Foreign Affairs
Libya Now The Port Of Choice For GIANT Ships Of Drugs
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Libya is now a major drug trafficking juncture to Europe, after the 2011 U.S. and NATO interventions.
European officials seized over 280 tons of hashish valued at over 3.2 billion dollars between 2013-2015 off massive freighters that departed from Libya. The same officials told The New York Times that the old drug routes involved small boats shuttling back and forth across the Strait of Gibraltar between Morocco and Spain.
The NATO intervention in Libya spawned a civil war, a failed state, and the largest Islamic State affiliate outside of Iraq and Syria. The government collapse is
The CIA’s June 2016 assessment noted that the terrorist group has between 5000-8000 fighters in its ranks. ISIS controlled the major city of Sirte for nearly a year until the Libyan National army retook the city in August.
Officials say that while traffickers alternate between land and sea routes to get drugs into Europe, Libya is always a central distribution point. Italian investigators even fear that ISIS levied taxes on drug traffickers, financially enriching the group with a reliable source of cash. “Once it reaches Libya, we lose track of it,” one Italian official lamented to TheNYT.
“What we can offer, or make a reasonable inferences from, is that where the terrorists are holding terrain they are controlling everything that goes through it, including the trafficking of whatever — whether it’s weapons or drugs,” a representative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s elaborated.
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