Looks like Liberia isn’t alone in being the new transit point for cocaine traveling from Latin America to Europe. Guinea-Bissau, yet another failed/narco state in West Africa, is beginning to look a lot more like Colombia. The Guardian has a good story today about drug trafficking there, a country with no prisons and a police force that seems to be in on the smuggling. Colombian cartels are moving in and buying up walled compounds as well as politicians and cops. The coke phenomenon also seems to have taken the locals by surprise.
Guinea Bissau’s cocaine Calvary began three years ago when fishermen on one island found packages of white powder washed up on the beach. They had no idea what the mysterious substance was. ‘At first, they took the drug and they put it on their bodies during traditional ceremonies,” recalls local journalist Alberto Dabo. ‘Then they put it on their crops. All their crops died because of that drug. They even used it to mark out a football pitch’.
As though the suffocation of society by the cartels were not enough, Guinea-Bissau inevitably suffers from a proliferation of addiction among its own people. ‘Foot soldiers are paid in kind,’ says Antonio Maria Costa, ‘and whatever is left behind is sold domestically.’ With addicts hidden away in villages, many still believe that their hallucinations are the result of evil spirits.
In a country where the average wage is $1 a day, people are understandably being caught up in the flurry (uh, pun) of cash and an extravagant lifestyle.
Down a street of elaborate colonial-style buildings is Ana’s restaurant. Beneath red-tiled roofs, giant candles flicker in the gentle, humid evening breeze - it could be mistaken for an exotic tourist destination. But ‘the only visitors we get are the Colombians’, sighs Ana, ‘this country is being destroyed by drugs. They’re everywhere. A few weeks ago, the man who used to be my gardener knocked at the door and offered to sell me 7kg of cocaine.’
Crack kills (and makes you crazy):
TAGS: Cocaine, Crack, Drugs, Rehab, Trade, Travel, united nationsWhen United Nations workers went to the country’s only excuse for a rehabilitation unit in a mangrove swamp 30km from the capital, they found a man called Bubacar Gano, who calls himself ‘the first man to smoke pedra’ - as crack cocaine is known in the country. He recalls the fishing boat that lost its load in the sea in 2005, saying: ‘Most of the locals who found the packages had no idea what it was or what to do with it. But I knew. After a while I became crazy and aggressive. But it is a difficult thing to stop smoking pedra.’
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March 9th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
And we have Kate Moss and Amy Winehouse to thank for it, according to Antonio Costa, director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.
From CNN:
“While some well-meaning pop idols and film stars might rage against suffering in Africa, their work is being undermined by the drug habits of careless peer such as Kate Moss… Coke-snorting fashionistas are not only damaging their noses and brains — they are contributing to state failure on the other side of the world,”
March 10th, 2008 at 5:28 am
Nice quote Azy! Celebs rule. I also love the ones who collect “ethnic” souvenirs/accessories from 3rd world countries.
March 10th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
I need to smuggle myself to Guinea immiediatly to “investigate” this. Azy, the UN needs to stick to what it was created to do and what is does best: stopping genocide. Or not.
March 10th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
I don’t think Kate or Winehouse’s promotion of drug abuse, alcoholism, anorexia, shitty boyfriends or bad hair dos is inherently a bad thing.
And OMG have you seen that new little Asian Jolie-Pitt? Totally cute!!!!
March 10th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
Moss….WOULD. Winehouse….that shit is GROSS.
March 10th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
Oh shit, I absolutely did not intend for people to think I concur with Costa’s statements! I rather concur with Jeff’s rundown of the two mentioned ladies.
Nothing I hate more than the “your drug use supports X and Y” bullshit. It reminds me of getting anti-Proctor and Gamble literature at shows as a kid…