Edited by 

Michael Miklaucic and Jacqueline Brewer 

With a Foreword by 

Admiral James G. Stavridis, USN

Published for the

Center for Complex Operations

Institute for National Strategic Studies

By National Defense University Press 

Washington, D.C.

2013
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v

Contents

Foreword vii

James G. Stavridis

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

Introduction xiii

Michael Miklaucic and Jacqueline Brewer

Part I. A Clear and Present Danger

Chapter 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3

Deviant Globalization

Nils Gilman, Jesse Goldhammer, and Steven Weber

Chapter 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15

Lawlessness and Disorder: An Emerging 

Paradigm for the 21st Century

Phil Williams

Chapter 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37

Can We Estimate the Global Scale and 

Impact of Illicit Trade?

Justin Picard

Part II. Complex Illicit Operations

Chapter 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63

The Illicit Supply Chain

Duncan Deville

Chapter 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .75

Fixers, Super Fixers, and Shadow Facilitators: 

How Networks Connect

Douglas Farah 

Chapter 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .97

The Geography of Badness: Mapping the Hubs 

of the Illicit Global Economy

Patrick Radden Keefe

Chapter 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .111

Threat Finance: A Critical Enabler for Illicit Networks

Danielle Camner Lindholm and Celina B. Realuyo
vi

Contents

Chapter 8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .131

Money Laundering into Real Estate

Louise Shelley

Part III. The Attack on Sovereignty

Chapter 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .149

The Criminal State

Michael Miklaucic and Moisés Naím

Chapter 10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .171

How Illicit Networks Impact Sovereignty

John P. Sullivan

Chapter 11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .189

Counterinsurgency, Counternarcotics, and Illicit 

Economies in Afghanistan: Lessons for State-Building

Vanda Felbab-Brown

Part IV. Fighting Back

Chapter 12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .213

Fighting Networks with Networks

David M. Luna

Chapter 13 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .233

The Department of Defense’s Role in Combating 

Transnational Organized Crime

William F. Wechsler and Gary Barnabo

Chapter 14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .243

Collaborating to Combat Illicit Networks Through 

Interagency and International Efforts

Celina B. Realuyo

About the Contributors 269
vii

Foreword

Admiral James G. Stavridis, USN

I

llicit networks affect everyone in our modern, globalized world. From human trafficking 

in Eastern Europe to drug smuggling in East Asia, to the illicit arms trade in Africa, to 

terrorist cells in East Asia and insurgents in the Caucasus, transnational illicit networks have 

tentacles that reach everywhere. The trade in illegal narcotics is perhaps most worrisome, but 

of growing concern is the illicit trafficking of counterfeit items, weapons, natural resources, 

money, cultural property, and even people by shrewd, well-resourced, and nefarious adversaries.

I have experience combating these threats personally at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels. As a young naval officer on a variety of ships, I spent a fair amount of time patrolling 

the global commons where transnational criminals in the guise of pirates and drug smugglers 

proliferate. I was in the Pentagon on 9/11 and personally experienced the global reach of modern terrorism. Later on, when I commanded U.S. Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM), 

one of my subordinate commands was Joint Interagency Task Force–South in Key West, 

Florida, a multinational and interagency/interministerial command that counters drug trafficking in the Western Hemisphere. I also experienced the pernicious effects that transnational 

crime has on our friends as it ranges throughout the entire Western Hemisphere. After leaving 

USSOUTHCOM to become commander at U.S. European Command (USEUCOM), I 

saw that Europe was also challenged by the same types of transnational crime. In response, I 

stood up the Joint/Interagency Counter Trafficking Center in Stuttgart, Germany, designed 

to counter transnational criminal networks in cooperation with our international partners.

When I took command of USEUCOM, I also became the Supreme Allied Commander, 

Europe (SACEUR). As SACEUR, I command Operation Active Endeavor, which counters 

trafficking in the Mediterranean, and Operation Ocean Shield, which is part of the international 

counterpiracy efforts off the Somali coast. In addition, we have pioneered responses to cyber 

threats. At the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, we have the North Atlantic 

Treaty Organization Computer Incident Response Center, and at USEUCOM, we are taking 

steps to create a subunified cyber command that will have links to both U.S. Cyber Command 

in the United States and USEUCOM in Germany.

