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Route of Evil
![[MAP: Guinea-Bissau, a major hub on the cocaine route to Europe, has become Africa's first narco-state.]](http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2008/05/25/GR2008052500077.gif)
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The U.N. Development Program ranks Guinea-Bissau 175th out of 177 nations on its Human Development Index. The U.N. drug and crime office has noted that the national budget of Guinea-Bissau is roughly equal to the wholesale value in Europe of 2 1/2 tons of cocaine.
The country is best known for its cashews and mangoes, but its main attractions for the cartels are its weak government and coastal waters dotted with scores of uninhabited islands.
Officials said the drug traffickers don't export directly to Europe because European navies and air forces would detect large shipments. So they send ships and planes loaded with cocaine to West Africa. Some is unloaded at abandoned airstrips in the islands off Guinea-Bissau; more is dropped at sea and picked up by small boats.
The cocaine is then broken up into still smaller loads and sent on to Europe in light aircraft or by human mules -- in 2006, Dutch police discovered on a single flight to Amsterdam 32 people traveling from Guinea-Bissau with hidden cocaine.
So much cocaine is moving through Guinea-Bissau that plastic-wrapped bricks of it have washed ashore, where officials said confused villagers tried using the unfamiliar substance to fertilize their crops or paint their walls.
The navy has only two boats, one of which is out of service, and the air force has no working planes or helicopters. "We have no military means over here. Nothing. Zero," said Jorge Sambu, a top aide to the navy chief of staff.
So Barbosa, the police chief, is attempting to fight sophisticated cartels from her primitive downtown office, with 63 officers, half of whom have guns. Her office is in a dirt courtyard. The "homicide bureau" is a single room with four empty desks and an old TV.
The department has no handcuffs, one laptop computer, sporadic electricity and hole-in-the-ground toilets. In the courtyard during a recent visit, a few barefoot officers lolled in the shade next to the smashed remains of several old computers.
Asked if the situation is hopeless, Barbosa, 47, laughed.
"This is the most dangerous thing we've ever seen," she said. "It's really worrisome -- they have guns, bullets and military equipment."
Last August, Barbosa said, two Colombian men living in Bissau, the crumbling capital city, were caught with the equivalent of $150,000, two grenades, a handgun, an AK-47 assault rifle, pepper spray, military weapons manuals, more than 100 rounds of ammunition and maps of the country's remote areas.
Barbosa said one of the Colombians had served five years in prison in Miami on a drug-related conviction. But both suspects were eventually released by a judge, with no explanation, and they still live in Bissau, she said.
