Burundi, East Africa’s Boiling Pot, Yet To Break Into Pieces Again

Timeline of Burundi’s Turmoil

By Derek Tumusime (In NewVision)

In the African traditional setting, cooking was at most done in clay pots, although clay is referred as a heat insulator; however, there are tendencies where the pot will emit excessive heat and later develop cracks before finally breaking into pieces that cannot be stitched together any more.

The latest developments from Burundi following President Pierre Nkurunziza pursuit and re-election for a third term, seem to suggest that it is East Africa’s boiling pot which no one is willing to carry off the fireplace with their hands not even member states of the East African community of which Burundi is a member or even deploy the East African Standby Force to nip in the bud the escalating violence that has claimed over 200 lives and has forced more than 200,000 Burundians to become refugees in neighboring countries.

In related development as matter of fact the escalating violence is not on the headlines of the region’s newspapers, we just can’t afford to go silent at this gradual stage of the Burundi conflict as it is likely to have spillover effects to the entire East African region.

The crux of the matter is that Burundi with its history of instability has developed cracks wide enough for her to break into pieces again.

Take for instance, the recent failed attempt by Speaker of Burundi’s Parliament Pascal Nyabenda to recall four of the country’s nine representatives to the East African Legislative Assembly, who are reportedly  not members of  the ruling CNDD-FDD party  and are living outside Burundi out of fear for their security is a clear indicator of the no- love relationship of the country’s body politic, a volatile situation and is on the verge of anarchy, civil war, ethnic conflict, inter alia, as the international community, such as the United Nations and several high profile non-governmental organizations have warned.

Burundi, a member state of the East African Community, is disintegrating at a faster rate under our watch despite efforts by the regional bloc to broker a peace deal among the antagonistic players of the country’s body politic.

However unfolding events clearly show that there has been no breakthrough, to the extent the chief mediator President Museveni who is deeply involved in his re-election campaigns, at one of his several press conferences recently admitted that he was not well versed with the latest events in Burundi but, according to what he was hearing most probably from the press, was that the situation was deteriorating.

We can forgive him since he delegated his Defense minister Hon Dr Crispus Kiyonga, but again this minister has been and is also involved in his parliamentary election campaigns in his home district of Kasese, therefore too busy to attend to Burundi.

In the meantime the regional bloc should have replaced the Ugandan team because of its busy political calendar to attend to such sensitive regional security issues and there is no doubt President Museveni would have performed his role better given his experience in regional affairs and his participation in regional peace building efforts such as interventions in South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, inter alia.

The East African Community [EAC] has not come out with a thorough explanation of how these peace talks are progressing or whether they exist at all, in fact there is a vacuum of information on its efforts to stabilize Burundi.

However tough and serious response to the situation in Burundi has so far come, from the US in its efforts to halt the escalating violence, President Barack Obama has imposed heavy sanctions on four prominent figures in Burundi, such as freeze on their assets and restrictions on visas to enter the US.

The targeted include; Maj Gen Godefroid Niyombare the former chief of Burundi’s intelligence and leader of the failed coup, Cyrille Ndayirukiye a former minister of defence, Godefriod Bizimana the deputy director of the National Police and the Minister for Public Security Alain Guillaume Bunyoni.

US also threatens to impose sanctions against more leaders both in government and in opposition. But the rest of the western powers who as usual, their initiatives stop at lip service inform of condemnation but no or less action, although important but it’s never enough, have resorted to evacuation of their diplomatic staff especially the non-essential staff and family members.

Burundi could turn out to be a breeding ground for regional instability like the Democratic Republic of Congo which still harbors armed groups fighting neighboring countries such as Rwanda, Uganda.

In this growing era of radicalization and terrorism in Africa such the Boko Haram in Nigeria, Al-shabab in Somalia, we cannot take the situation in Burundi for granted, for instance , the recent countries which have become failed states such Libya and Syria are now home to the ruthless Islamic state.

The East African region especially the great lakes region since independence has been home to some of the worst armed conflicts on the African continent; it has also witnessed some of the worst atrocities in human history such as the 1994 ethnic cleansing in Rwanda, the use of sex as a tool of war especially against innocent girls and women in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the LRA insurgency in Northern Uganda, the 2007 post-election violence in Kenya, the recent civil war in South Sudan( the Bor and other massacres ), not forgetting the sporadic terrorist attacks in Kenya by Al-shabab,  these and many more have befallen this region.

At the height of these armed conflicts the most affected are women and children, thousands have been condemned to a refugee life and to makeshift displaced peoples’ camps and left at the mercy of international Aid agencies for basic needs of survival.

Fundamental human rights are violated with impunity, human life is extinguished mercilessly within no time, young girls are rape and defiled at the orders of warlords, children are displaced from their parents whom in most cases they never see again, such is the brunt of armed conflict the people of Burundi have had to bear with in the past and are likely to bear with it again.

