Transnational Crime

Zakari Oumoru, the governor of the Maradi in Niger hosted a cross-border meeting in Niger with the Nigerian governors of bordering Katsina, Sokoto, and Zamfara states to focus on cross-border crime, particularly banditry, kidnapping, and cattle rustling. The governors of the four states signed a memorandum of understanding, the text of which has not yet been carried in the Nigerian media. However, it reportedly pledges closer cooperation against cross-border crime. Also present were representatives of the Nigerian security services based in the three Nigerian states.  The governor of Sokoto is Aminu Tambuwal, the governor of Katsina is Aminu Masari, and the governor of Zamfara is Bello Matawalle. Tambuwal and Matawalle ran on the ticket of the opposition People's Democratic Party (PDP), while Masari ran on the ticket of President Buhari’s All Progressives Congress (APC). Cooperation at the national level between Anglophone Nigeria and its francophone neighbors has long been difficult, but not impossible. At the state level, cooperation may be easier and more productive. The border between northern Nigeria and Niger is mostly a line on a map drawn-up by the British and the French during the colonial era. In many or most areas, the same people live on either side, and there are a large number of informal and unregulated crossing points.  Central governments are often less than enthusiastic about international cooperation negotiated at the state level because it can undermine central authority. However, the presence of Nigerian security service representatives indicates that Abuja did not necessarily object, and may even have supported, the initiative of the Maradi governor.

The organizational features commonly found in the online criminal underground look a lot like traditional business structures, with organizational heads, line managers, and front-line staff. 

A growing number of actors have joined the fight against dirty money. The success of global efforts to combat illicit financial flows, however, remains uncertain. 

