By day, Guinea-Bissau looks like the impoverished country it is. Most people cannot afford a bus fare, never mind a four-wheel drive. There is no mains electricity. Water supplies are restricted to the wealthy few, and landmark buildings such as the presidential palace remain wrecked nine years after the end of the war. But this wreck of a country is what the UN calls the continent's 'first narco-state'. West Africa has become the hub of a flow of cocaine from South America into Europe, now that other routes have become tough for the traffickers.
US Drug enforcement agents report that the old cocaine channels through the Caribbean, markedly Jamaica and Panama, have become more intensively policed, forcing the Colombians to develop new routes to traffic cocaine. The increasing might of Mexico's powerful drug cartels has forced the South Americans to search for trafficking routes to Europe across the Atlantic rather than through Central America.
Moreover, the West African coast can be reached across the shortest transatlantic crossing from South America: either by plane from Colombia, with a re-fuelling stop in Brazil; or by ship from Brazil or Venezuela. The boats leaving South America on the five day journey travel by night, remaining motionless by day, covered in blue tarpaulins to avoid detection from the air.
From the investment perspective of a drug trafficker assessing the “ease of doing business,” Africa potentially offers a number of attractive features to the international narcotics supply chain:
1. Geographically advantageous relative to producer and high-value user countries or to critical interim destinations to reach those markets. Geography here is conceived not just in terms of physical distance between producers and consumers, but also in terms of how they are connected through high-traffic air and sea ports, land routes, or the international finance and banking system.
2. Sufficient concentration of authority in relatively few individuals, particularly over air, sea, and land connections, who are amenable to facilitating complex movement of bulk drug shipments. Amenability of individuals to cooperation is shaped by some combination of: Poor salary, weak career prospects, limited institutional pride, low professionalism, weak national identity, lack of community, etc. High need for revenues among key individuals, whether because of weak or uncertain alternative sources of funds or because of competition within prevailing political economy.
3. Low risk of discovery due to weak oversight, independent media, or civil society. Low risk of prosecution due to unclear legal code, such as a lack of criminalisation of drug smuggling, or a manipulable judicial system, which allows for skipping bail or corrupting key figures.
4. Low cost of operations, primarily in terms of payments to local facilitators for services. Weak, incomplete, or opaque regulatory environment allowing for simple acquisition of land and front companies.
Guinea-Bissau is attractive to traffickers because it is close to the growing market in Europe and has reasonably good connections to Portugal, a key landing point for drugs in Europe, as well as other African hubs such as Senegal, Mauritania, The Gambia, or Morocco.
Although much of the cocaine goes directly to Spain and Portugal, London is becoming an increasingly prominent final destination because of the street prices the drug commands - yet the U.K has no permanent diplomatic presence in Bissau, and has not joined the Iberian countries and the EU in contributing to the latest UN plans to help the country. According to the UNODC, the UK and Spain have now overtaken America in the consumption of cocaine per head.
Guinea Bissau's cocaine era began when fishermen on one island found packages of white powder washed up on the beach. They had no idea what the mysterious substance was. 'At first, they took the drug and they put it on their bodies during traditional ceremonies," recalls local journalist Alberto Dabo. 'Then they put it on their crops. All their crops died because of that drug. They even used it to mark out a football pitch'.
The real moment of truth came when two Latin Americans arrived by chartered plane, armed with $1 million in 'buyback' cash, which the locals gleefully accepted. The two men were apprehended by police, but released. When people found that it was cocaine and they could sell it, some of those fishermen bought cars and built houses.
As well as the favourable location, in Guinea Bissau the cocaine gangs have found a country where the rule of law barely exists. Law enforcement has literally no control for two reasons: there is no capacity and there is no equipment. The infiltration of West Africa by drug cartels has happened with lightning speed. Since 2003, 99 per cent of all drugs seized in Africa have been found in West Africa. Between 1998 and 2003, the total quantity of cocaine seized each year in Africa was around 600kg.
| Blue Atlantic 2.5 tonnes $500 Million |
But by 2006, the figure had risen five-fold and during the first nine months of last year had already reached 5.6 tonnes. The latest seizure, from a Liberian ship - Blue Atlantic - intercepted by the French navy last month, was 2.4 tonnes of pure cocaine. But while seizure rates globally are estimated to be 46 per cent of total traffic, the amounts found in West Africa are 'the tip of the iceberg. Even though one recent raid in Guinea-Bissau netted 635kg of cocaine, the traffickers were thought to have still made off with a further two tonnes.
