Illicit Flows And Trafficking Southern Europe-Maghreb
networks ; between them all , a great porosity exists from the French Mediterranean coast to Andalusia and the Italian Mezzogiorno ( Southern Europe ) and from there to the Balkans , the Middle East , and the Caucasus .
Individuals or trafficked products generally circulate in the same invisible “ pipelines ”: cheap Asian electronics , cigarettes , various narcotics , and sew workers , etc . Polycriminal-hybrid globalized networks are thus born and grow , most often complementary , easily accessible to the nomads involved , traffickers or pure bandits .
Geopolitics of Troubled Areas
Illicit markets ... criminal trading hubs ... transcontinental routes ... transborder
“ grey ” or “ troubled ” areas ... in our study on trafficking from Southern Europe to the Maghreb and then to the Sahel , geopolitics is everywhere and the illicit , hidden is just behind it , in the confines . Let us first look at the peripheral trouble spots , around the geographical area that we are studying .
But first : all along these routes , the logistics of “ globalization from below .” First and foremost , truckers and their trucks are crucial for all traffic . They are the clients of the sex workers , from whom they also buy cigarettes and the dose of cocaine that gives the energy for the next stage . In their trucks , for a fee or for various favors , they can transport illegal immigrants and all the proceeds of trafficking and “ black ” cash to be “ laundered .”
They represent an enormous logistical army . In the center of the troubled zone of Le Perthus-La Junquera ( at the heart of our subject , to which we return below ) there are often , at the same time , more than 3,500 trucks and 5,000 truckers . The same is true of all criminal trading hubs on the China-Adriatic land route .
Outside the Scope of Our Study
THE SOUTHEAST OF THE AREA OF OUR STUDY , the Adriatic troubled
zone , Trieste-Bari-Balkans covers precisely , from west to east and from north to south :
• The south of Italy and its mafia lands of Puglia , Campania , and Calabria ( Sicily stays away from this traffic , and is a bit conspicuous for it ).
• On the other side of the Otranto Canal , the south of Serbia , Macedonia-FY- ROM , the west of Bulgaria .
These are the lands of trade and trafficking of heroin , cocaine , and cigarettes , which go up the Balkan route , and chemical drugs ( amphetamines , ecstasy ), which go down it toward Turkey and the Middle East .
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