Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy
Jane's Intelligence Review
December 1, 2005
Trans-Mediterranean drug trafficking from Morocco has grown in
line with European consumption, but now also provides the infrastructure
for smuggling people and consumer goods. Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy reports.
Part one: Morocco
said to produce nearly half of the world's hashish supply,
Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy, Jane's
Intelligence Review, 1 November 2005.
Most of the hashish produced in Morocco is sold abroad, overwhelmingly
in Europe, although there is a significant domestic consumer market
for the drug.
European consumption has long acted as a pull factor on Moroccan
hashish production. Spain and France not only contributed to the development
of cannabis cultivation in Morocco during the colonial era but, more
recently, their respective growing hashish consumer markets have also
spurred production in the Cherifian kingdom.
The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (Website),
for example, notes that in France the "lifetime prevalence rates
for cannabis use among adults aged between 15 and 64 increased from
21.9 per cent in 1999 to 26.2 per cent in 2002".
The parallel increases of hashish production in Morocco and of hashish
consumption in Europe are attested to by the rise in European seizures
of Moroccan hashish noted in the United Nations Office on Drugs and
Crime World Drug Report 2005 (Report),
which reports that seizures have risen from about 200 tonnes in 1985
to 950 tonnes in 2003.
In 2003, out of global cannabis resin seizures of 1,361 tonnes,
950 were seized in Europe and 96 in Morocco. France is the world's
fifth highest-ranking country in terms of hashish seizures (six per
cent). Spain, which is Morocco's closest European neighbour, seized
most of the world's hashish in 2003: 727 tonnes, that is, 53 per cent
of global seizures and 76 per cent of European seizures. That Spain
seizes that much hashish is evidence of the importance of the Spanish
territory as a transit zone for Moroccan hashish. It is also most
likely a legacy from when Spain and France split the Moroccan kingdom
in two protectorates in 1912, when Spain ruled over the northern half
of the country and granted the right to cultivate cannabis to a few
tribes. It is therefore worth noting that the former colonial powers
that held sway over Morocco are most directly concerned about Moroccan
hashish trafficking and consumption.
Although all of the hashish consumed in Spain and 82 per cent of
that consumed in France is estimated by the United Nations Office
on Drugs and Crime to be of Moroccan origin, the two countries are
far from being the only European consumers of Moroccan hashish. Eighty
per cent of the cannabis resin destined for the West and Central European
markets is estimated to originate in Morocco, and national markets
such as those of Portugal, Sweden, Belgium and the Czech Republic,
among others, are overwhelmingly dominated by Moroccan hashish. In
accord with a geographical logic, most Moroccan hashish consumed or
transiting in France comes by way of Spain, mostly by road: most French
seizures are conducted at the Spanish border. Also, due to the central
location of France within Europe, less Moroccan hashish is imported
from the Netherlands to France than from France to the Netherlands.
Trafficking from Morocco
As many seizures have shown during the last decades, most large shipments
of Moroccan hashish are exported from Morocco across the Mediterranean
Sea aboard fishing vessels and private yachts. As explained in the
2001 Report on the cannabis situation in Morocco's Rif region
by the French Observatory of Drugs and Drug Addiction (Observatoire
Français des Drogues et des Toxicomanies) (Website
& Report),
shipments of up to two tonnes are increasingly being confiscated from
small Zodiac speedboats that are believed to be capable of making
roundtrips to Spain, especially to Malaga, in one hour. According
to the same report, the primary zone of export for Moroccan hashish
is located around Martil, Oued Laou and Bou Ahmed on the Mediterranean
coast, although the bigger ports of Nador, Tetouan, Tangier and Larache
are also used by hashish traffickers.
However, according to the Spanish press, the routes of entry of
hashish into Spain have recently diversified due to the use of faster
boats with a wider range. Drug smugglers are now reaching provinces
such as Huelva, Almería and Murcia y Valencia, where seizures
have multiplied. Important quantities have also been seized as far
north as the Ebro river delta.
Traffickers also export hashish concealed in trucks and cars embarked
on ferries leaving from the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla
or from Tangier. According to the Observatoire Français des
Drogues et des Toxicomanies report, and as shown by recent seizures
conducted in Europe, Moroccan hashish is also being sent southward
by truck to the Atlantic port of Agadir, to Casablanca and Essaouira,
from where it is exported to the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, the
UK and, of course, Spain.