We must appreciate the fact that injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere; Burundi should not slide back to anarchy as we watch just like the 1994 Rwandese genocide and also although not so recent the 2007 post-election violence in Kenya, where justice for the victims is not forthcoming and in fact attempts of prosecuting perpetrators by the international criminal court[ICC] is being frustrated not only by Kenyans themselves but also by those other African countries which just watched on as innocent Kenyans where being subjected to horror by their own.

The latest attempt [futile] being, Kenya’s bid to have the rule on recanted evidence amended by the assembly of state parties [ASP] so as in the case Deputy President William Ruto recanted Evidence is dropped, this is unfortunate as it undermines the principles of international [criminal justice] Law and the thirst for justice for the victims of post-election violence in Kenya.

Therefore in the case of Burundi we have the opportunity of the stopping the unrest before it further escalates rather than wait to frustrate justice. 

Last week’s Friday attacks on military camps which are some of the worst since the unrest begun in April this year, is pointer to a situation that is gradually getting out of hand, therefore all options geared towards restoring sanity in Burundi must be fast-tracked in pursuit of a long standing political solution to the crisis by the international community.

Originally published in Uganda's NewVision

The writer is an International law Student, with interest in Regional affairs [The East African Community].

SPECIAL REPORT: West Africa's Alarming Growth Industry – Methamphetamine

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo now heads the West African Commission on Drugs (Image source: wacommissionondrugs.org)

By David Lewis (Reuters)

When customs officers in the sleepy Senegalese town of Koumpentoum discovered a stash of pills hidden in a bus from Mali in late February, they initially thought it was counterfeit medicine.

They stored the haul, poorly concealed in blue plastic bags and a yellow jerry can, in the back of the customs office. Its owner escaped, slipping away into the sprawl of shacks and hawkers.

Days later, according to two officials involved in the seizure, a top officer from regional headquarters took a closer look at the trove and identified it as the drug methamphetamine. The 81 kg (179 pounds) stash was worth an estimated US$12 million or more based on the street price for the drug in Tokyo, where much of it ends up.  

The seizure was one of three in Senegal so far this year. It highlights the new and fast-growing role West Africa is playing in the global drug trade, not just as a transit point for drugs but also as a producer of amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS).

Smugglers of Moroccan hashish have long crossed West Africa on their way to Europe or Asia. Over the past decade, the region has also become a major transit point for Latin American cocaine headed to Europe. But local and international officials say West African criminal groups are now producing and exporting hundreds of millions of dollars worth of methamphetamine – or meth – every year, most of it shipped to Asia.

Climate dictates where cocaine, heroin or hashish are produced, but there are no such constraints on meth. The synthetic drug is derived from ephedrine or pseudoephedrine, two medicines that are used to treat ailments from nasal decongestion to asthma. As anyone who has seen the television series “Breaking Bad” knows, meth can be manufactured even with basic equipment and a simple understanding of chemistry. The potential profits are huge: One kilo of meth costs around US$1,500 to make in West Africa but sells for around US$150,000 in Japan.

Senegalese police prepare to incinerate methamphetamines seized at the Malian border in Tambacounda, Senegal, June 29, 2014. Reuters/Pape Demba Sidibe

The powerful stimulant is smoked, swallowed, snorted or injected by hundreds of thousands of users there, in the United States and elsewhere. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) says meth is increasingly popular in East and Southeast Asia. Meth gives users an intense rush, heightens attention and curbs appetite. It is highly addictive. Over time, addicts usually suffer anxiety, weight loss and tooth decay.

One reason West Africa is a good production zone, according to law enforcement officials, is the region’s weak controls on imports of meth ingredients. Imported legally for use in products such as cold medicine, they can easily be diverted and transformed into meth by boiling, filtering and then combining them with other chemicals.

Pierre Lapaque, head of UNODC in West and Central Africa, puts production of the drug in West Africa at around 1.5 tonnes per year. That’s small by world standards – just a little over one percent of the 107 tonnes that was seized around the globe in 2012. But it is up from zero in the region just five years ago.  

“It is pretty alarming,” Lapaque said.

Nigerian authorities have discovered 10 labs since 2010. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo told Reuters that political leaders needed to wake up to the fact the region had become a producer.

Obasanjo now heads the West African Commission on Drugs and said the production of meth in the region was raising the threat of drug-fueled instability. “It is now affecting our politics because money earned from drugs is going into politics,” he said. “You have drug barons who are now sponsoring politicians, or who (are) in fact going into politics themselves.”

Rusty Payne, a spokesman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, said one sign of the growing importance of West Africa was the arrival of Latin American producers, including Mexicans. Mexican drug gangs play a central role in the meth industry in North America. Payne said Mexicans have helped set up clandestine labs – known as “clan labs” – in Nigeria.

“They are not just mom and pop labs, they are big labs,” Payne said. “Mexicans aren’t going to come over and train (people) unless they are dealing in large amounts.”

