The El Chapo of the Sahel, Africa's Desert Trafficking and the Sahara’s Most Dangerous Gangs
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Ryan Reynolds here for, I guess, my 100th Mint commercial. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, honestly, when I started this, I thought I'd only have to do like four of these. I mean, it's unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month. How are there still people paying two or three times that much? I'm sorry.

I'm sorry, I shouldn't be victim blaming here. Give it a try at midmobile.com slash save whenever you're ready. $45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. See details. It's July 27, 2016 in the ancient city of Agadez, Niger.

A sprawling mud brick metropolis, smack bang in the middle of the Sahel. A belt of land where the lush African savannah meets the scorching Sahara desert. It's a blisteringly hot Wednesday, hump day, and as a small nondescript van makes its way to Agadez, three local drug traffickers are about to get burned even worse.

Sidi Lameen is a successful politician, an elected MP, but he wants more. With the help of his nephew, Sheree Sidi, and son-in-law Ali Abdullahi, Lameen dispatches a delivery van from capital city Niamey, over 600 miles northeast, to Agadez, a criminal paradise and home to Africa's biggest gun, drug, and people trafficking routes. The van is refrigerated, the kind you'd send chickens in or dairy products.

Only this particular one is carrying around two tons of top-notch Moroccan hash with a street value of around 2 million US dollars. That's a hell of a prize in a country the UN calls the world's least developed and where the GDP per capita is a rock-bottom 600 bucks.

There's only a handful of guys who can afford to ship such precious cargo through Niger's wild, bandit-ridden highways. For decades, a haven to Cold War rebels, cartels and terror groups. And Sidi Lameen is not one of them.

The hash belongs to a far more powerful man, Sharif al-Taha, an Islamist warlord turned gangster. He spent years fine-tuning illicit routes through the desert, using centuries-old trading routes that made ancient kings on camelback rich beyond imagination.

Agadez, this okra oasis warren of round-earth homes and mosques, crammed with migrant ghettos, narco warehouses and brothels and arms bazaars, has become its prime transshipment point. And it's fueling a migration crisis into Europe, turning its politics upside down and scattering weaponry to violent rebels all over the African continent. To gangs, corrupt officials and Salafists, Agadez is heaven on earth.

to everybody else it's hell utaha then is agadez's mysterious beelzebub a man whose exploits have commanded few column inches but of whom everyone is clear he's very very dangerous locals call him the untouchable outsiders noting a similarity to another successful and slippery criminal lend him another name the el chapo of the sahel

And on this sweltering Wednesday in 2016, he's about to show the skills that have made him, by most accounts, the richest drug trafficker in all of West Africa. Lamine, the MP, calls ahead to Agadez. The goods are on their way, he says.

Time to act. In a village just outside the city limits, a group of men hijack the van and drive it to a secret compound. It might seem like the risk of doing business to all Taha, but this is a false flag. Lameen's own pals are behind the raid, and he gives the order to make the two tons of hash disappear.

Big mistake. Al-Taha has eyes and ears everywhere, not least in Agadez. And he quickly sniffs out Lameen's scam. He drags in the politico for interrogation, but Lameen swears he knows nothing. Kidnapping a sitting MP might be considered a bold move, but not for Al-Taha. He's more powerful than most of Niger's power brokers anyway, and a fair number of them offer the Sahel's El Chapo their protection.

Al-Taha isn't buying Lameen's denials. That's when the reprisals begin. Al-Taha snatches Lameen's men in Agadez and extracts confessions. It's an easy task given he runs the place. The drugs are gone, they say? Okay, I'll take your money instead. One man loses so much he has to sell his home and leave town. Another flees to neighboring Libya, whose civil war has, since 2011, helped supercharge Niger's criminal superhighway. They're lucky to be left alive.

Next, Al-Tahar hunts down Lameen's nephew, Sharif Seedy, and his son-in-law, Ali Abdullahi, his weed truck co-conspirators. His men kidnap them before Al-Tahar demands a huge amount for their release. He'll get his money in due course. And just months later, he'll repeat the tactic on a visiting American missionary, throwing Niger's fragile relationship with Washington, D.C., and its former colonial rule of France, into chaos.

But that's not even a patch on the pandemonium Alt-Taha's revenge has on Niger's domestic politics. MPs are furious at Sidi Lameen for upsetting El Chapo's criminal apocart, and they call to revoke his parliamentary immunity. Lameen, rather wisely, flees north to Morocco. At least he can get high while he waits for justice, or death. His fate will take another three years to play out.

In the meantime, the fallout from the fake raid slashes open tribal, national and regional wounds in the Sahel, whose leaders are so easily toppled it's known by foreign media as the, quote, coup belt of the world. Seven years later in 2023, the ties that snapped that Wednesday in 2016 are going to help fuel another putsch in the army, hounding the nation's reformist leader into a palace safe room and plunging the Sahel into a fresh round of political madness.

And all of that over a van stuffed full of weed. Welcome to the Underworld Podcast. Underworld Podcast

Merry Christmas you filthy animals, you're in a well full of nut-fine-actin' and welcome to the show that teaches you truly how screwed up the world is at the best time of the year. Hope you've all got your presents sorted and you listen to this with a glass of sherry or eggnog or whatever you're drinking and what better way to celebrate the birth of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ than a hard-boiled episode about organised crime and misery in the middle of Sahara Desert.

