside experts for specific tasks (accounting, software design, money laundering, murder) as needed.
Having avoided diversification beyond what is necessary to preserve the core business of peripheral trades like extortion, kidnapping, truck high jacking, and murder for hire, has given the Sinaloans a reputation as the “best” in their trade. This is aptly illustrated perhaps by the reluctance of the government to pursue high level leaders of the Cartel, as opposed to the “low hanging fruit” of groups like the Beltran-Leyva Family, CDG, knights Templar and the Zetas.  The Sinaloans have been masters of “soft” media manipulation:  when they slaughter their rivals or potential threats to their own interests, they are very articulate at how they present their side of the story.

Their “narco-mantas” (the poorly spelled banners they hang up at the scene of the crime) give a rationale for their acts are less a taunt of their would-be rivals or those seeking to close down their industry, as it is a “sorry we had to do this” note… that they know will be reported, bad spelling and all.  The bad spelling is probably intentional, cooked up by a hip PR company to create a popular image of the Sinaloans as “hill billies” simply trying to make a living, and not the sophisticated international luxury goods retailer and wholesaler that
it is.

One suspects the attention the Cartel pays to popular culture… commissioning corridos and other “low-brow” entertainment… is part of the same branding strategy. Certainly, they have been a successful business, and with their funds, are able — as with other multinationals — to underwrite political campaigns and to steer public policy towards their own interests.

Cartel de Sinaloa
-Major Mexican drug trafficking organization
- Also known as the Sinaloa Cartel, Pacific Cartel, Guzman-Loera Organization, the Federation, and the Golden Triangle.
-This cartel was formed in 1989.
-El Chapo Guzman is the leader of the Sinaloa cartel.
-El Chapo has been featured in Forbes and other lists as one of the richest and most powerful figures in the world.
-The cartel now controls the complete border from Tijuana to western Juarez
-Feuds include fighting with the Tijuana Cartel, the Los Zetas, the Juarez Cartel, and the Beltra-Leyva Cartel.
-Claims are often made that the Mexican government favours the Sinaloa cartel over others. Recent claims have been made that the US Federal Agents have favoured Sinaloa as well.

Los Zetas
-Created in 1999 by former special forces deserters who used their skills to work for cartels.
-A major Mexican and Guatemalan drug trafficking organization
-Split from their main employer the Gulf Cartel in early 2010
-They turned from an armed wing into a full fledged drug trafficking organization
-The currently control the Nuevo Laredo corridor into Southwest Texas.
-They have spread their territory stretching from the Texas border to Guatemala.
-They have seized control of much of the human smuggling industry into the US, from Central America all the way into Texas. They are believed to be responsible for the massacre of 72 Central and South Americans in northern Mexico.
-They are currently fighting with the Gulf Cartel mainly, as well as the Sinaloa and La Familia cartels.
-The group is a favourite target by the Mexican and US Government because of their ruthless behaviour.

The Gulf Cartel
-Major Mexican drug trafficking organization
-One of the older Cartels, founded in the 1970′s.
-The cartel controls some of the Gulf coast of Mexico and the north-east border area of Mexico which sits against Texas.
-For years it was mostly peaceful in North-eastern Mexico while the Gulf Cartel held undisputed control of the area.
-Formerly oversaw and employed the Los Zetas. The Los Zetas are now their #1 rival.
-Feuds include fighting with the Los Zetas, the Juarez Cartel, Beltran-Leyva Cartel, and the Tijuana Cartel.
-Most fighting is currently within its disputed territory with the Los Zetas.
-Believed to be favoured over the Los Zetas by the Mexican and US Government.

Cartel de Juarez
-Also known as the Juarez Cartel and the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes Organization
-A minor drug trafficking organization, due to its recent loss of territory and power
-Formed in the 1970′s
-The cartel controls the El Paso and formerly the New Mexico corridors
-Their feud with the Sinaloa Cartel has been the source of much of the bloodshed in the drug war.
-They have lost much of their territory to Sinaloa, and some claim that Sinaloa has defeated this cartel, although the fighting still exists.
-The cartel overseas and mostly controls the La Linea and Barrio Azteca street gangs
-The group could soon lose its territory to the Sinaloa Cartel if a change of tides in the war doesn’t happen soon
-The group is believed to be a favorite target by the Mexican and US Governments

The New Federation
-This is an alliance of the La Familia, Gulf Cartel, and Sinaloa formed in 2010.
-They are together fighting the Los Zetas and the Juarez cartel.
-Reports of this alliance vary
-The Gulf Cartel reportedly reached out to the Sinaloa cartel for help in fighting and eliminating the Zetas.

THE OTHER MEXICAN CARTELS

The Knights Templars (Los Caballeros Templarios)
-Mexican drug trafficking organization
-This is a split faction from La Familia Michoacana.
-They are becoming one of Mexico’s leaders in methamphetamine manufacturing.
-They do not allow members to use drugs

New Generation Jalisco Cartel
-Mata Zetas (Zeta Killers) is the famous armed wing of this DTO
-This group is responsible for the mass Zeta killings in Veracruz
-A fairly new group in the scene
-Based in the Mexican State of Jalisco
-Claims to protect the people from kidnapping, extortion, and violence aimed at innocent citizens
-Tied with the Sinaloa Cartel

Cartel Del Pacifico Sur (South Pacific Cartel)
-Mexican dug trafficking organization
-A group aligned with the Beltran-Leyva Cartel.
-Group that El Ponchis, the 14 year old hitman was a member of.
-Believed to be more of a Beltran-Leyva cell than an independent cartel

Cartel De Tijuana
- Also known as the Tijuana Cartel and Arrellano-Felix Organization.
-Now a minor Mexico drug trafficking organization
-Formed in 1989
-The cartel controls the Baja California area and California border with Mexico.
-Once a notorious cartel, they have recently been depleted of upper ranking members and have attempted to maintain a low profile.
-The Cartel has known to have heavy influence into San Diego and Los Angeles areas.
-Feuds include fighting with the Sinaloa Cartel, Gulf Cartel, and La Familia
-It’s territory has been lost for the most part to the Sinaloa Cartel
-They have a pact to allow some drug trafficking through the now controlled Sinaloa corridors in the Tijuana area

La Familia Michoacana
- Also known as the La Familia and The Michoachan Family.
-Now a minor and borderline extinct Mexican drug trafficking organization
-Formed in the 1980′s, but was dependent on alliances with the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas until 2006.
-Originally formed as a vigilante group to help bring justice to Michocan.
-They control some of the Southern Mexican ports that bring in drugs from South America.
-Their new found alliance with the Gulf Cartel allows them access to some of the Northeastern corridors.
-Has a large faith based structure, handing out Bibles and helping their community heavily
-Feuds include fighting with Los Zetas, Juarez Cartel, and Tijuana Cartel
-Failed ceasefires with the Mexican Government and split factions by the Knights Templars have weakened the groups power

Los Negros
-A military type group that was fighting against the Los Zetas for control over Nuevo Laredo corridor
-Was formerly overseen by the Beltran-Leyva cartel. Was more recently ran by La Barbie, the famous Texan who rose to cartel stardom. Now that he is incarcerated it is hard to tell what will happen to this group.

Cartel de los Beltran-Leyva
-Formed in 2008 as a split faction from the Sinaloa Cartel
-Feuds include conflicts with Sinaloa, Gulf, and La Familia cartels
-Major allies with the Los Zetas
-Major rivals of the Cartel de Sinaloa
-Believed to be inactive because of arrests and killings of high ranking members

Cartel Del Colima
-A major synthetic drug cartel.
-Known as the meth kingpins.
-Has kept a low profile by avoiding violence

Milenio Cartel
-Mexican drug trafficking organization
-Also known as Los Valencia
-Separated from the Juarez Cartel in 1999-Has maintained to stay out of the spotlight
-Once a rival of Los Zetas, currently joined forces with Zetas
-Grows natural drugs such as marijuana and opium

Oaxaca Cartel
-Mexican drug trafficking organization
-Had early beginnings in the marijuana trade in the 1970′s
-Has also kept a low profile by avoiding violence

CIDA-Acapulco’s Independent Cartel
-Mexican drug trafficking organization
-A new and mainly unknown cartel in the Acapulco area fighting for control of the local port.
-It is yet to be seen if this cartel will disappear as a minor gang, or emerge as a local leader
-They are responsible for killing hit men that have been killing recklessly in Acapulco.

COLOMBIAN DRUG TRAFFICKING ORGANIZATIONS
(these groups supply Mexican cartels with cocaine)

Valle de Colombia Cartel
-Colombian cocaine trafficking group
-One of the most active Cartels in Colombia
-Is responsible for bringing much of the cocaine from South America to Mexico

FARC
-Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
-Ties to communist Cuba, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, the ETA of Spain, and other Marxist movements
-Aligned with the remnants of the Tijuana Cartel and the Juarez Cartel for cocaine shipments
-Claims to only supply drugs to support their political movement
-Known for high profile kidnappings

Rastrojos
-Colombian cocaine trafficking group
-Partners with the Sinaloa Cartel and the Juarez Cartel for cocaine supplies
-Ariel routes from Eastern Colombia and Southwestern Venezuela for shipments
-Sea routes from the Pacific Coast of Colombia
-Former members of Norte de Valle who are partnered with Ejercito Revolucionario Popular Antiterrorista Colombiano. (Led by Pedro Oliveiro “Cuchillo” Guerrero and Daniel “El Loco” Barrera

Urabenos
-Colombian cocaine trafficking group
-Remaining members of army members of the AUC
-Positioned along the Panama border
-Aligned with the Gulf Cartel for cocaine trafficking

Los Paisas
-Colombian cocaine trafficking group
-3rd generation Medellin based group
-Beltran-Leyva organization in Mexico is a major cocaine buyer from the group

CENTRAL AMERICAN DRUG TRAFFICKING ORGANIZATIONS & GANGS
(these groups transit drugs north, cash south, and weapons both ways. They also provide other services for Mexican and Colombian groups)

Mara Salvatrucha – MS -13
-Central American/ Los Angeles street gang
-They have been known to be employed in Southern Mexico, and in the United States to carry out hits, as well as move large amounts of drugs onto the streets by cartels
-They are involved in human smuggling into Mexico from Central America.
-They also share drug distribution and smuggling into Mexico and Central America

