Mali: Islamic Terrorists Go Total Gangster
18th October 2015
Local officials and the UN are calling for some action on the drug smuggling problem in Mali. Getting absolutely all the Islamic terrorists out of northern Mali has proved difficult mainly because the remaining terrorists have a lucrative source of income. This is their control of part of a smuggling network that moves drugs and people from sub-Saharan Africa to the Mediterranean coast and thence to Europe. There is also a steady traffic in weapons from Libya (where vast Kaddafi era stockpiles were looted during the 2011 revolution) to sub-Saharan Africa via Mali and other states on the southern edge of the Sahara. All this smuggling has actually been going on for years and was briefly interrupted in 2013 when the French invaded northern Mali. But now the smuggling operations have adapted to the presence of peacekeepers and French counter-terrorism forces in northern Mali and business continues.