drug trafficking ‘represents the most serious challenge to human security

  This illegal market, estimated in Kenya at more than €100 million a year, is constantly growing and has serious consequences for the health of Kenyans.  Previously absent from the country, hard drugs – especially heroin – are now easy to find and at minimal cost: less than two euros a dose.

  In Mombasa, the drug-trafficking hub, an estimated 3.5 percent of the population has already tried heroin.  Estimates of frequent users range from 2,500 to 5,000.  Drug use is becoming a growing public health problem because as well as the harmful effects of drugs, many users contract AIDS or hepatitis C due to a lack of precautions.  https://www.france24.com/en/africa/20191018-kenyan-port-of-mombasa-becomes-world-s-new-drug-trafficking-hub

……………..........

  the African Union Commission on the Implementation of the Decisions of the Third Session of the African Conference of Ministers of Drug Control and Crime Prevention in 2011 recognised marijuana as “the most problematic illicit drug in Africa” and estimated that eight per cent of Africa’s population, mostly the youth “many of whom are orphaned and marginalized”, use marijuana, which accounts for 64 percent of drug treatment demand on the continent, without stating the nature of treatment demand.  Though illegal, marijuana is widely available and cheap. UNODC estimates that Africa accounts for between 22 percent and 26 percent of the world’s cannabis production, making the continent one of the largest annual sources of cannabis production.  UNODC’s 2013 report estimates cannabis use in Africa at 7.5 percent, or nearly double the global average. Cannabis is the drug of choice for the young, the marginalised, and the poor    -p. 3 of http://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/State-Officials-and-Drug-Trafficking-2013-12-03.pdf

…………………….

