Carried in the stomachs of human ”mules”, hidden in ship containers or packed by traffickers into planes, boats or jeeps, Colombian cocaine is criss-crossing the remote coasts and deserts of West Africa on its way to Europe.
In a multimillion-dollar deployment of logistics that is alarming United States and European counter-narcotics authorities, Latin-American drug cartels are setting up air and sea supply routes and drugs stockpiles across the west of the African continent.
United Nations experts say recent cocaine seizures show this network extends from the teeming Atlantic ports of Nigeria, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea to Guinea-Bissau’s mangrove-fringed islets and creeks and the Saharan dunes of Mauritania, Niger and Mali.
”Now we have big seizures, of several hundred kilograms, taking place in countries on the coast,” Antonio Mazzitelli, representative for West Africa of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), said in an interview on Wednesday.
Combined with the seizures, local police are reporting detentions and sightings of suspected Latin-American drug traffickers, believed to be Colombians and Venezuelans.
”What we are seeing is the presence in West Africa of Latin-American criminal organisations that take care of receiving large shipments [of cocaine] and organising their reshipment towards the final markets,” Mazzitelli said.
The destination of the drugs is Europe, or emerging narcotics markets, such as South Africa and the Middle East. ”New modus operandi are being developed,” Mazzitelli said.
Evidence points to the cartels setting up logistics bases, including clandestine airstrips, ship moorages and even refuelling depots in isolated, unsupervised corners of West Africa — for example, on the Bijagos islands off Guinea-Bissau. Police have already closed down a fake fishing factory on one island that was being used as a front for drug trafficking.
Absence of control
European and US authorities are trying to piece together a coherent picture of the growing West African drugs connection. ”How does it reach the final markets … does it go out by plane, does it go out by [human] courier, by containers, by ships or through all of these means?” Mazzitelli said.
He cited the seizure in Mauritania earlier this month of 600kg of cocaine. The drugs were unloaded from a small plane that made an emergency landing at the northern port of Nouadhibou.
Several thousand kilometres away across the Sahara in Niger, the army recently intercepted another drugs convoy of vehicles guarded by heavily armed traffickers, indicating another route.
On the remote Mali-Burkina Faso border in March, police arrested five Nigerian women — who pretended to be pregnant — carry several dozen kilograms of cocaine concealed on their bodies.
Some cocaine shipments have been found hidden in deliveries of marble or cotton, or inside walls of ship containers.
Mazzitelli said West Africa is an ideal staging post for Latin-American cartels targeting Europe, not least because many local states cannot control their vast territories and investigation and prosecution mechanisms are weak.
Guinea-Bissau, for example, has no proper prison. Some of the Latin-Americans arrested so far have either simply walked free or been released on bail, after which they vanish.
Mazzitelli said some regional governments are slow to grasp the threat. ”What they do not understand unfortunately is that the drug money can contaminate and corrupt their own societies; there is always a spillover effect,” he said. — Reuters