by Sylphes Mangaya, The Congo, 23 April 1997
THEME = DRUGS
The Observatoire Géopolitiques des Drogues (OGD) took the initiative to organise a three-day symposium on "Sub-Saharan Africa's Drug Situation". The event was supported by the European Union, UNESCO and France's Ministry for Cooperation. It was held at UNESCO's headquarters in Paris from 1-3 April. In his opening address, UNESCO's Assistant Director, Henri Lopes, said: "There reaches a point in drug-taking, when the effects are irreversible". The symposium aimed to warn people against the increase in production and use of drugs in Sub-Saharan Africa.
For the first time, experts, judges, journalists and researchers (from Africa, Asia, Europe and the USA) succeeded in alerting donor organisations for Africa, like the World Bank, about Africa's drug problems. It's clear this is not a priority for them. Other organisations like the French Institute for Scientific Research for Development and Cooperation (ORSTOM), the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNS), and even the European Union have for a long time been reluctant to even consider the question. They reckoned that if they were to tackle the problem, they would run the risk of creating "diplomatic incidents".
Pascale Perez is a geographer and co-ordinates the OGD's projects for Africa. He said that the illegal production of drugs is a feature of Sub-Saharan countries' economies and cannot be simply ignored. He said that there is increased production in countries like: Zaire, Cameroon, The Congo, Mozambique...This is a result of democratisation and above all, of the effects of Structural Adjustment Programmes imposed on these countries by donor nations and organisations. Things really got serious in the 1980s, especially as regards cannabis production, when African peasant farmers could only make a living by growing illegal drugs.
What had happened? In the 1970s there had been a dramatic price fall on the world markets for such crops as cocoa, coffee, cotton, etc. Then came the 1980s and the period of imposed Structural Adjustment Programmes. Government subsidies to farmers were cut and there was less and less distribution of fertilizers and seeds, plus a dramatic increase in prices.
Farmers had to look for alternatives and turned to more economically productive crops. Cannabis was in great demand in Europe and this was an answer to their needs. Let's look at Côte d'Ivoire and see what you can get from banned crops as compared with ordinary crops. In 1995, one hectare of cultivated cannabis brought in a hundred times more than one hectare of cocoa. And one hectare of marijuana brought in fifty-five times more than one hectare of rice or cassava - basic crops in this part of Africa. It's illegal to grow cannabis, marijuana and the like. But because it's illegal, producers run a number of risks, so their prices are high.
Narcotics trading is also an element in Africa's on-going armed conflicts. According to Alain Labrousse, OGD's Director, "The cannabis trade influences Africa's conflicts". For example: In Senegal, the Casamance rebels imposed a tax on the cannabis fields. In 1994, the Senegalese army destroyed 300 cannabis plants i.e. a fifth of the region's agricultural production. Marijuana is exchanged for arms as well. In Liberia, the war lord, Charles Taylor used the ports under his control to transport cargoes of cannabis. Italians and Greeks were hand-in-glove with him.
In Africa, cannabis finds a ready market among the militia, the military and the police. In The Congo, the drug-bedevilled militia and police are frequently held responsible for the present crime-wave in the country's towns and cities. They're also heavily involved in the narcotics trade. For a long time, mandrax helped finance certain South African freedom movements.
Jean-François Bayart is a sociologist and Director of the Centre of Studies for International Relations. During the symposium he took the floor to explain that from his experience, he knows that Heads of State in Africa are far from being innocent in matters concerning their country's economic problems. These men are sometimes ringleaders in smuggling rackets and attempts to cheat the tax man. Their "colleagues" are involved in the illegal arms and narcotics trade, and in other criminal activities. Company boards of directors, are nothing more than mafia-type gangs. Africa's economy is characterised as being dominated by what can best be described as "unofficial, illegal and criminal activities". A good example is the case of twenty diplomats from Equatorial Guinea, who, a while back, were caught with a large consignment of cocaine in their possession.
Raymond Kendall is Interpol's Secretary General. He says that narcotics' networks have become very sophisticated. Today, what concerns Africa, concerns the whole world. Since 1990, several African capitals have become transit zones for the narcotics trade. African dealers have turned to South-East Asia for their supplies. The networks are controlled by Ghanaians and Nigerians. Interpol says that a number of airlines such as Ethiopian Airlines and Air India are very much implicated in the traffic of hard drugs (heroine and cocaine). Carriers take the drugs through Africa and on to the United States by direct flights. The drug-smugglers pretend to be students and are met off their flights by Africans, resident in the USA.
From 1989 onwards, Interpol noticed that cocaine coming from Rio de Janeiro, appeared in Africa, mainly in transit cities such as Lagos, Abidjan, Lome and Cotonou. Mr.Kendall remarked that Brazil is the preserve of African drug barons. The African illegal drugs market is full of psycotropes, amphetamines or barbiturates. Dealers use false health declarations to buy tons of what is claimed to be "medicine" from Europe and India.
