A Critical Review of Evolutionary Trends of Drug trafficking in Guinea- Bissau

BY
EMMANUEL UZUEGBU - WILSON (PhD)
Department of International Law and Security Studies,
School of Law and Security Studies,
Babcock University, Iperu-Campus, Ogun State, Nigeria.
E- mail : uzuegbu-wilsone@babcock.edu.ng, uzuwilson@yahoo.com.

Abstract
Guinea-Bissau emerged as the most vulnerable drug trafficking country in the West African sub-
region beginning from the onset of Cocaine trafficking which started in the early 2000s. This led
to the country being dubbed by the global media as “Africa’s First Narco-State”. The study
employed a desk-review research approach with the reports and evaluations obtained from
secondary sources of data analyzed through content analysis. The study found that prolonged
dominant military rule, limited civilian oversight over the security sector, weak institutions and
endemic clientelism in Guinea-Bissau remain driving factors that led to the state being used by
drug cartels as major trafficking hub for narcotic drugs. The study concluded that Guinea Bissau
state qualify as a “Narco State” based on numerous evidential reports on high level corruption
and penetration of the highest level of power by drug trafficking networks. The study therefore
recommended that policy initiatives by the government of Guinea-Bissau should aim at
strengthening the already weakened political economic structure through sustainable
development and the provisions of socio-economic needs to the citizenry. Security sector reforms
initiatives should be fully operationalized and interdiction strategies tailored towards responding
to the challenges of drug trafficking while also targeting its ties with other transnational threats.
Finally, the government of Guinea-Bissau should review their drug laws and policies and also
ensure that the prosecutions of drug traffickers are made public as deterrence measure to others.

Keywords: Drug Trafficking, Elite Protection, Narcotics, Narco-State.

Introduction

Since the independence of Guinea-Bissau in 1974, the military participated in nine coups or
attempted coups and with no elected political leader serving a full term in office within that
period. Miguel Trovoada, the head of the U.N. Integrated Peacebuilding Office in Guinea-Bissau
noted that during military dictatorships which lasted until 1994, the military was used to getting
benefits from drug trafficking and the desire to control the drug trade has fostered political
instability since then and smugglers have gained a foothold in the tiny West African nation in
part because of its persistent political instability. The Current President José Mário Vaz has also
fired two prime ministers in 2015, an action that deepened the political crisis and viewed to have

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strengthened the resolve of the military brass to protect cocaine trafficking as their key source of
income (Loewenstein,2016). The legislative elections, civil war and coups d‟état therefore could
not consolidate institutional stability in Guinea-Bissau (United Nations Security Council,2018).

The Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon ones reported Guinea-Bissau to be
the most vulnerable drug trafficking countries in the West African region which according to him
“transitioned from being a mere transit hub to serving as a genuine marketplace” for illicit drugs
(Cockayne & Williams, 2009, p.4). In providing an insight into the origin of Guinea - Bissau
involvement in the drug trade (Shaw & Reitano, 2013) noted that the evolution of the drug trade,
started with the commencement of cocaine shipments in West Africa region in late 1990s which
also coincided with the Guinea - Bissau‟s elites struggle for resources and by mid-2000, the drug
trade started increasing at an alarming rate in the country.

As further explained by (Shaw & Reitano, 2013), the relationship that developed has never been
one of drug traffickers imposing their trade on a set of reluctant locals. What emerged was a
contract between members of the military and their civilian political or business connections
within the Bissau elite and the traffickers themselves. The relationship was mutually beneficial,
but it engendered greater instability locally as various factions vied for a share of the pie.
Providing protection for the drug transit market meant controlling the state; and controlling the
state meant benefitting from the resources of drug trafficking. However, while illicit funds
available from drug trafficking in West Africa was still comparatively small in comparison to
elsewhere in the world, in this impoverished region it dwarfed any other form of economic
accumulation.

To further aid the drug trade, the 88 islands of the Bijagos Archipelago with several landing
strips which were vestiges left by the colonialist and used mostly during the liberation war served
as a major transiting point for cocaine due mainly to its “remote location, lack of surveillance and
multiple landing reports” (Kohnert,2010,p.12). Before long, Colombian drug dealers and their
networks had scattered throughout Bissau, bringing in drugs and paying for their protection
through collaboration with highly placed government officials and corrupt law enforcement
agents most especially the military and also making arrangement for transshipment to Europe.

