The Challenge of Drug Trafficking to Democratic Governance and Human Security in West Africa

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Strategic Studies Instituteand

U.S. Army War College Press

THE CHALLENGE OF DRUG TRAFFICKINGTO DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE

AND HUMAN SECURITY IN WEST AFRICA

David E. Brown

May 2013

The views expressed in this report are those of the author anddo not necessarily reect the ofcial policy or position of theDepartment of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S.Government. Authors of Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) and U.S.Army War College (USAWC) Press publications enjoy full aca-demic freedom, provided they do not disclose classied informa-tion, jeopardize operations security, or misrepresent ofcial U.S.

policy. Such academic freedom empowers them to offer new andsometimes controversial perspectives in the interest of further-ing debate on key issues. This report is cleared for public release;distribution is unlimited.

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FOREWORD

The Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) has maintainedclose and positive professional ties with our colleaguesat the Africa Center for Strategic Studies (ACSS) inWashington, DC, since ACSSs founding in 1999. TheAfrica Center is the preeminent U.S. Department ofDefense (DoD) institution for strategic security stud-ies, research, and outreach in Africa.

I am pleased that SSI and ACSS are once more ableto collaborate in the publication of this monograph.Its author, David E. Brown, is currently the SeniorDiplomatic Advisor at ACSS. He brings unique per-spectives to the important foreign policy issue of il-licit drug trafcking in West Africa, having served asDeputy Chief of Mission at the three U.S. Embassiesin the subregion during much of the last decade, in

Cotonou, Benin; Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso; andNouakchott, Mauritania.

Mr. Browns Letort Paper describes how West Af-rica is under attack from international criminal net-works that are using the subregion as a key globalhub for the distribution, wholesale, and increasingproduction of illicit drugs, most prominently cocaine,but also heroin and amphetamines and their precur-sors. While West African states have made remarkableprogress in democratic and economic developmentover the past decade, the insidious effects of narcot-ics trafcking have the potential to reverse manyof these gains.The proceeds of drug trafcking arefueling a dramatic increase in narco-corruption in theregion, allowing drug trafckers to stage coups dtat,

hijack elections, and co-opt or buy political power.The problem has worsened to the point that these net-works represent an existential threat to the viability of


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already fragile states in West Africa as independent,rule of law based entities. Besides a spike in drug-re-

lated crime, narcotics trafcking is also fraying WestAfricas traditional social fabric and creating a publichealth crisis, with hundreds of thousands of new drugaddicts. On net, drug trafcking and other illicit traderepresent the most serious challenge to democraticgovernance and human security in the region since re-source conicts rocked several West African countriesin the early-1990s.

The most important of these international criminalnetworks are from Latin Americaprimarily fromColombia, Venezuela, and Mexicopartnering withWest African criminals. These criminals, particularlyNigerians and Ghanaians, have been involved inthe global drug trade for several decades, rst withcannabis and later with heroin. There is also increas-

ingly strong evidence linking terrorist organizationsor state sponsors of terrorism to the West Africa drugtrade, including Colombias Revolutionary ArmedForces of Colombia (FARC), al-Qaeda in the IslamicMaghreb (AQIM), Hezbollah (allied with elements inthe Lebanese diaspora), Venezuela, and Iran. Thesecriminal and terrorist groups are also a threat to U.S.national security, because the illicit prots earned byLatin American drug cartels operating in West Africastrengthen the same criminal elements that trafcdrugs to North America, and the same North Africanand Middle Eastern terrorist groups and nations thattarget the United States.

Mr. Brown concludes by noting that internationalaid to West Africas war on drugs is only in an ini-

tial stage. He offers specic counternarcotics policyrecommendations for U.S. Government agencies,the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and its com-


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ponents, the Economic Community of West AfricanStates (ECOWAS) and its member-states, and the

international community, including the United Na-tions (UN). However, Mr. Brown stresses that WestAfricas progress in combating drugs will have to bemeasured in decades or even generations, not years,and also unfold in parallel with creating alternativesustainable livelihoods and addressing the longer-term challenges of human insecurity, poverty, andunderdevelopment.

SSI is pleased to offer this monograph in fulll-ment of its mission to assist U.S. Army and DoD se-nior leaders and strategic thinkers in understandingthe key issues of the day.

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.DirectorStrategic Studies Institute and

U.S. Army War College Press


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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DAVID E. BROWN is a career member of the SeniorForeign Service, who joined the Africa Center forStrategic Studies (ACSS) as Senior Diplomatic Advi-sor in August 2011. His prior Africa experience in-cludes serving as the Senior Advisor to the J-5 (Strat-egy, Plans, and Programs) Director of the U.S. AfricaCommand (AFRICOM) in Stuttgart, Germany; threetimes as Deputy Chief of Mission at U.S. Embassies inCotonou, Benin; Nouakchott, Mauritania; and Ouaga-dougou, Burkina Faso; and as Economic Ofcer at theU.S. Consulate-General in Lubumbashi, DemocraticRepublic of the Congo. Mr. Browns non-Africa over-seas tours have been as Consul General in Cheng-du, China, and Economic Ofcer in Beijing, China;Tokyo, Japan; and Moscow, Russia. He has also served

in Washington, DC, as the Director of the Ofce ofEnvironmental Policy; as Economic Ofcer in the Bu-reau of Economic and Business Affairs responsible fortrade policy with developing countries, including Af-rica; and on the Canada desk, with responsibilities foreconomic, consular, and law enforcement issues. Priorto joining the U.S. Department of State, he worked inMiami as the business manager of the Latin AmericanBureau of CBS News. Mr. Brown holds a B.A. in gov-ernment (political science) from Cornell University;an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago, specializ-ing in nance; and an M.B.A. from the University ofLouvain, Belgium, with majors in econometrics andinternational business.

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SUMMARY

West Africa is under attack from internationalcriminal networks that are using the subregion as akey global hub for the distribution, wholesale, and in-creased production of illicit drugs. Most drug trade inWest Africa involves cocaine sold in Europe, althoughheroin is also trafcked to the United States, and thesubregion is becoming an export base for amphet-amines and their precursors, mainly for East Asianmarkets and, increasingly, the United States. The mostimportant of these criminal networks are drug trafck-ing organizations (DTOs) from Latin Americapri-marily from Colombia, Venezuela, and Mexicopart-nering with West African criminals. These criminals,particularly Nigerians and Ghanaians, have been in-volved in the global drug trade for several decades,

rst with cannabis and later with heroin. The problemhas worsened to the point that these networks rep-resent an existential threat to the viability of alreadyfragile states in West Africa as independent, rule oflaw based entities. As part of this new Latin America-West Africa criminal nexus, Guinea-Bissau is gener-ally recognized as a narco-state where state-captureby trafckers has already occurred.

There is also increasingly strong evidence linkingterrorist organizations or state sponsors of terrorismto the West Africa drug trade, including ColombiasRevolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC),al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Hezbollah(allied with elements in the Lebanese diaspora), Ven-ezuela, and Iran. These criminal and terrorist groups

are also a threat to U.S. national security, because theillicit prots earned by Latin American drug cartelsoperating in West Africa strengthen the same crimi-


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nal elements that trafc drugs to North America, andthe same North African and Middle Eastern terror-

ist groups and nations that target the United States.The link to AQIM takes on particular signicance inlight of this terrorist organizations recent takeover ofa vast sector of ungoverned space in northern Mali,along with Touareg allies.

West Africas geographical location between LatinAmerica and Europe made it an ideal transit zone forexploitation by powerful drug cartels and terroristorganizationsmuch as the Caribbean and CentralAmerica had long suffered for being placed betweenSouth Americas cocaine producers and North Amer-icas cocaine users. West Africas primary operationalallure to trafckers is not actually geography, how-ever, but rather its low standards of governance, lowlevels of law enforcement capacity, and high rates of

corruption. Latin American trafckers recently re-located a share of their wholesale distribution fromthe Western Hemisphere to West Africa, with thesubregion moving from being merely a short-termtransit point to becoming a storage and staging areafor wholesale repackaging, re-routing and sometimes(re-)sale of drugs.

