Africa--highway to drug hell?

Africa has become a highway for Asian heroin into the United States, the US Department of Justice's Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) reported in a February special review. "Violent Nigerian cartels pose a sophisticated threat to US drug enforcement efforts," it warned.

The recently released report on African drug trafficking highlights some startling facts. It describes in graphic detail the increasingly dangerous methods of concealment being used by African couriers to transport Asian heroin.

Carried by 'swallowers', who ingest as many as 150 egg-sized condoms filled with the deadly cargo, the pure heroin is smuggled through coastal towns in eastern India to Africa and on to the United States and Europe. Though highly effective, this dangerous method of transportation has resulted in numerous deaths when defective condoms burst in the stomachs of their human carriers. Nigerian cartels operating out of both the United States and their homeland have become so sophisticated at such operations that a US-based, ethnic Nigerian gang called the Blackstone Rangers has set up its own training school in Chicago to teach couriers of all nationalities how to avoid detection by customs and border officials. As such it has developed the smuggling of heroin into a fine art.