121. Pulling Apart at the Seams: How the Smuggling and Narcotics Trade Are Helping to Reshape Governance in the Sahel
- Author:
- Andrew Lebovich
- Publication Date:
- 01-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Fletcher Security Review
- Institution:
- The Fletcher School, Tufts University
- Abstract:
- The jihadist takeover of northern Mali in mid-2012 caught many regional observers by surprise. For years, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and later the AQIM splinter group, the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO in French), were seen largely as smugglers, criminals, and “narco-traffickers.” This perception led to a curious process by which some analysts dismissed the risk posed by these groups, while others (chiefly, Western governments) developed a near obsession with the prospect that money from smuggling operations, particularly drugs, would finance jihadist activity in the Sahara and Sahel.[1] While regional experts have since aggressively critiqued the notion of extensive ties between Sahelian militant groups and smuggling, particularly in the narcotics trade,[2] it is nonetheless important to assess the extent of these connections and how they fit into a larger regional context. The purported link between cocaine trade and militant groups gained traction among outside observers due to the appearance of both in northern Mali at approximately the same time. Cocaine first began circulating through and in northern Mali in the early 2000s, while the group that would become AQIM, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), achieved notorious renown in 2003 with the kidnapping of 32 Europeans in southern Algeria. [3] Analysts also focused extensively on cocaine, despite the large circulation through and within the region of cannabis products, amphetamines, and other drugs.[4] However, the rise of smuggling networks and economies in the region long preceded the arrival of jihadist militancy. As anthropologist Judith Scheele and others have noted, smuggling in northern Mali began in the 1960s and 1970s with the trade in foodstuffs, especially powdered milk and pasta produced in Algeria, which was then re-sold in Mali and northern Niger.[5] In the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, illicit or semi-licit (grey market) trades emerged, including the smuggling of subsidized petrol from Libya and Algeria into the Sahara, as well as the two-way movement of weapons, counterfeit or contraband cigarettes, and people.[6] This smuggling was itself part of an older process in a region that has always depended on the circulation of people and goods for survival...
- Topic:
- Crime, Al Qaeda, Borders, Drugs, and Smuggling
- Political Geography:
- Africa, Libya, Algeria, Mali, Sahel, Niger, and Sahara