I'm Sean Williams, of course, and I'm joined by Danny Gold in New York City. Is it snowing there? Are you skating at the Rockefeller or watching Die Hard? I mean, what else do New Yorkers do at Christmas? Ignoring, of course, the horrors of SantaCon. First off, that was an incredible opening. Just monumental. I'm endlessly fascinated by this topic and know very little, so excited to learn more. And I just want the world to know that you wrote this episode in like two days, which is just...

Just wild stuff. But yeah, New York is rainy and I just haven't caught the Christmas spirit. Usually I'm like a white woman from the big city going back to her hometown for the holidays in a Netflix movie. Just give me some kitschy holiday market, ice skating, Fifth Avenue displays. But all I've done is go to the super Italian neighborhood of Diker Heights to look at the Christmas lights and eat some red sauce. So yeah, no Christmas spirits yet, dude. I'm bummed.

Nah, I mean, I'm kind of the same. I don't think I've ever felt this less about Christmas. I'm looking out the window right now and it's blazing sunshine, like 20 degrees. Wow, poor guy. That is not Christmas. Yeah, I'm really hard done by here. 20 degrees for Fahrenheit is what, like 65, 70? 70, 75, something like that. It's pretty warm. So perfect weather, basically. Yeah, it's perfect. It's a paradise here. But, you know, it's not snowing, disgusting, miserable British people sitting around pubs. So I'm not feeling it, but...

I mean, I had my saddest Christmas in New York, actually. I'd run out of money there. I spent the day on my rented single bed in Alphabet City eating a deli sandwich, and I played GTA alone on my iPhone, which I was kind of thinking was sad at the time, but now I'm saying it sounds like heaven, maybe? Should have just gotten hammered and ended up in Christmas Eve in the drunk tank, you know? R.I.P.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I did get hammered. But yeah, it's been a pretty nuts year for the show, actually, 2023. I think we've changed partners twice. I don't know, and put out fresh shows almost every week. You're working on two documentaries at the same time. I move countries and a kid. I mean, I think my main resolution for the new year is basically do airfoil. You're going to finally bench those 350 pounds? Honestly, dude, I'm at the point where my arms are just getting too big for my body. Like everything else looks terrible.

But that's doing well. So yeah, I don't know. A lot of banter so far, but it's the holidays, people. Let us live.

Yeah, man, chill out. It's a good time to say thanks to everyone who listens to the show. So the end of the year. I know being earnest is just about the worst crime on earth right now, but we do appreciate guys, especially those of you who not only write us five-star reviews, which are the only ones we read, but also subscribe to the Patreon, help us prioritize the show, hold off mental illness and buy groceries. I even shook off my guy Bogdan and Kishanel finally, so I'm not looking over my shoulder from an old Dovan's in Wellington.

Next week, we're going to begin 2024. Is it the last day of the year? I don't even know what days are anymore with a mailbag episode. So if you have any questions for us, what's going on with the CJNG, is someone going to do Tyson Fury on drugs charges or who's going to win the ashes in 2025? Get in touch. Email us theunderworldpodcast at gmail.com. So I was thinking at first of doing something a bit chintzy and Christmassy for today, but

I don't think anyone who's tuning into a podcast about organized crime over the holidays really cares about themed episodes. I mean, I reckon a fair number of you are going to be listening on the drunk walk home from the pub. So this one's on a subject I've been pretty obsessed with for a while. Someone actually asked me to do a story on this, but they didn't ask me to fly there, which is crap. And apart of the world, I mean, I've been desperate to visit for a long time.

So this one is about Sharif Al-Taha, aka the El Chapo of the Sahel. Yeah, 2024, let's just get someone to send Sean there. I can think of no better work trip for a young father to take than to run around the Sahel. You

investigating drug traffickers and people traffickers. Yeah, I mean, as we're going to find out, this is pretty much the safest place on earth for many reasons, the weather and the people. There's, of course, way, way more to this subject than this El Chapo guy, right? There's a whole world of

of people, arms, narco, all kinds of trafficking that I alluded to in the cold open. And it traces its way all the way back to antiquity. Don't worry, mate, this isn't going to be an hour on Roman spice traders as much as I would really love to do that. But there will be a little bit of history sprinkled in. I actually, I think that would be awesome. Like maybe not for this podcast, but I would love to learn about the history of Roman spice traders in places like that.

All right, cool. I'm actually going to write it down on the list right now and we'll do it next month. So first off, let's set the scene. What is the Sahel at all? Well, it's this fat belt up to 600 miles wide, so up and down rather, that stretches all the way across Africa from Mauritania and Senegal in the west to Sudan and Eritrea in the east. So that's from the Atlantic all the way to the Red Sea and that's almost 4,000 miles.

And like I mentioned before, it's the land where the green African savannah meets the Sahara, which is the biggest hot desert on Earth for any pub quiz losers. The name Sahel actually comes from the Arabic for coast or shoreline, and that stresses the region's historic position as the terminus of caravan routes from the Med to sub-Saharan Africa. Today's show is mostly going to get to the nations of the Western Sahel, all of which was conquered by the French in the 19th century.

and which now have their own security group, the G5. That is Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger.

