Drug trade rakes in billions for criminal gangs

Page 49: Daily Graphic, May 22, 2012. ILLICIT drug trafficking and other criminal activities in West Africa generate $3.3 billion profits to criminal gangs annually. The US Assistant Secretary responsible for Narcotics, Mr William R. Brownfield, who disclosed in a statement on countering narcotics threats in West Africa to the Senate Caucus on Narcotics Control, said cocaine trafficking was one of the most lucrative illicit activities. The other criminal activities are found in human trafficking, small arms, oil, cigarettes, counterfeit medicine and toxic waste. “Transnational organised crime, including drug trafficking, is a major threat to security and governance throughout West Africa. In fact, the U.S. government and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) have estimated that about 13 per cent of the global cocaine flow moves through West Africa,” he said. According to Mr Brownfield, drug trafficking in West Africa had expanded to include heroin and cited the busting of an international heroin trafficking ring from Ghana in July 2011. He said another reason drug trafficking in West Africa deserved particular attention was because of its destabilising impact across the region. He said proceeds of drug trafficking were being pumped into election campaigns in West Africa and fuelling a dramatic increase in narco-corruption. “Criminal networks are co-opting government officials and security forces — the very actors responsible for fighting crime. They seriously compromise the effectiveness of anticorruption and institution-building efforts as they permeate political and state administration institutions and build corrupt networks with state officials to facilitate or reduce the risks and costs of their operations,” he said. According to him, “Competition between government factions for control of drug trafficking profits has greatly increased instability in the region. The potential for drugs to contribute to destabilisation in the region is clearly seen, for example, in the case of Guinea-Bissau, where most of the country’s leadership has been implicated in drug trafficking”. Mr Brownfield said it was in response to those challenges that the US Government developed the West Africa Co-operative Security Initiative (WACSI) to undermine transnational criminal networks in West Africa and to reduce their ability to operate illicit criminal enterprises. He said WACSI offered the first comprehensive US government approach to drug trafficking in West Africa with the first objective of building accountable institutions to help address corruption within the justice and security sectors, high-level corruption of government elites, and the culture of impunity. According to him, “in too many cases, traffickers in West Africa have been able to buy high-level protection for their illicit activities”. He gave an assurance that the US would work with both the government and civil society actors “to strengthen the will and capacity to pursue impartial, apolitical investigations and prosecutions of significant corruption”. “Achieving peace and security requires justice systems, not simply the administration of justice. Arresting drug traffickers and their government facilitators will not cure the problem, particularly if there is not a transparent system of justice in place to incarcerate or rehabilitate offenders,” he said. He cited the establishment of a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Special Investigative Unit (SIU) in Ghana which had been able to conduct sophisticated criminal investigations, leading to multiple arrests, including government officials and international traffickers. “Four of these suspects were expelled into U.S. custody and the leader of the Ghana-based organisation was sentenced to 14 years in prison,” he said. Mr Brownfield said the needs in West Africa were overwhelming and needed a well-focused and coordinated effort to succeed. “We face a difficult task ahead of us, and we recognise the need to partner with all players involved to fight this growing danger. The key to combating drug trafficking and other transnational crime is to undermine the factors that permit it – namely the weak rule of law and entrenched corruption – and the socio-economic factors that continue to drive it,” he stressed.