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Guinea-Bissau: Drug Trade in Broader Context
AfricaFocus Bulletin
Jun 14, 2011 (110614)
(Reposted from sources cited below)
Editor's Note
"In Guinea-Bissau, drug trafficking ... is a consequence of the
pre-existing lack of stability that allows smugglers to
establish their networks in the region and operate to and from
there. Ignoring the structural causes of the problem (endemic
poverty, corruption, impunity) will have an even deeper impact
on the local population than the illegal drug trade, and will
leave unaddressed the very conditions that continue to foster
trafficking opportunities in the future." - February 2011
report from Norwegian Peacebuilding Center
This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains (1) a recent essay by Marie
Gibert from the African Arguments website, warning against
allowing stereotypes about the drug trade to obscure the
possibility of progress on other fronts even in such difficult
conditions, and (2) excerpts from a recent comprehensive
analysis from Norwegian Peacebuilding Center of the
international cocaine trade in Guinea-Bissau.
Another AfricaFocus Bulletin, sent out today by e-mail and
available on the web at http://www.africafocus.org/docs11/wod1106.php, contains excerpts
from the new report from the Global Commission on Drug Policy,
arguing for a fundamental change in the global approach to the
"war on drugs," Continuing an approach based primarily on
prohibition and law enforcement, the report argues, will not
only fail to stop drug addiction and trafficking, but will also
continue to fuel the growth of criminal violence and expansion
of other negative consequences to more vulnerable populations,
such as in Guinea-Bissau and other African countries.
Also of interest, a series of photographs on Guinea-Bissau by
photographer Ernst Schade, at http://www.ernstschade.com/index.php?page=guinea-bissau-2006
A summary of trends in the international drug trade in Africa
can be found in Chapter III of the Annual Report of the
International Narcotics Control Board, at
http://www.incb.org/incb/en/annual-report-2010.html
For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on Guinea-Bissau, visit
http://www.africafocus.org/country/guineabissau.php
Additional links and background are also available in
"Guinea-Bissau: In Need of a State", July 28, 2008
http://www.africafocus.org/docs08/gb0807.php
++++++++++++++++++++++end editor's note+++++++++++++++++
Guinea-Bissau: A Narco-Developmental State?
May 24, 2011
By Marie Gibert
Marie Gibert is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department
of International Relations, University of the Witwatersrand,
Johannesburg, South Africa.
[For full text, including footnotes, see
http://www.africanarguments.org
This article appeared in African Arguments Online, a new venture from the Royal
African Society and partner organizations, featuring blogging
from notables such as Alex de Waal and Richard Dowden, plus an
interactive facility for comment and discussion. It is divided
into 5 strands: African politics Now, Making Sense of Sudan,
Rethinking Zimbabwe, the Central Africa Forum and Asia in
Africa.
For a report on an earlier seminar on the situation in GuineaBissau,
held in November 2010, see
http://www.royalafricansociety.org / direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/4jvygxl
]
Guinea-Bissau has repeatedly, over the past few years, been
dubbed a 'narco-state'. This label has tended to be associated
with the image of a dysfunctional 'failed' state. Yet, a recent
report published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and
the World Bank shows remarkable improvements in the country's
health and education sectors and calls for a more qualified
understanding of the country's politics.
The evidence that supported the "narco-state" label was
generally sketchy, but nevertheless undeniable. As in other West
African countries, the Bissau-Guinean police have seized a
number of major drug shipments from traffickers and planes --
generally originating from Latin America and headed to Europe --
in past years. Expensive cars allegedly owned by drugtraffickers
or their allies were also seen in ever greater
numbers in the streets of Bissau. The 'narco-state' tag was
further strengthened by visible links between representatives of
the state and drug-trafficking networks, as some of the arrested
traffickers and seized drugs later vanished from the state's
prisons and coffers, with no explanation forthcoming from the
Bissau-Guinean authorities. Another sign of criminal state
complicity was in the rapid and ostensible enrichment of some of
Guinea-Bissau's senior military officers.
Although the government of Guinea-Bissau has signalled its
willingness to address the issue, the series of political crises
since 2009 has made this task very difficult. In spite of the
peaceful legislative and presidential elections that took place
in November 2008 and June-July 2009, the coup attempts,
political assassinations and army mutinies during the same
period underlined the persistent and violent rivalries in
Guinea-Bissau's political leadership.