Barrio 18 ( M-18)
-Central American / Los Angeles street gang
-Began as a Mexican and Mexican American street gang in LA
-Now more prominent in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala
-Bitter rivals of MS-13
-Ties with the Los Zetas and Sinaloa Cartel are suspected

El Perrones
-El Salvador drug trafficking organization
-Transit drugs from Panama to Guatemala
-Most prominent Salvadorian trafficking group

Texis Cartel
-El Salvador based drug trafficking organization
-Leaders are prominent and respected businessmen
-Profit off of controlling drug transit routes

El Mendozas
-Guatemalan drug and contraband trafficking organization
-Believed to have brought the Los Zetas into Guatemala as hired guns
-Highly connected to Guatemalan government
-Many members are believed to have fled to Belize

El Lorenzanas
-Guatemalan drug and contraband trafficking organization
-Ties to the Sinaloa Cartel
-Many members believed to be in Belize

El Leones
-Guatemalan drug trafficking organization
-Former cattle rustlers and car thieves
-The group was attacked by the Los Zetas in 2008
-Their territory is now believed to be run by the Zetas

MEXICAN & US STREET GANGS (These groups supply drugs from Mexico/Colombia to the streets, as well as fight in the streets for aligned cartels. MS-13 and M-18 belong to this group as well)

La Linea
-Mexican drug trafficking group

-The armed force employed by the Juarez Cartel
-Responsible for much of the blood shed and drug smuggling activity on a daily basis
-The leader was recently apprehended and has admitted to ordering over 1500 murders in the Juarez area
-Responsible for much of the violence in the Juarez area
-Recently threatened US government employees in MexicoMano Con Ojos
-Mexico City based gang
-A break-away group from the demised Beltran-Leyva Cartel
-The group has brought violence to the Mexico City metro that has not been seen
-The gang is fighting for rising control of drug sales in Mexico City

Barrio Azteca
-A street gang formed in El Paso, Texas. It now operates on both sides of the border.
-Mexican and Mexican-American gang
-In Mexico generally known as the Aztecas
-Are alligned with the Juarez Cartel and fighting the Mexicles and Artistas Asesinos
-They have been known to carry out contract hits for cartels on both sides of the border as well as moving large amounts of drugs

Mexicles
-Originates as a Texas prison gang
-Mexican and Mexican-American gang
-Declared war on the Barrio Azteca in 1999.
-Their war with the Barrio Azteca made them good candidates for the Sinaloa to hire them as hit men and grunts for the war against the Juarez cartel.

Artistas Asesinos
-Juarez street gang
-Aligned with the Sinaloa Cartel
-Used for day to day violence and drug distribution
-Also known as Los Doble A

The Mexican Mafia
-Also known as La Eme
-Mexican and Mexican-American gang
-They historically are known to be tied with the Tijuana Cartel.
-They have performed hits on both sides of the border for the Tijuana cartel, as well as moving large amounts of drugs onto the streets

West Africa Commission on Drugs calls for radical policy rethink to curb regional instability caused by narcotics trade

West African governments must treat drugs as a public health issue and consider partial decriminalisation to stop the region becoming "a new front line in the failed "war on drugs", a panel of experts convened by Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general, has warned.

In a stark assessment of the corrosive effect the international drug trade is having on the area's security and development, the West Africa Commission on Drugs (WACD) says the region's combination of "political instability, unemployment and corruption" is proving increasingly attractive to those trafficking cocaine and heroin from South America and Asia into Europe and the US.

The commission says weak governance, legal loopholes and thriving informal economies have been luring drug cartels to west Africa since the mid-2000s, pointing out that the UN now puts the annual value of the cocaine moved through the region at $1.25bn (£745m).

Its report – Not Just in Transit: Drugs, the State and Society in West Africa – notes that the area has also become a producer and exporter of synthetic drugs such as amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS), which are not only consumed in the region but also shipped to south-east Asia.

The commission says the growing presence of drugs and drug money risks undermining the economic and political stability achieved by west African countries that have only recently emerged from years of conflict and violence. But it also points to a rising human cost as more west Africans take drugs, exacerbating public health problems such as HIV and hepatitis C.

Given the situation, says the commission, the time has come for a radical rethink of drug policy."We have concluded that drug use must be regarded primarily as a public health problem," says the report. "Drug users need help, not punishment. We believe that the consumption and possession for personal use of drugs should not be criminalised. Experience shows that criminalisation of drug use worsens health and social problems, puts huge pressures on the criminal justice system and incites corruption."

Cannabis is a case in point. The drug has long been grown as a cash crop, mainly for local consumption in countries such as Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal, and estimates from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) suggest much more cannabis is consumed in west Africa than cocaine, heroin or ATS. According to UNODC figures, estimated adult cannabis use in west and central Africa is 12.4%, compared with averages of 7.5% in Africa and 3.9% globally.

Such high usage is proving a drain on already scarce resources. Crop eradication efforts have failed to find quick and attractive alternatives for cannabis farmers, while police crackdowns designed to meet targets for arrests and seizures have been counterproductive. Most of those arrested for drug offences in Nigeria,Mali,Senegal,Ghana,Guinea and Sierra Leone tend to be small-scale cannabis dealers or users who spend a long time in pre-trial detention and often succumb to other illnesses while waiting to be sentenced or released (by paying a fine – or a bribe).

The report argues that the region's "poor, uneducated and vulnerable" should not be penalised for taking drugs when governments and law enforcement agencies should be using their funds and legal powers to stop the traffickers and their accomplices.

"What ultimately emerges from the evidence is that the harms of criminalisation far outweigh those of decriminalisation. West Africa would remove a huge weight from an already overburdened criminal justice system if it were to decriminalise drug use and possession, expand health and social services for those with problematic use, and expend greater effort in pursuing … traffickers … and rooting out corruption from within."

But the commission – chaired by the former Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, and including members from Senegal, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Togo, Mauritania, Nigeria, Cape Verde and Mali – stresses that the problem is a global one.

Since west Africa neither produces nor consumes most of the drugs moved through it, "nations whose citizens consume large amounts of illicit drugs must play their part and seek humane ways to reduce demand for those drugs".

Annan, who launched the WACD in January last year, has previously called for countries to explore the decriminalisation of cannabis and urged the world to admit that the war on drugs has failed.

He said that drug traffickers who moved their business to west Africa following the loss of their Caribbean transit points had been quick to establish new networks – and equally quick to corrupt societies by bribing politicians, police, customs officials and the judiciary.

Kofi Annan has long been persuaded that west Africa needs to adopt a holistic approach to its drug problem.

"They're businesspeople; they look for other access," he said. "They settled on Guinea-Bissau, which was almost a failed state, and then it began to spread through the region. At the beginning, people thought it was just in transit – but no country remains in transit for long: the young people want to use it and then you also have loose money floating around in poor countries, and that undermines democracy."

The Ghanaian diplomat said his experiences as UN secretary general and on the Global Commission on Drugs Policy had convinced him that west Africa needed to adopt a more holistic approach to its drug problem.

If local governments wanted an example of what not to do, he added, they should look at the crime, terror and corruption suffered by parts of Latin America in recent decades.

"The US war on drugs has failed," said Annan. "If we go the same way with a failed war on drugs, or try the American or the Latin American route, there's no way we can sustain it; in fact, we might really destabilise our societies. We can adopt an approach that is health-based, that is educational, but be absolutely hard and harsh on the drug dealers and the barons and the big boys."

Although he is cautiously optimistic that the opposition to decriminalisation is beginning to recede – he points to the recent legalisation of marijuana in Uruguay and the US states of Washington and Colorado– the veteran diplomat knows that true change is likely to take a very long time.

"It's a fight that's not going to be won easily. Those of us who are engaged in this have to be ready to wake up every morning ready to fight it. You have to keep pushing; it's going to take a while."

Annan recalls the speech he made to the World Economic Forum in Davos last year, in which he said: "I believe that drugs have destroyed many people; but wrong government policies have destroyed many more."

Challenged on the dangers of decriminalisation and asked how he would reassure a mother who feared that the policy would, in effect, put drugs in her son's hand, he offered a different point of view.

"I would want to ask the same mother's neighbour, whose son was caught at college with half a gram and is in jail for 10 years and comes out completely destroyed, which would you prefer? The approach where you educate, you treat them medically and you advise, or the approach where you throw them in jail and spend more money on prisons than on your education?"


On one point, however, Annan is adamant: without honest and proper engagement by governments, civil society and individuals, there can be no global progress.

"If they sit back, who's going to do it for them? Each of us will have to ask ourselves a question: has the war on drugs been successful? And, if it has failed, what do we do? I'm not even asking them to embrace our position, just let them think it through. I'll be happy with that."

Akasha Brothers & Co

One evening last November, a handful of policemen in Kenya's sweltering port city of Mombasa were hand picked to help in the final stages of a U.S.-led drugs sting that spanned three continents.

The target was a mansion in the wealthy beach suburb of Nyali. The policemen were banned from using their mobile phones and the names of the men they wanted were kept from them until two hours before the raid. Secrecy was deemed vital in a region known for its corruption.

The quarry that night were the alleged leaders of the Akasha Cartel The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) had spent years infiltrating Akasha and alleges that the gang is part of a heroin supply chain that stretches from the poppy fields of Afghanistan through east Africa to the cities of Europe and the United States.

Inside a mansion girded by palm trees and a two-metre cobblestone wall, police captured the alleged leader of the crime syndicate, Baktash Akasha, his brother Ibrahim, and two other men. Kenyan police charged them with trafficking narcotics to the United States. Prosecutors in the United States subsequently indicted all four on charges including conspiracy to import heroin.

In documents filed in a court in the Southern District of New York on Nov. 10, the U.S. prosecutors alleged that the Akasha cartel was responsible for the "production and distribution" of large quantities of narcotics in Kenya, Africa and beyond.

All the men deny the Kenyan charges and are fighting a U.S. request to have them extradited. Instead, they want their case heard in Kenya.

The raid was part of a wider effort by the DEA and Kenya to counter the growing power of drug cartels operating in east Africa. But while the raid was a success, the story of the operation highlights the many hurdles to slowing drug flows: corruption, porous land borders, poor maritime surveillance and a weak judiciary.

