11,000%. That’s the increase in drug seizures made by the authorities in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso in just under a decade, thanks to growing regional instability and skyrocketing drug demand in Europe. Between 2015 and 2020, authorities in these three countries, now under Russian-aligned military juntas, seized on average 13 kg of drugs per year. In 2024, Senegalese authorities seized, in a single shipment, one tonne of cocaine at the Malian border.
The Sahel has long been an eldorado for smugglers: human beings – trafficked from warzones to the wealthy coastal cities of Africa or immigrants to Europe – weapons, abounding since the fall of Gaddafi’s regime in Libya and the collapse of Sudan, and drugs, produced in Latin America and trafficked through ports in West and Central Africa to dodge the heavily monitored routes in the Americas.
But in the 2020s, drug trafficking has exploded in the region, benefitting from the regional instability caused by jihadi insurgencies and military regimes along the “Coup Belt”. A major factor in this increase is the dwindling influence of Europe – international programs spearheaded by Western capitals aiming to prevent and combat smuggling in the region have greatly suffered from the pivot towards Moscow operated by the military juntas in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.
Propped up by demand from European consumers and eased by corruption in both Africa and Europe, the drug business is also increasingly fuelling the jihadi insurgents that have conquered large swathes of territory in the Sahel: at first merely indirect actors through taxes levied on smuggling networks, the jihadi groups are increasingly involving themselves directly into the trade, raising fears that “narco-terrorism” might become a severe challenge to the region.
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we are looking at the next Syrian migration crisis when JNIM and other Jihadist group finally topple the regional government. It is only a matter of time when not if and they have been expanding their area of attack to other countries like Togo, Ghana, and etc thing are only to get worse.
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!ping AFRICA
11,000%. That’s the increase in drug seizures made by the authorities in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso in just under a decade, thanks to growing regional instability and skyrocketing drug demand in Europe. Between 2015 and 2020, authorities in these three countries, now under Russian-aligned military juntas, seized on average 13 kg of drugs per year. In 2024, Senegalese authorities seized, in a single shipment, one tonne of cocaine at the Malian border.
The Sahel has long been an eldorado for smugglers: human beings – trafficked from warzones to the wealthy coastal cities of Africa or immigrants to Europe – weapons, abounding since the fall of Gaddafi’s regime in Libya and the collapse of Sudan, and drugs, produced in Latin America and trafficked through ports in West and Central Africa to dodge the heavily monitored routes in the Americas.
But in the 2020s, drug trafficking has exploded in the region, benefitting from the regional instability caused by jihadi insurgencies and military regimes along the “Coup Belt”. A major factor in this increase is the dwindling influence of Europe – international programs spearheaded by Western capitals aiming to prevent and combat smuggling in the region have greatly suffered from the pivot towards Moscow operated by the military juntas in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.
Propped up by demand from European consumers and eased by corruption in both Africa and Europe, the drug business is also increasingly fuelling the jihadi insurgents that have conquered large swathes of territory in the Sahel: at first merely indirect actors through taxes levied on smuggling networks, the jihadi groups are increasingly involving themselves directly into the trade, raising fears that “narco-terrorism” might become a severe challenge to the region.
we are looking at the next Syrian migration crisis when JNIM and other Jihadist group finally topple the regional government. It is only a matter of time when not if and they have been expanding their area of attack to other countries like Togo, Ghana, and etc thing are only to get worse.