Stepped up U.S. drug enforcement and interdiction in Latin America, coupled with a falling dollar and a surging demand for cocaine on the streets of Europe, is leading to political and economic chaos across West Africa, where international narco-traffickers have established their most recent, and lucrative, staging grounds. In fact, the drug trade is fast turning large parts of the region into areas that are all but ungovernable — with major implications for international security. “The former Gold Coast is turning into the Coke Coast,” said a 2008 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). “The [...]
TORRÉON, Mexico — Fernando Martí, the 14-year-old son of a Mexican sporting goods magnate, was kidnapped in June, strangled within a few days of his abduction, and found in the trunk of a car in the nation’s capital in August. His ordeal — along with stratospheric levels of drug violence and the recent designation of Mexico as the country that leads the world in kidnappings — has provoked a groundswell of outrage across Mexican society. Politicians, civil groups, newspaper commentators, the business community — virtually everyone drawing breath from Tijuana to Cancun agrees that Mexico’s rampant criminality must be addressed. [...]
SAN JOSÉ DEL GUAVIARE, Colombia — At a military base in this eastern town on the edge of the jungle, Juan Manual Santos, Colombia’s defense minister, recently delivered a triumphant appraisal of the country’s fight against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Just a few years ago, it would have it would have been hard to imagine staging such an event here, for fear of a guerrilla ambush. “We have chosen San José del Guaviare because it symbolized the old Colombia, a country ridden with narcotraffickers, paramilitaries and guerrillas,” said Santos as he addressed the country’s generals and elite troops [...]