The operation, revealed in court documents and interviews, came at a crucial time. Law enforcement agencies are worried that a record opium harvest in Afghanistan will flood global heroin markets this year. The United Nations reported Afghan opium cultivation rose 7 percent in 2014. Western drug agencies are worried this will grow further following the withdrawal of all British and many American troops from Afghanistan.

Western officials are concerned that increased drug trafficking in east Africa could destabilise the region. They fear a repeat of what happened on the other side of Africa in Guinea-Bissau, which has been flooded with South American drugs. The United States has called that west African country Africa’s first "narco state."

Most Europe-bound Afghan heroin still goes through the established "Balkan route" via Iran and south-east Europe. But a spate of seizures along the Kenyan and Tanzanian coastline over the past few years points to a switch to a "southern route" via Africa.

Short of funds and anti-trafficking expertise, east African countries rely on the Combined Maritime Force (CMF) to go after drug traffickers. While the 30-nation naval force was set up to protect busy shipping lanes from Somali pirates, it is intercepting more and more drug deliveries. Last year it seized 3.4 tonnes of heroin, a 66 percent increase on 2013.

To help, Western law enforcement agencies are stepping up operations in east Africa and countries closer to Afghanistan. The DEA says it plans to re-open its office in Karachi, Pakistan, to work with DEA agents in Nairobi and with Pakistani authorities.

Britain, which estimates it is the destination for about 20 percent of the heroin shipped through east Africa, has also stepped up its presence in the region.

"Now it is not just about us here in Kenya," Hamisi Masa, the head of Kenya's elite Anti-Narcotics Unit, told Reuters. "The whole world is concerned."

THE FAMILY BUSINESS
The Akasha family has been involved in the drug trade for years, Western diplomats allege.

In the 1990s, the clan was led by Baktash's father Ibrahim. U.S. Embassy cables published by WikiLeaks describe Ibrahim Akasha as a drug baron. "The Akasha family long controlled drugs (then mostly hashish, heroin, cannabis) along Mombasa to Europe," said a cable dated Jan. 9, 2006.

Ibrahim Akasha

In 2000, Ibrahim Akasha was killed in a drive-by shooting in Amsterdam's Red Light district, according to the cables. That dented the business and split the family. Baktash and his half-brother Nurdin, better known as Tinta, Ibrahim's son with another of his wives, accused each other of murder plots against the family. Tinta could not be reached for comment.

The DEA had been monitoring the Akashas for years, according to Cliff Ombeta, a lawyer representing the Akashas in Kenya.

By 2014, when the agency began the operation to catch the Akashas, Baktash had taken over the family business. A burly man with a receding hairline, he had built
close links with major Pakistani heroin traffickers, the DEA alleges.

One such contact, the U.S. indictment states, was Gulam Hussein, also known as the "Old Man." Hussein had lived on and off in Kenya since 2012. The indictment describes him as "the head of a transportation network that distributes massive quantities of narcotics throughout the Middle East and Africa."

The Old Man

Another alleged contact was Vijaygiri Goswami, an Indian businessman who had spent more than a decade in a Dubai jail for drug trafficking offences. Goswami is married to 1990s Bollywood star Mamta Kulkarni and had built business empires in Zambia and South Africa.

Goswami and Hussein were captured with the Akasha brothers in the Mombasa raid. As well as the heroin charges, U.S. prosecutors have charged the Akashas and Goswami with conspiracy to import methamphetamines, according to the indictment in the New York court.

None of the men have pleaded to the U.S. charges, according to Daniel Arshack, a New York-based lawyer for Goswami. He said he was confident all four men will not be extradited. "We have no reason to believe that the allegations in the U.S. indictment are supported by facts," he said.

Vijaygiri Goswami

PRIVATE JET
According to U.S. court documents and to Kenyan lawyer Ombeta, who represents not just the Akashas but also Goswami and Hussein, the DEA sting started in March last year.

Ombeta told Reuters the sting against his clients amounted to entrapment.

An undercover DEA source posing as a member of a Colombian drugs cartel was introduced to Baktash by a friend of the Akashas. The friend "was also a DEA agent," Ombeta said.

The DEA would not discuss details of its operatives or informants. Ombeta said the man pretending to work for the Colombians was a Moroccan national who had been jailed for a drug trafficking offence in the United States. Peppering his conversation with talk of a private jet and ambitious business plans, the man cultivated an image of opulence, Ombeta said.

Soon after their first meeting, the Moroccan man gave 3 million Kenyan shillings ($32,870) in cash to the Akashas as a goodwill gesture, Ombeta said. "He was flashing money so they could see this was someone who has money and is ready to buy."

The Moroccan man told Baktash Akasha that the Colombians wanted to buy high-quality heroin to sell in the United States, according t+o prosecutors. In one of many conversations recorded by the DEA, Baktash allegedly said that he could get them unlimited amounts of "white crystal," a reference to pure heroin.

Weeks later, Baktash allegedly told one of his Pakistani suppliers that the Colombians wanted 500 kg (1,100 lb) of "carat diamond," a reference to high quality heroin. The supplier replied the heroin would cost them about $12,000 per kg and said that he had 420 kg of pure heroin.

THE SULTAN
As the DEA source was negotiating with the Akashas, the CMF naval force made a series of seizures in Indian Ocean waters off Kenya, Tanzania and the island of  Zanzibar. The U.S. extradition document links at least one of these shipments to Hussein.

In April 2014, CMF forces boarded a traditional wooden dhow and found a tonne of heroin stashed among cement bags. That was roughly equal to all the heroin that 11 east African governments had seized between 1990 and 2009, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.

Then in July, for the first time ever, Kenya's navy made a major heroin seizure. Tipped off by a Western agency, it intercepted a rusting vessel that had set off from Pakistan. A week after they towed the ship into port in Mombasa, officials discovered nearly 800 kg of heroin in its diesel tank.

According to a U.S. extradition document, the man responsible for that second shipment was Gulam Hussein. U.S. court documents allege Hussein told undercover DEA sources he had transported "tons of kilograms of heroin by sea."

Undeterred by the seizure, Hussein, the Akashas and Goswami allegedly set about agreeing a deal on their upcoming shipment.

In mid-September, Baktash told the Moroccan man that a heroin supplier known as "The Sultan" had sent a representative with a one kilogram sample of heroin for the Colombians to test, court documents allege. The shipment arrived in Kenya in October. Goswami allegedly told the Moroccan that he was working with Baktash to get another 500 kg.

POLYGRAPH TESTS
As the sting neared its end, the DEA and Kenyan authorities grew worried that word would leak.

Junior officers in the Kenyan police earn less than $200 a month. Such low pay helps fuel corruption, according to Kenyan officials. "Drugs barons have bought some of our officers and this is very sad," Mombasa County Commissioner Nelson Marwa told journalists in December."We have information that police vehicles and ambulances are being used to transport drugs within (Mombasa) county and the coast region."

The Mombasa police rejected this claim. It said Marwa’s statement was "shocking" but promised to conduct an internal investigation.

In the days leading up to the raid, Kenya's Anti-Narcotics Unit (ANU) suddenly transferred nearly 30 police officers, including some of its own men, away from the Mombasa region.

Local media linked the redeployments to the Akasha bust, saying most of the policemen were moved because of corruption fears. Hamisi Masa, the ANU chief, told Kenyan press he was behind the transfers, but called it a "regular" move.

Fearful of possible corruption, the DEA has in the last three years helped set up a special "vetted" unit within the ANU. Officers who want to join the inner circle have to pass extra checks including polygraph tests. Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) carries out similar vetting and due diligence checks with local security officials. It is also beefing up its Kenya team.

THE RAID
In early November, Baktash's brother Ibrahim allegedly delivered 98 kg of heroin to the man from the Colombian cartel in Nairobi, unaware that the DEA was clandestinely recording their meetings. A couple of days later, he allegedly delivered 1 kg of methamphetamines.

Soon after, Ibrahim left Nairobi on a commercial flight to Mombasa, and the DEA and ANU made their move.

ANU officers handpicked several regular policemen to provide back-up and then hid in a mansion opposite the Akasha home. At about 1.30 am on Nov. 10, they launched their raid, arresting the men and confiscating laptops, tablets, mobile phones and cars.

"There was no resistance ... just shock that they had been caught completely unaware," said one member of the Anti-Narcotics Unit.

Tinta Akasha

Ombeta, the Kenyan lawyer representing the four men, said Baktash has told him that he suspects his estranged brother Tinta collaborated with the DEA.

The four men have also told their lawyer that their initial mistrust of the Moroccan man had receded as he splashed more and more cash around.

Drug use in Kenya has risen fast in the past few years, according to religious leaders, politicians and charities working to tackle the problem. They say domestic use has soared as international drug cartels have turned east Africa into a major transit route for narcotics from Afghanistan. Some of the drugs spill onto the localmarket, they say.

Juma Ngao, a director at Kenya's National Authority for Campaign against Alcohol and Drug Abuse (NACADA) said the Indian Ocean port towns of Mombasa, Malindi and Lamu have been hardest hit because most drug shipments come by sea.

The problem has become a political issue, with many Kenyans concerned it willfuel the region's rising crime and poor security. A spate of Islamist attacks on bars, non-Muslims and other targets has already dented the coastal region's tourism industry. The growing drug problem could further harm an area best known for sun and sand.

Yet with Mombasa's police and some politicians often accused of corruption and involvement in the drugs trade, many Kenyans are despondent about the country’s prospects of kicking its new addiction.

In April and November last year, the Australian navy seized two consignments of heroin off the coast of Kenya, totalling 787 kg and worth about USD 278m. Another haul was made in July when Kenyan police found 342 kg of heroin in the tank of a ship docked at the Mombasa port, making it the biggest ever single seizure of drugs in Kenya coastal city.

The three seizures roughly equalled the amount captured by 11 east African governments between 1990 and 2009, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.The hauls proved once again how Kenya and East Africa waters have become a key export route for heroin from Asia to Europe.