The assassinations, on 1st March 2009, of the head of the armed
forces, General Batista Tagme Na Wai, and of the president, João
Bernardo ("Nino") Vieira, paradoxically raised hopes. Many
thought that the personal antagonism between the two men
accounted in great part for the political paralysis preventing
essential reforms, first and foremost in the security sector. In
spite of the violence that preceded and marked the subsequent
presidential election campaign, the smooth running of the two
election rounds and the unanimous, domestic and international,
recognition of its result -- the election of Malam Bacai Sanh´,
of the ruling party PAIGC -- as democratic and transparent,
raised hope that Guinea-Bissau was finally entering a new era of
peace and greater prosperity.
The return in December 2009 of Rear-Admiral José Américo Bubo na
Tchuto -- who had been accused of organising a failed coup
attempt in August 2008 and had taken refuge in The Gambia -- and
the army mutiny organised by some of his allies the following
April, however, cast a further shadow on Guinea-Bissau's future.
The events led to the dismissal of Chief of Staff General Zamora
Induta, who had been appointed following his predecessor's
assassination and had promised to proceed with the long awaited
reform of the army. It also saw the reinstatement of RearAdmiral
Bubo na Tchuto, cleared from charges of coup attempt and
involvement in drug-trafficking activities by a military court,
at his old position at the head of the country's navy, and the
rise of his ally General António Indjai.
Many analysts have seen in these events the hand of a narcotrafficking
mafia eager to prevent any political reform that
could lead to repression of their activities and to protect
their accomplices within the army and civilian administration.
While the influence of narco-trafficking over the current power
relations in Guinea-Bissau cannot be doubted, the direct
involvement of narco-traffickers in the above crises is still
the object of much speculation. Analysts and journalists alike
hastily drew on some rumours -- for example that the bomb that
killed General Tagme Na Wai in March 2009 was made in Thailand,
a country known for its involvement in the international drug
trade -- to draw a link that we should still treat with the
greatest caution.
Nonetheless, the events of 2009 and 2010 have come to confirm
Guinea-Bissau's narco-state label in the minds of many
international actors. This has had, overall, negative
consequences for Guinea-Bissau as the international community
has been increasingly reluctant to support a country with such
an uncertain political future. Most notably, in 2010 the EU
decided to withdraw its initial plans to follow up EUSSR GuineaBissau
(a mission in support of security sector reform), with
another,similar mission. In reaction to the official appointment
of mutiny leaders at the head of the army, the EU subsequently
opened an article 96 consultation procedure with Guinea-Bissau,
which could eventually lead to a definitive suspension of EU
development aid. While there may therefore have been a time when
the spotlight drawn on narco-trafficking suited Guinea-Bissau's
political leadership -- providing renewed international interest
in the small country and averting eyes away from its long-time,
unsolved political rivalries -- this is hardly the case now, and
Guinea-Bissau seems increasingly isolated.
However, not all donors have turned their backs. The Bretton
Woods institutions have remained consistently present in the
country, with IMF staff continuing regular visits to the
country. And the government of Guinea-Bissau carried on with the
implementation of the economic and administrative reforms agreed
with the IMF and the World Bank. This is remarkable, given the
political atmosphere of the last years and the general -- and
seemingly sensible -- belief that political instability and
violence necessarily disrupt governmental action.
What is more, the IMF, World Bank and government's joint efforts
seem to have produced measurable, positive results for the
welfare of the country's population. In their joint staff
advisory note on the second annual progress report of GuineaBissau'
s poverty reduction strategy paper (PRSP) published in
December 2010, the IMF and World Bank teams thus note that the
country has made significant progress with respect to most
indicators covering education and health, Quoting figures
obtained from the Multiple Indicators Cluster Survey (MICS)
conducted by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) in 2010, they
underline that primary school enrolment rates rose from 42% in
2000 to 45% on 2006 and 65% in 2010. Gender equality in
education has followed a similar trend, with the ratio of girls'
to boys' enrolment expanding from 0.67 in 2000 to 0.83 in 2006
to 0.94 in 2010. The illiteracy rate among women of 15-24 years
has accordingly decreased from 83% in 2000 to 61% in 2010.
Results are also impressive in the health sector, with child
mortality falling from 223 deaths per 1,000 births in 2006 to
155 in 2010. The cholera awareness and prevention programme led
by the national health authorities and their NGO partners also
seem to have effectively prevented any new outbreaks in 2009 and
2010.