The street value of the drugs trafficked far exceeds gross national product. A quarter of all cocaine consumed in Western Europe is trafficked through West Africa, for a local wholesale value of $1.8bn and a retail value of 10 times that in Europe. In Guinea-Bissau, the value of the drugs trade is far greater than the national income.
| Civil War Devastated Guinea-Bissau |
Guinea Bissau, with a population of 1.6 million, is ranked fifth from bottom in the UN's world development index. Even its recent history is one of torment: after 13 years of bloody guerrilla conflict, it won independence from Portugal, spent the first years under a Marxist Leninist dictatorship, then 18 under João Bernardo Vieira, until he was ousted by a military rebellion. Successive crises, two wars and economic collapse brought Vieira back in 2005, with a purge of the army and deceptive stability.
| Drug Mule working For Nigerian Cartel |
Nigerian drug gangs have always been an energetic presence on the global trafficking scene. Asian and African cartels trafficking heroin across the Atlantic in the opposite direction, to the US. Last year, the DEA and police in Chicago tracked nine West Africans who had moved heroin originating in South-east Asia through various West African countries, markedly Guinea-Bissau, to the US. Geographically, West Africa makes sense.
| Narco Sub Can Carry Up To 800 Tonnes |
The logical things is for the cartels to take the shortest crossing over the ocean to West Africa, by plane - to one of the many airstrips left behind by decades of war, or by drop into the thousands of little bays - or by boat all the way. A ship can drop anchor in waters completely unmonitored, while fleets of smaller craft take the contraband ashore. Guinea Bissau is a failed state, it's like moving into an empty house. There is no prison in Guinea-Bissau. One rusty ship patrols a coastline of 350km, and an archipelago of 82 islands. The airspace is un-patrolled. The police have few cars, no petrol, no radios, handcuffs or phones.
You walk in, buy the services you need from the government, army and people, and take over. The cocaine can then be stored safely and shipped to Europe, either by ship to Spain or Portugal, across land via Morocco on the old cannabis trail, or directly by air using "mules".
First emerging in the mid-2000s, narcotics trafficking has steadily worsened, with indications that large shipments arrived on a weekly or biweekly basis and that at least 25 tons of cocaine entered the country from April to July of 2012. In other words, more than half the total annual cocaine flow previously estimated to be trafficked through the entire West African region transited Guinea-Bissau in less than 4 months. These rising drug flows, which may rival the value of Guinea-Bissau’s entire economy have severely impacted the country’s governance and security.
Yet while it is a small country of just 1.6 million people, its recurring instability, especially its pivotal role in the drug trade, has had significant and worsening consequences across West and North Africa. Likewise, the length of trafficking routes into and through West Africa inevitably mean that the increasingly numerous shipments arriving in Guinea-Bissau must move through neighbouring West African countries before reaching their final destinations in Europe.
| Luxury Villa Dakar Senegal |
With the increase in trafficking, attendant criminality also spreads. Money tied to the drug trade must find channels for laundering, which often means buying property in Senegal or The Gambia, bartering for gold, diamonds, and other commodities in Liberia, or investing in dodgy and unproductive businesses elsewhere, which crowds legitimate entrepreneurs out of the first narco-state.
Estimates vary as to the cogency of the Colombian presence, but one observer suggests there are as many as 60 Colombian drugs traffickers in Guinea-Bissau. Colombians have bought local businesses, including factories and warehouses, and built themselves large homes protected by armed guards. They and their local hired help flaunt their liberty to operate - and the money they make from doing so.
