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| Guyanese Connection |
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.
