By Donna Miles
American Forces Press Service
STUTTGART, Germany – When U.S. Africa
Command was garnering unprecedented international attention in October during
its campaign to protect Libyan civilians from Moammar Ghadafi’s violent
crackdown against a rebellion, the command achieved another, less
headline-dominating victory.
Police in Cape Verde, a small group of
islands off Africa’s west coast, seized an estimated 3,300 pounds of cocaine in
the country’s largest-ever drug bust. The cocaine had originated in South
America and was transiting through Cape Verde bound for Europe, Africom
officials said.
And as confirmed by an International Institute
for Strategic Studies report in April, proceeds from shipments like this one
are a major funding source for terrorist activities.
Thanks in large part to the new
Africom-funded Counter-Narcotics and Maritime Security Operations Center in
Cape Verde, profits from the $100 million in captured cocaine there never made
it into terrorists’ hands.
The center, built with about $1.5
million from Africom and formally presented to the Cape Verdean government in
May 2010, is enabling the country’s police, coast guard and military to
collaborate more closely to crack down on illicit trafficking, piracy and other
transnational threats, U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Mark Huebschman said.
“We feel that interagency center was a
key asset that helped facilitate this very significant drug seizure,”
Huebschman, chief of Africom’s counternarcotics and law enforcement assistance
division, told American Forces Press Service.
The center features inter-island
communications relays that give Cape Verdean government agencies and offices
the ability to share information and coordinate their activities against
narco-trafficking and other illegal activities, Huebschman explained.
To complement its operations, the United
States also helped Cape Verde upgrade its tiny, four-craft patrol boat fleet
and donated another small high-speed vessel.
As a result, Cape Verde is better
equipped to monitor and patrol its vast territorial waters and economic
exclusion zone, with the United States providing only a supporting role,
Huebschman said.
Army Gen. Carter F. Ham, Africom’s
commander, called these efforts an example of the capacity-building initiatives
that are helping Africans to solve African problems.
Testifying before the House Armed
Services Committee in February, Ham called narcotics trafficking a
destabilizing influence throughout Africa, particularly in West Africa.
“The Africans are not the overall
consumers of these drugs that are coming from Central and South America,” he
told the House panel. “But they are the transit point for the narcotics that go
into Europe.”
Yet the consequences impact Africa
directly, he said, breeding corruption and undermining good governance wherever
illegal narcotics flow.
“That,” he told Congress, “works
contrary to our national interests.”
As traffickers move cocaine shipments
through West Africa, their counterparts in Afghanistan and Pakistan are
increasingly funneling heroin shipments through East Africa, Huebschman
reported. In addition, traffickers are beginning to pay couriers in drugs rather
than cash, he said, creating new local markets for drugs on the continent.
Africom is working with its African
partners to confront drug trafficking
head-on, while also drawing on resources and expertise from its staff
representatives from the Drug Enforcement Agency, Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, FBI and Coast Guard, all of which have reach-back to their
agencies in the United States.
“This is really a problem we have
approached through a whole-of-government effort,” Huebschman said.
The efforts run the gamut, from training
to building capacity within partners’ civilian law enforcement agencies or
equipment for them to operate, to minor construction projects to establish
bases for their operations.
“We also do projects that promote information
sharing, like computer systems and telecommunications systems,” Huebschman
said. “All are geared toward providing these law enforcement agencies with an
enhanced capability to be able to attack these drug-trafficking organizations.”
For example, officials used high-tech
full-body scanners provided by Africom and ICE-led training to interdict a drug
courier at one of Nigeria’s international airports almost immediately after
putting the system into operation, Huebschman reported. The scanners have proven
so successful in supporting Nigeria’s counternarcotics efforts that the United
States last year removed Nigeria from its list of major illicit drug-producing
and drug-trafficking countries.
Meanwhile, Africom continues to promote
cooperation among its African partners so they can provide a unified front to
address the problem.
For example, law enforcement officials
from seven West African countries met in Sierre Leone in December to explore
ways to curtail drug trafficking in the region. The conference, organized by
the U.S. State and Justice departments under the auspices of the West Africa
Cooperative Security Initiative, focused heavily on the need to combat
transnational organized crime activities, particularly corruption, in West
Africa.
A new strategy document developed
through that initiative is designed to take this effort to the next level by
leveraging ongoing efforts by international partners and organizations: G8
partners, The European Union, the African Union and the Economic Community of West
African States, among them.
“We’re trying to approach this problem
from an international perspective, and to leverage all the resources and
capabilities that these various countries and agencies bring to this
challenging problem,” Huebschman said.
Meanwhile, rather than basking in the
glory of their recent cocaine interdiction, the Cape Verdeans are continuing to
exercise with their counterparts from the United States and Europe to improve
their maritime security operations.
They recently took part in the
multinational Saharan Express 2012 exercise, part of the Africa Partnership
Station mission focused on combating illicit activities -- such as illegal
fishing, narcotics-trafficking and piracy -- that are endangering the maritime
security in many of the participant nations.
Ten regional militaries participated in
the training, conducted off the coasts of Cape Verde, Mauritania, Senegal and
The Gambia, with scenarios that included visit, board, search and seizures,
search-and-rescue scenarios, medical casualty and radio communication drills,
and information management practice techniques.
“We live in a world that is confronted
with many problems like piracy, drug trafficking, terrorism, organized crime,”
said Col. Alberto Ferdandes, chief of staff for the Cape Verde armed forces.
“It’s necessary for each of us to find a solution to respond to these problems
in an efficient manner, we need to have a communal response and it is important
that we are all prepared so we can produce a unified action.”
“We all know that illegal fishing
threatens the food security of our countries,” agreed Senegalese Chief of Naval
Staff Adm. Mohamed Sane. “Illegal acts like immigration, arms trafficking,
pollution, piracy and terrorism threaten social stability. No maritime power
can face these challenges alone.”
(Navy
Lt. Nathan Potter, public affairs officer for U.S. Naval Forces
Europe-Africa/U.S. 6th Fleet, contributed to this article.)
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