Arms-Drug Trafficking in African countries and the Terror Nexus

U.S. Defense Establishment and the American Taxpayer

Now look, how many more decades do these people plan on emptying an ocean with a sieve? Russian President Vladimir Putin noted in a press conference that disrupting Islamic State's oil smuggling trade starts with asking which governments are buying the oil. It's the same with transnational trade in illicit drugs, slaves, and weapons. 

What we're actually seeing played out again and again is the U.N. Oil for Food Program, with bombs and Islamic blather thrown in. 

If you want to shut down the terror groups, you must confront the fact that it's governments that are keeping them in business either by acting as facilitators or buyers, and by using the groups as mercenaries.

You have to go after the governments. There's no other way. The way that has been tried since 9/11 -- destroying entire nations while throwing away valuable lives on battlefields -- has not worked. But it has generated mass murder on a scale that evokes human slaughters carried out in the last century by totalitarian governments.    

All right. Here's a helpful video/transcript summary from SouthFront regarding Boko Haram and other major Salafist criminal players in Africa that fund themselves with crossborder contraband business.  And by the way please send those people at SouthFront money. Their constant fundraising is grating on my nerves.  

From the transcript: 

[...]

The main sphere of Boko Haram’s activity is the region of Lake Chad and in the northeastern part of Nigeria where main trafficking routes are localized. The group is able to get revenue from providing logistical support to drug lords transporting heroin and cocaine to Europe through Port Harcourt and Port of Calabar in Nigeria. Any attempts to push militants from this region face a tough response of Boko Haram defending its financing sources.

Now, Boko Haram is expanding its business into Port of Abidjan and Port of San Pedro and corrupting port officials in order to allow trafficking there.

Another well-known transport route of drugs and arms lays through the northern part of Mali to Libya, Morocco and Algeria. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and local jihadi groups are the beneficiary party of this route. AQIM and Boko Haram don’t coordinate military operations or terror acts. The only thing what unites these groups is involvement in a wide network of trafficking from the South African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic.

Thus, AQIM and Boko Haram operate as a kind of criminal syndicates with main aim is to build a transnational criminal network. These groups use Jihadi ideology and propaganda as a common tool to hide their real aims and rake in recruits in the region of activity. Al-Shabaab which operates in Somali has a similar pattern. The only difference -- Al-Shabaab is seeking to control arms trafficking from Yemen.

[END REPORT]