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The enormous drug money brought about corruption and involved a transit chain described
below:
Every level of society that had the potential to facilitate or interrupt the
drug transit chain: within the state, from law enforcement, customs
officials, prosecutors, judges, politicians; and within the private sector,
from drivers, handlers, security guards, transport barons.. The military,
with its transport, communications and security infrastructure, competed
against the government to gain access and provide protection to the
criminal groups that could fund their lifestyles. This competition over the
drug trade led to violence and political instability from 2000 onwards,
with an unceasing cycle of assassinations, coups and counter coups.
(Shaw & Reitano, 2013).

Till date, Guinea-Bissau has remained a significant transit hub for drug trafficking from South
America to Europe which according to (INCSR,2013) has been contributed by:
the country‟s lack of law enforcement capabilities; demonstrated
susceptibility to corruption; porous borders; convenient location between
Europe, South America, and neighboring West African transit points; and
linguistic connections to Brazil, Portugal, and Cape Verde provide an
opportune environment for traffickers. Islands off the coast of Guinea
Bissau are drug trafficking hubs. Guinea-Bissau‟s political systems
remain susceptible to and under the influence of narcotics traffickers; the
complicity of government officials at all levels in this criminal activity
exacerbates the problem.

According to accounts by experts, the prolonged dominant military rule and also limited civilian
oversight over the security sector in Guinea-Bissau have been noted to have “led to such high
volumes of drug trafficking that senior officials in the Navy and the Air Force were designated
drug kingpins by the U.S. Department of Treasury” (USAID,2013,p.28). In a report assessing the
threats generated by transnational organized crime in West Africa, it was noted that:
There have been a series of coups, attempted coups, and other forms of
political unrest in Guinea-Bissau, including the assassination of President
Vieira in 2009. While the conflict appears to have occurred along well
established political fault lines, competition for cocaine profits raised the
stakes and augmented tensions between rival groups (UNODC, 2013,
p.9).
Accusing finger was pointed to Late President „Nino Vieira as one man that introduced drug
trafficking to Guinea-Bissau who according to accounts “offered the air trade to the Chief of the
Armed Forces, and controlled the maritime traffic with the help of the Chief of the Navy, that
was the exchange” (Shaw & Reitano, 2014, p.6).The situation was further described by McGuire
(2010) who noted that:

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 political and economic power are run through informal, and sometimes
illegal, channels in a resource-scarce environment characterized by
intense competition, massive sums of money from narcotics trafficking
may be quickly regarded as an opportunity for the accumulation of
resources, and concurrently, political power (p.10).

Another description of the state of affairs in Guinea- Bissau was provided by Ralston (2014) who
stressed as follows:
Guinea-Bissau had long been struggling with weak institutions, a
politicized military, and endemic clientelism …, but the onset of cocaine
trafficking, which started in the early 2000s, has magnified these
weaknesses. With a sluggish annual growth rate of 0.4 percent over the
past three decades, no other industry in Guinea-Bissau could generate as
much liquidity as cocaine trafficking.. As money underpins the patronage
system upon which local politics is built, certain factions started to
actively channel state resources into expanding trafficking. Troops were
used to unload and protect shipments .., police officers and judges were
prevented from doing their job, and government facilities were used to
store the merchandise …. (p.14)

While Nigeria is noted as a production zone for methamphetamine production, a senior United
State DEA official also listed Guinea-Bissau as “possible locations for meth labs” alongside
other West African countries such as Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana (Lewis,2015).
However, the reputation of Guinea-Bissau with regards to the drug trade resulted in concrete
consequences at the international level; these consequences include suspension from foreign aid,
reduced foreign investment and also restrictions on officials‟ travel. Unfortunately, on the
balance “the resources available from the DTOs could well exceed the foreign assistance
provided to Guinea-Bissau” (USAID, 2013, pp.20-21).

In recent times, hundreds of diplomatic passports used by traffickers, which were recently seized
by the judicial police and most of the cocaine that comes into Guinea-Bissau, were brought by
mules travelling from Brazil, mostly students. It was also reported in 2017 that airport agents
caught 14 mules, carrying 8.65 kilograms of cocaine (Mallinder, 2018). One thing that is
abundantly clear in Guinea-Bissau is the fact that the ports of Guinea-Bissau has continued to be a
major drug trafficking hub. This is evidenced by the recent seizure on the eve of the legislative
elections of 789 kg of cocaine. The report stated that:

On 9 March 2019, after a tip-off from the UK‟s National Crime Agency,
police in Guinea-Bissau seized 789 kilograms of cocaine near Safim, 15

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 kilometres from the capital, Bissau. The drugs, which had been
transported by sea, were placed in 30-kilogram bags and hidden in the
false bottom of a truck loaded with fish. It was the largest cocaine bust in
the country‟s history. But this seizure is extraordinary and notable for a
number of other reasons. Firstly, it is Guinea-Bissau‟s first seizure of
cocaine in more than a decade. The last was in April 2007, when the
police seized 635 kilograms of cocaine (Global Initiative Against
Transnational organized Crime,2019).

