Page 2 of 2 Signs emerge of global crime wave
By Michael T Klare
In fact, this observation applies no less well to many other countries
suffering from severe economic distress. Take Guinea-Bissau and its neighbor
Guinea, both essentially indigent countries that are widely described as
"narco-states" (that is, states whose political and economic institutions have
been thoroughly infiltrated by the Latin American drug cartels).
Guinea-Bissau holds the ninth spot from the bottom on the overall UN human
development index released in December, which measures living standards,
health, and quality of life globally. In terms of gross domestic product per
capita, however, it's fifth from the bottom, just ahead of Liberia and Burundi.
Hardly surprising, then, that a government almost incapable of otherwise
generating
income is thought to be heavily penetrated by the cartels.
According to UN officials, Guinea-Bissau reaps as much as $1 billion per year
in illegal proceeds from the drug trade, a vast bounty in a country so poor.
Drug trafficking "is indeed a factor in the current crisis," observes Carlos
Cardoso, a researcher at the Council for the Development of Social Science
Research in Africa. "Drug trafficking seems to involve the military. Given the
ubiquity of the military in political life, anything that affects it, affects
the state."
Neighboring Guinea, once known as French Guinea, presents a very similar
picture. Ruled until December 2008 by the military dictator Lansana Conte, it,
too, had become a haven for South American narco-traffickers.
"In the past few years, as Mr Conte's health declined, Guinea drifted toward
chaos," Lydia Polgreen wrote in the New York Times. "South American drug
traffickers, who ship cocaine to Europe via West Africa, infiltrated the
government at the highest levels. Mr Conte's son Ousmane confessed on
television [in February] to aiding the cocaine traffickers who had turned
Guinea into a virtual narco-state."
Lansana Conte died on December 23 and power was usurped by a military junta
headed by Captain Moussa Dadis Camara; the junta's young officers have pledged
to clean up the country and oust the traffickers, but many Guineans express
skepticism about their capacity to accomplish this Herculean task.
An environment of poverty and chaos has long prevailed in Somalia, home to the
most determined and aggressive of the high-seas pirates. Of the 293 piracy
incidents noted by the PRC in 2008, 111, or 38%, occurred in the Gulf of Aden
or off the coast of Somalia.
Many of the most daring incidents - including the seizure of the Sirius Star -
also occurred in those waters. By their own account, many of the Somali pirates
are former fishermen driven out of business when the collapsed Somali state
could no longer protect the country's rich fishing grounds against predation by
the highly organized fleets of other countries. Now penniless, these one-time
fishermen have taken up piracy to support their families.
"Killing is not in our plans," the hijacker of a guns-laden cargo ship told a
reporter in October 2008. "We only want money so we can protect ourselves from
hunger."
Syndrome of crime, violence and repression
China, of course, is no Guinea-Bissau. Millions of Chinese citizens live in
relative luxury, the beneficiaries of a quarter-century of unparalleled growth;
but millions more still live in extreme poverty, struggling to survive on
minuscule farms in the countryside or working as migrant laborers in the
cities, mostly in factories making consumer goods for the export market.
So long as China's economy was booming, migrant laborers were able to find work
in the coastal export factories and send a bit of money back to their families
in the countryside. Now, with Chinese trade figures in a major decline and many
factories cutting back or closing due to the slump in exports, at least 20
million of these workers are locked out and Chinese officials fear a spike in
social unrest and crime.
That 20 million figure was provided by Chen Xiwen, a senior official who heads
the Chinese Communist Party's office on rural policy. "For those migrant
workers who have lost their jobs, what are they going to do for income when
they return to their villages? How are they going to manage? This is a new
factor affecting social stability this year," he said at a news conference in
February in Beijing.
That many of the migrants will be able to find remunerative work in their own
villages is inconceivable - plots of farmable land are far too tiny and,
despite a Chinese governmental stimulus package, there are as yet few other
sources of income.
As a result, most of these unemployed former peasants will head back to the
cities in search of any sort of work. The danger is that many will be cheated
out of their pay by unscrupulous factory owners taking advantage of their
desperation or will simply find no work at all, leading to angry protests
(known as "mass incidents" in China). Count on one thing: as in Mexico and
elsewhere, some of them will be drawn into organized crime activities or other
illicit pursuits.
Acknowledging these risks, Chen Xiwen spoke ominously of the need for greater
government preparedness to contain mass incidents and other forms of social
disorder. "If a mass incident occurs, leading cadres must all go to the front
line, and talk to the people directly, face-to-face, to explain things," he
urged, rather than simply rely on police coercion and thereby provoke greater
public anger.
This syndrome - declining employment in the core economy, growing reliance on
jobs in marginal enterprises or in an unofficial black-market economy, and
rising rates of violent crime leading to increased state repression - is likely
to be repeated in a range of other countries suffering from the global economic
crisis.
Russia is at particular risk from this syndrome. According to a World Bank
report released in March, its economy is expected to contract by a staggering
4.5% in 2009 and unemployment is expected to reach 12%, doubling the 2008
figure.
The consequences are sure to be severe: "[T]he number of poor people in Russia
will likely increase by 2.75 million, wiping out part of the gains in reducing
poverty in recent years." This, in turn, will force more people to make ends
meet by any means necessary, including participation in the informal economy,
petty thievery, and organized crime - thereby inviting increased repression by
state authorities.
Russia has, of course, long been plagued by high levels of individual and
organized crime. "The US Embassy receives numerous criminal incident reports
from private and official Americans on a routine basis. These incidents
include, but are not limited to, racial violence, theft, vandalism, robbery,
physical assaults, and murder," the Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC),
a State Department agency, reported in February.
The current economic crisis has, by all accounts, sharply increased the level
of such lawlessness. Russian newspapers have reported increases in everything
from shoplifting and aggravated assault to murder. "One of the most significant
negative consequences of the crisis could be a change in crime trends," the
chief prosecutor of Moscow, Yuri Syomin, observed in February. "If life becomes
worse, then crime will rise."
One aspect of the growing violence in Russia likely to be replicated elsewhere
is attacks on immigrants, who are often portrayed by racist and
ultra-nationalist groups as taking jobs from native people at a time of
employment scarcity.
"There has been a steady increase in racially motivated incidents and
ethnically motivated violence throughout Russia," the February OSAC report
noted. "Attacks on ethnic minorities by young Russian ultra-nationalists who
profess a sentiment of 'Russia is for Russians' have risen for the third
straight year."
These concerns were heightened last December when photos of the decapitated
body of a Central Asian male, presumably an immigrant from one of the former
Soviet republics, were sent to human rights organizations in the country by an
ultra-nationalist group that claimed responsibility for his murder and
mutilation.
Wherever one looks, then, the global economic crisis is destined to be
accompanied by rising levels of crime, violence, and - increasingly - state
repression. Worried governments may attempt to forestall the risk of criminal
disorder by spending more on law enforcement or, as in the case of China,
stepping up the rate of executions. In a world on the brink, this is unlikely
to deter those like the Somali pirates who "only want money so we can protect
ourselves from hunger."
Without a global stimulus effort aimed at those at greatest risk of
destitution, hunger, and homelessness, expect an epidemic of global crime and
boom times for criminal syndicates and cartels everywhere.
Michael T Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at
Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. His most recent book, Rising
Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy, has just been released
in paperback by Henry Holt. A documentary film version of Klare's previous
book, Blood and Oil, is available from the Media Education Foundation by
visiting Bloodandoilmovie.com. To catch an audio interview with Klare on the
coming global crime wave, click here.
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