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Paradise Lost: The Implications of the U.S. War on Drugs and Narco-Trafficking in Guinea Bissau

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It may be time for policymakers, especially in the United States, to hit the stop clock on the War on Drugs (WoD) for a moment and look closely not only at how "success" is measured, but at the implications of those measurements. Since President Richard M. Nixon declared war on the production, distribution, and consumption of illicit narcotics roughly 40 years ago, the aggressive policy initiative has yielded few tangible results and can hardly evade being characterized as an utter failure. Much to the chagrin of successive presidential administrations that took up the mantle, the WoD probably served instead to help such "nefarious" criminal organizations sustain profitability. The tenets of economics hold that when there is a surfeit of demand and shortfalls in supply of a particular product, a rise in price necessarily follows. Notwithstanding the economic realities of the WoD, one of the more disquieting and unintended byproducts is the shift by Columbian and Venezuelan drug cartels from focusing on the narcotics market in the U.S. to that of Europe, while using the fragile states of West Africa, particularly Guinea-Bissau, as a stepping stone.

The United States Government (USG) is fully aware of the aforementioned economics of the drug war. However, they are also aware that they are capable of embargoing cocaine for the next 40 years without any effect on the vested interests therein. Effective WoD policing on the border and in the Caribbean, along with the near monopoly of the powerful Mexican cartels, has pushed their South American competition to shift their activities rather than continue through Central America. The South American drug cartels are now jumping shores across the Atlantic, to use Guinea-Bissau as a locale through which they can reach a profitable market safe from some of the encumbrances of US surveillance. Guinea-Bissau, for its part, lacks a robust demand for drugs on par with the United States, and there is no indication that these cartels have tried to cultivate one. However, cocaine use in the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Germany, France, and Italy has increased substantially, and narco-traffickers are keen to accommodate this pique in interest. As a result, the West African nation has become a footnote to the drug consumption of Europe.

On April 2nd, 2013, agents from the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) apprehended the Bissau-Guinean drug kingpin and navy chief, Rear Admiral José Américo Bubo Na Tchuto, during a sting operation in international waters off Guinea-Bissau's coast. Na Tchuto had made a deal with undercover DEA operatives to receive and store cocaine shipments in Guinea-Bissau before their transport onward to the U.S. and Europe. In exchange for his services, Na Tchuto was to be compensated $1,000,000 per 1,000 kg of cocaine and a portion of the product to bribe government officials, which allegedly went as high up the ladder as interim President, Manuel Serifo Nhamadjo. If he had been successful, one can readily imagine the scope of power and influence one million USD would have afforded Na Tchuto or anyone for that matter in the streets of Guinea-Bissau.

To put Na Tchuto's fee in perspective, one ought to consider that aside from Guinea-Bissau being the world's 5th poorest country and having an annual GDP per capita of roughly $1,200, the business of cocaine trafficking has reached absurd levels – grossing an estimated $4.3  billion in revenues a year.  What's more, the country's real GDP for 2012 amounted to a hair under $2 billion.  This disparity is alarming and should give pause to any DEA agent who might think that the Na Tchuto affair was akin to severing the head off the snake. Conversely, the economic incentives that reinforce and sustain cocaine trafficking from South America to Western Europe via Guinea-Bissau have reached epic proportions. Mathematically, if the deal was for only one million USD per 1,000 kg of cocaine, the former navy chief was in fact asking for less than one half of a percentage point (.02%) of the total revenue the industry generates yearly. This sum is a drop in the bucket and in all likelihood indicative of collusion between much broader interests.  To boot, this bust evinces the fact that the cartels have gained a foothold in Guinea-Bissau, a country uncomfortably close to Mali, which has recently had its own share of political instability, military coups, and illicit narcotics trafficking that emboldened and empowered the likes of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

When it became clear to U.S. policymakers that the cartels had simply pivoted to Guinea-Bissau rather than limited their activities, the U.S. should have reevaluated the efficacy of their policy approach to the War on Drugs. As of yet, this has not happened. In fact, the U.S. seems to be attempting to quell the rising flow of narcotics through Guinea-Bissau using the same policies that saw it employed at the onset. Moreover, its efforts have yielded limited success. Recently, the New York Times reported that Jeffrey P. Breeden, the DEA's section chief of Europe, Asia, and Africa, acknowledged how the U.S. was falling behind in tackling narcotics trafficking in Africa. Further, William R. Brownfield, Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, and chief architect of the State Department's anti-trafficking strategies, maintained that the West Africa Cooperative Security Initiative (WACSI) would seek to replicate what has been done in Central America and Mexico.

Both of the above statements are telling. At face value, the goals of confronting drug trafficking head on, enhancing Africa's institutional capacity to cooperate across country lines, and providing law enforcement training seem noble, if not unremarkable. However, the notion of the WACSI as essentially grounded on problematic policy suggests that this initiative will materialize as a cookie-cutter approach to fighting the drug war. Considering how the afflicted countries of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador have witnessed horrific surges in drug-related violence and homicides, as cartels vie for control of routes and market access, the effectiveness of applying standing policy to West Africa is at the very least questionable.  Also, when probed about these associated issues, USG officials make light of the situation by simply saying that the alternative to not challenging the cartels would be worse. This myopic view on policymaking will reproduce the same failures in Latin America and transfer drug-related violence and clientelism to West Africa – a highly undesirable outcome that the nations therein could do without.

Every day approximately one ton of cocaine from South America leaves Guinea-Bissau for a final destination somewhere in Europe. Between 2006 and 2008, Europe saw cocaine usage spike by 2 million users. This occurred while domestic usage has declined at a rate of roughly 50 percent since the cocaine heydays of the 80's and the 90's, and the U.S. ratcheted up its counteroffensive efforts in Africa by augmenting its spending to $100 million in 2011 and 2012.  The expansion of the drug war will be an exercise in futility if it focuses on cocaine seizures and high-profile arrests rather than creatively deconstructing the economic interests at play.  Without significant revisions to how the U.S. is waging this war, the fragile nations of West Africa are going to suffer the brunt of the consequences: insecurity, instability, violence and undemocratic governance, spawned from a wealthy consumer demand for cocaine in Europe.

Derek Langford is a Program Assistant with the Africa Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

Prior to joining the Wilson Center, Mr. Langford has worked for the World Bank, IFESH Senegal, and Global Kids.  He is fluent in French, and proficient in Kiswahili.

Photo attributed to Coast Guard News on Flickr commons

 

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