Now, above these countries, to the north of them, sit those of the so-called Maghreb, which is a northwestern corner of Africa and the westernmost extent of the Arab world. So that's from west to east, western Sahara, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. And as we're going to find out, all these places work together in a massive cross-country caravan. They carry absolutely everything across the African continent. And these days, very little of it is legal.

Now, a lot of these states rank among the most poor and worst governed on earth. And they're getting absolutely pummeled by climate change, lakes and oases drying, water disappearing. It's pretty desperate stuff. Morocco, I feel like is doing, I mean, I looked into it seriously, but Morocco, I feel like is doing well. No, like maybe just comparatively speaking, but decent economy, got a lid on terror groups. My parents actually went there like a couple months ago. They had a great time.

Yeah, Morocco's a really close ally of the US and Israel as well. And I think they've done a lot of work on anti-terror. So they've got rid of a lot of that. But there's loads of criminal trafficking as we've done in so many episodes before. Yeah, I mean the hash trade. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, but that would be like the Maghreb. So this is more, I'm talking about these Sahel nations like right in the middle of the desert. These are like really desperately poor. Oh yeah, I know. They're all fucked unfortunately. So of the 100 million or so people who live in these G5 Sahel nations, over 7 million of them flee each year, which is like an unbelievably massive number. And obviously it's a massive opportunity for people smugglers who ferry people across nonsensical borders drawn in the sand by the French.

arms, people, drugs. These are the big three in the Sahel. And part of this is down to the region's batshit birth rate. So despite those 7 million people going, there's even more being born. I mean, this is something that leaders are desperately trying to tamp down. It's been out millions of young men and women with no prospects whatsoever. And as we know from this show, nothing good can ever come of that.

Now, Niger is the world's youngest country with the average age, and that's 14.8 years. Yeah, that is insane and just a recipe for disaster. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And there are plenty of disasters kicking off already. So by comparison, the U.S. is 38.1, which is weirdly exactly how old I am. So, yeah, I'm on the way down. Anyway, you've basically got every major Islamist group running around Sahel freely, often with the backing of despots propped up by the West, who are just terrified of what might pop up in the despot's place, a la Libya. We'll get to that further down. And there are more coups than the Mike Tyson Culver House, five in the Sahel since 2020.

I think I speak for everyone when I say, what is a culver house? It's a pigeon nest or a pigeon coop. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe they don't use that word in America, but yeah, that's what we use for the flat cap old guys in Yorkshire who breed pigeons. I don't really get it. Apparently, it's big in America now. There's an amazing film about Delhi pigeon flies. Oh, it's been huge. Really? Yeah.

Well, I don't know about always, but back in the day, it was a big thing in Brooklyn and Manhattan, people who used to fly pigeons and stuff like that. Man, this really takes me back to a story I'm still desperate to do about a pigeon named Pierre in Belgium, who is the world's most expensive flying pigeon. But...

Why didn't these editors pick it up? Anyway, writes Ben Taub in the New Yorker about Chad, for example, is a good example. Quote, there has never been a change to the presidency by fair or free election, only succession by capture the flag. The capital falls and the victor holds the presidency for as long as he can.

It's a gigantic, epic mess. According to Global Risk Insights, quote, despite the decline of trans-Saharan trade during the 19th and 20th centuries as a consequence of European colonization, the past decade has seen a dramatic resurgence of these ancient trade routes, as the interplay of geopolitical shockwaves with the Sahel's existing social, demographic, and geographical characteristics has fueled the emergence of lucrative illicit economic networks.

I mean, that's just a fancy report way of saying everything's falling apart and the Krims are everywhere. So these networks don't just come out of nowhere, of course. During pre-colonial times, Saharan trade routes in salt, copper, gold, spices, and slaves transformed cities like Gao and Timbuktu in Mali, making empires like the Mali, Songhai, and Sokoto wildly rich.

In fact, Mansa Musa, the 14th century king of the Malian Empire, is thought to be the wealthiest human who ever lived. Didn't he do like a lot of people traffic or just have like a massive amount of slaves, right?

Yeah, yeah, he's cancelled for sure. But yeah, he had quite a lot of money. Speaking of slaves, by the way, Mauritania, and this is pretty mad if you don't know it, only abolished hereditary slavery a few years ago. And it's still known as slavery's last stronghold. There's a bunch of good stories on that. I think Alexis Okioa did one in New York a few years back. Anyway,

Anyway, the French come along in the 19th century and they create a French West African empire of their own. But after the French get their backsides kicked by Algeria during that nation's war of independence, the rest of French West Africa falls like dominoes and by the 1960s, all of the Sahel has broken free of Paris.

A range of Islamist movements are forged in these independent struggles, and they'll metastasize into a lot of today's scary terror groups. I mean, there's a pretty strong crossover between these guys and organized crime. In some cases, the Venn diagram's just a big round ball. Arms become a major cash cow. Corrupt officials and gangsters sell vast amounts of mostly Chinese-made guns and ammo to African rebels, mafiosos, and warlords. And there are a lot of them.

