A rise in illicit drug trafficking in Africa in recent years has drawn the attention of U.S. policy makers. The 110 th Congress, for instance, passed P.L. 110-417 , requiring the Department of Defense (DOD) to author a report to Congress laying out a counternarcotics strategy for the region, among other related goals. The issue has also arisen in the 111 th Congress. On June 23, 2009, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) held a hearing entitled Confronting Drug Trafficking in West Africa , and other recent hearings, such as a late 2009 SFRC hearing on U.S. counterterrorism activities in Africa's Sahel region, have also referenced this issue. President Barack Obama has also highlighted the challenge posed by drug trafficking in Africa, which he has stated "threatens stability" throughout West Africa. Africans have been involved in the global illicit drug trade for several decades, both in Africa and elsewhere, but as a region, sub-Saharan Africa played a generally peripheral role in large-scale global drug trafficking prior to the mid-2000s. This was due, in part, to its geographic distance from traditional key centers of non-cannabis illicit drug production and consumption and from primary transit routes between them. While commercially significant amounts of some drugs, particularly heroin, reportedly transited the region in the 1980s and 1990s, the amounts trafficked were generally much smaller than those in most other global regions. With the exception of cannabis, local drug demand and supply incentives also remained low by global standards for several reasons. These included a relative lack of purchasing power as a result of low average household incomes across much of sub-Saharan Africa ("Africa" hereafter, except where otherwise noted), along with widespread cultural unfamiliarity with and exposure to the main non-cannabis, illicit narcotics common in other parts of the world. Africa's historically relative peripheral status vis-à-vis the global trade in non-cannabis illicit narcotic drugs appears, however, to be ending. Hotspots of illegal drug activity have emerged in West Africa and East Africa, as well as in Southern Africa. Diverse signs of drug trafficking activity in West Africa during the past five years indicate that this sub-region is emerging as a key warehousing and transshipment hub for large-scale consignments of South American cocaine being smuggled en route to Europe. In recent years—albeit not in late 2008 or 2009, an anomaly discussed below—the region has witnessed a sharp rise in record-sized multi-ton cocaine seizures and a rise in reported cocaine criminal cases involving diverse foreign and African individuals, including African state officials and Latin American drug syndicate members. According to analyses by government and multilateral agencies, Kenya and Ethiopia are notable transshipment hubs for heroin from Afghanistan and Pakistan. East Africa is the primary smuggling conduit for moving heroin from Southwest Asia to Africa for further transshipment around the globe, according to the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB). South Africa has become a source and transshipment point for synthetic drugs, like methamphetamine and other amphetamine-type drugs, for both domestic consumption and foreign destinations in Europe and South Asia. There are also reports that multiple countries in Africa are being used as hubs for the illicit diversion of chemical precursors used to manufacture illegal drugs. According to the INCB, Africa "has emerged as a major area" for the diversion to the Americas and elsewhere of the key methamphetamine precursor chemicals ephedrine and pseudoephedrine. Local drug consumption trends are generally not well documented because of a paucity of data on illicit drug usage rates. Cannabis use rates in Africa, however, are reportedly among the highest worldwide, while available data indicate that use of other drugs, including cocaine, heroin, and amphetamines, is generally below the use rates of other world regions but is growing in some African countries. On December 18, 2009, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) announced the extradition from Ghana and arrest of three West Africans on narco-terrorism charges. The indictees allegedly agreed to transport cocaine for the Colombian drug trafficking and terrorist organization, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), from West Africa to Europe with the assistance and protection of regional affiliates of the Al Qaeda terrorist group. These arrests and other reports and congressional testimony suggest that there may be collaboration between drug traffickers and terrorist organizations in the region, as well as linkages between drug smuggling and other types of illicit trafficking and criminal activities. (See " Potential Links Between Drug Trafficking and Terrorist Groups ," below.) On December 8, 2009, the U.N. Security Council held a special session on drug trafficking as a threat to international peace and security with a focus on Africa. The meeting focused on the "numerous security risks caused by drug trafficking ... in Africa," among other world regions, including "serious threats posed" by linkages between transnational organized crime and the "increasing link, in some