New, more sophisticated networks run by Nigerians have seen the light of day in Eastern Europe. Professor Miroslav Nozina of the Institute for International Relations, University of Prague, explained that in Prague, Sofia and Warsaw, the narcotics trade is run by people coming from Eastern Europe and from Africa. Most of these dealers have Nigerian passports. Professor Nozina says that all these traffickers have family links. Also, you will find area and interest groups working together e.g. From West Africa: Ghanaians work with Nigerians and Senegalese. Sometimes they are university colleagues. In Prague, some drug dealers are former chemistry class-mates. They have residence permits, which makes it easier for them to travel around Europe. They're extremely active in organised crime, in providing false passports, in smuggling people in and out of countries, in the traffic of arms coming from Nigeria and sold in Chad. It is confirmed that the Russian mafia have close links with these African networks.
International organisations fighting the narcotics trade, don't know much about what's happening on the African scene - mainly due to lack of expertise. This explains why they've done nothing about it. "We're just getting off the ground", says Michel Pipelier, who is with the French Cooperation Ministry. Nevertheless, his department has made a valuable contribution in the fight against drug trafficking, by training police and judges for dealing with criminals involved in the "trade". He's also helped various countries to ratify international anti-drug conventions, and to revise their laws in accordance with these conventions. He informed the symposium, that France has given practical support to the up-dating of Interpol networks, in their fight against illegal drugs. He regretted, however, that efforts made in this direction by twenty African countries, have not so far proved very effective.
For example, the anti-narcotics brigade set up in The Congo in the beginning of 1990, is still inactive. In this case, perhaps it would be better to train the whole police force in anti-narcotics tactics, rather than just a specialised group. In countries such as South Africa and Nigeria, a lot of money has been invested in the fight against drug trafficking, yet the results are still insignificant. Patrice Dufour represented the World Bank at the symposium. He suggested that efforts should be made to reorganise regional structures covering such areas as responsibility, decentralisation, working together.
Participants were convinced that it's no use going blindly into the fight against drug trafficking. Abdul Latif is the United Nations Programme for the Control of Drugs (PNUCID)'s Director for Asia and the Pacific. He said: "To eliminate cannabis, we have to take a global approach to rural development. When you go to a village, don't blurt out that you've come to fight against drugs. Say you've come to help them develop agriculture...all kinds of agriculture. Little by little, you can encourage them to do away with growing cannabis. If you don't take things easy first of all, you'll only cause problems for those people who are grow cannabis".
Should cannabis be legalised, so that inevitably its price on the world market falls, simply because there'll be so much of it around? Opinions were divided on this question. Alain Labrousse (OGD) said there is a problem. "Drug trafficking causes the crime rate to rise. At the same time, if you legalise cannabis this means its price falls, and this will be a fatal blow for the Third World population".
One thing is clear. Drug use in Africa is going up and up. "We were not warned about the consequences of heroine arriving in Africa", deplored one speaker. Young people even from the age of seven, start using drugs because cannabis is grown in their villages. In Benin, Professor René Gualbert Ahyi, a psychiatrist, says that the peasants drug their cattle so as to increase their working capacity in the fields. In urban centres, prostitutes use drugs to get "high" or to dope their clients in order to rob them afterwards. In Ghana, 15% of the population use cannabis. Experts present at the symposium, condemned advertisements against smoking and alcohol, because these ads encourage the youth to turn to narcotics as an alternative.
In addition to cannabis, psycotropics such as mandrax, valium or rohypnol drugs are used, as well as hard drugs like cocaine and heroine, which are used especially among poor populations. These were originally used only in wealthy circles, because they were very expensive. Nowadays, in some countries, there is a real boom in the use of cocaine and crack. In Dakar for instance, the number of "crackhouses" has increased enormously, so much so, that it is reckoned there are more crack consumers in Dakar than in Paris.
African specialists in the drug problem say that only non- governmental organisations (NGO)s have undertaken a serious fight against drug trafficking the use of drugs. This statement is a bitter blow for PNUCID which puts all its efforts into supporting African government projects, even if there's not much to show by way of results. Many speakers were worried by the international organisations' efforts in the fight against drugs. They said that too much emphasis is placed by these organisations on countries like South Africa and Nigeria, whereas every other country needs similar attention. There's also grave doubts about the efficacy of the World Day Against Drugs, organised by the United Nations in June each year.
Africa is now experiencing the same drug problems as Latin America experienced in the 1970s. Today, many African country's economies are based on the production, marketing and sale of drugs! Donor nations and organisations are now waiting to hear what those African countries who participated in the symposium, are going to do about solving their particular drug problems.
But these same donor nations and organisations have done nothing to find any reasonable policy on agricultural development that will replace cannabis production!
END