It also seems that large quantities are increasingly sent to West
Africa before being exported to Europe. Recent seizures of cocaine
and hashish packed together and in the same manner were made in Morocco
and in Spain. This suggests that Colombian drug traffickers have allied
themselves to Moroccan counterparts and either now ship cocaine directly
to Morocco, or store it temporarily in Mauritania. Another new route
for cocaine trafficking is likely to have emerged, taking advantage
of African ports and arriving in Morocco by way of Nigeria, Ghana,
Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Gambia, Senegal, Mauritania and Western
Sahara. Some Moroccan hashish is also exported to Algeria, via the
Oujda-Maghnia road, along which contraband and human smuggling also
takes place.
The high level of drug trafficking across the Mediterranean Sea,
where most transportation of hashish still occurs, implies that drug
traffickers benefit from both low-level and high-level protection
and complicity among some Moroccan authorities, a reality that more
than one decade of arrests and trials have gradually confirmed. One
recent case was the dismantlement of the 'Mounir Erramach network'
in 2003, which shed light on the old and complex web of protection
and complicity benefiting hashish trafficking in Morocco.
As is the case in all countries producing agriculture-based illicit
drugs, farmers are very rarely directly involved in drug trafficking
activities. This is also the case in Morocco, where very few cannabis
growers from the Rif have the resources and connections required to
ship hashish to the main ports of the Mediterranean coast, let alone
across the sea to Spain. Hashish trafficking within and from the Rif
requires the roads to be 'bought' and traffickers, not farmers, have
the financial and socio-political means to do this, something that
is unavoidable considering the frequency of police roadblocks in the
Rif Mountains and the many military watchtowers dotting the Moroccan
Mediterranean coast.
'Buying the roads'
'Buying the roads' is a well-known worldwide trafficking and smuggling
process whereby traffickers and smugglers buy their way across national
and international roadblocks and checkpoints. Most frequently, what
traffickers and smugglers buy is the transit of their cargo, no matter
what the cargo is. As recent important European seizures of hashish
in Moroccan seafood exports confirm, both legal and illegal goods
can be traded on the same routes or even together in the same cargo,
something that is, of course, made easier by the marked increase in
movements of goods by land, sea and even air, which has occurred globally
during the last few decades.
The Rif economy depends on a huge contraband trade that feeds off
growing unemployment and pauperisation now that outmigration opportunities
to Europe have been all but suppressed by strict immigration policies
within the European Union. In the Rif region, as anthropologist Gina
Grivello notes in the online UNESCO document (Website),
Compliance and transgression: The impact of international migration
on gender expectations among Riffian Moroccans: "Many families
have had to adapt to the transformation from a peasant-based economy
to one that is semi-proletarianised. Lack of water, devastating land
erosion, the highest unemployment rates in the country and political
marginality have rendered this region incapable of sustaining its
growing population." Both the contraband economy and illegal
migration, or harraga, act as safety valves for the Rif region and
Morocco at large.
Contraband smuggling occurs via the same ports used for hashish
trafficking, although, of course, in a reverse direction. The three
most important entry points for smuggled goods are the two Spanish
enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla and along the Algerian border around
Oujda. Smuggled goods are numerous and range from cosmetics, tires
and detergents, to gasoline and processed foodstuffs. According to
the findings of an American Chamber of Commerce workshop in Morocco
in 2001, the contraband economy provided work for 45,000 people, 75
per cent of whom were women, and generated annual sales revenues of
15 billion dirhams (USD1.7 billion) that evaded import duties and
sales taxation. Moreover, it is estimated by the same source that
every job created in the contraband business deprives the national
economy of 10 legitimate jobs and that the industrial and agricultural
production of Morocco suffers considerably from the unfair competition
of smuggled goods.
The economy of Morocco and, to a larger extent, of the Rif region,
also depends heavily on outmigration and foreign remittances sent
from Europe. With USD3.6 billion in official remittances in 2003,
Morocco was the fourth-largest remittance receiver in the developing
world. According to a recent paper by Hein de Haas, from Radboud University
Nijmegen, Morocco: From emigration country to Africa's migration
passage to Europe (Paper):
"remittances are a crucial and relatively stable source of foreign
exchange and have become vital in sustaining Morocco's balance of
payments. In 2002, official remittances represented 6.4 per cent of
the gross national product, 22 per cent of the total value of imports,
and six times the total development aid paid to Morocco. They also
exceed the value of direct foreign investments, which are also much
more unstable." In fact, emigration, seasonal, semi-permanent
and permanent, has always been so vital to the Rif economy that it
has not changed since European immigration policies were considerably
tightened in the early 1990s.