The seizure by the UNODC and Interpol supported Transnational Crime Unit in Bissau (TCU) and
the Judicial Police of Guinea-Bissau no doubt represents one of the largest haul of illicit drugs that
have ever been discovered by authorities in the country (Cross, 2019). Furthermore , the police
authorities in Guinea-Bissau said on Tuesday 3 September 2019 that they had seized more than
1.8 tons of cocaine hidden in flour bags, the largest seizure in the country‟s history (Summers,
2019). The cocaine seizure report further stated that:

Police seized over 1.8 tonnes of cocaine in Caio and Canchungo in what
was reportedly the largest seizure in the country. The drugs, hidden in
sacks of flour, arrived at the port of Caio from Colombia. Authorities
seized 264 kg of cocaine in Caio and seized the rest of the cocaine in
Canchungo. Guineau-Bissau is considered a transit zone for drugs
between Latin America and Europe (Loock, 2019)

After a two-week intelligence operation, police arrested eight people: four Bissau-Guineans, three
Colombians and a Malian, It was the second large drug shipment to be caught this year in the
former Portuguese colony on the Atlantic Coast, long a major crossing point for Latin American
cocaine headed to Europe after 789 kilograms seized in March. According to Domingos
Monteiro, the deputy director of the judicial police, the latest shipment was on its way to Islamist
militants: “The drugs belong to the terrorist network Al Qaeda. The cocaine comes from
Colombia. But the destination is the Arab Maghreb,” primarily in northern and central Mali where
Al-Qaeda‟s affiliate in north and West Africa is based but has a presence across the region (Pujol-
Mazzini, 2019).

According to (Riper, 2016) there are five major challenges facing Guinea-Bissau. They are “the
profit paradox, the hydra effect, the authority-resource dilemma, the corrupted sovereign dilemma,
and the “It‟s not my problem” challenge”. On the part of the Judiciary Police, the challenges of
combating drug trafficking and organized crime in Guinea-Bissau are enormous and include
“legal framework, more detailed and flexible investigation techniques, lack of material resources,

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technical and operational training, data collection and the ability to establish partnerships with
neighboring countries” (UNIOGBIS,2018). Unfortunately, despite the billions of dollars being
spent over the last decade by international donors, U.N. officials reported that Guinea-Bissau has
continued to attract opportunistic traffickers. Much of the aid provided to combat drug trafficking
also have been simply swallowed up by corrupt officials who are in on the game and members of
the security services that are not a part of the official smuggling racket remain woefully under-
equipped (Loewenstein,2016).

Configuration and Demography of Guinea- Bissau

Guinea Bissau formerly Portuguese Guinea is a country with a population estimated in 2019 at
1.92 million Worldometers (2019) and remains the smallest among the countries in the world.
The country is situated on the West coast of Africa, bordered on the North by Senegal, on the
East and South East by Guinea, and on the South West and West by the Atlantic Ocean, with a
total boundary length of 1,074 km (667 mile). In land mass, it has a total area of 36,120 sq km
(13,946 sq mile), with about 10% of its land mass periodically submerged by tidal waters which
comparatively, is less than three times the land mass size of the US state of Connecticut. Guinea-
Bissau covers just 10,800 square miles, but its plethora of remote islands and unpoliced
mangrove creeks makes it ideal territory for smugglers.

Aside from the mainland territory of Guinea-Bissau with a low-lying inland, that excludes the
North-East, it is also made up of the Bijagos Archipelago and various swampy Coastal Islands
which includes Jeta, Pecixe, Bolama, and Melo. The climate in Guinea-Bissau is either hot,
humid, or tropical (World Mark Encyclopedia of Nations,2007). Because of environmental
problems like drought, erosion, as well as acidification and salinization that perennially faces
Guinea-Bissau; fire disaster remains a hazard destroying up to 40,000 hectares of land per year.
Guinea-Bissau has 8 regions, which does not include the capital, Bissau and 37 sectors. Each of
these regions has a regional council, with membership that consists of elected representatives
from the various sectors (World mark Encyclopedia of Nations, 2007).

