Cape Verde only war for independence against Portugal between 1974 and 1975, the efforts of the Caboverdean Armed Forces have now been turned to combating international drug trafficking. In 2007, together with the Cape Verdean Police, they carried out Operation Flying Launch ("Operacão Lancha Voador"a), a successful operation to put an end to a drug trafficking group which smuggled cocaine from Colombia to the Netherlands and Germany using the country as a reorder point. The operation took more than three years, being a secret operation during the first two years, and ended in 2010. Although located in Africa, Cape Verde has always
Literature of Cape Verde Notebook) in 1955 which won the Camilo Pessanha Award, the first Cape Verdean book to be awarded. Aguinaldo Fonseca was the forgotten poet, though his poems were published in "Linha do Horizonte" collection in 1951. At the time, writers like Manuel Lopes would be linked to resistance movements. Some writers were exiled to some European countries in the years before independence. Cape Verde became independent on July 5, 1975. Cape Verdean literature began to flourish further, the work "The Island of Contenda" was published in 1976. Writers like Henrique Teixeira de Sousa, Gabriel Mariano and others continued to write and