Five of Central America's seven countries are now on the United States' list of 20 "major illicit drug transit or major illicit drug producing countries".
The 20 states identified as major illicit drug transit and drug producing countries in the annual presidential report to Congress were unchanged from 2006, but the administration said allies Afghanistan and Colombia had made progress.
Corruption often enables the passage of goods from source, through transit, to illicit markets and the unscrupulous dealers who may be many thousands of kilometres away from where the specimens were stolen.
The port of Maraonsetra is a hub for the transit of illicit rosewood.
A regulated framework for drugs could drastically lower the violence and murders associated with illicit markets, especially in transit countries.
The report listed Afghanistan, the Bahamas, Bolivia, Brazil, Myanmar, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Laos, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Venezuela as major drug transit or major illicit drug-producing countries.
But exactly what happened to him remains a mystery, another unsolved case in a country overwhelmed with a record number of kidnappings and killings, many tied to the traffickers who have turned Mexico into the busiest transit route for illicit drugs in the world.
Uruguay, for instance, approved a legal market for marijuana, but is nowhere to be seen in the 2016 list, either under blacklisted countries or those that are recognized as "major drug transit and/or major illicit drug producing countries".
President Charles Taylor, who helped trigger Sierra Leone's war and backs Mr. Sankoh, has turned Liberia into a laundering site for illicit diamonds as well as a transit corridor for weapons purchased in exchange.
For example, in 2010, a Norwegian terrorist, incited by reports of British newspapers describing Prague as "being the most important transit site point for illicit weapons in Europe", found himself unable to obtain any in the country when preparing for the 2011 Norway attacks.