All of these organizations were designed to facilitate a whole-of-government approach, 

where all elements of national power work together in order to address emerging threats. 

Eventually, once societies understand the nature of the threats facing them, they will hopefully 

mobilize nongovernmental assets, adopting a “whole of society” approach. When all of these 
viii

Foreword

elements work together, governmental and nongovernmental groups can join international 

regional and global groups to form a “whole of international society” approach, allowing us 

to close the seams that exist between nations and regions. Only then will we be able to close 

these illicit transnational networks.

These networks have taken advantage of modern advances in communications and 

transportation to globalize. Narcotraffickers in the Andean Ridge, for instance, have expanded 

operations as far as their markets in the United States and Europe. Illegal arms merchants 

have expanded their operations around the world. Human smugglers have moved their slaves 

from underdeveloped countries to sex operations throughout the developed world. And, of 

course, we have all seen the global reach of modern transnational terrorism. No one is immune 

from this insidious threat.

It will take a combination of initiatives to defeat the threats created by illicit criminal 

networks. These transnational organizations are a large part of the hybrid threat that forms 

the nexus of illicit drug trafficking—including routes, profits, and corruptive influences—and 

terrorism, both home grown as well as imported Islamic terrorism. With the latest wave of 

globalization allowing for even more movement of people, goods, and information, these actors 

have spread their tentacles wider and deeper, breaking new ground. At the same time, they 

have demonstrated an ability to adapt, diversify, and converge. This has allowed them to obtain 

vast resources and to continuously reorganize themselves to stay ahead of efforts to combat 

them. They have achieved a degree of globalized outreach and collaboration via networks, as 

well as horizontal diversification.

Criminal networks have the advantage of three primary enablers. First are the huge profits 

realized by transnational criminal operations. Second is the ability of these organizations to 

recruit talent and reorganize along lines historically limited to corporations and militaries. The 

third is their newly developed ability to operate in milieus normally considered the preserve 

of the state, and often referred to as the diplomatic, informational, military, and economic 

elements of national power. In the past, although some corporations or cities wielded some of 

these elements of power, for the last 200 years or so, it was mainly states that did. Transnational 

criminal elements have recently been able to generate these state-like capabilities. Through 

resource development and reorganization, they now rival the capabilities of many states and 

overwhelm the capabilities of others.

Access to large-scale resources is made possible by the incredible amount of money that 

transnational crime generates. This in turn enables other criminal activities. Criminals suborn 

rule of law actors within countries and are able to operate across borders. The end result is 

corruption. They can often use these resources to train and equip themselves better than those 

who seek to halt them. For example, the narcoterrorists in Mexico are often better armed than 

the government forces that they face. Their communications networks are also world class 

because they can afford the best equipment.

These organizations have also adapted their recruiting and organizing. Drug cartels 

have been recruiting trained special operations forces and educating lawyers and accountants. 

Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) has also adopted a technique of telling its more promising new 

members to avoid getting tattooed so that they can better blend into the societies they operate 

in. These organizations adapt in order to take advantage of the emerging situations that they 
ix

Foreword

find themselves in. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, for instance, started out 

by guarding airfields for the cartels and quickly realized that they could take over the trade 

themselves. Over the space of a few years, they vertically integrated, morphing from terrorists 

to narcoterrorists. Other organizations such as al Qaeda have discovered franchising, enabling 

them to reach into areas that they previously could not organize in. For example, Hizballah has 

created connections with drug-trafficking organization in the Tri-Border Area of Argentina, 

Brazil, and Paraguay. This ability to change approach to both recruiting and organizing helps 

make these organizations extremely dangerous. And as these organizations spread out horizontally and meet fellow criminals, they form into modern networks, mimicking normal societies. 