Kenya's drug routes
In December 2004 a seizure marked a turning point in Africa drugs trade. It was the biggest ever: 1.1 tonnes coming in a vessel docked at Mombasa port. Cocaine has been seized in Malindi, Mombasa (837.5 Kg) and Nairobi (304 Kg) . The street value was estimated in 80 million USD. Narcotics allegedly came from Colombia through Venezuela. This large cocaine seizure haul involved all the big players both in politics and drug trafficking in Kenya.

	Ali Hassan	Joho

Politician and businessman, John Harun Mwau, was born in Kenya in 1948 to a humble family. But by the 1990s, he was a rich man. Two decades later, he is richer still. Last year, the Mwau family was named in the 2014 'Wealth in Kenya' report as one of the richest in the country.And the US government is currently seeking to confiscate 750 millions dollars he has investied there: in 2011 Obama's administration blacklisted him in the "Kingpin act".

Mwau's vast wealth is not from honest hard work. He is Kenya's biggest drug trafficker, and in two decades has earned hundreds of millions of dollars from illegally moving cocaine into Kenya, the United States and Europe. Mwau began his career as a sharpshooter in the Kenyan police in his 20s. He joined the Kenyan parliament in the Kilome province in 1992 under his own brand new
political party: PICK (Party of Independent Candidates of Kenya). He left his seat in 2013.

William Kabogo

 Mwau ran also for the Kenyan presidency in 1992. He lost. But then president, Daniel Arap Moi, offered him the role of head of the newly-created Kenya Anti-Corruption Authority. His job as “transparency upholder” lasted just a few months. After keeping a low profile for several years, he emerged again as a major importer of electronic goods from the Middle East and Europe. But troubles for Mwau started in 2004.

In December that year, Kenyan authorities seized in Nairobi, Mombasa and Malindi an astonishing 1,21 tonnes of cocaine. The African Business magazine suggests the cargo came from Venezuela and Colombia, and was destined for Ireland and the Netherlands. It was the largest drug haul ever in Kenya's history. Shortly after, investigators raided the depot of Pepe Enterprises Ltd, a Mombasa -based company allegedly owned by John Mwau. The company has a warehouse located at the Athi River in the outskirts of Nairobi, where it is suspected that part of the narcotics shipment found its way there.

Gideon Mbuvi

The same newspaper reported that Kenya’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) “refused to identify a prominent Nairobi hotelier being investigated over the shipment”. The 2012 report "Termites at Work: Transnational Organized Crime and State Erosion in Kenya” released by the International Peace Institute (IPI), highlighted that Mwau has “also been contracted by the government over many years to operate an inland container depot at Athi River in the outskirts of Nairobi, known as the Pepe Container Freight Station”.

The report named Mwau as a violent drug dealer involved in money laundering and contract killings. “In 2008," the report continues, "John Harun Mwau, following his appointment as assistant transport minister, appears to have been responsible for Kenya’s container transport arrangements” and “for the Kenya Ports Authority (KPA), which controls all ports of entry and inland container terminals in Kenya”. The manager of the depot was charged for drug trafficking but was acquitted for lack of
evidence"

Ali Punjani

“Mombasa port is like a tunnel. All illicit business happens here and it is controlled by traders supported by customs personnel and powerful people in government. Whoever controls the port controls the illicit business in Kenya” IPI interview with Njuguna Mutonya, former bureau chief of Nation Media Group, Coast Province, August 18, 2010.

But the toughest blows to Mwau's jaw were yet to come. Prior to 2007, Mwau was under investigation with two other suspects for having allegedly provided large sums of money to the election coffers of the PNU (Party of National Unity), headed by Mwai Kibaki, at that time the Kenyan president. Mwau resigned from his trade assistant minister post in December 2010 after Internal Security minister, George Saitoti, informed the Parliament that MPs Ali Hassan
Joho, William Kabogo, John Harun Mwau and Gideon Mbuvi, and Mombasa tycoon Ali Punjani were being investigated for alleged drug trafficking.

According to local press reports, Mwau's resignation came one month after U.S. ambassador for Kenya, Michael Ranneberger, handed over a detailed confidential report made by American anti-narcotics agencies. All U.S. assets in which Mwau held more than 50% shares were frozen. The U.S. Treasury Department believes Mwau used overseas tournaments and his status to start moving narcotics. In the same period, Mwau visited Colombia quite often: according to top sources, Mwau set up his links with drug traffickers at that time.

The accusations thrown in the Parliament by former minister Saitoti were based on a joint investigation run by US law enforcement and Kenyan government. Strongest allegations moved the investigation at the beginning, less concrete in the later evidence. The confirmation is John Harun Mwau's investigation: in February the "Interim report on drug trafficking investigations" by Kenyan police concluded: "No evidence has so far been found to link him to drug trafficking".

In 2012 the main accuser, professor George Saitoti, died in an helicopter crash on the outskirts of Nairobi: Al Shabaab militias and drug traffickers are the main suspects for the disaster. Investigations have not yet found anyone guilty. In 2011, the United States sanctioned Mwau under the Kingpin Act, and is currently working to seize $750m of his investments there.

The main accuser, professor George Saitoti, died in an helicopter crash

Adam Szubin, the Director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (Ofac) in the US Department of Treasury, told journalists: “We view [Mwau] as among the more powerful and active narcotics traffickers in the region.”"It’s not a quick or short process. We built a case slowly and carefully to ensure that it is soundly built”.

“The US never apologises for killing its enemies, real or imagined." Mwau said in 2011. "They will violate other nations’ airspace and eliminate their targets. The task of justification is left to themselves”. Mwau also claimed that he had every reason to believe that the move by the US government to designate him as a significant foreign narcotics drug trafficker was tailored to make him an easy target for elimination.

In January 2014, the National Authority for Campaign Against Alcohol and Drug Abuse in Kenya (NACADA), invited by John Harun Mwau to say whether they had any evidence linking him with the drug trade, cleared the former politician of any involvement in drug trafficking. But, as reported in the Daily Nation piece on the subject, "Nacada is a State agency and chairmen of such institutions do not have the powers to clear individuals of any past or present allegations”.

Politics and Drugs: The Johos Brothers
A report issued in 2010 by the U.S. Embassy in Kenya and cited in Parliament by then Internal Security Minister George Saitoti says that MPs Joho, William Kabogo, John Harun Mwau, Gideon Mbuvi and Mombasa tycoon Ali Punjani, are among the most dangerous drug traffickers in the country. The document were also signed by then U.S. ambassador Michael Ranneberger.

The report describes how Abubakar Joho and his brother Ali Hassan are in charge of a multi-million euro trafficking empire. Abubarak was the first of the two to enter the drug trade. According to the U.S. report, Abubakar Joho “was the clearing agent for containers that held a one ton shipment of cocaine seized in 2004.

The influence of Abubakar on Ali Hassan is typical of an elder brother towards his younger. According to the American document, it was Abubakar who insisted and convinced Ali Hassan to enter politics. When a young Ali Hassan Joho runs and wins the 2007 elections as a representative of the Mombasa region in the national parliament,shortly after, the report suggests, his career in the drug trade began.

The report reads that the political campaign that granted him the regional political seat was funded by Swaleh Kandereni, Billy Mahandi and Swaleh Ahmed who were all rested in Mombasa under drug trafficking charges in 2010. According to the American document, Kandereni allegedly was a major supplier to dealers in the coastal town of Malindi. Another of Joho’s influential campaigners was suspected narcotics trafficker Ali Punjabi.

Since 2010 the Kenyan Anti Narcotics Unit have suspected Ali Hassan Joho to be involved in the narcotics trade, however due to Joho’s “political position and financial resources it is unclear what the [Kenyan] police intended to do with that evidence”, the report ends.
Ali Hassan Joho is elected as governor of the Mombasa county on March 4, 2013. Together the brothers own Prima Bins & Pest Control, an import-export company in charge of waste management and rat- killing, based in Mama Ngina Drive, Mombasa. It is through their company that the pair move drugs across Kenya.

Amiran Kenya's MD

U.S. officials also identify Israeli company Amiran Kenya Ltd, owned by Israeli businessman Andy, as a crucial actor in the criminal network. Andy appears closely connected with a Mombasa-based man, nicknamed Adamo, one of Joho’s trusted operators. The American report insists that both Mwau and Johos have own companies based at the Kilindi port, in Mombasa, where the cargo seized in December 2004 was heading: "Some of the cocaine [from the 2004 haul] had been stored at the Pepe Container Freight Station CFS, a facility owned by Mr Harun Mwau".

Sam Klepper

Ali Hassan Joho is also a close acquaintance to Mary Wambui, according to the U.S. report, Wambui often met with Hassan and promoted his candidacy for a seat in the regional parliament of Kisauni in 2007.  Former Othaya MP Mary Wambui, has been stalked by controversy since she came to the limelight soon after the 2007 election.

Mary Wambui

Forget the purported State House connection or the fact that she is a wealthy woman, reportedly with huge interests in real estate — what raised questions was her alleged connections to two Armenian mercenaries, Artur Margaryan and Artur Sargasyan.

In a communication intercepted by Wikileaks in 2006, then US ambassador to Kenya Michael Bellamy linked Ms Wambui to narcotics trafficking and the Artur brothers’ entry into the country.

Mr Bellamy said from interviews he conducted with key people, Ms Wambui, whom he referred to as “Second Lady”, allegedly worked with then State House adviser Stanley Murage and CID boss Joseph Kamau to conceal the identity of the Armenian brothers.

KTN Senior Investigative Editor MOHAMMED ALI and Senior Investigative Reporter DENNIS ONSARIGO disclosed how several tonnes of the cocaine went missing, how key suspects were allowed to escape and how two State prosecutions were deliberately mishandled.

They also shone a light on the drastic lengths to which Kenya’s drug barons and their friends in high places go to ensure their secrets remain protected. At least four police officers and one spy investigating or connected to drug-related cases have been killed in mysterious circumstances, the team reported.

Artur Brothers

The men were allegedly recruited to set up and train a specialised anti-narcotics unit. Publicly purporting to be investors and privately passing as security consultants, the foreigners — known locally as the ‘Artur brothers’ — have since been unmasked by multiple sources as impostors.
More than one source suggests the State was tricked into hiring enforcers working for drug traffickers who wanted to recover the 1.2 tons of cocaine being held in Kenya.

