“In April 2013 a successful sting operation and an indictment by the US Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) targeted two of Guinea-Bissau’s most notorious cocaine kingpins:
the former chief of the Guinea-Bissau navy, Rear Admiral José Américo Bubo Na Tchuto,
and the head of Guinea-Bissau’s armed forces, General António Indjai. This is a victory for the law enforcement response to organised crime. In the decade since the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) first warned that Guinea-Bissau had become a ‘narco-state’, the country has been caught in an accelerating cycle of political fragility that is driven in part by the desire to control lucrative cocaine connections. Impunity has become part of the fabric of Guinea-Bissau as trafficking is an essential survival strategy for many, which has disintegrated any basis for a society predicated on the rule of law. The DEA intervention is significant because it has ended impunity in a dramatic way, but the risk is that without the proper follow-up Guinea-Bissau will become a flashpoint for
further instability and conflict, when the country should instead be preparing for
democratic elections. To avoid this, a sustained and comprehensive strategy should be put in place to strengthen the criminal justice system in the country and to build citizens’ confidence that the state has the capacity to deliver justice and uphold the rule of law.”
