Ironically, she said, these policies have brought drug traffickers into close contact with police and military — many of whom have been bought off and become involved in the trade themselves.
The agency also identified a high-value Afghan target, Haji Bashir Noorzai, an opium trafficker with close ties to the Taliban's leader, Mullah Omar.
The transportation route through West and North Africa — where swaths of desert are controlled by extremist groups tied to Al Qaeda and corruption and instability are widespread — has brought traffickers into closer proximity with various terror groups, several officials said.
Other EU measures announced by Ms Malmstrom involve making the asylum application process within the EU more efficient; stepping up the fight against human traffickers; and closer co-operation with states on the traffickers' transit routes, such as Morocco and Libya.
Please remember that several thousand members of our security forces have died as a result of combat with drug traffickers, in fact close to 4,000.
He may be untainted personally, but he has not purged the traffickers and warlords close to him, let alone started to unhook Afghanistan from its institution-suborning dependency on poppy and opium.
If a single route or market is closed, traffickers easily shift to others.
They learned that Guzmán would soon be coming to Culiacán, the state capital of Sinaloa, for a meeting with his sons Alfredo and Iván — ascendant traffickers who were both close friends of El Chino Ántrax.
The pope was referring to more than 250 people, some of whom have been held in purpose-built containers for more than a month by Bedouin people-traffickers in an area close to the Israeli border.
"They're using the excuse that it encourages traffickers – I think if we close down legal routes, the traffickers will have a field day".
