SIERRA LEONE: Drug fight advances but risks remain
FREETOWN, 12 June 2009 (IRIN) - While the government and international agencies are making what the UN calls “considerable” progress on reducing drug trafficking in Sierra Leone, the trafficking – coupled with youth unemployment and corruption – remains one of the most destabilizing forces in the country, officials say.
Sierra Leone – along with Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, and Senegal – is part of a regional transit axis for drugs passing from South America to Europe, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
The country’s anti-corruption commissioner Abdul Tejan-Cole told IRIN: “Corruption, drugs and youth unemployment are the biggest destabilizing forces in Sierra Leone. Unless urgent steps are taken, [these] could pose serious risks.”
Drug trafficking in Sierra Leone risks undermining government efforts to fight corruption – part of reforms that include security sector restructuring, infrastructure building and job creation, said Bernard Mokam, head of the UN Development Programme in Sierra Leone. “One of the international community’s biggest priorities must be to contain trafficking, promote youth employment, and protect Sierra Leone’s territorial waters.”
Stability in Sierra Leone remains fragile despite the government having made impressive gains to rebuild, UN Secretary-General l Ban Ki-moon said in a 10 June communiqué.
Local business leader Solomon Wilson of Sierra Leone Investment Information told IRIN: “Drug trafficking can seriously undermine the work of the country’s anti corruption strategy because these [drug] deals are never done in isolation…traffickers use unregulated money to bribe people at all levels, from executive level to the junior ranks.”
An anti-corruption unit, set up in 2000, last year drew up a strategy to stamp out corruption at all levels of government. Security officials have already been investigated and charged on drug trafficking offences, said Cole. “We need to accumulate these examples. We are making progress in creating cleaner systems…but everyone wants things done yesterday,” he said.
Cracking down
Antonio Mazzitelli, head of UNODC in West Africa, told IRIN Sierra Leone has made steady progress in its fight on drugs, partly evidenced by a drop in seizures, arrests and drug operations in recent months.
The amount of drugs trafficked in Sierra Leone is unknown, but the latest major seizure was a 700-kilogram cocaine haul at the airport in the capital Freetown in July 2008, according to Mazzitelli, who said the seizure indicated Sierra Leone was a “major hub”. Since then there have been few reports of major drug operations.
The government has set up a task force to fight drug trafficking, made up of police, the Office of National Security, immigration officials, military and marine forces. Its aim is to gather intelligence, execute seizures and patrol Sierra Leone’s porous borders with Guinea and Liberia.
Security sector reforms, underway since 1999, have raised the number of police officers from 6,000 in 2001 to 9,500 today, according to Berhanemeskel Nega, head of the Integrated UN Peacebuilding Office in Sierra Leone (UNIPSIL). Of these, as a start, 72 are currently being trained to fight drug trafficking and related crimes, said Assistant Inspector General of Police Richard Moigbe.
But keeping the police on the right side of the fight goes beyond training, said Nega. “We also need to continue to improve police working conditions to keep them on board – a junior officer earns just US$39 a month,” he said.
International efforts
A number of international agencies and governments are providing support for Sierra Leone’s drug fight, among them the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol), the US government, the UK special crime investigation unit, UN police, the Peacebuilding Commission, Department for Peacekeeping Operations and UNODC – all of which are part of UNIPSIL.
“International pressure on traffickers and decision-makers in the region – including in Sierra Leone – is starting to pay off,” said Mazzitelli. “For the first time, foreign drug traffickers are being sentenced in West Africa – that includes Sierra Leone and Senegal.”
“The impunity that was once the rule is being broken.”
According to police inspector Moigbe, 15 people involved in the July 2008 seizure were investigated and charged including two police officers, a national security officer, two air traffic controllers and eight foreigners, two of them West African.
As concern over the links between drugs, instability and corruption mounts, political leaders are also starting to have to answer both to international players and their own constituents on progress in the drug fight, said Mazzitelli. In Ghana the government’s action on drug trafficking featured highly in election campaigns, he said.
But Sierra Leone needs to speed up its efforts to avert a potentially destabilizing internal drug market from forming, said Sierra Leone National Drug Control Agency officer, Michael Sesay.
While internal consumption of the trafficked drugs is currently low, Sesay said is worried about long-term fallout if the country remains a hub. “Drug trafficking in Sierra Leone spells doom for our post-war development efforts, as most of the youths who were conscripted in the rebel forces were drugged, making them to resort to indiscriminate destruction of lives and property.”
Thousands of child soldiers were drugged with amphetamines and marijuana during the civil war, leaving many of them addicted with no recourse to drug rehabilitation after war, according to Sierra Leone’s Drug Enforcement Agency .
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