KENYA-NARCOTICS: Gateway To Global Trade

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Mar 26 1996 (IPS) - Kenya’s Indian Ocean port of Mombasa is the economic hub of the East African region, serving landlocked Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi as well as parts of Sudan and Zaire.

But apart from handling legitimate trade though, the port is also an international gateway for narcotics traffickers, the Kenyan authorities acknowledge.

Last year, 12 tonnes of hashish worth 18 million dollars passed through the port. Of that total, six tonnes were seized in Europe and America. In the same year, about 30 kgs of heroin, and more than half-a-million madrax tablets — believed to have slipped in through Mombasa — were seized in Kenya, says the country’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID).

In a speech to a new batch of anti-narcotics officers in Mombasa recently, CID boss Noah Arap Too called for improved security at the port to combat the rise of narcotics smuggling through Kenya to markets in Europe and the United States.

“Drug trafficking through the sea…is on the rise and there is need for more advanced methods of surveillance and control,” Too said.

This month, two British experts invited by the Kenyan government spent two weeks in Mombasa teaching modern methods of drug detection to the anti-narcotics officers. The technique, known as Risk Assessment and Profiling of Containers, has been in use in Europe for the past 12 years.

Demonstrating the system, the British specialists said the method narrows areas of search by identifying containers likely to be hiding drugs. For it to work effectively though, it requires experience and an intelligence network.

Previously at Mombasa, hordes of anti-narcotics officers were deployed to search containers in a wholesale manner, a method which, the British experts said, has proved to have little chance of success.

To supplement the new techniques, Kenya is set to receive four sniffer dogs from South Africa as part of a 250,000-dollar three- year U.N. Drug Control Programme (UNDCP) initiative designed to stamp out drug trafficking in the East African region.

The programme includes dog-handling, anti-narcotics training and the supply of vehicles and drug detection equipment. The dogs — Labradors and German Shepherds — are to work at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta Airport and in Mombasa.

The problem of narcotics smuggling has taken on a political dimension. President Daniel Arap Moi said on Mar. 12 in Mombasa that “Kenya is a signatory to all international conventions banning drug trafficking and will not allow her ports to be used for illicit drug trafficking.”

His outburst followed a report by the U.S. State Department that East Africa was increasingly becoming a conduit for heroin, hashish and mandrax.

The report points out that the increased volume of sea trade expected from the planned designation of Mombasa as a free-port is likely to “complicate efforts by Kenyan drug enforcement agencies to stem narcotics trafficking along the coast.”

“The principal obstacle to effective law enforcement is neither corruption nor lack of political will,” the State Department noted, “but rather, insufficient finances and equipment.”

Last year, the United States granted a mere 45,000 dollars for anti-narcotics work in Kenya.

Most of the heroin and mandrax — a depressant in demand in South Africa — transiting through Kenya originates in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Cocaine sails into Mombasa from Latin America.

But, as the profile of Kenya as a drugs entrepot rises, so does the amount of narcotics filtering onto the local market. For example cocaine, almost unheard of in Kenya in the past, now has a street value of about 73 dollars a gram and heroin sells for around 19 dollars a gram in Nairobi and Mombasa. Hashish can be picked up for under 1.5 dollars a gram.

The maximum penalty for contravening Kenya’s Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (Control) Act is life imprisonment. But stiff sentencing is apparently not working as a deterrent to the highly lucrative narcotics trade.

Apart from Kenya, the UNDCP is also targeting Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia. According to the head of the UNDCP here, Rohinton Senthna, Durban, Cape Town, Massawa (Eritrea) and D’jibouti are other vulnerable ports in the region.