Guinea-Bissau Judiciary Police (PJ) apprehended more than 1.8 tons of cocaine, making it the biggest seizure in the history of the West African country.

According to the Portuguese news agency Lusa, Domingos Monteiro, PJ's deputy director, said that it shows "PJ determination in fighting organized crime."

Eight people, consisting of four Bissau-Guineans, three Colombians, and a Malian, were arrested. 

The narcotics arrived in the country by sea in the country’s northwest. After a two-week intelligence operation, on Monday, the police seized 264 kilograms in the north of the country, and on the same day confiscated another 1,605 kilograms. The cocaine was worth more than 35 million U.S. dollars.

This was the second large drug shipment to be caught this year in the former Portuguese colony on the Atlantic Coast, after a seizure of 800 kilograms in March. 

“The drugs belong to the terrorist network Al Qaeda. The cocaine comes from Colombia. But the destination is the Arab Maghreb,” said Domingos Monteiro. Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in North and West Africa is based primarily in northern and central Mali but has a presence across the region with authorities suggesting it is involved in drug trafficking in the lawless Sahara desert.

Guinea Justice Minister, Rute Monteiro, said the apprehension was a big hit on the traffickers. "The [Guinea-Bissau] government commends the result of this seizure. Fight against crime is a part of the government program, so it's with great satisfaction that we see that the PJ did their investigation and seized that amount of drugs," noted Rute Monteiro, quoted by Lusa. 

Lack of resources 

Guinea-Bissau is home to 1.8 million people and covers just 10,800 square miles, but the Bijagos Archipelago and its 88 mostly uninhabited and remote islands, with little policing, make it a smugglers’ paradise.

The United Nations described Guinea-Bissau as a “narco-state” due to drug trafficker's power over parts of the government. South American cartels have used it as a trafficking hub. The arrest of some politicians implicated in the trade by the United States’ Drug Enforcement Administration in 2012 seemed to lead to the decline of cocaine traffic, but the country is still struggling with this problem and internal instability.

In a report for the Global Initiative Against Organized Crime, Lorraine Mallinder wrote that one high-ranking UN official in Bissau said no less than 30 tons of cocaine is still coming into the country each year. And now, there are new players in the game, like the Al-Qaeda working with Latin American cartels.

In an interview with Al Jazeera in March this year, the president of Guinea Bissau, Jose Mario Vaz, said the country is still a cocaine trade hub, and it lacks resources to tackle traffickers. "I would like to ask for help to fight these people because they are strong," said Vaz, adding he was "afraid."

"We don't have airplanes, we don't have boats, we lack the radars that would give us control over our… economic zone," he noted.

(With input from Reuters)