Kraehe, George. "Contested Terrain: The New Geography of Drug Trafficking in North Africa and the Sahel Since the Arab Spring". Small Wars Journal, 24 Jan. 2018.

Kraehe, George. "Contested Terrain: The New Geography of Drug Trafficking in North Africa and the Sahel Since the Arab Spring". Small Wars Journal, 24 Jan. 2018.

• Twenty years ago, narcotics trafficking in North Africa, the Sahel, and the wider Middle East, was geographically focused on the countries of the Levant, relying on local production of cannabis and opium as well as opium transported west from Afghanistan. Today, the drug trade’s geographic focal point is West Africa and the Sahel as way stations for cocaine originating in South America.
• The new cocaine traffickers are attracted to West Africa and the Sahel because of (1) the region’s direct access to South American cocaine sources, (2) established smuggling routes and networks, and (3) perceived low standards of governance and law enforcement. Past collusion between smugglers and state officials not only has the effect of eroding the rule of law and the power of central government control, but it also establishes the modus operandi and relationships which survive to facilitate the increase in narcotics trafficking more recently.
• In the 1990s Syria controlled Lebanon’s fertile Beqa’a Valley, roughly 90% of whose arable lands were devoted to the cultivation of opium and cannabis. The Beqa’a Valley provided half the supply of heroin consumed in Europe. The US Drug Enforcement Agency designated Syria a major drug transit and illicit drug-producing country in the international heroin and cannabis trade. 
• Revenue from drug production from Beqa’a accounted for more than 50% of Syria’s foreign income. It also personally enriched Hafez al-Assad’s brother, Rafat. 
• The Syrian army was directly involved in the traffic, extracting cash bribes from traffickers to allow heroin through control points and allowing the use of army trucks and helicopters to transport narcotics to transfer points on the Lebanese coast. 
• In addition, with Syrian government approval, Hezbollah sold drugs to buy weapons and otherwise finance its terrorist operations. 
• For some time, the US acquiesced in the Syrian government’s support of the drug trade, at the very least to ensure the regime’s support of the US-led coalition against Iraq in the Persian Gulf War. It was more important to build a united Arab front against Iraq than it was to stop the Syrian army from facilitating drug trafficking to fund terrorists.
• Cocaine trafficking in Libya had been controlled by Muamar Qadhafi’s tribe — the Qadhadfa — since the early 1990s. Senior government officials, with help from the security services, actively managed the drug trade until the end of the Qadhafi regime, creating relationships and vested interests that survived the end of his government. With the eventual fall of the Qadhafi government and the fracturing of the Libyan state into a collection of warring factions, cocaine traffickers have found fertile ground to build on what Qadhafi started.
• The Libyan regime also took advantage of its connections with militant groups in Latin America, including members of Hugo Chavez’s government in Venezuela and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), which since the late 1960s had acquired control over half of the world’s cocaine production. The relationships initiated between Qadhafi’s clients and South American cocaine dealers survived.
• In recent years, Morocco has been the world’s largest producer of cannabis, responsible for approximately 21% of world production. According to UNODC, Morocco has supplied up to 60-70 percent of the cannabis seized in Europe. Main drivers of this trade include Morocco’s domestic poverty and the country’s proximity to and relatively high rate of interaction with Europe. 
• The cultivation of cannabis provides an income for 800,000 Moroccans, accounts for 10% of the country’s exports, and represents 3% of the country’s GDP. As much as 50% of Morocco’s economy operates on the black market, or $3 billion, and the drug trade accounts for $2 billion of that.
• Cannabis cultivation was encouraged by official policy in the 1960s and 1970s, effectively serving as the basis of a parallel economy. Government officials are believed to be involved in the drug trade or complicit, notwithstanding pressure from the IMF to crack down on cannabis cultivation.
• Nearly all of the world’s cocaine originates in Latin America. At least nine leading Latin American drug cartels have established bases of operations at ports in about a dozen West African nations, with Guinea-Bissau as a major hub of trade for points east and north in Mauretania, Mali, and Libya. UNODC estimated that by 2010, up to 50% of non-US bound cocaine was trafficked, primarily by surface vessel, to West Africa.
• According to UNODC, cocaine seizures in Africa have increased from 0.1 percent in 2000 to 2.1 percent in 2006, a more than 2000 % increase in 6 years. It reported that seizures of cocaine traceable to Africa peaked in 2008 at 33 metric tons as compared to only 1 ton in 1998. By 2008, some estimates had the amount of cocaine trafficked to Europe from West Africa as high as 245 metric tons, or 70% of the European demand.
• Significantly, while cocaine trafficking in Africa has increased dramatically, cocaine consumption in the region has not. According to UNODC, consumption of cocaine in in the region has been essentially unchanged from 1998 to 2011 at approximately one metric ton. Virtually all the cocaine transited through North Africa is consumed outside Africa and mostly in Europe.
• South American cocaine trafficked to West Africa is transported to Europe primarily over inland trade routes that are well-established and well-suited to illicit smuggling. Once used to traffic gold, salt, and slaves, these caravan routes and the associated relationships formed between tribes, villages, and commercial enterprises comprised a complex and informal system of trade.
• Traffickers also have brought in new personnel and established new infrastructure. As Syrian and Lebanese nationals continue to emigrate to Latin America, becoming involved in international narcotics trafficking, so have a number of 'apparently wealthy' Latin Americans emigrated to West Africa, where they claim to be investors in the local economy.
• Traffickers also have established narcotics wholesale distribution centers in West Africa, making the region for the first time a storage and staging area for wholesale repackaging, re-routing and sometimes sale of drugs and not just a transit point. 
• Finally, to complete the network, South Americans have emigrated to Spain and Portugal and have established cocaine and processing labs that convert cocaine base into a sellable product.
• The Arab Spring was a watershed for the region’s drug trade. Pre-Arab Spring, the state controlled the drug trade in many of the region’s countries either by effectively managing it as a matter of criminal enforcement or by engaging in it.  As the authority of many of the Arab and African states collapsed or weakened, so has their control of the drug trade.