NOT READY FOR METH

Africa’s place in the synthetic drug market was, until recent years, limited to South Africa, which has a domestic market and feeds the global supply chain.

The surge in production elsewhere on the continent is part of a broader boom in the global amphetamine-type market. UNODC says annual methamphetamine seizures more than doubled between 2010 and 2012.

The first sign that synthetic drugs were being produced in West Africa came in 2009 when chemicals including MDP-2-P, used to make ecstasy, were found at a lab raided in Guinea. UNODC estimates some US$100 million of ecstasy could have been produced from the precursors found there.

The same year, a Nigerian expelled from China was arrested with a manual on how to cook meth, said Ahmadu Giade, head of Nigeria’s National Drug Law Enforcement Agency.

“Nigeria at that time wasn’t prepared for that type of drug because we knew nothing about it,” said Giade. He sent a team to South Africa to investigate how police there handled meth labs.

In 2010, Nigerian agents stumbled across a meth lab in a place called Monkey Village. Sunday Drambi Ziramgey, commander of a National Drug Law Enforcement Agency team, was one of the first on the scene. He described a bungalow where each of the four rooms housed a different stage of the cooking process. In the kitchen, they found cooking pots, burners and compressing machines. A web of light bulbs had been strung up to dry the meth.

A clandestine methamphetamine laboratory is seen inside a compound at Monkey Village in Lagos, Nigeria, in this undated photograph taken from a National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) PowerPoint presentation provided to Reuters, July 9, 2015.  Reuters/NDLEA/Handout via Reuters

A 2010 U.S. investigation into cocaine smuggling in Liberia also uncovered plans to produce meth in the country for shipment to the United States and Japan. A 2011 report by Nigerian law enforcement officials, seen by Reuters, details a step-by-step guide for meth production and distribution which was taken from a Nigerian deported from China. The guide included contacts in Ghana, Iran, Thailand and China who would help find couriers and buyers for meth.        

A senior DEA official listed Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana and Guinea-Bissau as possible locations for meth labs.

Mame Seydou Ndour, Senegal’s anti-drug tsar, said making meth across the region had multiple advantages. “The transport cost is reduced. There is less risk in Africa. Labor is cheaper here too – with poverty there are plenty of people who are ready to get involved,” he said. 

THE NIGERIAN CONNECTION    

As with many other industries, Nigeria dominates meth production in West Africa. It’s home to Africa’s biggest population and some of the region’s most established criminal gangs, according to drugs experts.

Those gangs have connections with experienced Latin American “cooks,” such as three Bolivians detained in one lab raid. But Nigerian gangs can now run the trade themselves, and have established global networks to distribute the finished product.

The DEA official said there had been several reported instances in Nigeria this year of 25 to 50 kg of ephedrine being diverted from registered pharmaceutical companies. “This, on top of the smuggled precursors, readily supplies meth production,” the official said.

Giade, Nigeria’s top anti-drug cop, said most of the precursors used in Nigerian meth production came from India. Some of the chemicals are approved for import by Nigeria’s national food and drug regulator, he said, while others are smuggled in illegally, “because we have porous borders.” Giade cited the border to the west with Benin as a major weak point.

In 2014 the Nigerian government told the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB)it needed 9.65 tonnes of ephedrine for legitimate businesses. India alone supplied Nigeria with 9.2 tonnes last year, according to a Reuters analysis of official ephedrine exports listed on Indian trade website www.zauba.com, which collates data from ports and customs authorities. It is not clear how much ephedrine Nigeria imported from other suppliers.

“India is legally doing business, but African nations should be checking if the amounts ordered are in line with what is needed by the different factories using ephedrine,” said UNODC’s Lapaque.

NEW NETWORKS

West African meth production is still far off the levels in Mexico, where officials seized 19 tonnes last year and discovered a string of so-called super labs. But local groups are beginning to make inroads into lucrative markets in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Japan.

Law enforcement officials say Nigerian criminal groups use extensive networks of human mules. Several officials in West Africa said Nigerians have begun to employ Europeans with clean passports, who are likely to raise less suspicion in Asia. In December 2013, a German man and an Austrian woman were arrested in Jakarta after they were caught having flown in from Dakar with meth hidden in their luggage, local media reported.

Police in London and Paris last year arrested eight Europeans who had left West Africa and were headed to Asia, each carrying 2 to 6 kg of meth, one foreign law enforcement official told Reuters.

In an effort to stop the industry becoming entrenched, Payne said the DEA is helping local officials by detecting and dismantling clandestine labs.

“They basically have a three-headed monster now in Africa,” Payne said. “They have the coke problem from South America, the heroin from Afghanistan, and the home-grown meth that is making its way to South Africa and Asia. We’re trying to address it as we can, but that is tough.”

This is a Reuters original investigation.

Video from wacommissionondrugs.org