West Africa’s new resource curse
A few weeks back the Guardian noted the transformation of Guinea-Bissau, a tiny, jungly and desperately poor country on the tip of West Africa, into the world’s first “narco-state.” Presumably this phrase means that its economy relies on drugs, though it has never been clearly defined and Guatemala and Afghanistan have also laid claim to the title in the recent past. No matter, what is not in doubt is that Guinea-Bissau, which had hitherto relied for survival on a meagre harvest of cashew nuts and fish (at least those fish that are not plundered by European Union trawlers), has found its diamonds/oil/gold/coltan substitute: cocaine.
The traditional route for exporting the drug from Colombia to Europe – Britons and Spaniards are the world’s biggest cokeheads – is via the Caribbean, but the American crackdown (no pun intended) has made that option both risky and expensive. Guinea-Bissau, which is the nearest point of Africa to South America, has no prisons and a police force that owns no handcuffs or vehicles, presents an alluring alternative. A few years ago, therefore, Colombian drug cartels began flying consignments of the drug to airstrips (left over from a recent civil war) in the remote jungles of the Bijagos islands. From there, having paid off local police, they move it north across the Sahara to Europe. (more…)
