Drugs Flowing to Europe Via West Africa

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http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h...c7s8QD8UJK8100

COTONOU, Benin (AP) — In one of this city's relatively posh neighborhoods, there is a compound full of specialists.
Some who work within the high-walled enclosure are experts in crushing cocaine bars and tying the powder into waterproof pellets for couriers to swallow. Others are adept at dismantling suitcases or electronic gadgets to hide cocaine.
The compound is part of a drug trafficking problem that is rapidly spreading from Nigeria to the west coast of Africa, leading to a new surge of drugs flowing into Europe. Since 2004, seizures of Europe-bound cocaine in Africa have risen fivefold, reaching a record 5.7 metric tons in the first nine months of last year, according to the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, or UNODC.
Virtually all the drugs seized in Africa in the first nine months of 2007 came from West Africa, according to a U.N. report on drug trafficking. They include 2.4 metric tons seized in Senegal in June, 1.5 metric tons taken in Mauritania between May and August, and smaller quantities in Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde, Benin and Guinea.
Shipments come by sea and air, mainly from Brazil and Venezuela. Shipments by sea are usually transferred into smaller vessels and fast boats and moved inland from poorly policed shores. Light aircraft from South America are known to have landed cocaine cargoes in Guinea Bissau, Sierra Leone and Mauritania.
To see how it works, look at Frank, a thickset, middle-aged Nigerian who cruises the streets of Cotonou, capital of Benin, in a silver-colored Mercedes-Benz jeep.
Frank went to Brazil more than a decade ago to study, and ended up dealing drugs. He landed in a Brazilian jail, where he met Gilberto, a Brazilian doing time for fraud. The partnership is now paying off for Frank, who refused to give his last name or that of his Brazilian connection.
Frank said he moved to Cotonou from neighboring Nigeria's main city of Lagos four years ago as drug raids intensified in Nigeria. In Benin, he teamed up with other traffickers operating out of the compound.
Many confessed traffickers interviewed by The Associated Press said tightening security in Nigeria led them to move to other countries in the region where law enforcement is lax and officials more pliable. Favorite West African destinations for Nigerian drug gangs include Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Benin and Ivory Coast.
Once in West Africa, cocaine takes one of two main routes. It is either smuggled north through Morocco by fast boats into Spain — using long-established routes for hashish trafficking — or by air in smaller quantities by couriers using commercial flights into European cities.
Nigerian gangs dominate the air routes to Europe, according to the UN report. Preferred couriers are European or North American passport-holders, such as the two British teenage girls recently convicted in Ghana of trying to board a flight to London with cocaine hidden in computer cases.
The major European destinations are Spain, the Netherlands and Britain. London has lately become favored because of the high price fetched on its streets, where a pound of cocaine is said to be worth about $14,500.
Law enforcement data shows Nigerian passport-holders account for more than 44 percent of all West African drug traffickers arrested in Europe, followed by those from Cape Verde at 25 percent and Ghanaians at 8 percent. In one dramatic instance two Decembers ago, 32 drug couriers who had left Guinea Bissau and transited through Morocco were arrested on a single flight upon arrival at Amsterdam's Schipol airport. Of these, 28 were Nigerians, according to UNODC.
"West Africa is under attack from drug traffickers," said Bagmar Thomas, head of the UNODC in Nigeria.
While the spread along the coast is new, Nigeria's role as a major drug transit point — cocaine from South America as well as opium and heroin from Asia — dates back two decades. The emergence of Africa's most populous country as a major drugs center coincided with sharp economic decline under corrupt regimes in the mid-'80s that spawned a large army of young unemployed. They became easy recruits into drug trafficking and other criminal rackets.
"For many who became traffickers it was just another job, another trade to make ends meet and possibly get rich quickly," said Ronke Olaoye, a sociology lecturer at the Lagos University.
To combat the troubling trend, West African countries have agreed to cooperate and share intelligence with the encouragement of the U.S. and Britain. Law enforcement officials acknowledge they're combating a formidable and resourceful foe.
"They (traffickers) have enormous resources at their disposal," said Mitchell Ofoyeju, a spokesman for Nigeria's National Drug Law Enforcement Agency. "Once you discover one tactic, they adopt another one."
In Nigeria, U.S. drug enforcement officials have conducted joint raids with Nigerian drug officials, providing assistance for increased surveillance of airports and border crossings, and checks on money-laundering activities, Ofoyeju said.
President Bush commended Nigeria for making remarkable progress against narcotics-trafficking and money-laundering in his yearly report to Congress in September on international drugs trafficking. However, the country remains in the category of "major drug-transit or major illicit drug-producing countries," along with Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia, Afghanistan, Burma, Pakistan, India, Venezuela and several other countries.
While traffickers like Frank fear a regional crackdown is imminent, they express no guilt. Instead, Frank accuses Western countries of seeking to deny people from poor countries their livelihoods to satisfy selfish interests.
"About 150 years ago Britain forced China to grow opium because it was in its interest to do so. Ironically, it is today in support of poppy eradication because the interest has changed," Frank said. "We are just in the business of supply and demand."