Aohell

Guinea-Bisseau Next Narcostate?

Guinea-Bisseau isn't having much luck these days. Its civil war is over, but it's drug traffickers doing all the rebuilding.

It's got lots of tiny, uninhabited islands, a relatively small population, and extreme poverty. Add to those assets a stretegic location in between South America and Europe, and you got prime real estate for up-and-coming cocaine smugglers. Guinea-Bisseau can't even keep its own population policed, so demands from Europe and the US to clean up the uninhabited islands aren't going to go very far in that nation. Even if those demands came along with cash grants, corruption in Guinea-Bisseau's economy would probably divert a big chunk of that money to hands not originally intended to receive it.

The drug dealers are already paying for the army to provide security for drug shipments. The army has already denied this, so you know it's gotta be true. The justice system is in great shape, and I mean that most sarcastically: there aren't any prisons in the nation, so anyone convicted of any crime - any crime - serves at most one year in detention before release. Police units claim to destroy captured drugs, but there is no independent confirmation those supposedly destroyed drugs actually met their reported fate. These aren't tiny packages, either. The latest collapse in the chain of custody involved 674 kilos of cocaine, about $39 million worth at current prices.

The only big infusions of cash into Guinea-Bisseau are from the drug dealers. They're effectively buying a nation to serve their needs.

Watch out.