cases, between drug trafficking and the financing of terrorism." (See " Multilateral and Regional Efforts to Combat Drug Trafficking in Africa ," below.) In 2009, U.S. government agencies continued to formulate and refine Africa-specific counternarcotics programs and assistance plans. Notable in this regard was the completion of several interagency country assessments, which are used to evaluate needs and program counternarcotics assistance for countries and regions in Africa. In addition, in September 2009, the Department of Defense produced a congressionally mandated counternarcotics strategy for the region. Notwithstanding such efforts, P.L. 111-117 (Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2010) did not explicitly allocate funds for Africa-specific counternarcotics efforts, as it did for some other countries and regions, although the bill does fund a variety of global programs that are likely to support such ends in Africa. (See " U.S. Policy ," below.) There was a decline in reported cocaine seizures in West Africa in the latter half of 2008 and in 2009, following a rapid rise in such seizures in recent prior years. The decline in such reports has spurred analysts to debate whether there has been a corresponding actual decline in volumes of trafficked through the region, and if so what its duration may be―or whether there was no such decline and whether other factors, such as changes in trafficking patterns or a lack of law enforcement intelligence or capacities, may explain the dearth of reported seizures. The discovery in Mali in November 2009 of a wrecked Boeing 727 believed to have been used to transport cocaine, along with other reports indicating the increased use of air-based methods to traffic cocaine in the region, suggests that smuggling methods may have changed, but that volumes at issue may not be declining. (See coverage of cocaine in " Drug Trafficking Trends in Africa " section, below.) Some reports in 2009 suggested that traffickers may be seeking to transform Africa into a drug-processing and production hub where unrefined illegal base drugs may be converted into finished products, although there is reason to believe that such efforts are embryonic. (See " Implications for U.S. Interests ", below, and coverage of heroin and synthetic drugs and precursor chemicals in " Drug Trafficking Trends in Africa ," below.) Historically, U.S. and international policy makers directed relatively little attention to counternarcotics issues in Africa, largely because the potential consequences for the United States and other non-African countries arising from drug trafficking in the region were typically viewed as limited. The perception that such activity may indeed threaten U.S. and other international interests has grown, however, as Africa's role in global trafficking has expanded. Some U.S. observers now argue that the rise in drug trafficking in Africa has been so rapid and large—an indication that international drug trafficking patterns are in flux—that it must now be given heightened consideration within the context of global U.S. counternarcotics goals and strategies. The extent of this rise also suggests that such activities have the potential to threaten diverse U.S. security, foreign policy, and economic interests within Africa. The growth of drug trafficking through Africa poses new challenges to international counternarcotics efforts, as well as a variety of emergent threats to the United States. These trends suggest that novel strategies or adaptations of existing ones may be required to track emergent drug flow patterns, dismantle major criminal syndicates involved in such trafficking, and prevent future hotspots from emerging. Many observers have raised concerns about potentially growing operational linkages between Latin American, West African, and Southwest Asian drug syndicates and European criminal elements. The increased trade suggests that such organizations are growing in capacity, strength, and global reach. There are signs that Latin American trafficking syndicates have expanded into the region. Several Latin American individuals from countries such as Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Mexico, some with known or suspected ties to cocaine syndicates, have been arrested in cocaine cases in West Africa in recent years. DEA also reports that since 2007, "DEA has identified at least nine top-tier South American and Mexican DTOs [drug trafficking organizations] that have established operations in Africa." Numerous Latin American persons, some suspected of having drug links, have reportedly established residences and businesses in Africa, particularly in West Africa. Many of the same transnational Latin American drug trafficking organizations that supply U.S. drug markets and engage in other, often violent, crimes targeting U.S. citizens, interests, or jurisdictions are believed to be playing a key role in the rapid growth of drug trafficking in Africa. In this respect, the threat to U.S. interests posed by this trend is direct, because these actors' expansion into Africa increases their global reach and provides them additional profits and organizational linkages, making them more financially and operationally diversified, robust, and versatile—and thus more difficult to track and halt.