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Political History and Economic Structure of Guinea-Bissau
Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony was the only African country that obtained its
independence through arms struggle in 1974. The struggle was spearheaded by a left wing Party
known as African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) led by its
leader Luis Cabral (Country Watch,2018,pp.9-10). Structurally Guinea-Bissau is a highly
fragmented socially and extremely unstable politically (Economic Watch,2011) and little was
made during the colonial era to build the Guinea Bissau political, administrative or bureaucratic
systems that are required to lay the right foundations for a stable post-colonial state. The political
history of the state was therefore “characterized by an intimate merger of its military and political
elite” from early independence (Kohnert, 2010, p.5).

Since its independence from Portugal in 1974, Guinea -Bissau has experienced political unrest
and frequent military coup. Guinea-Bissau had been ruled together with Cape Verde as one
colonial territory under the Portuguese and had fought to emerge and actually won sovereign and
independent status as one country, resulting from the first army coup organized from the
mainland in 1980 which provided the elite based on Cape Island the opportunity for breaking
away from the mainland and by so doing their erstwhile comrade-in-arms of the old PAIGC
movement (Country Watch,2016)
Another facilitating factor had to do with the physical separation of the two territories by a large
bud of waters and the sheer difficulty of administering such an archipelago from one central
place based on the mainland. The breakaway of Cape Verde being the richer, better developed
and more educated and exposed part left the remaining part of the former Portuguese colonial
half Guinea-Bissau very much resource-handicapped indeed. As previously implied, Guinea-
Bissau, first leader Late President Luis Cabral was overthrown in a coup in 1980 by Joao
Bernardo „Nino‟ Viera who eventually set the path for a multiparty democratic system in which
the first presidential election poll was won by him in 1994. President Joao Bernardo „Nino‟ Viera
survived several attempted coup from the 1980s to early 1990s and political rivals within that
period was highly suppressed (Country Watch, 2016).

A civil war erupted between 1998 to 1999 that eventually led to the overthrow of Viera in a
military coup d‟ etat . An interim government was set up in February 2000 after the civil war

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headed by Kumba Yala, an opposition leader who eventually won the election through a
transparent polls. President Yala was eventually overthrown in a bloodless military coup in
September 2003 and was replaced by an interim President- Henrigue Rosa. Former President
Viera was eventually re-elected as President of Guinea-Bissau in 2005 and subsequently
assassinated in March 2009. An emergency election held in June 2009 produced Malam Bacai
Sanha as President who died in January 2012 from illness. A run-off election to replace Sanha
was however hindered by a military coup that took place in April 2012 (Central Intelligence
Agency, 2014,p.1).

The strong historical legitimacy of the military for decades in Guinea- Bissau was due mainly to
the decisive role played in fighting the liberation war or the “people‟s war” which eventually led
the military constituency to play a pivotal role in further destabilizing the democratization
process by overthrowing every successive government before the end their five -year term in
office (Kohnert, 2010, p.5). Besides, Guinea-Bissau army was top heavy and comprised mainly
of former freedom fighters of the bloody guerrilla war against their former colonial masters
Portugal. Guinea- Bissau political landscape was therefore characterized with coup, counter
coups and political assassination, personalization of power by the ruling elites, nepotism and
political patronage. Political and administrative machinery put in place in Guinea-Bissau could
not help to exercise control of the high level military dominance of the state affairs and can be
adjudged to have contributed to recurrent political crises in the Guinea-Bissau state that gave
opportunity for military coup and counter-coup and unfortunately the proliferation of criminal
activities and networking of which drug trafficking remains the major threat.

Is Guinea-Bissau West Africa’s First Narco State?

So far in the West African region, Guinea-Bissau is generally referred as the “First Narco-State”
as several evidence abounds in literature that the state has been taken over by drug cartels
(Wechsler,2009,p.2; Brown,2013,p.33). According to the (Council of the European Union
,2013,p.3) the Guinea- Bissau state is “blighted by a succession of coups, political instability and
recurring poor governance, has become a narco-state and one of the main centres of cocaine
trafficking in West Africa”. Also according to the (WACD, 2014), Guinea Bissau “has taken on

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some attributes of a „narco-state‟, in the sense that state institutions have been deeply
compromised by drug traffickers (p.20).

