Young people in the UK are now Europe’s biggest consumers of cocaine, and until recently I was one of them. But with trafficking networks infiltrating African governments what kind of monster have we been feeding?

Cocaine is a multi billion pound business, and Europe is one of its most profitable markets, with around four million users a year. This may not seem much, but with European user paying anywhere from 45 to 75 Euros per a gram, were spending billions on cocaine every year, which means big business for criminal and terrorist elements operating within the lucrative trafficking networks.

Cocaine trafficking has left a legacy of violence and corruption wherever it goes. Colombia, the world’s largest producer, has endured over fifty years of civil war, violence and chaos and in Mexico the war between trafficker and the government is driving the country close to collapse. What is less known is the destabilising effect cocaine trafficking is having on West Africa, a region where many countries are emerging from years of conflict, through which a quarter of Europe’s supply is now thought to flow.

In order to get the product from the source (Colombia, Peru, Bolivia) to the market (Europe) traffickers have to use transit points through which they can by-pass security and enter through the back door. Traditionally the Caribbean and Nigeria have been the main points of transit, but increased security has forced traffickers to search for other options, and the West coast of Africa has emerged as the perfect candidate.

Strategically situated between South America and Europe, West Africa has miles of unguarded coastline, busy unregulated coastal traffic and a well-worn route through Morocco into Spain. Having emerged from over a decade of internal and cross border conflict many countries in the region are desperately poor, and their governments highly corruptible. In an area of the world were most people live on a dollar or less a day, drugs money goes a long way enabling traffickers to infiltrate the highest levels of government and law enforcement in various countries in the region, dramatically boosting the potential for renewed instability.

Its believed that when the first package of cocaine washed up on shores of the tiny country of Guinea Bissau, the local fishermen used it to fertilize their crops, innocent to its worth. A few years on and the world fifth poorest nation has been labelled a ‘narco state’, with endemic corruption, crime and violence climaxing with the assassination of the countries president, and the head of the armed forces earlier this year.
In neighbouring Guinea the drug trade inspired a military coupe which exposed a web of drug trafficking activities in which the late-president, his family and numerous government and law enforcement officials were personally involved.
While in Sierra Leone, a plane carrying 40 million dollars worth of cocaine from Venezuela was intercepted last year at the international airport; apparently one of many deliveries allowed to pass through the airport by corrupted security personnel.

The trade is also introducing local populations to the curse of crack cocaine, spawning a generation of addicts, funded through crime and prostitution. In Sierra Leone, Crack cocaine had already left behind a fearsome legacy. During the countries decade-long civil war it was mixed with gunpowder and fed to young rebel recruits, many of them children, to induce a state of fearlessness and aggression. This aggression left thousands dead, mutilated and traumatized.

Pastor Ngobe, the founder of a drugs rehab in Sierra Leone called the City of Rest, was involved in the rehabilitation of combatants after the war ended in 2002. He now works closely with drug addicts and he’s worried of the growing influence of crack cocaine. Although crack is still too expensive for most people in Sierra Leone, Pastor Ngobe tells me that drug traffickers are increasingly paying in kind, making crack more accessible and affordable in impoverished communities. This is leading to increased consumption in a country already struggling from a crisis of marijuana abuse and drug induced psychosis. According to Dr Nahime the countries only psychiatrist eighty percent of his hospitals intakes are now due to drug induced psychosis, the product of a growing drug culture amongst the countries jobless and marginalised youth.

Leading up to the early 1990’s Sierra Leone was governed by a corrupt government who increasingly neglected the needs of the people, especially the youth. When the regime took away free education, an opportunist called Foday Sankoh used the anger and frustrations of a marginalised and disempowered generation to wage a campaign of terror and brutality on the very people he claimed to be liberating.
The nightmare that engulfed the country lasted for over ten years, sustained by the illicit trade of the countries diamonds. Now after five years of peace diamonds could be used to fund the countries post war recovery but there are fears that they are now being used as a tool for laundering drug money.

A diamond dealer (who wishes to remain anonymous) from the diamond rich region of Kono told me that South American cocaine traffickers often come to the region in to buy diamonds. He claimed that the cartels are using diamond mining as a cover to justify their presence in the country and that simultaneously they are using the stones to launder their money, a technique previously used by Hezbollah and reportedly Al Qaeda during the war in Sierra Leone.

Lansana Gberie wrote a report exposing the smuggling of diamonds by rebel forces and diamond companies during the war and has been working with British and Sierra Leonean Intelligence to gather research on drug trafficking in the region. He told me that he knew of all kinds of connections between illicit drugs and the informal currency trade, and although no research has been done on the subject he believes that it is ‘quite conceivable that drug smuggling could be linked to diamond smuggling’ in Sierra Leone. This connection is strengthened by the emergence of Lebanese cocaine trafficking networks with close links to Hezbollah. The large Lebanese community in West Africa also controls a large proportion of the region mineral sector, and according to Interpol, diamond and cocaine smuggling is being used to fund operations by Hezbollah and Al Qaeda, strengthening the link between cocaine trafficking and ‘terrorism’.

The UN has labelled cocaine one of the biggest threats to security in West Africa, and its not hard to see why. In an impoverished region recovering from years of conflict, with millions of unemployed youth wondering the streets, the arrival of wealthy and dangerous criminal networks could undermine all the efforts that have been made to rebuild the region and secure a peaceful future for its people. But whose fault is this? Is it the South American drug cartels? The Lebanese trafficking networks? The people of West Africa? Or is it ours?