A lot of arms come into Central and West Africa via the so-called African Gateway of Djibouti and Eritrea, two deeply corrupt nations on the Horn of Africa over in the East. There's hardly a ton of security to sneak past in, say, South Sudan or the Central African Republic, and it's pretty much open season on arms trafficking. Yeah, the Central African Republic. I mean, when I was there, I always wanted to go to the Northeast because it's really tough to get there. But it's, you know, it's just like a...

you know, everywhere that run it. I mean, this is like 2014, but even then with oil smuggling, diamonds, people trafficking, all that sort of stuff. It's just, it's crazy. Yeah. It's an insane place. What was the name of that old dictator they had that went all like French Napoleonic and like he was doing some crazy stuff. Something with the Bozaza? Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That guy was a lunatic. It's been a minute. Anyway,

Anyway, after the Yom Kippur War in 73 and the Iranian Revolution of 79, there was a major squeeze on the oil industry worldwide. And that fuels cross-border fuel smuggling during the 80s that is still going strong today. More on that later.

Cigarettes also become big underworld business. They go north from Togo and Benin into the desert. Western Sahara's Polisario Front, its socialist liberation group, is still today making money taxing illegal cigarette shipments. I had a great time out there years back. I ran a marathon, did some good stories.

I'll put some stuff on the reading list. Later in the 80s, the Sahel's illegal trades are boosted by the advent of 4x4s and GPS, which you might be shocked to hear are just a little more reliable than camels and a couple of blokes looking at the stars. And pretty soon, there are deep-rooted networks in absolutely everything.

Some bad guys get insanely wealthy off the back of this confluence of conflict, terror and absent states. Take Algerian Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a one-eyed pirate looking bloke known as Nelson or the Uncatchable. He starts out as a member of the Armed Islamic Group, say what you see guys, a more radical offshoot of the Salafist group for preaching and combat which, I mean imagine thinking the Salafists have gone all libtard.

This bunch, they come out of the Algerian Civil War. That's between 1991 and 2002, which itself is an offshoot of 1954-62,

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Algerian War for Independence, and they spring onto the international stage a year later when they take 32 Europeans hostage in northern Mali, and they ransom them all successfully for $6 million. In 2006, they pledge their allegiance to Al-Qaeda, spreading as far as Timbuktu. You might remember Bel Mokhtar from his time rampaging all around the Sahara as an affiliate of ISIS in Syria. You know, I was wondering where I recognize that name from, and that's got to be it.

Yeah, man, he looks absolutely insane with the one eye as well. Kind of reminds me of Abu Hamza in the UK with his hook hand. But yeah, why do these guys? I guess, yeah, it's a good look. I don't know. The ultimate goal for Belmoktar, of course, is to create a caliphate across the Sahel.

A bit like a Malian empire, but a little bit more gaudy and killy. To fund it, he commandeers Sahel routes for cigarettes, drugs, and other goods because he's such a good Muslim. And he allies with a powerful group, and they're called the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad.

These guys are very, very important in the region. Ostensibly, they're disaffected members of the 4 million strong Tuareg tribe. They're Berbers who live across the Sahel, but largely in Niger and the huge, barely inhabited north of Mali. Remember, these borders are just like lines in the sand. There's so many tribes that just move from place to place. They don't really have nationalities.

The NMLA want to establish this independent country called Azawad, which is a great name, with Timbuktu as their capital, more great names. But in fact, this rebellion is led by Malian military officers, and that suggests it might have more to do with drug trafficking networks that they want to take over rather than some organic ethnic movement.

Belmoktar very cleverly cozies up to these guys, and his terror organization soon becomes one of the world's richest, trafficking goods and drugs and swallowing up rival groups like a kind of Saharan traveling Wilburys. Really? Like one of the richest? I mean, that strikes me as hard to believe.

Well, yeah, it struck me as hard to believe. But I think they might be given sort of like the relative wealth in Africa or like comparatively to other drug trafficking groups in West Africa. But they're definitely controlling a huge amount of the drug routes at the time. But yeah, they're probably not as rich as like the actual El Chapo. Anyway, let's take a step back at this point because...

There is a hell of a lot going on here. We've gone from Mansa Musa to 19th century colonialism, Cold War conflicts and the advent of vehicles and the breakout of Islamist liberation ideology to create this well-oiled, expansive, illicit trade route across the Sahel using mad dogs like the MNLA and piss-poor government and military grifters as protection.

All the while, drugs have taken a bigger and bigger slice of the trade. Hash is still huge, of course. It goes from Morocco's rift mountains up into Europe, but first by heading south into the Sahel, then back up through the desert to Libya. Oh, it's really interesting. I just assumed it mostly went just straight from Morocco to Spain.

I think some of it does, but so much of it's getting snagged on the border that actually it's more useful just to send it back and then up through Libya, which kind of tells you just how messed up Libya is. But we'll get into another route a bit further down the show as well, which is really, really fascinating. It's not even from Morocco.

But cocaine shipments, these are the things that have been rising steadily over the past 20 years. South American cartels, particularly the Sinaloans, they've established bases in Nigeria, Ghana, Mali and Senegal since the early 2000s.

Within a few years of them setting up, nine of the ten largest Mexican and Latin American cartels operate in Africa. Guinea-Bissau, with its perfect cocktail of corrupt military leaders, uninhabited islands, and non-existent legal system, soon takes top spot. And we did an episode on them. You did an episode on them, Guinea-Bissau as a narco state, I think a few years ago. But definitely look that up because it's a fascinating place.