Investigations by Standard Group journalists show key State agents and politically connected people had a hand in bringing the men to Kenya and embedding several of them as senior police officers in the Criminal Investigations Department. This is why they received help and protection from various State agents who believed they were in Kenya on legitimate, Government-sanctioned operations.

CID boss Joseph Kamau

For about three months, the so-called Artur brothers had free run of Nairobi police stations from which they took vehicle number plates with which to disguise their unit’s cars. One of them even visited the secure installation where the 1,141kg of cocaine was being stored

The man who appeared to be their leader has been videotaped saying he was hired to set up a secret police unit to deal with drug trafficking using foreign “soldiers of fortune”. Artur Margaryan, who uses a false name, says this was why he was appointed as deputy police commissioner, serving under then CID boss Joseph Kamau.

Our investigations have identified at least six accomplices of the so-called ‘Artur brothers’ who entered Kenya around 2006. Like Artur Margaryan and Artur Sargasyan, some of the six men used several false names and travel documents to move in and out of the country when conducting their activities.

Most were from Eastern bloc or former Soviet Union countries and have been described by American diplomats as being possibly Russians, Bosnians or Ukrainians. Other sources say the men were enforcers for the Russian mafia, which has been linked to the drug trade in Latin America and is made up of criminals from Eastern bloc nations.
Akasha Cartel
They first came up on the radar when Ibrahim Akasha was brought to court in 1996 on drug trafficking. Ibrahim Akasha hired a Yugoslavian crew to move  his product to Europe. This new crew was linked up to an international syndicate based in Amsterdam: at the top of the Dutch gang was Sam Klepper, a notorious drug trafficker born in the Netherlands.

Akasha’s inside men in Amsterdam were the Barsoums brother, Mounir and Magdi. For a couple of years the new collaboration between the Dutch and the Kenyan gangs ran smoothly. The party turned sour in 1999 when a payment for a drug consignment failed to arrive. The Akasha Cartel responded by abducting the Dutch gang’s Yugoslavian crew member from which they managed to ransom for USD 211k

Streten “Jotcha” Jocic

Ibrahim Akasha was shot dead in an Amsterdam street in 2000. It is likely that Mounir Barsoum was the trigger man. Klepper’s gang was fighting against a Yugoslavian gang led by the famous drug dealer Streten “Jotcha” Jocic which. It was the same Yugoslavs that pushed for executing Ibrahim Akashah. In October 2000 Keller was killed, followed by the Barsoums brothers in 2002 and 2004.

According to Kenyan intelligence, The Netherlands was the final destination of the huge haul of 1,2 tons of cocaine cargo seized in 2004. The US Drug Enforcement Agency “had spent years infiltrating Akasha and alleges that the gang is part of a heroin supply chain that stretches from the poppy fields of Afghanistan through east Africa to the cities of Europe and the United State. In documents filed in a court in the Southern District of New York on November 10th, 2014, the U.S. prosecutors alleged that the Akasha Cartel was responsible for the “production and distribution” of large quantities of narcotics in Kenya, Africa and beyond.

In November 2014, the U.S. government requested the extradition of Baktash Akasha Abdallah, Ibrahim Akasha Abdallah and co.However the Baktash brothers, Vijaygiri Goswami and the old man were all freed on bail in March 2015.  Baktash paid a USD 325.000 bail to be freed.

 They behead people by the hundreds. They heap headless, handless bodies along roadsides as warnings to those who would resist their power. They havepenetrated the local, stateand national governments and control entire sections of the country. They provide employment and services to an impoverished public, which distrusts their actual government with its bitter record of corruption, repression, and torture. They seduce young people from several countries, including the United States, into their murderous activities.

Driven By Money

Is this a description of the heinous practices of the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria? It could be, but it’s not. These particular thugs are a lot closer to home.They are part of the multi-billion-dollar industry known as thedrug cartels of Mexico. Like the Islamic State, the cartels' power has increased as the result of disastrous policies born in the U.S.A.

Driven By Religion

In the images coming out of Mexico or Iraq, one striking feature is the importance of the mask. The mask is primarily not a medium to hide identity. The masked person stands outside the relationships of visual exchange that constitute social life, outside the norms that shape our interactions. The mask is both a medium and a metaphor of transformation, with in many societies the wearing of masks a means to access unseen power. In Mexico or Syria the masked killer is accessing the power of The Cartel or al-Dawla.

Masked New Generation Cartel

There are other parallels between IS and groups like Mexico's Zetas and its Sinaloa cartel. Just as the U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya fertilized the field for IS, another U.S. war, the so-called war on drugs, opened new horizons for the drug cartels. Just as Washington has worked hand-in-hand with and also behind the backs of corrupt rulers in Central Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa, so it has done with the Mexican government. Both kinds of war have resulted in serious blow-back with violent consequences felt in our own cities, whether at the finish line of the Boston Marathon or in communities of colour across the country.

Masked ISIS Members

In Mexico, the U.S. military is directly involved in the war on drugs. In this country, that "war" has provided the pretext for the militarization of local police forces and increased routine surveillance of ordinary people going about their ordinary lives.

And as the national security state have used the spectre of IS to create an atmosphere of panic and hysteria in the USA, so have they also used the drug cartels' grotesque theatre of violence to justify their demonization of immigrants from Latin America and the massive militarization of America’s borderlands.

The War in Mexico
If there was an official beginning to Mexico's war on drugs, it would have to be considered the election of Felipe Calderón as the country’s president in 2006. The candidate of the right-wing Partido Acción Nacional, the National Action Party (PAN), Calderón was only the second Mexican president in 70 years who did not come from the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). His predecessor, Vicente Fox, had been the first.

It was Calderón who, with encouragement and assistance from the United States, changed Mexico's war on drugs from a metaphor into the real thing, in which guns and grenades would fuel the deaths of more than 60,000 Mexicans through 2012. Thats 25 times the US military death tollin the Afghanistan war, 13 times more than the US military death toll in the Iraq war.

The current president, Enrique Peña Nieto of the PRI, admits that another 27,000 Mexicans were murdered in the first year of his presidency. To put that into perspective the 17 EU countries recorded 125 gunshot homicides for  2011, or three times more than the US in the same period.  25,000 more have been disappeared since 2007. It was Calderón who brought the Mexican military fully into the fight against drugs, transforming an ineffective policing policy into a full-scale shooting war with the cartels. At least 50,000 military personnel have been deployed.

In addition to ordinary citizens, journalists and politicians have been particular targets in this war. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that murders of Mexican reporters have increased dramatically since 2006. Among those whose killers have been positively identified, 69% died at the hands of the drug cartels, and at least 22% were killed by government or military personnel.

Wikipedia lists over 100 politicians who have lost their lives in Mexico's war on drugs. That list does not include a woman named Aide Nava González, whose headless body was dumped this month on a road in Guerrero state. Nava was contending for the Partido Revolución Democrática, the Democratic Revolution Party, slot on the ballot in the town of Ahuacuotzingo. Her husband, the former mayor, had been murdered there last year. A note from Los Rojos, a local drug gang, was left with Nava's
body.

"This is what will happen," it read, "to anyone who does not fall in line, fucking turncoats."
Guerrero is the home of Ayotzinapa, a town where 43 teachers-in-training once attended a rural teachers college. All 43 “disappeared” last September during a demonstration in the neighbouring town of Iguala. Their arrest by police, and apparent subsequent murder at the hands of a local drug gang, Guerreros Unidos, was one of the few stories of Mexican suffering to break into the U.S. mainstream media last year. The mayor of Iguala has since admitted that he instructed the police to
hand the students over to the gang and has been arrested, along with his wife. The town’s police chief is still on the run.

Like the "war on terror" globally, Mexico’s war on drugs has created endless new pretexts for government repression, which has its own lengthy history in that country. That history includes the long-remembered police murders of some 300 students, among the thousands protesting in Mexico City's Plaza de las Tres Culturas a couple of weeks before the Summer Olympics began in 1968. Juan Méndez, the U.N.'s Special Rapporteur on Torture, wrote in his 2014 mission report on Mexico:

"The National Human Rights Commission recorded an increase in the number of complaints of torture and ill-treatment since 2007 and reported a peak of 2,020 complaints in 2011 and 2,113 in 2012, compared with an annual average of 320 in the six years prior to 2007. Between December 2012 and July 2014, the Commission received 1,148 complaints of violations attributable to the armed forces alone."

ISIS

According to Méndez, it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact number of torture cases in the country in any year, because there is no national registry that records such complaints. Nor is everyone who was tortured by representatives of the government likely to report their suffering to that same government.

What is not difficult to pinpoint is the nature of the torture. Méndez notes the "disturbing similarities" in the complaints of those tortured.  The police and the military are regularly reported to use a combination of "punches, kicks, and beatings with sticks; electric shocks through the application of electrical devices such as cattle prods to their bodies, usually their genitals; asphyxiation with plastic bags; water-boarding; forced nudity; suspension by their limbs; [and] threats and insults."

Gulf Cartel

The purpose of such torture is clear as well.  As Mendez reports, it’s "to punish and to extract confessions or incriminating information." A 2008 change to the Mexican constitution makes it easier to do this: under this policy of pre-trial detention (arraigo in Spanish), suspected drug traffickers can be held for up to 80 days without charge. According to the Mexican Commission for the Defence and Promotion of Human Rights, "Supposedly,arraigo is used as a means to investigate suspected criminals, but in practice, it is used as a kind of public scrutiny that allows more time for the authorities to determine whether the detained is guilty or innocent." It's much easier to extract a confession when you have electric cattle prods and water-boarding at your disposal.

Washington Fights a “War” in Mexico
Who pays for Mexico's war on drugs? You won’t perhaps be too surprised to learn that the United States foots a major part of the bill. Between 2008 and 2014, Congress has appropriated $2.4 billion to fight the cartels, as part of the Mérida Initiative, a "security cooperation agreement" between the U.S. and Mexican governments. That money supportsa failed warin which tens of thousands have been killed and thousands more tortured.

Mexico

U.S. involvement, however, goes far beyond money. Along with the publicly acknowledged Mérida Initiative, the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) signed secret agreements with the Fox and Calderón administrations without the knowledge or consent of the Mexican congress. These openly violated the Mexican constitution, which reserves to that congress the right to approve agreements with foreign governments, as well as the U.N. Convention AgainstTransnational Crime, which requires that activities carried out by one country inside another be approved by the appropriate agency in the country where those activities take place.

