Word: drugging
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Like its poverty, Guinea-Bissau's landscape proved ideal for drug cartels. Its 350-km coastline, with 50 or so uninhabited islands, offers excellent drop-off points for drug vessels, and planes can deliver drugs to any number of Portuguese-built airstrips that have been abandoned for years as the country has no planes. "This is an open space where you can do anything," says a military officer from another African country who is stationed in Guinea-Bissau as part of a cooperation agreement. "There is no plane. No radar. Nothing...
...April, the country had become so swamped with cocaine that radio journalists in Bissau broadcast an appeal for villagers to phone in with details of mysterious activities. Locals near the airfield of Cufar quickly called on their mobile phones to describe major drug drops. Crucially, they exposed the military's deep involvement in the trafficking. "People called and said: 'Here is a plane landing, now they are offloading packets, now the military is coming, the military is loading it and driving toward Bissau,'" a local journalist told...
...pictures of Culiacán, the home of Mexico's drug-trafficking industry...
...pictures of Mexico's drug wars...
Government officials say they have too little money and not enough weaponry or personnel to stop drug trafficking. "Cocaine is a big, big problem," says Barnabé Gomes, spokesman for the country's President, João Bernardo Vieira. "We need help to do something." He says what's needed is Western intervention to stop traffickers transiting through Guinea-Bissau: "Europe is not doing much to help. We are even asking the United States to help us." In Bissau's crumbling port, Portuguese naval Sergeant Jorge Padua says he arrived last March to help Guinea-Bissau apprehend illegal fishing boats...