Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com
The U.S. is expanding its war on drugs to Africa, the New York Times reports.
Targeting areas used to smuggle Latin American cocaine into Europe, the U.S. is training an elite unit of counter-narcotics police in Ghana and plans to do so with Nigeria and Kenya.
The aggressive position in Africa is a sign that the U.S. is increasing some operations while the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down, according to the New York Times.
“We see Africa as the new frontier in terms of counterterrorism and counternarcotics issues,” Jeffrey P. Breeden, the chief of the D.E.A.’s Europe, Asia and Africa section, told the New York Times. “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.”
OK, Let me get this straight. Drugs from South American countries are going to other nations in Africa for trans-shipment to yet other nations in Europe. Why is the U.S. via the DEA addressing this? This should be an African and European problem. With budget shortfalls and an exasperated drug problem in the U.S., the DEA should expend their resources at home interdicting the drugs that enter our country.