INSIGHT-Failed coup puts spotlight back on Guinea-Bissau's role in cocaine trade

BISSAU, Feb 11 (Reuters)

* Guinea-Bissau president links coup attempt to his war ondrugs

* Some opposition figures, experts question his record

* West Africa has become nexus for cocaine smuggling toEurope

* Officials say armed forces, government members areinvolved

* President's uncle calls for international support

By Aaron Ross

BISSAU, Feb 11 (Reuters) - In October, President UmaroSissoco Embalo told French radio that drug trafficking andcorruption were over in Guinea-Bissau, a country that hasstruggled to shake off its reputation as a "narco state" of WestAfrica.

Those words rang hollow a few months later. Fierce gunfireinterrupted a cabinet meeting Embalo was presiding over, andwithin hours of the deadly Feb. 1 attack he described it as afailed coup attempt possibly linked to the drugs trade.

At a news conference on Thursday, Embalo said three soldierswho were arrested by U.S. drug authorities in a 2013 stingoperation and pleaded guilty to cocaine trafficking had beendetained in connection with the attack.

Embalo said he personally saw two - Captain Tchamy Yala andLieutenant Papis Djeme - during the assault and that ex-navycommander Bubo Na Tchuto was coordinating the coup attempt fromnavy headquarters.

"When the shots were being fired in the Government Palace,Bubo was at the navy headquarters ... and I heard the assailantssay we are going to call him to send us reinforcements.

"Bubo was arrested in uniform - someone who is not on activeduty ... That shows the intention," Embalo said.

Reuters has not been able to reach the three men forcomment.

Embalo suggested the attack, in which the government saidseven security personnel defending the president, threegovernment workers and one assailant were killed, wasretaliation for his efforts to crack down on drug trafficking.

"When I committed to this fight against corruption andnarco-trafficking, I think that I signed my death warrant," hesaid.

But some politicians and regional analysts have questionedthis, saying drug smuggling has persisted under Embalo's watchand the attack was more likely related to trafficking groups andtheir political backers competing for the spoils.

"I think it's a conflict between all the factions thatparticipate in the government or some of the factions," saidManuel dos Santos, a senior member of the main oppositionAfrican Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde.

"And it is probably related to drug trafficking."

The president's uncle Mussa Embalo, until recently anadviser, said Embalo had shaken up the leadership of the navyand judicial police to better combat drug trafficking.

"There are successes and setbacks. We need (the) assistanceof our international partners," he told Reuters.

COCAINE HUB

Most people in the capital believe the intense, five-hourgun battle was, in one way or another, tied to narcotics.

It is an indication that, despite false dawns in recentyears, Guinea-Bissau remains vulnerable to instability that sometop officials blame on the illicit trade.

Embalo said at the news conference that many militaryofficers and politicians continue to be involved in the drugstrade.

Asked how he reconciled that position with his remarks inOctober that trafficking was no longer a problem, he did notdirectly answer.

Defence Minister Sandji Fati declined to be interviewed forthis article. An armed forces spokesman did not respond toquestions on whether officers were involved in the cocainetrade.

The country of two million people emerged as a major cocainetrafficking hub in the 2000s, according to experts.

Guinea-Bissau's location on West Africa's Atlantic coast andlax law enforcement made it attractive to cartels, they said.

By sending their product first to Guinea-Bissau orneighbouring countries and then on a separate ship or plane toEurope or the United States, they could avoid scrutiny typicallyreserved for cargoes originating in South America.

There were no major cocaine busts in West Africa from 2014to 2018, leading some to question whether the region had fallenout of favour with traffickers or managed to clean up its act.

But a spate of record seizures in 2019 from Guinea-Bissau toSenegal and Cape Verde put paid to those hopes, and some expertsbelieve the region's https://www.reuters.com/article/capeverde-drugs-idUSL5N1ZW4BDcurrent role is substantial https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/senegal-seizes-record-2-tonnes-cocaine-off-atlantic-coast-2021-10-19at a time of record global cocaine production.

"Guinea-Bissau is one of the rapidly rising West Africancountries used as a point of transit for drug trafficking on theroute to Europe," the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime's regionalrepresentative for West and Central Africa, Amado Philip deAndrés, told Reuters.

While he noted some positive developments in recent years,most of which pre-dated Embalo, he said more needed to be done.

"There are still grounds for improvement in Guinea-Bissau,particularly in terms of bringing perpetrators to justice."

For Guinea-Bissau, the repercussions from the trade areserious.

Residents of Bissau, which has experienced around a dozencoups or attempted coups since independence from Portugal in1974, said in the wake of the Feb. 1 bloodshed that they couldnot recall an incident of such intense violence.

When Reuters reporters visited the Government Palace threedays after the attack, hundreds of shell casings lay strewn onthe ground near dried pools of blood, and bullet holespockmarked all four sides of the main building.

An unexploded rocket-propelled grenade was wedged betweenthe branches of a palm tree. Another was lodged in a wall.

Witnesses in the neighbourhood said ministers had fled thecompound on foot into the dirt roads behind the compound,seeking refuge in surrounding buildings.

Embalo said he hid in a side office for five hours with hisjustice minister and two guards.

"I said: 'we stay here but you leave the door open ...because when the door is open, people think that there is no oneinside.'"

TACKLING THE PROBLEM

Two law enforcement sources said that they detected anuptick in activity related to cocaine smuggling in Guinea-Bissauthroughout 2020, the year that Embalo took office.

A Western diplomat said he thought Embalo was sincere aboutwanting to crack down on trafficking but that he was constrainedby the military's influence.

Embalo, a former army general, has refused to hand overformer armed forces chief Antonio Indjai to U.S. authorities,who last year offered up to $5 million for information leadingto his arrest. Indjai was indicted in U.S. court in 2013 onnarcotics trafficking charges.

Indjai denies the allegations, and Embalo said he isprevented by national law from extraditing a Guinea-Bissaucitizen.

The two men appeared in a photograph at the presidency thatwas published in local news reports and shared on social mediashortly after Embalo's inauguration in February 2020.

Musso Embalo, the uncle, said the photo with Indjai andother senior officers was taken to show the support of theBalanta, Guinea-Bissau's largest ethnic group, for Embalo, whois Fulani.

Indjai is Balanta and the group dominates Guinea-Bissau'smilitary.

The government spokesman did not respond to requests forcomment about the photo or the government's actions on drugtrafficking.

The president's account of seeing Yala and Djeme during theattack is consistent with a leaked army report that said the twosoldiers were at the scene.

The president said there had been a number of other arrestsbut declined to say how many, pending the outcome of an officialinvestigation.

Na Tchuto, Yala and Djeme were detained in 2013 by U.S.authorities on a luxury yacht after offering to import narcoticsinto the United States on behalf of informants they thought wereSouth American traffickers.

The three men pleaded guilty to conspiracy in a U.S. courtand were later released after serving their sentences.

The case cemented Guinea-Bissau's reputation as a stopoverof choice for Latin American drugs en route to Europe and theUnited States. Even before that, Guinea-Bissau had beendescribed as a "narco state" by the United Nations.

President João Bernardo Vieira was assassinated by soldiersin 2009, a killing widely believed to have been connected totrafficking networks. In 2012, army officers eyeing control ofthe drug trade seized power in the so-called "cocaine coup".(Additional reporting by Alberto Dabo in Bissau, Nate Raymondin New York and David Lewis in Nairobi; Editing by MikeCollett-White and Alexandra Zavis)