Countering the Drug Trade in West Africa

Countering the Drug Trade in West Africa PDF Author: Cristina Webster
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781634858687
Category : BUSINESS & ECONOMICS
Languages : en
Pages : 65

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Book Description
In recent years, West Africa has played an increasing role in the global drug trade. In the early 2000s, drug traffickers searching for new routes and markets began shipping South American cocaine to Europe through West Africa. Criminal groups have now expanded their operations in the region to include heroin trafficking and methamphetamine production. While cocaine trafficked through West Africa typically reaches Europe rather than the United States, illicit activities surrounding the West African drug trade jeopardize U.S. goals in the region. The drug trade destabilizes governments and funds terrorist organizations, including Hezbollah and Al Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb. In 2011, the State Department launched the West Africa Cooperative Security Initiative to coordinate the U.S. response to these threats. This has been a positive start, but the Caucus believes more must be done. This book provides eight recommendations on how the United States can better assist our partners in West Africa.

Countering the Drug Trade in West Africa

Countering the Drug Trade in West Africa PDF Author: Cristina Webster
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781634858687
Category : BUSINESS & ECONOMICS
Languages : en
Pages : 65

Get Book Here

Book Description
In recent years, West Africa has played an increasing role in the global drug trade. In the early 2000s, drug traffickers searching for new routes and markets began shipping South American cocaine to Europe through West Africa. Criminal groups have now expanded their operations in the region to include heroin trafficking and methamphetamine production. While cocaine trafficked through West Africa typically reaches Europe rather than the United States, illicit activities surrounding the West African drug trade jeopardize U.S. goals in the region. The drug trade destabilizes governments and funds terrorist organizations, including Hezbollah and Al Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb. In 2011, the State Department launched the West Africa Cooperative Security Initiative to coordinate the U.S. response to these threats. This has been a positive start, but the Caucus believes more must be done. This book provides eight recommendations on how the United States can better assist our partners in West Africa.

Illicit Drug Trafficking in West Africa

Illicit Drug Trafficking in West Africa PDF Author: Gregory J. Broecker
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Airspace (Law)
Languages : en
Pages : 27

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Book Description
The latest World Drug Report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) paints a grim picture of worldwide drug smuggling. Cocaine bound for wealthy industrialized countries is increasingly transiting through poverty-stricken developing countries. The UNODC reports show a clear increase in cocaine and other illicit drugs transiting West Africa. These drugs originating in Latin and South America are moving via sea, land and air through West African countries north into Europe and North America. Weak governance contributes to this increasing problem, facilitating logistics routes for drug smugglers. The U.S. has multiple tools at its disposal; security assistance resources, partnering countries to coordinate with, and various international organizations to leverage, orchestrating mechanisms in countering illicit drug trafficking via air through West Africa. Introducing primary surveillance radar (PSR) to the region will illuminate non-cooperative movement and add another tool to counter illicit drug trade through West Africa. PSR will also serve to cover multiple agency policy objectives and underpin effective airspace management, enabling trade, investment and economic development.

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

The Challenge of Drug Trafficking to Democratic Governance and Human Security in West Africa PDF Author: David Edward Brown
Publisher: Army War College Press
ISBN:
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 108

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Book Description
International criminal networks mainly from Latin America and Africa -- some with links to terrorism -- are turning West Africa into a key global hub for the distribution, wholesaling, and production of illicit drugs. These groups represent an existential threat to democratic governance of already fragile states in the sub-region because they are using narco-corruption to stage coups d'état, hijack elections, and co-opt or buy political power. Besides a spike in drug-related crime, narcotics trafficking is also fraying West Africa's traditional social fabric and creating a public health crisis, with hundreds of thousands of new drug addicts. While the inflow of drug money may seem economically beneficial to West Africa in the short-term, investors will be less inclined to do business in the long-term if the sub-region is unstable. On net, drug trafficking and other illicit trade represent the most serious challenge to human security in the region since resource conflicts rocked several West African countries in the early 1990s. International aid to West Africa's "war on drugs" is only in an initial stage; progress will be have to be measured in decades or even generations, not years and also unfold in parallel with creating alternative sustainable livelihoods and addressing the longer-term challenges of human insecurity, poverty, and underdevelopment.