By Hunter Marston Over the last year, concerns about Southeast Asia’s increasingly powerful autocrats have dominated headlines and commentary about the region. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, though democratically elected, has imprisoned his critics, including even senators. Myanmar’s military has expelled hundreds of thousands of minority Rohingya Muslims through targeted violence, while the Thai junta has clung to power despite promises of elections to come. Meanwhile, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen this year won an unfree and unfair election in which the main opposition party was banned. Yet behind these headlines of creeping authoritarianism, Southeast Asian states often exhibit weak, centralized state power in many respects. Indeed, illegal economies in Southeast Asia, including narcotics, prostitution, and human trafficking, among other industries, thrive in the borderlands and frontier towns of Southeast Asia. Rather than imposing law and order, states are often either complicit in these crimes networks or lack the power to stop them. In his new book Hello, Shadowlands: Inside the Meth Fiefdoms, Rebel Hideouts and Bomb-Scarred Party Towns of Southeast Asia, Patrick Winn, Asia correspondent with Public Radio International and a veteran Southeast Asia journalist, analyzes the flourishing crime world on the periphery of state power in Southeast Asia (i.e., the “shadowlands”) and examines the “rational, complex actors” who engage in the sex and drug industries, among other illicit activities. Winn argues that these illegal economies flourish, in some place in Southeast Asia, due to the absence of powerful state institutions—but also that, where necessary, criminal networks cooperate with state authorities and security forces. Further facilitating these powerful networks, according to Winn, is the rising influence of Chinese authoritarianism and the declining power of the United States, the combination of which he sees as “a blessing for organized crime.” China’s enormous middle class, he argues, guarantees a steady stream of consumers with a rising demand for illicit exports, while the Chinese government’s preference for noninterference in neighbors’ internal affairs and disinterest in human rights dictate that Beijing will not restrict illegal trade flows. China’s expanding influence occurs as U.S. power recedes, and Southeast Asia is exhibiting a tilt toward authoritarian governance, although he notes that the United States’ approach to many of these illegal economies in Southeast Asia has often been ineffective in the past too. From the start, Winn offers vivid characters and a human dimension, making the book a compelling read. Winn’s first chapter, for instance, situates the reader in a den of methamphetamine addicts in northern Myanmar’s Kachin State, illustrating their addiction while also examining the broader reasons why the methamphetamine trade has flourished in northern and northeastern Myanmar. He moves on to focus on the lawlessness of Myanmar’s frontier towns, which facilitate a wide range of illegal trade. Winn illustrates how the flow of drugs and weapons persists outside the authority of Myanmar’s central authority, in areas controlled by ethnic Kachin militia for instance. Where the central government is present, it is unable or uninterested to enforce antidrug policies, while army officers who control key checkpoints often benefit from the drug trade by accepting bribes, and the military face allegations of a larger role in the drug trade. Winn next shifts his focus to the Philippines. Rather than just explore the drug war under President Rodrigo Duterte, Winn opts for a different angle. He tells the story of albularyo, herbal practitioners who take great risks to offer both actual drugs—albeit ones that are illegal in the Philippines and are brought in clandestinely, due to the government’s inability to police these shipments—that produce medical abortions, as well as folk remedies that supposedly induce abortions. Abortion is illegal in the Philippines, and the Catholic Church wields significant moral and political power in the country. The Duterte administration, which has pushed for broader access to birth control, has often clashed with the church, although Duterte has not pushed to legalize abortion. Facing desperate circumstances, albularyo remain popular among women with no legal access to abortion. Winn’s portrait of Karen, a woman barely making ends meet who seeks an herbal practitioner to prevent her fourth pregnancy, touches on both drug wars: the first on the modern meth trade; the other against the traditional healers who offer illicit medical abortions, many of which can be incredibly damaging to the health of the mother and child. During times where her income ran low, Karen started selling meth to make enough money to feed her children. When she heard of Duterte’s proposed amnesty for drug users and sellers who turned themselves in to authorities, she submitted her information to the government. But rather than a blanket pardon, those who took Duterte at his word learned that they were now on a list of targets for police and vigilantes enforcing the president’s drug war. Karen has narrowly dodged visitors to her home and is living on the run for fear of her life, unable to see her children. After examining how the North Korean regime uses restaurants across Southeast Asia to bring in hard currency for the totalitarian state, Winn’s tour of the growing “shadowlands” of Southeast Asia takes him to southern Thailand. In the deep south, near the Malaysian border, there is a significant sex industry—despite an ongoing separatist insurgency that often has directly targeted commercial sex workers, as well as soldiers, teachers, and anyone the insurgents see as somehow linked to or complicit in the Thai state. The insurgency, which dates back more than fifteen years in its current iteration, has killed more than 6,500 people in its current period. Insurgents often target bars and other sites in the southern border towns where sex workers operate. While prostitution is technically illegal in Thailand, many police are aware of and tolerate sex work taking place within certain bars because they are able to extract bribes. Police corruption and the heavy security presence of Thai armed forces in the south further inflame local resentment. In his afterword, Winn offers several policy recommendations designed to combat the growing illegal economy in various Southeast Asian states. These include: increase police officers’ salaries; decriminalize sex work; legalize narcotics (including meth); and create powerful anticorruption commissions to hold authorities to account and strengthen rule of law. Such commissions have demonstrated some notable results in Indonesia, for instance, whose corruption eradication commission has led to the arrest of high-profile politicians. Winn astutely points to inherent contradictions in US foreign policy that potentially facilitate illegal economies in Southeast Asia: spending billions on a global war on drugs while slashing overseas development assistance, for instance. Winn’s argument that Southeast Asian crime syndicates make rational choices and operate by certain codes of conduct holds up under scrutiny. But his broader geopolitical conclusions—that China’s rise is as preordained as the United States’ decline—come off as less supported by evidence. Winn is on firmer footing in his quest to understand the people he interviews in the shadowlands. His intimate portrait of the everyday criminals who skirt the law and live in the shadows adds an important human dimension to a still widely misunderstood domain of the global economy and Southeast Asia’s rapidly changing societies. Hunter Marston (@hmarston4) is a Washington, DC–based Southeast Asia analyst and coauthor of a chapter in the forthcoming volume Asia’s Quest for Balance: China's Rise and Balancing in the Indo-Pacific (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018).