According to Bybee (2011) Guinea-Bissau should more consistently qualify for a failed state and
not a Narco-State. Her argument was based on the fact that “while certain organs of the state in
Guinea-Bissau may have been captured through narco-corruption (the military and criminal
justice sector), one cannot say that the capacity of the state has been altered, because of its
extremely limited capacity to begin with”. Her view was however countered by Brown who
viewed her argument as “more definitional than substantive, may nevertheless be useful” and
explains thus:
Because it implies that international assistance to Guinea-Bissau‟s police
authorities may help create a beachhead within the state against narco
corruption. While weak compared to the military, police authorities, in
alliance with civil society, could help lead a fight in the future to
recapture Guinea-Bissau from narco-traffickers (Brown (2013,p.34).

A more granular analysis of the trafficking economy of Guinea-Bissau according to (Shaw,2015)

reveals it as an elite network with mafia-like attributes as described below:

In Guinea-Bissau, protection has been supplied by a small network

within the country‟s elite. That protection, however, is not related to the
enforcement of a contract engaged in by others, but the exchange of a
„fee‟ to protect the movement of illicit goods through the country. The
ability of the elite network to offer protection derives precisely from the
fact that the key institutions of the state, including notably the justice
system, matter little, and are unable to mount a response. This is not
because of the corrupting influence of narcotics, but because of the badly
eroded nature of the institutions.

The study of (Shaw, 2015) therefore concluded that using the term „narco-state‟, where much of
the state has little or no capacity, is inappropriate but rather opted for better approach to analyze
the actions of key players as an elite protection network that did not act on its own, but relied on a
series of „entrepreneurs‟ who operated as an interface between traffickers, with the high-ranking
military personnel within the elite network only occurring relatively late. Senior soldiers‟
therefore attempts to provide more than just protection and enter the drug market themselves.
In describing further the complicity of state officials in the drug trade (Udama,2014) noted as
follows:

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 The state of Guinea Bissau offers a paradigmatic and unprecedented
insight into an explosive state of West Africa drug trade involving high
profile political elites and military measured from any perimeters, and it
shed light on the nature and spread of the phenomenon across the region.
It is an example where alliances between drug traffickers and state
authority are commonplace, and has been labelled narcostate by the
UNODC. For example, when planes arrives loaded with cocaine, it is the
presidential guards that secured the cargo and most of the deals are
conducted inside the first lady‟s private residence or the president‟s VIP
salon car at the international airport to avoid detection. The cocaine is
then sent to Europe in the country‟s diplomatic pouch. High-ranking
military and government officials have been directly involved in the drug
trade (drug have been found at military bases and seizures made by
police disappeared (p.6).

Much of the country‟s ruling class is now thought to be implicated in the trade in what is termed
an “elite protection network” for the cartels where senior military figures provide security and
logistics to South American drug cartels in exchange for money and drugs according (Shaw,
2015). In a recent report by the respected Jane’s Intelligence Review which confirmed that the
military is being “complicit” in the drug trade concludes that Guinea-Bissau “remains an
important hub for cocaine trafficking to Europe, despite the anti-trafficking initiatives of the
United Nations and other international organizations (Loewenstein, 2016). This is further
explained below:

Outside the capital city, drug smugglers operate virtually

unmolested by authorities. In the fishing village of Kassumba, a
known smuggling hub near the border with Guinea, law
enforcement has no visible presence at all. White sandy beaches and
palm trees give the impression of calm, but the reality is very
different: According to the UNODC‟s Moreira, smugglers drop
sealed packages containing small quantities of cocaine into the
coastal waters here. The packages are retrieved by local fishermen
and passed on to military officials and politicians, who oversee their
safe transport to Bissau (Loewenstein,2016).

According to the facts gleaned from the studies of (Brown,2013,p.13; Reitano & Shaw,2014)
notable facts about Guinea-Bissau alongside others cited earlier in the evolutionary trend include:
1. Various reports that pointed to the fact that former President Joao Bernardo Vieira,
assassination in March 2009 was linked to his involvement in the drug trade.
2. The drug trade in Guinea Bissau is so rooted that the income generated “likely now
surpasses the entire formal value of the national economy”.

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 3. Military leaders have since been designated “drug kingpins” by the U.S. Government.
One of them is Ex-Navy Chief of Staff Jose Americo Bubo Na Tchuto, who was
designated “drug kingpins” in April 2010 for his complicity in the drug trade.
4. The Armed Forces Chief- Antonio Injai and his air force counterpart Ibrahim Camara,
were reportedly “competing with Tchuto for a larger share of drug profits”.

