March 9th 2009
The Drug War You Haven’t Heard About
I
t is being waged in Guinea-Bissau. When I read about it, I remembered it vaguely … west coast of Africa … little place, maybe about the size of Connecticut. Yup – squeezed between Senegal and Guinea, the former Portuguese colony is just 34 years old and has suffered two coups, two attempted coups and one civil war. Par for the course for former Portuguese colonies.
And now, it is on the verge of falling into the hands of drug lords.
Guinea Bissau: The Thai Link in Killings
Lagos — Fresh facts are now emerging on the killing of the Guinea-Bissau Army Chief, Brig. Gen. Batiste Tagme na Waie, which later triggered the assassination of President Joao Bernardo “Nino” Vieira.
Waie was killed last Sunday when a bomb planted by unknown persons exploded in his office. A reprisal attack less than 24 hours later by elements within the army led to the tragic killing of Vieira.
Somehow I’d missed all this, even the fact that Guinea-Bissau’s president was killed. And what’s this about a link to Thailand? Is it Islamists? Apparently not:
The Defence Minister and his service chiefs were in no doubt as to where the bomb came from: Thailand. In fact, the Minister of Defence showed what seemed to be a component of the bomb to the ECOWAS delegation. “The debris from the blast was so much that it took us about one hour to get the corpse of Waie out of the rubble that was his own office wing of the army building,” Barbeiro said. …
Analysts say that Guinea-Bissau has become the soft underbelly of the sub-region. An admixture of factors has made Guinea-Bissau an attractive transit point for hard drugs bound for Europe and other parts of the world: pervasive poverty, unemployment, and $3 billion budget deficit compounded by $30 million in salary arrears.
The drugs in question apparently come primarily from Thailand.
Drug money is now the driver of the Guinea-Bissau economy. Last month, the United States State Department warned that the “degeneration of Guinea-Bissau into a narco-state is a real possibility.”
The United Nations estimates that the cocaine transiting through Guinea-Bissau is worth more than a billion dollars a year, which is several times higher than the paltry national budget.
It is, perhaps, no coincidence that the bomb is being linked to Thailand. The Southeast Asian country has become a major hub for the production and shipment of hard drugs, especially cocaine.
Guinea-Bissau could descend into terrible drug violence – perhaps it already has – with no discernable consequence to America. But we should pay attention. As we worry about an emerging narco-state in Mexico and continue to bring Columbia out of its narco-statedom, as we worry about narco-fiefdoms in our cities, perhaps we are looking at global conflict as too much just between Western and Islamic civilization.
The drug lords are expanding, and are trying to solidify their power. If we ignore them too much because we are too focused on jihad, or because, like Obama, we’re not focused much on Jihad but rather on massively expanding government’s influence, we will give them time to expand and entrench. One day, civilization is going to have to take on these thugs – and it will be much more difficult if we continue to let them kill presidents and terrify cities without consequence.
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