Foreign Policy In Focus

Over the next four years the U.S. will face a number of foreign policy issues, most of them regional, some of them global. Conn Hallinan has been outlining and analyzing them. His first report covered the Middle East.

Africa is probably the single most complex region of the world and arguably its most troubled. While the world concerns itself with the Syrian civil war and the dangers it poses for the Middle East, little notice is taken of the war in the Congo, a tragedy that has taken five million lives and next to which the crisis in Syria pales.

Africa represents 15 percent of the world’s population, yet only 2.7 percent of its GDP, which is largely concentrated in only five of 49 sub-Saharan countries. Just two countries—South Africa and Nigeria—account for over 33 percent of the continent’s economic output. Life expectancy is 50 years, and considerably less in those countries ravaged by AIDS. Hunger and malnutrition are worse than they were a decade ago.

At the same time, Africa is wealthy in oil, gas, iron, aluminum and rare metals. By 2015, countries in the Gulf of Guinea will provide the U.S. with 25 percent of its energy needs, and Africa has at least 10 percent of the world’s known oil reserves. South Africa alone has 40 percent of the earth’s gold supply. The continent contains over one-third of the earth’s cobalt and supplies China—the world’s second largest economy—with 50 percent of that country’s copper, aluminum and iron ore.

But history has stacked the deck against Africa. The slave trade and colonialism inflicted deep and lasting wounds on the region, wounds that continue to bleed out in today’s world. France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal sliced up the continent without the slightest regard for its past or its people. Most of the wars that have—and are—ravaging Africa today are a direct outcome of maps drawn up in European foreign offices to delineate where and what to plunder.

But over the past decade, the world has turned upside down. Formerly the captive of the European colonial powers, China is now Africa’s largest economic partner, followed closely by India and Brazil. Consumer spending is up, and the World Bank predicts that by 2015 the number of new African consumers will match Brazil’s.

In short, the continent is filled with vibrant economies and enormous potential that is not going unnoticed in capitals throughout the world. “The question for executives at consumer packaged goods companies is no longer whether their firms should enter the region, but where and how” says a report by the management consultant agency A.T. Kearney. How Africa negotiates its new status in the world will not only have a profound impact on its people, but on the global community as well. For investors it is the last frontier.

The U.S. track record in Africa is a shameful one. Washington was a long-time supporter of the apartheid regime in South Africa and backed the most corrupt and reactionary leaders on the continent, including the despicable Mobutu Sese Seko in the Congo. As part its Cold War strategy, the U.S. aided and abetted civil wars in Mozambique, Angola, and Namibia. Americans have much to answer for in the region.

Militarization

If there is a single characterization of U.S. policy vis-à-vis Africa, it is the increased militarization of American diplomacy on the continent. For the first time since World War II, Washington has significant military forces in Africa, overseen by a freshly minted organization, Africom.

The U.S. has anywhere from 12,000 to 15,000 Marines and Special Forces in Djibouti, a former French colony bordering the Red Sea. It has 100 Special Forces soldiers deployed in Uganda, supposedly tracking down the Lord’s Resistance Army. It actively aided Ethiopia’s 2007 invasion of Somalia, including using its navy to shell a town in the country’s south. It is currently recruiting and training African forces to fight the extremist Islamic organization, the Shabab, in Somalia, and conducting “counter-terrorism” training in Mali, Chad, Niger, Benin, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Gabon, Zambia, Malawi, Burkina Faso, and Mauretania.

Since much of the U.S. military activities involves Special Forces and the CIA, it is difficult to track how widespread the involvement is. “I think it is far larger than anyone imagines,” says John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org.

As a whole, U.S. military adventures in Africa have turned out badly. The Ethiopian invasion overthrew the moderate Islamic Courts Union, elevating the Shabab from a minor player to a major headache. NATO’s war on Libya—Africom’s coming-out party—is directly responsible for the current crisis in Mali, where Local Tuaregs and Islamic groups have seized the northern part of the country, armed with the plundered weapons’ caches of Muammar el-Qaddafi. Africom’s support of Uganda’s attack on the Lord’s Resistance Army in the Democratic Republic of the Congo resulted in the death of thousands of civilians.