It is important to note that Guinea-Bissau remains the most significant narcotics trafficking hub
in West Africa where government officials at all levels are complicit in drug trafficking. The
country also has the least developed institutional framework for combating drug trafficking and
relies mostly on existing law enforcement agencies i.e the Judicial Police and the Justice sector as
well as elements of the military doing that job. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)
and the UN Integrated Peace-Building Office in Guinea-Bissau (UNIOGBIS) in recognition of
Guinea - Bissau law enforcement inadequacies especially with regards to combating drug
trafficking initiated a Security Sector Reform (SSR) programme to tackle the inadequacies . A
U.S.-funded Regional Law Enforcement Advisor developed a training strategy and coordinated
U.S. assistance to Guinea-Bissau‟s law enforcement agencies (INCSR, 2013). The government is
also reforming the country‟s security services, which also include those responsible for counter
narcotics enforcement.

A number of successful programmes to supports Bissau-Guinean authorities in curbing the

activities of drug traffickers have been carried out by UNODC. Some of these programmes
include: The West Africa Coast Initiative (WACI), a multi-stakeholder partnership between
UNODC, UNOWAS/DPA, DPKO and INTERPOL, supported the establishment of a
Transnational Crime Unit in Bissau in 2011. Other initiatives include the Airport Communication
Project (AIRCOP), jointly implemented by UNODC, INTERPOL and the WCO which
established a Joint Airport Interdiction Task Force (JAITF) at Osvaldo Viera Airport in April
2018. The initiative has since registered the highest number ever of cocaine seizures at Bissau
airport (UNODC, 2019). The UNODC Global Maritime Crime Project (GMCP) also deployed a
maritime law enforcement mentor to Guinea Bissau in 2018 and 2019. Furthermore, a Cross-
border Crime Project supports the enhancement of cooperation and investigation between

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Senegal, Guinea-Bissau and The Gambia and was instrumental in this latest large seizure
recorded in Guinea- Bissau (UNODC, 2019).

Finally, inspite of the numerous programmes aimed at curbing the drug trade in Guinea- Bissau,
recent report of two largest seizures this year alone comprising of 789 kilograms of cocaine
seized in March 2019 (Pujol-Mazzini, 2019) and over 1.8 tonnes of cocaine in seized in
September 2019 (Loock, 2019) lay credence to the use Guinea-Bissau as a major trafficking hub
for narcotic drugs.

Conclusion and Recommendations

This study in synthesizing scholarly arguments from literature reviewed posits that the Guinea
Bissau state qualify as a “Narco State” based on numerous evidential reports as a result of high
level corruption, drug trafficking networks and the penetration of highest levels of power in
Guinea Bissau by drug trafficking networks. This study therefore recommends the following:
1. Policy initiatives of Guinea-Bissau should aim at strengthening the already weakened
political economic structure through sustainable development and the provisions of socio-
economic needs. This will go a long way to decrease community resilience and support given
by the local community on issues relating to the drug trade.
2. The authorities Guinea-Bissau should improve the professional standards of combat
institutions. Security sector reforms initiatives such as the West Africa Cooperative Security
Initiative and several other related initiatives should be fully operationalized and interdiction
strategy tailored to respond to the challenges of drug trafficking while also targeting its ties to
other transnational threats.
3. Guinea-Bissau military involvement in politics has greatly led to instability generated by the
military elites competing with complicit state officials for the control of the drug trade.
Therefore security sector reforms should fully implement recommendations that aim at
curtailing the power of their military forces by streamlining the population of the military to
the standard required and then restricting them to their core professional duties.
4. Government of Guinea-Bissau should review their drug laws and policies and ensure that the
prosecutions of drug traffickers are made public as a deterrence measure to others.

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5. Government should take necessary steps to improve security sector governance while also
addressing the structural and economic weaknesses of their state through sustainable
development programmes. This will help to curtail the capabilities and influence of foreign
trafficking groups.
6. In recognition of the fact that crime governance appear to be interlinked with drug trafficking
as a state-sponsored industry with complicity of higher level elites in the illicit drug trade than
lower level official as a result of the huge profit made from it, policy measures directed
towards combating the drug trade should consider a top-down approach in order to sanitize
the system from where complicity to the drug trade is observed most.
7. Political leaders should muster the political will to sustain democratic ethos, practices and
good governance, eradicate political corruption at all levels of government in order to prevent
the complicity of state officials and the criminalization of states by the powerful networks of
drug trafficking organizations.
8. Legal framework put in place should facilitate interdiction actions, arrest procedures and the
successful prosecution of drug traffickers.

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