[iwar] FW: *ICN: Crimes Of The New Millennium
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Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2000 06:37:51 -0600
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Subject: [iwar] FW: *ICN: Crimes Of The New Millennium
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Crimes Of The New Millennium
By Dr Mark Galeotti, Jane's Intelligence Review, 8/24/2000
If the last century was dominated by cold wars, then the struggle
against organised and transnational crime will be a defining theme of
the next. To launch this regular feature, Dr Mark Galeotti considers
the
evolution of the transnational criminal environment.
THE TURN-OVER of the global criminal economy is roughly estimated to
be
US$1 trillion a year, of which narcotics may account for about half.
Around 4% of the world's population takes illegal drugs - from inhaled
solvents to the Asian betel nut. Up to half a trillion dollars are
laundered through the world's financial systems each year. The
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
estimates
that this money laundering has cost member states over $120 billion
per
year, with the USA accounting for $76 billion.
Global organised crime is evolving, embracing new markets and
technologies, and moving from traditional hierarchies towards more
flexible, network-based forms of organisation. To an extent, the
legitimate world is a victim of its own success: globalisation of the
legal economy has also globalised the underworld, prosperity fuels the
demand for many illicit services and improved policing forces
criminals
to become more organised in order to survive.
The late Claire Sterling popularised the notion of a 'Pax Mafiosa',
the
concept that international organised crime groupings were working
together efficiently and harmoniously, and dividing the globe between
them. There is ample evidence of co-operation: Italian syndicates sell
Latin American drugs in Europe, Russians buy stolen cars from the
Yakuza
and Albanians move Asian heroin for Turkish drug clans.
It would, however, be a mistake to take this too far. Many of these
arrangements are very loose, little more than mutually-profitable
trades
or temporary alliances of convenience. If anything, there is scope for
future conflicts within the global underworld as markets become
saturated and the opportunities for further peaceful expansion
exhausted.
In many ways the traditional demarcations between national security
and
law enforcement concerns are becoming increasingly unclear. Serious
and
organised crime can directly affect national security resources,
whether
undermining state budgets - with implications for defence
expenditure -
or threatening morale and discipline.
Beijing's concerns about the criminalisation of its military elites
was
one of the main reasons behind its efforts to end its involvement in
commercial activities. In Russia, the penetration of organised crime
has
had a more direct and immediate impact, with special forces
moonlighting
as hitmen and weapons being sold even to Chechen rebels (see JIR June
1999, pp 8-10).
In this respect, there is a direct carry-over. Organised and
transnational crime groups act as agents of instability and
insecurity.
The haemorrhage of weapons from former Soviet military stockpiles, a
trade facilitated and often run by organised crime, fuelled the Balkan
arms race and put high-order firepower into the hands of every Balkan
faction, gang and militia.
Organised crime is often powerful enough to create its own 'states-
within-states'. From the poppy fields of Uzbekistan's Fergana Valley
and
the warlord territories of Myanmar (formerly Burma), to the so- called
'Farclandia' enclave in Colombia and Morocco's cannabis- growing Rif
region, organised crime undermines the integrity of the host state and
of national borders.
Crime has long been used as a tactic to fund political insurgency.
However, many organisations, such as the remnants of the Peruvian
Sendero Luminoso and elements of the Northern Ireland paramilitary
forces, have lost their political rationale and become little more
than
organised crime groupings with a line in anachronistic rhetoric.
As some terrorists evolve into criminals, organised criminal groups
become increasingly politically active and lobby, bribe or corrupt
legitimate governments. In Serbia, recent crime-related murders, such
as
the killing of Serbian paramilitary warlord Zeljko 'Arkan' Raznatovic,
suggest a degree of criminalisation within the regime, a phenomenon
well
entrenched in Latin America, Africa and Asia. However, it would be
foolish to pretend that this is not a problem in Europe and North
America - it simply tends to adopt more subtle guises.
It is important to consider changes within the wider context in which
crime operates. Political developments are defining the new global
underworld. The collapse of the USSR was a seismic event that
unleashed
a new and fast-moving form of organised crime onto the world (see JIR
March 2000, pp 10). However, the return of Hong Kong and Macau to
Chinese control, war in the Balkans and many other geopolitical upsets
have had serious implications for the global underworld. The Balkan
wars, for example, made it even harder to block heroin-trafficking
routes into Europe from the south-west. The spread of migrants and
refugees into the European Union (EU) also created new criminal
networks, especially the Albanians who now handle much of the
wholesale
heroin trafficking for Turkish gangs.
Other political processes are opening up new markets and havens for
organised crime. The Schengen Accords (which opened borders within the
EU) and the future expansion of the EU eastwards have criminal
implications, making international criminal traffic within the region
increasingly cost-effective. Many countries risk becoming 'hooked' on
the trade. By 1999, for example, Mexico's narcotics industry was worth
an estimated $30 billion in profits, four times the revenue from the
country's largest legal export, oil.
Another process at work is the apparent blurring of boundaries between
crime, espionage and statecraft. This is not unprecedented; criminals
have often been useful tools for espionage agencies but involvement
with
crime has become not just a short-term expedient but a basic policy.
The
Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), for example, is an
increasingly important source of narcotics, to the extent that this
reflects the activities of corrupt 'untouchables' and desperate
military
and security officers. However, the criminalisation of North Korean
elites, for example, appears to be turning into a criminalisation of
state policy. Drugs trafficking is being embraced as a means of
bringing
new revenue into a destitute state, and developing new
intelligence-gathering routes and contacts.
Economic and technological change is putting new tools in the hands of
the criminals, including internet banking, and the security and
flexibility of the digital cellphone. It is also putting unprecedented
power into the hands of a small number of people: while transnational
crime is often organised, computer hacking, for example, can be a
solitary process. In 1994 $3.7 million was stolen from Citibank by
Vladimir Levin, a Russian computer hacker, working with only a handful
of accomplices. The evolution of technology and the laws relating to
it
also create new crimes, such as the burgeoning global trade in CFCs
('greenhouse gases') and toxic waste.
Even physical and environmental changes can have an impact on the
global
underworld. Global warming, for example, can play its part in changing
the geography of drug production and is already allowing the
production
of opium and marijuana in new areas of southern Russia.
Since 1986 the US government has formally recognised drug smuggling as
a
national security threat and, however limited its successes, Moscow
has
also highlighted crime as a challenge in successive security
doctrines.
Intelligence agencies are therefore not only being deployed against
transnational and organised crime, but are also developing their own
specialists in this field (see JIR July, pp 50-52).
An encouraging global trend is the growing awareness of crime as a
national security issue, but much still needs to be done. Barriers
between law enforcement, intelligence and defence communities need to
be
lowered, and a variety of fora - including Jane's Intelligence
Review -
can help in this vital process.
Dr Mark Galeotti is Director of the Organised Russian and Eurasian
Crime
Research Unit at Keele University, UK and an adviser to the LENS
Global
Forum.
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Det. Robert W. Miller
Colorado Internet Crimes Against
Children Task Force
Pueblo High Tech. Crime Unit
Pueblo County Sheriff's Office
320 S. Joe Martinez Blvd.
Pueblo West, CO. 81007
Tel (719)583-4736
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