It's so interesting. Again, if anyone wants to send me on a, I don't know, five plane trip to West Africa, go for it. But from their first attacks in 2006, the Tuaregs of the MNLA have become another go-to for the cartels.

This route, their route, goes through the Sahel and up through Libya, or sometimes through Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and into Israel. Or it gets flown into Europe and the Middle East on flights leaving from regional airports including Bamako, Ouagadougou, Niamey and Nouadhabou. And I'll give you a fiver if you get all those countries right from the cities alone.

In 2009, this trade comes into spectacular view when reports emerge of a Boeing 727 carcass that's either crashed or been set on fire near the north-eastern Malian visit of Tarkint, registered in Guinea-Bissau and recently taken off from Venezuela, carrying what investigators reckon to be up to 11 tonnes of cocaine to be smuggled overland to Morocco by a cartel of Spanish, French, Moroccan, Malian and Senegalese operatives.

Folks call this plane air cocaine, which is a bit of a boring name, but it's rumored to have been delivered to a dual national Algerian Malian by the name of, yes, you guessed it, Sharif al-Taha.

Similar to our pal Bel Mokhtar, Al-Tahar's rise to infamy follows the terror to gangster career path. He's a member of the Lemhar tribe, and he goes on to ally with the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, or MUJAL, Powers of Al-Qaeda. This is a canny defense alliance. The MNLA are actually rivals of the Lemhar, and Al-Tahar is worried that his drug empire will fall to the Tuaregs and their own cocaine trafficking kingdom.

It's 2011 now, NATO is bombing Tripoli, Muammar Gaddafi is getting pulled from a drainpipe to be beaten to death. Libya is the main export route for contraband and people leaving Africa into Europe, and it's descending into bloody chaos.

writes friend of the pod, Vander Felbad Brown, quote, the collapse that followed the overthrow of the Muammar Gaddafi regime and the subsequent civil war in the country and rise of assaulted militias and warlords provided both weapons and logistical assets for both criminal rackets and politically motivated violence across the Sahel. This is a really, really big deal.

In April 2012, the MLLA elevates its rebellion into a full-scale war, and its leader declares Azawad's independence. By that July, the Tuaregs have taken most of northern Mali. In January 2013, the French are called in to help, and they reclaim the MLLA's territory.

But war is great for business, especially for Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who that year rebrands his terror outfit as the Al-Multahamun Battalion. I hope I've got that right. Well, I don't really care. Carrying out suicide bombings in Algeria and Niger. First off, there's a lot of rebranding going on with these terror groups. Do you think they do... There's market research and they're like, you know what? We're not... People are kind of against... Let's switch it up. But also why only... Maybe it's just creative differences, you know? Well,

Why? Algeria strikes me as, again, something I'm not super familiar with, but I generally assume their government is pretty... They're not known for their liberalism or their pro-West stances. I would assume that they wouldn't be a big terror target. No, but they did, after the civil war, which was called the Dirty War by many, they did disappear a lot of Islamists. It's essentially a war between the Islamists and...

uh, a secularist security apparatus and the security apparatus one. And so they have this like crazy secret police. I can't remember if the guy, there was a guy that was in control of them for decades. I think he died a couple of years ago, but it's like still in pretty lockdown. So I think there's a lot of bad blood, um, there, which our pal Bill Moktar is, uh, gunning for. So, um, yeah, I don't know. There's things. Yeah. What, what don't you know?

I don't know anything about love or relationships or happiness, but this stuff I've got a basic Wikipedia knowledge of. Anyway, after a good run murdering innocents, Belmoktar gets moved on to his guy's Libyan office, where it seems that he's still today controlling the illicit drug and people smuggling routes out of Sieta, Derna and Benghazi, which are three of the major port cities there.

Altahar at this point really goes hard on the kidnap for ransom trade while he's building his own drug empire. He even sells himself to the Algerian government as a hostage negotiator with his own powers in the Mujal, which is pretty ballsy. In 2013, Malian officials issue a warrant for his arrest, but by October it's been wiped. The political fallout is just too damn big.

Some say he flees the Burkina Faso in 2014, but wherever he is, the rise and grind just doesn't stop. Here is the Moroccan outlet Atalaya. Quote, Al-Taha is known for being an untouchable drug baron in the Sahel.

His political relations allowed him to unload Colombian planes directly into Gal, that's a city in northern Mali. Altahar is also responsible for several kidnappings in Niger. Belmokhtar, the leader of AQIM, that's Al-Qaeda and the Islamic Maghreb, so he's kind of like crossing borders here, had very good relations with him. But there are no links between them on a commercial level.

Ohtaha has recently been the protagonist of several negotiations between the Malian state and terrorists. So this guy is kind of a master manipulator. He's playing all sides at exactly the same time.

Then the war on Syria steps up and the rise of ISIS or Daesh only serves to embolden Islamists and flood even more weapons into the Sahel. It also triggers a massive migration crisis as people from the Middle East and Africa try to escape war, poverty and the effects of climate change. Just look at Lake Chad for example.

People have been using Saharan caravans to flee the region for centuries, of course, only now it accelerates at a crazy pace. And Agadez, Niger's storied oasis city, home to 110,000 people, becomes its lodestar. Its centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It's really pretty. But what lies beneath is anything but.

