[LINK] "Africa's Cocaine Hub: Guinea-Bissau a 'Drug Trafficker's Dream'"

[rfmcdonald]

Beyond the Beyond's Bruce Sterling linked to Alexander Smoltczyk's Spiegel article describing how Guinea-Bissau is fast becoming a narcostate. The people charged with preventing the use of the former Portuguese colony as a transit state for moving drugs from Latin America to Europe are badly undersupported and undersupplied by the people, as people

João Biague says he only has one way to lose his job: "success." As soon as he manages to seize a shipment of drugs, he admits, "I'll be fired." But "success" is not actually part of the job description of the director general of Guinea-Bissau's judicial police.

Biague has his office in a colonial building slowly turning black from the moisture and humidity. It's located on a dirt street near an athletic field. The potholes are filled with plastic refuse and seashells. A woman is crouching under a ceiba tree and roasting a scrawny ear of corn over a smoldering fire.

His agency corresponds to the headquarters of Germany's Federal Office of Criminal Investigation (BKA) in Wiesbaden -- or the FBI in Washington, DC.

And:

In order to run their trans-Atlantic trafficking operations, the cocaine barons of Latin America need countries with an ideal geographic location, under the radar of international interest and characterized by the highest possible corruption index. Guinea-Bissau comes very close to fulfilling this ideal.

The country has porous borders, inconspicuous airfields and a virtually powerless civilian government. Extradition agreements are practically unknown. One of the most sought-after American fugitives from justice, convicted murderer and hijacker George Wright, worked for years as a basketball coach in Bissau.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) sees Guinea-Bissau as the world's only example of a narco state: "In Afghanistan and Colombia, individual provinces are in the hands of drug lords. Here, it's the entire state," says a high-ranking official at the agency's headquarters in Vienna. In Colombia, the drug lords take advantage of the chaos. In Bissau, they benefit from the secure environment.

For a narco state, Guinea-Bissau seems rather peaceful, even sleepy at times. There are no junkies here and no beheaded traitors on the roadside. The daily drug trade is conducted virtually without violence.

"The situation is difficult," says Biague, as he closes his office door. After the military coup in April, he explains, there has been an increase in smuggling. "The positions have been reshuffled, and the police and civil authorities have become even more cautious," he says. One of his men was recently almost beaten to death -- in an army barracks, he claims. Biague also says his predecessor fled because she couldn't stand the threats anymore.