The IMF-World Bank report attributes these improvements to
broadening access to social services thanks to government
reforms supported by NGOs and the private sector. Among these,
the report quotes the elimination of school fees and the
introduction of school feeding programmes in most primary
schools, large-scale vaccination campaigns, the effective
distribution of bed nets and improvements in health facilities,
as well as an incentive premium for healthcare workers operating
in isolated rural areas (and its effective payment).
Although this positive assessment must be treated with great
care -- all specialists of Africa know how unreliable such
figures can be -- it does call for more caution in our
descriptions and analyses of states like Guinea-Bissau, which
many would hastily call 'failed'. It is important to note,
first, that dynamic governmental action, supported by external
and private actors and no doubt also strengthened by GuineaBissau'
s history of state presence in rural areas, can result in
significant improvements in health and education over a
remarkably short period of time. While these short-term results
remain terribly fragile and insufficient, they indicate that
adequate -- and sufficiently supported -- governmental action can
have a significant social impact extremely quickly.
Second, while the Bissau-Guinean state may be 'failed' enough,
notably in the security sector, to attract narco-trafficking
interests, it clearly seems to have been strong enough to lead
an effective campaign in two sectors that are of vital
importance to the country's population. This is not to say that
the recent political events, and the many signs of narcotrafficking'
s pervasive influence in Guinea-Bissau are not
extremely worrying -- indeed, the IMF and World Bank teams
underline that political instability has repeatedly compromised
the ability of the government to provide essential public goods
and services and has contributed to the exodus of qualified
personnel. Nevertheless, this shows that a state can be
failed in certain -- especially politically sensitive -- sectors
and remain, or become effective again, in others. Perhaps more
importantly, it shows that a state can continue to function, at
least partially, in the kind of 'no peace-no war' situation that
Guinea-Bissau has been experiencing for many years.
Finally, these recent improvements in Guinea-Bissau's health and
education sectors call on donors and journalists/analysts alike
to be extremely weary of easy and quick labelling tendencies.
Guinea-Bissau's security sector is indisputably in need of a
reform that would, inter alia, put an end to narco-trafficking's
detrimental influence on the country's politics. It is also
clear that this reform is unlikely without a strong political
will, at the heads of both the state and the army. The above
results obtained by the government in adverse political
conditions also seem to indicate, however, that there may be a
greater need for constructive -- and possibly selective and
target-orientated -- external support than for all-encompassing
sanctions and conditions on the part of donors. Not least
because a government able to make a significant difference in
the daily lives of its citizens will no doubt be more popular
and thus have a strong advantage over a still reform-resistant
army.
The international cocaine trade in Guinea-Bissau:
current trends and risks
February 2011
Luís Filipe Madeira, Stéphane Laurent and Sílvia Roque
Norwegian Peacebuilding Center Noref Working Paper
[Excerpts only. For full text, including footnotes, see
http://peacebuilding.no / direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/3mxn9do]
Luís Filipe Madeira teaches International Relations at the
University of Beira Interior (Portugal). He holds a PhD in
Political Sciences from IEP, University of Montesquieu-Bordeaux
IV, and he regularly collaborates with CIDAC (Portuguese
NGO)
Stéphane Laurent was trained at the University of Bordeaux in
Management of Development and Humanitarian Aid. He is a member
of the Board of CIDAC where he coordinates the development
cooperation sector. Since 2002 he has been responsible for the
NGO's cooperation with Guinea-Bissau.
Sílvia Roque is a researcher at the Centre for Social Studies of
the University of Coimbra. She holds a master's degree in
African Studies from ISCTE (Lisbon) and a BSc in International
Relations from the School of Economics of the University of
Coimbra. She is a completing her PhD in International Politics
and Conflict Resolution and has been conducting research on
Guinea-Bissau since 2006.
Executive Summary
This paper analyses the international, West African and national
conditions that fuel the spread of the international
drugs trade in West Africa, particularly in Guinea-Bissau, and
examines the impact of the international cocaine trade at a
social, economic and governance level in this small West African
country.
Although drug trafficking has a long history in West Africa,
over the past five years the region has increasingly attracted
international attention as a new hub for the illicit cocaine
trade between Latin America and Europe. In the case of GuineaBissau,
that attention has been all the greater for a number of
reasons:
- the visibility of the authorities' involvement in
trafficking, causing international agencies and the media to
dub it the "world's first narco-state";
- the amount of drugs seized on its territory and the
increasing presence of South Americans, to whom this type of
activity is attributed; and lastly
- because the country is totally dependent on aid and
uses the media attention given to drug trafficking as an
argument for keeping aid flowing into the country.
