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Mark · Site Admin Joined: 13 Nov 2007 Posts: 1052

Tiny African nation pays price as new cocaine hub

http://www.star-telegram.com/279/story/664465.html

Excerpt:

QUINHAMEL, Guinea-Bissau -- Filipe Dju sat grim-faced on the tangled roots of a mangrove tree, a padlocked chain around his ankle tethering him to four other recovering cocaine addicts.

Three months ago, Dju's family took him to this tiny, swampy West African country's first drug rehabilitation center because he had turned violent using a drug barely seen here until 2005.

"My mother said my head was not working well," said Dju, 40, whose life and country have been crippled by Colombian drug cartels shifting their focus from Americans paying in ever-weaker dollars to Europeans paying in increasingly valuable euros.

Guinea-Bissau, one of the world's poorest nations, has become a major transshipment hub and the epicenter in Africa for the cocaine trade, according to U.S., European and U.N. officials. The shift demonstrates how the flow of drugs adapts not only to law enforcement pressure but also to the forces of global economics.