Cartels land in Africa
CNN ran an interesting story on the rise of drug trafficking in Africa and reported that Colombian and Mexican drug cartels have jumped the Atlantic Ocean and expanded into West Africa, working closely with local criminal gangs to carve out a staging area for an assault on the lucrative European market.
While the European market has been expanding, use in the United States has declined from its peak in the 1980s, the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime said in its 2009 annual report, issued in July.
About 1,000 tons of pure cocaine are produced each year, nearly 60 percent of which evades law enforcement interception and makes it to market, the report said. That’s a wholesale global market of about $70 billion.
Criminals traffic about 250 tons to Europe each year, though not all of it makes it there, the U.N. said. The European market totals about $11 billion. About 27 percent of the cocaine that entered Europe in 2006 came from Africa, the United Nations said.
Huge profits make Europe particularly attractive. Two pounds of uncut cocaine can sell for $22,000 in the United States but for $45,000 in Europe, analyst Ashley-Louise Bybee wrote in a policy journal this year. The Justice Department said the price in Europe can be three times more than in the United States.
A strong euro and weaker dollar also make Europe attractive to traffickers because of favorable exchange rates. There’s also the fact that the European Union recently issued a 500 euro note, currently equivalent to about $700. The largest U.S. denomination in circulation is the $100 bill. Traffickers prefer the large euro notes because they are easier to carry in large quantities.
For example, Benson said that $1 million in $100 bills weighs 22 pounds, while $1 million in 500 euro notes weighs 3.5 pounds.
Though Europe is highly attractive to traffickers, it can have tight, Western-style security. So the Colombian and Mexican cartels have discovered that it’s much easier to smuggle large loads into West Africa and then break that up into smaller shipments to the continent — mostly Spain, the United Kingdom and France.
West Africa is a smuggler’s dream, suffering from a combination of factors that make the area particularly vulnerable. It is among the poorest and least stable regions in the world. Governments are weak and ineffective and, as a top DEA chief testified to the U.S. Senate this summer, officials are often corrupt.
Law enforcement also is largely riddled with corruption. Criminal gangs are rampant. Foot soldiers can be recruited from a large pool of poor and desperate youth.
“It’s a point of least resistance,” Benson said.
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/09/21/africa.drug.cartels/index.html