The London-based Saudi magazine, El Majalaa, is reporting that Mokhtar Belmokhtar is still alive, contrary to U.S. claims in 2013, 2015, and 2016 that he had been killed in Libya. The report, which cites correspondence with Libyan and Algerian intelligence services, states that he is operating in the largely ungoverned spaces between Chad, Niger, and Mali.  Born in Algeria in 1972, Belmokhtar fought as a jihadi in the Afghan and Algerian civil wars. He lost an eye in Afghanistan, earning him the nickname “the One-Eyed.” He is also called “Mr. Marlboro” because of his involvement in cigarette smuggling, and “the Uncatchable” because of his ability to outwit his pursuers. Considered “the world’s most wanted Algerian,” he has twice been sentenced to death in absentia by Algerian authorities. While Belmokhtar is most often associated with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), he also has close ties with other Islamist groups. His marriages with indigenous Berbers and Tuaregs—he has taken two wives from each group—further extend his network in the Sahel. In 2012, he established the al-Mulathameen Brigade (the Brigade of the Masked Ones), which quickly gained prominence after carrying out an attack in early 2013 on the French-owned Tigantourine gas facility in southern Algeria. More than eight hundred hostages were taken, forty of whom were executed before the plant was liberated by the Algerians. Other kidnappings by Belmokhtar involved the capture of two Canadian diplomats and a number of Europeans, fetching ransoms that reportedly helped AQIM become the wealthiest al-Qaeda affiliate. During the Islamist occupation of northern Mali in late 2013, Belmokhtar merged al-Mulathameen with a Tuareg group to establish al-Mourabitoun (the Sentinels). Though literally up to his elbows in blood, Belmokhtar enjoys folk hero status among some in the Sahel. As for his disappearance, some credibly hypothesize he was badly wounded in Libya, but not killed, and that he has been convalescing. If so, one must assume that he will once again become active. There are similarities between Belmokhtar and Boko Haram’s Abubakar Shekau. Official authorities have regularly reported that both have been killed, even when they have not. Both have links to Islamist groups outside of West Africa, though there is little evidence of tactical of strategic cooperation. And both appear to have strong ties to local populations. That said, there is no evidence in the public domain that suggests Belmokhtar and Shekau are in contact.   

The New York Times, citing U.S. military sources, identifies the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara as responsible for the October ambush that killed four American soldiers in western Niger. The U.S. Department of State has already designated it to be a “foreign terrorist organization.” The name of the organization conjures association with the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, but caution is required. Evidence that the Islamic State of the Greater Sahara is somehow an extension of the Islamic State in the Middle East or even in Libya is sparse. The leader of the ambush is identified as Doundoun Cheffou, allegedly a “lieutenant” of Adnan Abou Walid al-Sahraoui. (The spelling of names is variable.) Cheffou is, among other things, a cattle herder and a member of a largely marginalized ethnic group. Al-Sahraoui was deeply involved in the 2013 temporary Islamist take-over of northern Mali. He merged his group with Mokhtar Belmokhtar to form al-Murabitoun. He pledged allegiance to the Islamic State’s al-Baghdadi in 2015, thereby splitting al-Murabitoun. In addition to being an Islamist terrorist, Belmokhtar is also known as Mr. Marlboro for smuggling, among other things, cigarettes. Cheffou appears to be part of a constantly shifting kaleidoscope of personalities, ethnic grievances, and criminal activities that uses Islamic rhetoric in a largely lawless region. This “ungoverned space” includes the disputed Western Sahara, southern Algeria, Mali, Niger, and even parts of Nigeria. These groups are deeply hostile to government authority and economic enterprises supported by France or the United States. Hence, they will attack the U.S. military whenever they can. But, it is unclear whether the pledges of allegiance to ISIS and al-Baghdadi have any meaning beyond the aspiration of association with an organization that for a time dominated large parts of Syria and Iraq. The Times cites Nigerien and French security sources who estimate that ISIS in the Greater Sahara has forty to sixty core members but can draw on villagers sympathetic to it in part because of unresolved ethnic and other grievances. This estimate fits a pattern of constantly shifting criminal groups that exploit local grievances and use Islamist rhetoric, but less is known about these groups than, for example, Boko Haram in northeastern Nigeria.