The best resource on Agadez is the HuffPost fantastic piece from December 2016 at the height of Europe's migrant crisis called the 21st Century Gold Rush by Marlia Politzer and Emily Cassie. Oh, yeah. You know, I actually remember that piece. It had just amazing photos and just like insane, insane access.

Yeah, the access is absolutely off the hook. Like they just take pictures of people using their names. These are like full blown criminals, organized crime groups. It's pretty amazing work. Can you win a Pulitzer if your name is Pulitzer? Is that allowed?

Anyway, this is the time when the big publications are trying these ambitious, really gorgeous multimedia features. New York Times has Snowfall, and there was one on the Australian bushfires, I think. The BBC did one on the weed dealers of the Becker Valley in Lebanon. You guys are running around doing great stuff with Vice News. Things are looking up. And now...

All right is a wildly optimistic way of viewing things, but you know, uh, more power, more power. Christmas. Good for you for, you know, Rose half, uh, glass, Rose, 10 or glasses, glasses, half full, whatever, dude, you know what I'm saying?

If people are going to send me to PNG to report on wild cult leaders, then something's good. But yeah, I don't know. Anyway, this piece, it starts well and it just gets better. And it's really great. Someone commissioned this at the HuffPost as well. I don't know what's going on there. Are they just a zombie site these days or are they making stuff? Anyway, here's the intro. Quote, the migrant crisis has converted a tiny city in Niger into one of the continent's most prominent and cruel smuggling hubs ever.

Weapons, drugs, laundered money, hapless migrants, indentured prostitutes, they all pass through Agadez and the trouble radiates out from there.

In 2013, Saharan smuggling networks are making between $8 and $20 million a year. By 2015, it's $300 million in Libya alone, with another 22 mil in Agadez. It's thought a third of all migrants coming through Agadez wind up on a boat to Europe.

Here's that HuffPost piece again, quote, Agadez's downtown is dotted with Western Union signs and storefronts for banks. Brand new McMansions are sprouting up on the fringes of town. The criminal influence of smugglers can seem inescapable here. Consider the tiny corner store that sells baby shampoo, diapers and grain staples that could somehow afford an air conditioning unit and a flat screen TV. Rare luxuries in this part of the world.

If you walk through the back door into an open-air courtyard, you'll find its real income source. A dozen near-starving migrants, sleeping on plastic mats, waiting to be loaded onto trucks destined for Libya.

Then there's the Nigerian restaurant that doubles as a brothel, located on a road a short stroll from the main mosque. After the sun goes down and devout Muslims answer the fifth and final call to prayer, the pimps release the prostitutes they lock up all day into the streets to approach potential clients. Jesus, that's a dark couple of paragraphs right there. I mean, how do you walk through the shop into that courtyard and not immediately get murdered? It's like really, really good stuff.

There are several roles in this people smuggling operation. Passers, or passeurs, are travel agents for migrants sorting their food and lodgings, stepping in if they run out of cash for roadblocks or grafting cops. The reporters speak to a guy who makes almost $18,000 a month doing this,

Then there are ghetto owners, who pen people in before they head off on the next leg of their route. In 2016, there are up to 200 ghettos in Agadez alone. Then there are sex workers, whole squadrons of them, serving a brittle and bitter cottage industry that's popped up alongside the smuggling.

Many of these women have come from northern Nigeria where they've been raped or attacked by Boko Haram. Some participate in a binding ritual called a juju oath. I actually traveled myself to a village in Benin State, Nigeria to witness one of these things. It's just myself, my fixer and a young girl. I'm guessing she was mid-teens and her father huddled in a stinking hut full of cobweb fetishes and voodoo dolls. And there was this juju witch doctor there too. So the girl's dad...

had to pay a few bucks to buy moonshine, which the witch doctor drank.

a lot and he blew a whole load of it onto various fetishes like spat it out it was so grim it's like disgusting experience i'll put some pictures on the reading list if anyone's interested this was like 7 a.m the witch doctor was absolutely plastered by the time we left anyway that was a ritual carried out by the black axe which is active on these smuggling routes too women earn a couple of bucks for each job and start in debt to their pimp it is flat out slavery

That's from also one of our first very episodes, very first episodes about Nigeria's Black Acts, that fraternity gang or whatever that Sean did too. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. I remember the delivery might not have been what it is now. And that's saying a lot. So, yeah, just buyer beware if you're heading all the way back that early in the portfolio. But then there are the drivers on the smuggling routes, the so-called transporters. And these are truck and military convoy owners who take the people alongside guns, drugs, whatever makes them the most cash.

Here's the article again, quote, Francois illustrated his business model with a napkin and a pack of cigarettes. He unfolded the napkin. These are the migrants, he said. Then he placed the pack of cigarettes on the table. But this is where we make the money, continued, draping the napkin over the cigarettes. The migrants, they're just the cover.

The migrants and transporters travel in numbers for safety. But the Sahara is a vicious, vicious place. 125 plus in a day, sometimes below freezing at night. There's scorpions, deadly vipers, sandstorms, 600 foot sand dunes, few if any landmarks. If your satellite phone bugs out or you lose power or fuel, that's it. You're dead.

For years, Agadez is home to Sharif Old Aberdeen, known locally as Sharif Cocaine. That's a pretty solid drill rapper name. It is actually. You don't have to be that creative in that industry. I mean, that would work.

