And it's finally here! We're off to the airport to catch the 3:40 am for Casablanca...woo hoo! I've reached the end of my service. Anyway - I'll be posting my last couple bits from Morocco, but I just had to do my last posting from Guinea.
Until Morocco...oo'o!
Monday, September 15, 2008
Saturday, September 06, 2008
I swear I had nothing to do with this...
Well, it appears that Guinea, and more specifically Boke, is turning into a transportation hub for drug traffickers from Colombia and Guinea-Bissau. They are finding new paths of least resistance for their drug routes to Europe, and Guinea is proving to have little resistance. Especially in Boke, where almost all the major authorities were involved. Read on.
Guinea probes suspected drugs flights in mine zone
Fri 5 Sep 2008, 9:51 GMT
CONAKRY (Reuters) - The government of Guinea is investigating suspected drug-trafficking flights in its main bauxite mining zone after U.N. experts said the country risked turning into a cocaine smuggling hub, police said on Friday.
In July, the United Nations' anti-crime chief visited Guinea, the world's leading exporter of the bauxite ore from which aluminium is made, and told President Lansana Conte his nation faced a serious threat from international drugs gangs.
The U.N. and Western law enforcement agencies are trying to stem what they call an offensive on weak impoverished West African states by Colombian cocaine cartels seeking easier routes through which to ship their drugs to Europe.
Senior Guinean civilian, military and police authorities from Boke, a mining town 170 km (106 miles) northwest of Conakry, were summoned for questioning in the capital on Thursday to explain recent movements by small planes in Boke.
"We'd noticed mysterious planes landing under strange circumstances in the middle of the night, and then leaving again after about an hour," a senior police officer, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.
"It seems the drug traffickers have homed in on our country as a transit hub. And we're determined to fight that," he added.
The Boke mining region, from where major foreign mining companies export bauxite, borders with neighbouring Guinea-Bissau, which Western narcotics experts have identified as a favourite transit route for the Latin American cartels.
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) officials believe that as international pressure has intensified on Guinea-Bissau to crack down on the traffickers, the gangs have shifted operations to the former French colony next door.
UNODC executive director Antonio Maria Costa said he obtained a commitment from Guinea's president in July that he would tackle drug trafficking and organised crime.
Guinea, which holds a third of the world's known reserves of bauxite, has lived in almost permanent institutional turmoil since last year with the ageing Conte being challenged by riots on the streets and army mutinies.
U.N. officials are concerned that widespread and high-level corruption and bitter rivalry between Guinea's security forces could undermine efforts to stamp out drug-trafficking.
When elite Guinean troops intervened to put down a pay mutiny by the country's police on June 17, killing at least eight policemen, they also ransacked the offices of the country's counter-narcotics unit and destroyed all its records.
Security experts say the drug cartels' penetration into West Africa and the Sahel in search of "least resistance" trafficking routes is creating an explosive mix, combining with existing arms- and people-smugglers, domestic insurgencies and pockets of al Qaeda militants sheltering in the remoter zones.
Guinea probes suspected drugs flights in mine zone
Fri 5 Sep 2008, 9:51 GMT
CONAKRY (Reuters) - The government of Guinea is investigating suspected drug-trafficking flights in its main bauxite mining zone after U.N. experts said the country risked turning into a cocaine smuggling hub, police said on Friday.
In July, the United Nations' anti-crime chief visited Guinea, the world's leading exporter of the bauxite ore from which aluminium is made, and told President Lansana Conte his nation faced a serious threat from international drugs gangs.
The U.N. and Western law enforcement agencies are trying to stem what they call an offensive on weak impoverished West African states by Colombian cocaine cartels seeking easier routes through which to ship their drugs to Europe.
Senior Guinean civilian, military and police authorities from Boke, a mining town 170 km (106 miles) northwest of Conakry, were summoned for questioning in the capital on Thursday to explain recent movements by small planes in Boke.
"We'd noticed mysterious planes landing under strange circumstances in the middle of the night, and then leaving again after about an hour," a senior police officer, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.
"It seems the drug traffickers have homed in on our country as a transit hub. And we're determined to fight that," he added.
The Boke mining region, from where major foreign mining companies export bauxite, borders with neighbouring Guinea-Bissau, which Western narcotics experts have identified as a favourite transit route for the Latin American cartels.
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) officials believe that as international pressure has intensified on Guinea-Bissau to crack down on the traffickers, the gangs have shifted operations to the former French colony next door.
UNODC executive director Antonio Maria Costa said he obtained a commitment from Guinea's president in July that he would tackle drug trafficking and organised crime.
Guinea, which holds a third of the world's known reserves of bauxite, has lived in almost permanent institutional turmoil since last year with the ageing Conte being challenged by riots on the streets and army mutinies.
U.N. officials are concerned that widespread and high-level corruption and bitter rivalry between Guinea's security forces could undermine efforts to stamp out drug-trafficking.
When elite Guinean troops intervened to put down a pay mutiny by the country's police on June 17, killing at least eight policemen, they also ransacked the offices of the country's counter-narcotics unit and destroyed all its records.
Security experts say the drug cartels' penetration into West Africa and the Sahel in search of "least resistance" trafficking routes is creating an explosive mix, combining with existing arms- and people-smugglers, domestic insurgencies and pockets of al Qaeda militants sheltering in the remoter zones.
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