rotta balcanica

Of Simone Benazzo The Swiss think tank Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime published a in May reports dedicated to the trafficking of people, drugs and money in the Western Balkans, edited by Walter Kemp, Kristina Amerhauser and Ruggero Scaturro. The study was one of the first to deal in a systemic and diachronic way with the evolutions that the "Balkan route" has experienced over the last half century.What was initially a corridor for narcotics later became, especially due to the wars in the former Yugoslavia, the El Dorado for arms traffickers and, in recent times, the obligatory route for tens of thousands of human beings fleeing from war, poverty, environmental catastrophes.  If since the 1970s the "Balkan route" mainly meant the drug trafficking network - especially heroin - which branches out across the Balkan peninsula, in 2015 the expression took on a new meaning.Around 1.5 million refugees and asylum seekers, mostly fleeing the war...