Tramadol can also be used to suppress fatigue when mixed with caffeine. The latest bust follows intercepted shipments in Greece last year and the Italian port of Genoa in May. Tramadol dependency is believed to be reaching crisis levels in parts of Libya and Egypt, prompting the authorities to start cracking down on the drug.

The latest seizure is said to be of pills destined to be sold by ISIS directly to its own members, at about €2 (£1.80) a pill, potentially netting the group almost €50 million. Tramadol is frequently trafficked between India and Libya, because Indian law contains loopholes in the code which regulates its vast pharmaceutical industry. These loopholes make it relatively easy to divert large amounts of prescription medicines to the black market. Unfortunately, with the collapse in law and order across much of the MENA region, the trade in illicit prescription medicine is becoming another form of revenue which insurgent groups and transnational terrorist networks are exploiting in order to raise funds to finance their operations at home and abroad.

Background

The ‘Ndrangheta organization in the Calabria region where the most recent batch of the drugs were discovered is Italy’s strongest mafia syndicate, and it dominates the European cocaine trade thanks to its strong international connections. Gioia Tauro is Italy’s largest container port and it is situated deep in ‘Ndrangheta territory; it is the home region of the Alvaro, Mammoliti, Molè, and Piromalli ‘ndrines, the basic criminal units of the clan-based ‘Ndrangheta confederation. These groups continue to influence the operations of the port despite greater scrutiny from the Italian authorities. Gioia Tauro city council itself has also twice been dissolved, in 1991 and 2008, over mafia infiltration by one or more of the area’s crime families. The port is especially useful to the ‘Ndrangheta because it specializes in transshipment activities, receiving goods from all around the world and moving them onto their final destination.

ISIS and other militant groups based in North Africa engage in a variety of fundraising activities, primarily the smuggling of arms, archeological relics, drugs, and fuel. However the traffic between Europe and North Africa flows in two directions, as the series of prescription pill busts in Greece and Italy to Libya has shown. Law enforcement bodies accuse the Italian mafias of smuggling arms as well as pills to the militants, with organized criminals increasingly open to trading with extremists. A recent case in Sicily linked the Sicilian mafia with Maltese criminals and a Libyan militia leader in a fuel smuggling ring with ties to France, Spain, and Italy. The end result is a web of smuggling that fuels crime and terrorism in both North Africa and Europe.

Impact

As mentioned above, North African extremists have a number of different revenue streams which are not dependent on overseas drugs manufacturers supplying them with prescription medication. Of course the trade is lucrative: Tramadol was officially deemed as the most used drug in Egypt in 2015, when 40.7% of the population were said to be using it according to the country’s Anti Addiction Fund, 97% of whom were men. Yet even if these figures were accurate, Tramadol is just one drug, and prescription medicine smuggling is only one revenue stream. The critical problem is the lack of border controls in Libya, which allows for the importation of various contraband that’s just as problematic for North African states as the illicit export of people and drugs is for Europe. The European Union and individual member states like France and Italy have initiated a number of new steps, from strengthening local security services in the Sahel countries to paying refugees and migrants not to come to Europe, which may end up curbing the ‘Wild West’ nature of much of North Africa. But international efforts will truly gain a foothold only once the civil war in Libya comes to an end and effective government is restored.

Forecast

While southern Europe and North Africa have long struggled with each other’s overlapping law enforcement problems (witness the smuggling of cigarettes and cannabis northwards from Africa to Britain in the 1980s), the Indian pharmaceutical industry’s lax enforcement regime is the real source of the prescription drug epidemic in the western Islamic world. It is only thanks to globalization, and the realization by international criminals that vast amounts of money can be made by sending synthetic opiates like Tramadol abroad, that middlemen like the ‘Ndrangheta have become involved in illicit sales to ISIS and Libyan militia groups. Though media reports are currently discussing the possible links between Italian organized crime and North Africa-based Islamists, a better use of their time would be spent discovering how the prescription order came to be placed in the first instance. Either ISIS in Libya, or the Calabrian mafia in Italy have to have placed the order. Since neither party could be considered a responsible wholesaler of prescription medicines, an international investigation into India’s ‘pill mills’ would seem the logical next step to curb the illicit trade in prescription medicine. India has its problems with corruption, but it is a stable country with a strong government which can enforce laws vigorously if so minded.