Pacific island countries are being overrun by the global drug trade

This undated outreach photo, received from the New Zealand Defense Force on February 8, 2023, shows the Royal New Zealand Navy ship HMNZS Manawanui recovering 3.2 tonnes of cocaine adrift in the Pacific Ocean in a historic drug bust estimated to cost approximately 316 million dollar worth. FILE PHOTO/Agence France-Presse

NUKU’ALOFA, Tonga – A drug wave is sweeping the paradise South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island states to channel narcotics around the world, top police and UN officials have told AFP.

Pacific islands such as Fiji and Tonga lie at the crossroads of largely unguarded ocean routes used to transport cocaine from Latin America and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia.

This illicit shipment increasingly ends up in local hands, fueling drug addiction in communities where serious crime was rare.

READ: P7.5-M ‘shabu’ seized en route to New Zealand

“We are victims of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for ships crossing the Pacific Ocean,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan told AFP.

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“We have a huge ocean area and we have 176 islands that are generally unprotected.”

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Bins of drugs are offloaded during stops at sleepy Pacific island ports, where they are repackaged en route to lucrative markets elsewhere.

READ: $160 million worth of cocaine, meth hidden in packets of instant noodles, car parts

“The information coming our way is that illegal substances are entering general cargo shipped through Tonga,” McLennan said.

“Right now it’s mainly methamphetamine.”

Methamphetamine use has become so widespread in Tonga – a deeply Christian country of 105,000 people – that the Global Organized Crime Index likens it to an “epidemic.”

“It’s a problem here,” taxi driver Latimuli Taliauli, 39, told AFP as he waited for a passenger at the dilapidated Talamahu markets in Nuku’alofa, Tonga’s capital.

“There are people out here who are damaged by methamphetamine,” he added, pointing to a disheveled man staggering between rows of vegetables and local crafts.

Drug highway

Data on drug use, addiction and crime are scarce or non-existent in many developing countries in the Pacific.

But courthouse data shows the Tongan justice system is clogged with drug users and dealers, from construction workers and mechanics to accountants and teachers.

A teenage thief and a 20-year-old accomplice appeared in court this year charged with looting the Tonga National Museum and stealing dozens of valuable artefacts, a sentencing report obtained by AFP shows.

These treasures were exchanged for a single gram of methamphetamine, the report found, a hit worth just $100.

Recent arrests indicate the extent of the so-called ‘Pacific drug highway’.

This year, four tonnes of methamphetamine were seized in Fiji, hidden in plastic-wrapped containers labeled ‘universal tile adhesive’.

It put Fiji – a country far better known for tourism than human trafficking – on par with the “largest” seizures reported in global methamphetamine hubs such as Thailand or Hong Kong.

Cocaine began trickling through the Pacific island nations at least two decades ago, as Latin American cartels sought to feed Australia’s appetite for hard drugs.

Although Australia consumed just two percent of the world’s cocaine by volume, sky-high prices made the country the world’s third most lucrative market in 2008, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Spread poison

The transcontinental cocaine pipeline has been flooded with synthetic methamphetamine in recent years, and the drug trade in the Pacific now follows two different routes.

Smugglers from Latin America and the United States sail through the island chains of Polynesia, bound for Tonga, Fiji and sometimes Samoa.

Across the Pacific, medicines prepared in the jungle labs of Southeast Asia flow through Melanesian states like Palau and Papua New Guinea.

While cash-strapped Pacific countries have been seen merely as a transit point for expensive cocaine, locals can more easily afford the cheaper, highly addictive meth.

“From what we have gathered on the ground, it is not only in urban areas, but also in villages and rural areas,” Fijian drug aid worker Kalesi Volatabu told AFP.

“We see lawlessness in communities, in schools, and the risks and dangers in rural villages where these poisons are being spread.”

Court documents seen by AFP refer to the murky presence of “organized and sophisticated drug cartels” in Fiji, and “international drug trafficking syndicates” in Papua New Guinea.

Jeremy Douglas, UNODC chief of staff, told AFP: “The Pacific is used by Latin American cartels, Asian syndicates and Triads, Australian and New Zealand bikers and American street gangs.”

Global Initiative, a Geneva-based think tank, has declared Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa cartel “the most prominent in the arena.”

In plain sight

Sanctions from the US Treasury Department, meanwhile, list the 14K Triad – one of the largest organized crime groups in Hong Kong – as a major threat in Palau.

In addition to drugs, the presence of organized crime has led to money laundering, prostitution and illegal casinos.

Sometimes large shipments of drugs are tied to buoys and released into the ocean currents.

The New Zealand Navy last year found a three-ton raft of cocaine tied together with cargo nets.

Police said it was dropped on a “floating transit point”, hidden in plain sight until it could be picked up and sailed to Australia.

“The Pacific has long been a region where not too many outsiders have been involved,” said Australian National University researcher Sinclair Dinnen.

“It’s relatively new in this part of the world. But it seems to be increasing.”