While the Obama administration has put soldiers and weapons into Africa, it has largely dropped the ball on reducing poverty. In spite of the UN’s Millennium Development plan adopted in 2000, sub-Saharan Africa will not reach the program’s goals for reducing poverty and hunger, and improving child and maternal healthcare. Rather than increasing aid, as the plan requires, the U.S. has either cut aid or used debt relief as a way of fulfilling its obligations.

At the same time, Washington has increased military aid, including arms sales. One thing Africa does not need is any more guns and soldiers.

There are a number of initiatives that the Obama administration could take that would make a material difference in the lives of hundreds of millions of Africans.

First, it could fulfill the UN’s Millennium goals by increasing its aid to 0.7 percent of its GDP, and not using debt forgiveness as part of that formula. Canceling debt is a very good idea, and allows countries to re-deploy the money they would use for debt payment to improve health and infrastructure, but as part of an overall aid package it is mixing apples and oranges.

Second, it must de-militarize its diplomacy in the region. Indeed, as Somalia and Libya illustrate, military solutions many times make bad situations worse. Behind the rubric of the “war on terror,” the U.S. is training soldiers throughout the continent. History shows, however, that those soldiers are just as likely to overthrow their civilian governments as they are to battle “terrorists.” Amadou Sanogo, the captain who overthrew the Mali government this past March and initiated the current crisis, was trained in the U.S.

There is also the problem of who are the” terrorists.” Virtually all of the groups so designated are focused on local issues. Nigeria’s Boko Haram is certainly a lethal organization, but it is the brutality of the Nigerian Army and police that fuels its rage, not al-Qaeda. The continent’s bug-a-boo, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Meghreb, is small and scattered, and represents more a point of view than an organization. Getting involved in chasing “terrorists” in Africa could end up pitting the U.S. against local insurgents in the Niger Delta, Berbers in the Western Sahara, and Tuaregs in Niger and Mali.

What Africa needs is aid and trade directed at creating infrastructure and jobs. Selling oil, cobalt, and gold brings in money, but not permanent jobs. That requires creating a consumption economy with an export dimension. But the US’s adherence to “free trade” torpedoes countries from constructing such modern economies.

Africans cannot currently compete with the huge—and many times subsidized industries—of the First World. Nor can they build up an agricultural infrastructure when their local farmers cannot match the subsidized prices of American corn and wheat. Because of those subsidies, U.S. wheat sells for 40 percent below production cost, and corn for 20 percent below. In short, African needs to “protect” their industries—much as the U.S. did in its early industrial stage—until they can establish themselves. This was the successful formula followed by Japan and South Korea.

The Carnegie Endowment and the European Commission found that “free trade” would end up destroying small scale agriculture in Africa, much as it did for corn farmers in Mexico. Since 50 percent of Africa’s GNP is in agriculture, the impact would be disastrous, driving small farmers off the land and into overcrowded cities where social services are already inadequate.

The Obama administration should also not make Africa a battleground in its competition with China. Last year US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described China’s trading practices with Africa as a “new colonialism,” a sentiment that is not widely shared on the continent. A Pew Research Center study found that Africans were consistently more positive about China’s involvement in the region than they were about the U.S.’s.

Jacob Zuma, president of South Africa, recently praised the continent’s “relationship with China,” but also said that the “current trade pattern” is unsustainable because it was not building up Africa’s industrial base. China recently pledged $20 billion in aid for infrastructure and agriculture.

One disturbing development is a “land rush” by countries ranging from the U.S. to Saudi Arabia to acquire agricultural land in Africa. With climate change and population growth, food, as Der Spiegel puts it, “is the new oil.” Land is plentiful in Africa, and at about one-tenth the cost in the U.S. Most production by foreign investors would be on an industrial scale, with its consequent depletion of the soil and degradation of the environment from pesticides and fertilizers. The Obama administration should adopt the successful “contract farming” model, where investors supply capital and technology to small farmers, who keep ownership of their land and are guaranteed a set price for their products. This would not only elevate the efficiency of agriculture, it would provide employment for local people.

The Obama administration should also strengthen, not undermine, regional organizations. The African Union tried to find a peaceful resolution to the Libyan crisis because its members were worried that a war would spill over and destabilize countries surrounding the Sahara. The Obama administration and NATO pointedly ignored the AU’s efforts, and the organization’s predictions have proved prescient.

