TERRORISM AND DRUG TRAFFICKING

CNN has reported the seizure of a ship with 1.5 tons of Cocaine 200 miles of the Iberian coast. The ship reportedly is involved in a drug network that “stretches from London and Spain to the Caribbean and Colombia,”

The seizure of this drug laden ship comes on the heels of the recent DEA arrest of Oumar Issa, Harouna Touré and Idriss Abelrahman, in Ghana. Their arrest was a DEA, Narco- Terrorism conspiracy case. According to an affidavit in that case the defendants were assisting FARC, a Colombian terrorist group, and Al-Qaeda, in transporting drugs across Africa. The destination of those drugs was Spain.

Alongside these two cases the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime released their “2009 Afghanistan Opium Survey” which states that “90% of the opium production originates in Afghanistan” and “the drug trade is linked to the insurgency and to the Taliban”. When you put all these circumstances on the table you begin to see a direct connection between terrorism and the drug trade.