Drug traffickers faced with restrictions to transit routes through Asia and the Middle East are turning to eastern Africa, driving up instability and increasing substance abuse, a United Nations report said. The U.N.’s Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said Africa’s emergence as an important heroin transport route in 2009 was of serious concern in a region ill-equipped to fight trafficking or care for people addicted to drugs.
“Drug seizures and the arrest of traffickers indicated that African drug traffickers — particularly West African networks — are increasingly transporting Afghan heroin from Pakistan into East Africa for onward shipment to Europe and elsewhere,” it said in a global report on the Afghan opium trade.
