FEARS FOR STABILITY IN WEST AFRICA AS CARTELS MOVE IN

Part Two: How Porous Borders And Poverty Make Fertile Terrain For
Drug Traffickers

The wooden canoes stacked on the putrid beach of Mbour's main port
tell not one story, but two. Once these locally made,
satellite-equipped pirogues did a busy trade in shipping out
thousands of young men for whom Mbour is the port of choice for the
perilous journey to Europe. Now they have begun to export a far more
profitable clandestine commodity to Europe's shores: cocaine.

Negotiating a path between sand-caked piles of gutted fish and robed
market women haggling over prices, Abdoulaye Boubacar, a local guide,
tells a tale that is increasingly familiar along the palm-fronted
coast of the west African tropics.

"The trade in humans has moved down south but now we have people
moving drugs instead," he says. Gesturing at a group of boys busily
scavenging for fishing nets that might be worth fixing on the
tar-stained sand, he adds: "If you look at the problems we have here
you can see why it can be attractive."

Some 3,210kg of cocaine have been seized off Senegal's seaboard this
year, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The
seizures are the country's largest so far. Last year over a tonne of
cocaine was found by police in a single boat in Mbour, a town of
70,000 people. Earlier more than two tonnes were discovered in a safe
house outside the capital Dakar, 60 miles north, destined for the coast.

European donors and local politicians alike worry that Senegal, an
oasis of political stability in one of the world's most politically
turbulent regions, is gradually succumbing to cocaine's lure.

"Cartels active in South America have come to Dakar and set up here,"
said Abdoulaye Niang, one of Senegal's anti-narcotics policemen, to
local reporters, pointing to the existence of structured networks of
Senegalese, Colombians and Europeans running regional operations.

But Senegal is just one piece in the jigsaw of west African countries
that have become a cocaine smugglers' paradise. Unmonitored coasts,
poorly paid officials, porous borders and booming informal markets:
to freewheeling drugs cartels it's an ideal market entry point.

Traffickers initially targeted Guinea-Bissau to the south, but
Senegal's relatively solid roads and good telecommunications
infrastructure has seen the traffickers move upwards. Ghana and
Guinea-Conakry are other preferred entry points, according to UNODC.
Mali, Nigeria, Senegal and Guinea-Conakry are favoured conduits for couriers.

The UN estimates around 50 tonnes a year, worth almost $2bn (UKP
1.5bn) at western European wholesale prices, passes through west
Africa. In some cases the value of the trafficked drugs is greater
than the country's national income.

Some cocaine leaves Colombia aboard planes small enough to fly at
altitudes of around 2,000m, making them undetectable by radar. The
planes land, often at night, in towns such as Boke in Guinea-Conakry,
from where the convoy is transported under escort to the city for
storage. Last month the son of former president Lansana Conte
confessed to being involved in drug trafficking on television.

Some byproducts of the cocaine trail are far more obvious than the
clandestine shipments themselves. In the nightclubs beloved by
Dakar's nouveau riche, Spanish and Portuguese accents are
increasingly heard amidst French and Wolof orders for imported French
wine. On the city's arid outskirts meanwhile, metallic and glass
office buildings rise, while apartment blocks punctuate the dramatic
Atlantic-facing corniche boulevard.

One local businessman said that whole construction sites were being
funded with drug money. "We're talking huge housing developments.
Senegal is doing well economically but when you see the pace of
construction it doesn't add up. Hundreds of millions of dollars are
being smuggled and laundered here," he said.

The rise in local drug activity only tells part of the story.
According to Antonio Mazzitelli, head of west Africa's regional UNODC
office in Dakar, Senegal's role in the Africa-Europe drug trade can
be seen in Europe's well-policed airports. "The seizure rate is weak;
the real measure of cocaine trafficking is how much is being caught
on people bringing it into Europe, that gives a much clearer
indication of the scale of the problem we're facing."

Senegal has become the largest source country in west Africa, with
434kg caught in 105 separate mule seizures over the past two years.
South American drug cartels often pay their Senegalese allies in kind
- - they get a cut of the cocaine being trafficked. Autonomous
Senegalese smuggling units have now sprung up, sometimes taking
advantage of the country's global diaspora of Muslim entrepreneurial
networks embedded as street traders in Europe, car dealers in the US
or import-export dealers in Hong Kong.

Even European figures represent a fraction of what gets through -
mostly to the UK and Spain, often via France. Averaging over 4kg a
mule, it's indicative of the risks some young Senegalese are taking.

Some locals are phlegmatic about the problem. One Dakar-based
journalist questioned why Africans should care what Europeans - and
increasingly, Arabs in the Gulf - choose to put up their noses.