The New York Times is reporting that three Malians have been arrested and charged with being part of an operation that smuggles drugs across West and North African routes into Europe. The money then goes to groups associated with Al Qaida, so the charge goes, and also involves “the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, a Colombian rebel group that has taken advantage of lax enforcement and corruption to use Africa as a significant transshipment route to Europe.”
graphic credit: New York Times
See the full criminal complaint here.
This is troubling, to be sure, but there is nothing particularly new about the various levels of these links. If I may be allowed a brief “I told you so,” I wrote about these links in 2001 in an article in Middle East Report , “Networks of Discontent: Drugs, Opposition and Urban Unrest.” The links among drug traffickers throughout Northwest Africa and southern Europe, arms traders (into Algeria), Latin American cocaine conglomerates and potential (and real) terrorist organizations are but the most recent variation on longstanding versions of the same. But a UN official recently expressed surprise at the “discovery” of these overlapping networks:
“It is scary that this new example of the links between drugs, crime and terrorism was discovered by chance,” [ Antonio Maria Costa, head of the Vienna-based United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime] noted. In recent years west Africa has become an important transit point for South American cocaine being smuggled to the European markets.
What? The bombings in Madrid on March 11, 2004 should have been enough to alert everyone and anyone to the existence of this growing problem. Those attacks were carried out by drug traffickers and petty criminals who had only recently become attracted to Islamist ideology.
Coordinated bombings of trains in Madrid killed 191 people and injured 1,900 – photo credit CBC
Nobody knows the intricacies and persistence of these networks better than David Gutelius who recently testified before the US Senate Subcommittee on African Affairs – his full testimony is here. Gutelius notes:
None of these larger issues – with one exception – is new. The southern Sahara has seen serious desiccation punctuated by severe periodic droughts over the last forty years, which has had a devastating impact on local livelihoods. Northerners (Arabs and Tamshek in particular) are, as ever, largely seen and treated as bandits by the southern majorities who control national politics, armed forces, foreign direct investment, and the foreign aid that flows into Mali and Niger. Informal trade remains a staple of economic activity through the desert – there are few others ways for people to sustain themselves in the Sahara’s edge.
I would add that the split between northerners and southerners that Gutelius mentions should not be overdrawn, at least in terms of these networks. These drug networks go far beyond overlapping relationships of criminals and terrorists. To a large degree they include the entities of the state designed to thwart such illegal activity: political institutions and the armed forces. And they also manipulate foreign aid and foreign direct investment. Take a hard look at what is going on in Guinea , for just one example, and you will see a state largely hijacked by a military that is fully engaged in the trafficking of drugs and weapons. Another example is Mali, where Touareg rebels have claimed an independent state in the northern region and where Libya and Algeria are involved in a variety of ways.
Touareg Rebel in Mali – Photo Credit: Les Afriques
The next paragraph in Gutelius’ testimony also bears especially close reading:
The one major exception to these longer-term dynamics is the changing nature and scale of smuggling. Over the past decade, and particularly in the last four to five years, the volume of trade has increased and cocaine has rapidly overtaken other commodities (people, cigarettes, fuel) in the long distance cross-desert trade. Demand from Europe and the relative efficiency of South American cartels in moving drugs to and through West African ports has led an exponential growth in the value and volume of the trade. Less appreciated,however, is that this has affected social and political patterns that may be creating more opportunities for political disintegration as the sheer number of those involved in this new trade grows. In my view, this is the largest current threat to regional stability – rather than either AQIM (Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb)specifically or reformist Islam more generally.
And his summary paragraph nicely puts the issue into a perspective that is extremely useful for policymakers:
In summary, the threat of instability in the Sahel is real, but the source of that threat is more directly linked to economic desperation, criminality, and differential access to political and economic control rather than Al-Qaida or Salafist ideology. AQIM and its allies still pose a real threat. But we tend give the group more credit than it deserves. U.S. counterterrorism efforts should provide a well-planned, integrated programmatic focus on those larger regional challenges and hold itself and its partners accountable for outcomes. The stakes related to the growing criminality in the region that feeds violence and erodes societal institutions are high and growing – not just for African governments, but for the U.S. and Europe as well. We ignore these at our collective peril.
My only addition to Gutelius’ summary is that US efforts in addressing this issue ought not be limited to counter-terrorism strategy but must also include regional development programs targeted to ameliorate the conditions of “economic desperation, criminality, and differential access to political and economic control.” Weak states and their corresponding sclerotic institutions are fertile ground for corruption – no surprise there. But addressing those weaknesses in a way that also counter the money and force of groups like AQIM and FARC who now have vested (and often mutual) interests in maintaining the flow of drugs, arms and money is a daunting task. Networks of loyalty have been developed that foreign governments and international aid organizations will be unlikely to compete with on their own, particularly as the those networks of loyalty reach into West and North African governments at very high levels. This will take years to undo and will require deft diplomacy and coordinated efforts that include foreign assistance, support of local police investigations, counter-terrorism and sustained resources. What does this mean in real terms? It likely translates into a decade of multilateral engagement in the region and sustained efforts to enhance the capacity and role of national and regional institutions such as courts, police forces, parliaments and oversight agencies – and links with civil society. All in all, that is standard fare for the democracy and governance part of the US Agency for International Development but for too long this part of the world has been seen as ancillary to US strategic interests. That must change and resources must follow. In addition, diplomatic pushes must be made that bring competing forces in the Maghreb to work together, no mean feat. That will require a joint US and European approach and new carrots and probably a few sticks.
Some of those carrots might well include more programmed visits to the US via the International Visitors Leadership Program through the US embassies in the region. Also included might be more programs to bring African students to the US and more university partnerships through USAID and Higher Education for Development. And to be sure enormous amounts of money on economic and agricultural development programs will have to be expended (experience shows this can be wildly counterproductive if the funds are diverted by the very actors who have created the problems being addressed). The sticks will require continued and probably expanded engagement of the U.S. military (the US African Command – AFRICOM – was established in 2007). There will also be hard conversations with regimes in the region and a coordinated approach from the US and France (this has not been easy to do in the past). These are all long-term strategies in support of the more immediate security needs – but we need to be able to engage in short-term tactics with broader goals in mind. Yes, we will have to interdict what we can but we can only arrest so many people; the overarching contextual issues must be attended to if we have any hope of mitigating this threat. Finally, bureaucratic barriers within the US government that put “Africa” in one bureau and the Maghreb in another must be addressed. To continue to see North Africa as distinct from West Africa will be of little use in this effort; these trade routes and networks have existed for centuries and the flow of drugs and arms along them is merely the latest iteration in an old story.