While West African states have made remarkableprogress in democratic and economic developmentover the past decade, the insidious effects of narcoticstrafcking have the potential to reverse many of thesegains. The proceeds of drug trafcking, by far themost lucrative transnational criminal activity in illiciteconomies, are fueling a dramatic increase in narco-corruption in the region, allowing drug trafckers to

stage coups dtat, hijack elections, and co-opt or buypolitical power. West African countries could developalong similar lines to Mexico, where drug gangs have

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a symbiotic relationship with the state and politicalparties, and drug-related violence increases signi-

cantly. Besides a spike in drug-related crime, narcot-ics trafcking is also fraying West Africas traditionalsocial fabric and creating a public health crisis, withhundreds of thousands of new drug addicts. Whilethe inow of drug money may seem economicallybenecial to West Africa in the short term, investorswill be less inclined to do business in the long termif the subregion is unstable. On net, drug trafckingand other illicit trade represent the most serious chal-lenge to human security in the region since resourceconicts rocked several West African countries in theearly-1990s.

International aid to West Africas war on drugsis only in an initial stage. Until recently, the UnitedStates, preoccupied by September 11, 2001 (9/11), and

wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, dedicated too few re-sources to monitoring, much less combating, transna-tional organized crime (TOC) in West Africa. Large-scale cocaine seizures in West Africa started in 2004,but the laying of the Latin America-West Africa illicitdrug pipeline started well before that. After the Eco-nomic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)adopted a regional action plan on drugs and organizedcrime in 2008, the United Nations (UN) respondedwith a 2010-14 plan, and the United States with itsown modest initiative in 2011. West Africas progressin combating drugs will have to be measured in de-cades or even generations, not years, and also unfoldin parallel with creating alternative sustainable liveli-hoods and addressing the longer-term challenges of

human insecurity, poverty, and underdevelopment.


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This paper concludes with specic counter-narcotics policy recommendations for the U.S. Gov-

ernment, including:

1. Expanding the U.S. Governments physical pres-ence in the subregion, including reopening the U.S.Embassy in Guinea-Bissau, and considering new DEAofces, e.g., in Bissau or Conakry, Guinea.

2. Seeking adequate, multiyear funding: to in-clude support for the U.S. Governments new WestAfrica Cooperative Security Initiative (WACSI); forDoD to continue to support the Liberian Coast Guardunder Operation ONWARD LIBERTY; and toexpand counternarcotics/illicit trafcking trainingefforts under AFRICOMs West Africa RegionalEngagement Plan.

3. Fostering closer partnerships with third coun-

tries on West Africa. For example, the U.S. Govern-ment could increase cooperation with EuropeanUnion (EU) member-states, including expandingintelligence-sharing with the EUs Maritime Analy-sis Operations Center (MAOC) in Lisbon; with Japanand Korea to jointly address the increasing problemof methamphetamine production in West Africa thatis sent for sale to Asia and the United States; withChina to support the maritime capacity of West Af-rican navies to carry out coast guard functions; andwith Brazil, which is already cooperating with Africancountries including Cape Verde.

4. Deepening cooperation with UN Agencies andINTERPOL, such as expanding cooperation with theUNs International Maritime Organization (IMO), in-

cluding its efforts to work with the Maritime Orga-nization of West and Central Africa (MOWCA) andECOWAS transport ministries.


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5. Aiding West Africa to expand maritime do-main awareness and cooperation by supporting

ECOWAS efforts to develop a regional maritimestrategy and operational capacity through ongoingtechnical assistance.

6. Promoting international and regional agree-ments, and changes in domestic law. The interna-tional community could help West African nationsto strengthen: a) their legal frameworks and enforce-ment mechanisms against organized crime, moneylaundering, and corruption; and, b) their law enforce-ment agencies operational capabilities, including air,maritime, and land border controls.


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Over the last decade, West Africa has made encour-aging progress. Violent conicts that had blighted the

region for many years have been ended. There havebeen real advances in development, health, and edu-cation. Economic growth is accelerating. Democraticpractice, although still not the norm everywhere inthe region, is taking root. However, we need to takeaction now before the grip of the criminal networkslinked to the trafcking of illicit drugs tightensinto a stranglehold on West African political andeconomic development.

Former United NationsSecretary General Ko Annan,February 2012


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THE CHALLENGE OF DRUG TRAFFICKINGTO DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE

AND HUMAN SECURITY IN WEST AFRICA

INTRODUCTION: BROAD CONTEXT OF DRUGTRAFFICKING IN WEST AFRICA

West Africa is under attack from internationalcriminal networks that are using the subregion as akey global hub for the distribution, wholesale, and in-creasing production of illicit drugs.1 Most of the drugtrade in West Africa involves cocaine sold in Europe,although heroin is also trafcked to the United States;the subregion is becoming an export base for amphet-amines and their precursors, mainly for East Asianmarkets and increasingly to the United States.2 Atleast nine top-tier Latin American drug cartels have

already established bases in at least 11 of 16 WestAfrican nations.3 Their illicit prots threaten U.S. na-tional security interests by strengthening criminal ele-ments in Latin America that also trafc drugs to NorthAmerica. For example, the same Latin drug trafckingorganizations (DTOs) transporting cocaine via WestAfrica to Europe are also responsible for cocaine ship-ments via Mexico to the United States. Responding tothis, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has re-vised its counternarcotics strategy and is carrying outinvestigative efforts against these DTOs on both sidesof the Atlantic Ocean.4

In recent years, West Africa has grown expo-nentially from a minor trafcking route for cocaineexports to a major hub.5 It was not until 2004 that

large-scale cocaine trafcking through West Africawas rst detected. Prior to this, annual cocaine sei-zure levels in West Africa had rarely exceeded one


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metric ton per year. Already by 2008, cocaine trans-shipments rivaled stolen crude oil for the most valu-

able smuggled commodity in West Africa.6

Estimatesof 2010 annual cocaine transshipments through WestAfrica ranged widely between 46 and 300 tons, yield-ing wholesale revenues of $3 billion to $14 billion. Bysome measures, 50 percent of non-U.S.-bound cocainenow goes through West Africa, i.e., about 13 percentof global ows.7 African authorities actually detectedfewer drugs in 2010 than in the 2 prior years, but thisis likely because trafckers switched to new convey-ances and routes.8 The hiding of drugs in containerson commercial vessels, for example, is a new strategywhose use probably expanded. In July 2010, a con-tainer with 450 kilos of cocaine was seized in Lagos,Nigeria, on a vessel arriving from Chile. In January2011, two other vessels seized in Nigeria had a total of

275 kilos of cocaine,9

one of which contained 110 kilosarriving from Bolivia.10 Another tactic was to route anincreasing number of containers through Argentinaand Uruguay toward West Africa.11 In November2012, authorities in Guyana seized 350 kilos of cocainehidden in a shipping container lled with soap pow-der destined for Nigeria.12

West Africas emergence as a trafcking nexus wasalso symptomatic of a shift in the center of gravity ofthe global market for cocaine from the United Statesto Europe. This shift occurred due to structural fac-tors including a declining and saturated U.S. cocainemarket, heightened European demand for cocaine, thestronger euro making sales of this drug more lucra-tive in Europe,13 the existence of well-developed West

African smuggling networks as ready-made part-ners,14 and successful interdiction efforts includinganti-money laundering measures15 that drove drug


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trafckers away from traditional trafcking routesinto North America and Europe, including via the

Caribbean and Spain.16

West Africas geographical location between Latin

America and Europe made it an ideal transit zonefor exploitation by powerful drug cartels and terror-ist organizations. In this sense, many West Africancountries are now suffering the adverse effects of thegeographic accident of lying between the sites of drugproduction and the most lucrative consumption mar-ketsmuch as the Caribbean and Central Americahad long suffered from being placed between SouthAmericas cocaine producers and North Americas co-caine users.17 Dakar, Senegal, for example, is roughlya midway point between Latin America and Europe,and is actually 700 miles closer to Recife, Brazil, thanit is to Paris, France.

