“West Africa is under attack from international criminal networks that are using the sub-region as a key global hub for the distribution, wholesale, and in­creased production of illicit drugs,” according to a new report by David Brown, Senior Diplomatic Advisor at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies.

Drug trafficking poses an immense challenge to democratic governance and human security in West Africa, Brown wrote in the report, which was published by the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

“While West African states have made remarkable progress in democratic and economic development over the past decade, the insidious effects of narcotics trafficking have the potential to reverse many of these gains,” said the report. “The proceeds of drug trafficking, by far the most lucrative transnational criminal activity in illicit economies, are fueling a dramatic increase in narco-corruption in the region, allowing drug traffickers to stage coups d’état, hijack elections, and co-opt or buy political power.”

In order to address this challenge, Brown argues that the U.S. government should expand its partnerships and physical presence in the sub-region. Specifically, the report recommends re-opening the U.S. Embassy in Guinea-Bissau and enhancing the presence of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency in key countries throughout the region.

The United States and other international partner states, according to the report, should seek to help expand African partner states’ maritime domain awareness as well as their legal frameworks and law enforcement agencies’ operational capabilities.

Brown recommends that the United States forge and strengthen partnerships with other external governments with an interest in stemming the flow of narcotics through the region, including European Union (EU) member-states—the largest consumers of cocaine trafficked through West Africa—and East Asian states, which consume the majority of the amphetamine type stimulants produced in the region. The report also stresses the need to deepen U.S. partnerships with regional and international organizations that have the mandate and capacity to address the counter-narcotics challenge.

“None of the recommendations will be easy to implement. All will require budgetary and manpower resources in an era when both will be increasingly scarce,” Brown concludes in the report. “Nevertheless, West Africa merits U.S. support, both for the well-being of its citizens, and for those in the United States who will suffer indirectly if the United States does not act now to stop transnational criminal networks operating in the sub-region and elsewhere.”

Source: Africa Center for Strategic Studies