Cocaine kings target Kenya: the seizure, on Kenya's tourist-paradise coastline, of the largest ever drugs haul in Africa has confirmed worries that sophisticated drug smugglers from South America have targeted this East African country as a base for their operations.

Warm sea breezes, swaying palm trees and a laid-back lifestyle have made the Kenyan coast the number one African destination for European tourists. But now this East African paradise is also gaining a reputation for a seamier side of life.

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Last December's seizure in Malindi, Mombasa and Nairobi of a Ksh5bn ($6.25m) shipment of cocaine en route to Europe from Colombia and Venezuela, now means that the East Africa port of Mombasa has joined the ranks of those cities that are a major conduit for South American drug shipments destined for Europe.

With the interception of this massive 1,500 kilo shipment of high-grade cocaine, believed to have been en route to Ireland and the Netherlands, Kenyan ports and seaboard have come under intense scrutiny from at least half a dozen European drug agencies, as well as the US's Drug Enforcement Agency, more commonly known as the DEA.

Finding such a large shipment, hidden in a container of South American bananas, was a huge triumph for Kenya's hard-pressed police force following a complex six-month undercover operation. It also illustrates the increase in cooperation now taking place between Kenya's law enforcement agencies and those of Spain, Ireland, the UK and the Netherlands as a response to major international drug cartels developing alternative shipping routes.

Increasingly, it would seem, Africa is being used as an intermediary destination for drugs bound for Europe as direct entry from South America becomes increasingly difficult for them. Africa's largest cocaine bust got underway with over 200 personnel from Kenya's paramilitary General Service Unit (GSU) simultaneously raiding Kenomar International Sea and Airfreight's warehouse in Nairobi's industrial district, and a luxury villa called Rocky House in Malindi on Kenya's Indian Ocean coast.

This came less then a week after Spanish drug enforcement agents arrested four alleged traffickers at a Holiday Inn car park in Alicante, Spain, and intercepted two vehicles carrying over a quarter of a million dollars worth of cocaine, and $40,000 in cash.

INTERNATIONAL AGENCIES CRACK SYNDICATE

Amongst those arrested were a Venezuelan man with a British passport, a Hungarian woman, and two Irish nationals. They had been targeted by European law enforcement agencies after an eight-month joint operation by British and Irish police investigating the supply of cocaine to Ireland's Dublin and Limerick-based drug distributors.

These arrests, it is believed, put a major dent into the amount of cocaine flowing into Europe at the end of 2004 and provided the final clues for the Kenyan police to crack the syndicate.

"This drug seizure involving agencies on three continents is the largest ever uncovered in Africa," Kenyan Police Commissioner Major General Hussein Ali said after his Criminal Investigation Department (CID) counterpart Joseph Kamau insisted that all suspects linked to the drug syndicate would be arrested, irrespective of their status in Kenyan society.

"Let the public know that we are not going to leave any stone unturned," Kamau stressed, in response to questions regarding rumors that a relative of the long-serving head of one the country's major security agencies, and the son of a former senior government employee, were linked to the multibillion Kenyan shilling cocaine haul.

Kamau also refused to identify a prominent Nairobi hotelier being investigated over the shipment, or confirm that a number of Mombasa-based warehouses had been raided and shipping containers impounded. Dutch police in Amsterdam did, however, reveal that a Kenyan connected to a top security official in the previous government had been arrested as a key suspect.

Ocean freight containers have become the method of choice for drug cartels moving increasing quantities of cocaine from South America into Europe. Hundreds of thousands of containers are on the high seas at any one time and Kenya's customs officials are simply unable to check each and every one arriving at Mombasa, the main port of entry for Eastern Africa.

However, Kenya Police raided the country's only privately owned container handling facility, the Pepe Inland Container Depot, located at Athi River just outside of Nairobi.

Kenya Police could not confirm that there was any connection between the two companies other then that Pepe was the container handling company contracted by Kenomar for all of its inbound shipments.

