Word: bissau
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...Guinea-Bissau had the money to paint a sign for arriving visitors, it might read: welcome to the world's newest narco state. This small country in West Africa is such a perfect base for cocaine operations that it could have been designed by Pablo Escobar himself. Escobar and other Colombian drug lords poured untold tons of cocaine into the United States in the 1980s, setting off a narcotics epidemic across urban America, and leading to drug wars which have taken decades and billions of dollars to combat. (See TIME's photo-essay "Guinea-Bissau, the World's First Narco...
...leading African connection in this growing global network is Guinea-Bissau. The fifth poorest country in the world was perfectly suited to playing a key role in the coke trade. The average person in this country of 1.6 million people earns about $720 a year and dies at 45. The capital, Bissau, is a decrepit relic on which the government has not slapped a lick of paint since the Portuguese colonials decamped in the 1970s. There are few phone lines and almost no electricity. Even the President's office building has a generator roaring outside. The judicial police headquarters...
...GUINEA BISSAU...
...Plenty of other countries presumably share insecurity complexes about their nationhood: Central African Republic (which sounds like it was named by a particularly uninspired committee), French Guiana (not to be confused with Equatorial Guinea, Guyana or Guinea-Bissau) and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (a collection of islands that sounds like it also could be an up-and-coming lounge act). But East Timor's problems are compounded by the fact that its population of just under 1 million is commonly referred to by no fewer than four names. Even though less than 10% of the population speaks Portuguese...
...Stability's Sake GUINEA-BISSAU Three days after being ousted in a bloodless military putsch, President Kumba Yala formally resigned his post. Coup leader General Verissimo Correia Seabra accused Yala of causing "political instability" in the impoverished former Portuguese colony in West Africa. Seabra promised to cede power to a transitional government that would oversee elections. Yala, who remained under house arrest, dissolved parliament in November and canceled polls four times...