Female Drug Smugglers in Trend

 Female Drug Smugglers in Trend

JAKARTA, Drug smuggling has changed its MO. If most smugglers used to be male, now more and more women are being used to do this.

Another change is, in the past most of them used to be Africans, now Middle Easterners are becoming regular drug mules. The fact is based on the observation by the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) throughout 2009, on the change of modus operandi of international narcotics circulation. Thus, stated DR Sri Suryati, member of the United Nation's INCB when contacted by Kompas.com, Wednesday.

Sri revealed that the international drug syndicate now tends to use new MOs in distributing drugs between countries. "For example, in South East Asia, the MO used to be by swallowing, in other words storing in men's stomachs. Now there's a new MO, which is by using young women as couriers."

She believes that narcotics producers employ such methods to lessen the possibility of detection by authorities in each country. "It's one of their ways to avoid the authorities. They realize that their previous MO, by using men, has been detected by the authorities and because of that many smuggling attempts have been thwarted. Therefore they look for other ways unnoticed by the authorities, one of which is by using young women."

The INCB also mentioned that in Indonesia, for the last few years, there has also been a new trend in drug smuggling. Drugs used to be smuggled into Indonesia by black foreigners from African countries. But now, there's a tendency for Middle Eastern couriers.

"By using foreigners from the Middle East is also one of their ways to fool the authorities with ways not yet detected. I think Middle Easterners are used because they're more reserved compared to Asians or Africans, thus the chance to interact with other people around is smaller, which also means the chance for detection is smaller too. Sometimes they use people in burkhas or veils to carry drugs and fool the authorities."

Despite the new trends though, Sri admits that the MO to employ African couriers is still in use by the international narcotics network to smuggle drugs to Indonesia.