REUTERS
Algeria has put the Army in charge of fighting drug trafficking, identified as the country’s top national security threat.
“We are waging a war. It is a war against a new form of terrorism: drugs trafficking,” Daho Ould Kablia, then Algeria’s interior minister, told the APS state news agency in July 2013.
Algeria is concerned about the link between extremism and rising drug trafficking, particularly in the Sahel region. Senior al-Qaida member Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who claimed responsibility for the deadly attack on an Algerian gas plant in January 2013, provided security to drug traffickers in Algeria in the past in return for money, a security source told Reuters.
Putting the Army in charge sends a strong signal that Algeria is taking the problem seriously, observers said. Fighting drug trafficking was formerly the job of the National Gendarmerie, Customs and Border Patrol.
“Smuggling provides armed groups and AQIM [al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb] in the Sahara the financial means to buy weapons and hire new militants,” said Anis Rahmani, a security expert and editor of Ennahar. “Obviously the only force capable to counter the growing smuggling activity that includes drug trafficking is the Algerian Army.”
Nearly 78 metric tons of cannabis resin were seized during the first six months of 2013, compared with 71 metric tons during the same period in 2012, according to the National Office for the Fight Against Drugs and Addiction.
“We consider that drug trafficking is now Algeria’s number one security threat, and terrorism is in the second position,” a top security official told Reuters.
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