Major Hans Radegod leads the Seychelles Coast Guard on a seemingly overwhelming mission: stopping the flood of heroin and other illegal drugs washing over his islands.
Radegod’s tiny fleet of four vessels patrol the nation’s 115 islands and 491 kilometers of coastline. They are pitted against traffickers from Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan who use the Seychelles as a transshipment point for thousands of kilograms of heroin bound for African nations each year.
Heroin trafficking is taking its toll on Seychelles, where an estimated 10% of the nation’s nearly 100 000 residents are addicted to the drug. That’s the highest rate of heroin addiction in the world, and it has almost doubled since 2018.
“Ten percent is a very high number,” Vanda Felbab-Brown, an analyst with the US-based Brookings Institution, recently told Deutsche Welle news service (DW). “It’s a very, very significant situation with massive consequences for not just the quality of individuals but, for example, the health of a workforce.”
Much of that workforce is employed in tourism, which accounts for more than 46% of Seychelles’ $16.7 billion economy.
With a gross domestic product of $2.1 billion and a per capita income of $32 400, Seychelles ranks among Africa’s wealthiest nations. Unemployment is about 3%. However, heroin is so prevalent in the country that its price has gone down 80%. A single dose that once cost $35 now costs $7.
Although the islands’ blue waters and white sands are a tourist draw, some also come for the drugs.
“I have a lot of clients,” a drug dealer and heroin addict identified as “Bobo” told DW. “Girls, men, foreigners, people who come as tourists. You name it.”
Bobo acknowledges that his drug dealing affects people far and wide.
“I’m conscious that I’m affecting a lot of families. I know that,” Bobo said. “I don’t have too much education. What can I do?”
To stem the tide of drugs transiting the western Indian Ocean, the Seychelles government works with several international partners to patrol its sprawling 1.3-million-square-kilometer exclusive economic zone for drug traffickers.
In late 2023, authorities intercepted two Iranian men on a dhow in Seychelles’ territorial waters who were transporting 622.6 kilograms of heroin and 388.6 kilograms of methamphetamine, according to Seychelles Supreme Court records.
Soon after, the Seychelles Coast Guard intercepted another dhow about 60 kilometers north of Seychelles’ main island, Mahé, and arrested two Iranian men and one Pakistani for transporting illegal drugs, including more than 22 kilograms of heroin.
In 2023, the court sentenced eight Iranians to 20 years in prison for drug trafficking and returned them to Iran.
At the end of 2023, Seychelles reported that the country had destroyed 1.2 million metric tons of illegal drugs, including an undisclosed amount of heroin, that had been captured over the previous 18 months.
“If we were judging success by the amount of drugs being destroyed today, this is a huge success for Seychelles,” Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Rony Govinden, said at the time.
Seychelles authorities know they are overmatched by the challenge of reducing drug addiction through treatment.
“Our biggest challenge is human capacity — the trained personnel to work with those people,” Marie Josett, director-general for the Division for Substance Abuse at the Seychelles Health Ministry, told DW.
For his part, Radegod recognizes that his forces are overmatched by the number of drug traffickers moving through his nation’s waters. But he is not giving up.
“The entry points are many, our forces are small,” Radegod told DW. “But we do work a lot to provide the security for the people.”
Republished with permission from Africa Defense Forum. The original article can be found here.
