Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Mogadishu (Agenzia Fides) - The Somalia, which since 1991 has been without a government capable of controlling the territory and enforcing laws, has become a haven for international criminal organizations that use it as a dump for toxic waste and as a hub for trafficking of arms, drugs, and human persons. In a recent report to the Security Council of the United Nations, the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Antonio Maria Costa, said, "especially because of the dramatic situation in Somalia, the East African region has become a free economic zone for all types of illicit trafficking: drugs, migrants, weapons, hazardous waste, and natural resources, as well as remaining the most dangerous maritime route because of piracy."
According to Costa, every year somewhere between 30 to 35 tons of Afghan heroin transiting through eastern Africa. Heroin and cocaine (which crosses western Africa) have become a kind of new currency exchange between criminal organizations and groups of guerrillas and terrorists operating in the continent. The boom in world production, which has increased in ten years from 4,000 to 8,000 tons of heroin and opiates in general, is saturating traditional markets such as Russia and much of Western Europe, and is thus pouring over into Africa.
The head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime has stressed that "Africa was once virtually immune from drug traffic and use, but today the continent is becoming the new benchmark for drug cartels precisely because of the poverty of those countries, the weakness of the judicial system, and the corruption of governments." (LM) (Agenzia Fides 28/12/2009)
