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“It was a cold-blooded assault. And the perpetrators have been definitely not members of our armed forces. They relatively have been individuals from the underworld, who wished to forestall my struggle in opposition to worldwide drug trafficking.”
These have been the phrases of Guinea-Bissau’s President Umaro Sissoco Embalo, talking to an assembled press corps on Tuesday night time. Simply hours earlier than, a bloody shootout had taken place on the authorities buildings, adopted by an hours-long siege on the advanced which homes not solely the official residence of the top of presidency, but additionally all the nation’s ministries.
Unknown people additionally fired projectiles allegedly propelled by bazookas. 11 safety personnel have been killed — all of them members of the presidential guard.
President Embalo — himself a former normal — appeared cool and decided all through his speech.
“The perpetrators have been definitely killers funds by the drug mafia,” he repeated on a number of events — regardless of insisting that he didn’t seem to need to leap to any conclusions within the ongoing investigation.
Above all, he confused that the federal government had been in a position to repel the assault and that the state of affairs within the nation was below his management.
Doubts raised over president’s model of occasions
Epifania Fernandes, a journalist for the unbiased newspaper “O Democrata,” was a witness to the assault by the coup plotters. She had gone to the federal government palace on Tuesday morning to report on a cupboard assembly when she instantly heard bazooka shells.
“Inside the federal government constructing, everybody panicked,” she informed DW. “Then we heard a whole lot of pistol pictures. I ran from corridor to corridor, ministry to ministry, and eventually hid in a bathroom. Solely after greater than 5 hours, at 5 p.m. within the afternoon, might I really feel reassured that all of it was over and that we might go away the federal government constructing. We have been all in a state of shock.”
Fernandes went on to explain the perpetrators she noticed: “Whether or not it was hitmen paid by the drug lords or troopers, I can’t say with certainty. Nevertheless, I noticed a number of armed individuals in civilian garments who weren’t recognizable — at the very least externally — as troopers.”
Domingos Simoes Pereira, head of the most important opposition social gathering in Guinea-Bissau PAIGC (African Social gathering for the Independence of Guinea and Cabo Verde), says it would not be “advisable” to associate with the president’s simplistic rationalization.
A part of a cargo of cocaine seized in 2012. Guinea-Bissau is without doubt one of the main hubs of drug trafficking in Africa
“[Embalo] is presenting himself as a fighter in opposition to the drug mafia as a way to lull the worldwide group into complacency,” Pereira informed DW. “However the residents of Guinea-Bissau need to know what is admittedly behind this alleged coup try. Who have been the individuals who carried out this coup? What number of have been there? Who was answerable for them? What have been their actual targets?”
The president has to date failed to offer solutions to any of those questions, Pereira says, including that some observers are overtly speculating that Embalo himself might have staged the coup.
“Such a coup could be a great pretext to accentuate his purge of inner critics and opposition figures,” Pereira suggests.
Within the palms of drug cartels
There’s presently no proof to help the idea that the drug mafia commissioned the alleged assault. Nevertheless, this concept can’t be dismissed altogether both: Guinea-Bissau is taken into account an necessary hub for drug trafficking — particularly for cocaine.
Since attaining independence from Portugal in 1974, the West African nation has skilled 9 coups and tried coups, in addition to a number of political assassinations. A few of these have truly been attributed to drug cartels, which have had a agency grip on the nation since 2005.
Based on the United Nations Workplace on Medication and Crime (UNODC), Guinea-Bissau is now one of the necessary gateways for cocaine coming from South America in the direction of Europe.
“Organized crime will do no matter it desires in Guinea-Bissau,” Calvario Ahukharie, the previous head of Interpol in Guinea-Bissau informed DW. He provides that the struggle in opposition to the drug cartels is virtually not possible to win, as many are rumoured to be in cahoots with navy officers and politicians.
“The drug lords from South America go out and in of our nation at any time when and nonetheless they please,” he explains. “They subjugate the politicians. They’re the actual rulers in our nation.”