Guinea-Bissau's armed forces and some politicians are thought to be deeply involved in the drugs trade. Last year, two military personnel were detained along with a civilian in a vehicle carrying 635kg of cocaine. The army secured the soldiers' release and so far there is no sign that they will face charges. Civil-military relations in Guinea-Bissau have deteriorated significantly over the last decade, resulting in the steady expansion of political meddling by military officers, fragmentation within the armed forces, and a shattered military professional ethos.
Guinea-Bissau’s military is old, top heavy, over-sized, and suffers from institutional sclerosis. Even after a demobilization campaign following the 1998-1999 civil war reduced the armed forces by roughly half, the military’s troop-to-population ratio remains double the West African average.
According to a 2008 study, more than half the army is over the age of 40, and 45 percent of all active duty members have more than 20 years of service. Personnel are heavily concentrated in the capital,
with 70 percent based in Bissau. There are twice as many senior officers in the armed forces as there are rank and file troops. In other words, the armed forces is less a dynamic and mission-focused institution serving the state than an exclusive club of aging individuals that frequently operates for their personal interests.
| Le Mouvement des Forces Démocratiques de Casamance |
Merit, performance, and leadership have far less impact than loyalty, seniority, and patronage on promotional advancement. These institutional shortcomings have contributed to a worsening tendency of the military to interfere in the country’s politics. A milestone of these altered civil-military relations was Guinea-Bissau’s 1998-1999 civil war.
Then Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces General Asumane Mané launched the conflict in 1998 after he had been sacked by then President Vieira for allegedly trafficking arms to support Le Mouvement des Forces Démocratiques de Casamance (MFDC), a rebel group in Senegal. (It later emerged that Vieira was also involved in arms trafficking). Vieira had miscalculated, though, and only curried minimal support from the armed forces and population.He was forced to rely on 2,000 troops quickly deployed by neighbouring Senegal and Guinea after Mané launched the conflict. With most of the country behind him, Mané eventually emerged victorious in 1999, and Vieira fled to Portugal.
| Chief of Staff General Veríssimo Correia Seabra |
Civil-military relations in Guinea-Bissau have been in decline ever since. after the civil war, elections for parliament and the presidency were held in 1999 and 2000. Not long after the presidential elections in 2000, a sign was erected above Mané’s offices declaring him “co-president.” He ignored or refused measures by the new civilian government to promote or shift troops and officers. Meanwhile, loyalty to Mané within the military began to fray as Mané became more deeply involved in politics. Some members of the armed forces sided with newly elected President Kumba Ialá, who had tried to consolidate his authority among the rank and file by favoring his fellow ethnic Balanta. Ialá ordered Mané arrested for subverting his authority, and Mané was killed in November 2000 by soldiers loyal to Mané’s successor,military Chief of Staff General Veríssimo Correia Seabra.
In 2003, General Seabra overthrew the increasingly unpopular and erratic President Kumba Ialá, who was blamed for a widely dysfunctional government and economic crisis. Like Mané, Seabra oversaw a return to civilian rule and elections, but fragmentation within the armed forces worsened as groups began to align behind different senior officers and military factions. Seabra was a victim of this deterioration when he was killed in a revolt in 2004. General Batista Tagme Na Wai rose to the top military post after Seabra’s death. Na Wai’s selection, which was largely determined by military elites as opposed to the civilian government, was a sign of how contentious things had become in the upper ranks of the military.
| General Batista Tagme Na Wai Funneral |
He was a member of former President Ialá’s ethnic group, the Balanta, but many of his deputies and newly promoted officers were closely aligned with former President Vieira in a delicate effort to balance competing groups in the armed forces and civilian political class. General Na Wai had an extremely antagonistic relationship with President Vieira, who had returned from exile and narrowly won a second-round presidential vote in 2005 as an independent candidate. For instance, one soldier was killed when so-called mutinous troops attacked the presidential palace in November 2008,and General Na Wai survived “accidental” gunfire directed at his motorcade by members of Vieira’s security detail. It was assumed that such incidents were orchestrated by each side.