West Africas primary operational allure to traf-ckers is not actually geography, however, but ratherits low standards of governance, low levels of lawenforcement capacity, and high rates of corruption.18Trafckers gain competitive advantages by operatingin West African states with the weakest rule of law.19Powerful cartels and terrorist organizations boththrive in West Africas permissive environment andits vast ungoverned sea, land, and air spaces.20 WestAfricas bordersincluding its maritime domainarelargely unguarded. The region boasts more than 2,600miles of coastline. To put things in perspective, theU.S. Pacic coast (minus Alaska) and Atlantic coasteach are less than 2,100 miles long.21 Then United Na-tions Ofce on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Executive

Director Antonio Maria Costa accurately capturedWest Africas dilemma when he summarized its drugtrafcking situation in 2008:


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Drug planes dont have to y below the radar, because

in most cases there is no radar (or electricity). Soldierssometimes help smugglers by closing airports andunloading the cargo. Police cars run out of gas whengiving chase or are left in the dust by smugglers all-terrain vehicles. There are no local navies to interceptships coming from Latin America or to chase 2,000-horespower boats that speed drugs up the coast to Eu-rope. Trafckers are seldom brought to trial; in somecases, there are no prisons to put them in. Even when

they are charged they are usually released because evi-dence is not collected or needed laws are not in place.22

West Africas governance, law enforcement, andcorruption challenges are linked to the subregionsunderdevelopment. All but three of 16 nations in WestAfrica are on the United Nations (UN) list of leastdeveloped countries, including the ve countries

with the very lowest levels of human development.23Ten of the top 41 countries in the 2012 Failed StatesIndex were in West Africa (and 25 of the top 41 werein sub-Saharan Africa).24 Current UNODC ExecutiveDirector Yuri Fedotov framed the linkage betweenunderdevelopment in the subregion and transnationalcrime in February 2012 as follows:

South American drug cartels are exploiting regionalvulnerabilities in West Africa: poverty, unemploy-ment, lack of border control, weakness of law enforce-ment structures, and endemic corruption. . . . For thesecriminals, West Africa represents not only the shortest,but also the most cost-effective channel for trafckingillicit drugs to Europe.25

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Coun-ternarcotics and Global Threats William Wechsler


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recently characterized the challenges faced by thesubregion as follows:

West Africa is now facing a situation analogous to theCaribbean in the 1980s, where small, developing, vul-nerable countries along major drug-trafcking routestoward rich consumers are vastly under-resourced todeal with the wave of dirty money coming their way.26

HISTORY OF DRUG TRAFFICKING IN WEST

AFRICA

Drug trafcking is not a new phenomenon in WestAfrica, but consideration of this history is importantto illuminate the entrenched nature of the drug tradein the subregion, and its negative implications fordemocratic development.27 The historical reality is thattrade routes for illicit (and licit) goods have existed for

hundreds of years in West Africa and are ensconcedin local traditions, especially in the Sahelo-Saharanregion.28 Consistent with this, the pre-independenceeconomies of West Africa were characterized by a va-riety of illicit, shadow economies. Cannabis trafck-ing in West Africa was documented almost a centuryago, in the 1920s, and is still widespread today. An-

nual cannabis production in West Africa is about 3,500tons/year.29 There were seizures in September 2011and February 2012 of ve and one tons respectivelyof cannabis resin being transported to Europe vianorthern Niger in Toyota 4X4s.30 The rst documenteduse of West Africa as a staging post for internationalheroin smuggling dates from 1952, when U.S. ofcialsnoted that parcels of the drug were being transported

by a Lebanese syndicate from Beirut to New York viaKano, Nigeria, and Accra, Ghana.31 While cocaine traf-cking has become a recent focal point of international


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attention on West Africa, the subregion actually has along history of trafcking and organized crime.32 West

Africa received less notoriety, however, only becausethe subregion, and indeed all of sub-Saharan Africa,generally played only a peripheral role in global drugtrafcking prior to the mid-2000s.33

Generally speaking, the roots of West Africastransformation into a major international trade hubin illegal drugs may be traced to the 1960s. It wasthen that the rst reports emerged of locally growncannabis being exported from Nigeria to Europe insignicant quantities.34 By the 1970s, Ghanaian smug-glers had joined Nigerians in exporting African-grown cannabis to Europe on a scale large enough toattract sustained ofcial attention. Starting from the1980s, production, distribution, and consumption ofcannabis provided pathways for the incorporation of

heroin and cocaine into West Africas drug trade. Atthat time, Nigerian smugglers started sending heroinby air courier from Pakistan to Nigeria, where it wasrepackaged and re-exported to the United States.35 Bythe 1990s, Ghana became an early transit point for theinternational cocaine trade, and in Accra it was publicknowledge which houses were built by cocaine mon-ey, and which ashy cars were cocaine cars.36 Nigeriastill plays a huge role in the international heroin trade,with intercepted stocks amounting to about 70 kilo-grams (kg) seized in the country per year.37 BesidesNigerian and Ghanaian global networks, major newones have developed involving Cte dIvoire andSenegal nationals.38

By the 1990s, Nigerian drug traders had largely

nished the process of internationalizing their busi-ness. Nigerian drug trafckers had not only developedthe means to make bulk shipments of narcotics, but


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had also become fully global, having a headquarters(home) country, business associates in both produc-

ing and consuming countries, and facilities in coun-tries outside Nigeria.39Part of the reason that Nigeriandrug trafckers have been so successful is that theirhome country has provided them with a relativelypermissive environment. Perhaps the most importantlocal partner of Nigerian drug traders in the 1990s wasthe Nigerian military, which by then had developed ahigh degree of impunity after being in power almostcontinuously for many years.40

Within West Africa, Nigerians established opera-tional centers in Cotonou, Benin, and Abidjan, CotedIvoire.41 Outside the continent, they establishedsales networks in major U.S., European and post-Soviet Union cities, including Geneva, Switzerland,42

where they are active in cocaine trafcking, and Mos-

cow, Russia, where they took over heroin retailing.43

In Asia, there are large networks of Nigerian air cou-riers, some bringing heroin transiting or stoppingin West Africa, and others transporting cocaine andmethamphetamines, ecstasy, and ketamine from WestAfrica toward Asia (and Australia); these often tran-sit via Malaysia or Indonesia, to Japan, Korea, China,Thailand, and Singapore.44 Since 2009, Nigerian andGhanaian DTOs diversied into trafcking crystallinemethamphetamine through links with other West Af-rican countries such as Benin, Cote dIvoire, Guinea,and Senegal.45

LATIN AMERICAN DRUG DEALERS PARTNERWITH WEST AFRICAN CRIMINALS

One typical way that the Latin American drug car-tels operate is to send lieutenants to open legitimate


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businesses in West African nations in order to obtaintheir legal residency papers, and start the process of

setting up local illegal networks and front compa-nies to facilitate drug trafcking.46 Once installed, theLatin Americans partner with transnational organizedcrime (TOC) groups in West Africa, particularly Ni-gerians, for their smuggling and trafcking expertise,safe houses, storage space, banking, and a host ofother services.47 This is analogous to how Colombiancartels established links with Mexican syndicates afterthe United States signicantly choked off the old Ca-ribbean drug transportation corridor and forced theColombians to start moving their drug loads acrossthe southwest border of the United States.48 MexicanDTOs, including the Sinaloa cartel, are also present inWest Africa.49 There have also been reports of Vene-zuelans, Surinamese, and European organizations in-

cluding Italian TOCs operating in the same territory.50

The degree to which Latin American trafckers

rely on West African partners, and the nature of thesepartnerships, depend heavily on the quality of law en-forcement in each African country. In countries suchas Guinea-Bissau, which has extremely weak gov-ernance, Latin American cartels need only bribe theonly institution with real powerthe militaryandare then able to enjoy de facto freedom from prosecu-tion. In other countries, such as Ghana, which has anemerging democratic tradition and stronger state in-stitutions, Latin American cartels rely more on localpartners, thus insulating themselves from possible ar-rest by local authorities. Not surprisingly, while lawenforcement authorities continue to arrest low-level

narcotics trafckers, Ghana has had relatively limitedsuccess in pursuing Latin American partners and theirGhanaian drug baron partners.51


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STRUCTURE OF WEST AFRICAN DTOS

The general structure of most West African crimi-nal networks has distinctive characteristics typical oflineage-based societies.52 Criminal enterprises in WestAfrica use similar techniques to those of legitimatetraders and business people: A successful individualentrepreneur invites one or more junior relatives ordependents to join him or her in a business deal.53West African criminal networks, in general, have cer-tain prime characteristics, including:

Small, compartmentalized cells of between twoand 10 members;

Mostly kinsmen from the same ethnic group ortribe;

The ability to communicate mostly in indig-

enous, African languages; Making deals and then dispersing, regrouping

at a later date as needed; Adopting false identities for its members,

including changing their nationality; and, Refraining from the use of violence in order not

to attract the attention of law enforcementofcials.54

Some observers have juxtaposed so-called hori-zontally structured African criminal gangs withthe so-called vertically structured Latin Americancartels. This is a awed analogy, however, as WestAfrican societies remain relatively traditional and hi-erarchical. The West African modus operandi closely

resembles an adhocracy, which is able to fuse ex-perts drawn from different disciplines into smoothlyfunctioning, yet, ad hoc project teams.55 This stands in


