Drug war in the Pool

Control over cannabis production is one of the main factors behind the current conflict in Congo-Brazzaville, the Paris-based ‘Geopolitical Drug Dispatch’ said in a recent article. It said Ninja militia allied to former prime minister Bernard Kolelas had, after the 1997 war, fled to the Mindouli area of the Pool region where they started growing cannabis on a large-scale. The killing of three Ninja leaders in Mindouli, ordered by a government-allied police captain over a drug affair, and the reprisal killing by the Ninja of the region’s prefect on 29 August 1998 set in motion the “full-blown rural guerilla warfare” prevailing in the Pool region since then, it said. Cobra militia, subsequently deployed by President Denis Sassou-Nguesso to combat the Ninja, had harvested the area’s cannabis crops and sent the stolen marijuana to Brazzaville where it was sold, the Dispatch said. The Pool has become the country’s top marijuana-producing region ahead of Plateaux and Cuvette, it added.