Madalena Kjarenca never knows what state the children will be in when they come to her door. She saw the horrific injuries. Bruises, knocked out teeth. A broken jaw.
"They suffer violence on a regular basis," said Kjarenca, whose non-governmental organization SOS Jeune, based in Brussels, takes care of unaccompanied children of Moroccan and Algerian origin.
Not far from the office of this NGO near the Eurostar terminal, groups of children from North Africa are often seen. Some of them walk the streets like zombies after being given Rivotril, a powerful benzodiazepine.
Kjarenca says that, apart from a few non-governmental organizations like SOS Jeune, these children have few friends. No one wants to take on the responsibility of taking care of them.
Some of the children cared for by this NGO have died in the meantime, from illness, were killed or committed suicide. Kjarenca says that in the last three years there have been at least five deaths. Another 23 children with whom she was in contact are in prison, and some have been charged with drug-related crimes.
On the surface, the suffering of these neglected immigrant children, and hundreds of others like them across Europe, is a testament to the failure of governments across the continent to provide assistance to the most vulnerable victims of the global migrant crisis.
If you dig deeper, all these children have a different story about Europe's growing addiction to the chemical formula C17H21NO4 - cocaine.
A Guardian investigation has found that hundreds, if not thousands, of African children are being trafficked to Europe to be involved in the booming cocaine trade, as small cogs in a £10 billion criminal industry that transports huge quantities of the drug from the Andean rainforests to the ever-growing number of customers across the continent.
Police intelligence has determined that there is an "unlimited" supply of vulnerable child labor being trafficked from North Africa to work for the highest tiers of cocaine networks in Europe.
In March, senior police officers convened a secret meeting in Brussels. Officials from 25 EU countries, as well as Great Britain, Europol, the European border service Frontex, the UN refugee agency and the European Commission attended.
Children are required to sell a certain amount to others on a daily basis, or else risk being gang-raped
On the agenda: the exploitation of unaccompanied African children by powerful international drug gangs based in Western Europe.
"We have evidence that these foreign minors are massively exploited by organized criminal groups involved in drug smuggling," said a police source who attended the meeting.
According to the police, this phenomenon is of an industrial scale. Investigators investigating the mass recruitment of minors by cocaine networks in Belgium soon realized that their modus operandi was being used across Europe.
A Belgian police document cites a recent report by European police officials investigating organized crime and human trafficking: "Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and France presented several concrete cases of the exploitation of hundreds of minors from North Africa, who were recruited by drug cartels to sell drugs."
Cocaine trafficking networks are particularly brutal, the police claim. Children are asked to sell a certain amount of drugs per day or risk gang rape. The footage confirms that the threat is real. Others are forced to have sexual relations with adults in order to secure their place in the network. A report by Dutch justice officials states that such "networks" are savage. "Networks force them to do certain things, many boys are raped and filmed during the rape," the report said.
Retribution is guaranteed. A child who was caught by the police selling drugs in Brussels was found bruised two days later. Punitive beatings.
Some escaped from Belgium; terrified that they will be killed because they owe money from drug sales. A number of them have been turned into child soldiers: go-betweens who are ordered to attack rival drug gangs, usually with knives.
"We find them with terrible injuries, deep knife wounds that they are trying to heal themselves," said a social worker from Brussels.
The latest Europol intelligence report confirms that drug gangs are abusing children and forcing them to attack their rivals. "They recruit minors to commit violent attacks and intimidate those who won't cooperate."
One of the highest European officials investigating the exploitation of such children warns that this threat is most prominent among minors from two African countries.
Veteran with 30 years of experience, Belgian Judicial Commissioner Eric Garbor says: Moroccan and Algerian minors are particularly vulnerable and are most often exploited by organized criminal groups involved in criminal activities such as drug trafficking".
This problem has recently come to light in London as well. At meetings of representatives of the police and social services, work is being done to determine whether criminal networks are behind a series of incidents in which Moroccan and Algerian children have been mutilated. According to the sources, the children were tortured.
Yusef knew it would be different, but coming to Europe was like coming to another planet. "You don't know the language, values, customs - or anyone. It's a big shock”.
After fleeing the Moroccan city of Sale and an abusive father, Youssef was vulnerable when he arrived in Spain as a 15-year-old and headed for Brussels.
Belgian Commissioner for Children's Rights Caroline Vriens describes boys like Yusef as the "most vulnerable" minors on the continent.
The drug gangs would agree with that. "Criminals in Europe approached me, but I always turned them down," said Yusef. Others were less decisive. Some of Yusef's friends simply disappeared.
Europe's failure to assimilate such vulnerable children will pay dearly. Today's 12-year-old street cocaine sellers are tomorrow's drug lords, Garbar said
"They are at the mercy of organized crime groups," according to a Belgian police document sent to Europol last December, adding: ".. for whom they are like castaways attracted by the light of a lighthouse."
The most powerful and largest lighthouse belongs to the Moroccan cocaine smuggling network, which is colloquially known as the "wet mafia".
It controls most of the territory around the Brussels Eurostar terminal. More important, however, is its control over Europe's second-largest container port, 30 miles north of Brussels. Antwerp has become the continent's main gateway for cocaine arriving from South America, hidden among the 12 million containers that pass through the port each year.
