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Guinea-Bissau: AQIM and the drug cartels

By on November 5, 2010
According to security sources operating in the sub-region, the CIA would have alerted the authorities of Guinea-Bissau on a top secret meeting held by the end of October by several Colombian drug lords, logistic chain distributors, and several traffickers operating in Bissau and the Sahel corridor.

The meeting was held on one small island of the archipelago of Bijagos, and would have allowed the Bogota-Bissau axis to review the challenges that confront the logistical routes for cocaine and to appoint new representatives, after many arrests of drug traffickers, especially in the sub-sahel, disturbing some of the ramifications of the complex distribution network. The same source indicated that some Sahelian traffickers, including a called Abdel-Karim, affiliated and  operating within Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) reportedly took part in the meeting, which tends to show growing interest in drug trafficking from the local franchised Islamist fraction, led by Osama bin Laden. The AQIM interest to Bissau’s territory is synonymous with bad news. Indeed, with a poorly organised army and plagued by strong internal dissent, it is unclear how Guinea Bissau could resist to AQIM and its many support groups and supporters in the region. The growing presence of AQIM ,south of the Sahel,  is also a warning signal to the international community to be seriously considered within the projections of the drug barons planning to establish several legal businesses to diffuse the illegal ones , but also  to make the task harder to the various security services involved in the fight against the financing and money laundering of funds from drug traffic and illicit trade.

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