United Nations estimates that at least 50 tons of cocaine is shipped through various states in West African region every year. South American drug traffickers are now known to be using select West African countries as transit points for onward smuggling of cocaine for distribution in Europe. An arrest of five suspects - three Venezuelans and two Bissau nationals - was made after  a plane believed to have arrived from South America was seized last month carrying 500 kilograms of cocaine. Also last month, July 13^th to be precise, a Cessna plane made an unauthorized landing at Lungi Airport, near Freetown in Sierra Leone loaded with 600 kilos of cocaine. Armed men later forced themselves through the airport and escaped with both the drugs and the crew. A group of men, including nine foreigners, many of them South Americans are said to be helping the police in the investigations. Drug enforcement agent say they have reasons to believe that the quantities involved in the two cases are only a fraction of what has already been successfully smuggled through this year alone.

In recent years drugs have become a general security issue in West Africa with narco-dollars disrupting the balance of local power and disfiguring already weak economies of the countries of the region. It is estimated that in countries like Guinea Bissau and The Gambia, the value of the drugs being trafficked is greater than the country's entire national income. There have been growing concerns by regional and international bodies that some these countries run the risk of being overtaken by drug cartels and becoming "narco-state".

Already in Guinea Bissau, what look like such cartels or their embryo appear already to have been in place. 

Analysts said the government's lack of resources has been failing its efforts to confront the menace. Both Justice Minister, Carmelita Pires and Attorney General, Luis Manuel Cabral, have been the targets of multiple threats over the arrest of five people suspected of drugs trafficking. Ms. Carmelita Pires said she received two anonymous telephone calls warning her that she was talking too much and that she was digging her own grave. "I will not turn my back on this fight. I will not relinquish my responsibility," vowed Ms Pires. Ms. Pires said though she is scared by the threats, the government would not be intimidated and would therefore continue to probe the country's major drug bust which has caused a stand off between police and soldiers at the West African country's main airport. The Justice Minister said that high-ranking political figures as well as senior personnel in military and security forces did not want his investigation to continue. While these responses by the two government officials show that not everybody in government in Bissau is under the pay of the drug cartels, the Director of UN Office of Drugs and Crime in West Africa Antonio Mazzitelli said the impoverished and politically unstable country has become a “major hub for cocaine traffickers where smugglers are aided by rampant corruption in public administration, which allowed them to operate with almost total impunity.” The same may also go for Sierra Leone .

According to a Lungi Airport Authority press release, July 16^th , the plane, dubbed "cocaine plan”, forcefully landed at Lungi International Airport on Sunday, July 13^th , at 3:05 a.m. local time. A rescue company which keeps a tally of air or sea accidents, or information related to these fields and civil defense issues in Venezuela, has revealed the rightful owner of the abandoned 'cocaine plane' in Sierra Leone as  Corporacion Aerostar, with address  521 C.A. of Avenue Los Laboratoios, Edif. Quorum, Piso 1, Los Ruices, Caracas . One of its registration number is YV1647, and it is a Cessna 441 model aircraft manufactured in 1978 with Tax RIF: J-31200146-1 and has El Caracas SVCS as its airport base.

Interestingly enough, that weekend, President Ernest Bai Koroma of Sierra Leone was on a visit in The Gambia as one of the Guests of Honor for the 30^th anniversary celebrations of the Banjul-based West African Insurance Institute. He had however cut his visit by one day and it is likely that this was what surprised the network of drug-smugglers and upset their plans. The plane landed at Lungi only to meet the airport awash with soldiers who where on duty there waiting for President Koroma’s rescheduled arrival. In fact the cocaine-plane arrived three hours before the president. There were even fears for an imminent military coup.  

And those fears were not too excessive. Drug networks can easily take over the effective reign of small and impoverished states of the sub-region especially those ravaged by prolonged and destructive civil wars, even if Sierra Leone is less likelier to succumb to such a state than Guinea Bissau. It is a country that has gone far in its efforts to emerge from the ruins of the scourge of war and to take stride on the path of growth and development but it is also a country that is still taking its time to heal. None of the commonly-believed causes of the civil war, including extreme poverty, rampant corruption and ethnic politics, have really been significantly addressed since the end of the war. And it was a civil war ended, not by Sierra Leone left alone, but with the help of foreign forces. Meaning that, some of the internal contradictions that exploded into a most savage civil war might not have been sufficiently reconciled and settled to help withstand the forces of organized crime. But as already inferred, the situation is much worse in Guinea Bissau.