Although the fields of diplomacy, information, military, and economic power have generally belonged to states since the 1700s, modern illicit transnational networks have expanded 

their operations into these areas. Modern illicit criminal networks communicate regularly 

with states, using information to communicate diplomatic messages to those that may want 

to face them down. They also use information to recruit vulnerable persons, transforming 

them into sex slaves or suicide bombers. As mentioned above, some of these networks have 

developed a military capability, which allows them to go toe-to-toe with national security 

forces in places like Mexico and Afghanistan—and their economic strength allows them to 

operate with impunity.

The problems created by these networks are legion. Two of the most dangerous threats 

are corruption and cyber security. Corruption acts as an enabler for transnational criminals, 

spreading deep within societies, preventing the rule of law from ensuring the safety and well 

being of the citizens of countries where it is endemic. Although challenging in developed 

countries such as the United States and Germany, it is an existential threat in less developed 

countries that are struggling to defeat this menace. Where the government writ does not go, 

criminal networks fill the vacuum and provide alternative governance. Where the police and 

judiciary are affected, criminals prey on the population and do not pay for their misdeeds. 

Because no one will invest in these areas, the people will not have access to the jobs and educational opportunities that would empower them to improve their situations. Corruption is like 

an autoimmune disease, shutting down the immune system so the body can be overwhelmed 

by any challenge.

Cyber is a nascent threat, but one with tremendous future capability. There have been two 

proven cyber attacks, one against Estonia in 2007 and the other against Georgia in 2008. In 

both cases, distributed denial-of-service attacks ranged from single individuals using various 

low-tech methods such as ping floods1

 to expensive rentals of botnets2 used for spam distribution that swamped Estonian and Georgian organizations including parliaments, banks, ministries, newspapers, and broadcasters—rendering many of the Web sites inoperable. Although 

the effects were localized to those countries, they do show what a cyber attack can produce. In 

the long run, cyber attacks will be able to shut down entire parts of the infrastructure of a state, 

which will directly threaten populations and significantly delegitimize states under attack. This 

danger will only grow as criminal networks hire their own hackers and eventually train them.

These illicit criminal networks threaten the United States both directly and indirectly. 

Directly, these criminals have attacked U.S. facilities and citizens throughout the globe. They 

also weaken the fabric of American society, which they touch through violence and corruption. 
x

Foreword

Indirectly, these organizations threaten the United States by attacking our allies and partners 

throughout the world. Imagine a world populated by narcoterrorist states. This situation would 

make it difficult for the United States to put forward its interests such as democracy and free 

trade globally. But at the root of the issue is the fact that narcotics and other illegal trafficking 

impact U.S. national security immensely by presenting the following dilemma: How best do 

we remain a free and open society—a land of opportunity and a partner of choice for our 

neighbor countries—especially in the post-9/11 era in which criminals and terrorists seeking 

to do harm continuously exploit our borders on land, at sea, and in the air?

All of these aspects of illicit networks and transnational crime are what make this book 

important. The Center for Complex Operations (CCO) has produced this edited volume, 

Convergence: Illicit Networks and National Security in the Age of Globalization, that delves deeply 

into everything mentioned above and more. In a time when the threat is growing, this is a timely 

effort. CCO has gathered an impressive cadre of authors to illuminate the important aspects 

of transnational crime and other illicit networks. They describe the clear and present danger 

and the magnitude of the challenge of converging and connecting illicit networks; the ways and 

means used by transnational criminal networks and how illicit networks actually operate and 

interact; how the proliferation, convergence, and horizontal diversification of illicit networks 

challenge state sovereignty; and how different national and international organizations are 

fighting back. A deeper understanding of the problem will allow us to then develop a more 

comprehensive, more effective, and more enduring solution.

Notes

1

A ping flood is a simple denial-of-service attack where the attacker overwhelms the victim with Internet Control 

Message Protocol Echo Request (ping) packets. 2

A botnet is a collection of Internet-connected computers whose security defenses have been breached and their 

control ceded to a malicious party.
xi

Acknowledgments

Every published book depends on a network, and the network engaged in the development of this book is extensive. It includes many senior and very busy experts and leaders in the 

field, within and outside of the U.S. Government. The concept for the book was born of the 

impressive intellectual capital emerging from the Center for Complex Operations (CCO) 

conference, “Illicit Networks in an Age of Globalization,” held at National Defense University, 

February 8–9, 2011. Our conference co-organizers, Andy Roberts, Justin Cutting, Jessica 

Larsen, and Bridget Yakley, without whose support the conference could not have been held, 

also provided valuable editorial assistance and constant support throughout the book development and editing process. 

