Recently a Boeing from Venezuela landed on an improvised landing strip in Mali's Gao region, with ten tonnes of cocaine on board. News reports about aircraft in West Africa filled up with cocaine are becoming more and more frequent. The drugs mafia in Latin America have discovered that they can reach the European market via Africa.

The transporting of narcotics via the west coast of Africa has proven to be the most secure way of getting drugs to customers in Europe. The so-called Atlantic route (South America – Portugal – Spain) is becoming steadily more difficult, so the drugs mafia have turned their attention to West Africa, which has a practically unguarded coastline and impoverished, weak and easy-to-bribe governments.

Waterbed effect
"The drugs trade, which has Europe as its primary destination, now chooses the African route. Especially the poor, open-to-bribery countries, but also the larger and more stable parts of Africa such as Nigeria and South Africa", says Wil Pansters, Director of the Mexican Studies Centre at the University of Groningen.

Every time a country somewhere in the world proudly presents figures showing the progress of the war against drugs trafficking, figures in another part of the world give precisely the opposite impression. The golden rule of supply and demand that defines the marketplace certainly applies to the drugs trade.

Weak states
Forty tonnes (27 percent) of the cocaine consumed in Europe has passed through various West African countries: Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Senegal, Mali or Mauritania. The international airports on the other side of the continent serve as through-routes for heroin that is imported from Asia and sold on the streets of Amsterdam or London. That’s according to the annual report of the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) of the United Nations.

The rapid growth is not only the consequence of the creativity and vast experience of the Latin American drugs cartels. The weakness of the states with which they do business, and the extreme poverty, makes this region an ideal place for their illegal practices.

Lack of everything
Guinea-Bissau is a good example of an extremely violent state, where the drugs trade is flourishing at the highest levels of the land. Tom Blickman, from the Transnational Institute of Policy Studies in Amsterdam, points out the extreme weakness of the government: “In Guinea-Bissau there’s no means of keeping drugs trafficking under control. The police don’t have any cars. They don’t have any radios. They don’t have anything.”

In the last few years, the Mexican drugs cartels have conquered the international market. Nineteen percent of the drugs in the United States come into the country via Mexico. The Mexican drugs mafia, along with that of Colombia, together form an enormous criminal force that reaches far beyond the borders, even across oceans.

Corruption
In Mexico, neither the huge army nor the police are in any position to bring an end to the drugs gangs. In 2009, drug-related violence has so far cost the lives of more than five thousand victims. The drugs trade is even infiltrated by individuals at the highest levels of the police and politics.

Mexico is an important through-route to the north from Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, but at the same time the quantity of marijuana and poppies has increased enormously. What particularly strikes researchers is the spectacular growth in the production of synthetic drugs.

Crossroads
Mexico has developed into the crossroads for drug trafficking, and that is feeding destabilisation in the region, says Luis Astorga from the Independent National University of Mexico. “This position that Central America has taken up in the cocaine route, is becoming increasingly important. Every success by Colombia or Mexico in the fight against drugs has immediate negative consequences in the Caribbean and Central America, where the governments are weaker.”

The fight against worldwide drugs trafficking is a major challenge for the international community, maybe even greater than the fight against international terrorism. Drugs trafficking brings democracies to their knees, and destabilises not only countries, but whole regions.

(RNW translation: as)