Following significant seizures of cocaine in 2006 and 2007, the
trade appeared to go into decline in 2008 and 2009, for which
the authors outline four possible scenarios, the most likely
being that it is continuing but through the employment of other
less visible methods, with the traffickers having made only a
temporary tactical retreat.
Favourable conditions for trafficking
Both the global operation of the cocaine market and a number of
specific national conditions favour the development of drug
trafficking in West Africa and especially Guinea-Bissau. At the
systemic level, the enforcement of the global drug-control
system tends to push traffickers to select transit routes
through states that are already weakened by internal conflict,
poverty or both.
In recent years, the Latin American drug cartels appear to have
shifted their attention to supplying the lucrative European
market by developing networks in West Africa, focused around
Ghana in the south and Guinea-Bissau in the north. From there
the drugs are smuggled into Europe on commercial flights by
mules. At the same time, by paying local collaborators in both
cash and cocaine, the traffickers are creating a local consumer
market for the drug.
The geography of Guinea-Bissau, with its myriad of coastal
islands, makes it the perfect destination for unloading drugs
that have been transported by sea, often from Brazil or
Venezuela. The virtual collapse of the country's administration,
the inadequacies of the police and justice
sector, impunity, endemic corruption and widespread poverty
create fertile conditions for the flourishing of the cocaine
trade which, in turn, has further adverse consequences at the
social, economic and governance levels.
The presence of resourceful and potentially violent South
American cartels in Guinea-Bissau has aggravated a situation
that was already unsustainable, and drug-related incidents are
on the rise. After reporting the involvement of the military and
their civilian allies in drug trafficking, several
journalists and activists have had to flee the country or go
into hiding. Drugs have been discovered at military bases,
and seizures made by the police have disappeared after being
confiscated by the military. Senior government officials have
also reportedly received death threats when seeking to
investigate cocaine seizures.
Social and economic impact
The influence that cocaine-trafficking is having on the
country's economy is not yet clear but, as it gains in
importance, it is likely to soon generate more wealth
than traditional legal activities and thus be more attractive to
the local population. The extent of the impact will depend
on whether Guinea-Bissau's role in the trafficking chain is
predominantly active or passive.
At the social level, domestic drug use is growing, with the
resultant addiction and violent crime; addiction to cocaine,
and especially crack, is reportedly rampant. Guinea-Bissau lacks
the material resources, expertise and experience to address
these problems. From a long-term perspective, the attraction of
the drugs trade for disenfranchised youth may also undermine
social control mechanisms that prevent crime and violence. So
far, however, Bissau's youth, though faced
with unemployment and few opportunities, have shown little
desire to go down that route. Nevertheless, the consequences
of globalisation, the food crisis and the inability of external
aid to respond to such problems could quickly change the
situation.
Policy options
The authors argue that, in the long term, in order to tackle the
enormous challenges that the drug trade poses in route
countries, a less securitizing agenda needs to be put in place
globally, and the prohibition-based international consensus
should be debated and reconsidered. In the meantime, a number of
shorter-term measures need to be taken urgently to halt the
negative effects of this activity at international and national
level. These include improving the coordination of efforts at
national, sub-regional, regional and international level,
reforming the country's institutions, supporting civil society,
rehabilitation initiatives and conducting further research to
gain an accurate understanding of the scale of the problem.
Methodological note
The international drugs trade in West Africa, and specifically
in Guinea-Bissau, has had a lot of exposure in the media but has
been little studied. Since it is an illegal trade, accurate data
on it is hard to come by, especially for countries where it is a
relatively new phenomenon and where statistical research and
analytical skills and tools are limited, as
in the case of Guinea-Bissau.
This paper is based on secondary data that has appeared in the
media, and reports by international organisations (academic
research on this specific issue and country is virtually nonexistent);
interviews with national and international
stakeholders who have privileged information on the issue; the
authors' extensive fieldwork experience in the country over the
past nine years in the context of development cooperation and
research projects in the fields of human security, youth and
gender violence; and the international peacebuilding
intervention in Guinea-Bissau, where the issue of drug
trafficking has repeatedly been highlighted and analysed by
international organisations, national officials
and the population.
A history of trading
In Guinea-Bissau the drugs trade only emerged as an acute
problem in 2005. This does not mean that the trafficking,
smuggling or even consumption of drugs is completely new to the
country. As in other parts of the world, trafficking is an
ancient economic activity in West Africa (including GuineaBissau).
