An unfamiliar country keeps popping up in press reports about drug trafficking: Guinea Bissau. This West African state of 1.5 million people is one of the poorest in the world. Its chief exports? Cashews, shrimp, and cocaine. Cocaine, in a country with no coca bush? That’s right.
More than four tonnes of cocaine have been seized in West Africa this year, a 35% increase over the entire haul for 2006. Drugs are also being seized in international waters off the Gulf of Guinea.
One reason why this region is becoming a major drug trafficking hub is its location. West Africa is an ideal staging point along the route from South America to the cocaine markets of Europe. Big shipments are hidden on fishing boats and freighters, then broken up into smaller consignments that are sent by fast boats up the coast to Morocco or Spain.
Moreover, Africa’s weak states offer the least resistance as a substitute for traditional cocaine smuggling routes in Central America and the Caribbean, which are being blocked. Many countries in the region cannot control their own territory, cannot administer justice, and are plagued by corruption.
To appreciate the malaise of a country like Guinea Bissau, imagine that you are a policeman there and are tipped off about a drug shipment coming in by plane. First, you have to find a car to drive to the landing strip, and get official permission and money to fill up the gas tank.
There is no way to call for backup without a two-way radio and no electricity to charge your mobile phone. If you reach the scene of the drop in time, the next challenge is to build a makeshift roadblock to stop the truck from off-loading the cocaine.
Strangely, the truck’s driver is wearing an army uniform and is not too concerned when you seize his cargo. You take him to the police station in the back of the car – without handcuffs, because you don’t have any.
A senior government official intervenes to try to secure his release. The police chief refuses, and is so incorruptible that he sleeps beside the drugs to prevent the multi-million-dollar evidence from disappearing. Later that week, the suspect is released into the care of the military, and the police chief is fired.
This is a true story. And it is not an isolated case.
Nor is Guinea Bissau the only country in the region vulnerable to serious organized crime. Convoys of heavily armed four-wheel-drive vehicles travel at high speed across the Sahel region of Western Africa, bringing hasish from Morocco via Mauritania, Mali, and Niger to Chad and beyond.
This drug trafficking equivalent of the Dakar Rally covers 4,000 kilometers of inhospitable terrain, across regions controlled by rebel groups and terrorists associated with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. These forces are probably profiting from the drug trade. At the very least, their collusion enables the traffickers to obtain fuel, spare parts, accommodation, and guides.
What can be done? Criminal justice must be made a centrepiece of security and development. Such an approach has vaulted Cape Verde off the bottom of development indices into the respectable ranks of middle-income countries within a decade.
Likewise, there must be a crackdown on corruption, as in Nigeria, where an anti-corruption revolution has swept an impressive list of greedy public officials from high office.
Fighting organized crime requires the state to recapture control over its own territory. Improved security at ports in Ghana and Senegal is putting a dent in illicit trade passing through those countries.
A few major drug seizures by a professional group of counter-narcotics agents would make drug traffickers change their perception of West Africa as a low risk/high benefit transit route.
It would also deprive their venal local accomplices of the incentive to exploit public office for private gain.
Countries like Guinea Bissau need help, fast. While the amount of investment needed is minimal, failure to act will be very costly.