Word: westly
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Guinea-Bissau is one of the Colombia cartels' most critical points for smuggling cocaine into Europe and, just before dawn on Monday, the tiny West African country plunged into a political power vacuum. At that moment, the long-time president of the country was shot dead in his home just hours after an armed attack on the military headquarters killed his Army chief of staff. The two men were adversaries in a bitter power struggle, one that had fueled a civil war in the late 1990s...
Viera had publicly criticized the drug traffickers yet seemed powerless to prevent them from opeating in his country - perhaps partly because of the involvement of some top military officers, according to regional sources. In an interview with TIME in Bissau in 2007, a high-ranking West African military officer who asked not to be named said Guinea-Bissau's government and mlitary allowed drug traffickers to operate "not because of a lack of resources but a lack of political will...
...ever since. Vieira came from the far smaller Pepel tribe. Soldiers drove Vieira from the country in 1999, but he returned in 2005 after he won a presidential election. "This is the final reckoning of accounts between two personalities who always fought each other," Antonio Mazzitelli, regional director for West Africa for the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, told TIME by phone from Senegal. "The fear I have is that it could generate an ethnic crisis...
...killings come after months of turmoil among the country's neighbors, in a region which has been beset by Latin American drug traffickers, who are increasingly using West Africa as a way station for cocaine smuggling into Europe. Military officers in neighboring Guinea mounted a coup last December hours after that country's president Lansana Conte died. Conte's administration had been seen as particularly friendly to the foreign drug lords. Last week, Guinea's military coup leaders arrested several politicians and military officers in the capital Conakry, charging them with drug smuggling for the Colombian cartels. The late President...
...months ago the judicial police finally moved into new offices, funded by the E.U., with telephones, computers and cars, according to Mazzitelli. Drug Enforcement Agency spokesman Garrison Courtney said by phone from Washington that the agency is also increasing its involvement in West Africa. "We are working a lot closer with our African counterparts to share information," he said. "We are opening new offices in West Africa." Despite the upheaval Mazzitelli believes that the deaths of two men, who have wielded huge power in Guinea-Bissau for decades, could help to pave the way to democracy. "This could...