{{Africa is critically viewed as a new battle against narcotics syndicates and terrorism. <\/p>\n
Cocaine smuggling through West Africa has increased in recent years.}}<\/p>\n
Several years ago, a South American drug gang tried to bribe the son of the Liberian president to allow it to use the country for smuggling.<\/p>\n
However, he tipped off the DEA, and the gang members got arrested and convicted.<\/p>\n
The United states government says its behind the curve in some ways to deal with these major threats.<\/p>\n
Thus the US government is already training anti-drug specialists in Ghana and plans to do the same in Nigeria and Kenya to counter Latin American cartels smuggling drugs through Africa to Europe.<\/p>\n
“We see Africa as the new frontier in terms of counterterrorism and counternarcotics issues,”Jeffrey Breeden, chief of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Europe, Asia and Africa was quoted as saying.<\/p>\n
“It’s a place that we need to get ahead of — we’re already behind the curve in some ways, and we need to catch up.”<\/p>\n
The United States is already conducting extensive anti-drug training programs in Mexico, Colombia and other countries.<\/p>\n
US anti-drug assistance to West Africa has reached nearly $50 million for each of the past two years, up from just $7.5 million in 2009.<\/p>\n
The DEA also is opening its first country office in Senegal.<\/p>\n
Additional information: NY Times<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Africa is critically viewed as a new battle against narcotics syndicates and terrorism. Cocaine smuggling through West Africa has increased in recent years.}} Several years ago, a South American drug gang tried to bribe the son of the Liberian president to allow it to use the country for smuggling. However, he tipped off the DEA, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[75],"byline":[334],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-2764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-homenews","byline-igihe-reporter"],"bylines":[{"id":334,"name":"IGIHE Reporter","slug":"igihe-reporter","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":334,"name":"IGIHE Reporter","slug":"igihe-reporter","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2764"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=2764"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=2764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}