Page 1 of 2 Signs emerge of global crime wave
By Michael T Klare
In all catastrophes, there are always winners among the host of losers and
victims. Bad times, like good ones, generate profits for someone. In the case
of the present global economic meltdown, with our world at the brink and up to
50 million people potentially losing their jobs by the end of this year, one
winner is likely to be criminal activity and crime syndicates.
From Mexico to Africa, Russia to China, the pool of the desperate and the
bribable is expanding exponentially, pointing to a sharp upturn in global
crime. As illicit profits rise, so will violence in the
turf wars among competing crime syndicates and in the desperate efforts by
panicked governments to put a clamp on criminal activity.
Take Mexico, just now in the headlines. In late March, during her first trip
there as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was repeatedly asked about the
burst of narcotics-related violence in that country, the thousands of deaths
that have gone with it, the patent inability of the Mexican military to
contain, no less repress, the drug trade, and the possibility that the country
might be at risk of becoming a "failed state". Mexico itself may not be in
danger of collapse, she replied diplomatically, but a very real danger
threatens both countries from a rise in violent crime along the US-Mexican
border.
"The criminals and kingpins spreading violence are trying to corrode the
foundations of law, order, friendship, and trust between us," she declared at a
press conference in Mexico City. To counter this danger, the secretary of state
promised a militarized response that reflected the level of danger she imagined
- a significant increase in US anti-narcotics assistance, including the
expedited delivery of Black Hawk helicopters.
The Mexican drug trade itself is nothing new. The illicit export traffic to the
United States and the ensuing bloody competition among drug traffickers for
access to the US market have long concerned US and Mexican law enforcement
authorities.
In the last two years, however, the violence associated with this commerce has
grown to unprecedented levels as the leading crime syndicates - the Juarez
Cartel, the Sinaloa Cartel, the Gulf Cartel, and Los Zetas - have successfully
resisted a fierce government crackdown, while fighting among themselves for
control over key border access points.
According to Mexico's Attorney General, Eduardo Medina-Mora, 5,376 Mexicans
were killed in drug-related violence in the first 11 months of 2008 compared to
2,477 during the same period in 2007, an increase of 117%. And as times get
ever tougher for ordinary Mexicans, recruiting for the trade grows ever easier
while the killings only multiply. Law enforcement officials in the US now
believe inter-gang warfare is spilling into the United States in a serious way,
producing rising murder rates in border states like Arizona, California, and
Texas.
The ongoing slaughter in Mexico may be monopolizing overseas crime headlines,
but other parts of the world have also seen sharp rises in criminal violence in
2008, and the early months of 2009, as the global economic crisis has deepened.
With legal jobs disappearing, growing numbers of unemployed youth are
unsurprisingly drawn to what's still available - illicit professions or jobs in
the military and police that, in many countries, are ill-paid but allow access
to bribes. Just such a process appears to be under way in impoverished parts of
Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Drug traffickers and pirates
In fact, it's an irony that, as global trading and other aspects of economic
globalization are breaking down, crime may be globalizing. Consider recent
developments in Guinea-Bissau and Peru, when it comes to the growing reach and
savagery of Latin America's drug traffickers.
On March 1, in Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony on the west coast of
Africa, unknown assailants killed Army Chief of Staff General Batiste Tagme Na
Waie and President Joao Bernardo Vieira within hours of each other. The two men
had long been political rivals, and it is widely believed that President Vieira
was behind Na Waie's assassination and was then killed in retaliation by
members of the country's security forces.
Guinea-Bissau, however, has also become an important way station for the
shipment of illegal narcotics from Colombia to Europe. Many observers believe
that the assassinations were tied to in-fighting among the drug cartels and
their associates within Guinea-Bissau's political and military elites. While
the killings may have been sparked in part by "personal hatreds [and] ethnic
rivalries", said Joseph Sala, a former State Department official with knowledge
of the country, a factor was also "the growing involvement of Latin American
drug cartels".
In Peru, the pervasive lure of illicit drug profits is reflected in the
re-emergence of the Shining Path guerrilla movement - this time as a cocaine
smuggling operation. Originally a revolutionary Maoist organization, the
Shining Path largely disappeared after its messianic leader, Abimael Guzman,
was captured by Peruvian anti-terrorist agents in 1992.
