n the streets of Muslim communities in Great Britain, local grocery markets legally sell a narcotic stimulant called khat (pronounced “cot”). Green bundles of the leafy plant wrapped in banana leaves sit inside beverage coolers next to Snapple and Coca-Cola.
Khat is chewed like tobacco to produce a euphoric state that can turn into an outburst of irrational violence according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
It is imported from places like Yemen, Kenya and Somalia into Great Britain at the rate of some 30 tons per month. It is sold legally throughout Great Britain, mostly in neighborhoods densely populated by North African Muslim immigrants to whom khat chewing at home is as common as coffee drinking in America.
For the past year concern among counter-terrorism analysts has been rising. They have warned that huge, largely ignored, increases in khat smuggling from Great Britain into major U.S. cities, including Dallas, may be funding international terrorist groups. Khat is as illegal in the United States as cocaine and heroin but until today smuggling cases had been rarely prosecuted.
The DEA announced a record large seizure of 25 tons of Khat worth more than ten million dollars and the arrests of a forty-four member international narcotics trafficking organization. An 18-month investigation resulted in the indictment of a United Nations’ employee who is accused of using a secure diplomatic pouch to smuggle khat. The organization also allegedly smuggled khat using human mules on international flights and shipments by overnight express packages.
The investigation found that khat was then distributed from New York by land to the District of Columbia, Illinois, Ohio, Minnesota, Maine, Massachusetts, Utah, and Washington where it was sold on the streets.
According to the indictment, money was laundered through “hawalas” which are informal networks of money remitters commonly used in Africa and the Middle East to transfer money. Tentacles of the organization stretched from the United States to co-conspirators in Europe, Africa, Dubai, and the United Arab Emirates.
In January 2005, Harvey Kushner, director of the criminal justice department at Long Island University, dedicated a full chapter of a new book to raise alarm that American law enforcement was virtually ignoring a booming illegal khat industry almost entirely controlled by Middle Easterners from countries identified as terrorist safe havens.
In his book, “Holy War on the Home Front,” Kushner called for a congressional investigation into why America’s homeland security bureaucracy had not given top priority to an estimated $1.5 billion khat smuggling industry into the U.S., which produces an illegal cash flow back to Great Britain, Somalia, Kenya and Yemen.
British counter-terrorism experts say their country has in recent years become a hotbed for Islamic extremist groups that advocate killing Americans, recruit suicide bombers and raise money for terror operations. U.S. intelligence agencies have identified Yemen, Kenya and Somalia as havens for terrorist networks, particularly for Al-Qaida.
Sajjan Gohel, Director of International Security for the Asia-Pacific Foundation told CBS 11 News, “organized crime and terrorism are very common bed fellows. They work hand-in-hand. They are able to communicate their activities and assist each other. And that is a tragic irony in that you will find in the illegal drug trade that terrorism in not too far behind.”
In 2000, for instance, Al Qaida operatives blew up the USS Cole after it docked at a Yemeni port, killing 17 American servicemen. In 2002, the CIA piloted an armed drone into Yemen and blew up a car full of suspected terrorists. Kenya, also a major khat producing country, is where Al Qaida operatives in 1998 blew up the American embassy and in 2002 aimed shoulder-fired missiles at a departing Israeli passenger jet and also attacked an Israeli resort in Mombassa. In 2003, an Al Qaida plot was foiled to re-bomb the new American embassy in Kenya using a planeload of khat ostensibly headed for Somalia.
“You don’t have to make a quantum leap to link drug smuggling from the Middle East, to Middle Eastern communities and …the great possibility of that funding terrorist conspiracies, both here and abroad,” Kushner told CBS 11News in a January 2005 interview in New York City. “It’s certainly known worldwide that Osama bin Ladin was dealing with the (heroin) trade in Afghanistan … coming into this country. It’s great cash flow. It’s hard to trace and it’s quick money to support terrorist activities.”
CBS 11 News found that most police labs don’t have the capability to test khat and Kushner complained that awareness was so low that street-level cops most often think they’ve come across some kind of salad when they accidentally discover khat during searches.
The latest enforcement action dubbed “Operation Somalia Express” indicates that there is a new concerted crackdown on khat flowing into the United States.
In London last year, Officials of Her Royal Majesty’s Customs and Excise Department told CBS 11 News that most of the seven tons per week legally imported into Great Britain comes from Somalia, Kenya and Yemen.
But interdicting khat smuggling aboard U.S.-bound flights was not a priority because khat is considered a legal vegetable, even being classified as a bean in some countries.
Few outside the insular transplanted immigrant communities from the Horn of Africa and parts of the Arab Middle East even know what khat is. The leaf is probably best known in the U.S. as the ingredient that fueled the deadly true-life events portrayed in the movie “Blackhawk Down.” The movie depicted a 1993 battle between American troops and khat-fueled Somali insurgents, their teeth blackened from the drug. Drug experts, as well as those who use khat, say the leaf does not impair motor skills but rather creates a mild, amphetamine-like euphoria that heightens senses and self-esteem.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration warns that khat can be psychologically addictive and has been known to cause aggressive behavior and feelings of paranoia among chronic users.
Federal authorities with jurisdiction over the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and North Texas acknowledge making regular discoveries of khat - by happenstance. In fact, more than 2,800 pounds of khat has been seized at D/FW since 2000. Applying a commonly used rule of thumb that most commodity seizures represent only 10-percent of what actually gets through, an estimated 14 tons of khat could have made its way through D/FW Airport. Drug dogs are not trained to ferret out khat.
CBS 11 News has learned that North Texas customs enforcement investigators broke up a sophisticated khat-smuggling ring at D/FW Airport in 2003. The operation involved a local airline employee, conspirators in Great Britain and North Texas-based distributors. As a major refugee resettlement city, Dallas is home to thousands of Somali, Ethiopian and North African immigrants.
Abdulkadir Araru, a Kenyan journalist based in London, has written extensively about khat. He said he has chewed it for 25 years and once was employed as a “clearing agent” who helped transport the drug into Canada before that country criminalized it in the late 1990s. Araru said his group would fly students in to Great Britain, where they would pick up large suitcases packed with khat then fly it home to Canada for about $1,000 round trip.
Araru said young white British mules are used now to haul loads into the U.S. and probably get paid about $2,000 on average to make the trip. Such smugglers are considered not as likely to draw attention as would someone of Middle Eastern descent.
“There is lots of money in it,” he said, adding that the price goes up once it crosses into illegal American territory. “Compared to other serious drugs, it’s very, very marginal, but of course for anyone who is carrying it or selling it, you’ll make good money. There are quite a number of chewers in the United States: the Arabs and Somali refugees and more refugees from Ethiopia.”
In the U.S. khat use is most prevalent among immigrants from Somalia, Ethiopia, and Yemen according to the DEA. Kushner warns that khat has the potential to become the new crack epidemic in those communities.
http://cbs11tv.com/investigators/local_story_207215042.html
