By DAVIN O'REGAN - Published: March 12, 2012
Since emerging as Africa’s first narco-state in the mid 2000s, Guinea Bissau’s slide toward instability has been swift and precipitous. The homicide rate has spiked by 25 percent and is now nearly three times the global average. Meanwhile, poverty levels have remained near the very bottom of world rankings. Over the last five years its score on the well known “Failed States Index” has plunged more than any other country.
Cocaine traffickers, mostly from South America, first visited this sleepy West African country almost a decade ago. Guinea Bissau offered a backdoor route into the booming European cocaine market and was virtually risk free on account of its weak, easily corruptible government agencies. Co-optation, after all, is the preferred method of South America’s drug cartels.
Narco-corruption quickly penetrated the highest levels of power, including the office of former President João Bernardo Vieira, who was assassinated in March 2009. Leading military officers have since been designated “drug kingpins” by the U.S. government. As a result of such corruption, the narcotics trade flourished and may now surpass the entire value of the national economy.
Were Guinea Bissau an isolated case, these events would be sad but strategically insignificant. Unfortunately, the country may be but Africa’s first narco-state.
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