Nah, I mean, similar to Dribble Lyrics, I mean, you can guess what this guy is getting rich from, right? His official work is heading up a logistics firm called 3STV, and he's deeply into politics too, sitting on an anti-coup board, because that has to exist in the Sahel, and holding a seat in Niger's National Assembly. He's even awarded a big contract by France to serve one of its military bases in Niger.

And when he dies in 2016, Niger's president, Isafu Mohamedou, attends his funeral. I didn't think I was going to get that name right, but some of these names, like when you say them, they really roll off the tongue quite nicely. There's also a thing called Rimbo Transport, a bus company in operation since 1999 that's had one of the most successful trafficking operations in the region.

Its own leader, a Tuareg named Muhammad Reesa Ali, aka Rimbo, of course, but no such links to the nickname like the previous guy. It's also some Aussie nickname, right? Rimbo. I think it's a play probably on Rambo. No?

Yeah, I guess in French it's like Rumble or something like that, right? Which is probably what Stallone was called there. He's arrested in 2015 trying to leave Niger with over $20 million stuffed into a load of suitcases. Pretty sus. And his name later appears in the Panama Papers. But nobody dares investigate him. And Rimbaud or Rumble, Rambo, he rumbles on regardless.

And these are some of the companies Altaha, the El Chapo of the Sahel, uses to ship his product across the Sahel, with Agadez one of his major hubs, of course. It is, of course, the place where, as we learned in the cold open, he screws over Lamine and cements his place as more powerful than the lion's share of Nigerien politicians.

The same year, the EU realizes that this place is a massive problem. So it throws money at Niger's government, which implements an anti-trafficking law, effectively shutting down Agadez as the world's biggest migrant smuggling point.

The army MPs also implement something resembling martial law, which turns the place into something of a concentration camp, controlled by bent soldiers and PMCs, exposing the locals to shakedowns but also forcing migrants and smugglers to go down even more dangerous and marginal paths. Local businesses reliant on the migrants, of course, die. Young men take up banditry in even bigger numbers, while Libya transforms into an open-air prison.

So it's kind of the death of Agadez itself as the trans-shipment point for people and drugs. But this law that Niger was forced to implement is so disastrous that this year, 2023, this government actually repealed it, calling it a, quote, colonial fetter.

So wait, they basically effectively shut down what was going on there, but it was almost too effective? Or what happened? It turned into like a whack-a-mole thing where the problem was just spread out elsewhere? Yeah, so it was one of those things where because everything was concentrated in Agadez and it was going to happen anyway, everyone was kind of safer when it was out in the open and everyone knew what it was.

But because the Europeans couldn't be shown to be doing nothing, they had to shut it down. You also had Wagner playing a role in this as well, which was pretty weird. So it essentially just created that whack-a-mole issue and everyone's forced out on different routes, which are, if the main ones are that deadly, then the ones that are left behind in this wake are even worse.

Says Azizu Shehu, coordinator at NGO Alarm Phone Sahara, quote, to avoid the traps of the police at checkpoints and military patrols in the field, smugglers devise new and more dangerous routes elsewhere across the border. And the consequences are deaths and disappearance across the deserts, with hundreds of arrests amongst drivers and smugglers.

So Agadez might be dead after this law, but the drug trade carries on apace, with Al-Taha at its summit. On March 2, 2021, Niger police seized 17 tons of cannabis resin in the capital city Niamey. And what makes this $37 million worth seizure extra weird is that none of the hash, none, in bricks marked with titles including The Face of Happiness and The Fingerprint in Arabic, has come from Morocco.

Instead, it has travelled all the way through the Mediterranean and around West Africa from Beirut, Lebanon, then up from Lome, Togo's capital, into Niamey, where it's due to be sent to Agadez, then on through the desert to the Libyan port city of Tobruk. So if you look at a map, this is mad.

thousands and thousands of miles to get to Libya overland. And it's just a hop and a skip across the Med. And Cyprus is right there on Lebanon's doorstep. Yeah, I mean, it just shows you how high the markups are and how profitable it is to sell this, that it can be so security as a route that probably costs so much money. Transport, fuel, protection, all that, although different traffickers getting paid off, and they're still making a ton of money on it.

Yeah, it just goes to show you how much these terror-slash-crime groups control the desert these days as well, that they can undercut Western shippers. I mean, you know, the cocaine routes that you might see going on ships to Rotterdam and the like, this is a real rival to that. Last January, cops seized 200 kilos of cocaine from the car of a mayor and his driver in Fasci,

a town in northern Niger, the country's largest ever cocaine seizure. They say the two suspects were shipping the gear from Mali into Libya, which, yeah, I mean, of course they are. Quote, it's the first time that our country has seized such a big quantity of cocaine, Niger's anti-drug organization spokeswoman Nana Bako says, adding that the drugs were heading for Europe, where they had an estimated street value of around $19 million.

According to the BBC, quote, Fashi is an oasis in the Teneri Desert about 400 kilometres or 250 miles north of Agadez. It's known as a trading centre for salt and dates. The region is used as a route for multiple types of trafficking, such as moving drugs between South America and Europe and migrant smuggling. So, close down Agadez, Fashi pops up.