There are many more whose efforts and support were crucial to the translation of concepts 

introduced at a conference into an enduring product that can be used to inform and educate 

practitioners and policymakers, while stimulating ongoing research and discourse in the 

academic and expert communities. We are confident this book will enhance understanding 

in Washington and other capitals of a challenging and growing threat to national security, as 

well as in the schools that educate the national and international security leaders of today and 

tomorrow. We thank David Sobyra, Elizabeth Phu, Gary Barnabo, and the leadership of the 

Office of Counternarcotics and Global Threats at the Department of Defense; David Luna 

and Kristen Larson of the Office of Transnational Criminal Threats and Illicit Networks at 

the Department of State; and Alex Crowther of U.S. European Command for their support 

to this publication and related research projects. Please accept our gratitude.

A champion of the need to use a holistic approach to fight the illicit transnational criminal 

networks that plague the global commons, Admiral James Stavridis has been a staunch supporter of this research since the beginning. The editors want to express our sincere gratitude 

to the admiral for his contribution to the book, but more importantly for his leadership in 

this arena and his determination to continually take the fight to the adversary. Thank you, sir.

The Center for Complex Operations is lucky to have an in-house force multiplier—our 

volunteer intern corps—that is a critical enabler engaged in every aspect of the work of the 

CCO. Mickey Kupecz, who gave tireless hours reviewing many of the book’s chapters, was 

particularly critical to the present effort; Miranda Taylor provided crucial production and 

graphics support; and Roxanne Bannon, Samuel Beirne, and Molly Jerome provided research 

and editorial assistance with the book. Other members of the CCO staff provided support 

and guidance throughout the process and we could not have done this project without them. 
xii

Acknowledgments

We would also like to acknowledge Dr. Hans Binnendijk and Ambassador John Herbst for 

empowering us to succeed in this and all our related endeavors.

Of course, we reserve special thanks for our authors: for their time, support, advice, and 

also their patience.
xiii

Introduction

Michael Miklaucic and Jacqueline Brewer

In the last 20 years, globalization has outpaced the growth of mechanisms for global 

governance. This has resulted in a lack of regulation—whether it be on the Internet, in banking 

systems, or free trade zones. The same conditions that have led to unprecedented openness in 

trade, travel, and communication have created massive opportunities for criminals. As a result, 

organized crime has diversified, gone global, and reached macro-economic proportions.

—Walter Kemp, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime,

 Organized Crime: A Growing Threat to Security

In some situations these new networks could act as forces for good by pressuring 

governments through non-violent means to address injustice, poverty, the impacts of 

climate change, and other social issues. Other groups, however, could use networks and 

global communications to recruit and train new members, proliferate radical ideologies, 

manage their finances, manipulate public opinion, and coordinate attacks.

—National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2025

Acceleration. Magnification. Diffusion. Entropy. Empowerment. The global environment and the international system are evolving at hypervelocity. A consensus is emerging 

among policymakers, scholars, and practitioners that recent sweeping developments in information technology, communication, transportation, demographics, and conflict are making 

global governance more challenging. Some argue these developments have transformed our 

international system, making it more vulnerable than ever to the predations of terrorists and 

criminals. Others argue that despite this significant evolution, organized crime, transnational 

terrorism, and nonstate networks have been endemic if unpleasant features of human society 

throughout history, that they represent nothing new, and that our traditional means of countering them—primarily conventional law enforcement—are adequate. Even among those 

who perceive substantial differences in the contemporary manifestations of these persistent 

maladies, they are viewed as major nuisances not adding up to a significant national or international security threat, much less an existential threat. 
xiv

Introduction

This view continues to dominate mindsets within the U.S. national security community. 

