Cocaine Trade Finds West Africa Window
By Jody Ray Bennett for ISN
Sometime early last month, Malian and UN officials discovered a partially torched skeleton of a Boeing 727 aircraft on a small, makeshift airstrip in external pageGao, a remote city in northeast Mali, that was once the capital of the external pageSonghai Empire and epicenter of the trans-Saharan trade route. No bodies were found.
When, in coordination with Malian military forces, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) travelled to the former capital of the fallen empire to investigate, external pageone of the Office’s representatives confirmed that the aircraft had departed from Venezuela, landed in Gao, but ultimately crashed after one failed takeoff attempt on 5 November.
While no significant amount of drugs was reported to have been found aboard the aircraft, US and European intelligence agencies alleged that the external pageplane was believed to have been transporting a large amount of cocaine and other illegal substances through North Africa. The UNODC estimated the plane could have been carrying up to at least 10 tonnes of cocaine and that the incident “was the first time the [UN had] heard of a plane of this size […] being used to smuggle drugs from South America to Africa.”
Agence France Presse (AFP) external pagerecently reported that “For the last few years, drugs traffic in West Africa has been dominated by the Colombian cartels [that] transport their wares, mostly cocaine, via Venezuela to the African coast,” and that as a result, “West Africa has become an important transit point for South American cocaine being smuggled to European markets.”
If the external pageintelligence and investigators are correct, untold amounts of the missing cocaine may already be selling in European cities.
While Malian investigators also believe the plane was used to transport illegal substances or other illicit goods, Malian military officials remain skeptical of the UN’s explanation that the Boeing crashed. Military sources who were participating in the investigation external pagetold Reuters on 27 November that the government of Mali had not ruled out the possibility that the plane was “torched by drug traffickers,” a technique sometimes employed by traffickers seeking to cover their tracks from authorities.
Nevertheless, the incident highlights the increased willingness or confidence of international traffickers to transport large shipments by air rather than conventional covert means of shipment.
Indeed, as one report by external pageThe Observer notes, “Until the discovery of the plane, it had been assumed that most of the cocaine transported from West Africa was in small planes or boats.”
And even if the shipment of cocaine was later loaded on small planes or boats bound for Europe, it would nevertheless be astonishing that the cocaine - estimated to have been between two and three tonnes - flew over the Atlantic Ocean from Venezuela aboard a craft the external pagesize of a Boeing 727. If true, this incident marks one of the largest known, single, successful shipments of cocaine in history.
Cocaine globalization?
Regardless of what happened in the hours prior to 5 November, the incident has re-ignited a discussion over the trans-Atlantic cocaine trade and the parties that facilitate the international black market.
With the plane having been found in Mali, several reports have correctly identified the existence of non-state groups in the African Sahara that have long been known to be involved in smuggling and trafficking operations.
The Boeing 727 was found in the middle of a external pageregion known to be “of heavy operation of external pageAl Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb (AQIM),” an insurgent group that aims to overthrow the government of Algeria but that, due to the large underground trading route and black market that follows the external pageAfrican Sahel, has managed to form external pagesplinter groups in neighboring countries, such as Mali.
“Currently AQIM is relying on kidnappings and other activities to raise money, which indicates that the group is experiencing a cash crunch. If they begin to move cocaine in a significant way, it would enhance their revenue stream considerably and allow them to buy weapons, as well as provide services for the isolated villages,” Douglas Farah, senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center in Alexandria, Virginia told ISN Security Watch.
“Remember that when AQIM was 'Call and Combat,' it kidnapped Europeans, raised about $8 million, tried to marry into local tribal leadership structures for protection and also tried to provide some social services. Cocaine money would make that a possibility again,” he added.
“We know al-Qaida in general has issued fatwas allowing drug trafficking and criminal activity if it is aimed at the destruction of the enemy, and I think this would qualify,” Farah said. “The Malian and other Sahel countries have few resources for this fight, and if AQIM suddenly were enhanced, we could see them make significant gains.”
But more significant than AQIM in the remote regions of Mali are the external pageTuareg, a nomadic pastoralist group with a population of over 5 million external pagespread throughout the remote regions of Algeria, Burkina Faso, Libya, Mali and Niger. This is exactly where the Sahel trading route lies, and Tuareg control much of its black market and smuggling lines.
Even though Mali’s Tuareg population is the second largest only to that of Niger, it is unknown if Tuareg traders are involved in cocaine trafficking or helping groups like the AQIM smuggle the product through Africa and onto European markets.
“[The Tuareg] know the smuggling routes and [have] used them for centuries, primarily for cigarettes and human traffic. If they were to be brought into the cocaine pipeline in a significant way, it would increase the flow of cocaine by land from West Africa toward Europe, in a way that would directly benefit the financial well-being of a terrorist organization that seeks to destabilize the region,” Farah said.
The Colombian connection
external pageThe Observer report notes that, “Like manufacturers taking advantage of cheaper labour by moving their plants abroad, the major Colombian drugs gangs have exploited west Africa's political instability, poorly funded law enforcement agencies, endemic corruption and porous borders. But a link with terrorist networks would add a new dimension.”
Another interesting development in this underground, trans-Atlantic trade route is the transformation of West African markets from delivery and transit-capable to production-oriented. This was one of the concerns noted by the UNODC, and as external pageThe Observer report notes, “In the past few months several laboratories used to produce cocaine hydrochloride (HCL), the finished product, from cocaine paste have been discovered in Guinea-Bissau's neighbor, Guinea, along with machines that can be used to make ecstasy pills.”
If drug traffickers are indeed exploiting cheaper labor to produce finished drugs in West Africa instead of Europe or elsewhere, profitability increases along with risk. Nevertheless, the downed Boeing might be an indication of traffickers’ increased confidence on moving the largest amount of drugs for as little cost as possible, the cornerstone of any private enterprise.
“Colombian and Mexican traffickers are feeling sufficiently confident in their ability to move product through West Africa and upping the size of their loads based on that confidence. In testing new routes they always start small, to minimize losses if the route isn't working. Once they are confident they flood the zone. It seems that this is the first indication that the West Africa zone is now being flooded,” external pageFarah wrote in a blog post.
The case has many actors involved in a game of big money and high risk. That traffickers would exploit long established trading routes that also contain some of the world’s least expensive labor costs would make sense from an economic perspective. Because there is little reason to assume economic rationalism does not affect non-state groups any differently from other actors standing to gain from formalized and legally sanctioned international trades, one could argue that traffickers would be crazy not to adapt to such a marketplace.
“Media has entirely missed the significance of the truly transcontinental expansion of the cocaine trade, and the impact it is having and will have on the fragile and failing states of West Africa. The shift in trafficking routes highlights the importance of the European market now, and the money flowing from that trade also virtually guarantees that the FARC and other drug trafficking organizations will continue to flourish because they have the cash inflow to keep them going,” Farah said.
“It also means that, even if the United States were to reduce its drug consumption considerably, it would not significantly diminish the power of the drug cartels because their markets and trafficking routes are so flexible, varied and widespread,” he concluded.