Guinea massacre highlights LatAm drug ties

At least 157 people were killed in the Guinean capital city of Conakry yesterday as part of a brutal repression by government forces.

The massacre occurred as 50,000 protestors demonstrated against military leader Capt Moussa "Dadis" Camara who came to power via a 2008 coup. The violence did not limit itself to the killings as local human rights activists also denounced troops for raping women under the guise of a “crackdown.”

In a televised address, Camara blamed “uncontrollable” soldiers for the heinous murders and banned all “subversive” gatherings. Nonetheless, his opponents remain defiant with some threatening to continue taking to the streets in protest.

The Conakry massacre brings to light the seeming lawlessness of numerous West African countries. As we’ve mentioned before, countries like Guinea Bissau have virtually turned into narco-states with close ties to Latin American drug gangs. Traffickers from countries like Colombia take advantage of the rampant corruption, abject poverty, and geography of Guinea Bissau as part of a drug “highway” from the Americas to Europe and Asia.

Despite being entitled “Guinea junta lead war on drugs” the following video from France 24 highlights the deteriorating situation in the country which is turning into a major drug production zone:

Online Sources- The Latin Americanist, YouTube, The Telegraph, BBC News, Guardian UK

Drug gangs behind Guinea-Bissau assassination?

The assassinations of Guinea-Bissau’s President Joao Bernardo Vieira and his Army chief have highlighted the importance of West Africa to the global drug trade. (The drug “highway” runs from South America and the Caribbean to Western Africa and then into Europe and Russia).

Experts consider the former Portuguese colony as Africa’s first “narco-state” under the late Vieira's rule. "It’s an easy country to actually be active if you're mafia, an organized crime lord", said a senior official with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime to BBC News. The power vacuum in Guinea-Bissau may bring more instability to the country, while nations in the area like Senegal, Sierra Leone and Guinea face potential collapse.

Vieira was gunned down by mutinous soldiers hours after his rival- military commander Gen. Batista Tagme Na Waie- died from a bomb attack. But were Latin American drug gangs the brains behind the dual murders? An article in csmonitor.com brings up that possibility:

In recent years, Colombian drug cartels have begun flying small planes across the Atlantic, landing on tiny islands dotting the Guinean coastline. Since Guinea-Bissau has no navy to patrol its waters, the cartels were free to unload tons of cocaine destined for Europe. The drugs were then distributed to impoverished African migrants, who would carry the drugs north by boat to the shores of France, Italy, and Spain…

"This recent set of killings can be explained [as] the action of the drug traffickers, who would not allow anything to get in the way or to obstruct their links with Europe," says David Zounmenou, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies in Tshwane, formerly known as Pretoria.

Vieira's killing comes days after authorities arrested the son of Guinea’s late president and accused him of drug trafficking.

Image- CBC (“President Joao Bernardo Vieira of Guinea-Bissau, shown here in 2006, died early Monday morning. (Thierry Charlier/Associated Press).”)
Online Sources- The Latin Americanist, Yéle Haiti, Voice of America, Times Online, The Telegraph, BBC News, csmonitor.com

IPS: L. American drug gangs create African “narco-state”

An article from Inter Press Service (IPS) and reported in The East African insinuates that Guinea-Bissau is becoming “the first African narco-state.” African according to the IPS piece, the grossly impoverished nation has become a safe haven for South American drug traffickers to smuggle their wares into the European market. The article notes that the country is on the verge of collapse:

“Today, Guinea-Bissau is literally fenced in. We must entertain no illusions: the state could collapse,” said Antonio Maria Costa, the head of UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime), at the same time alleging that armed forces officers were suspected of collusion “and even involvement in drug trafficking.”

Costa maintains that South American traffickers chose Guinea-Bissau partly because of its convenient location in West Africa, but mainly because its authorities are incapable of combating organized crime.

He said that nearly all drug seizures have been carried out in international waters by European naval vessels, not by Guinean forces, which are not equipped to patrol the seas and airspace.

Costa warned about the growing use of Africa as drug smuggling routes in comments made last year. Several countries in western Africa have tried to unite their efforts in order to combat the drug trade though a spokesman for Nigeria's National Drug Law Enforcement Agency acknowledged that the traffickers “have enormous resources at their disposal".

Sources- Associated Press, The Latin Americanist, BBC News, The East African,

Image- U.S. Department of State