Drug Trafficking in West Africa

Dennis C. Blair, Director of National Intelligence, this week presented the "Annual Threat Assessment of the Intelligence Community" to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. You can read his entire prepared report here.

(The entire section on Africa is also posted at this site.)

But here is an excerpt on drug trafficking in Africa:

Drug Trafficking in West Africa

Drug trafficking has become a major problem in West Africa, and the emergence of
Guinea-Bissau as Africa’s first narco-state highlights the scope of the problem and what may be in store for other states in the region. Away from the scrutiny of local and international law enforcement, drug traffickers, often departing from Venezuela by air and sea, have transported large quantities of drugs, predominantly cocaine, from Latin America to European markets through the porous borders of more that a half dozen West African countries. Traffickers have successfully co-opted government and law enforcement officials in these countries, further undermining weak and economically impoverished governments who lack adequate law enforcement and judicial capacity. ECOWAS sponsored a conference in Cape Verde in late 2008 to address this issue and the governments of Great Britain and France have conducted limited law enforcement and counternarcotics training in the region, but drug trafficking in West
Africa probably will continue to expand in volume and scope in the absence of a concerted international effort to stop it.