From Business Insider

A surge in cocaine has transformed Guinea into West Africa’s latest drug hot spot, jeopardizing President Alpha Conde’s efforts to rebuild state institutions after a military coup and attract billion of dollars in mining investment.

Locals and Latin Americans long-accused of smuggling are operating freely in the country, some with high-level protection from within Conde’s administration, according to Guinean and international law enforcement officials and internal police reports seen by Reuters.

The growth of trafficking was overlooked as diplomats focused on securing a fragile transition back to civilian rule after the 2008 putsch.

Counter-narcotics agents from the United States and other countries, meanwhile, concentrated on smugglers in neighboring Guinea-Bissau, a tiny former Portuguese colony dubbed by crime experts Africa’s first “narco-state.”

However, the U.S. State Department’s 2013 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report said seizures in Guinea and cases abroad traced back there show a spike in trafficking since Conde won power at a 2010 election.

A lack of government figures makes estimating volumes tricky, but a foreign security source said one or two planes landed each month last year, ferrying in cocaine from Latin America mostly for smuggling to Europe.

Written by David Lewis/Read more at Business Insider