Synthetics are also coming through Niger in bigger quantities of late. The Global Organized Crime Index says that, quote,

have positioned Niger as a crucial transit point for traffickers. The demand for the drug in the wider region fuels the trafficking trade, with smugglers capitalizing on the higher price it commands in Libya as compared to Niger. Interpol, though, has had some success against African drug traffickers.

I think we got into this a tiny bit in the Guinea Bissau episode, but in December 2020, an operation called CAFO2 dismantled several supply lines in the desert, seizing 50 firearms, nothing, 40,593 dynamite sticks, that is something, 6,000 ammunition rounds, 1,500 kilos of cannabis and chat, that's the leaf that people chew, it's kind of a stimulant, 2,200 boxes of contraband drugs, and 600, sorry,

60,000 litres of fuel.

Last June, another Interpol op, Trigger 8, arrested 120 people and took apart an alleged 14 criminal groups involved in arms trafficking. Which is pretty vague, right? Could just be a bunch of guys doing almost nothing in the desert. But anyway, none of this has, of course, toppled all Taha from top spot. And it seems corrupt officials are biting back on the anti-drug crackdown.

This June, military generals ousted Niger's President Mohamed Bazoum. Given he's gone hard on terror and criminal networks, it seems likely the coup is at least partially because he's taking money off the generals' tables that are doing the coup against him. And it's also scared the crap out of the US and France, given the Sahel is now the world's focal point for radical violence. The desert is swarming with groups like Al-Qaeda, IS in the Sahel, IS in West Africa,

the Support Group for Islam and Muslims, aka the JNIM coalition, and of course Boko Haram in Nigeria. And they're all growing. Surely, surely, UTAH has played a massive role in all of this. Despite all the pushback, it's never been more lucrative to ship cocaine through the Sahel. The UNODC reckons illicit routes now total around $4 billion, in a part of the world where most people survive on two bucks a day. Of course,

this trade is going to find a way. Even traditionally peaceful Burkina Faso has suffered in recent years, not only from its own military coup, but from mobsters trying to take over its gold mines. UNOWAS, which is the UN's office for West Africa and the Sahel, even says that the Sahel is becoming a consumer of coke, which I didn't really see coming. Yeah, I mean, even one or two stops off South America, it's still probably a pretty...

The price probably isn't super low. So I can't see the general population there really being buyers. It's one thing if you're in Nigeria and in the capital city or South Africa or whatever, Nairobi, but I can't see places like Burkina Faso having a huge market for it. My assumption is people being paid in products and then just selling to other people either involved in that sort of trafficking or other trafficking that are making lots and lots of money. But I can't see it being, it's just too poor an area to have a huge customer base.

Yeah, I can't imagine being out in the middle of Sahara Desert and feeling like a line of coke. It doesn't really seem like the most fun thing to be doing. Okay, but what about young Sean? What about Sean 10 years ago? Oh, yeah. Well, not only was I herding goats across the Sahara, but I was deeply into drug trafficking. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe if everyone's 15 years old in Niger, they're getting up to all kinds of shit. But yeah, you're probably right. It's probably me and Payne in kind.

The final twist in all of this is that this year, Insight Crime published a report on a brand new cocaine trafficking route through Africa, and one that could rival all Taha's dominance. Latin American coke is making its way to Brazilian organized crime groups, that's your powers, the PCC, which play a key role in all of this, I'm sure. And then it exits the continent via Sao Paulo's Gorillaz International Airport, and there it's smuggled on board planes by Nigerian expats, including the Black Axe.

Quote, "Koreas fly to Nigeria's largest city, Lagos, with some passing through other African countries like Ethiopia or Benin first. After receiving the drugs in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, trafficking groups use more Koreas to distribute cocaine to other African nations, Asia and Europe."

Now, these are small amounts. A single courier can swallow up to 10 kilos of coke per trip in condoms, which is a pretty dangerous way to ship drugs. Wait, 10 kilos sounds like an insane amount. There's no way that's not... I can't imagine that's true.

I don't know, man. You haven't seen me go through a Christmas dinner. It's doable. But I mean, I definitely wouldn't want to get on a plane afterwards. God, I'd definitely go for the low carb option for the in-flight meal at least. But these guys run syndicates with hundreds of couriers at a time, meaning they can ship vast quantities of products to give options besides other routes via sea and air. Says the UNODC officer Ted Leggett, quote, there isn't a mafia type structure to it. The network's a small scale and organic infrastructure

As soon as they make enough money, they get out of the drug trade and go into other forms of business. No shit. Actually, there is shit involved, isn't there? But anyway, he adds, quote, they fill gaps in the global cocaine distribution network. It's the invisible hand of the market in action. So.

There you go. Start the show with a van full of weed. End it with Adam Smith. Oh, and a bit of good news in all of this. Remember that American hostage, Jeff Woodker, the guy who was taken by Old Taha? He was actually released this June after seven years in captivity. So Merry Christmas to him, you, and if you are going to do drunken crimes this holiday season, do not put them on Instagram, of course. Dude, well done. Great.

great episode. Go on patreon.com slash the normal podcast to support Sean. Uh, cause you know, this is, this is like weekly. He's doing this. Not me. My episodes are terrible, but Sean's doing a great job and he needs your support. And he's got a child to raise in New Zealand where things are, I don't know, more expensive, less expensive. Who knows? Anyway. Yeah. Next week, mailbag, email us, have a good vacation.

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