Illegal Drug Trade in Africa

Illegal Drug Trade in Africa PDF Author: Liana Sun Wyler
Publisher: Silverwood Institute
ISBN: 9781422316610
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 53

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Book Description
In recent years Africa has increasingly become a locus for drug trafficking (DT), particularly of cocaine. Africa's emergence as a DT nexus has resulted from shifts in internat. DT patterns, incl. heightened European demand for cocaine, internat. counter-narcotics pressure driving drug traffickers away from traditional DT routes, and the allure of low levels of law enforce. and high rates of corruption in many African countries. Contents of this report: The Rising DT Threat; Implications for U.S. Interests; DT and Use Trends in Africa; Illicit Drug Use Trends in Africa; Focus on West Africa as a Global Cocaine Transit Hub; U.S. Policy; Multilateral and Regional Efforts to Combat DT in Africa; Congressional Role. Map and tables. A print on demand report.

Africa and the War on Drugs

Africa and the War on Drugs PDF Author: Neil Carrier
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 1848139691
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 117

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Book Description
Nigerian drug lords in UK prisons, khat-chewing Somali pirates hijacking Western ships, crystal meth-smoking gangs controlling South Africa's streets, and narco-traffickers corrupting the state in Guinea-Bissau: these are some of the vivid images surrounding drugs in Africa which have alarmed policymakers, academics and the general public in recent years. In this revealing and original book, the authors weave these aspects into a provocative argument about Africa's role in the global trade and control of drugs. In doing so, they show how foreign-inspired policies have failed to help African drug users but have strengthened the role of corrupt and brutal law enforcement officers, who are tasked with halting the export of heroin and cocaine to European and American consumer markets. A vital book on an overlooked front of the so-called war on drugs.

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

The Challenge of Drug Trafficking to Democratic Governance and Human Security in PDF Author: U S Army War College
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781502463081
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 86

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Book Description
West Africa is under attack from international criminal networks that are using the subregion as a key global hub for the distribution, wholesale, and increased production of illicit drugs. Most drug trade in West Africa involves cocaine sold in Europe, although heroin is also trafficked to the United States, and the subregion is becoming an export base for amphetamines and their precursors, mainly for East Asian markets and, increasingly, the United States. The most important of these criminal networks are drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) from Latin America-primarily from Colombia, Venezuela, and Mexico-partnering with West African criminals. These criminals, particularly Nigerians and Ghanaians, have been involved in the global drug trade for several decades, first with cannabis and later with heroin. The problem has worsened to the point that these networks represent an existential threat to the viability of already fragile states in West Africa as independent, rule of law based entities. As part of this new Latin America- West Africa criminal nexus, Guinea-Bissau is generally recognized as a narco-state where state-capture by traffickers has already occurred. There is also increasingly strong evidence linking terrorist organizations or state sponsors of terrorism to the West Africa drug trade, including Colombia's Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Hezbollah (allied with elements in the Lebanese diaspora), Venezuela, and Iran. These criminal and terrorist groups are also a threat to U.S. national security, because the illicit profits earned by Latin American drug cartels operating in West Africa strengthen the same crimi nal elements that traffic drugs to North America, and the same North African and Middle Eastern terrorist groups and nations that target the United States. The link to AQIM takes on particular significance in light of this terrorist organization's recent takeover of a vast sector of ungoverned space in northern Mali, along with Touareg allies. West Africa's geographical location between Latin America and Europe made it an ideal transit zone for exploitation by powerful drug cartels and terrorist organizations-much as the Caribbean and Central America had long suffered for being placed between South America's cocaine producers and North America's cocaine users. West Africa's primary operational allure to traffickers is not actually geography, however, but rather its low standards of governance, low levels of law enforcement capacity, and high rates of corruption. Latin American traffickers recently relocated a share of their wholesale distribution from the Western Hemisphere to West Africa, with the subregion moving from being merely a short-term transit point to becoming a storage and staging area for wholesale repackaging, re-routing and sometimes (re-)sale of drugs.