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contrast to the more corporate-style relations of classicAmerican maas. Moreover, informal or ad hoc

is not intended to imply that West African trafckersare not capable. A senior U.S. anti-drug ofcial oncedescribed Nigerian drug networks as some of themost sophisticated and nely-tuned transshipment,moneymoving and document-forging organizationsin the world.56West African trafcking groups haveshown a high degree of exibility in their amphet-amine-type stimulants (ATS) trafcking routes by us-ing couriers from countries outside the region, e.g.,from Eastern Europe or Asia, and by diversifying theirroutes, which are mostly by air.57

Nigerian drug trafckers are also decentralizedand diversied into TOC lines of business, includingillicit drugs, prostitution, and scams.58 Consistentwith this, Nigerians dominate the markets for cocaine

and prostitution in Rome, Milan, Naples, Genoa, andother Italian cities, in collaboration with the Calabreseand Camorra maa,59 and may be more accuratelyconsidered to be TOC members than merely DTOs.This being said, most indigenous organized crimegroups in West Africa, with the Nigerians and Ghana-ians being exceptions, have historically lacked the so-phistication of global drug trafcking cartels. Unfor-tunately, West Africans are catching up by partneringand learning from the Latin American drug cartels.60

GLOBAL DRUG TRAFFICKING ROUTES VIAWEST AFRICA

Global drug trafcking routes that pass through

or originate in West Africa vary by the type of druginvolved:

1. Heroin. This drug is principally smuggled byWest African criminal groups from Afghanistan and


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Pakistan, through Iran and other Middle Easterncountries, on to East or Southern Africa, then to West

Africa before being transported to the United Statesand Europe. Nigeria and Ghana are the principal tran-sit zones in West Africa, with Cote dIvoire anotherkey transit country.61 By contrast, heroin coming fromSouth America, especially Colombia, often traversesthe Atlantic to West Africa, only to cross back to NorthAmerican markets.62In both routes, heroin is trans-ported from the source zone by a variety of means,including maritime containers, go-fast boats, smallwooden shing vessels called dhows, air drops at sea,air cargo, and luggage and body-carried by couriersor mules.63

Nigerian nationals accounted for 32 percent of drugtrafcking arrests in Pakistan from 2000-08, with Gha-naian, Guineans, and Ivoirians accounting for 1 per-

cent each.64

During July 2011, the DEA Ofce in Accra,in coordination with the Ghana Sensitive Investiga-tive Unit (SIU), concluded an investigation targetinga Ghana-based organization responsible for shippingmultikilogram quantities of heroin from West Africato the United States. That month, U.S. federal agentstook down an international heroin-trafcking ringthat moved heroin from Ghana to Dulles InternationalAirport outside of Washington, DC.65

Smaller countries in West Africa are also touchedby the international heroin trade. In May 2011, theDEA Ofce in Lagos, Nigeria, in coordination withDEA Islamabad and the Benin judicial police, inter-dicted 200 kgs of heroin from Pakistan that was intransit in Cotonou, Benin. This undercover operation

resulted in the single largest heroin seizure in Beninshistory, and the arrest of three Beninese and one Togo-lese in Benin and several arrests in Pakistan.66


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2. Methamphetamine.Illicit manufacture of meth-

amphetamine is not entirely new to the African conti-nent. Since 2004, regular reports of illicit manufactureof the substance have been received from South Afri-ca.67 Since 2007, the DEA has assisted with the seizureof several other multiton pseudoephedrine and ephed-rine shipments in Africa that have been linked to Mex-ican DTOs68 in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, the DemocraticRepublic of the Congo (DRC), and Mozambique.69Mexican cartels are gaining a foothold in West Afri-ca, where their trafckers are being used as advisorsand possibly being recruited as chemists in the illicitmanufacture of methamphetamine.70

West Africa has been a transshipment area forprecursor chemicals diverted for methamphetamineproduction since at least 2009, with large increases in

shipments through Benin, Cote dIvoire, and Senegal,71

and with Nigeria and Ghana as likely production hubsbased on increased precursor shipments. The addeddanger with ATS is that, unlike cocaine and heroin,illicit ATS manufacture does not rely on the cultiva-tion of naturally occurring plants such as the cocaleaf or opium poppy and, as such, is not limited tocertain geographic locationsleaving the possibilitythat West Africa could be transformed not only intoa key transit point for ATS, but into a manufacturinghub as well.72 The DEA has already documented theemergence of West Africa as a signicant productionpoint of origin for multikilogram methamphetamineshipments to the Far East.

Evidence was uncovered in July 2009 of intended

ATS manufacture in Guinea, with precursor chemi-cals sufcient to manufacture ecstasy worth over $100million.73 In April 2010, 36 kilos of crystal metham-


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phetamine destined for Japan and ve kilos of meth-amphetamine destined for the United States via South

Africa were seized on cargo planes in Nigeria.74

In June2010, Cote dIvoire ofcials seized precursor chemicalsacetone destined for Benin and methyl ethyl ketonedestined for Guinea.75 In 2010, the International Nar-cotics Control Board reportedly stopped shipments of500 kg and 200 kg of ephedrine headed for Guinea andNiger.76 In 2010, the United States Government indict-ed members of a large international cocaine trafck-ing organization for, inter alia, the intent to establisha clandestine laboratory in Liberia for the large-scalemanufacture of methamphetamine that would havebeen destined for Japan and the United States.77

Because of limited reporting to UNODC by WestAfrican countries, the best measure of the escalatingsituation appears to be reports coming from countries

in East and Southeast Asia of the increasing involve-ment of West African nationals. While China and Tai-wan have traditionally been the source countries formethamphetamine smuggled into Japan, the propor-tion of seized methamphetamine trafcked into Japanfrom Africa rose from 7.4 percent in 2009 to 36 percentin the rst half of 2010, mostly from Nigeria.78

The most common destinations for methamphet-amine trafcked through Africa have been Japan, fol-lowed by Korea. Since March 2010, numerous arrestsof couriers in Asia attempting to smuggle metham-phetamine from Africa indicates African drug syn-dicates produce the drug for export throughout theAsia-Pacic region, with most of the Africa-sourcedmethamphetamine destined for sale in Japan follow-

ing transshipment through countries such as Ma-laysia79and Thailand.80 In May 2011, there were twoseizures in Nigeria of 63 kilos of methamphetamines


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and 26 kilos of amphetamines destined for Japan, anda seizure in Senegal of one kilo of methamphetamine

from a courier from Togo heading to Japan. Accord-ing to a European police ofcial based in Africa, Nige-rian criminal networks were building links to Japansyakuza criminal gangs.81

French anti-drug ofcials agree that most meth-amphetamine production in West Africa is destinedfor East and Southeast Asia, including also China,Cambodia, Vietnam, and the Philippines.82 Since 2010,West African groups, particularly Nigerians, havetrafcked methamphetamine to New Zealand83 andlikely Australia as well.

In 2011, the DEA and Nigerias drug enforcementagency jointly initiated two additional investigationstargeting clandestine methamphetamine operatorseither based in Nigeria or selling their labs illicit pro-

duction in Nigeria. These operators are actively seek-ing organized criminal group assistance in legallyimporting and then diverting large-scale quantitiesof precursor chemicals into Nigeria to increase theirmethamphetamine production capacity.84 An operat-ing methamphetamine laboratory was discovered inLagos, Nigeria, in June 2011, which was estimated tobe capable of producing 150-200 kgs per week.85 A sec-ond operational lab was seized in February 2012, andone Nigerian and three Bolivians arrestedsuggest-ing possible cooperation with Latin American crimi-nal syndicates.86

Togos Security and Protection Minister was quot-ed in August 2012 as saying that the drug trafckingsituation in West Africa has reached worrying pro-

portions . . . especially after the illegal setting up oflaboratories to manufacture amphetamine drugs inthe subregion.87 While West Africa is not currently an


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important source region for the importation of meth-amphetamine drugs into the United States, it may

become so in the future. As Senator Dianne Feinsteinpointed out during a Senate hearing that she chairedin May 2012:

Methamphetamine and other illegal drugs produced inAfrica could very well make their way to U.S. marketsone day. Some methamphetamine currently producedin Africa is being shipped all the way to Southeast

Asia. There is no reason to believe that methamphet-amine produced in Africa could not make it into theUnited States in the future.88

Senator Feinsteins concerns are well placed. Mostcountries in West Africa do not have the legislativeand institutional frameworks necessary to control pre-cursor trafcking. As has been the case with heroin

and cocaine, trafckers are taking advantage of thesubregions permissive environment to import chemi-cal precursors and, increasingly, use these locally inthe illicit manufacturing of ATS drugs.89

3. Cocaine. Colombia produces about 54 percent ofthe rened cocaine on the world market, with the rest

coming from Bolivia and Peru.