The transporting of people and goods across frontiers
is a specialised activity that has been going on for centuries
and is characteristic of populations living in border regions.
Guinea-Bissau is well-known in the region for the illegal
trafficking of small arms. High-ranking government and military
officials have been directly involved. Over the past five or six
years, the illegal arms trade seems to have diminished
only to be replaced by the trafficking of cocaine, involving, in
particular, military actors.
...
The prohibitionist paradigm and the inefficiency of drug control
systems
Over the past century, the universal ban on illicit drugs has
been a global policy established by international treaties ...
However, despite this consensus on policy, three key factors
play into an underground transnational relationship
which may produce a number of unintended consequences both at
national and international level. The cocaine trade illustrates
these factors: 1) the concentration of world production in just
three countries (Peru, Bolivia and Colombia); 2) the relative
efficiency of the national drug control systems in the largest
cocaine markets of North America and Western Europe (with around
7 and 4 million consumers respectively); and 3) the incentive to
break the law given the enormous economic worth of the illegal
drug trade.
...
Market and route changes
Large-scale cocaine trafficking through West Africa was first
detected in 2004. This development reflected a shift in the
global cocaine market's centre of gravity from the United States
to Europe. ...
Over the past decade, US and Mexican cocaine seizures have
declined dramatically, indicating a reduction in the cocaine
supply to the US market. This is probably the result of a
deliberate policy by the Latin American drug cartels,
for which there may be two reasons. On the one hand, the North
American market seems to be less accessible to the traffickers
than the European one. ... On the other hand, cocaine prices in
the European market are far more attractive to traffickers
than those in the US. ...
Europe has approximately 4 million cocaine consumers and average
annual use amounts to 36 grams per individual. It may have
imported around 144 tons of cocaine from South America
in 2006 alone. Considering that around 27% of European cocaine
seizures passed through West Africa, it can be estimated that 40
tons of the cocaine consumed transited through that
region. In 2006 the average wholesale price per kilogram was
$46,700, therefore the value of those 40 tons amounts to
approximately $1.8 billion. Police sources estimate the
traffickers' profit rate to be around 25%, which in this case
represents a yearly profit of approximately $500 million.
... This is the transnational background against which West
Africa, over the past six or seven years, has been increasingly
pulled into the transatlantic cocaine trade.
The creation and development of West African networks
Africa is not a producer of cocaine and was traditionally only a
very marginal trafficking route for it. Between 1998 and 2003,
annual African cocaine seizures averaged at something like 0.6
metric tons -- an insignificant proportion of global cocaine
seizures. Since 2004, however, when Latin American traffickers
decided to stockpile cocaine in West Africa, the situation has
changed dramatically.
The countries most affected by cocaine trafficking
are Cape Verde, Guinea, Mali, Guinea-Bissau, Ghana, Benin, Togo,
Gambia and Nigeria.
According to European law enforcement agencies, cocaine
trafficking in West Africa is focused around two hubs. The
Southern Platform has Ghana as its entering point from where the
drug is taken to Togo, Benin and Nigeria. The Northern Platform
has Guinea-Bissau as its entering point and, eventually, Sierra
Leone and Mauritania, with the cocaine then being distributed by
air to Senegal, Guinea and Gambia. Mali is served by land from
Guinea-Bissau as well as from Guinea.
...
Administrative collapse and impunity
Guinea-Bissau is one of the most dependent countries in the
world. Since gaining independence from Portugal, the country has
pursued an extroverted governance strategy based on the
demands of donors, which has ended up creating a growing
dependent urban population, and an economy based on the
production and exportation of the cashew nut. Political
legitimacy is a facade and neopatrimonialism has been the rule
throughout the past decades. The local political and military
elites -- the generation that won independence from the
Portuguese in the 1970s -- behave as if the country was their own
personal property. A developmental state was therefore never
consolidated. This situation deteriorated further with the
imposition of structural adjustment programmes in the 1980s,
leading to the virtual collapse of the state administration.
Public services, especially those related to justice and the
police, have been systematically underfinanced. As regards the
police force, an indispensable tool in the repression of drugrelated
criminal activities, officers earn low salaries that are
only sporadically paid and the police stations lack telephones,
computers and often even electricity. The force has virtually no
boats for patrolling the coast line and little fuel for the few
police cars they have. Many officers are unable to fire a gun or
swim. When someone is arrested, the prisoner has to be taken to
the police station by taxi because no police cars are available.
...