Transnational Organized Crime in East Asia and the Pacific

Transnational Organized Crime in East Asia and the Pacific PDF Author:
Publisher: UN
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
Human trafficking and smuggling of migrants: Four of the 12 illicit flows reviewed in this report involve human beings. The first two concern movement between the countries of the region, one for general labour and one for sexual exploitation. The third concerns the smuggling of migrants from the region to the rich countries of the West, and the last focuses on migrants smuggled through the region from the poor and conflicted countries of South and Southwest Asia. Drug trafficking: The production and use of opiates has a long history in the region, but the main opiate problem in the 21st century involves the more refined form of the drug: heroin. In addition, methamphetamine has been a threat in parts of East Asia for decades (in the form of yaba tablets), but crystal methamphetamine has recently grown greatly in popularity. Virtually every country in the region has some crystal methamphetamine users, and some populations consume at very high levels.Resources: Resource-related crimes include those related to both extractive industries, such as the illegal harvesting of wildlife and timber, and other crimes that have a negative impact on the environment, such as the dumping of e-waste and the trade in ozone-depleting substances. In all cases, the threat goes beyond borders, jeopardizing the global environmental heritage. These are therefore crimes of inherent international significance, though they are frequently dealt with lightly under local legislation.Counterfeit goods: The trade in counterfeit goods is often perceived as a "soft" form of crime, but can have dangerous consequences for public health and safety. Fraudulent medicines in particular pose a threat to public health, and their use can foster the growth of treatment resistant pathogens.

Cocaine Trafficking in the Caribbean and West Africa in the Era of the Mexican Cartels

Cocaine Trafficking in the Caribbean and West Africa in the Era of the Mexican Cartels PDF Author: Daurius Figueira
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1475961405
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
This book deals with three major developments within the illicit drug trade of the Caribbean Basin that not only changed the nature of the illicit trade but has expanded the expanse of the trade as it now impacts Africa and Asia making it truly globalised. The three major developments dealt with are: the trafficking jump to West Africa by Caribbean Basin drug trafficking organisations, the rise to dominance of the Mexican cartels in the illicit trade of the Caribbean Basin and the evolution and nature of Caribbean gangland and its organic links to the illicit drug trade.

Africa's Connection to the Drug Trade

Africa's Connection to the Drug Trade PDF Author: Peyton E. Daniels
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781616686680
Category : Drug control
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Africa has historically held a peripheral role in the transnational illicit drug trade, but in recent years has increasingly become a focus for drug trafficking, particularly of cocaine. Africa's emergence as a trafficking nexus appears to have resulted from structural shifts in international drug trafficking patterns. This book examines how best to balance short-term and long-term counter-narcotics goals and strategies in Africa, how various U.S. civilian and military and international agency counter-narcotics roles and responsibilities in Africa should be defined and what types and levels of resources these efforts may require.

Drug Trafficking in West Africa

Drug Trafficking in West Africa PDF Author: William R. Wallace
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781980967699
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 73

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Book Description
West Africa has become a global hub for illegal drugs transiting from both Latin America and Asia to end users in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. The type of illegal substances has expanded from cocaine and heroin to amphetamine-type stimulants. West Africa is particularly susceptible to influence by transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) due to endemic corruption, minimal border security, regional geographic location, and poor resource management. This thesis determines the impact of drug trafficking in West Africa on the national security interests of the United States. The U.S. strategy derived from the National Security Strategy, as well as the National Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime. This study reports the conditions that exist and are exploited by TCOs in an effort to conduct illegal activities and undermine the security of West African countries and the national security interests of the United States. The significance of this study is that it provides further guidance and research opportunities for scholars and government officials to continue to analyze how the United States addresses the potential of a destabilized West Africa from affecting the national security interests of the United States of America. CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION * Background * Primary Research Question * Secondary Research Questions * Assumptions * Definitions of Key Terms * Scope and Limitations * Delimitations * Significance of the Study * Organization of the Study * CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW * Introduction * Section 1: Current Drug Trafficking Trends in West Africa * Section 2: Current National Security Strategy Relating to Drug Trafficking and Transnational Crime * Section 3: Congressional Testimonies and Research Relating to West African Drug Trafficking * Section 4: Summary of Findings * CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY * Introduction * Section 1: Data Collection * Section 2: Credibility of Sources * Section 3: Data Analysis * Section 4: Summary and Conclusions * CHAPTER 4 ANALYSIS * Introduction * Section 1: Overview of Transnational Crime and Drug Trafficking Trends * Section 2: Drugs Being Trafficked through West Africa * Section 3: The U.S. National Interest Regarding TOC * Section 4: Summary of Analysis * CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS * Conclusion * Recommendations * BIBLIOGRAPHY