drug trafficking ‘represents the most serious challenge to human security’ in West Africa “since resource conflicts rocked several West African countries in the early 1990s.”13   The report claims that these networks “are using narco-corruption to stage coups d’état, hijack elections, and co-opt or buy political power.  Besides a spike in drug-related crime, narcotic trafficking is also fraying West Africa’s traditional social fabric and creating a public health crisis, with hundreds of thousands of new drug addicts.”14  The report further amplified more recent anxieties:  that international terrorist groups are using the drug trade to fund their activities, the latter potentially having played an important role in the coup and subsequent breakdown of order in Mali, for example.  There is, the report stated, “growing links in West Africa between drug trafficking, other forms of transnational organized crime, and  international terrorism” and that these links “represent a new security threat to the United States.”15 The report identified four “terrorist groups or state sponsors of terrorism active in drug trafficking in West Africa”: Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC); Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM); Hezbollah; and Iran.16  While many dispute these claims, not least because some of these links have been drawn from sting operations led by non-West African drug enforcement agencies, it is clear that some of the extremist groups active in the Sahel region for example, have engaged in drug trafficking.  And despite certain claims, drug trafficking does not necessarily define what these organizations are; rather, as noted, it is just one of the many the illicit activities they engage in, often with the complicity of state officials. …   a country like Ghana, which appears to be deeply penetrated by drug traffickers, is also held to be a reasonably strong and functioning democracy. Ghana continues to be deemed the leading ‘anchor’ state in West Africa on account of its long period of stability, steady economic growth, and democratic consolidation.19  At the same time however, successive governments have been slow to adopt measures that can help buffer the political and security systems from illicit activity such as drug trafficking, while corruption at all levels of the administration remains a significant challenge.   -pp. 5-6 of http://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/State-Officials-and-Drug-Trafficking-2013-12-03.pdf …………………….. 3-14-20   In the darkness the team suits up quietly, putting on their helmets and tactical gear.  Federal agents lug battering rams, bolt cutters and heavy weaponry by foot up a hill on a residential California street that's softly aglow from street lamps. …”Police search warrant!" And then three thunderous bangs as the task force breaks down the front door.  Moments later a reputed member of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, known as CJNG, is walked out in handcuffs.   In early-morning raids Wednesday, agents fanned out across the United States, culminating a six-month investigation with the primary goal of dismantling the upper echelon of CJNG and hoping to get closer to capturing its leader, one of the most wanted men in America.  There's a $10 million reward for the arrest of Nemesio "El Mencho" Oseguera.   The gang controls between one-third and two-thirds of the U.S. drug market. It is so violent that members leave piles of bodies in streets and hanging from overpasses in Mexico, and they fill the city of Guadalajara with mass graves. They carry machine guns and hand grenades.  They once used rocket launchers to shoot down a Mexican military helicopter.   More than 600 people have been arrested during the operation in recent months, more than 15,000 kilos of meth was seized and nearly $20 million was taken as search and arrest warrants were executed.  About 250 were arrested Wednesday….   Justice Department's criminal division, called the operation "the most comprehensive action to date in the Department of Justice's effort to disrupt, dismantle and ultimately destroy CJNG.” …   The Jalisco Cartel was formed in 2010 from a wing of the Sinaloa cartel based in the western city of Guadalajara.  While it once specialized in producing methamphetamine, like most Mexican cartels it has expanded into multidrug shipments including fentanyl, cocaine, meth and heroin….While Mexico says it is no longer concentrating on detaining drug lords, the Mexican government has extradited Oseguera's son and has detained some of his associates.  https://www.voanews.com/usa/inside-massive-dea-raid-targeting-drug-cartel  …………….. 3-4-20  African drug cartels have tightened their hold on the city and the suburbs and started directly associating with the district’s youths to supply chemical drugs, mainly MDMA and LSD. Police officials said African suppliers, mainly Nigerians, used to earlier push MDMA and LSD into the state via drug cartels based out of Kasaragod, Kannur and Kozhikode, India.  https://www.nyoooz.com/news/kochi/1436777/african-drug-cartels-connecting-with-kochi-youth-to-supply-mdma-and-lsd/ ……..............… 9-7-2019   some Nigerians do not see the need for the deluge of verbal retaliatory attacks on South Africa in this instance. Chinedum Agwaramgbo, one of such persons, alleged in his Facebook post, that Nigerians in that country actually engineered the hatred visited on them. He claimed that those living in South Africa deliberately and consistently contrive the drug war raging in that country and have “systematically destroyed the very fabric of the people, morally, culturally, economically and socially”. He further alleged that Nigerians who immigrated to South Africa turned it to one of the major capital city of drugs in the world.  The drug cartels, according to Agwaramgbo, began with the Yorubas and increasingly overtaken by the Igbos.  He said: “The Igbos in the drug business have effectively run the Yorubas out of S.A. to other southern African countries like Mozambique. The Nigerians have presently turned the country into a drug-war zone, killings galore with Igbos killing Igbos. … The country, according to investigations, has been facing a growing epidemic with drugs said to have been quietly taking over major cities and small towns in the former apartheid enclave. This much was revealed at the policy briefing by Enact Project, a group, which comprises INTERPOL, in April, based on its research and on-the-ground interviews with drug users and dealers across South Africa.   “The drug route that crosses South Africa has created a regional heroin economy, with severe social and political repercussions. To a significant degree, heroin is a key commodity underpinning the criminal economy in South Africa and has facilitated the expansion of the criminal economy by pulling in new players as traffickers, dealers and users,” the group was quoted to have said. … claim there is no set price for bribes paid to police, but R50 to R100 was an average bribe payment for a low-level police officer in a patrol van. Police officers are said to visit a few times a week,” the group had said.   In January, a R700 million consignment of uncut cocaine from Brazil en route to Singapore and India, which was seized by authorities at Coega harbour outside Port Elizabeth, prompted a call from one of South Africa’s top cops for communities to disempower drug lords. “By confiscating this cargo, we have severed the supply chain,” Lieutenant-General Godfrey Lebeya, the national head of the Hawks, said of the massive bust.   The Hawks are South Africa’s Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (DPCI), which targets organised and economic crime, corruption, and other serious criminality. The consignment of 706 cocaine bricks, each weighing 1kg, was found concealed at the bottom of the ship – below more than 3,669 containers. …The Lt-Gen. also said “If you stop demanding drugs, cartels will not be producing or delivering them. The empires of the cartels will fall.  Sever the demand chain. The power to stop this is in your hands.”   https://lockedup.co.za/2019/09/07/inside-story-of-south-africa-drug-cartels/ ………………….. 3-8-20   A new report released by the US department of State says that Tanzania-based drug trafficking organisations and courier networks operate globally and play a prominent role in the Southwest Asian heroin trade, using Dar es Salaam as the launchpad to control the trade in East Africa. Dar es Salaam has been fingered as the region’s key transit point for illicit drugs, facilitating the movement of multi-million-dollar narcotics to Kenya, Uganda and Europe as a result of its porous borders and poor policing. The US Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs report says Tanzania’s location, porous borders, and persistent corruption present challenges to drugs interdiction.   “Traffickers exploit Tanzania’s 1,300km coastline and inadequate port security. Heroin is transported by small vessels southward along Africa’s east coast to Zanzibar and the mainland and in large quantities via land borders from Kenya, through Tanzania, and onward to Mozambique for trans-shipment to Europe and North America.  Smaller quantities are trafficked to Europe, India and North America largely via commercial air,” the report released on Monday reveals. The South American cocaine enters Tanzania by air for further international distribution, the report says, while the country also produces cannabis and khat for domestic consumption and regional distribution, even though they remain illegal in the country.   https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/ea/US-agency-labels-tanzania-east-africa-drugs-trafficking-hub/4552908-5482476-ssbpvl/index.html …………………………….. 12-4-19    Transcontinental production, primarily from Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, descends to Venezuela, their global logistics hub, financing communist regimes and Cuban psychological operations know-how — consequential security, social and political interference in the United States and beyond.  European supply passes through the Sahel-Sahara region in Africa. The Sahel G-5 includes Chad, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and Mauritania….The Port of Turbo in Colombia reportedly holds 30,000 African migrants at a time hoping to gain entry into the U.S.    This is more than an unusual coincidence — the cartels operate where the wild things are.  It’s a triangular trade of drugs, money, minerals, weapons and people, between Latin America, Africa and Europe, run by interwoven networks of organized crime, clans and religious extremists.  They undermine not just our populations and the integrity of our nations but our Western way of life. … NATO should be tasked with a sea blockade of Venezuela, while securing the inter-tropical convergence zone in the Atlantic between the Americas and Africa, and at the request of France, with an air, sea and land command plan for West Africa and the Sahel, with clear objectives and rules of engagement, insulated from national political pressures.    The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) should contemporaneously provide the forum to decide on definitive, coordinated northern hemisphere action, including overseas legislation, to provide the requisite legislative and law enforcement teeth to take down their global operations network.   It is time for NATO to engage these wild cartels.  https://thehill.com/opinion/criminal-justice/472866-snow-sand-marxists-and-mexicans-our-transcontinental-cartel-problem ……………………….