Mali mainly, 2012 coup, drugs & more

[bourbon]

In my short time there I observed nothing that looked like evidence of any domestic drug trade. On the one hand, why should I given my horrible French and the briefness of my visit. On the other hand, I have some knowledge of how drug dealing works at the street level (if anyone is dying to know how I came about that knowledge PM me) and I didn’t see any signs of it. Mind you, this is almost all in Bobo. I did see some prostitutes during my few days in Ouaga so the crime situation there is almost certainly different.

But as the linked article points out, you have to go through Burkina if you want to get anything that came off a ship in Ghana to Mali without a (more) circuitous route so a traffic in cocaine is plausible. I was in on a couple of conversations with Burkinabé regarding the mechanics of stealing, shipping, and fencing stolen scooters. Can’t recall the particulars, and all it proves is that there are criminal networks in the region, not that they are moving drugs and/or affiliated to international terror networks. But it does go to plausibility.

Interesting.

Trafficking on this level will spread its tentacles into the power structures of a nation. The big money is in the transshipment to Europe. Domestic markets for cocaine and opiates, or lack thereof, may be a clue into the nature of the trade.

The domestic consumer market for cocaine and heroin in Mexico during the 80’s and 90’s was much smaller than it is today. Basically there was a system and there were rules; if you open a kilo in Mexico, you die. The current violence in Mexico is attributable in part to the collapse of this system in the late-90s and early-2000s.

[ganulv]

Trafficking on this level will spread its tentacles into the power structures of a nation. The big money is in the transshipment to Europe. Domestic markets for cocaine and opiates, or lack thereof, may be a clue into the nature of the trade.

Your comment came to mind while listen to an NPR piece today—the particularly relevant bit begins around 2:10.

[bourbon]

Your comment came to mind while listen to an NPR piece today—the particularly relevant bit begins around 2:10.

It is an issue that is really in need of greater study. The best material I have read was by a French NGO called Geopolitical Drugs Watch (Observatoire Geopolitique des Drogues) that in the 1990’s would publish an annual report called “The World Geopolitics of Drugs”. I think they were tied to either the French government or the EU, but they got their funding pulled and were shut down.