In particular, after the fall of communism in 1991, Albania also became an important country in the region for heroin trafficking. Strategically positioned at the centre of the region, with a large coastline along both the Adriatic and Ionian seas and neighbouring Italy and Greece, the country quickly turned into a key hub for heroin coming from the East before reaching the European Union.<\/p>\n
Alongside heroin trafficking, the country is also known for\u00a0illicit cannabis cultivation<\/strong>. For over two decades, Albania was considered one of Europe\u2019s largest producers of outdoor cannabis, a phenomenon that was tolerated by those in power.\u00a0From 2000 to 2014, Lazarat, a village in south Albania, was one of the country\u2019s symbols of cannabis cultivation. The village became a safe place for cultivation, though the plots of cannabis did not belong to the village citizens alone: criminals from other areas of the country could rent land in the town and cultivate their own crop. Together with Lazarat, Dukagjini Highlands in northern Albania\u2019s Shkod\u00ebr municipality was also a notorious place for cultivation.<\/p>\n Despite a 2014 police crackdown in both places, the war against cannabis cultivation was far from over. In fact, in 2016, the country saw an unprecedent level of spread in cannabis cultivation all over the country. This situation raised the alarm and, as result of internal and external pressures, the police and other institutions in Albania intensified their efforts against the phenomenon, bringing cultivation rates to historic lows over the past five years.<\/p>\n This long experience with heroin trafficking \u2014 coupled with large, illegal cannabis cultivation \u2014 has granted Albanian criminal groups crucial know-how as well as financial leverage.<\/p>\n As a result, at the beginning of 2000, these groups have also entered\u00a0the lucrative \u2018business\u2019 of cocaine trafficking.<\/strong>\u00a0The start was humble. Criminals from Albania were randomly contracted from the Italian mafia and other criminal networks to drive cocaine from ports throughout the continent and distributing it in the streets of European capitals.<\/p>\n However, Albanian criminal groups soon started to master the skills and learned the tricks, moving up the value chain to eventually become major distributors by securing cocaine directly from Latin America before unloading it in Albania and some of Western Europe\u2019s major ports; thus creating distribution networks across the continent and beyond.<\/p>\n Drawing from the Italian mafia model, these criminal groups have effectively moved\u00a0upstream toward the source:\u00a0<\/strong>their brokers are in the countries where cocaine is produced \u2014 like Colombia \u2014 and in important dispatching centres \u2014 like Ecuador.<\/p>\n Their activities were facilitated by the fact that these groups had also started to\u00a0build cells and expand their activities in major cities\u00a0<\/strong>across the United Kingdom, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany, among others.<\/p>\n As such, they were able to\u00a0create and run the whole chain<\/strong>, from arranging big shipments directly from Latin America to street distribution throughout Europe, empowering themselves and raising their prominence.<\/p>\n Accounts show this business model has secured them millions of euros in revenue, money that is usually\u00a0laundered in Albania as well as countries where they operate<\/strong>.<\/p>\n In the overwhelming majority of cases, Albanian criminal groups have\u00a0drug traffic<\/strong>\u00a0at the centre of their criminal operations. These groups traffic the heroin that enters Albania through Turkey across Western and Central European countries, as well as cocaine that they secure in Latin America. Illicit cannabis is also\u00a0a commodity that often makes up an important part of these groups\u2019 activities<\/strong>. Albanian-grown cannabis is usually transported by speedboats to Italy to be further distributed across Western Europe.<\/p>\n In 2016, cannabis cultivation in Albania reached an unprecedented level and was spread throughout the country as never before.<\/p>\n In the same year, the police seized nearly\u00a0two and a half million marijuana plants<\/strong>, a far greater figure than the average number of cannabis plants found by law enforcement in previous years \u2014 usually\u00a0about a quarter<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 and almost four times higher than in 2015, which had seen a then-record in cannabis confiscations.. Such data spotlights the Albanian police\u2019s increased efforts to combat drug trafficking. Given the gravity of the situation, the government adopted\u00a0a three-year anti-cannabis action plan in March 2017<\/strong>. The plan tasked not only law-enforcement agencies but also a wide range of state institutions, ministries, and local authorities to help in the fight against cannabis cultivation. Altogether, the measures have been successful, as cannabis cultivation has drastically decreased over the past four years.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, there has also been a shift in cannabis cultivation from Albanian criminal groups abroad. Since for the past five years cultivating cannabis has not been as easy nor profitable as it once used to,\u00a0groups have been cultivating it indoors abroad<\/strong>. For example, in the last few years, Albanian criminal groups\u2019 indoor cannabis cultivation in the\u00a0UK<\/strong>\u00a0has experienced an increase and raised security concerns in the country.<\/p>\n Moreover, one of the main reasons behind the Albanian government\u2019s efforts to aggressively tackle cannabis cultivation was the\u00a0international pressure and bad reputation<\/strong>\u00a0Albania had acquired because of it. Curating this image also became salient as it coincided with the time Albania was intensifying its efforts around the\u00a0European Integration path<\/strong>. In fact, in 2016, the opening of the accession negotiations didn\u2019t happen in part because of the widespread cultivation of cannabis in Albania that year, diminishing Tirana\u2019s chance to open negotiations with the EU.<\/p>\n However, this wasn\u2019t the only concern as regards relations with Brussels. In 2019, the Dutch Parliament opposed Tirana\u2019s opening of negotiations with the EU, setting a date to open the membership talks whilst demanding more commitment in the\u00a0fight against corruption and organized crime<\/strong>.<\/p>\n In fact, besides tackling cannabis cultivation, Albania has also recently intensified its collaboration with foreign law enforcement authorities, above all with Italy, in bringing down Albanian organized crime groups.<\/p>\n The Albanian judicial reform, which started five years ago, is also showing its first results. A new\u00a0Special Anti-Corruption and Organized Crime Structure<\/strong>\u00a0(SPAK) investigating high-level cases of corruption and organized crime has been recently established and is already having a significant impact in the fight against Albanian criminal groups operating abroad, too. These new structures are expected not only to break down the wall of impunity, but also to\u00a0bring to justice powerful figures who have helped these criminal organizations succeed.<\/strong>\u00a0The vetting of judges and prosecutors as part of this judicial reform is considered an important step in this regard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Balkans, which lie at the heart of South-Eastern Europe, have historically been an important transit route for drugs,\u00a0especially for heroin coming from the East to be trafficked across Europe.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28593,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8606,8609],"tags":[7489,10996],"vrsta":[9441],"pdfpub":[],"coauthors":[10993],"class_list":["post-28592","publikacija","type-publikacija","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-challenges-risks-and-threats","category-organised-crime","tag-albania","tag-global-drug-trafficking","vrsta-analysis"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bezbednost.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publikacija\/28592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bezbednost.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publikacija"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bezbednost.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/publikacija"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bezbednost.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bezbednost.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28592"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/bezbednost.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publikacija\/28592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31830,"href":"https:\/\/bezbednost.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publikacija\/28592\/revisions\/31830"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bezbednost.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bezbednost.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bezbednost.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bezbednost.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28592"},{"taxonomy":"vrsta","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bezbednost.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vrsta?post=28592"},{"taxonomy":"pdfpub","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bezbednost.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pdfpub?post=28592"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bezbednost.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=28592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Countering drug trafficking<\/h2>\n