"El Ponchis", the 14-year-old cartel hitman for Los Zetas

Under these secret agreements, U.S. DEA agents met repeatedly with high-level members of particular drug cartels, especially the Sinaloa group, to obtain information about rival organizations. Informants served as go-betweens in contacts between the DEA and "El Chapo" Guzmán, the head of that cartel. Guzmán was arrested in 2014 by the Mexican government. The newspaper El Universal conducted a year-long investigation in which its reporters documented the extent and effects of this illegal cooperation. The DEA arranged to dismiss drug trafficking charges that were pending in the United States against some of their Sinoloa Cartel informants. In other words, it allowed the cartels with which it worked to continue business -- and murder -- as usual.

ISIS Child Soldiers

In at least one case, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) issued multiple re-entry visas to informants, allowing them to bring significant quantities of drugs into the United States with impunity. In fact, it appears that, in order to maintain the flow of information, U.S. officials took sides in the drug war that devastated the Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez, killing an estimated 10,500 people. With tacit U.S. permission, the Sinaloa Cartel was able to defeat the rival Juárez Cartel.

Seventy percent of the guns used in Mexico's drug wars also come from this country. Most are purchased at one or another of the 6,700 licensed firearms sales outlets along the U.S.-Mexico border. The University of San Diego's Trans-Border Institute estimates that, between 2010 and 2012, about 253,000 firearms were bought each year for transfer to Mexico. And most of them made it across the border. The Institute reports that "Mexican authorities have seized roughly 12.7% of the total annual
trade" in weapons. U.S. interdiction efforts account for a measly 2% of those seized.

And not all of the weapons that ended up in Mexico did so against the wishes of the U.S. government. In the debacle known as "Fast and Furious," the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) allowed "more than 2,000 weapons, including hundreds of AK-47-type semi-automatic rifles and .50 caliber rifles," to "walk" across the border and into the hands of the Mexican cartels. Its ostensible purpose was to follow the guns in hopes that they would lead to the arrest of
high-level cartel leaders. But relevant agencies of the Mexican government were never informed about the operation, and it seems that there was no actual effort to track the weapons once they crossed the Mexican border. The weapons turned up at crime scenes in both Mexico and the United States. On December 14, 2010, near the Mexican border in Arizona, one of them killed Brian Terry, a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

ATF wasn't the only agency involved in "Fast and Furious." Personnel from ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, the DEA, and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Arizona also participated, along with the FBI and the IRS.

Nor was the Mexican government entirely informed, although it seems clear that one man, Eduardo Medina Mora, knew about it. A former director of Mexico's equivalent of the CIA, Medina is considered the "legal architect" of that country’s drug war. He was Mexico's attorney general when Fast and Furious got under way. By 2010, he'd been removed from that post (possibly because one of his top deputies was arrested for taking bribes from the cartels) and appointed ambassador to the United Kingdom.

Eduardo Medina Mora

Later, he served as ambassador to the U.S. until, in early March 2015, President Peña Nieto barely won Senate approval of Medina's appointment to a 15-year term as head of Mexico's Supreme Court. Mexicans who still remember Fast and Furious were outraged.

The Pentagon and CIA are also involved in Mexico in significant ways. Since at least 2011, the Pentagon has deployed both piloted aircraft and drones in the Mexican war on drugs. The CIA has also sent operatives to do intelligence gathering. And without specifying which agencies are responsible for such activities, the New York Times reports that "the United States has trained nearly 4,500 new [Mexican] federal police agents and assisted in conducting wiretaps, running informants, and interrogating suspects.” Furthermore, the "Pentagon has provided sophisticated equipment, including Black Hawk helicopters.”

Earl Anthony Wayne

In 2011, the State Department recalled career diplomat Earl Anthony Wayne from Kabul.  He was then serving as deputy ambassador to Afghanistan and coordinating with the NATO-led occupation forces there. His new assignment based on his counterinsurgency experience? Ambassador to Mexico. In 2013, the U.S. Army opened a special-ops centre in Colorado, according to the El Paso Times, "to teach Mexican security forces how to hunt drug cartels the same way special operations teams hunt al-Qaida." Because that worked out so well in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Drug War Comes Home (Along With Plenty of Blowback)
All in all, the U.S. drug war in Mexico has been an abject failure. In spite of high-profile arrests, including in 2014 Joaquín "El Chapo” Guzmán, Guzman's stunning second escape from a maximum-security prison in July 2015 sparked an immediate, massive manhunt for the Sinaloa Cartel head.
Skepticism has emerged about the official story regarding the escape of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman from the country’s most sophisticated, maximum security prison.

According to confidential sourses Mexico Attorney General Arely Gomez told President Enrique Peña Nieto that Chapo did not escape via an elaborate mile-long tunnel, but walked out the front door. The tunnel excavation project would have required the workers to remove over seven tons of dirt, sand, and other materials. This would have required trucks with 20-ton capacity to make close to 400 trips to the small, lonely house on the hill overlooking the prison. And doubts have circulated around other small details, such as why Chapo had hair in the video showing him just And doubts have circulated around other small details, such as why Chapo had hair in the video showing him just prior to his escape,prior to his escape, yet in the picture the authorities provided to the public following his escape, he is bald.

One Mile Tunnel

The cartels are responsible for the majority of the methamphetamine sold in the United States today. Since 2006, when a federal law made it much harder to buy ephedrine and pseudoephedrine in this country, the cartels have replaced small-time U.S.-based meth cookers. The meth they produce is purer than the U.S. product, apparently because it's made with purer precursor chemicals available from China. The other big product is heroin, whose quickly rising consumption seems to be replacing the demand for cocaine in the United States. On the other hand, marijuana legalization appears to be cutting into the cross-border traffic in that drug.

The Washington Post reports that almost 9% of Americans “age 12 or older -- 22.6 million people -- are current users of illegal drugs, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration." That represents a one-third increase over the 6.2% in 1998. It takes a lot of infrastructure to move that much product.

And that's where U.S.-based gangs come in. Urban gangs in the United States today are not the Sharks and Jets of West Side Story. Certainly, there are still some small local groups formed by young people looking for family and solidarity on the streets. All too often, however, today's gangs represent the well-run distribution arm of the international drug trade.

In Chicago alone, 100,000 people work in illegal drug distribution, selling mostly into that city's African-American community.Gang membership is skewing older every year, as gangs transform from local associations to organized, powerfully armed criminal enterprises. Well over half of present gang members are adults now. The communities where they operate live in fear, caught between the gangs that offer them employment while threatening their safety and militarized police forces they do not trust.

Just like U.S. military adventures in the Middle East and Afghanistan, the U.S.-Mexico war on drugs has only left a larger problem in place, while producing blow back here at home. A particularly nasty example is the cartels' use of serving U.S. military personnel and veterans as hit men here in the United States.

On July 25 an El Paso, Texas court handed down a life sentence to Army private first-class Michael Apodaca, 22, after he admitted to beingrecruited and paid $US5,000 by the Juarez Cartel to shoot and kill Jose Daniel Gonzalez-Galeana, a cartel member who had been outed as an
informant for U.S. customs.

Soldiers Of Fortune

In September Kevin Corley, 29, a former active-duty Army first lieutenant from Fort Carson in Colorado, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire for DEA agents posing as Los Zetas members in a Laredo, Texas federal court.He told his contact he could provide tactical training for members of the cartel and purchase weapons for them. In later meetings, Corley discussed stealing weapons from military posts and military tactics. On Dec. 23, 2011, he agreed to perform a contract killing for the cartel in exchange for $50,000 and cocaine.

But the effects are far bigger than that. The DEA told the Washington Post that Mexican cartels are operating in more than 1,200 U.S. cities. In all those cities, the failed war on drugs has put in prison 2.3 million people -- in vastly disproportionate numbers from communities of colour -- without cutting demand by one single kilo.

$177.26. is the retail price, according to Drug Enforcement Administration data, of one gram of pure cocaine from your typical local pusher. That is 74 percent cheaper than it was 30 years ago when the war on drugs began.This number contains pretty much all you need to evaluate the Mexican and American governments’ “war” to eradicate illegal drugs from the streets of the United States.

Conceived to eradicate the illegal drug market, the war on drugs cannot be won. Once they understand this, the Mexican and American governments may consider refocusing their strategies to take aim at what really matters: the health and security of their citizens, communities and nations.

Prices match supply with demand. If the supply of an illicit drug were to fall, say because the Drug Enforcement Administration stopped it from reaching the nation’s shores, we should expect its price to go up.

That is not what happened with cocaine. Despite billions spent on measures from spraying coca fields high in the Andes to jailing local dealers in Miami or Washington,a gram of cocaine cost about 16 percent less last year than it did in 2001. The drop is similar for heroin and methamphetamine. The only drug that has not experienced a significant fall in price is marijuana. The most enthusiastic supporters of the war on drugs are the cartels themselves and those that work with them because without the war on drugs they would all be out of business.

And yet, though that war has only visibly increased the drug problem in the same way that the war on terror has generated ever more terror organizations, in both cases there’s no evidence that any other course than war is being considered in Washington.

Guyanese Connection

The U.N. secretary-general says an estimated $1.2 billion worth of cocaine transits through West Africa each year. The council issued a statement Wednesday after Ban Ki-moon briefed it on the widespread risks to stability in a region where borders are porous, governments are poorly funded and extremist groups are active.

West Africa's recent rise as a route for cocaine and other drugs from Latin America to Europe has startled the international community.  Diplomats now point out that the region is producing its own drugs, including methamphetamine. Ban says the region now has "more than a million users of illicit drugs,"which hurts development in the vast region where unemployment earlier this year was estimated at 10 percent.

The region is seeing a "growing number of HIV infections due to drug injections," Yury Fedotov, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, told the Security Council.











Despite efforts put in place by the various governments along the coast of West Africa to curtail the hauling of cocaine through its coastline, the illegal trade has rather become more sophisticated.According to Alexandre Schmidt, Regional Head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, drug cartels were now using new methods of hauling illicit drugs, including the use of submarines, in order to outwit the security agencies.