It fails to fully appreciate the growing power of nonstate actors and adversaries, or the magnitude of the threat they pose and the harm they impose on the international system itself. 

It underappreciates the possibility—indeed likelihood—of the convergence, whether for 

convenience or growing ambition, of criminal, terrorist, and even insurgent networks. More 

important even than insufficient recognition of the efficacy of these adversaries is the absence 

of a plan to counter the threat they pose to both national security and the international state 

system. In short, this view does not see the big picture—the long view of the declining robustness and resilience of the global system of nation-states that has been dominant for centuries, 

and the unprecedented attacks on that system. The failure of that system—in which we and 

so many have prospered beyond belief or precedent in history—would be a catastrophic and 

existential loss.

Global trends and developments—including dramatically increased trade volumes and 

velocity, the growth of cyberspace, and population growth, among others—have facilitated the 

growth of violent nonstate actors, the strengthening of organized crime, and the emergence of 

a new set of transcontinental supply chains as well as the expansion of existing illicit markets. 

The resourcefulness, adaptability, innovativeness, and ability of illicit networks to circumvent 

countermeasures make them formidable foes for national governments and international 

organizations alike. Their increasing convergence gives them ever-improved ability to evade 

official countermeasures and overcome logistical challenges as well as ever better tools for 

exploiting weaknesses and opportunities within the state system, and attacking that system. 

Since illicit actors have expanded their activities throughout the global commons, in the land, 

sea, air, and cyber domains, nations must devise comprehensive and multidimensional strategies and policies to combat the complex transnational threats posed by these illicit networks. 

This book is an attempt to map the terrain of this emerging battlespace; it describes the 

scope of the security threat confronting the United States and the international community 

from transnational criminal organizations and what is being done to combat that threat—from 

the strategic level with the release, in July 2011, of the U.S. Government’s Strategy to Combat 

Transnational Organized Crime: Addressing Converging Threats to National Security and, in April 

2011, of the Department of Defense (DOD) Counternarcotics and Global Threats Strategy—to 

the operational level with increased regional partnerships and dialogues. 

A Clear and Present Danger 

What are the nature, magnitude, and danger of this phenomenon? The first chapters of this 

book describe the gravity and the scale of the challenge posed by proliferating, diversifying, and 

globalizing illicit networks. Authors Nils Gilman, Jesse Goldhammer, and Steven Weber label 

this phenomenon “deviant globalization” and argue that it is first and foremost an economic 

phenomenon that cannot be detached or separated from the broader process of globalization. 

It is that portion of the global economy that meets the demand for goods and services that 

are illegal or considered repugnant in one place by using a supply from some other part of the 

world where morals are different or law enforcement is less effective. Illicit networks are globally 

integrated enterprises. Just as corporations no longer think of national borders as barriers, these 
xv

Introduction

networks will operate wherever a profit can be made. No corner of the world is untouched by 

transnational organized crime, and many illicit networks have multicontinental areas of operations. Take, for example, the Sinaloa Cartel, which operates on five continents, earns billions 

of dollars, and has successfully diversified beyond drugs to other criminal activities such as 

kidnapping and money laundering. 

Beyond their global operations, deviant entrepreneurs worldwide have demonstrated 

that they can effectively shut down large urban spaces (such as the favelas of Brazil) and even 

whole subregions (such as the Tri-Border Area where Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay meet), 

while usurping their host states’ basic functional capacity. They can and do provide social 

services to local constituencies ranging from community protection to the provision of such 

public goods as disaster relief, dispute resolution, and even garbage collection. The examples 

are too numerous to mention in full but include Hizballah in Lebanon, criminal syndicates 

in the favelas of Brazil’s megacities, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta 

in Nigeria, and drug-trafficking organizations such as the now defunct Medellín Cartel in 

Colombia. Over time, as the illicit economy grows and nonstate actors provide an increasing 

range of social goods, a security and political vacuum emerges from the gradual erosion of state 

power, legitimacy, and capacity, and the state is displaced by the same illicit networks that are 

eating away at its legitimacy. 