A gateway to the drug commerce
Ahukharies explains that enormous portions of medication are casually smuggled into the nation on massive ships, inside packages weighing as much as 200 kilograms. The federal government in Guinea-Bissau, he says, will seemingly go away this drug mafia alone and allow them to reign as they please.
In return, the political elites shall be paid off — with cash and even with medication.
“The drug lords really feel proper at residence in Guinea-Bissau, like they’re in paradise,” Ahukharies concludes.
Guinea-Bissau started its transformation right into a narco-state in 2005, when long-time president Joao Bernardo “Nino” Vieira — who had dominated the nation with an iron fist between 1980 and 1999 — was re-elected president after coming back from six years of exile in Portugal.
Vieira allowed the Colombian drug mafia to grab the nation. Guinea-Bissau’s quite a few islands, which have been nearly uncontrolled by the state, have been used as a station to herald cocaine from South America en path to Europe.
The drug lords had nothing to concern from Vieira, says Ahukharie:”Quite the opposite, Vieira paved the best way for the drug cartels to have free reign, and in return he acquired a share of their earnings.”
However quickly, Nino Vieira got here into battle with rivals in his personal navy. In March 2009, he was assassinated by his personal troopers.
Navy in cahoots with cartels
However even after Nino Vieira’s loss of life, the drug smuggling enterprise continued to thrive in Guinea-Bissau: In April 2013, Guinea-Bissau’s navy chief, Jose Americo Bubo Na Tchuto, was lured into an intelligence entice set by brokers of the US Drug Enforcement Company (DEA), who arrested him on the excessive seas in worldwide waters, making his extradition merely a formality.
Bubo Na Tchuto offered US authorities with necessary info and names of key gamers within the commerce. He was consequently launched from jail quickly after his courtroom conviction, in order that he might return to Guinea-Bissau.
Observers are sure that pockets of Guinea-Bissau’s military are nonetheless concerned in drug trafficking. However a number of the senior navy officers in Guinea-Bissau have reportedly turn out to be extra cautious, making an attempt to fall below the radar.
Within the wake of the current coup try, one identify retains arising time and again: Bubo Na Tchuto — despite the fact that he’s now not lively within the navy.
What has two wings and will not fly?
An airliner parked on the airport of the capital Bissau since October 2020 has been the topic of a lot dialogue in current months — particularly on the subject of the state of corruption and lively collaboration between authorities and navy officers and drug cartels.
The related authorities do not know who owns the Airbus 340 plane, nor what it was carrying when it landed there. Investigations into this mysterious state of affairs have been repeatedly postponed or averted.
President Sissoco Embalo, nonetheless, nonetheless fancies himself as a dedicated fighter in opposition to worldwide drug trafficking. He refuses to attract any connection between the wayward aircraft and the drug cartels working in his nation.
Then-Interpol chief Calvario Ahukharie reveals images in 2012 of troopers unloading a cargo of cocaine
His stance has brought about a lot outrage, not solely among the many opposition and civil society, but additionally in his personal authorities.
“I am undecided if this president actually has what it takes to fashion himself as a pacesetter within the struggle in opposition to the drug cartels within the nation,” says opposition chief Pereira. “We even have details about the motion of boats in our territorial waters for which there are not any believable explanations.”
Coup d’etat or coup de’grace?
However Pereira might not be as harmless as he makes himself out to be: He and his personal social gathering have additionally been repeatedly accused of getting hyperlinks to the drug cartels that function in Guinea-Bissau — and fairly overtly so.
Nonetheless, Pereira has repeated his calls to the worldwide group to not settle for the president’s “simplistic statements” surrounding the tried coup.
Whether or not Pereira is concerned within the drug commerce or not, his message appears to have fallen on lifeless ears: The Financial Group of West African States (ECOWAS) seems to agree with President Embalo’s model of occasions — at the very least for now — and have praised Embalo’s efforts in opposition to the drug mafia working in his nation.
The worldwide group in the meantime has solely condemned the coup try for what it’s — an try at seizing energy with out going by way of democratic processes. There’s been no point out of the South American drug wars being performed out on African soil. No less than not but.
Braima Darame contributed to this report.
This text was initially written in German.
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