90

Prior to about 2004,cocaine destined for Europe had followed a northerlyroute from South America, through the eastern Carib-bean to Spains Canary Islands and Portugals AzoresIslands, to clandestine landing zones on the coast ofSpain, Portugal, and the Netherlands or to commercialports such as Barcelona, Rotterdam, and Antwerp.91Besides Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands, other

major European entry points for cocaine includedFrance and Italy.92


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However, heightened U.S. anti-drug and counter-terrorism law enforcement and border control efforts,

coupled with U.S. and European interdiction, forcedsmuggling further south to destinations in West Af-rica from Mauritania to as far south and east as Ni-geria.93 Around 2004, West Africans began to providelogistical assistance to South American cocaine traf-ckers in organizing their West African maritimeshipments to Europe from at least two subregions: onecentered on Guinea-Bissau and Guinea in the westernGulf of Guinea, and the other centered on the Bight ofBenin, including Ghana, Togo, Benin, and Nigeria.94

This rst subregion was along Latitude 10 North be-tween northern South America and the western partof Africas coast, and became so important that lawenforcement agencies dubbed it Highway 10.95Europol has recently conrmed that former hashish-

smuggling routes are also being used by cocaine traf-ckers.96 These routes may involve Moroccan nationalswho have gained smuggling expertise through yearsof trafcking hashish across the Mediterranean.97 Al-geria is also an important hub for drugs of all kinds,with numerous reports of the arrests of couriers.98

In 2007, U.S. and international authorities estimat-ed that approximately 80 percent of cocaine travelingfrom Latin America to Africa moved by sea and 20percent by air.99 There may be as many as 100 shipsthat cross the Atlantic every year transporting drugsto West Africa.100 Anecdotal evidence suggests car-tels have even used submarines.101The largest knownloads of cocaine en route to Europe via West Africahave been transported by large commercial shing

or freight mother ships that hand off shipments tosmaller, faster boats outside territorial waters (includ-ing shing boats, sailing yachts, and speedboats).102


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According to Europol, the crews of these smaller ves-sels are often West African, with Spanish or South

American controllers.103

In addition to ships, about 60 illicit aircraft regu-larly make the cross-Atlantic journey, beneting froman abundance of landing strips and limited air trafccontrol.104After arriving in West Africa, the cocaine istransported in small quantities by couriers on com-mercial ights, and sometimes by air freight or bysmugglers across the Sahara to North Africa and thenEurope.105 A 2008 Department of Homeland Securityreport warned of a growing eet of rogue aircraftcrisscrossing the Atlanticat least 10 aircraft, includ-ing executive jets, twin-engine turboprops, and ag-ing Boeing 727s.106 UNODC reported in 2010 that anumber of modied aircraft had taken off from Ven-ezuela toward West Africa, notably to Cape Verde,

Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Mauritania, and Sierra Leone.107

Some smaller aircraft are modied for the transatlan-tic voyage by the inclusion of additional fuel tanks.108Some airports or landing strips are also in the Saha-ra-Sahel.109 In November 2009, a burned Boeing 727was found in the desert of northern Mali after havingserved to transport several tons of cocaine on a ightfrom Venezuela.110 One afuent area of Gao, in north-eastern Mali, had been known as Cocainebougouat least until the March 2012 Al-Qaeda in the IslamicMaghreb (AQIM)/Touareg takeover of that city. 111

Much of Colombias cocaine exports to Europeare now passing through Venezuela and Brazil andthen transiting through West Africa via air and ship.A signicant portion of the Bolivian (and, to a lesser

degree, Peruvian) cocaine shipments are also movingby air via Venezuela, in part because of the Bolivar-ian Revolutionary alliance between Bolivian Presi-


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dent Evo Morales, himself a coca farmer before risingto power, and Venezuelan President Hugo Chvez.112

Several of the largest cocaine busts in West Africa havecome aboard aircraft that departed from Venezuela.113The majority of the Bolivian and Peruvian cocaineis moved through Brazil and then onward to Africa.There are linguistic as well as geographic reasons forthe Brazil connection. Guinea-Bissau, and Cape Verde,two of the most active transshipment hubs, are formerPortuguese colonies, like Brazil.114 This Brazil connec-tion was facilitated by increased air transport linksbetween Brazil and Africa. Consistent with this, inNovember 2011, there were two seizures at the Lagos,Nigeria, airport from passengers on a Qatar Airlinesight from Sao Paulo, Brazil.115 Brazil is now rivalingVenezuela as the number one point of departure forcocaine transported to Africa.

Wholesale Distribution and Sale Shifts toWest Africa.

In recent years, Latin American trafckers also re-located a share of their wholesale distribution from theWestern Hemisphere to West Africa. This means thatthe subregion has moved from being merely a short-term transit point to becoming a storage and stagingarea for wholesale repackaging, re-routing, and some-times (re-)sale of drugs.116 It also means, as AntonioMazzitelli, UNODC regional representative for Westand Central Africa, put it, that West Africa is chang-ing more and more from being just a stockpiling placeinto a hub where cocaine is traded.117

Recent UNODC drug seizure data of stockpiled co-caine suggest that multiple subregional repackagingand redistribution trafcking patterns have emerged


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in the Economic Community of West African Statess(ECOWAS's) 15 member-states, as well as Mauritania

and Morocco. In recent years, there were conrmedcases of trafckers who stockpiled cocaine in Nigeria,Benin, Togo, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal,Cape Verde, and Mauritania. One route involves co-caine entering Guinea-Bissau that is then routed toSenegal, Guinea, Gambia, and Mali for onward trans-port to Europe.118 Leopold Senghor International Air-port in Dakar is known to be a crucial departure pointin West Africa en route to Europe. Bamakos interna-tional airport has become another important transitpoint for drug trafckers, especially Nigerians, trans-porting drugs to Europe.119 Another route involvesCape Verde, where in October 2011 the DEA workedwith local and Dutch authorities to make the largestrecorded cocaine seizure in that countrys history.120

One academic, citing news reports, has writtenthat:

Nigerian middlemen have also played a leading rolein the development of a transSaharan route for smug-gling cocaine into Europe, sometimes using Touaregguides. In early 2008, Malian authorities seized750 kilos of cocaine at Tinzawatine in the middle of

the Sahara. . . . Once cocaine reaches North Africa,established Moroccan hashish smugglers can take itto Europe.121

In June 2011, French law enforcement separatelyassisted in the seizure of 400 kgs of cocaine destinedfor Niger.122

Latin American groups are employing West Afri-

cans to handle cocaine shipments in West Africa, pay-ing for these services in cocaine. This has led to twoparallel systems of importation to Europe: one involv-


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ing larger quantities remaining under South Americancontrol, and one involving smaller quantities owned

by West Africans. The former is more likely to usemaritime shipments, while the latter more often usescouriers on commercial air ights, a favored techniqueof West African groups worldwide.123 A typical WestAfrican air courier tactic is the so-called shotgun ap-proach, in which as many as 30 couriers are placed onboard a single ight with the knowledge that customsofcers only have the capacity to arrest and processa limited number of them. Some trafckers will putcouriers on a single commercial ight from places likeAccra, Ghana, to the European Union (EU), and willthen give the name of one courier to the authoritieson the receiving end to focus law enforcement on thatindividual, allowing the remainder to proceed un-checked.124 Finally, the wider availability of cocaine at

the wholesale level and the consequent developmentof a regional market have generated a new group ofoperators, the freelancers. These people, often Eu-ropeans or West Africans with valid resident permitsin Europe, invest their savings in the purchase of acouple of kilos of cocaine with the objective of smug-gling it to Europe.125

LINK TO TERRORISM: ALLIANCES BETWEENDRUG TRAFFICKERS AND TERRORISTS

Criminal enterprises are evolving into new hybridorganizations that blur the traditional distinction be-tween organized crime and terrorism.126 There is evi-dence that some of these hybrid organizations have

ties to West Africa. Both groups exploit the same stateweaknesses and are increasingly overlapping in usingthe same shadow facilitators, or criminal specialists,