HIGHLY SOPHISTICATED OPERATION

In the raid on the Rocky Point villa in Malindi, police discovered a speedboat with 700 packets of plastic-wrapped cocaine worth some $150,000 hidden in compartments in its hull. This boat had been imported from Spain and the boat's previous owner was from Malaga, Spain. The boat was valued at some [euro]20,000, but the boat's true ownership is still in question.

Similarly, there are questions over the real ownership of the Rocky Point villa. Police initially arrested the villa's caretakers, an Italian couple. But the registered owner is another Italian national. Rental arrangements had been made by a local Malindi broker with a German national, simply identified as Erik, some three months previously. The caretaker couple, the broker and a fourth person were all arraigned on narcotics charges on December 29 at the Nairobi Law Courts.

The cocaine packets hidden in the speedboat seized by police indicate that this Kenyan drug smuggling operation was a highly sophisticated one. Transferring the drugs onto freighters out at sea with the speedboat would have obscured the shipment's South American port of origin, thus bypassing the intense scrutiny that containers from South America receive on arrival in Europe.

With some 13 German, Polish, Dutch, Italian, Irish and Kenyan citizens arrested, the Kenyan operation was obviously of major importance to a South American drug cartel.

It raises worries that Kenya's peaceful coastline is not only a haven for tourists seeking sun, sand, rest and relaxation, but also an important base of operations for some of the world's most violent criminal underworld.

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Drug smuggling operations are inevitably accompanied by turf wars between competing gangs vying for supremacy in this highly lucrative, illegal trade.

Kenyan Police announced that they were investigating possible links between the seized cocaine shipments and the fatal stabbing of a Swiss national in the Malindi area the previous week. The case of two British tourists, who were seriously injured in a supposed robbery two weeks before, was also reopened; and the apparent suicide of a German in the Malindi area has also come under renewed scrutiny.

A 1999 study of the narcotics trade in Kenya indicated that the business is probably controlled by some of Kenya's political heavyweights. The report concluded that important politicians shared in the profits of the illegal drugs trade in return for political protection. The report mentioned an assistant minister who is said to have funded campaigns during the 1992 and 1997 general elections through drug cartel kickbacks.

"The Kenya government is very concerned that Kenya is becoming one of the countries used as a conduit for drugs because of our efficient communications system," government spokesman Alfred Mutua told Voice of America. "The drugs raid underscores the worries the Kenya government has about this illegal trafficking."

Confirming that Kenya's law enforcement agencies are working closely with Interpol and other drug-fighting organisations around the world, Mutua said that his government "is determined to stamp out any Kenya drug trafficking". Pointing to Kenya's stiff 10-year jail terms, with no option of fines even for drug possession, Mutua claimed that Kenya is "committed to eliminating even the less dangerous marijuana trade".

But this seizure of high-grade cocaine by the Kenya Police has focused the spotlight on Kenya in both a positive and negative way. The revelation that the country is now a major transit point for drugs en route to Europe has come as a shock to many, and the fact that four westerners staying at the Rocky Point villa could escape in a car before the police arrived led some to claim there are still corrupt Kenyan law enforcement agents that act as the drug traffickers' eyes and ears. "Such informers must be rooted out if our efforts are not to be negated in the future," a senior Kenya Police spokesman stressed. "To be successful we cannot have informers within the system itself."

Kenya is one of three African countries with UN International Drug Control Programme resident offices. As the 1999 UN report indicates, Mombasa and Nairobi are now the region's most important transit points for illegal heroin shipments from Asian producer nations to the wholesale drug distributors of Europe. Last December's cocaine intercept indicates that Colombian and Venezuelan drug gangs are also getting in on the act.

The Kenya Police have proved with this latest seizure that they are more than able to handle their end of the worldwide fight against the scourge of drugs. Kenya should be commended and afforded all the help it needs by Western governments and their drug-fighting agencies to continue the fight against narcotics. The country's front-line efforts deserve nothing less.