On March 1, 2009, Na Wai was killed in a bombing. Hours later, troops loyal to Na Wai stormed the presidential residence, tortured, and fatally shot Vieira. Later it was reported that the device used to kill Na Wai was more sophisticated than anything previously seen in Guinea-Bissau. The explosive may have originated in Thailand, leading to suggestions that Latin American drug cartels had sponsored a connection between Na Wai’s rivals in Bissau and high-profile weapons traffickers. Na Wai’s successor was Vice Admiral José Zamora Induta, a deputy under General Mané during the civil war.
| President Nino Vieira |
Induta was in office for just a year when without explanation on April1, 2010, his deputy, General António Indjai, arrested him, other military officers, and then prime minister and presidential aspirant, Carlos Gomes Jr. The latter, in particular, had been a strong supporter of Indjai’s rivals within the military and was advancing robust changes within the security sector. Indjai declared himself military chief of staff. Ultimately, Gomes Jr. was released under intense pressure from large public demonstrations, influential civil society leaders, and international partners. Vice Admiral Induta and another officer were detained for 8 months without charge.
| Vice Admiral José Zamora Induta |
Among the first prominent actors behind the surge in the cocaine trade in Guinea-Bissau was President Vieira during his return to office from 2005 to 2009. Many senior military officers also became deeply involved. During General Na Wai’s years as chief of staff of the armed forces, cocaine was found at military installations; 25 soldiers were arrested from vehicles transporting cocaine; military officers intervened in police drug investigations to release prisoners and confiscate cocaine; and in one well-known incident in July 2008 troops cordoned off and unloaded 500-600 kilograms of drugs from a private plane that landed at the country’s main airport from Venezuela.
Over time, the flow of cocaine has expanded and grown more sophisticated. Even though actual seizures and interdictions have been intermittent the UN Secretary General reported to the UN Security Council in December 2012 that hundreds of kilograms of cocaine were entering Guinea-Bissau each week (with an approximate European wholesale value of at least $10-20 million).
| General António Indjai |
Many key figures have been involved. Rear Admiral José Américo Bubo Na Tchuto, twice the head of the navy, and General Ibraima Papa Camará, chief of staff of the air force, served as top military leaders even though they were sanctioned as drug traffickers by the U.S. government in April 2010. Na Tchuto was arrested along with several other Bissau-Guineans in April 2013 in international waters by U.S. authorities following a 7-month-long drug sting operation. He was recorded on multiple occasions agreeing to facilitate the transhipment of 4 tons of cocaine into Guinea-Bissau and, eventually, into the United States and Europe. Na Tchuto’s commission was $1 million per ton.
| Rear Admiral José Américo Bubo Na |
Four other military officers including General Indjai were involved in a separate investigation. This plan involved smuggling cocaine in a shipment of military uniforms into Guinea-Bissau from Colombia by plane, after which the plane would return to Colombia bearing sophisticated weaponry purchased by the Guinea-Bissau military. According to the indictment of Indjai, he was recorded telling U.S. law enforcement informants that he would arrange for the purchase of surface-to-air-missiles and to ship cocaine. In 2012, near his home village of Mansôa, General Indjai struck ground on a sizable new estate with apparent plans for a private landing strip, presumably to better manage, protect, and conceal drug shipments.
Since the coup, there have been few interdictions, reflecting the more conducive operating environment for traffickers. Competition for the Office of the President has characterized much of Guinea-Bissau’s history. This tension is a structural feature of Guinea-Bissau’s political system, whereby a disproportionate concentration of power resides in the presidency.
Individuals aligned with the president gain access to financial opportunities and career advances unavailable to the general population. Outsiders are also subject to intimidation and the arbitrary application of the law. President Vieira was certainly amenable to trafficking and retained sufficient authority to facilitate its movement. He may even have been one of the first individuals to introduce bulk cocaine trafficking through Africa to Europe based on connections he developed while exiled in Portugal, Senegal, and Guinea from 1999 to 2005.
As the trafficking developed, military leaders also became involved, given their authority over land, air, and sea routes as well as their ability to protect bulk shipments. In fact, the military’s previous involvement in arms trafficking may have facilitated a segue into drug trafficking. The military and Vieira as well as other key elites were already in competition for power and had few comparable alternative revenue streams. They would, therefore, welcome the huge funds associated with drug trafficking to strengthen their positions. There were few other institutions that could intervene: the National Assembly, the Judicial Police, and the judiciary remained too weak.