Lastly, the Obama administration should join with India and Brazil and lobby for permanent membership for an African country—either South Africa or Nigeria, or both— in the UN Security Council. India and Brazil should also be given permanent seats. Currently the permanent members of the Security Council are the victors of WW II: the U.S., Russia, China, France and Great Britain.

In 1619, a Dutch ship dropped anchor in Virginia and exchanged its cargo of Africans for food, thus initiating a trade that would rip the heart out of a continent. No one really knows how many Africans were forcibly transported to the New World, but it was certainly in the tens of millions. To this day Africa mirrors the horror of the slave trade and the brutal colonial exploitation that followed in its wake. It is time to make amends.

For more of Conn Hallinan's essays visit Dispatches From the Edge. Meanwhile, his novels about the ancient Romans can be found at The Middle Empire Series.

Former Liberian President Charles Taylor has been found guilty of 11 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity this morning by an international court at The Hague. Emira Woods, an Institute for Policy Studies expert originally from Liberia, is available for interviews on the case.

"The long-awaited verdict of the Special Court brings some measure of justice to a region ripped apart by brutality, greed, and proxy geopolitical actors" Woods said.

Taylor was accused of 11 charges, ranging from murder, rape, and sexual violence to the recruitment and use of child soldiers in a long and bloodied war in Liberia’s neighbor Sierra Leone. Taylor was charged by the Special Court for Sierra Leone, a court established before the International Criminal Court was formed.

“Taylor’s case is associated with many firsts," Woods said. "He is the first head of state to have escaped from a U.S. medium-security prison. He is the first head of state to publically refuse to sign an imbalanced rubber concession agreement with Firestone Tire and Rubber Company. He was the first sitting head of state to be brought on charges for international crimes against humanity. And now, he is the first head of state since World War II to have been convicted of war crimes by an international criminal court."
 
Taylor was key leader in a machinery of repression that killed 50,000 Sierra Leoneans and amputated the limbs of tens of thousands more, mostly civilians.

Reporters/journalists seeking to contact Ms. Emira Woods for interview, please contact IPS Media Manager Lacy MacAuley at (202) 445-4692 or lacy@ips-dc.org.

(Pictured: President Ali Bongo Ondimba of Gabon.)

Shortly after this year got underway, two military leaders from Gabon visited air bases in Germany for a three day sojourn with some of their U.S. counterparts. The consultations were said to have focused on air base defense. Little was said publicly about the gathering or what prompted it. "The sorts of threats that exist in Gabon also exist here," Colonel Jean Paulin Asseko Makoka , commander of Libreville Air Force Base, told the Armed Forces New Service (AFSN). "We have spent time discussing various threats, and we now have a better understanding of how the U.S. Air Force confronts these threats and the measures they take to mitigate them."

Military forces in Gabon count less than 5,000. About 1,000 are in the country's air force and they have at their disposal 5 attack helicopters and 13 ground attack planes. Gabon is also said to have a 1,800-member guard that provides security for country's president.

According to AFNS, U.S. Master Sgt. Mike Keeler termed the visit the latest in a series of capacity-building engagements between the two countries, adding, "We are always eager to engage with our African partners and we are especially proud when we can bring them here and show them the kind of quality people we have standing watch over our forces and resources."

The trip serves to highlight the increasing efforts by the U.S. to forge close links with African military leadership. What happened shortly after it ended speaks volumes about the risks to such relationships and the challenges facing the Obama Administration as it seeks to increase its presence on the continent.

Just as the Egyptian military delegation in Washington at the end of January cut short its stay and returned to a country in open rebellion, the Gabonese Air Force commanders returned home to a land seething in anger that exploded in a bloody fashion a few weeks later. Protesters soon took to the streets with a litany of complaints much like those heard across North Africa and elsewhere in recent weeks. In a demonstration in Meyo-Kyé, a small city in northern Gabon, a banner read: "In Tunisia, Ben Ali left. In Gabon, Ali Ben [president Bongo] out."

"Thousands of opposition supporters took to the streets of the nation's capital, Libreville, on January 29th, and faced violent suppression from Ali Bongo's troops," Ethan Zuckerman wrote on his blog February 9. "Protests have spread to other cities, and the crackdown against them has become increasingly fierce. Protests planned for February 5th and 8th were both suppressed with tear gas. At this point, it's unclear whether protesters will be able to continue pressuring the government, or whether the crackdown has driven dissent underground."