Recently, however, a surviving faction of the group has reappeared in a remote,
impoverished jungle redoubt, promoting the growing of coca and its refinement
into cocaine. Although still professing loyalty to its Maoist roots, the
guerrilla faction appears to devote most of its time to fending off efforts by
the Peruvian military to suppress drug trafficking in the area. The result has
been a spike in armed violence with at least 22 soldiers and police officers
killed in the region in 2008, the highest death toll in almost a decade.
As times get tougher, increased criminal violence is also evident in two other
striking ways: as rising levels of piracy on the high seas and as a spike in
capital punishment in China.
The increase in piracy has gained particular notoriety since Somali pirates
hijacked the Sirius Star, a Saudi supertanker carrying more than $100 million
worth of crude oil, in November 2008. In some sense, Somalia may be the poster
child for what lies in store for far wider regions in a new era of
criminalization. As a genuine failed state, after all, it has been experiencing
the local equivalent of a great depression for years.
While it has led the way on piracy, the phenomenon is on the rise elsewhere as
well. The taking of the Sirius Star was only one of 293 incidents of piracy in
2008 - the highest number since the Piracy Reporting Center (PRC) of the
International Maritime Bureau began compiling such records in 1992. According
to the PRC's annual piracy report, 889 crew members were taken hostage in 2008,
11 were killed, and 21 are still missing and presumed dead; guns were fired in
139 of the incidents, up from 72 in 2007.
When it comes to China, whose booming economy was a global wonder until world
trade took a tremendous hit last year, it's hard to gauge the level of violent
crime, as officials there are said to systematically under-report it. However,
there are indications that it is on the rise and that organized crime has
secured a stronger presence in the country.
In what is evidently an effort on Beijing's part to combat this trend, the
government has vastly stepped up its executions of criminals found guilty of
capital offenses. In 2007, according to Amnesty International, at least 470
convicted criminals were executed and another 1,860 (or more) sentenced to
death.
The just-released figures for 2008 show an enormous increase: 1,718-plus
executions and another 7,003 people sentenced to death. Some of those killed
may have been political prisoners falsely charged with criminal offenses, but
most were, presumably, common criminals put to death to intimidate others who
might engage in similar behavior.
The rise of the narco-state
These developments and others like them naturally beg the question: to what
extent can any increases in violent crime in the coming period be attributed to
the global economic meltdown?
Certainly the situation in Mexico suggests a close correlation. Like other
countries dependent on exports to the United States, Mexico has been reeling
from the current crisis. Total exports fell 32% in January, while automobile
exports - a major source of economic activity in Mexico's border states - fell
by 50% in the first two months of 2009. By one account, Mexico's export
factories have lost 65,000 jobs since October, a number that experts believe
understates the loss. Many economists now predict a painful 5% contraction in
the Mexican economy in 2009.
One Mexican export business, however, is thriving in bad times: the drug trade.
With so many people out of work or facing diminished incomes, the attraction of
being employed by it has certainly risen. By some estimates, illegal
trafficking, mainly to the United States, nets the Mexican drug cartels nearly
$25 billion each year, making this one of the country's most lucrative
industries, and despite an attempted government crackdown, there seems to be no
downturn in sight.
True, narco-traffickers risk being apprehended and doing jail time, but so many
of Mexico's police and court officers are evidently on cartel payrolls that the
likelihood of that happening remains modest for higher level operatives. With
other job opportunities for poor young men dwindling, the appeal of easy money
- not to mention the faux glamour of an outlaw's life - must seem irresistible
to many.
The crackdown on drug trafficking being conducted by the Mexican government
with strong US backing has, paradoxically, made the narcotics trade more
appealing as a profession. This is so because increased drug seizures have
driven up the street price of drugs, thereby increasing profits for those who
succeed in eluding the police and anti-drug agents. Given the general economic
environment, this is certain to prove a self-perpetuating system that will
continue to lure ambitious or desperate young men into the drug trade.
As Professor Francisco E Gonzalez of Johns Hopkins University suggests in
explaining this predicament in Current History magazine, "[I]t goes without
saying that conditions of hopelessness and extreme life choices abound in
developing countries such as Mexico. As long as these conditions persist, and
as long as the system put in place to counter the narcotics trade leads to the
generation of exceptional profits, there will continue to be individuals
willing to play this lottery."
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