In December 2013 an Accra court in Ghana convicted Guyanese Premchand Singh, Ghanian Seth Grant, Australian Samuel Monty, Percival Junior Curt and Ronald O’Neil Miller were arrested in Sekondi in the western region of Ghana, in connection with the importation of 400 kilogrammes of suspected cocaine worth $50 million.

Latin American cartels are using a new secret weapon to smuggle more than 3,000 miles across the ocean to Africa. Submarines are now part of an elaborate drug smuggling operation to avoid detection. Up to 100 feet long and nearly impossible to detect , they are capable of distributing several tons of coke in just one shipment. Dozens of subs are thought to be in operation between the coasts of South America and Africa, and law enforcement estimates that another 70 will be built in the next year alone.

“Transnational organized crime reaches into every region, and every country across the world. Stopping this transnational threat represents one of the international community’s greatest global challenges,” said UNODC’s Executive Director, Yury Fedotov, in a news release.
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“Crucial to our success is our ability to raise public awareness and generate understanding among key decision and policy-makers.”The $870 billion turnover from transnational organized crime is six times the amount of official development assistance, and is comparable to 1.5 per cent of the global domestic product, or seven per cent of the world’s exports of merchandise, according to UNODC. Drug trafficking is the most lucrative form of business for criminals, with an estimated value of $320 billion a year.

The Huge Impact of Drug Abuse
“Heroin, cocaine and other drugs continue to kill around 200,000 people a year, shattering families and bringing  misery to thousands of other people, insecurity and the spread of HIV,” Fedotov told the UN General Assembly, during a special thematic debate on drugs and crime as a threat to development.
“At present, only around one quarter of all farmers involved in illicit drug crop cultivation worldwide have access to development assistance – if we are to offer new opportunities and genuine alternatives, this needs to change,” Fedotov said.
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The Assembly’s debate coincided with the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, observed on 26 June, and was also the forum for Fedotov’s launch of UNODC’s flagship study, the 2012 World Drug Report.
The UNODC chief said that drug-producing and drug-consuming countries have a stake infighting the illicit drug trade,adding that Governments should not forget that illicit drugs also affect health and security globally.

Drug use appears to be spilling over into countries lying on trafficking routes, such as in West and Central Africa, which are witnessing rising numbers of cocaine users, and Afghanistan and Iran, which are grappling with the highest rates of opium and heroin use.

Mr. Fedotov noted that as developing countries emulate the lifestyles of industrialized nations, drug consumption will probably increase, placing a heavier burden on countries ill equipped to deal with burgeoning drug demand. International support should therefore aim at strengthening the capacity of vulnerable nations to confront that challenge, he said.
The 2012 World Drug Report finds that although global patterns of illicit drug use, production and health consequences largely remained stable in 2012, opium production had rebounded to previous high levels in Afghanistan, the world’s biggest opium producer. In addition, lower overall levels of cultivation and production of opium and coca have been offset by rising levels of synthetic drug production.

230 Million People Use Illicit Drugs
Around 230 million people, or five per cent of the world’s adult population, aged 15 to 64, are estimated to have used an illicit drug at least once in 2010, according to the Report. Problem drug users, mainly heroin- and cocaine-dependent persons, number about 27 million, roughly 0.6 per cent of the world adult population, or 1 in every 200 people.

On opium, the Report says that Afghanistan has returned to high levels of opium production. Global opium production amounted to 7,000 tons in 2011, up from 2010, when plant diseases wiped out almost half the crop yields and triggered steep price rises in Afghanistan. Myanmar remained the world’s second largest poppy-crop grower and opium producer after Afghanistan, with cultivation up by 14 per cent in 2011 and a nine per cent share of global opium production.

On cocaine, the Report finds that the number of estimated annual cocaine users in 2010 ranged from 13.3 million to 19.7 million– or around 0.3 to 0.4 of the global adult population.

North America, Europe,Australia,  
Major Markets for Cocaine
The major markets for cocaine continue to be North America,Europe and Australia. The United States saw cocaine use decrease from 3.0 per cent in 2006 to 2.2 per cent in 2010 among adults, and in Europe cocaine use remains stable but continues to rival use in the United States. However, cocaine use is up in Australia and South America, and it is also spreading to parts of Africa and Asia.
The 2012 World Drug Report finds that the use and global seizures of amphetamine-type stimulants, the second most widely used drugs worldwide, remained largely stable.

However, in 2010, methamphetamine seizures, of around 45 tons, more than doubled those of  2008, due to significant seizures in Central America and East and South-East Asia. In Europe, ‘ecstasy’ pill seizures more than doubled, from 595 kilograms in 2009 to 1.3 tons in 2010, indicating a stronger market on that continent.

International global drug cartels have ploughed millions of dollars into a secret system letting key players keep in touch.

Last night one insider with knowledge of the network claimed underworld bosses running a $40 billion criminal empire recruited experts to design a special hi-tech kit that can’t be bugged, tracked or decoded. The secret system is being used in Colombia, West Africa, Spain, the Middle East and Britain to seal drugs and arms deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

The ground breaking devices are disguised to look like everyday household items. Faced with the threat of PRISM, a clandestine mass electronic surveillance data mining program known to have been operated by the United States National Security Agency and GCHQ.  DTOs at the very highest level of the criminal underworld are playing spies at their own game. 

The narcos new technology will make it “almost impossible” to track major drug deals around the world. The confidential source said: “Imagine having a piece of equipment that is bug-proof and completely secure through which numbers, dates, times and places are detailed. It’s a piece of equipment so cleverly disguised you would not have a clue it was being used for something else.


The Los Zetas Cartel already operate a vast telecommunications network involving two-way radios, encrypted, secure radio networks, computers and burner cell phones. The original Zetas experience in the military lead to a number of innovative techniques in the Zetas operations including successfully using existing networks securely and building their own radio systems. 
“A piece of equipment that cannot be decoded or tracked – that is what is now in place.

“There’s no longer any need for face-to-face meetings, so no more getting caught by surveillance.

“No longer is there a need for pay-as-you-go phones you can throw away or ‘chatting’ on PlayStation forums. A few weeks ago police raided a house in which this form of COM system was being used.

“Organised crime has moved on, the communication idea was bankrolled at the top level and IT and  encryption specialist unconnected to the cartels were brought in to devise a suitable plan and implement a system.

“I would say tens of millions have been spent on securing a network that enables people to do business in a safe and risk-free way.”

He said the system was being used by all the major players in the drugs trade, including in Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Mexico, The Caribbean,West Africa and Spain.

It faces“rife corruption” in West Africa where our insider accused some governments of sending out military ships to target traffickers smuggling tons of cocaine through international waters.

Once escorted to shore, he said drug runners are ordered to hand over hundreds of thousands of dollars before the shipments are handed back.

“The Government gets brownie points for the big drug bust and pockets a nice backhander too.

“The cocaine isn't destroyed – it’s simply sent to its destination via a different route. Latin American cocaine traffickersmay also be using submarines to move the Europe-bound drugs across the Atlantic Ocean, cocaine seizures have gone down throughout the region, at the same time that consumption in West Africa is going up. A United Nations report showed that the illicit flow of cocaine through the region boomed, surpassing even the GDP of some of the countries through which the drugs were trafficked.

Trying To Avoid PRISM 
Scalability to support surveillance of large, complex IP networks (such as the Internet).
High-speed packet processing performance, which enables it to sift through the vast quantities of information that travel over the Internet. Normalization, Correlation, Aggregation and Analysis provide a model of user, element, protocol, application and network behaviours  in real-time. That is it can track individual users, monitor which applications they are using (e.g., web browsers, instant messaging applications, e-mail) and what they are doing with those applications (e.g., which web sites they have visited, what they have written in their emails/IM conversations), and see how users' activities are connected to each other (e.g., compiling lists of people who visit a certain type of web site or use certain words or phrases in their e-mail messages. High reliability from data collection to data processing and analysis. Its functionality can be configured to feed a particular activity or IP service such as security lawful intercept or even Skype detection and blocking.



                                                                                                                                   




                                                                                         










The intercepted data flows in to a Intercept Suite. This data is stored and analysed for surveillance and forensic analysis. Other capabilities include playback of streaming media, rendering of web pages, examination of e-mail and the ability to analyse the payload/ attachments of e-mail or file transfer protocols. Other software, such as Pen-Link, offer the ability to quickly analyse information collected by the Directed Analysis or Lawful Intercept modules.

A single terminal can monitor traffic equal to the maximum capacity (10 Gbit/s) of around 39,000 256k DSL lines or 195,000 56k telephone modems. But, in practical terms, since individual internet connections are not continually filled to capacity, the 10 Gbit/s capacity of just one installation enables it to monitor the combined traffic of several million broadband users.
Intercept Suite (NIS) is a network traffic intelligence system that supports real-time precision targeting, capturing and reconstruction of web-mail traffic... including Google Gmail, MSN Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail". However, currently most web-mail traffic can be HTTPS encrypted, so the content of messages can only be monitored with the consent of service providers.
The system can also perform semantic analysis of the same traffic as it is happening, in other words analyse the content, meaning, structure and significance of traffic in real time. The exact use of this data is not fully documented, as the public is not authorized to see what types of activities and ideas are being monitored. 

Strange Bed Fellows
Los Zetas and the Sinaloa Cartel are using Atlantic Ocean drug routes to West Africa and perhaps working together on logistics to deliver shipments to Europe  to achieve a shared common goal. If the Saudis and Israelis can find common ground working together why not the two competing cartels.

Once organized crime groups have smuggled the narcotics – cocaine, marijuana, heroin and synthetic drugs – into West Africa, they transport them, often in vehicles or small air planes, to Europe. Other transnational criminal organizations based in other parts of Latin America also are trafficking drugs to Europe through West Africa, authorities said.

Among the criminal groups which are sending greater amounts of drugs to Europe through West Africa include the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian Norte del Valle cartel. Latin American drug traffickers are using two basic methods to transport drugs to Africa and Europe, authorities said: 

By sea, transnational criminal organizations hide drugs in large ships that travel from Latin America to Africa and Europe. Drug traffickers set up fake export operations and hide their drugs in the cargo of the phony export businesses, authorities said. Once the large ships have reached their ports, organized crime operatives often use smaller “fast boats” to transport the drugs from the ship to land;

By air, organized crime groups hire travellers  who are known as“drug mules,” to hide drugs in their luggage, clothes or even inside their bodies.