Vieira was killed by soldiers immediately following the still unexplained assassination of Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces Na Wai, in March 2009. In the lead up to elections to replace Vieira, several prominent politicians, including one candidate for president, were assassinated under mysterious circumstances, indicating how high the stakes for the presidency remained. Eventually, Malam Bacai Sanhá, a hero of the liberation era and long-time leader in the PAIGC, was elected in a second-round runoff in July 2009.
Among the most common means of transporting drugs into and out of Guinea-Bissau are the use of propeller planes and jets. Though landing planes into weakly monitored areas may sound simple, the method is often logistically complex. Behind each shipment typically lays an intricate fabric of aircraft purchases, aircraft registries, companies, financiers, fake business deals to conceal the reasons for travel and cargo, complicit licensed pilots and crew, and coperation of officials.
| N351SE $300k Per Trip |
In other words, a number of entities and individuals from multiple criminal networks operating in several countries and jurisdictions are involved in each flight that lands or departs from Guinea-Bissau. For instance, on July 12, 2008, a Gulfstream II jet landed at Osvaldo Vieira International Airport in Bissau from Venezuela. The jet parked at a military hangar and was unloaded. Customs was prevented from searching the plane, and eventually it departed. Engine trouble forced the jet to return, after which members of the Guinea-Bissau Judicial Police seized the aircraft, which still contained small amounts of cocaine. With the assistance of international investigators, it was concluded that it had transported 500-600 kilograms of drugs. The pilot and crew were arrested along with several collaborating police officers and air traffic controllers.
| Carmelo Vasquez Guerra |
As it turned out, the pilot was Carmelo Vasquez Guerra, a Venezuelan allegedly linked to Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel and wanted in connection with the landing of a DC-9 airplane in Mexico in 2006 that had transported 5 tons of cocaine from Venezuela. His brother and several other individuals were arrested in the 2006 incident.
Not long after his arrest in Bissau, however, a judge ordered Guerra to be released, ruling that his provisional detention had expired. He soon disappeared but was again arrested for drug trafficking in Venezuela in 2011. Meanwhile, evidence seized from the Gulfstream jet that Guerra had flown to Bissau mysteriously disappeared just several days after the aircraft was seized. No case was ever advanced, and the plane remains abandoned on the airport tarmac in Bissau.
Like its pilot, the Gulfstream jet also held an interesting history. The aircraft was registered as N351SE in January 2008 by a corporation named LB Aviation Inc. with an address in Yorklyn, Delaware in the United States. The address of incorporation is a house in a remote wooded area off a small country road and shared by a law firm named Whittington and Aulgur. The plane was likely never in Delaware but located at the Fort Lauderdale airport in Florida, where it was photographed in
February, March, and May of 2008 before reappearing in Bissau in July.
As it happened, LB Aviation Inc. was registered to a Luis Bustamante in Fort Lauderdale for just
12 months, from September 2007 (a few months prior to when N351SE was certified in January 2008) to September 2008 (roughly 2 months after N351SE was seized in Bissau). While stranded in Bissau due to engine problems, another plane arrived from Dakar to repair the Gulfstream and take it to Senegal. This repair crew and rescue plane were under the employ of Africa Air Assistance, a business based in Senegal that had also been named as an owner of the infamous 727 jet that would later be found abandoned in northern Mali after delivering several tons of cocaine to traffickers in the Sahelian desert.
| Africa Air Assistance Cocaine Jet Mali |
Planes owned by Africa Air Assistance or its proprietors have been photographed in West Africa, Portugal, Spain, and France. According to Bissau-Guinean blog reports, one plane was sighted making a mysterious landing at a military airport in Bissau in October 2012. Similar circumstances suggest this is a recurring business model in the region.
In January 2011, a plane carrying 944 kilograms of cocaine was seized in Barcelona, Spain along with its crew of three Argentines, all of whom were sons of former brigadier generals in the Argentine armed forces. The Challenger 604 aircraft had departed from a small airport outside Buenos Aires but landed in Amílcar Cabral International Airport in Cape Verde before reaching Spain. Cape Verde is a close neighbour of Guinea-Bissau, and the two actually comprised one state until 1981.
