Sahel: armed groups, illicit arms trade fuels drug trafficking — UNODC report

Drug trafficking continues to thrive in the Sahel, home to 300 million people and a buyer’s market for guns, because of non-state armed groups which are very active there, according to a new 2023 report published Monday June 26 by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

The report explores the fight against drug and arms trafficking in the Sahel, focusing specifically on how the drug trafficking is fueled by illegal arms trade, both of which are in turn increasing the overall insecurity. The unstable region is plagued by insurgency and banditry, which are rooted in endemic inter-communal tensions, clashes between farmers and herders, a spread of violent religious extremism, and competition over such scarce resources as water and arable land amid extreme climate shocks.

The UNODC report says that many arms trafficking hubs in the Sahel rim border on transportation routes where multiple criminal activities take place, adding that Illegal markets – often hidden in plain sight in towns and villages along strategic corridors – lay unhampered by the presence of authorities.

The quantities of cocaine seized in Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad soared last year, having increased from 13 kg per year between 2015 and 2020 and 35 kg in 2021 to 863 kg in 2022, according to the UNODC report. The largest seizures were made in Burkina Faso (488 kg), Mali (160 kg) and Niger (215 kg) and “are probably only the tip of the iceberg of much larger undetected flows,” says the report.

Most of the drug trafficking is organized “by for-profit criminal groups” that have joined the traditional networks of traffickers. According to experts, armed groups of various stripes operating in Mali have been implicated in transporting drug shipments, including cocaine and cannabis resin, illustrating that illicit markets provide financial resources. Besides cocaine, herbal cannabis remains “the most seized drug in the Sahel”, with 36 tons in 2021, “a record”, the report notes. The largest quantities were also intercepted in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.