While XXL anti-drug operations have been taking place in France since March 19, 2024, in Belgium, the police are on all fronts, but seem very helpless given the scale of the task. In Spain, a “Special Security Plan” was put in place in 2018.
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Announced with great fanfare by Emmanuel Macron from the La Castellane district on March 19, 2024, the “XXL square net” operations to fight against drug trafficking continue in France. In Belgium and the Netherlands, the police are focusing their attention on the ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam, since cocaine seizures there reach record levels each year. In Spain, efforts are concentrated in the Andalusian region of Campo de Gibraltar, a gigantic drug hub.
Increasingly violent criminals in Belgium
In Antwerp and Amsterdam, customs officers say they find cocaine everywhere, such as in the linings of clothing. The two governments regularly announce increased resources to increase seizures, such as the recruitment of hundreds of additional police officers, the purchase of new scanners or even the use of artificial intelligence to detect drugs.
The figures are edifying, since 116 tonnes of cocaine were seized in the port of Antwerp alone in 2023, so much so that Belgian incinerators have not kept pace to destroy them. The army was called in to protect storage buildings attacked by criminals determined to recover this merchandise.
The Belgian and Dutch police have also discovered, thanks to the decryption in 2021 of messaging used by South American drug traffickers, a sprawling network using methods worthy of the worst police series. Clandestine drug laboratories, in which Colombians work, are now commonplace, as are torture rooms in port containers or even executions or mutilations between rival gangs.
South American mafias have imported their methods such as corruption, but also acts of violence and threats against the families of customs officers, who refuse to work for them. The Belgian Minister of Justice was placed under protection after threats of kidnapping, and even judges are the subject of corruption attempts, we recently learned. Finally, it is not uncommon to see police officers in the list of arrests.
The police are not inactive, since since 2021, 1,400 criminals linked to drug trafficking have been arrested, 100,000 suspects have been identified and 120 are being tried in a mega trial. But under pressure, the mafias continue to reorganize and violence spreads everywhere. In Brussels, not a week goes by without a shooting attributed to score-settling between rival gangs.
The results of a “Special Security Plan” in Spain
In 2018, this plan was implemented in the Campo de Gibraltar region, after episodes of violence, which highlighted the escalation of crime in this region of southern Spain, located in the province of Cádiz, in the Strait of Gibraltar. According to official figures, this Plan resulted in an investment of nearly 80 million euros for the Spanish government, with 40 million intended for increasing police numbers and 40 million for strengthening operational and intelligence capacities, as well as than material and technological means.
This investment has borne fruit, according to the Ministry of the Interior, since since 2018, Spanish agents have seized almost 1,700 tons of drugs, during more than 22,000 police operations and around 20,000 people have been arrested or are under investigation for drug smuggling or trafficking.
However, it is in this same region that two Spanish civil guards were killed in February 2024, when drug traffickers deliberately collided with their “narcolancha”, a powerful semi-rigid boat, the small Zodiac of the Civil Guard. This dramatic episode occurred in the small port of Barbate, near Gibraltar, and the scene was filmed by neighbors. Some even applauded and encouraged the drug traffickers’ attacks, angering many Spaniards.
The first to react were the police who denounced the lack of personnel and resources to fight against delinquents who, on the contrary, are increasingly organized, violent, much better equipped, and who do not hesitate not to taunt the police. “There will be no impunity. We will continue to work and implement all necessary and precise means, as we have been doing for 5 years,” said Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska. “Drug traffickers and criminal organizations must know that they are facing tough guys, that they are not going to get away with it and that they will continue to be cornered more and more every day.”
Spain will therefore increase material and human resources to fight drug trafficking, but the task promises to be difficult. Let’s not forget that the province of Cádiz is located less than 15 kilometers from Morocco, the world’s main producer of cannabis. It is therefore an essential gateway to drug trafficking in Spain and Europe. A region, moreover, hit by unemployment and poverty, where part of the local population has made drug trafficking trivial.