The police ambush was a success, but only just. Fuel for the police vehicles to get to the location outside of town was hard to come by. Then the first car sped through the roadblock, as some officers were busy picking mangoes. After the fourth was caught, some of the cocaine was pocketed before it could be destroyed.
But, as chaotic as it sounds, the April 3 seizure of about 635kg of Colombian cocaine that had just been flown into an army-run airstrip in Guinea-Bissau was a tiny but important victory in the battle against a mounting surge of the drug flowing into West Africa.
It also gave an indication of the scale of the challenges facing those trying to curb the flow to Europe’s flourishing cocaine markets. The street value of the drugs seized was more than $35-million. But another $100-million worth is believed to have got through. Two soldiers were arrested in the sting but the ringleaders are still free.
West Africa is no stranger to the drug trade. Nigerians are infamous for running a highly efficient network of couriers, known as mules, who can ferry up to 3kg of cocaine to dealers around the world who want small quantities in a hurry.
But the recent phenomenon of cocaine arriving from Latin America and heading to Europe in bulk has taken it to a new level. ”We are talking about hundreds of kilos, if not tonnes,” said Antonio Mazzitelli, the head of the United Nations’s Office on Drugs and Crime in West Africa.
With the street value of cocaine in Europe now about $60 000 per kilo, the trade that transits through the region is believed to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. More precise figures for the trade are hard to come by but seizures over the past few years are a fairly good gauge.
Guinea-Bissau’s largest seizure took place in the heart of the capital last September when two Colombians were caught driving around with 674kg of cocaine. Another 600kg haul took place in May in northern Mauritania. Nearly two tonnes of cocaine were seized in Ghana last year and about seven tonnes were seized from ships off the West African coast in 2006 alone.
”The growth of the European and new markets in South Africa, the Middle East and Asia have led to the need to set up new stockpiling and redistribution places to make the tracing of shipments more difficult,” Mazzitelli said.
”Latin America is the only source of cocaine so West Africa is the ideal hub for big quantities. The existence there of a number of failed states — states that are not able even to exercise their basic prerogatives — has facilitated this,” he added.
Guinea-Bissau is at the centre of this hub and the crumbling former Portuguese colony, perched on the western tip of Africa, oozes decay. The bullet riddled former presidential palace with its bombed-out roof serves as a reminder of the country’s last war at the end of the 1990s. The conflict was not serious enough to have attracted much attention and Guinea-Bissau has quietly suffered several years of unstable peace since then. One attempted coup failed, another, in 2003, succeeded and elections in 2005 returned Joao Vieira, a formerly deposed president, to power.
But the 24-hour growl of generators highlights the collapse of the state — only those rich enough to have one have electricity. There is virtually no private sector and salaries are always months late, though, when there is money, the current government is wise enough to pay the army first. The street value of Guinea-Bissau’s recent large seizures was the equivalent of more than 10% of the country’s GDP.
”Our economic problems and the lack of a real state make us vulnerable. There is a risk of us becoming a narco-state,” explains Juliano Fernandes, a former minister and attorney general in Guinea-Bissau.
With years of experience in drug running and budgets many times larger than Guinea-Bissau’s, Colombian-run cartels are operating sophisticated networks 2 000km across the Atlantic. Drug control experts say they can choose between a number of routes, depending on the amount and the final destination.
Up to a tonne of cocaine can be packed into a small aircraft and flown, via a refuelling stop in Brazil, straight into remote airstrips that were built across Guinea-Bissau for fighter jets during the war for independence. Larger amounts are put in bigger planes and dropped from the air into secluded bays in the scattering of uninhabited islands or along the country’s unguarded coastline. Teams waiting on the ground then scoop up the drugs and dispatch them by air or in boats through the winding mangrove-lined creeks.
The cocaine is then distributed through a network of organised crime and legitimate businesses that are involved in everything from importing and exporting goods to running deep sea fishing operations, experts say.
As seizures in the region suggest, there are various routes to ferry the drugs into and out of Africa. Buried in food on overland trucking routes through the desert, packed into the catches of commercial fishing vessels or swallowed by human mules, the drugs make their way north. One consignment from Ghana was hidden in giant snails destined for Irish restaurants.
Somewhat belatedly, the scale of the trade has begun to worry those outside the region. Ahmadou-Ould Abdallah, the UN’s senior representative for West Africa, warned in May that action must be taken to stop the cartels overrunning West Africa. A joint European anti-drugs task force will soon become operational in Portugal and the United States recently dispatched high level navy and coast guard officials promising to help control the chaotic ports and high seas.
But the people of Guinea-Bissau say the trade there is sanctioned by officials, and the benefits are clearly visible in the shiny new cars and large new houses of those involved. Foreign officials and local human rights activists agree, saying some members of the government and the armed forces are clearly involved, whether by turning a blind eye or actively supporting the traffickers.
”The state is impotent. It has a problem imposing itself as people can’t control some members of the armed forces,” said Fernandes. ”The government needs to take up its responsibility, even if it means a clash. There needs to be a repression of these acts.”
This is the first in a series of pieces on the cocaine trade in West Africa