The toughening of European immigration policies has only spurred
illegal migration and human smuggling, progressively turning Morocco
"from an emigration country to Africa's migration passage to
Europe".
In Between Morocco and Spain. Men, migrant smuggling and a dispersed
Moroccan community (Paper),
the academic Marko Juntunen states: "The gates of Western Europe
were practically closed to Moroccans as Spain adopted [in May 1991]
a strict entrance visa policy for visitors from the south. During
the early 1990s, migrant smuggling on small open boats, a phenomenon
called harraga, emerged in the area, and its socio-cultural and economic
effects soon became visible all over northern and north central Morocco
and in Andalusia, Murcia and Catalonia in Spain. The black market
and underground economy connected with migrant smuggling expanded
rapidly and constructed a new social and economic linkage between
the two countries".
Juntunen further explains: "A long tradition of cannabis smuggling
between the northern provinces of Morocco and southern Spain offered
a ready 'infrastructure' for migrant smuggling. The new immigration
policy transformed migrants into profitable goods, which in many cases
were more advantageous than hashish for the smugglers: the profit
was guaranteed even if the boats failed to reach the Spanish coast.
The migrants were also often more easily fooled than professionals
in the drug business."
As in the case of hashish trafficking, the author states, "there
are numerous different methods of smuggling migrants: in cargo boats
or fishing boats, but there are also networks with contacts with the
crews of passenger boats and customs officials who accept unrecorded
passengers". In Larache province, the cheapest and most popular
method is to cross the Strait of Gibraltar in pateras, small five-
to seven-metre fishing boats. Quite often, illegal migrants smuggled
to Europe are sent aboard pateras along with some hashish. The Spanish
police reported in 2000 that migrants smugglers increasingly "forced
their clients to transport hashish to Spain and meet their budgets
by selling it during the first few days".
The importance of the contraband economy and illegal migration clearly
shows that hashish trafficking, while vital for the Rif region, is
far from being sufficient to sustain its economy. Since the mid-1980s,
a worsening economic situation in the Rif has pushed many people to
migrate to Europe and immigrants from the Rif region have come to
make up the vast majority of Moroccans settled legally or illegally
in Spain. It is also interesting to note that in some caïdats
(a caïdat is part of a cercle and a combination
of cercles makes up each of the 37 provinces of Morocco)
of the Rif region, more than 75 per cent of emigrants have crossed
illegally to Spain or France.
Clearly, the Rif region depends on a complex economy of illegal
trades, made up by hashish trafficking, widespread contraband and
illegal migration, three activities that have grown together since
the mid-1980s. The economic development of the Rif is therefore an
essential and urgent goal for the European Union (EU), if its leaders
are willing to reduce people smuggling and hashish trafficking from
Morocco. However, according to de Haas: "From the Moroccan perspective,
migration constitutes a vital development resource that alleviates
poverty and unemployment, increases political stability, and generates
remittances." In fact, "the Moroccan government has little
interest in stemming emigration while European employers are in need
of labor."
The same could well be said of hashish production and trafficking
if the worsening context of the Rif region and the growing European
consumption were to be considered alone. However, the cannabis economy
is an altogether different problem, since the ecological and legal
contexts threaten an activity that is vital for the Rif economy. Therefore,
a massive effort to develop the economy of the Rif region must be
carried out by Morocco and the EU if its socio-economic and political
stability is to be improved or even maintained.
Eradication and prohibition
After the UN Office on Drugs and Crime revealed in its 2003 Cannabis
Survey (Survey)
that cannabis was cultivated on 134,105 hectares in Morocco in 2003,
cultivation reportedly dropped by 10 per cent in 2004, to 120,554
hectares.
Many direct and indirect factors can explain this cultivation decrease
after years of rapid expansion. Cannabis cultivation, which has long
been tolerated for both political and economic reasons, thereby allowing
it to become the region's main economic activity, has come under greater
international scrutiny after the first UN Office on Drugs and Crime
report was published in 2003. Moroccan authorities therefore felt
compelled to start acting, as is attested to not only by the eradication
measures undertaken in some parts of the Rif region from 2004 on,
but also by the cultivation interdiction pronounced in many areas
by the authorities.
