and have implemented practical measures to stem this flow. All the while, the fears of many observers have been confirmed as the insidious effects of the drug trade have begun to take effect in many West African states.
Consumption is on the rise and narco-corruption now undermines the rule of law and legitimate economic growth necessary for development and stability. One of the most alarming trends that place Africa and Africans on the radar of policy makers, law enforcement, and researchers alike is the number of fronts on which the illicit drug trade is growing. Its geographic expansion beyond the relatively confined region of West Africa is now endangering East and Southern Africa.
The arrival of new drugs to the region--heroin and Amphetamine has been accompanied by the discovery of local manufacturing facilities to process them. The growing level of activity by Africans--who initially served as facilitators but now appear to be taking a more proactive role--raises concerns that a new generation of African DTOs is rising in the ranks.
Globalization,which is the integration of regional economies, societies, and cultures, is considered one of the most significant developments of the 20th century. In addition to multitude of cultural, political, economic, and technological benefits it brings to many fortunate countries, globalization has also brought with it opportunities for the weak,poor,and oppressed to participate in traditionally closed markets. Yet, while globalization has been lauded for fostering free trade and economic prosperity, its so-called dark-side has also created opportunities for criminals,businessmen,institutions and politicians to enrich and empower themselves by taking advantage of lucrative illicit markets, or by creating new ones. The forces of globalization and its causes and effects have been well documented and are largely accepted as having facilitated the expansion of licit as well as illicit markets to regions that otherwise would not have enjoyed significant economic activity.
Africa is the exemplar, whose geographic proximity between the source zone and final markets for many illicit goods has contributed to its exploitation by DTOs. The emergence of West Africa as a major transit point for Latin American cocaine en route to Europe has taken the international community by surprise. Europe and the United States, in particular, are concerned for many reasons.
From Europe's perspective, it is now experiencing increasing levels of cocaine entering its borders from West Africa, at least partly as a result of highly effective counternarcotics strategies that have concentrated law-interdicting drugs on commercial airflights from the Caribbean to Europe (primarily the Netherlands Antilles to Amsterdam and Jamaica to London). This strategy has been so effective at disrupting major trafficking routes and deterring couriers that traffickers have been forced to identify new routes to enter Europe where law enforcement is less likely to detect their shipments. From its experience as both a transit zone and a final market for heroin, Europe is all too familiar with the public health and safety issues associated with addiction, crime, prostitution, and violence that typically accompany drug trade.
From the U.S perspective,it fears the existence of several anti-American terrorist groups operating in Africa coupled with drug revenues that could cultivate a crime-terrorist nexus, thus threatening its interests in yet another region. Furthermore, since the DTOs operating in West Africa are the same ones that traffic drugs into the United States, Americans view the proceeds of these Africa-based operations as bolstering the strength of those DTOs operating on its southern border with Mexico. All parties are concerned with the destabilizing impacts of the drug trade,including its potential to finance local insurgencies,expand into new illicit markets (such as arms), and its under mining effect on programs that improve governance, anti corruption,accountability, and raise public trust in government institutions.
.jpg)
Despite regional and international counter-narcotics programs designed to interdict drugs and build the capacity of local law enforcement institutions to detect trafficking activity and prosecute the offenders, the continent appears to be growing in importance to DTOs. Whereas Africa's involvement in the global drug trade before the mid-2000s was generally limited to West African heroin distribution networks, the last several years has witnessed an unrelenting expansion of the drug trade throughout the continent. Cocaine, synthetics, and increasing amounts of heroin are now transiting Africa where some portion of it stays to satisfy the local market, while the remainder is moved to final destinations in Europe and North America.
Regrettably, the growth of transnational organized crime in Africa is not limited to the drug trade. Trafficking in humans, cigarettes, arms, natural resources (most notably diamond, timber, and minerals), oil, hazardous waste, and most recently, the manufacture and sale of fake pharmaceuticals, are all illicit trades that continue to thrive in Africa.