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for money laundering, weapons trafcking, humantrafcking, smuggling, document forgery, transporta-

tion, security, and strategic corruption.127

These growing links in West Africa between drugtrafcking, other forms of transnational organizedcrime, and international terrorism represent a new se-curity threat to the United States. Consistent with this,President Obamas Strategy to Combat TransnationalOrganized Crime, released in July 2011, declared orga-nized crime to be a national security threat, and wasa signicant step forward in addressing this crime-terror-insurgency nexus.128 Four terrorist groups orstate sponsors of terrorism active in drug trafckingin West Africa are:

1. Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia(FARC). There are precedents in other regions ofthe world for terrorists using the drug trade to -

nance their activities. In 2010, 18 of 44 internationalterrorist groups designated by the United States hadbeen linked to some aspect of the international drugtrade.129 Through much of the 1990s and 2000s, theFARC funded its insurgency in Colombia through co-caine production and kidnapping.130 President Chvezin Venezuela has allowed the FARC, with whommany observers believe he has a deep and personalrelationship, to establish routes through his countrythat greatly lessen the threat and the cost of movingcocaine.131 Some of the cocaine-smuggling operationsin West Africa have been linked to the FARC, includ-ing an April 2007 arrest and subsequent unexplainedrelease in Guinea-Bissau of two FARC ofcials in con-nection with the discovery of a large consignment

of cocaine.132 In May 2010, an investigation targetingtwo DTOs revealed that six tons of cocaine purchasedfrom the FARC were transported on a plane originat-ing in Venezuela and transited Liberia for eventual


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distribution into Europe and the United States.133 Thissuccessful investigation was made possible by the

cooperation of Liberian ofcials, including the Direc-tor of National Security, who is the son of PresidentSirleaf Johnson.134

2. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).Other international terrorist groups already presentin West Africa are also increasingly engaging in drugtrafcking to nance their activities, including thelikely purchase of sophisticated weaponry. Accordingto UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, an assessmentmission dispatched in December 2011 to look at the ef-fects of the Libya crisis on the Sahel found that terror-ist groups such as AQIM had begun to form allianceswith drug trafckers and other criminal syndicates.135The link to AQIM takes on particular signicance in

light of this terrorist organizations March 2012 take-over of northern Mali, along with the AQIM splintergroup Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa(MUJAO) and Touareg allies such as Ansar Dine.136

In December 2009, the DEAs Ghanaian counter-parts arrested three suspected members and facilita-tors of AQIM based upon a United States arrest war-rant stemming from a narco-terrorism indictment inthe Southern District of New York. The charges in thiscase marked the rst time that associates of al-Qaedahad been charged with narco-terrorism offenses. Allthree defendants pleaded guilty.137AQIM has protedfrom North Africas drug smuggling and West Afri-cas assorted smuggling enterprises, such as in Maliand Western Sahara.138 AQIM collects a tax on traf-

ckers who pass through territory under its control.139Touareg rebels in the north of Mali and Niger havealso been involved in trans-Saharan trafcking.140


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3. Hezbollah. Given the prominence of the Leba-

nese diaspora community in West Africa and itsmembers control of pipelines to import and exportillegal commodities, it was inevitable that those orga-nizations and the drug trafcking groups would linkup.141 A U.S. investigation codenamed Operation TI-TAN unraveled a Lebanese-dominated syndicate thatlinked members of the Lebanese diaspora in Northand South America and Nigeria with partners in theirMediterranean homeland.142 In January 2011, a Leba-nese national, Ayman Joumaa, was placed on a U.S.Treasury Department Ofce of Foreign Asset Control(OFAC) blacklist for cocaine trafcking and moneylaundering for a network operating in West Africa,Lebanon, Colombia, and Panama.143

Hezbollah, an international terrorist group with

links to the Lebanese diaspora, relies on independent,transnational criminal specialists in West Africa withclose links to the drug trade for money laundering,document forgery, and other criminal activities.144 His-torically, Hezbollah had a signicant role in the blooddiamond trade. In addition, many in the Lebanese di-aspora community in West Africa, numbering severalhundred thousand, pay a portion of their earningsto support Hezbollah in Lebanon, with the knowl-edge and acquiescence of host governments in thesubregion. The importance of this revenue stream wasrevealed when a charter ight bound for Beirut fromCotonou, Benin, crashed on takeoff on December 25,2003. On board was a Hezbollah foreign relationsofcial carrying $2 million in contributions raised in

the region.145

A DEA investigation into the Lebanese CanadianBank illustrates why Hezbollahs activities in West


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Africa are of concern.146 In February 2011, the U.S. De-partment of the Treasury, working with the DEA, list-

ed the Lebanese Canadian Bank and its subsidiaries asa nancial institution of concern for money launder-ing. This investigation uncovered a complex schemethat moved illegal drugs from South America to Eu-rope and the Middle East via West Africa and maskedthe proceeds through sales of used cars and consumergoods.147 This bank and its subsidiaries were involvedin money laundering of hundreds of millions of dol-lars per month. Its subsidiary in Gambia, Prime Bank,is owned by a Lebanese national believed to be aHezbollah supporter.148 Treasury found complex linksbetween the bank and drug trafckers to Hezbollah.(Treasury and the DEA were also able to link indi-viduals in Iran to this criminal money laundering anddrug smuggling network.149)

4. Iran. Because of a possible link to terrorism -nancing, the DEA has targeted on a priority basis Ira-nian distribution networks involved in sending herointo West Africa for onward shipment to the UnitedStates. In May 2010, an investigation involving theDEA ofce in Accra, Ghana, resulted in the seizure of80 kgs of heroin contained in eight industrial metalgears that had arrived via air cargo from Tehran, Iran.In November 2010, a joint investigation by the DEAand the Nigerian Drug Law Enforcement Agency re-sulted in the seizure of 118 kgs of Southwest Asian(SWA) heroin in a commercial shipping containeroriginating in Iran. In June 2011, the DEA Paris Of-ce, in coordination with the French Customs Service,

searched a crate which led to the discovery of two200-gram packages of heroin contained within each ofthe 26 cylinders, for a total net weight of 10.4 kgs of


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heroin. The shipment from Iran was going to transitParis on its way to West Africa.150

IMPACT ON GOOD GOVERNANCE

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, speaking be-fore the UN Security Council in February 2012 aboutpeace, security, and stability in West Africa and theSahel, stated that:

Transnational organized crime, including drug traf-cking, affects peace, security and stability whereverit occurs. It undermines the authority and effective-ness of State institutions, erodes the rule of law andweakens law enforcement structures.151

Secretary General Ban is correct to be concernedabout West Africa. Some analysts believe that the

damage done to governance in West Africa due tothe drug trade has already reached the point thatsome governments in the subregion are dominatedby criminal networks,152 and that their sovereigntyand even viability as independent rule of law basedentities is in jeopardy.153 As UNODC put it, WestAfrican states:

. . . risk becoming shell-states; sovereign in name, buthollowed out from the inside by criminals in collusionwith corrupt ofcials in the government and the secu-rity services. This not only jeopardized their survival,it poses a serious threat to regional security because ofthe trans-national nature of the crimes.154


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In short, these violent nonstate actors may repre-sent, over time, an existential threat to the viability of

West African states and thus the greatest challengeto human security in the subregion since resourceconicts rocked several countries starting in theearly-1990s.

Narco-Corruption Fuels Coups Dtat, BuysPolitical Power/Protection.

There is little doubt that the proceeds of drugtrafcking are indeed fueling a dramatic increase innarco-corruption in West Africa. UNODC indicated ina 2010 report that the drug trade in West Africa ap-pears to be controlled by national gures so powerfulthat little opposition is possible, but where disputesover illicit markets can lead to the toppling of gov-

ernments.155

Mauritanian national Ahmedou OuldAbdallahthe UNs former Special Representative ofthe Secretary General for West Africa, Somalia, andBurundistated in a February 2012 interview thatseveral West African leaders, through family ties ortheir own contacts, were connected to the drug tradein the region. He felt that politics in West Africa al-ready had gangrene because of drug corruptionand that:

One can imagine the problems that Westerners willhave working with the countries of West Africa ina few yearsif not nowwhen one sees how muchtrouble the United States is having now working withLatin America [on the drug issue].156

With the presence of large amounts of money, drugtrafckers can stage coups dtat, hijack elections, andbuy political power. In Guinea-Bissau, at least the


