DAKAR, (Reuters) – A U.S. drugs sting targeting Guinea-Bissau’s top military brass may freeze cocaine smuggling through the tiny West African state in the short term but could jeopardise efforts to restore order after a 2012 coup.
The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday accused Armed Forces Chief General Antonio Indjai of plotting to traffic cocaine to the United States and sell weapons to Colombia’s FARC rebels, after a months-long undercover operation that has also ensnared a former navy chief.
But Indjai – widely seen as the country’s most powerful man – remains in Bissau after evading the sting and the big question is how he will react to becoming a target for American law enforcement agents.
Guinea-Bissau’s caretaker government is due next month to publish a road map to elections that African and Western diplomats hope will close the book on decades of political turmoil since independence from Portugal in 1974.
“The arrests could make some of the military and political leaders very nervous and less willing to carry on with a transition that might result in their demise,” said Vincent Foucher, a researcher at International Crisis Group.
“Or it could do the exact reverse and increase the leverage of those in the international community that act as the good cops,” Foucher said, referring to some diplomats who have shown an interest in engaging with the existing leadership.
Repeated coups, political assassinations and a civil war in the nation nestled below Senegal on Africa’s Atlantic coast, have weakened its law enforcement and paved the way for Colombian cartels to use it as a transhipment hub for tonnes of narcotics destined for Europe and the United States.
The country entered its latest crisis last April, when the military arrested then Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Junior and acting President Raimundo Pereira in the midst of an election that Gomes Junior was poised to win.
Indjai, who accused Gomes Junior of plotting to replace Bissau’s army leadership, seized control in the wake of the putsch. He ceded power a month later to a transitional government led by a civilian president, Manuel Serifo Nhamadjo, in a deal brokered by West African regional bloc ECOWAS.
Both Gomes Junior and Pereira were forced to leave the country as part of the deal.
DRUGS TRADE
The European Union and the CPLP grouping of Portuguese-speaking nations have since refused to recognise Nhamadjo’s administration, saying it remains under the control of military officials involved in the drugs trade.
Nhamadjo’s government has denied any drugs links and has said the lack of support for his administration from traditional partners has hindered progress at setting elections.
Nhamadjo is in Germany seeking medical treatment for complications from diabetes. A spokesman said he could return to Guinea-Bissau within days.
Diplomatic sources said the U.S. anti-drugs operation in Bissau has already had a chilling effect on smugglers, who have for years taken advantage of weak law enforcement and a maze of offshore islands to move cocaine.