Przemyt narkotyków a zagrożenie bezpieczeństwa państw Afryki Zachodniej. Casus Gwinei Bissau

The image of Africa as a main drug smuggling transit point has emerged relatively recently. Almost till the 1970s it was thought that the drug problem did not apply to the African continent. But one decade was enough to change this vision and make Africa, and especially West Africa, be seen as an important transit point for drugs (mainly cocaine and heroin) produced in South America and Asia. International efforts to combat drug trafficking in West Africa have been so far unsuccessful. Moreover, since 2005 it has been observed an increase in drug smuggling operations on a large scale in this region, carried out mainly by nationals of Latin America and Europe, with use of new ‘popular' transit points located in small West African countries, such as: the Gambia, Guinea, or titular Guinea-Bissau, to which a few years ago the international press attached the label of “the first African narco-state”. The development of narco-business in Guinea-Bissau is most often associated with its state dysfunctionality problems, this article is trying to analyse the roots of this phenomenon, as well as the influence it may have on the country itself, as well as on the whole region.