BISSAU, Guinea-Bissau – The man who ruled this small African nation for nearly a quarter-century was assassinated Monday just hours after a bomb killed his longtime rival, the armed forces chief, leaving behind a precarious power vacuum as the country struggles to stem a booming cocaine trade.

Analysts fear the back-to-back assassinations could shake up drug cartels that use the country as a transit point for shipping cocaine to Europe, leading to new alliances.

[b]President Joao Bernardo "Nino" Vieira had ruled Guinea-Bissau for 22 of the past 29 years, surviving numerous attempted coups, including one four months ago when gunmen opened fire on his home. Vieira later complained that the military had failed to intervene, leaving his body guards to fend off the attackers alone.

Tension between him and the head of the army escalated further in January, when Gen. Batiste Tagme na Waie received a call from the president's office, asking him to come at once, said his chief of staff Lt. Col. Bwam Namtcho. Waie rushed outside and was nearly killed when assailants opened fire on his car, a sequence of events that prompted Waie to believe the attack had been ordered by Vieira.

On Sunday, the army chief was killed when a bomb hidden beneath the staircase in his office exploded, said Namtcho.

Hours later, volleys of automatic gunfire rang out for at least two hours before dawn outside Vieira's palace. Military spokesman Zamora Induta denied the military had killed Vieira in retaliation for Waie's assassination, instead calling the attackers "an isolated group" and vowing to pursue them.

The former Portuguese colony has suffered multiple coups and attempted coups since 1980, when Vieira himself took power in one. His relationship with the army was always an uneasy one, fueled by a continuing power struggle as well as ethnic differences. Whereas most army officers are Balanta, the country's dominant ethnic group, Vieira is Papel, a far smaller ethnicity representing just 5 percent of the population.[/b]

After an attempted coup in the mid-1980s, Vieira established a military tribunal and systematically purged the top Balanta officers, condemning many of them to death. One of the country's top lawyers — who was also Balanta — was among those executed and Vieira did not back down even when Pope John Paul II asked for clemency.

While Waie was not killed, he was dropped off on a deserted island miles off the coast of the tiny nation and left there for years along with other coup plotters before being allowed back, according to country experts and Namtcho.

Vieira's death creates a dangerous opening in light of the country's appeal to cocaine smugglers.

While demand for cocaine has leveled off in America, it continues to rise in Europe, forcing Latin American drug cartels to aggressively seek new routes to smuggle cocaine to Europe. In recent years, they have begun flying small, twin-engine planes to Africa's West coast, where they land on deserted islands or on dirt runways and then parcel out the drugs to dozens of smugglers who ferry them north.

Guinea-Bissau, ringed by an archipelago of uninhabited islands, has become a key transit point for Europe-bound cocaine, with the government estimating that as much as 1,750 pounds of the drug is transiting the country's borders each week. It's an amount worth billions of dollars per year, dwarfing all other economic sectors.

"Like many countries in West Africa, Guinea Bissau has seen an increase in the amount of cocaine being trafficked over its borders during recent years," Interpol's Drugs and Criminal Organizations Unit said in a statement to The Associated Press, which detailed a special project launched by the agency to address the issue.

The power vacuum in the country could make it even more attractive for drug cartels, who under increasing pressure in neighboring countries. But Antonio Mazzitelli, West Africa director of the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime, argues that the cocaine trade could not have flourished as it did without the approval — if tacit — of the head of state.

"I always believed that Nino (Vieira) was a good ally of the traffickers, so at the end of the day they might find themselves penalized by this situation," said Mazzitelli.

"If Nino was not part of the drug trafficking, then there was a kind of silent agreement to allow the traffickers to make their money and allow him to continue running his country."

Under this scenario, his death could lead to a reshuffling of political alliances with drug lords trying to create new partnerships.

Vieira's death comes at the same time that the leader of a recent coup in neighboring Guinea appears to be cracking down on that country's cocaine trade, which flourished after the international community pressured Guinea-Bissau to take action.

Although numerous country experts stressed that the twin assassinations were not linked to drugs, Mazzitelli also points out that the method used to kill Waie — a bomb — is highly unusual.

Coup d'etats and assassinations are common throughout the region, but they are typically carried out with kalashnikovs — not explosives. The sophistication of the bomb, which most likely was detonated from afar, raises the question of whether the killers of the army chief received expert help. Colombian cartels, for example, are known for using car bombs in their own turf wars.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090302/ap_on_re_af/af_guinea_bissau

in the year 2009

1.5m population

$904.4m GDP

$600 GDP per capita

102/1,000 infant mortality rate

10% HIV/Aids among adults

42.4% literacy rate

47.52 life expectancy in years

3 airports with paved runways

41% proportion of population under age of 14

19.2 average age in years

5 average number of years in school

Source: CIA Factbook

whew not surprising the drug trade is booming there

president viera was first bombed, came out and was shot at; survived and then he was taken to his mother in laws home and cut in small pieces of meat , http://connectafrica./2009/03/03/au-leaders-over-guinea-bissau-crisis/

africa
africa
is our home . . .

Guinea-Bissau, ringed by an archipelago of uninhabited islands

There is no such thing as an 'uninhabitable island'. I shall advise my MEND brothers to move there promptly and take control of the drug trade immediately.

vwvw:

president viera was first bombed, came out and was shot at; survived and then he was taken to his mother in laws home and cut in small pieces of meat , http://connectafrica./2009/03/03/au-leaders-over-guinea-bissau-crisis/

Ibime:

There is no such thing as an 'uninhabitable island'. I shall advise my MEND brothers to move there promptly and take control of the drug trade immediately.

chei, naija man like awoof

vwvw:

president viera was first bombed, came out and was shot at; survived and then he was taken to his mother in laws home and cut in small pieces of meat , http://connectafrica./2009/03/03/au-leaders-over-guinea-bissau-crisis/

dayum

President Joao Bernardo Vieira, murdered by soldiers Monday morning, was brutalised before being shot several times in the throat and face, said the doctor who declined to be identified.

"The president was hit by several bullets in the thorax and face and his body shows the marks of violent blows," said the doctor, who declined to be identified.

"He was savagely beaten before being finished off with several bullets," he added.

i have lived in Guinea Bissau and Nino's grip was- i still feel odd saying Nino was
he was such a huge factor in the country its almost impossible to think of Bissau without Nino

That i almost lost my Father during the '98 war,
all i can say is, thank Goodness both are out
tho the drug cartels. . . .
the only thing one can do now is to watch n wait

This is a non issue as afar as am concerned. The killings, coups and bloodshed carries the hallmark of backward African nation which is in turn run by people with low intelligence. Since they cannot have their house in order, I trust the international community to do something, given the fact that their borders are porous to drug traffickers.

It is only a matter of time. Once concaine reaches epidemic levels in the European countries, they will be forced to act one way or the other.