Venezuela key route for cocaine trade

Caracas: Venezuela has become the key trafficking route for most of the cocaine sold on Britain's streets, anti-drugs officials believe.

A crucial change in the global pattern of narcotics smuggling is under way. Last year, about 250 tonnes of cocaine are thought to have passed through Venezuela - perhaps a fivefold increase on 2004.

Much of this ended up in Britain. Anti-drugs officials estimate that more than 50 per cent - and perhaps up to two thirds - of all the cocaine consumed in Britain has been trafficked through Venezuela.

Senior commanders in Venezuela's security forces are thought to be profiting from the trade and actively helping the smugglers, notably by allowing them to use military airfields.

"Venezuela is a magnet for trafficking right now. It's a huge problem," said a senior member of another Latin American government.

Colombia remains the world's largest producer of raw coca, which is refined into cocaine. In the past, most of the narcotics were smuggled north to the Caribbean, for onward passage to Europe or America.

Transit point

Today, however, the cocaine is more likely to go over the eastern frontier into Venezuela where it is loaded on to long-range aircraft and flown across the Atlantic to West Africa.

Small countries with little ability to police their airspace or coastlines, notably Guinea-Bissau, Senegal and Sierra Leone, are key transit points from where the drugs are then shipped to Europe.

Under Chavez, drug-runners are relatively safe from arrest. In 1998 - the year before he came to office - Venezuela's security forces made 11,581 drug-related arrests. By 2005, this had fallen to just 1,082.

The performance has been better this year, with 1,979 arrests recorded between January and March, but they are still well below the totals before Chavez won power.

Venezuela's transformation into a drug-runners' haven has several causes.

Chavez, who calls President George W. Bush the "devil", has officially ended all cooperation with the US's anti-narcotics campaign.

Perhaps more seriously, however, he has also stopped cooperating with Colombia, whose right-wing regime he denounces as a US "puppet".

"There has been a turnaround in our policy since 2000," said Rocio San Miguel, head of Citizen Control, a Venezuelan organisation that monitors the country's armed forces.

"Traditionally, borders in Latin America have been grey, lawless areas. One of the most active in the whole continent is between Colombia and Venezuela. It's impossible to oversee it if there's no co-operation between the two countries."

Moreover, Chavez has a longstanding relationship with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc). These rebels fund their insurgency by smuggling drugs - and they have a presence on Venezuelan territory which is, at the very least, tolerated.

Corruption

Behind all this, however, lurks corruption. Documented cases suggest that members of the Venezuelan army, police and national guard are actively helping the traffickers.

Last June, four smugglers were arrested at the main airport on Venezuela's Margarita Island while loading 2.2 tonnes of cocaine on to an aircraft bound for Sierra Leone.

They did not expect to be caught because five officers from the CICPC, an elite police unit, were part of their gang and had escorted them into the airport.

Much of the cocaine smuggled out of Colombia is flown over the border in light aircraft. Anti-drugs officials, who track these illicit flights, say they have landed at military airfields inside Venezuela.

Here, the cocaine has been transferred on to long-range planes, generally Gulfstreams, Boeing 727s or DC-9s, for the onward journey to West Africa.

America's latest "Narcotics Control Strategy Report" says shipments to Trinidad and Tobago are "often facilitated and protected by members of the Venezuelan military".

No evidence suggests that Chavez has personally profited from smuggling, but anti-drugs officials believe that he must be aware of collusion between traffickers and Venezuela's security forces. Chavez has denounced the drugs trade as "evil" and pledged to act.