US Report: Balkans Major Drug Transit Point

According to the report, Albania, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina are used by narcotics traffickers to move Afghan heroin from Central Asia to destinations around Western Europe. To a lesser extent Macedonia, Romania and Montenegro are also considered as staging posts for traffickers.

The region's poorly financed, poorly managed and under-equipped police, border security and customs controls, make it an attractive stop on the smuggling route for traffickers moving shipments into Western Europe.

Albania, apart from being on the heroin transit route, is also an important cannabis producer for markets in Europe. The cultivation is largely carried out in the more remote mountain regions of the country that the government has difficulty accessing, with the most likely final destinations being Italy and Greece.

“In response to international pressure and with international assistance, the government of Albania is confronting criminal elements more aggressively but continues to be hampered by a lack of resources and endemic corruption,” the report notes.

The report underlines that corruption remains a deeply entrenched problem in Albania, reaching the highest echelons of power, which aid and abet organised crime and drug trafficking.

“The fact that high government officials enjoy immunity from prosecution hinders corruption investigations generally,” the US State Department says.

Bosnia is considered one of the main transit countries in the region for drug trafficking due to its strategic location along historic Balkan smuggling routes.

Weak state institutions, lack of personnel in counternarcotics units, and poor cooperation among the responsible authorities account for Bosnia’s vulnerability.

“The narcotics trade remains an integral part of the activities of foreign and domestic organised crime figures that operate, according to anecdotal evidence, with the tacit acceptance and sometimes active collusion of corrupt public officials,” the report notes.

Apart from being an important transit country for heroin and cocaine, Bulgaria is also a producer of illicit narcotics, the report says. With its geographic position on Balkan transit routes, Bulgaria is vulnerable to illegal flows of drugs, people, contraband, and money.

“Heroin distributed in Europe moves through Bulgaria from Southwest Asia and via the Northern Balkan route, while chemicals used for making heroin move through Bulgaria to Turkey and the Middle East,” the report reads.

As in Albania and Bosnia, corruption and effective implementation of legal and structural reforms remain the mains challenges for the Bulgarian government in its war against drugs.

“Bulgarian law enforcement agencies, investigators, prosecutors and judges suffer from public mistrust, and require widespread reforms, much more reliable political and public support, and strong leadership to develop the capacity to investigate, prosecute, and adjudicate illicit narcotics trafficking cases and other serious crimes effectively,” the report notes.

Kosovo, the newest state to emerge from the territory of the former Yugoslavia, is also considered primarily a transit point for heroin originating in Turkey and Afghanistan and destined for Western European countries.

Its porous borders and corruption among the border police, customs officers and the state police make the battle against narcotics traffickers an uphill battle for Pristina.

Kosovo is the only country in the region that has not yet become a party to the 1988 UN Drug Convention because its declaration of independence on February 17, 2008, has been widely contested by Serbia, and its formidable ally in the UN Security Council, Russia.

Serbia is also a major transit country for narcotics and other drugs along the Balkan smuggling corridor from Turkey to Central and Western Europe.

While the country has realised record-setting successes with drug interdictions and seizures, organised crime groups still exploit Serbia's inadequate border controls to traffic heroin, cocaine, marijuana, and synthetic drugs.

“Serbia's drug laws are adequate, but strategic coordination among law enforcement and judicial bodies is problematic,” the report notes.

Croatia, like other Balkan countries, is also considered as a transit point through which narcotics are smuggled on the way from the production countries to consumer countries. However, while smuggling occurs both overland and by sea, in contrast to elsewhere in the region the most significant seizures, particularly for cocaine, are connected to sea transport.

Accordnig to the report, the three remaining countries in the region, Romania, Macedonia and Montenegro, are not valued as major transit points from drugs coming from Central Asia; however they have recorded sporadic seizures of illicit drugs.

Montenegro in particular, is used by organised crime groups as a transit country for cannabis from Albania and Kosovo, and smaller amounts of other narcotics from the Middle East and Latin America, destined for the western Balkans and Western Europe.

Though the local narcotics market in the region is small, the report notes that domestic consumption of drugs is growing and the drugs that are transited through the region are fueling the growth.