Last year, authorities seized a record 116 tons of cocaine at the port. Still, a lot gets through: according to reports, only one or two percent of containers entering Antwerp are inspected. Every ton that passes the authorities tightens the grip of the wet mafia and allows it to make further progress in its effort to meet the growing demand for the drug in Europe.
Analysts claim that increasingly powerful European cocaine gangs, such as the wet mafia, are now working directly with South American drug cartels to bring cocaine production to record levels.
Due to the huge amount of cocaine that arrives in Europe from South America, the prices of this drug are low, and the quality is high. Compared to the 1990s, the street price of cocaine would be around 24 euros per gram.
"It is more accessible, cleaner than 20, 30 years ago," he said Team Surmont, analyst at the European Center for Narcotics and Addiction Monitoring.
Users behave accordingly: four times more Europeans use cocaine than two decades ago. However, market growth also requires a larger workforce. Mokro mafia immediately saw that unaccompanied and undocumented children like Yusef are ideal, cheap and available street vendors.
In a recent report by the Belgian police, which was sent to Europol, it is stated that the wet mafia as a structured criminal network "no longer hesitates to exploit minors in order to get rich".
The labor supply is significant. Last year, the police referred 623 unaccompanied children from Morocco and Algeria to child protection services in Brussels. Others disappear, never to be found again.
Tijana Popović from the organization Child Focus in Brussels recorded 332 "worrying" disappearances of unaccompanied children in Brussels last year, including the 11- and 12-year-old age group.
Garbar states in the police report that thousands of unaccompanied children enter Europe every year and "disappear without a trace". He adds: "Many of them are 'trapped' in criminal circles."
Apart from Brussels, many also disappear in Paris. Last year, police uncovered a large drug-trafficking network in the Barbes area that exploited Algerian children.
Recently, concerns have been growing in London as well, with police and child protection experts holding meetings to discuss the disturbing new trend. Extremely vulnerable Moroccan children, who appear to be under the control of criminals, have been found in at least four areas of London
During February and March, British Rail Police found nine Moroccan and Algerian children in urgent need of protection. Five were found on London's rail or underground network.
Detective Arlen Wilson said that they "identified children and vulnerable persons in the railway network who we believe are victims of exploitation and modern slavery".
Police investigating the issue raided an address in Finsbury Park, north London, according to sources. The authorities were forced to act quickly. Children are not only vulnerable, but have also been abused.
"Those young people who were identified in the UK had serious injuries which indicated that they had been subjected to a high degree of violence," said a source from the child protection service. "Expressed violence as a method of control".
Amin turns, squinting in the sun, his face pockmarked with scars he refuses to talk about. Behind him, a six-meter-high fence separates Morocco from the Spanish enclave of Melilla. For three years, Amin, like hundreds of other unaccompanied children, survived by selling handkerchiefs to workers at the port of Beni Ansar, playing a cat-and-mouse game while evading authorities who wanted to deport him.
Europe is behind the fence. Freedom. Soon, surely, they will go over the fence?
"I want to help my family, to go to Europe. I want to change my life," says this thirteen-year-old who left home in search of work after his father passed away.
And Yusef went that way, climbed the fence, crouched on the boat towards Spain. Most hide in trucks, often taking advantage of the chaos created by events such as the Paris-Dakar Rally. A number of them are directly trafficked into cocaine networks in cities like Brussels, the police claim.
Cartels skillfully use social media to lure children like Yusef and Amin. On these platforms there are "harraga" channels linked to drug gangs that promise a better life in Europe.
"Haragga" means "to burn" in Arabic, which is a kind of instruction to destroy personal documents in order to avoid identification once they arrive in Europe. Children like Amin are called harragas - "those who burn". The police claim that the mokro mafia is not in danger of running out of such children. "The Mokro Mafia is aware that they have limited human resources at their disposal in their country of origin. What we in the EU have is an unstoppable flow of cheap human resources from Africa," said Garber.
At some point, police expect the influx of young, cheap labor from Africa to expand further at the expense of child exploitation from countries such as Sudan. Cocaine networks were quick to take advantage of the chaos in Afghanistan. At a meeting in Brussels in March, police showed photographs of Afghan children, some as young as 12, being trafficked en masse into Europe's cocaine capital, Antwerp.
In Brussels, armed police force young Moroccans away from the Eurostar terminal. Ahead of the European Parliament elections, half-conscious children selling cocaine do not look good for the image of the political capital of the European Union.
Shortly afterwards, a separate police operation was announced to crack down on the trafficking of African children to European cocaine cartels.
On a broader level, there is a need to change the way of thinking within the police, said Garbar. Arresting children who deal drugs does not change anything. In the neighborhood near the Eurostar, 2000 drug-related arrests have been made in the past six months, which have not affected the supply of cocaine.
Yusef calls for a more humane solution.
"To live and survive on the street you have to be strong. You need to look at them as human beings, and you need to give them a chance outside of crime."
Yusef is proof that they can succeed. He is now 25 years old and has been living in Belgium for six years and working for the Red Cross.
Garbar warns that failure to assimilate such vulnerable children will result in Europe paying a heavy price. Today's 12-year-old street cocaine dealers are tomorrow's drug lords.
"When they grow up, these young people will be a threat to our societies. They did not adapt to our lifestyle and did not benefit from protection and adequate care from our countries. These young people will continue their criminal activities and their power will grow. If we do not act against this phenomenon, then in 10, 15, 20 years we will face one of our most important problems".
Translation: NB
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