Is heroin ‘corridor’ fuelling Cabo Delgado carnage?

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime’s Mozambique representative Cesar Guedes has argued that the trafficking of heroin to Europe via Mozambique is one of the main reasons for the conflict in Cabo Delgado Province, where the government forces are fighting Islamic guerillas. Interviewed by the Portuguese news agency Lusa, Guedes said that Afghan heroin production has tripled over the past decade, and Mozambique is on one of the ‘corridors’ used to transport the drug. A report on the allAfrica site notes that he said Kenyan and Tanzanian authorities have increased their vigilance and forced traffickers to seek ‘new routes and new markets’. ‘The (Mozambican) borders are enormous and the authorities are not everywhere. And the traffickers know this,’ he said. He argued that in Cabo Delgado the traffickers ‘prefer a situation of instability because they can then choose better their space and time’ to transport the drug.

Full report on the allAfrica site