In addition to defying both borders and law enforcers, transnational illicit networks are 

unrestrained by legislation, unimpeded by morality, empowered by vast amounts of cash, 

and able to take advantage of all the latest technological developments. They use technology 

for communications, even encrypted, to identify and recruit individuals with needed skills 

and to exchange tradecraft secrets and lessons with other illicit groups and networks around 

the world, manage their global enterprises, and plan global collaboration and operations. 

Globalization involving the crossborder integration of value-added economic activity has 

dominated international economic activity in recent years. For the past several decades, this 

sort of economic activity has grown twice as fast as overall global economic growth. And while 

new technologies have drawn the world’s communities into ever-closer physical and economic 

proximity, they have not eliminated local differences in economic opportunities, moral attitudes 

toward different sorts of economic activity, or the capacity of law enforcement agencies in 

different parts of the world, resulting in what might be referred to as a “lumpy” environment. 

Illicit networks depend on and benefit from the same technologies and innovations that help 

legal private industry navigate this lumpy environment. This presents a substantial challenge 

to government agencies that cannot adapt or adopt the technologies as rapidly as their networked tormentors. 

The old paradigm of fighting terrorism and transnational crime separately, utilizing 

distinct sets of tools and methods, may not be sufficient to meet the challenges posed by 

the convergence of these networks into a crime-terror-insurgency nexus. Violent nonstate 

actors, including terrorist organizations and insurgent movements, seek to collaborate with 

criminal networks—and in some cases become criminal networks—in order to finance acts of 

terrorism and purchase the implements of destruction and killing. Terrorists and insurgents 

can tap into the global illicit marketplace to underwrite their activities and acquire weapons 

and other supplies vital to their operations. On the other hand, many transnational criminal 
xvi

Introduction

organizations have adopted the techniques of terrorist violence—sometimes referred to as 

the “propaganda of the deed”—as a central element in their strategic communication plans 

and a way of intimidating their rivals. In the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam we see the 

convergence of crime, terror, and insurgency into a potent set of capabilities—drawing from 

and contributing to the toolkits of each of the three species of illicit organization—that is 

particularly toxic if not unique. The conventional view that mutual disincentives discourage 

terrorists from associating with transnational criminal networks, and vice versa, appears to 

be an artifact of a bygone era.

The illicit economy operates in the shadows of the legal and official political economy. 

In order to understand the scope of the problem, both scholars and practitioners must develop credible estimates of the size of the illicit economy using accessible data sets, sound 

methodologies, and transparent assumptions. Otherwise, it is hardly possible to support any 

argument concerning the size, nature, and growth of illicit networks and markets. Estimates 

of the magnitude of the phenomena we call transnational organized crime range from 1 to 15 

percent of global product. Justin Picard attempts to sharpen the analytic tools for developing 

meaningful metrics in this otherwise occluded space. It is also necessary to estimate the degree 

of harm caused by illicit markets. One must establish a relationship between illicit activities 

and the actual harm they cause to society in order to understand and counter the threat they 

pose. This cannot be done without collaboration among experts on illicit markets, economists, 

criminologists, environmentalists, diplomats, political scientists, and public health specialists, 

among others. 

Illicit commerce affects numerous industries from banking, finance, information technology, real estate, telecommunications, transport, and import/export to industries many do 

not often think of including entertainment, music, film, textiles, and luxury goods. By some 

estimates, transnational criminal organizations are attaining the same high levels of revenue 

as Fortune 500 companies. These organizations invest in the licit economy—through real 

estate, businesses, and other entities—as both a means to launder money and a way to gain 

legitimate revenue, thereby creating a “gray economy” in which legality is sometimes difficult 

to distinguish from illegality. With skilled lawyers, financiers, and accountants, illicit networks 

are able to launder their profits and effectively generate further income, often from strictly 

legal activity, thus drawing many more players—sometimes unknowingly—into the domain 

of illicit activity. Phil Williams puts these developments in the context of a range of disturbing 

“mega-trends” that he argues will lead to a future of lawlessness and disorder.