Since the uprising began in Tunisia the outpouring of rage has almost always been described as something happening in "the Arab world." However, in the weeks that followed rebellious manifestations showed up in other parts of Africa as well as in non-Arab Iran and Central Asia. Actually, one might say the most common link in the events has been the oil related wealth of the nations involved.

Oil accounts for nearly half of Gabon's government budget, 43 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP), and 81 percent of its exports. Some experts say Gabon will run out of oil in a couple of decades. Central Africa has acquired significant strategic importance because of its richness in petroleum and other natural resources.

The insurgents who took to the streets in Gabon were protesting a 2009 election they said was stolen by Gabon's President Ali Bongo Ondimba.  Interestingly enough, the election was prompted by the death of Al Bongo's father Omar Bongo, who had run the country for nearly 50 years. A major complaint that had drawn masses into the streets of Egypt was the intent of President Hosni Mubarak to be succeeded by the younger of his two sons, Gamal Sayed Mubarak. A large banner carried aloof by the Gabon demonstrators read: "Le Gabon n'est pas une monarchie."

In one of the few major media reports on the situation in Gabon, Christian Science Monitor correspondent, Drew Hinshaw, wrote February 12, "The protests that are reshaping the Arab world weren't supposed to spread south to sub-Saharan Africa. But for weeks, while scenes of Egyptians overtaking their capital have mesmerized global TV audiences -- and brought the world's most recognized names in TV news to Cairo -- Gabonese protesters have been facing death and imprisonment in a series of anti-repression demonstrations consciously modeled off the Tunisian example.

"The former French colony has been run for 34 years, with open support from France, by the Bongo family -- first by Omar Bongo, and then by his son, Ali. In the family's first act, Bongo Sr. ran up a rap sheet with Amnesty International that includes political murders and tortures of opposition leaders. The family managed to survive the winds of democratization that swept Africa in the early 1990s, before Bongo Sr. died in 2009, passing power to his son, Ali." 

"In the meantime, the family has channeled at least $100 million of state money into US banks alone, according to an investigation by the US senate," Hinshaw wrote. "To make a point, Bongo Jr.'s wife was at one point renting a $25,000 a month house from the rapper then known as Puff Daddy.

"Critics say the Bongos got away with these sort of antics, which have cost so many autocrats their Western backing because of one thing only: Oil. The country used to pump 370,000 barrels a day of the stuff, but finds its reserves running drier by the week. No matter. The damage has already been done. Petrol has made this corner of the continent an African banana republic -- except that commercial farmers no longer bother to grow bananas in what would be great soil for the crop, thanks the limits of an oil-inflated currency…"

Ali-Ben Bongo Ondimba is said to have spent $136 million on a 48,000 square foot, 14-bedroom mansion with seven parking spaces, a tennis court and a heated swimming pool on an acre of land in the heart of Paris.

Although it is one of Africa's more prosperous countries the richest 20 percent of the population receive over 90 percent of the income while about a third of all Gabonese live in poverty. Average income is $2 a day. The jobless rate stands at 21 percent.

Sometime around New Year's Day while the Obama family was on holiday in Hawaii, the Associated Press was informed that the President is -- in AP's words, "quietly but strategically stepping up his outreach to Africa, using this year to increase his engagement with a continent that is personally meaningful to him and important to U.S. interests."And that Obama intended to focus in Africa "on good governance and supporting nations with strong democratic institutions."

The report suggested the President will travel to Africa this year and deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said stops will reflect positive democratic models. "The official said the administration must persuade African nations that their interests are better served by aligning with the U.S." said AP.

That was before Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Algeria. Now it appears the Administration has an additional challenge on the continent: getting its own act together in the face of the ongoing storm.

"Over the last decade we have invested heavily in toppling an oil rich Iraqi regime and committed the lives of our troops to nation building in Afghanistan, but there has been no real initiative to transform the human rights platform and economic empowerment of African people from the Sinai Peninsula to the Sub-Saharan desert," MSNBC political commentator Edward Wyckoff Williams noted recently on the website Grio. "Why? It seems the crisis unfolding in Egypt and Tunisia will provide a teachable moment for Americans to become more politically aware of the true state of democracy (or lack thereof) in these African nations. American diplomacy can no longer hide behind pretense."

