DRUG-RUNNING REPLACES ZANZIBAR SLAVE TRADE

Two hundred years after illegal slave dealers made their fortunes in
Zanzibar, the Mafia is taking over their old stamping ground, turning the
tropical spice island into a hub of the global drugs trade. Italian drug
barons are exploiting the island's strategic position off the east coast of
Africa as a junction for the shipment of heroin from the Far East and
cocaine from Latin America. For the Mafia, Africa is not so much a market
as the perfect stop-off connecting the producers in the developing world
with the consumers in the developed.

Prof Erich Meffert, Germany's honorary consul for Zanzibar, who has lived
on the island for 12 years, said the authorities turned a blind eye to the
trade, for which they were generously paid. He said: "The harbour is
effectively open, so anything comes and goes.

"The romantic image of Zanzibar as the Arabic fairy tale of 1,001 nights is
very far from the truth. There is a big Italian Mafia presence here and
with the economic collapse in agriculture on the island it is the only
source of money for many people."

Zanzibar has traditionally been a travellers' haven, known for the easy
availability of marijuana. But now it is gaining a seamier reputation, as
the Mafia moves in to exploit Africa's lax security. The growth in the
illegal hard drugs trade in Zanzibar is driven largely by the recent
crackdown on the Tanzanian mainland and in Kenya by local authorities
encouraged by Western nations, especially the United States.

But it is also part of a wider phenomenon. It was in the 1990s that
Interpol and European crime experts uncovered a greater use of Africa as a
dispersal point for hard drugs, according to Julio Fernandez, Spain's
national drug squad chief.

South Africa has become a particular focus of the Mafia. As apartheid was
dismantled in South Africa, the barons who organised crime exploited the
police's collapse of morale and authority. Several high-profile Italian
suspects, including Vito Palazzolo, who is on Interpol's wanted list, have
successfully fought extradition to face money-laundering charges in Italy
by becoming naturalised South Africans.

The port of Mombasa, in Kenya, was seen as an important Mafia hub for
illegal drugs but it came under pressure after the FBI began investigations
following the August 1998 embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi.
Italian Mafia families which had been working in Mombasa simply moved 25
miles across the Indian Ocean to Zanzibar, according to the honorary consul.

There they found a former British colony and Omani sultanate which had seen
its traditional income from the export of cloves and, more recently,
seaweed greatly reduced by a decline in world prices.

They brought with them vast sums of money which Prof Meffert said were
"laundered" by building holiday resort hotels on Zanzibar's beautiful,
sandy, east coast. He said: "The airport here was privatised two years ago,
and while it used to be part of the airport at Dar es Salaam it is now
under its own control."

He suggested that the tiny airport's direct tourist flights to Milan, Oman
and the other Gulf States allowed the heroin to be fed directly into the
Western drugs chain. He said speedboats moored on the east coast had been
used to rendezvous in international waters with container ships out of
Singapore and elsewhere in the Far East.

These boats collected relatively small but lucrative packages of drugs
which they brought back to Zanzibar for them to be moved on. One of the
islands south of the Zanzibar archipelago is even called "Mafia Island",
although locals cannot recall how it got its name.

The illegal drugs trade echoes the illicit slave trade that dominated
Zanzibari history through the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. The prospect
of cheap slave labour from deepest, darkest Africa brought Omani traders to
the archipelago, and so lucrative was the trade that the sultan of Oman
eventually moved his entire base from Muscat to Zanzibar.

Tens of thousands of black Africans were seized by slave traders who
shipped them to Zanzibar before they were moved on as plantation labour to
islands throughout the Indian Ocean. The legacy of the slave trade can
still be seen in the old slave markets of the island's Stone Town.

As Britain's imperial ambitions grew in the 19th century it outlawed the
trade in slaves, and for decades the Royal Navy played cat and mouse with
Omani dealers in the waters around Zanzibar. But in the 21st century there
does not appear to be anyone willing to play that enforcing role.