Sahara Desert Drugs Destroy Tuareg Society

"Thus the Sahara houses a complex netherworld of people operating outside and beyond any law. Gun runners bring weapons and ammunition of every description, mostly of Soviet—era origin and mostly from Sudan, Somalia, and Chad, to clients across the western Sahel. Drug traffickers are reportedly paid $40,000 by Colombia’s FARC rebels or their West African partners to run a shipment of cocaine from, say, Guinea- Bissau across the Sahara to the eastern Mediterranean littoral, from where it is taken into Europe’s soft underbelly or to the Arabian peninsula and the Gulf States.
Such vast sums of drug money are wreaking havoc within the traditional Tuareg leadership structure. The elders find it increasingly difficult to hold sway over, and can exert little discipline on, the flash kids with weapons and pockets full of cash. Absent the traditionally strong Tuareg cultural foundation and clan discipline, the kids are easier pickings for AQIM as the region drifts toward the anarchy of Somalia and the turmoil of Darfur, which, my jailers told me, was very
much their objective. "
(Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)