"And herein lies the even greater conundrum: if Egypt is in crisis, then what does that say for the rest of Africa?" Williams wrote. "Will the events unfolding across this ancient land lead the Obama administration to implement real changes on how America approaches foreign policy in Africa? So much rhetoric and lip-service has been paid to the atrocities in Mugabe's Zimbabwe and the political and social unrest demonstrated in Rwanda and the Congo, but instead of real intervention, America has maintained a status quo of inaction."

On December 3, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the U.S. viewed that Bahrain was "a model partner for not only the United States, but for so many countries that are looking to see the way that Bahrain decides about its future" and that she was "impressed by the commitment that the government has to the democratic path that Bahrain is walking on." On January 25, while riot police were attacking protesters in Cairo, Clinton said the Mubarak government appeared to be stable and looking for ways to respond to the needs of Egyptians. 

A year ago, Ali Bongo met privately in New York with Clinton who called him a "valued partner." After the meeting she, said "I want to recognize President Bongo's efforts to improve government efficiency, eliminate waste and fight corruption."

According to Global Voices, two press releases issued by the Gabonese opposition accused the U.S. ambassador in Gabon Eric D. Benjaminson of keeping a guilty silence on violations by Ali Bongo and his regime against civil liberties.

Carl Bloice, a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, is a columnist for the Black Commentator. He also serves on its editorial board.

Earlier this week, the AP reported that Obama is

[Q]uietly but strategically stepping up his outreach to Africa, using this year to increase his engagement with a continent that is personally meaningful to him and important to U.S. interests.

This story and the statement from Obama represent an opening for progressives in the United States. and in Africa to begin to push the Obama Administration on its short-sighted Africa policy. The last two years have been more or less a honeymoon where folks were so enthralled by a son of Africa in the White House that there was not enough hard criticism of the Administration’s policies, which continued rather seamlessly from Bush.

As you know, extractive industries - oil, gas and mining remain the dominant lens through which U.S.-Africa policy is set. AFRICOM and the expansion of U.S. militarism in Africa is a tool through which the United States can secure its narrow interests in Africa’s resources. In addition, the Obama Administration is pushing hard on its “Feed the Future” Initiative – which translates on the ground into land grabs for biofuels and genetically modified foods.

The key in the coming year will be the degree to which progressives can position ourselves to challenge harmful policies while pushing forward alternatives on food sovereignty (local food), land rights, human rights, environmental justice, economic justice (debt cancellation) and peace (stop the flow of weapons and military contractors). Many of these themes will be featured at the World Social Forum in Senegal next month.

The article focuses on elections noting that,

The administration is monitoring more than 30 elections expected across Africa this year, including critical contests in Nigeria and Zimbabwe.

Out of the 30, there will be 12 key elections in Africa this year (including the referendum in Sudan and Presidential elections in Nigeria, Uganda, Liberia – all of whom now have oil). This will bring more sustained mainstream media coverage to Africa than in other years.

An Obama trip to Africa will intensify that coverage. Rumors are flying as to where Obama will go and when. My bet is on the UNFCCC which will be in South Africa in December.

But Big Oil and other powerful U.S. companies and the negative impact of U.S. guns and training will remain a serious challenge to peace and stability on the continent.

We're honored to have Michael Busch dissecting the latest WikiLeaks document dump for Focal Points. This is the twenty-second in the series.

It’s no secret that West Africa has become a major transport hub for Latin American cocaine in recent years as American authorities choke off trafficking routes in the Caribbean. Most frequently, attention is focused on the weak states in the region, particularly Guinea-Bissau, where law gets sold out to the highest bidder, and order is nowhere to be found. Yet it’s become increasingly clear that traffickers are enjoying a healthy presence in the region’s stronger states as well, a fact that friends and contacts hammered home to me on a recent trip to Senegal. But new cables released by WikiLeaks this week add new depth to just how problematic the situation has become. In a series of embassy dispatches from Accra, American officials report that drug traffickers have so thoroughly corrupted the state in Ghana that the country’s president himself suspects his inner circle of advisors to be in on the act. A cable from late 2007 sets the scene: 

Ghana is increasingly becoming a significant transshipment point for cocaine from South America and heroin from Southwest Asia. The majority of the narcotics flow is to Europe, although seizures have occurred on flights to the U.S. The GOG [government of Ghana] does not have a handle on the issue and lacks an overarching strategy to deal with the problem.

