Abstract
Regarding illicit routes, Africa, and concretely the Sahel becomes one on the main doors of the drug sent from Latin America. But there is no only drug. The same routes are used by the mafias as routes of migratory flows. In this sense, the Maghreb and the Sahel had registered recently an important increase in the illicit traffics. These routes are used by the transnational organized crime groups, which have illegal activities of arms traffic, money laundry, traffic of human beings as well as other illicit traffics. In this sense, Africa is the new ‘paradise’ for any type of illicit traffics: drugs, human beings, weapons and raw materials such as precious stones, ivory, gold, platinum, wood, or oil... Particularly, across the Sahel region there are some specific conditions such as conflicts and unresolved internal tensions, political instability, state fragility and widespread power vacuum, vast uncontrolled and permeable frontiers, institutional weaknesses or corrupt regimes, that constitute a perfect breeding ground for the criminal networks. All of these circumstances contribute also to generate the proliferation of non-State actors in North Africa, as armed groups, insurgent movements, ethnic militias, organized crime groups, contrabandists, traffickers as well as extremist religious groups. The result of this is a region with an important increment of violent extremism and terrorist activity (sometimes linked with criminal groups creating a hybrid hazard), the proliferation of migrant smuggling mafias, as well as the drug caravans. The aim of the paper is analyzing the new transnational crime organizations based in Africa, and at the same time, the tools to deal with this threat. The research focuses on the main conglomerates of crime, the links between Africa and Latin American organized crime groups and how this danger in combination with terrorist groups could have a massive impact in the security of the region as well as for the world security.
Panel: Hybrid Threats, Criminal Insurgency and the Path Toward Multi-Domain Security
Cite this presentation
@inproceedings{eiss-2018-criminal-networks-in-africa-a-new-door-of-latin-america-traffics,
author = {Raquel Barras Tejudo},
title = {Criminal Networks in Africa: a New Door of Latin America Traffics?},
booktitle = {European Security Studies Conference 2018},
year = {2018},
url = {https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2018-criminal-networks-in-africa-a-new-door-of-latin-america-traffics.html}
}