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South American drug cartels are moving their logistics bases to West Africa, lured by lax policing in an unstable region and the presence of small, underground criminal groups, United Nations experts say. Drug cartels are increasingly using West Africa as a hub for smuggling, working with criminal networks from the region who market cannabis, cocaine and heroin in Europe and North America, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
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Operating as flexible networks of individuals rather than large-scale, hierarchical organisations, they can market illicit products to diaspora populations in drug consuming countries and recruit couriers among a cheap labor force available at home.
"One of the reasons these networks can abandon traditional command-and-control relations is that many of them are grounded in a common ethnicity," UNODC said in its study. "Betraying compatriots is not only in violation of deeply ingrained values, it can result in exclusion from this vital support base," it said.
While war crimes prosecutors in Sierra Leone have said international terrorists have used the West African diamond trade to fund their operations, UNODC said no clear links had been established to the drugs trade, though that could change. "This is the sort of environment within which organised criminal and terrorist groups can grow. There are many well-proven cases of terrorist groups going hand in hand with drug cartels," Mazzitelli said, taking Taliban fighters in Afghanistan and rebel groups in Colombia as examples. "In Spain the terror attack was financed if not entirely then partially through drug trafficking," he said, referring to bomb attacks which killed 191 people in packed rush hour trains in Madrid in March 2004.
The economics of drug traffic grows in an atmosphere of poverty and joblessness. If we really want to win the war on terror, we need to build opportunities for rural people in the third world.
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South American drug cartels lured to West Africa
By Nick Tattersall
REUTERS
3:40 a.m. July 28, 2005
DAKAR – South American drug cartels are moving their logistics bases to West Africa, lured by lax policing in an unstable region and the presence of small, underground criminal groups, United Nations experts say.
Drug cartels are increasingly using West Africa as a hub for smuggling, working with criminal networks from the region who market cannabis, cocaine and heroin in Europe and North America, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
"If you look at recent seizures of cocaine, the biggest are all linked to groups with operations on the West African coast," Antonio Mazzitelli, head of UNODC's regional office for West and Central Africa, told Reuters in an interview.
Consignments of cocaine would mainly come in from Latin America through the Cape Verde islands off the Atlantic coast, or through Ghana, Nigeria and Togo, from where they would be re-exported to markets including Spain, Portugal and the United Kingdom.
Spanish authorities seized nearly three tons of cocaine on a Ghana-registered vessel in international waters off the African coast just three days ago, arresting 12 Ghanaians, four Koreans and two Spaniards.
Spain said the traffickers had picked up the drugs in an unidentified South American country and refuelled along the African coast before setting off for Europe.
Major shipments of heroin produced in southern Asia were also transiting through West Africa, particularly Ivory Coast, after being flown by air couriers from Kenya and Ethiopia, UNODC said in a recent study on crime in Africa.
HARD TO CRACK
West Africa is seen as an attractive transit centre for international drug traffickers because the criminal networks already in place around the region have proven notoriously difficult for police and customs officers to break.
Operating as flexible networks of individuals rather than large-scale, hierarchical organisations, they can market illicit products to diaspora populations in drug consuming countries and recruit couriers among a cheap labor force available at home.
"One of the reasons these networks can abandon traditional command-and-control relations is that many of them are grounded in a common ethnicity," UNODC said in its study.
"Betraying compatriots is not only in violation of deeply ingrained values, it can result in exclusion from this vital support base," it said.
While war crimes prosecutors in Sierra Leone have said international terrorists have used the West African diamond trade to fund their operations, UNODC said no clear links had been established to the drugs trade, though that could change.
"This is the sort of environment within which organised criminal and terrorist groups can grow. There are many well-proven cases of terrorist groups going hand in hand with drug cartels," Mazzitelli said, taking Taliban fighters in Afghanistan and rebel groups in Colombia as examples.
"In Spain the terror attack was financed if not entirely then partially through drug trafficking," he said, referring to bomb attacks which killed 191 people in packed rush hour trains in Madrid in March 2004.
Mindful of the threat posed by criminal groups operating across borders, police forces around Africa have linked up to a global satellite communication system run by Interpol which is supposed to track fugitives and stolen goods.
Interpol Secretary-General Ronald Noble told reporters in Ghana this month that 31 African countries were now connected to the system.
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