Recently in Guinea Bissau Category

• Some 40 tons of cocaine, (value $1.8 bn), crossed West Africa on to Europe in 2006.
•  West Africa includes 10 of the 20 lowest scorers on the UN index of development
•  Criminal organizations and terrorists forming "hybrid" bodies in West Africa
•                              Photo: Antonin Kratochvil/VII, for The New York Times

Guinea-Bissau, in West Africa has emerged as a nodal point in three-way cocaine-trafficking operations linking producers in South America with users in Europe; the value of the cocaine that transits this small and heartbreakingly impoverished country dwarfs its gross national product.
The police have computers, courtesy of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The U.N. has recognized drug trafficking in the region as a threat to international peace and security.

On the tarmac of Osvaldo Vieira, the international airport of Guinea-Bissau, sits a once-elegant Gulfstream jet, which in the normal course of events would have no reason to land in a country with no business opportunities and virtually no economy.