Slavery, long banned and universally condemned, persists in many corners of the world, victimizing tens of millions of people.

Slavery, long banned and universally condemned, persists in many corners of the world, victimizing tens of millions of people.

The latest paper in the Corruption Brief series from the Civil Society, Markets, and Democracy program at the Council on Foreign Relations was published this month. In the brief, Dr. Jodi Vittori, senior policy advisor at Global Witness, addresses the myriad problems posed by anonymous shell companies – corporate entities with few or no employees and no substantive business, which offer a convenient way to privately move money through the international financial system. Such companies, she argues, offer a vehicle for illicit financial flows from corruption, narcotrafficking, and terrorism – and many of them are based in the United States. Vittori calls on policymakers to pass legislation to disclose ownership information for all companies, increase federal contract transparency, and boost other business and government transparency mechanisms at home and abroad. Doing so, she concludes, will restrict a critical tool for corrupt financial flows around the world. You can read the full report here.

If an online deal is too good to be true, it's probably a scam.

Pollsters’ best bets were radically overturned in Colombia Sunday, as widespread apathy and torrential rains dampened turnout in the referendum on the peace deal. Opponents of the deal appeared as surprised as anyone at their own victory, triumphing by fewer than 55,000 votes in a country of 33 million voters. Abstention topped 60 percent, and the “No” side won with the support of less than one-fifth of total voters, by a margin of 0.16 percent of those eligible to vote. As the Washington Post’s Nick Miroff noted in a fast reaction piece, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) are probably the biggest losers of this surprising upset: voters did not buy the guerillas’ makeover into legitimate political actors or feel the need to offer them concessions, such as limited jail time or guaranteed legislative representation. President Juan Manuel Santos and his exhausted negotiators come a close second in the losing column. Although holding the plebiscite may now look like a mistake, it should be noted that there were good reasons to go down this path: the possibility of the plebiscite gave negotiators leverage to extract concessions in Havana, promised greater legitimacy, and was procedurally far preferable to the constitutional convention that the FARC had initially demanded. But now four years of very intense negotiations have landed in the dustbin, the opposition led by former President Álvaro Uribe will be emboldened, and any new deal seems likely to face an even steeper uphill battle. Several unanswered questions will guide developments in the aftermath of this cataclysmic vote: Did the Santos administration and the FARC mean it in September when they repeatedly said that this was the only deal possible? Both FARC leader Timochenko and Santos seemed to walk back their previous statements on Sunday night. Promisingly, Santos pledged to keep the ceasefire in effect and Timochenko said negotiations would resume. But the bargaining space for the government side has shrunk dramatically, which suggests that the only real way forward is through concessions by the FARC. Given that such concessions would probably involve losses that were unacceptable to the FARC the first time around—surrendering political rights or accepting jail time, for example—it is hard to envision the path forward. This leads to a second question: how representative is Timochenko’s leadership of the FARC? There were already small pockets of opposition to the deal reported within the FARC, and failure to achieve success in the voting booth could presumably further undermine leaders’ internal standing. The FARC leadership has already made costly concessions premised on peace, including opening the group to outside observers, initial demobilization, and the destruction of munitions. How strong is the current leadership’s grip on the force, and how many new concessions can the FARC negotiators make without losing internal support? More generally, what does the FARC do next? News reports out of the guerillas’ 10th Conference suggested that many fighters were looking forward to life at peace, sleeping in the open and starting up normal lives. Does the FARC have the capacity to return to violent opposition if negotiations falter, or has the past six months’ movement toward peace sapped individual fighters’ resolve? Do renewed negotiations serve as cover for regrouping, or is there genuine commitment to finding a deal? What form does a new peace deal take? The Constitutional Court’s August ruling on the peace deal suggested that the government would be not be permitted to implement any of the deal if it were rejected at the ballot box. But could there be a workaround through passage of alternative legislative bills, as La Semana suggested in a post-vote analysis? Or would legislating an alternative deal without the cover of a popular plebiscite be politically suicidal, if voters feel that the October 2 results should only really be overturned by another national vote?Already, Santos seems to be suggesting by his actions—including the return of negotiators to Havana and a call for broad discussion among all the political parties—that a new deal is the only way forward. But there may be a broad gamut of potential alternative strategies, ranging from deepening the ceasefire and complementing it with legislative changes that provide partial gains, to calling a constituent assembly to address the issue. There is also, of course, the possibility of simply throwing in the towel, and waiting for the next president to deal with this in 2018. But Santos seems to have staked too much on a deal to spend the next two years sitting on his hands as a lame duck. What will the opposition do with this unexpected victory? It seems unlikely that the “No” victory would lead to Santos’ resignation, as some uribistas initially hinted, but how does the opposition translate this political manna into concrete policy? Does the victory enable Uribe or other opponents to push for a return to a get-tough policy against the FARC? Does it allow them to push for concessions for government actors, such as military personnel, involved in wrongdoing during the war? And is there any possible peace made by the Santos government that the uribistas could be convinced to support? Uribe seemed to be carefully calibrating his message on Sunday night: perhaps recognizing the narrow win and fearing a backlash, he noted that all Colombians want peace, but not any peace. How will the opposition position themselves next, and what levers will they use to ensure that they continue to be heard? Correction: October 5, 2016 An earlier version of this blog post included the following sentence. “Rural areas, which have been the primary victims of the violence, voted strongly against the agreement.” This was based on an early report from the Miami Herald. More recent data suggests that rural areas nationwide may not have lined up quite so solidly against the deal. Therefore, we have removed this assertion and thank our readers for their eye to detail.

