Venezuela Gangs And African Jihadists Drive Europe’s Cocaine
A covert pipeline linking Venezuelan cartels, corrupt security forces, and West African jihadists is flooding Europe with record cocaine shipments, transforming a traditional drug route into a hybrid crime-terror economy that is overwhelming fragile states and outpacing law-enforcement responses today.
From Colombia’s Coca Fields To Venezuela’s Criminal Coast
The story begins not in Caracas but in Colombia’s hinterlands. Record harvests of coca in recent years have overwhelmed the traditional trafficking routes into North America and Europe. Faced with more product than old corridors can handle, traffickers have increasingly turned to Venezuela, a country with a long Caribbean coastline, weakened institutions, and plenty of corruptible officials.
International law-enforcement officials quoted by The Wall Street Journal describe how Venezuelan military officers and drug gangs now move cocaine using almost every vehicle imaginable: light aircraft hopping between clandestine airstrips, fishing boats slipping out at night, freighters hiding bricks among legitimate cargo, and even semi-submersible vessels riding low beneath the waves. Almost no coca leaf is grown in Venezuela, and few labs there refine the final product. Instead, Colombian organizations bring finished cocaine across the border, often through states such as Apure, and hand it off for export.
The staggering volumes and direct linkages to terrorist groups should alarm policymakers and security analysts about the broader security threats, emphasizing the human cost of this evolving crisis.
Washington has tried to answer with force. The Trump administration has ordered strikes on boats it says are carrying cocaine from Venezuela and Colombia to the United States, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio cited Venezuela’s role as a transit hub to defend those operations, suggesting Europeans “should be thanking us” rather than criticizing. But experts interviewed by The Wall Street Journal say far more Venezuelan-linked cocaine is actually destined for Europe, with West Africa now the key hinge.
Jihadist Corridors In West Africa
The first leg of the journey across the Atlantic frequently ends on isolated airstrips and coastal inlets in countries such as Guinea-Bissau and Burkina Faso. In one incident last year, two Gulfstream private jets loaded with cocaine took off from a makeshift strip in Apure. One was intercepted in Guinea-Bissau with 2.6 tons on board, the other reached Burkina Faso, both nations beset by instability and Islamist insurgencies.
According to Western and local officials, smugglers in West Africa link up with jihadist-aligned armed groups, particularly in the Sahel. Current and former rebel leaders in northern Mali told The Wall Street Journal that al–Qaeda–affiliated factions provide armed escort to convoys and charge “taxes” on the cargo. When al Qaeda forces seized control of parts of northern Mali in 2012, veteran Algerian militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar fought secular Tuareg factions not just for ideology, but for control of these highly lucrative smuggling routes.
Once ashore, the drugs begin a brutal overland trek. From coastal states, convoys move north through Mali and Niger, then across the Sahara toward Algeria, Morocco, and Libya. A United Nations report cited by The Wall Street Journal notes that a Russia-backed Libyan faction has been collecting fees on cocaine passing from Niger to Egypt. In effect, each checkpoint along the way carves off a slice of value, funding everything from jihadist training camps to the private militias of embattled warlords.
Despite efforts, coups and conflict hinder cooperation, underscoring the need for the international community to unite and address these security challenges effectively.
Europe Overtakes The U.S. As Cocaine’s Main Market
For years, the epicenter of the cocaine trade was the U.S. East Coast. Now, the tide has shifted. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reports that seizures in Europe have surpassed those in North America, a sign that traffickers are prioritizing the continent’s growing consumer base and higher street prices. “The quantities have gone up so much, the problem that traffickers have now is moving them,” said Jeremy McDermott, co-director of InSight Crime, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.
Venezuela’s growing role in Europe’s cocaine supply chain should prompt policymakers and law enforcement to prioritize efforts to disrupt these routes and protect European security interests.
The examples are piling up. Spanish authorities seized 3.3 tons of cocaine last December aboard a Venezuelan fishing vessel near the Canary Islands, one of the largest busts of its kind. In 2023, Irish police intercepted the MV Matthew with 2.2 tons on board, Ireland’s biggest haul ever; investigators say the ship loaded its cargo in waters near Venezuela. Semi-submersibles leaving Venezuelan shores have been intercepted mid-Atlantic with tons of cocaine, including one stopped recently by Portuguese police that carried a Venezuelan crew and 1.7 tons of drugs.
Venezuela is also emerging as a player in Europe’s criminal landscape. Spanish police have detained 13 members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang with a reputation for extreme violence in the Americas, in what officials describe as the first such operation on European soil. That suggests Venezuelan players are no longer just wholesalers at the source, but are starting to plant themselves closer to the retail end of the chain.
Corruption in aviation has played its part as well. Shortly after Nicolás Maduro’s election in 2013, a British trafficker managed to load nearly 1.4 tons of cocaine into suitcases on a commercial flight from Caracas to Paris, where French police seized the shipment. U.S. prosecutors later alleged that senior Venezuelan officials, including Maduro ally Diosdado Cabello, were involved, citing intercepted communications. Cabello has repeatedly denied any role in drug smuggling, framing the accusations as an excuse to justify regime change.
A Hybrid Threat That Outpaces Fragile States
What makes this web so difficult to confront is its hybrid nature. Venezuelan gangs and corrupt officers handle one leg, Colombian cartels another, West African smugglers and al Qaeda affiliates a third, North African militias a fourth. Each group acts with a degree of autonomy. Yet, together they form a global pipeline that exploits every weakness in state capacity from the Orinoco delta to the shores of Sicily.
Cocaine is not just a product in this system; it is a currency that buys weapons, loyalty, and political leverage. The Wall Street Journal’s reporting points to a broader alignment of interests among criminal networks, militant organizations, and rogue or fragile governments. The result is a supply chain that does more than feed European nightlife. It corrodes institutions in Latin America and Africa, finances extremist violence, and undermines European democracies struggling to cope with rising addiction and organized crime.
Governments have responded with seizures, strikes, and new cooperation agreements, but the fundamental economics remain in favor of the traffickers. As long as coca production stays high, European demand keeps climbing, and instability spreads across the Sahel, Venezuela will remain an attractive launching pad, and jihadist corridors in West Africa will stay open for business. Disrupting that axis will require more than dramatic interceptions at sea; it will demand sustained efforts to rebuild governance in Venezuela, stabilize key African transit states, and tighten security at the European end of the chain, before yet another ton of powder makes the crossing.
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