February 11, 2009
Al Jazeera
Abstract:
The tiny impoverished African nation of Guinea Bissau has become a fulcrum for international drug trafficking. People & Power discovers the impact cocaine is having both on officials and civilians.
When local fishermen discovered the packets of white powder floating off the coast of the tiny West African country of Guinea-Bissau three years ago there was much confusion.
"Some people thought it was flour," one fishermen says. "Others thought it was fertiliser to put on their tomato plants, others thought it was something we put in dried fish."
The strange powder was in fact cocaine. One man painted his boat with it. Another used it to mark out a football pitch.
The fishermen were unaware that they had discovered some of the first evidence of a major shift in international drug trafficking.
Latin American drug cartels are finding it harder to send their goods directly to Europe without being intercepted. So the cartels are plotting a new course, straight across to Africa....
September 26, 2008
International Crisis Group // Open Democracy
Abstract:
The expansion of drug-trafficking networks in west Africa is further corroding Guinea-Bissau's institutions to produce the region's first narco-state, says Emmanuelle Bernard of the International Crisis Group.
Guinea-Bissau is most likely the world's next narco-state. The United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates that much of the forty tons of cocaine that transits west Africa every year on its way from South America to Europe passes through the country. The traffickers are attracted by the weakness of Guinea-Bissua's political and administrative institutions. For their part, aid donors - concerned by political instability and public mismanagement - have been reluctant to provide financial support to tackle these core weaknesses. A brief moment of hope in 2007 that this might change was crushed. It may not return soon....
September 11, 2008
World Politics Review
Abstract:
Stepped up U.S. drug enforcement and interdiction in Latin America, coupled with a falling dollar and a surging demand for cocaine on the streets of Europe, is leading to political and economic chaos across West Africa, where international narco-traffickers have established their most recent, and lucrative, staging grounds. In fact, the drug trade is fast turning large parts of the region into areas that are all but ungovernable -- with major implications for international security. "The former Gold Coast is turning into the Coke Coast," said a 2008 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). "The problem is so severe that it is threatening to bring about the collapse of some West African states where weak and corrupt governments are vulnerable to the corrosive influence of drug money."
Though hardly alone in West Africa, Guinea-Bissau, the world's fifth poorest country, with a population of 1.5 million, has for all intents and purposes become the textbook example of the African "narco-state." Due to its relative proximity to South America, its hundreds of miles of unpatrolled coastline, islands and islets, along with the fact that Portuguese is its lingua franca, Guinea-Bissau has been increasingly targeted by South American drug lords as a preferred traffic hub for European-bound cocaine, according to the UNODC. What's more, as citizens of a former Portuguese colony, Guineans do not need visas to enter that EU country, further facilitating the movement of drugs.
Authorities there can do precious little about it. "Guinea-Bissau has lost control of its territory and cannot administer justice," declared Antonio Maria Costa, the UNODC executive director, in a statement before the U.N. Security Council in December. "There is a permeability of judicial systems and a corruptibility of institutions in West Africa," he added. "Guinea-Bissau is under siege. Literally under siege." Guinea-Bissau enjoys plenty of company among its neighbors: To varying degrees, Ghana, Senegal, Nigeria, Cape Verde, Guinea-Conakry, Togo, Benin, Senegal, South Africa, and other West African and sub-Saharan states (including already-challenged states like Sierra Leone, the Ivory Coast and Liberia) are all beginning to feel the long reach of cocaine smuggling....
February 15, 2007
Integrated Regional Information Networks
Abstract:
Guinea-Bissau has become a key transit point for cocaine moving between Latin America and Europe as drug traffickers take advantage of scant surveillance, government instability and poverty to ply their trade. There have been more than 50 known seizures of drugs in he past two years, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC). "And that's just the tip of the iceberg," said Antonio Mazzitelli, the UNODC representative for West and Central Africa.
Guinea-Bissau 
