Broader effort envisioned
Inside Pentagon
U.S. Africa Command aims to wrap up studies in May spelling out the unique counternarcotics needs of individual West African countries and has also begun assisting with intelligence-collection centers -- two undertakings that officials there hope will evolve into broader international efforts to tackle the continent’s growing drug problems.
AFRICOM is helping the State Department’s international narcotics and law enforcement affairs bureau to carry out the assessments, which began in late 2008, said Steve Johnston, the division chief of the command’s counternarcotics and law enforcement assistance division, in an interview from the command’s headquarters. The Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security are also involved.
In the last two weeks, the interagency government team completed two reviews for Cape Verde and Liberia, Johnston said, noting previously completed reviews looked at Senegal and Guinea Bissau.
“We’re coming down to the wire in finishing up our last ones in West Africa, and basically what’s coming out of that is that each country’s unique,” Johnston told Inside the Pentagon this week. “Each have different requirements and we’re trying to make sure that we shape our support to them to make sure we meet their needs, as opposed to try to impose what we think they need upon them.”
From the beginning, Congress asked for a vision of the command’s counternarcotics approach over the next five years and sought studies that conveyed what African governments needed to battle drug trafficking and use, he explained. The next phase would be to work individually with partner countries on the continent with an eye toward establishing the “connectivity between them,” so that government attempts to fight illicit substances could be addressed regionally, he said.
West Africa is a priority for the command, the State Department and Congress as well as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Counternarcotics and Global Threats William Wechsler, maintained Johnston.
Drug trafficking has emerged as a major threat to security, governance, development and public health in West Africa, with the annual sub-regional drug trade valued at nearly $2 billion, noted Andre Le Sage, the academic chair for terrorism and counterterrorism at the Defense Department’s Africa Center for Strategic Studies in Washington. He spoke at a regional workshop held by the center last fall.
A U.S. military official familiar with the region could not reveal study specifics for each West African country but told ITP that requirements vary. One nation may lack basic training to determine if a substance is truly a drug, including how to test for it, and may be without test kits and a laboratory, the military official said. Other countries, meanwhile, may have drug test kits and know how to search vehicles or individuals but seek more advanced equipment “at the airport in order to screen people coming through,” the official noted, adding that in some cases, a government may have laws against hashish usage but not ones governing trafficking cocaine through the country.
The assessments aim to create a comprehensive look of “what’s moving through, what we can do about that, who can address that, what do they need to address that, how can we assist,” as well as the next steps of ensuring whether individuals can be prosecuted and imprisoned, according to the military official.
The hope is to come up with a “systematic plan to go from the assessments, individual country assistance, to a regional plan” that is part of an interagency government approach in which AFRICOM plays a small part, Johnston said. The command can offer drug test kits, assist in providing basic law-enforcement training and help the Senegalese navy to project their naval power farther south to help protect their southern maritime domain, he added.
The Justice Department, moreover, needs to help bolster a prosecutorial service and a criminal justice program, Johnston said, explaining that a lack of asset-forfeiture laws in some African states makes it difficult for governments to strip people of illegally obtained assets.
“We’re just starting to move in that direction,” he noted. “We see that on the horizon but we’re just not there yet.”
Over the next few years, Johnston said, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) will probably assume a larger role in this endeavor.
Beyond these country-by-country studies, the command is also teaming up with African partners to build drug intelligence fusion centers, the first one being in Cape Verde. AFRICOM and the government in the West African nation are putting the finishing touches on a counternarcotics maritime information security center, aiming to forge a connection with the Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre-Narcotics in Lisbon, he said.
The command is “looking at a couple of other potential areas” for fusion centers in West Africa but plans to discuss the idea with the United Nations and Western European partners to prevent repeating similar efforts, according to Johnston.
Sara Batmanglich, a senior program officer focusing on West Africa at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University, believes AFRICOM has “a lot to offer West Africa in terms of technical training and capacity-building on this issue.” But she stressed that ECOWAS must take the lead.
“Right now there is plenty of goodwill to cooperate and tackle this problem, and I think that has to be built upon and reinforced, whereas duplication and parallel initiatives could erode this will,” said Batmanglich. “I’m not saying this is necessarily what’s happening, but I do think it’s a potential danger of too many cooks in the kitchen.”
As it stands, drug trafficking and criminal organizations are coordinating in Latin America, Africa and Europe, according to Batmanglich. As a result, the international community’s response must show a “commensurate” amount of cooperation and information-sharing, which has been “notoriously a sticking point” at all levels, she added.
While AFRICOM can do its part, particularly where narcotrafficking-organized crime “bleeds into terrorism,” tackling the challenge will require investment of personnel and resources from other U.S. government agencies, added Peter Pham, a senior fellow and Africa project director at the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, and an associate professor of justice studies, political science and African studies at James Madison University in Virginia.
“First, we need to get information,” Pham said. “We don’t even have an embassy in Guinea Bissau, arguably ground zero of the West African narcotics traffic. Second, we need to get the law enforcement and other specialists in there to build relations with their counterparts, like AFRICOM does with military counterparts.”
The Drug Enforcement Agency has a presence in only four African countries (Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa), he added.
Third, in collaboration with other partners, the United States needs to build training programs for law enforcement, Pham told ITP. -- Fawzia Sheikh