We are ten days away from Colombia’s momentous October 2 plebiscite on the peace deal. Current polling suggests voters will choose “Sí,” bringing to an end a war that has killed nearly a quarter of a million Colombians and displaced as many as seven million more over the past half century. But although the outlook for approving the deal is good, the battle for the peace will be far longer and more uncertain, requiring a sustained effort for years to come. Five aspects of implementation are particularly thorny, with the fifth—funding the high cost of implementing the deal—undergirding all the rest: First, forgiveness. Acceptance of former members of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionárias de Colombia (FARC) as legitimate political actors will be difficult for many Colombians, and suspended prison terms and the guarantees of FARC representation in the lower chamber and Senate stick in many a craw. The crimes committed by the FARC—bombings, kidnappings, conscription of minors as soldiers, disappearances, and drug running chief among them—may have had some justification in the revolutionary mindset of the FARC, but they have left deep and open wounds that will require the government to invest in providing security for its old foes. A determined revenge-seeker could easily destabilize the long-elusive peace. Second, creating and embedding an effective Colombian state. There is no hyperbole in the observation that the Colombian state has been weak and ineffective across large swathes of its territory. Indeed, one of the posited causes of the FARC’s success was precisely that it filled a vacuum in areas of the country that were alternately ignored or abdicated to local strongmen. Reclaiming Colombian territory will require massive investments in the more than a quarter of Colombia’s municipalities (nearly 300 out of 1,100) that were under de facto control by non-state actors. It also requires increasing social spending for the 1 in 3 Colombians who live in rural areas, who have borne the brunt of the fighting and are far poorer and less educated, on average, than their urban peers. Reaching these areas is a peacemaking challenge as well, given the widespread use of landmines by the warring parties: the United States and Norway this week committed to assist with the removal of landmines, contributing funds that will help the Colombians with the estimated $300 million price tag for mine removal. Third, preventing non-state actors from emerging in ungoverned spaces. The bulk of FARC forces will begin demobilizing next week, just ahead of the referendum, and congregating into special concentration zones for six months following. One of the most important challenges will be bringing these former combatants into the legal economy, after years in which many were deeply involved in violent and illegal contraband. The FARC long justified its claims by pointing to the inequality of land distribution, and partly as a consequence, land reform became a key pillar of the peace deal. The UN has committed to helping formalize land titles in rural areas, assisting a new national land agency that will redistribute as much as three million hectares and raise the formal land titling rate from its abysmal current level, estimated at only 52 percent of landholdings. The deal also commits the government to providing subsidies to former combatants for two years, with one-time payments of about $3,500 to those who surrender their weapons, as well as a monthly allowance. But land reform and temporary subsidies alone are a small carrot: other economic alternatives need to be made available to former combatants to prevent them from simply turning to other illicit activities in which their military training would provide them with a comparative advantage. Fourth, and related: reducing the recrudescent drug trade. The Santos government’s suspension of aerial glyphosate spraying of cocaine has not been accompanied by effective manual eradication efforts, and what efforts are being made have been hampered by local resistance. As a consequence, drug production is estimated to have expanded by nearly 40 percent in 2015, nearly double the low recorded in 2012. Whatever one’s perspective on the effectiveness of