The Challenger would be unable to make a transatlantic flight without refuelling, hence the stop in Cape Verde, but there was also some media speculation, denied by Cape Verdean officials, that drugs may have been loaded or unloaded in Cape Verde. The Challenger 604 had a U.S. registration number, N600AM. It was owned by 604 Jet LLC since November 2006,and prior to that by Secure Aviation LLC, both incorporated in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It had made previous trips to Malaga (Spain), Tel Aviv, and London. Secure Aviation LLC shares the same address and management as 604 Jet LLC, according to corporate registry documents.
| Gustavo y Eduardo Juliá, y Gastón Miret Flew in From Africa with 900kg of Cocaine |
Meanwhile, court documents from the proceedings against the three Argentines reportedly indicated that they may have had connections to Colombian drug traffickers and had made multiple visits to Bolivia and Spain prior to their arrest. Two of the three were ultimately convicted in January 2013 sentenced to 13 years.
While it is often lamented that little can be done about drug trafficking in Guinea-Bissau given how weak and compromised the country’s leadership is, the trade through the country is actually only one part of a more complex trail of individuals and activities, whether in neighbouring African states, Latin American countries, Europe, or the United States. other states—has a benign effect on the transited country.
The assassinations of Vieira and Na Wai in March 2009 were assumed to be linked in part to disputes over narcotics trafficking. In April 2010, General Indjai, then deputy chief of staff of the armed forces, detained his superior and other senior officers, effectively promoting himself to head of the military. Soon after, he reinstated Rear Admiral Bubo Na Tchuto to his position as head of the navy, despite the fact that Na Tchuto was an internationally sanctioned drug trafficker and had fled the country in 2008 pending charges of coup plotting.
These erstwhile partners, however, had their own falling out almost 2 years later. Troops loyal to Indjai and Na Tchuto fought gun battles on the streets of the capital on December 26, 2011. Na Tchuto was eventually arrested and charged (again) with attempting a coup d’état. However, the entire incident may have been a dispute over shipments of cocaine, suggesting the rising potency of narco disputes within the worsening fragmentation of the armed forces. In another volte-face, Na Tchuto once again was released from detention in May 2012. There were subsequent reports that he may have been promoted to a Vice Admiral and was on track to be reinstated as head of the navy until his arrest by U.S. authorities in April 2013.
Moreover, trafficking in high-value narcotics has grown in many of Guinea-Bissau’s neighbours. Cocaine has been seized in large quantities in Senegal, and regional traffickers have used the country as a base. A bank in The Gambia was sanctioned by the U.S. government in 2011 for its linkages to a West African drug-trafficking and money-laundering network operated by Hezbollah.
Several large seizures of cocaine have occurred in Sierra Leone, including an incident in 2008 that implicated the Minister of Transportation and led to his dismissal. Never indicted, he was rehired as a special advisor to the President not long after and became Minister of Political and Public Affairs in 2013. The nature of narcotics trafficking in Africa also continues to evolve. There have been multiple incidents not only of cocaine but also heroin trafficking in Ghana.
Large quantities of chemicals used to manufacture amphetamines have been seized in Côte d’Ivoire and Niger. One trafficking network detained in 2010 in Liberia was surreptitiously recorded by U.S. law enforcement informants trying to convince Liberia’s senior intelligence officials to establish a drug laboratory to manufacture amphetamines for sale in the United States and Japan. Since July 2011, five sophisticated amphetamine laboratories have been discovered in Nigeria.
| Konstantin Yaroshenko Got 20 Years for 4000kg Shipment into Liberia |
Amphetamines often sell at a much higher wholesale price than cocaine or heroin, netting higher profits for criminal groups. This, in turn, could usher in a whole new era of narcotics-driven destabilizing effects in Africa. These changes signify how the international drug trade in Africa continues to deepen, evolve, and grow. It was only in 2006-2007 that alarms were first raised over
Latin Amer