While the 2004 UN Office on Drugs and Crime survey (Survey)
does not give estimates of eradicated areas in Morocco, the US 2005
International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (Report)
explains for at least the 10th consecutive year that the government
of Morocco "has stated its commitment to the total eradication
of cannabis production", but that, "given the economic and
historical dependence on cannabis in the northern region, eradication
is only feasible if accompanied by a well-designed development strategy
involving reform of local government and a highly subsidised crop-substitution
programme". However, this has proved very difficult to achieve
and, according to the International Narcotics Control Strategy
Report: "Moroccan officials have indicated that crop-substitution
programmes thus far appear to have made little headway in providing
economic alternatives to cannabis production."
However, while the Moroccan authorities have not conducted large
eradication operations in the Rif region itself, they have carried
out a few monitoring actions between 26 June and 17 July 2005 to the
west of the region, in the province of Larache. Yet, Larache, where
10 per cent of the country's cannabis was cultivated in 2003, is paradoxically
the province that underwent the lowest decline between 2003 and 2004
(one per cent). The Moroccan press reported that at least 3,600 hectares
of cannabis have been eradicated in the province of Larache.
The eradication campaign was directed by the governor of Larache,
who declared that he obeyed government orders and that a public awareness
campaign had been carried out in the mosques and souks of the province.
However, as previous eradication threats had been numerous and, say
most farmers, clearly formulated so that tolerance by some officials
could be bought, most farmers did not take the warning seriously.
Eradication was nonetheless carried out, right before the harvest
season and without any compensation provided to the targeted farmers.
Notwithstanding the fact that eradication efforts have been shown
to fail and, even worse, to be counterproductive, in Asia as well
as in Latin America, the Moroccan authorities have resorted to a purely
law enforcement-oriented policy without implementing any economic
or development measures to help cannabis farmers cope with the sudden
loss of income. The Agency for the Development of the Northern Provinces
is supposed to conduct alternative development projects in the areas
targeted by the eradication measures. But, so far, more than three
months after the eradication campaign, no economic help has been received
by the farmers even though experience from other regions of the world
where illicit crops are grown clearly indicates that eradication is
counterproductive if alternative development or alternative livelihood
programmes are not set up and operative before eradication measures
are resorted to.
However, since eradication has been minimal in Morocco, most of
the 10 per cent drop in cultivation that occurred between 2003 and
2004 is likely to be due to the Moroccan authorities' attempts at
raising public awareness of the prohibition of cannabis cultivation.
It must be noted that traditionally, cannabis cultivation is either
tacitly authorised or expressly forbidden by Moroccan authorities
throughout the Rif region on a yearly basis so that both its geographical
spread and its total acreage is controlled and, to some extent, contained.
Only such control can actually explain why entire valleys are covered
with cannabis one year and void of it the following year. It is evident
that all the cannabis farmers of a given valley could not have decided
all at once and on their own to plant or not to plant cannabis. Individual
cannabis farmers would have little reason otherwise to stop what is
their most lucrative activity.
In 2005, many douars, or villages, in Chefchaouen province
did not grow cannabis because they had been told not to by the local
authorities. The Moroccan state's ability to restrict cannabis cultivation
in and to some areas is in part due to the sophisticated structure
of the Moroccan administrative authorities, which enables the state
to probe into the situation of each douar, where a mokadem,
or local informant, is appointed to inform the sheikh of
the local affairs of the douar. Each sheikh is responsible
for a number of mokadems and douars, and reports
to the caïd of a caïdat. Every year, in
each douar, the mokadem informs the population of
the authorisation or interdiction to cultivate cannabis and reports
about it to its hierarchy. There is no doubt that Moroccan authorities
have every means to monitor cannabis cultivation across the country.
Therefore, while cannabis cultivation is clearly illegal in Morocco,
it has obviously been largely tolerated by the state since its independence
in 1956 and its expansion has been condoned, and to an extent controlled,
by the authorities.
Dr. Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy is a geographer
and research fellow at the CNRS, France. He studies the geopolitics
of illicit drugs in Asia and produces www.geopium.org.
His most recent book is Yaa
Baa. Production, Traffic, and Consumption of Methamphetamine in Mainland
Southeast Asia (2004, Singapore University Press).
© 2005 Jane's Information Group