the drug war, the simple fact is that on the ground, larger crop production means more potential revenues for organized illicit groups, whether these are criminal or political in nature. Already, there are fears that the National Liberation Army (ELN; which has not participated in the peace deal) or criminal groups might take control of the huge portion of the trade—estimated at 60 to 70 percent of total national production—that might be freed up by the FARC’s exit. New criminal groups are reportedly emerging in former FARC territories, and the possibility that several thousand former FARC members could suddenly swell the ranks of the bacrim (bandas criminales, or criminal gangs) bodes poorly. No one is so naïve as to think that the peace will bring a complete end to violence—especially given the large numbers of armed forces operating in Colombia. But it would be a shame if it were to generate destabilizing new criminal organizations or spark a bloody contest for the FARC’s old territories. Fifth, and underlying all the other challenges, paying for peace. The cost of the multipronged effort described above has been estimated at between $31 billion and $90 billion over the next decade. In other words, somewhere between 0.8 and 2.4 percent of GDP each year for the next ten years, in addition to all of the other pressing needs facing Colombia. This is at a time of falling oil revenues, a depreciating peso, a fiscal deficit that is approaching 4 percent of GDP, and a threatened downgrade in the country’s sovereign debt rating. The Santos government’s tax reform proposal—expected to go forward by the end of the year—will be closely watched to see how committed Colombian legislators are to financing the peace. But it will be insufficient on its own, especially because significant amounts of money and willpower for post-conflict reconstruction will be needed quickly. For all of the gains of recent years, the Colombian government is clearly stronger on the military-security front than it has been in post-conflict civilian reconstruction efforts. Already, there is a clear split emerging between urban and rural areas with regard to support for the peace deal, which suggests that urban support for the required post-conflict spending may diminish over time. Adding to the complications will be the upcoming 2018 presidential elections, which could further fracture support, given that the leading candidates will not have many incentives to fully endorse the deal. In Washington, the peace deal is being heralded on both sides of the aisle as a vindication of the huge investment in Plan Colombia. Indeed, the plan invested $10 billion dollars over sixteen years, with clear consequences in terms of degrading the capabilities of the FARC and increasing the effectiveness of the Colombian state, both of which contributed to driving a deal. But while it is welcome, the half billion dollars that the U.S. Congress is moving in rare bipartisan fashion to contribute to the peace effort next year probably represents only around one-twentieth of the annual cost of doing peace right. If past experience is any guide, furthermore, there will be enormous temptations for budget appropriators to move on to other pressing needs as time goes by and the flaws of the peace process become more apparent. Other countries that stand to gain from the peace seem even less willing to contribute. It would be a tragedy if the peace deal were to receive public approval on October 2 only for the peace itself to fail. From a U.S. perspective, a failed peace would endanger a nearly two-decade-long strategic effort. It would undermine a key ally in security matters, which has become especially valued for its role in sharing hard-earned expertise in combating drug trafficking and organized crime with Latin American neighbors. From a Colombian perspective, the peace is potentially one of the most momentous historical breaks since the late 1940s. The FARC appears to be largely a spent force, but the conditions that permitted it to emerge and become a potent problem remain. Difficult though it will be, there may never be a better opportunity for Colombia to create an effective state presence in the countryside or to rein in illicit non-state actors.