Once the drugs have reached West Africa, drug traffickers often load the drugs into land vehicles, such as SUVs, and transport them to their distribution points in Europe.

Security forces in Latin America and the United States have succeeded in recent years in slowing the amount of drugs smuggled north to the U.S. and Mexico by transnational criminal organizations.

This success has made the Atlantic drug routes to Africa and Europe more important to narco-traffickers, said security analyst Alfredo Rangel Suárez, the director of the Democracy and Security Centre at Colombia’s Sergio Arboleda University.

“The fight against crime and the closing of border crossings by authorities in countries where cocaine is directly introduced have forced the FARC, Los Zetas and the Sinaloa cartel to look for new routes to satisfy demand in the European drug market, which means ports in Western Africa,” Rangel Suárez said.

For Colombian narco-traffickers, “the Atlantic route is becoming more important than the Pacific one,” according to the World Drug Report 2013 of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Many Brazilian drug traffickers ultimately transport their drugs to Portugal in part because they speak Portuguese, making communication easier, according to the UNODC report.

Entry points
Sixteen African countries comprise the main points of entry for Latin American drug traffickers, according to a report by the American Police Community (AMERIPOL), a continental police organization of 18 countries in the Americas, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala,Haiti, Nicaragua, and the United States.

The African countries commonly used as entry ports are: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea,Guinea Bissau,Liberia,Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria,Senegal,Togo and Sierra Leone.

Los Zetas and the Sinaloa cartel 
Two Mexican transnational criminal organizations, Los Zetas and the Sinaloa cartel, smuggle cocaine from Colombia, Ecuador, and Brazil into Sierra Leone and then to Europe, according to Rangel Suárez. Los Zetas and the Sinaloa cartel, which is led by fugitive kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, often collaborate with other Latin American organized crime groups.

Faces of The FARC

For example, Guzmán has formed alliances with Colombian organized crime groups, such as the Oliver Solarte cartel. Once in Europe, DTOs traffic cocaine using local gangs. According to Europol, El Chapo has presence in Portugal, Spain, Germany, Italy, Poland, and the Czech Republic.  As for Los Zetas, they created an alliance with the Ndrangheta in Italy. From Italy, the Ndrangheta is responsible for distributing cocaine in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Holland, France, Belgium, Spain, Bulgaria, and Albania.

“This alliance is beneficial for both criminal groups. Los Zetas transports the drugs to and within Europe while ‘Ndrangheta guarantees secure distribution points,” the report stated.

In 2011, Italian police arrested 45 individuals linked to an unspecified Mexican cartel (most likely Los Zetas). In addition to drug trafficking, Los Zetas are involved in human trafficking between Europe and Mexico.
The FARC
The FARC is responsible for many of the drugs that are transported to West Africa and then to Europe, Rangel Suárez said.

“The FARC is the biggest cocaine smuggler in the world,” he added. “In Colombia, more than half of the drugs produced and exported to other countries are marketed by the FARC.”

Three other Colombian organized crime groups – the Popular Revolutionary Anti-Subversive Army of Colombia (ERPAC), Los Urabeños and Los Rastrojos – also transport drugs to West Africa and on to Europe.

"Drugs from South Africa are moving via Mozambique and Kenya to the Far East," South Africa's representative on the UN International Narcotics Control Board, Dr Lochan Naidoo, said yesterday.

"For example, it would cost about R50 to be able to get 1g of methamphetamine (tik) in Cape Town. That same 1g would sell for about $1000 (about R10800) in the streets of Japan so it would encourage people to be become drug mules for small packages."

The board's annual report revealed that, while South African police have successfully dismantled many tik laboratories, amphetamine-type stimulants continue to be illicitly manufactured in the country and exported to Asia and possibly Australia.

Within South Africa, the abuse of tik, methcathinone (or cat) and heroin has increased since 2012.

Said Naidoo: "Seizure data for the period 2010/2012 suggests that heroin originating in Afghanistan is tracked, using dhows and to a lesser extent container shipments, from Iran and Pakistan towards the sea borders of Kenya and the United Republic of Tanzania, for further transportation by road to South Africa."

According to the report, international drug traffickers are testing the Port of Ngqura and Durban's harbour as possible entry points for smuggling drugs into Southern Africa.

"Durban has been named for the first time in the report. That is why it is important that the report was launched in this city. There is a great concern about southeast Africa becoming the next South America," Naidoo said.

The report also criticised the "misguided" legalisation of cannabis in Uruguay and Colorado and Washington in the US, with Naidoo disputing marijuana's medicinal properties.
The report stated that promoting "alternative drug regimes" would lead to much greater use of such drugs and higher levels of addiction. Misguided may be better applied to the 50 year war on drugs.

Sex Pays For Student Habit
According to information from Durban University of Technology's student services unit, health workers, protection services and residence supervisors, 15% of the 4500 students living in the Durban residences are using drugs.

University spokesman Alan Khan said 2% of female students become prostitutes and 10% have relationships with "sugar daddies" to sustain their drug habit.

"A significant number of male students indulge in drug and alcohol abuse, though more female students indulge in alcohol than males," he said.

And more female students have been caught on campus with drugs, he added.

Adeolu Ogunrombi

At the end of June, the United Nations held its yearly International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking. Yury Fedotov, head of the UN's drugs crime office, marked the occasion with a speech. The Illegal  highs market is still booming and the planet's governments are still losing the War On Drugs.

However, Fedotov did make an interesting point about the emerging cocaine market in (mainly Western) Africa. “In Africa, [cocaine] consumption appears to be growing,” he announced, before asserting – worryingly – that this noted increase in “drug trade and organised crime is fuelling economic and political instability in Africa”. 

The heavy policing on traditional cocaine routes from South America has caused the smugglers to pivot and instead use countries like Ghana and Nigeria to get their product through to European customers.

Adeolu Ogunrombi is currently the Project Coordinator of Youth RISE Nigeria and West African Countries, an initiative which focuses on advocacy, capacity building and research on drug policy reform with a special focus on young people. He has an extensive background in public health and human rights practices. 

He has been at the forefront of the debate on drug policy reform in Africa. He has authored and presented scientific papers in many international conferences on issues bordering on HIV/AIDS, drug policy, harm reduction and young people. He was nominated among the 100 global Youth Leaders by Women Deliver in 2010.

Interview with Adeolu Ogunrombi from the West African Commission On Drugs

So, Adeolu. Where does all this cocaine come from?
Adeolu Ogunrombi: The cocaine comes from Latin America, over the Atlantic and through West Africa towards its intended customers in Europe.

Okay. And is this really a new smuggling route?
The West African route has been exploited for a long time, but what we've witnessed in the last decade is an increase in the volume of the drug passing through the region as transnational drug cartels collaborate with local criminal and smuggling networks, corrupt officials and terrorists to transport their goods to Europe and North America. The traditional routes are being policed more heavily, so the traffickers find alternatives. 

Is this having any knock-on effect on the use of cocaine in the area?
Yes, the consumption of cocaine and other hard drugs in the area is increasing. This affects most of the countries within the region, from Mali to Cape Verde,Nigeriato Sierra-Leone and Ghana toGuinea-Bissau. The 2013 World Drug Report showed Nigeria topping the list of hard drug consumers in Africa, with a very high level of cocaine use.

And that increase is definitely because of the trafficking? You're saying that there are "spill-over" markets?
Yes. As the drugs are trafficked through the countries, some of the product inevitably finds its way into the local supply. According to the UNODC, about 30 percent of trafficked drugs are consumed locally. Because of the increase in availability, the drugs are becoming more affordable and accessible. For example, a hit of crack cocaine is about $2 or $3 – a price much more suited to the area.

This has created all sorts of problems, including an increase in the number of people who are addicted and the number of injecting drug users. Young people are increasingly being affected, too.

If you’ve got people injecting drugs, you’re going to have a problem with the spread of HIV and AIDS through dirty needles. Do you feel that West Africa has the facilities to deal with any increase in addicts caused by these new trafficking routes?
That’s a big challenge at the moment, because the infrastructure isn't there and harm reduction services are next to non-existent. Law enforcement within the region still embraces a punitive approach. There was a recent case in Ghana, which was also reported in the print media, of a young man who was caught smoking marijuana. Police shot him dead during their efforts to arrest him.

Who's doing the trafficking?
I can’t really give you a list of all the people involved, but we've had reported cases of people from Colombia, Bolivia and Brazil. Cartels from these countries then meet local contacts in the West African countries who know the area.

Mexico Cartels

If you look at all of the violence in Mexico – the drug cartels fighting among themselves, civilians getting hurt and killed and the political process being undermined – do you worry about that happening in West Africa?
Of course. You can look at the situation in Latin America as guidance; everyone is fighting for control of the region, and competing for powerful positions because of the huge amount of money they get from the trade. Such a situation may arise in West Africa as well if the necessary measures aren't put in place. Bear in mind, too, that the value of the cocaine passing through the region is far higher than the national budgets of some of the transit countries themselves.

Do you, like Yury Fedotov, think organisations such as yours need more funding?
Definitely. But it’s not just that. While many people allude to the growing challenge of drug trafficking and consumption within the region, it is yet to be one of the main agendas of many governments and institutions within West Africa. Not many people know about the gravity of the situation; how it is undermining security, governance and development as a whole – no one is talking about it.

So you need money to raise awareness?
Yes, and the right approach to drug control in general. At the moment we stick with the traditional tactic, the indicators of which are the number of arrests, the number of drug seizures, etc. Whereas our progress should be measured by the number of people in need of drug treatment who are able to access it without fear of arrest or coercion; the number of new cases of drug-related HIV being averted – things to do with health rather than crime.

So it’s not the drugs that are the main concern, it's the laws that are triggering worse problems?
I'd say so, yes. The laws themselves are what are causing problems all over the world. When you’re driving the drug user population underground by making their habit illegal and putting the trade completely in the hands of criminal groups, the social harms produced are much greater than the harms of the drugs themselves.