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last two coups dtat have been directly or indirectlylinked to a ght for control of the drug trade. In drug

trafcking hubs such as Ghana and Nigeria, membersof Parliament, police ofcials, and government min-isters have been implicated in drug smuggling overthe past year.157 The largest seizure of heroin in NewYork in 2006 was made from a shipment originatingfrom Ghana and belonging to a Ghanaian memberof parliament who was not subsequently suspendedfrom his position in government.158In January 2011,then Ghanaian President Atta-Mills called in Westerndiplomats for a private meeting at which he reassuredthem of Ghanas resolve in the ght against illicitdrugs in order to dissipate doubts following revela-tions that Ghanas national drug bureau had activelycollaborated with drug trafckers to torpedo a UnitedKingdom (UK) anti-drug operation involving cocaine

and heroin transiting Ghana en route to the UK.159

Drug trafcking is a major problem for the Govern-ment of Sierra Leonea recovering failed state at riskof regression because of illicit drugs.160 In Sierra Le-one, the Minister of Transportation resigned after hisbrother was implicated in the countrys largest cocaineseizure,161 but was rehired despite this scandal.162InMauritania, the son of former President Ould Haidallawas arrested on cocaine-trafcking charges.163

Framing the seriousness of the governance chal-lenge, one academic wrote recently that:

Cocaine trafcking is becoming integral to how WestAfrica is governed. Political actors are using criminalorganization as an aspect of statecraft, and criminalactors are using political privileges as business assets.Trafckers get access to state immunities, passport anddiplomatic bags, airspace and maritime approaches,and even state-owned vessels. National political andmilitary institutions are in turn used to tax the trade.164


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One Ghanaian academic recently said that narcot-ics were the top challenge now facing West Africa,

both for functional states such as Ghana, and non-functional states such as Guinea-Bissau.165 Worsen-ing the situation is the fact that many ruling elitesin West Africa, fearing internal coups and yet facinglittle threat of external aggression, systematically al-lowed their militaries to deteriorate in the years af-ter independence.166These elites also kept their lawenforcement and justice systems underdevelopedand corrupt, with police chiefs in many West Afri-can countries being appointed directly by the presi-dent and dependent on the head of states supportand patronage for resources, promotion, and the jobitself.167 Drug trafckers are able to offer law enforce-ment ofcials in West Africa more than they couldearn in a lifetime simply to look the other way.168

Some ruling elites are even tempted to use anti-drugcampaigns as a mechanism to weaken political oppo-sition.169Anti-corruption bodies have also been veryweak, often serving as yet another mechanism forpurging domestic opposition instead of cleaning updecient institutions.170

UNODCs current Representative for West Africasaid in June 2011 that a big part of the problem is aweakness in the subregion of the judicial and penalsystems, where there remains a culture of impunity.Up to then, he added, no country in West Africa hadever brought a case in its judicial system for launder-ing drug money. This representative asserted that theinternational community had focused its efforts onlaw enforcement, and had done little to strengthen

the judicial systems.171 Consistent with this, a Frenchnational was convicted in Nouakchott, Mauritania,in February 2010, along with a police commissioner,


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a former International Criminal Police Organization(INTERPOL) representative, and local businessman,

of transporting 760 kilos of cocaine in a minibus in Au-gust 2007. In August 2011, however, the court of ap-peals reversed the convictions and freed the accused.In September 2011, the Mauritania Supreme Courtreversed the appeals court decision, red the head ofthe appeals court, and punished four other judges fortheir decision to reverse the convictions.172

Even when ofcials are not corrupt, state-paidprosecutors are usually no match for the best defenselawyers that drug money can buy.173 Not surpris-ingly, when drug trafcking surges, the legal systembecomes overburdened with court cases related todrugs in one way or anotherwhen there are evenapplicable laws in place to indict individuals, let aloneprosecute and incarcerate them.

DrugsA New Form of Resource Conict?

In the post-independence period in West Africa,much of political conict focused on gaining access tothe state in order to control rents from various legal,semi-illegal, or outright illegal resource economiessuch as diamonds, gold and other precious metals,stones, and timber (Liberia, and Sierra Leone), oil(Nigeria) and shing. The latter is often conducted il-legally and destructively by international eets fromoutside West Africa.174 Since the early-1990s, this con-ict in West Africa devolved into protracted violentclashes and civil wars that, as one academic testied:

centered on natural resources, particularly diamonds,timber, oil, and gold. Prots from these resource wars


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fueled the rise of the Revolutionary United Front(RUF) in Sierra Leone, for example, fed the wars sus-tained by Liberias Charles Taylor and contributed tothe rampant corruption and weak or failed institutionsin almost every country of the sub-region. At the sametime, these kinds of natural resources, while valuable,pale in comparison to the money now generated bythe cocaine trade in West Africa. For example, at itspeak, the total annual value of the blood diamondtrade smuggled out of Sierra Leone and Liberia wasless than $200 million. . . . The potential to fuel conicts

over the cocaine pipeline, the most lucrative commod-ity so far and one whose prots are several orders ofmagnitude larger than diamonds, is truly frighten-ing. . . . Just as the blood diamond trade and illicittimber deals allowed groups like the RUF to purchaseadvanced weapons on the international market, theinux of cocaine cash will allow the criminal and mi-litia groups in the region to acquire ever more sophis-ticated armaments, training, and communications.175

Separatists in Senegals Casamance Region are al-ready using the drug trade to nance their rebellion,and while they have historically used the sale of can-nabis to do so,176 it is logical to assume that cocainerevenues will eventually contribute to this ongoinginstability, if they have not already.

Even if West Africa does not see a return of civilwars or rebellions, diplomats and other internation-al ofcials worry that some West African countriescould develop along similar lines to Mexico, wheredrug gangs have a symbiotic relationship with po-litical parties and with the state and drug-related vio-lence results in thousands of deaths every year.177Thecurrent UNODC Representative for Mexico, AntonioMazzitelli, who was also previously its representativefor West Africa, believes that West Africa could see fargreater violence, much like small gangs in Jamaica,


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such as those by drug kingpin Christopher DudusCoke, who was extradited to the United States in

2010.178

One academic hypothesized that where thereis political sponsorship of drug trafcking, violencecan be relatively low, but that:

. . . where sponsorship is contested, violence results. InJanuary 2011, for example, a major battle was foughtbetween Berabiche Arabs running drugs to Libya, andTouareg [tribesmen] who demanded a fee for passing

through their territory.179

Latin American drug gangs themselves could alsobe the source of killings and other violence in WestAfrica, adding to the regions instability. Many of theMexican cartel wars are, in essence, resource wars,with the merchandise in dispute being not only thetrafcked drugs but the physical trafcking hubs

through which the illicit goods must pass. In otherwords, the criminal pipeline itself can become a re-source in dispute, and one of the primary sources ofviolence.180 There is also a risk that rivalries betweenvarious African networks of corrupt politicians ormilitary ofcials could lead to violencesome-thing some analysts believe has already occurred in

Guinea-Bissau.Whether similar cartel wars could break out in Af-rica is uncertain. Some skeptics assert that such vio-lence would not be consistent with the way disputesare handled in West Africa; it may also be the case thatgovernance is so weak that there are multiple chan-nels or pipelines to trafc through the subregions16 countries, and therefore little reason to ght over

them. One exception, however, could involve ghtingfor control of choice island landing strips in Guinea-Bissau, which, with the collusion of a weak host gov-ernment, are particularly valuable pipelines.


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Civil society can also be intimidated and muzzledby the drug trade. There have been signicant in-

stances of interference with the freedom of the pressby some ofcials in Guinea-Bissau related to media re-ports on drug trafcking and alleged related corrup-tion in the military. According to the report of the UNSecretary General on the mission to Guinea-Bissau inSeptember 2007:

The period from July to August 2007 was marked by

tensions over concerns by civil society organizationsregarding what they saw as pressures relating to free-dom of the press and freedom of expression in connec-tion with their reports on drug trafcking.

A November 2007 report from Reporters WithoutBorders recounts how Guinea-Bissau journalists hadreceived death threats from senior military ofcials.

One brave Ghanaian investigative journalist releasedan undercover video showing numerous customsagency ofcials taking bribes at Tema Harbor in Feb-ruary 2012.181 Human rights can also become a casu-

alty when drug trafckers are calling the shots.182

Drug Trade Not a Threat to Political Stability?

