Mozambique now key hub in heroin trade: report

MAPUTO: Mozambique has emerged as one of the world´s key heroin trading hubs, with the drug now the country´s second largest export as it is smuggled from Afghanistan to Europe, according to a new report.

More than 40 tonnes each year is moved across the Indian Ocean in dhows and taken ashore on beaches in northern Mozambique, said the report by London-based researcher Joseph Hanlon, published this week. The drug is stashed in trucks and driven 3,000 kilometres to Johannesburg before being shipped to Europe in a network organised through WhatsApp and Blackberry messages by dealers in Dubai. "The Dubai dealer contacts a more junior figure in Kenya or northern Mozambique, who sends out Uber-like WhatsApp messages to fishing people telling them to pick up the drugs," said Hanlon, of the London School of Economics (LSE), wrote. Hanlon, a veteran specialist in Mozambique, said that previous government involvement in the trade had evolved into an informal business built on petty bribes and mobile phone messaging.