Even though it may have acquired large proportions, drugs
smuggling still remains in the hands of specific groups, such as
certain military leaders. It was stressed that traffickers
have the capacity to accurately map the political situation of
the country (alliances, antagonisms, and personal rivalries) in
order to know who, when, and where to press or bribe to obtain
support and co-operation. According to police and judicial
sources, the local Latin American traffickers act under the
protection of the Guinea-Bissauan military which forces
judges to sign release orders whenever a cocaine trafficker is
arrested. It is worth mentioning, therefore, that the
distinction between military and political actors is not always
easy to establish in Guinea-Bissau, as "each politician has his
own military and each military has his own politician".25
...
The main risks for Guinea-Bissau
In Guinea-Bissau, drug trafficking in itself is not the main
cause of destabilisation -- it is a consequence of the preexisting
lack of stability that allows smugglers to establish
their networks in the region and operate to and from there.
Ignoring the structural causes of the problem (endemic poverty,
corruption, impunity) will have an even deeper impact on the
local population than the illegal drug trade, and will leave
unaddressed the very conditions that continue to foster
trafficking opportunities in the future.
...
Military power
The military has tremendous power in Guinea-Bissau. If the
country's position in the international drugs trade depends on
the nature of the relations that the drug traffickers are
capable of establishing with politicians and high-ranking
officers of the armed forces, then the future of the country
will also depend on the capacity of Guinea-Bissauan society
itself, as well as on the international community, to respond by
forcing the military to withdraw from the political
and judicial spheres of government. The separation of powers,
the primacy of the rule of law and the participation of citizens
in the political decision-making process must be ensured if
Guinea-Bissau is to successfully overcome its
present challenges.
...
Social impact
In addition to the country being a staging post, general concern
about the increase in drug use is growing and several local
reports of crack use, which was not usual until recently, need
to be further investigated. Drug trafficking is increasingly
associated with a potential rise in violence. There is the risk
that these routes may become a desirable source of income for
unemployed youth in Bissau, in a context in which alternative
resources, such as international aid, are decreasing. The
widespread feeling of impunity and low life expectancy make it
even more acceptable to grasp any opportunity for quick moneymaking:
'Drugs are going to bring development!' said one of the
people we interviewed for previous studies in Bissau.
The immediate social impact of cocaine trafficking in GuineaBissau
is that local drug consumption has increased.
Unfortunately, there are no official data available to
substantiate this claim. However, all respondents agreed that
addiction to cocaine, and in particular crack cocaine,
is rampant.
...
Guinea-Bissau lacks the material resources -- and expertise and
experience -- required to address these problems. As far as
cocaine addiction is concerned, for example, in the whole
country there is only one drug-addiction treatment centre. The
Desafio Jovem centre for drug rehabilitation and mental illness
was set up in 2002 by Father Domingos Té and since then has
sought to rehabilitate drug addicts through a faith-based
residential rehabilitation programme. However, the institution
has nothing -- there are no psychologists, doctors
or medicines; all it can offer is guidance, a
mattress and basic meals.
...
Security considerations
Also, while Guinea-Bissau's ruling elite is perceived by the
international community as a threat to the security of both its
own citizens and the international system, international
intervention is focused mainly on securing only the latter. The
crucial issues for the international agencies and donors, and
sine qua non conditions for the maintenance of aid, have been
the security sector reform and the fight against drug
trafficking with the purpose of "protecting" the central
countries against the penetration of illegal products. The
security in question is not that of the population of the
country; given the state's shortcomings, that remains society's
responsibility.
This has meant in practice the repeated postponement
of long-term programmes for bringing about the socio-economic
development of the country, since the primary objectives are
focused on seeking to establish a penal state in a context in
which the state has been being continuously dismantled for
decades. This skewed focus does nothing to change the structures
and exercise of political and economic power or the social
hierarchies. On the one hand, impunity and distrust remain. ...
Focus on human security
The justice and police sectors are critical not only to any
attempts to eradicate drug trafficking, but most of all to
efforts to ensure human security. Guinea-Bissau needs assistance
to finance, staff, train and equip its justice and police
departments. Such efforts should, however, not only be focused
on securitizing measures.
The authors believe that if the national police and justice
systems only receive training and resources because of the
impact of drug trafficking on western countries, the local
impact of criminal activities -- as well as the daily lack of
security experienced by the population -- will remain secondary
and will not be tackled. ...
The involvement of the armed forces in destabilizing
activities impedes long-term political reform and development.
Therefore, drug trafficking cannot be tackled without reforming
the armed forces and reducing their role in political activity.
...
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