Africa a New Conduit for Europe's Drugs
Pastor Dale Morgan
Africa a New Conduit for Europe's Drugs*
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI
The Associated Press
Sunday, July 29, 2007; 12:16 PM
BISSAU, Guinea-Bissau -- The fishermen who came across the bags of white
powder bobbing in the ocean knew they had found something valuable, but
they weren't sure exactly what.
Back in their village, women unwrapped the layers of plastic and
sprinkled the contents on their crops, thinking it might be fertilizer.
Soon entire fields were dusted with cocaine, say police who use the
incident two years ago to illustrate how easily their country became the
world's newest narco-state, a way station for South American cocaine
heading to Europe.
"The drug traffickers look for the weakest point. We are the weakest
point. Our people don't even know what cocaine looks like," says
Inspector Quintinio Antonio, sitting in the dilapidated office of
Guinea-Bissau's counter-narcotics police.
This island-ringed nation of 1.5 million is a fairly straight 4,000-mile
shot across the Atlantic from the coca fields of South America. But
geography is only part of the appeal for traffickers trying to get the
drug to Europe, where cocaine seizures have quadrupled over the past
decade and prices for the drug are now double those in America. The
smugglers also need a weak, easily corruptible government and a
population ignorant of the narcotics trade.
It's a need born of a changing drug market. The cocaine boom that
gripped the United States in the 1980s is now under way in Europe, where
consumption has grown two-, three- or fourfold in various countries over
the past decade, according to a U.N. report last month.
The demand has made Europe a far more lucrative drug market than
America: One pound of uncut cocaine can fetch $21,000 in Europe,
compared with $10,000 in the U.S., according to U.N. figures.
To elude European airport security and coastal patrols more easily,
smugglers ship drugs in bulk to Africa's western seaboard, where they
are parceled out to hundreds of individual smugglers who use fishing
vessels, sailboats and their own bodies to sneak it north into Europe.
The U.N.'s Office on Drugs and Crime says the world's total supply is
around 2.2 million pounds a year. Interpol says 440,000 to 660,000
pounds of the drug enters Europe via West Africa.
Europe-bound cocaine has been found all along Africa's western spine
from Mauritania to Senegal and from Liberia to Ghana.
One of the most important stopovers in this global network, say senior
drug intelligence officials, is Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese
colony with a language akin to the traffickers' Spanish and a string of
uninhabited islands perfect for drug drops.
No one can say how much cocaine is funneled through Guinea-Bissau's
220-mile coastline to Europe. But in the case of 13,600 pounds of
cocaine seized at sea from three different vessels in the past 17
months, the country's fingerprints were obvious _ a ship registered in
Guinea-Bissau, a captain from that country, airplane tickets found
aboard a boat showing smugglers flew from Brazil to Guinea-Bissau before
sailing north.
Police here say they know which islands are leased by drug lords, who
use front businesses such as hotel construction to justify frequent
plane landings. They know the addresses of safe houses used by
Colombians. They have license plate numbers of SUVs supposedly used to
transport cocaine and the tail number of a plane painted with a blue
stripe from which drugs allegedly were unloaded _ under military escort
_ at the capital's airport.
Yet over the past three years, they have made only two major seizures,
and the head of the judicial police who led both was sacked _ a move
many say was retribution from politicians involved in the drug trade.
"The information we have clearly points to the conclusion that
traffickers are operating on a large scale and with almost complete
impunity" in Guinea-Bissau, says Antonio Mazzitelli, West Africa
director of U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime.
If drug traffickers were to imagine a perfect base for their operations,
they would have conceived something similar to the world's fifth poorest
nation.
Its government is so poor its police cannot afford handcuffs. The
judicial police, charged with counter-narcotics, has only two working
squad cars for over 70 officers. Lacking money for fuel, they often run
out of gas during car chases after suspected drug smugglers.
Officers earn $100 a month on average, but they have only been paid for
two of the last six months.
There is no prison, so convicted criminals are housed in a crumbling
Portuguese villa where food is scarce. Some thieves and murderers are
allowed to leave to find something to eat if they promise to return.
The police say they are doing their best to stop the influx of drugs,
and the government has openly requested Western help in combating the
traffickers, but senior diplomats claim this same government
deliberately keeps the police under-equipped because most of its
officials have been bought off.
In September, according to police accounts, undercover cops were tipped
off to a pending drug shipment and, afraid their squad car would break
down or run out of gas, they rented a taxi. They arrested two Colombian
nationals with 674 kilograms (1,486 pounds) of cocaine, an amount whose
street value in Europe is equal to one-fifth of Guinea-Bissau's annual
gross domestic product.
They squeezed the suspects between two officers in the taxi's back seat,
the only way they could think to keep them from fleeing in the absence
of handcuffs.
Weeks later a judge freed the Colombians. The cocaine, which had been
placed in the national treasury, vanished.
Several foreign diplomats say the police are too ineffective to stop the
drug cartels and the military has been bought off.
In April, police say, two soldiers were caught in a car with 1,400
pounds of cocaine, flown to the mainland in a plane that landed on a
military airstrip.
Army spokesman Arsenio Balde denies that the military is systematically
involved in drug trafficking, but adds, "I cannot exclude the
possibility that individuals within the army are involved."
Although European governments are working with African states to stem
the flow of drugs, "Africa is a windfall for drug traffickers," says
Eloy Quiros, the head of the drug force in Spain, where 3 percent of the
population now uses cocaine, compared to 1.8 percent in 1997.
Some critics say the system in Guinea-Bissau is hopelessly rigged in the
drug lords' favor.
Given that a Guinea-Bissau police officer earns about as much as a gram
of cocaine fetches in a Madrid nightclub, "the Colombians who come (to
Guinea-Bissau) could buy the entire country if they wish," Quiros says.
Already, according to police, residents of the capital own at least four
Hummers _ a car worth more than 100 times the average annual salary _
and two of the owners are unemployed men in their 20s and 30s.
Over a hill beyond the airport, three-story villas with swimming pools,
basketball courts and guesthouses are sprouting out of the red dirt, the
homes of the country's naval commanders and military elite, say police.
Offshore, the same islanders who until recently didn't know what cocaine
looked like are becoming increasingly sophisticated and keen to spread
the word on drugs coming in.
Each time a plane lands and offloads a suspicious package, they radio
the information from island to island until they reach one with cell
phone coverage. From there, it is relayed to Pindjiguiti FM, a radio
station in the capital that broadcasts a description of the plane on the
daily "Good Morning Bissau" show.
"When we call the authorities, they say the planes are unloading
materials for a new hotel," says the show's host, Sumda Nansil. "It's
been months, the planes keep coming, but there is no sign of a hotel."
___
Associated Press correspondents Mar Roman in Madrid, Raphael Satter in
London, Heidi Vogt in Lagos, Nigeria, Marta Falconi in Rome, and Jenny
Barchfield in Paris contributed to this report.