Guinea-Bissau offered proximity to Europe, a purchasable state structure, a desperate citizenry and a hopelessly overmatched police force. The Judiciary Police numbered a few dozen and had no vehicles and few weapons, handcuffs, flashlights — a serious problem in a capital with no streetlights — or even shoes. Their prison consisted of a few locked rooms with barred windows in their headquarters on the road leading out of the capital. Corruption was rife. And yet they made some spectacular arrests. Jorge Djata, the deputy chief of the drug squad, told me that in September 2006, he received word of a shipment of drugs coming into Bissau from a town to the northwest. He and several colleagues jumped into one of the rattletrap Mercedes taxis that ply the city’s streets, followed the car to a house rented by Colombians and took them by surprise. The haul was 674 kilograms, or nearly 1,500 pounds, of cocaine with a street value of about $50 million.

What happened next, however, defines the problems of law enforcement in countries like Guinea-Bissau even more than does the lack of shoes and guns and cars. Djata and his colleagues took the three Colombians and the drugs to their headquarters. Then, Djata says: “We got a call from the prime minister’s office saying that we must yield up the drugs to the civil authorities. They said the drugs would not be secure in police headquarters, and they must be taken to the public treasury.” A squad of heavily armed Interior Ministry police surrounded the building. Djata said his boss replied, “We will bring the drugs ourselves, and then we will burn them.” Government officials refused. Djata and his men relented, and the drugs were taken to the public treasury. And soon, of course, they disappeared — as did the Colombians.

The high-ranking military officials who coordinated the arrival and unloading of the Gulfstream in 2008 were never charged, and the case was closed for lack of evidence. Ansumane Sanhá, who served until recently as one of three magistrates investigating drug cases, told me that South American dealers were frequently issued Guinea-Bissau passports. They drove around the dusty, pitted streets of Bissau in Hummers and Jaguars. The parliamentary elections of November 2008, though generally deemed fair by international observers, were viewed by the Bissau-Guineans themselves as a raucous bidding war. “The streets were full of 4-by-4 cars,” recalls Luís Vaz Martins, the president of a local nongovernmental organization, the Human Rights League of Guinea-Bissau. “The parties would give cars to any influential man. I’ve never seen so many members of Parliament who were drug dealers.” Vaz Martins says the dealers scrambled for cabinet posts, above all the ministries of interior and fisheries. Why fisheries? “This is the most important,” Vaz Martins explains. “The drugs come by plane, and they’re dropped into the sea, and if you’re the minister of fisheries, you can send boats to pick them up.” The navy had a few boats as well, used for the same purpose. The police, of course, had no boats.

Guinea-Bissau seems hopelessly afflicted with bad government. On the evening of March 1, 2009, the army chief of staff, Gen. Batista Thagme Na Waie, was assassinated in an explosion. Hours later, President Vieira was hacked to death. Vieira may have had Thagme killed; or the murder may have been carried out by drug dealers who felt double-crossed. Soldiers loyal to Thagme appear to have killed the president in revenge, though some speculate that forces in the military were responsible for both assassinations. Neither murder has been solved or is likely to be. The killings eliminated at a stroke two of Guinea-Bissau’s founding fathers as well as two of its most notorious figures. Trafficking dropped in the aftermath, possibly because drug lords no longer knew who could guarantee their security. Thagme was replaced by Gen. José Zamora Induta, an intellectual respected for his integrity. In July, Malam Bacai Sanhá, another figure then believed to have no known ties to trafficking, was elected president. But the recent coup may have dashed all hopes for reform. Not only was Induta deposed, but mutinous soldiers also liberated from a U.N. office a notorious naval official who had once been forced to flee the country after allegations of drug corruption. That figure, Adm. José Américo Bubo na Tchuto, is now the new deputy chief of staff.

During my visit — before the coup, of course — senior government officials assured me that all the bad things were in the past. The justice minister, Mamadou Saliu Djalo Pires, whom international enforcement officials view as one of their key allies, said, “The new cabinet is very conscious of the problem of impunity.” He said prosecutors were working on indictments in the Gulfstream case; high-ranking military officials would be brought to justice. In fact, the military still essentially controls Guinea-Bissau, and few believe that General Induta exercised real control over senior officers. Nevertheless, the international community felt at the time that it finally had partners it could work with and had been lining up with offers of equipment and training. While I was in town, the French ambassador held a ceremony to hand over to the police three new 4-by-4 vehicles, worth about $70,000. The United Nations drug office held a daylong workshop with officials representing Portugal, Spain, the European Union and other countries, as well as key domestic enforcement figures.

The police have a new headquarters in a converted colonial-era structure with pillared galleries. They have computers, courtesy of the U.N. drug office. Stacks of filing cabinets from a company in Muscatine, Iowa, still in their shrink wrap, were sitting next to the driveway when I arrived. Sixty new recruits were recently trained in Brazil, bringing the total force to about 180; one member of the force told me that they were now being paid about $100 a month — and, more important, actually receiving their wages. The U.N. drug office had agreed to pay for fuel for the new fleet of cars and motorbikes. Still, the day I visited, the computer terminals, like the filing cabinets, were sitting in plastic covers, and I had the strong impression they hadn’t been used. It was 3 in the afternoon on Friday, and most of the squad had knocked off for the weekend.