DRUGS-AFRICA: Barons Transform East Africa Into Transit Point

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Judith Achieng'

NAIROBI, May 19 1998 (IPS) - International drug barons are transforming East Africa into a transit point for narcotics bound for Southern Africa, crime investigators here have warned.

According to the directors of the Criminal Investigations Departments (CID) of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, the region is fast becoming a superhighway for traffickers who transport drugs to South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Botswana, where they exchange them for stolen vehicles.

“We have evidence that traffickers are using Kenya as a market for stolen vehicles in Southern Africa in exchange for Mandrax tablets,” Kenya’s CID director, Noah arap Too, said here last week. He said the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, had also been serving as a key transit point for drugs destined for Western Europe.

Most of the drugs come by air from India to Nairobi where they are offloaded and smuggled inland in south-bound containers that purportedly contain legitimate goods. Some cargo from India also arrives by sea in the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa, some 500 kms east of here, before it is re-routed by road to Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Kenya is a signatory to the ‘1988 Vienna Convention on Drug Control’ and to the ‘Acts on Trafficking Offences’ signed jointly by European countries and the Commonwealth — a grouping of ex- British colonies including Kenya. But even though the country has signed on to anti-drug instruments, it continues to be plagued by the drug scourge. Early last month, three Tanzanian nationals and a Kenyan were charged here for trafficking. The four, found in possession of 1.1 kilogrammes of heroin valued at 1.1 million shillings (one US Dollar is equal to 60 Kenya shillings) were allegedly in transit from Iran to Tanzania.

The arrest came barely 10 days after the Kenyan customs seized a 145-kg consignment of hard drugs marked ‘spare parts’ bound for South Africa.

Authorities here say traffickers defy Kenya’s stiff penalties and that police efforts to control the trade are further hampered by the fact that manufacturers have been varying the form of the drugs to avoid detection.

In 1993, Kenya increased the penalty of trafficking from a maximum of eight years to life imprisonment in addition to a fine of 1,000,000 shillings or up to 3 times the market value of the commodity impounded.

“Our main problem is that the traffickers are getting smarter by using more sophisticated methods of concealing their shipments,” says Peter Kimanthi, Kenya Police spokesperson.

They also stoop at nothing in their bid to ensure that they have a domestic market. In Nairobi and Kampala, the capital of Uganda, pushers reportedly administer heroin shots to school children in a bid to develop a clientele.

Doctors say the first dose is usually enough to cause a young victim to be hooked and force him/her into crime in order to feed the habit. In Nairobi, a kilogramme of heroin fetches up to 1 million shillings according to dealers.

Both heroin, a highly addictive narcotic derived from morphine and, Mandrax, a depressant, are in abundance in Nairobi. “They are sold in many places,” said a 14-year-old street boy who identified himself only as ‘Rasta. “I get my doses from a man whom I meet once a week.”

The weekly doses of heroin Rasta procures from the man he calls ‘Uncle’ make him ‘feel good’ and inspire him with a sense of ‘power’, he says. “I prefer the injections. A dose lasts me a week.” But the cash he gets from begging in the street is not enough to feed his habit. “I need 500 shillings a week,” he says.

To curb the alarming trend, narcotics experts and customs officials from 15 countries met here last week to map out strategies to ensure a ‘drug free eastern and southern Africa’.

“At a time when national borders are increasingly under assault from drug traffickers and their criminals seeking to find ways of compromising national sovereignty in pursuit of their illicit trade, regional cooperation assumes critical importance,” said a statement released after the conference.

The conference, funded by the U.N. International Drug Control Programnme (UNDCP), brought experts from Botswana, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, and Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

UNCPD is involved in raising awareness and strengthening law enforcement so as to halt the flow of illegal drugs across national borders.

A group of envoys is also preparing to help fight the drug scourge. The diplomats, led by the Swedish Ambassador to Kenya Lars-Goran Engfeldt, met last week with the authorities here to pledge support in the fight against the growing drug menace in the region.

The two sides agreed to meet quarterly to increase cooperation and “improve efficiency … in drug control.”