Over the past decade, West Africa has emerged as a major new cocaine conduit from Latin America into markets of the North. Balkan gangs now operate in its ports. Politicians have been caught abetting the drug trade. And complex economies—ranging from Atlantic fishermen to Sahel smugglers—have sprung up to facilitate the transfer of cocaine to Europe.
How and why did West Africa come to be the world's great new cocaine highway? This piece examines the emerging phenomenon of the narco "transit" state: a country that does not produce cocaine, or even function as a major market of the product, but which has been captured by the money to be made from its movement. Its focus is Sierra Leone, a nation in which infamous European drug lords not only now operate with total immunity, but openly cohort with its ruling elites. It traces the story of Sierra Leone's rise to narco-dominance—and its role in the violent world of cocaine trafficking.
