Tunisia: What if hard drugs dethroned amphetamines?

In 2020, customs seized 39 kg of cannabis, 6 kg of cocaine and more than 1 kg of heroin, i.e. 46 kg in all of soft and hard drugs.

In 2021, they seized 50.5 kg of cannabis and 18.2 kg of cocaine. The gold medal in Tunisia, however, goes to amphetamines, the consumption of which has practically tripled from one year to the next: 451,021 pills in 2020 and 1,117,241 in 2021. These quantities are to be multiplied at least by 10 if we consider those that have escaped the cracks of the police and customs services.

Drugs are wreaking havoc in Tunisia. The phenomenon has grown in 10 years. The quantities of narcotics sold on the national market increase considerably from one year to another in a constancy revealing a growing social malaise and an increasingly assertive and active presence of the mafias managing the death trade. Mafias with ramifications everywhere including, according to some sources, in the police and customs services, hence the particular attention paid by officials at the Ministry of the Interior to the secrecy of investigations.

Worse, according to some information, the Sicilian “Casa Nostra“ and the “Calabrian Ndrangheta“ would have a storefront in Tunis. How, in this case, be surprised at the seizure in Ecuador (a small South American country) of 600 kg of cocaine concealed in a cargo of bananas and intended for Tunisia?

Although the investigations have just begun, the Tunisian authorities having contacted Interpol for more information, the names of the importer and his accomplices must not be ignored by the investigators of the narcotics services of the National Guard, who do not want to divulge anything at this time. Serious doubts would weigh on a former deputy suspected of being part of the mafia clan.

Gone are the days when a case such as the “couscous connections” in which the brother of the former president of Tunisia, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was involved, raised an outcry, drug trafficking, influence and trafficking in human beings have been “democratized” (sic) and trivialized. Tunisia, a country where political parties, occupying the forefront of the political scene and influential in the ARP, would themselves be involved in mafia affairs.

The essential questions that arise today are: is Tunisia only a country of transit? Has it become, thanks to the so-called dignity revolution (resic), a global hub for drug trafficking? Have we become for the Mediterranean and Africa what Mexico is for the United States, a main supplier of drugs and amphetamines?

In Tunisia, where the voice that carries the most is that of money and interest, and where the phrase that opens all doors is “He who cannot be bought with a little money can be bought with a lot of money”, everything is possible while waiting for the re-establishment of a strong state and the rule of law.

Amel Belhadj Ali