Did Drug Traffickers Just Try To Seize Control Of A West African Country?

Few Americans are probably aware of the fact that the tiny West African nation of Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony with a population smaller than the state of New  Mexico, has been dubbed “Africa’s First Narco State” by the UN.

As a result, the attempted coup that recently befell the country’s ruler, President Umaro Sissoco Embaló, who faced a “Scarface”-style gunfight at his presidential palace in Bissau, international authorities are growing increasingly concerned that his government could fall and the country could essentially be lost to the drug cartels, who might end up in control of the country.

The FT explored the situation in a lengthy report published this weekend. According to President Embaló, who faced his tiny country of 1.8M with a live broadcast the day after the assassination attempt – one of many high-profile coup attempts carried out both across the region and the globe – and told them that 7 of his own defense personnel had been killed during the attack. On Thursday, a regional body said it would deploy troops to help stabilize Guinea-Bissau.

The “attempt to kill the president, the prime minister and all the cabinet” was perpetrated by “an isolated force…linked to the people we fought,” Embaló said after the attack had ended. The “failed attack against democracy…was well-prepared and organised and could also be related to people involved in drug trafficking.”

Here’s the problem (or at least what Embaló’s drug trafficking enemies perceive to be the problem): elsewhere across the region, the unrest reflects unhappiness with government’s ability to stem rising jihadi violence. But the situation in Guinea-Bissau is tied to the corrupting influence of drug traffickers, who have enough money and arms to keep the jihadis at bay on their own. – READ MORE