FLASH
Shkruar nga Pamfleti
A mafia world war. This is what is happening in Antwerp, where a civil war is taking place within the Moroccan mafia, which pits the Belgian clans against the Dutch ones, who in turn fight against the ambitious Albanians...
After North America, Europe is the largest drug market in the world. The big cocaine trade alone, according to Europol, is worth more than ten billion euros and involves tens of thousands of workers, from drug traffickers to front-runners, involved in trafficking, selling and cleaning.
Cocaine is worth a third of the EU's entire drug market, but is responsible for almost all the deaths, injuries and violence that occurs in Europe each year. Europe which, since being conquered by cocaine, has been plunged into a vortex of brutal drug wars coming from Latin America.
The Costa del Sol, the French coast, the Scandinavian suburbs, English metropolises, Belgian cities and Dutch ports are the main theaters of the cocaine wars that are taking over the streets of Europe. Malaga, Marseille, Stockholm, London and Amsterdam are the European drug centers, but Antwerp is the capital.
Antwerp, the European capital of cocaine
Antwerp, the city of jewels, ranks first for cocaine consumption - with a daily average of 2,381 milligrams of cocaine per thousand inhabitants ( EMCDDA data, 2022 ) - and is the preferred European port of international traffic drugs.
The above numbers are the expression in figures of what Antwerp is, a city that geography has positioned at the center of the roads connecting the drug markets of South America and Europe. The South American cartels can ship their products to anyone and anywhere as long as the buyer has the money, but they have never hidden that Antwerp is the main route and this is due to corrupt port authorities, anti-mafia legislation non-existent and proximity to the market of the main centers in Europe.
Criminal organizations have adapted to the wishes of their suppliers, establishing operational centers and/or sending crime figures to South America. This emigration of gangsters from all over Europe should have happened quietly, because business requires calm, but ancient rivalries and a lack of coordination have caused the outbreak of a terrible drug war.
The vast majority of cocaine consumed daily in Europe, from Sweden to Italy, carries two labels: produced in South America, imported from Antwerp. This is evidenced by the figures of the drug war, 25 murders and explosive attacks in the first five months of 2023 alone, and huge seizures at the port: 4.7 tons in 2013, 8.1 tons in 2014, 14.4 tons in 2015, 29.8 tons in 2016, 41.2 tons in 2017, 50.1t in 2018, 62.1t in 2019, 65.5t in 2020, 89.5t in 2021, 109.9t in 2021.
An increase in cocaine seizures in the port of Antwerp, due in part to the 2021 SkyEcc maximum international investigation, has worsened the drug war that has plagued the city. Because it triggered a hunt for spies, informers and competitors, which did not spare even the port workers, which during 2022 produced 81 episodes of gang violence, including shootings and bombings, and which in 2023 extended to relatives of criminals.
A mafia world war. This is what is happening in Antwerp, where a civil war is taking place within the Moroccan mafia, which pits the Belgian clans against the Dutch ones, who in turn fight against the ambitious Albanians. The picture is complemented by the entry on the scene of drug lords from France, the aspirations of Chechen criminal families and the occasional interventions of international drug trafficking giants, the 'Ndrangheta and Latin American cartels, to protect their interests from traveling and the bullets of colleagues without rules and hesitations.
The dawn of a narco-state?
Antwerp is the center of a global mafia war that is producing victims across the border, from England to Spain, and which is dividing public opinion and the political world of Belgium. The reasons for talking about a narco-state and asking for an army intervention in Antwerp, as demanded by the New Flemish Alliance, are there: a justice minister lives among guards after escaping a kidnapping attempt by a Moroccan clan;
the ramifications of the war for Antwerp, particularly felt in the neighboring Netherlands, which is the cradle of the Moroccan mafia, led to increased surveillance measures for Mark Rutte and Princess Amalia;
Belgium is the second country in the European Union, after Spain, in terms of the number of clandestine laboratories for the processing of cocaine (EMCDDA data, 2022);
the port has turned into a gray area, where corruption is rampant, as evidenced by the dozens of workers arrested for collaborating with gangs, as well as those killed or kidnapped, and by the fact that only one container in every forty-two is checked for don't upset the gangs;
The central government has so far refused to take drastic measures, such as deploying the army, preferring investments in strengthening port staff, purchases of high-tech cargo scanning, checks on commercial activities suspected of drug laundering - euros and inter- border operations.
However, Bianca's peak seizures and rain of arrests, over 1,700 from early 2022 to mid-2023, did not affect the intensity of the narco-conflict. Indeed, the more it is opposed, the more it internationalizes and brings other realities. / Adapted "Pamphlet" from "Inside Over"
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