How Venezuelan gangs and African jihadists are flooding Europe with cocaine

Venezuela has become a major launchpad for huge volumes of cocaine shipped to West Africa, where jihadists are helping traffic it to Europe in record quantities.

- Benoit Faucon

Surging trans-Atlantic drug flows mean that cocaine seizures in Europe now exceed those in North America.

(AFP)

Corrupt military officers and drug gangssmuggleship-ments by light aircraft, fishing boats, semi-submersible vessels and freighters heading cast, international law-enforcement officials have said publicly. The cocaine flows to West Africa, where an informal network of jihadist-linked smugglers and their allies then move the drug north to feed high and rising demand in Europe.

“Cocaine in the 1980s is not the same as the one we see today,” said Jesus Romero, a retired U.S. military intelligence officer. “There are direct linkages to terrorist organizations to support their cause.”

Unprecedented levels of cocaine production in Colombia in recent years have overwhelmed traditional smuggling routes, leading traffickers to exploit Venezuela’s strategic location, ineffectual security institutions and long coastline, the law-enforcement officials have said. That has led cocaine consumption to rise worldwide in regions that hadn’t been major consumers, from Australia to Eastern Europe, United Nations drug researchers say.

The confluence of drug smugglers, jihadists and corrupt officials is part of a growing global alignment among criminal gangs, militant groups and rogue governments that threatens democratic norms and social stability, with profound potential ramifications.

Now, the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro—who it asserts is heavily involved in drug smuggling—has brought global attention to the country’s role in the drug trade.

Maduro has denied the allegation.