One contrarianand some would say cynicalview is that it is incorrect to assume that the drugtrade epidemic in West Africa will necessarily chal-lenge political stability and threaten existing govern-ments. One academic has written that, To the extentthat a governing elite captures rents from the drugtrade, a symbiosis between foreign (and national)drug trafckers and the ruling elites may devel-op183analogous to what has occurred in Jamaica.184


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In this view, drug trafckers enjoy a sponsored safehaven, and the stability of the existing political status

quo is reinforcedmaking it harder to root out theseentrenched interests.185

The fundamental problem with this view, howev-er, is that the short-term stability of having nondemo-cratic ruling elites enter into symbiotic relationshipswith drug trafckers will in the long-term choke offdemocratic evolution in West Africa. The stability ofthis alliance lasts only until the next group of wan-nabe leaders acts to mount a coup or launch an insur-gencythereby perpetuating a new form of resourceconict in West Africa. Guinea-Bissaus instabilityis evidence of this point in terms of this nation hav-ing a briey stable alliance over the drug proceedsthat became unsustainable as different segments thenstarted to compete for control of this illicit trade.

Guinea-BissauAlready a Narco-State.

In West Africa, Guinea-Bissau is generally recog-nized as a narco-state where state-capture has alreadyoccurred.186 A narco-state has been dened as a na-tion that has been taken over and is controlled andcorrupted by drug cartels and where law enforcementis effectively nonexistent.187 In Guinea-Bissau, drugtrafcking networks penetrated the highest levels ofpower, including the ofce of former President JoaoBernardo Vieira, who was assassinated in March 2009.As a result of such corruption, the narcotics tradeourished and likely now surpasses the entire for-mal value of the national economy.188 Military leaders

have since been designated drug kingpins by theU.S. Government. Ex-Navy Chief of Staff Jose Ameri-co Bubo Na Tchuto, for example, was listed as a drug


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kingpin in April 2010 by the U.S. Department of theTreasury,189and then reinstated by the Guinea-Bissau

government as the head of the Navy a few months lat-er. Armed Forces Chief Antonio Injai reportedly hadbeen competing with Tchuto for a larger share of drugprots,190 with the former controlling airports, andthe latter, maritime shipments.191 Ibrahima Camara,the head of Guinea-Bissaus air force, is also involvedin drug trafcking. One observer believes that the in-volvement of the Guinea-Bissau armed forces in thedrug trade is so entrenched that there exists a genera-tional tension between an old guard that has access todrug revenues, and a younger generation of ofcersthat wants its share.192

One researcher has argued that Guinea-Bissau ismost consistent with a failed state, not a narco-state.This researcher argues that, while certain organs of

the state in Guinea-Bissau may have been capturedthrough narco-corruption (the military and criminaljustice sector), one cannot say that the capacity of thestate has been altered, because of its extremely limitedcapacity to begin with.193 This researchers distinction,while more denitional than substantive, may never-theless be useful because it implies that internationalassistance to Guinea-Bissaus police authorities mayhelp create a beachhead within the state against nar-co-corruption. While weak compared to the military,police authorities, in alliance with civil society, couldhelp lead a ght in the future to recapture Guinea-Bissau from narco-trafckers.

Both the United States and the broader interna-tional community, through the UN, are working to

assist police and judicial authorities in Guinea-Bissau.Guinea-Bissaus Transnational Crime Unit (TCU) wasthe result of work that UNODC started in 2008 with


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the Guinea-Bissau Judicial Police to set up a special-ized unit to increase the number of investigations into

drug trafcking and organized crime.194

The TCU wasexpanded in 2011 to branches of the Judicial Police intwo key remote locations of the country: the Island ofBubaque in the Bijags Archipelago and Cati in thesouth of Guinea-Bissau. UNODC has also worked tostrengthen the justice system and rule of law struc-tures, most notably by training judges and prosecu-tors specializing in cases related to drug trafckingand organized crime.195

Assistant Secretary of State Johnnie Carson, in aMay 2012 Senate testimony, listed three key lines ofefforts for the United States in Guinea-Bissau neededto ght drug trafcking, beyond working to restorecivilian authority and constitutional rule of law. Therst was to work alongside international partners in

applying targeted sanctions (e.g., travel bans and as-set freezes) on the worst or most vulnerable offenders.The second was to continue to pursue security sec-tor reform in Guinea-Bissauto remove corrupt ele-ments from its military, strengthen law enforcement,and instill respect for civilian government.Third wasto pursue a policy of containment by helping Guin-ea-Bissaus neighbors improve the capacity of theircustoms, border, and port authorities.196

With regard to Assistant Secretary Carsons sec-ond key line of effort, the U.S. Department of StatesBureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforce-ment Affairs (INL) funded two new positions in June2011, dedicated to Guinea-Bissau: a Regional Law En-forcement Advisor and a Justice Sector Advisor. The

Regional Law Enforcement Advisor is based in Benin.The Advisor developed a long-term law enforcementtraining strategy and coordinated U.S. Government


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assistance to Guinea-Bissau law enforcement agen-cies.197In November 2011, INL and the UN Integrated

Peace-Building Ofce in Guinea-Bissau collaboratedon Guinea-Bissaus rst National Forum on CriminalJustice. The forum issued a report that recommendeda substantial restructuring of the nations criminal jus-tice system and changes to the criminal code.198

Guinea as the Next Narco-State?

Some observers fear that the next state in WestAfrica at risk of capture by drug trafckers is Guinea-Conakry, the eastern neighbor of Guinea-Bissau. Sincea coup in Guinea in December 2008, there have beenreports of Latin American cocaine traders moving insignicant numbers to Conakry, where some relativesof the late President Lansana Ousmane Conte have

an established interest in the cocaine trade.199

In 2010,the U.S. Government designated Ousmane Conte, theson of Guineas late President, as a Tier I Kingpin.200

Although Alpha Cond became Guineas rst demo-cratically elected President in November 2010, his ten-ure has been weakened by delays in legislative elec-tions and a lack of progress in security sector reform,which has left a bloated military bureaucracy that ismore interested in its own prerogatives than in ght-ing against the drug trade. As with Guinea-Bissau,the international community urgently needs to worktogether with the Cond government to turn the tideagainst state-capture in Guinea by drug trafckers.


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IMPACT ON SOCIETY

Historically, the societies of transit countries havenever been able to remain immune from the negativeimpacts of drug trafcking. Inevitably, local consump-tion of drugs increases, which has cascading negativeeffects on the social fabric, stability, and security ofany transit country.201 For example, no country in LatinAmerica has suffered as much as Brazil for becominga key transit country, where payment is often madewith drugs; it has become the second largest consum-er of cocaine in the world, after the United States.202Already, West Africa is proving that it is no exception.There is often a lack of appreciation by leaders in WestAfrica of how serious this problem is, and of how rap-idly it can metastasize. An estimated $800 million wasspent on drug use in 2009 alone in West Africa, which

has become a huge local consumption market.203

Drugconsumption in West and Central Africa is grow-ing quickly, with up to 2.5 million estimated drugusers now in these areas, a UN ofcial reported inFebruary 2012.204

There are roughly 1.1 million cocaine consumersin West Africa, according to UNODC, which indicatesthat 8 percent of the worlds 14 million cocaine usersare from the subregion.205 Of the 35 tons of cocaine thattransited West Africa en route to Europe in 2010, 13tons were consumed locally, and somewhat less thanone ton seized.206 Of particular concern is crack co-caineincreasingly popular due to the yield of 30-40doses of crack cocaine from one gram of pure cocaine.The numbers of crack cocaine users have increased

considerably over the past few years.207UNODC estimated in 2009 that there were 793,000

heroin users in Central and West Africa, and 1.7 mil-lion for the continent as a whole.208


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Trafcking has also fueled increasing consump-tion of methamphetamine in the subregion.209 ATS are

transported mainly from Nigeria to several countriesin West Africa, with trafckers using land routes dueto the free movement policy of ECOWAS. The use ofamphetamines has already been reported in severalWest African countries, including Burkina Faso, Ni-ger, Senegal, and Sierra Leoneeven among school-aged children. UNODC has established an annualprevalence rate of amphetamines at 1.4 percent in Ni-geria based on a 2008 household survey. This rate ishigher than South Africa, currently thought of as themost established ATS market in Africa, higher than inmost European countries, and comparable to use lev-els in Asia, where ATS use has a long tradition. 210

Ghana is one example of a West African nation witha growing illicit drug problem. Cannabis is the most

abused illicit drug, but the use of hard drugs is on therise. Cocaine and heroin are the upper-middle-classdrugs of choice, while poorer Ghanaians get hookedon crack cocaine.211 Evidence of an increase in cocaineand heroin usage in Ghana is the sharp increase inrequests for drug recovery treatment in 2011. Up toJune 2011, there were 887 illicit drug users being treat-ed at four psychiatri

The Challenge of Drug Trafficking to Democratic Governance and Human Security in West Africa

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