Worse still,

The GOG seems to focus more on small time dealers and couriers and it does not typically carry out long term investigations that result in the arrest of major drug traffickers. For example, GOG contacts in both the police Service and the President’s office have said they know the identities of the major barons, but they have not said why they have not chosen to arrest them. A Police Service contact told us the GOG does not have the political will to go after the barons. This official and other others close to the President have also told us that they cannot trust anyone when it comes to narcotics. Corruption is endemic in Ghana and pervades all aspects of society. Although difficult to measure, corruption almost certainly impacts the law enforcement organizations charged with counternarcotics efforts.

As part of an internationally coordinated effort to stem the flow of drugs through Ghana to points West, Great Britain established the Westbridge interdiction program. A cable from 2008 notes that while the program had experienced a measure of success, it also revealed the extent to which drug traffickers had penetrated Ghana’s security forces to help lubricate the flow of drugs through the country. One British anti-narcotics agent   

observed NACOB [Ghana’s narcotics control board] agents at the airport (particularly Ghana Police Service officers on loan to NACOB) directing passengers away from flights receiving extra interdiction scrutiny. On one occasion, he returned unexpectedly to the airport at 4 a.m. to screen a flight. An arrested trafficker told the UK official that the trafficker had been told that Westbridge was not operating that night. A test by Westbridge officials of the cell phone SIM card of a trafficker found the phone numbers of senior NACOB officials.

For the embassy’s Charges d’Affaires, Sue Brown, this was old news. “The Project Westbridge team's concerns over the integrity of NACOB personnel at the airport are neither new nor surprising,” she comments at the end of the cable.  But what follows in a report from a year later must have raised her eyebrows a bit more. Ghana’s president, John Atta Mills, seemingly intent on taking charge of the fight against drug trafficking in the country,

had expressed interest in acquiring itemizers for the Presidential suite at the airport in order to screen his entourage for drugs before boarding any departing flight. According to O'Hagan, Mills wants these officials to be checked in the privacy of his suite to avoid any surprises if they are caught carrying drugs. The itemizers, similar to those provided several years ago by the U.S. Embassy through INL funding, would be sensitive, portable screening devices that can detect the drug content in minuscule drops of human sweat after recent external contact or for up to three weeks after ingestion.

Mills also asked that screeners be assigned to airport government VIP lounges to search first- and business-class travelers leaving the country. According to the cable,

NACOB believes that the VVIP lounge at the airport has been a source of drugs leaving the country. Passengers leaving the lounge are driven directly to the plane and are not searched before departure. NACOB placed two officers in the lounge to screen departing passengers, and the number of passengers using the VVIP lounge has decreased. 

The only trouble seems to be that the itemizers in question are in continual need of very expensive maintenance and protection against sabotage. Nevertheless, the cable concludes that help could come from the airlines themselves which

might be willing to pay for the itemizers to be repaired, and specifically mentioned KLM and Delta…the cost of maintenance on the itemizers is less than the cost of diverting flights on which passengers suffer drug overdoses. Within the last few months…KLM has diverted to Spain two flights from Accra to Amsterdam because passengers started vomiting drugs. In both cases, the passenger died.

Once again, the timing of the cables release by WikiLeaks couldn’t be better. Just over a week ago, Ghana’s minister of the interior released a detailed statement celebrating the country’s recent success in fighting the drug trade, noting that “drug trafficking is efficiently and effectively being controlled” by authorities in Accra. And to the country’s credit, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime has ceased its practice of officially labeling Ghana the “Cocaine Coast,” which must surely be a good sign.

But then again, as the Guardian’s coverage of Ghana’s unfolding WikiLeaks embarrassment highlights, taking a government’s word for things doesn’t always lead one to an accurate sense of reality. While British officials were complaining in private about Ghana’s out-of-control drug trafficking problems and their own inability to stop it, in public they were all smiles. The British Home Office, responsible for overseeing UK interdiction efforts in Ghana, publicly lauded its efforts as “‘a very good example’ of how to tackle the cocaine trade, while in a written statement, the Home Office said ‘these operations meet our drugs strategy commitment to intercept drugs and drugs couriers before they reach the UK.’”