Complex Illicit Operations

How do illicit networks operate? What are their interrelationships? What are their logistical 

challenges and responses? What is their tradecraft? As long as there is a market for illicit 

products, illicit supply chains will thrive and provide a supply to meet the demand. Duncan 

Deville describes the various agents manning these supply chains, their functional roles, and 

their extraordinary creativity in adapting to any attempt to curtail their efforts. When joint 

Colombian and international law enforcement efforts succeeded in reining in the activities of 

Colombian coca cartels in the 1990s, the cartels changed their roles within the supply chain, 
xvii

Introduction

and distribution operations migrated to Mexico. The “balloon effect” is not new. What has 

changed is the skill of trafficking organizations in applying aspects of a commercial supply 

chain to support their illicit activities and get their products to the customer, and their payment—predominantly cash—back to the merchant. 

Criminal and terrorist entities are mobile and increasingly migratory actors capable 

of shifting both their locations and their vocations in order to exploit geographic, political, 

enforcement, and regulatory vulnerabilities. They do not view state borders as impenetrable 

“castle walls.” This process has led a range of bad actors to shift their operations to certain 

regions, countries, or cities that will allow them to function in a relatively unimpeded manner. 

All illicit networks need is one lax jurisdiction to create a center of operations. Certain specific 

locations such as Dubai, Turkey, Moldova, and the Tri-Border Area of South America have 

proven so appealing to various criminal or terrorist enterprises that they have emerged as 

“hubs” in the illicit global economy. Global crime networks collocate with members of radical 

political movements in ungoverned border regions in Central and South America; similar 

collocation has occurred in the Balkans. 

Patrick Radden Keefe argues that terrorist and criminal groups have different needs for 

their operations centers. Organized crime is dependent on a baseline of infrastructure and 

services, while terrorist organizations can operate in unstable, chaotic environments or even 

where there is complete state failure. Many hubs in the illicit economy are found in major cities 

that have the advantages found in strong states—infrastructure, banking, and a baseline level of 

rule of law. Other key qualities of hubs include state degradation, borderlands where sovereign 

boundaries converge, corruption, poverty with large informal economies, and extensive tribal 

or kinship networks. 

One of the least understood nodes in the illicit network is a new type of nonstate political 

actor, a “global guerrilla” or “super fixer.”1

 Douglas Farah describes a small group of super fixers 

and enablers who allow the networks to function and facilitate global connectivity among 

illicit networks including linking criminal and terrorist groups. Not loyal to any single entity 

or network, they are valuable to multiple, even competing, networks. Among the fascinating 

attributes of these individuals is their ability to survive regime changes and political upheavals 

that on the surface would seem to presage their doom. For them there is no ideological hurdle 

to overcome, only business to be done. These individuals owe little allegiance to anyone or 

any cause but themselves. As quasi-independent operators, super fixers are the key links in 

the chains that move illicit commodities—cocaine, blood diamonds, “conflict” timber, human 

beings—because they have the relationships to reach out and connect to the next concentric 

circle of actors. These operators are vital links—both for rebels in the jungle or for Afghan 

warlords who have no understanding of the outside world—to the market for their illicit 

commodities. In the process they can gain immense wealth and influence. The geopolitical 

importance of super fixers is only likely to increase in the coming decade.

The ultimate enabler of both crime and terrorism is money. Any book on transnational 

organized crime must address the importance of money and of following the money. Both 

criminal and terrorist groups must raise, move, and hide or integrate their money. Louise 

Shelley explains how investment in real estate is used as a way both of laundering illicit 

proceeds and of generating new revenue through traditional real estate–related transactions, 
xviii

Introduction

such as rental properties and property sales. Investment in real estate also provides the illicit 

network with safe house capacity from which to execute operations. The crime-terror nexus 

is thought to be growing because terrorist groups act to take advantage of the money-raising 

and movement strategies of criminal groups. Current strategies to map and combat threat 

finance—criminal money laundering and terrorist financing—use the authorities of law 

enforcement, intelligence operations, public designation, and international cooperation with 

partner nations. Danielle Camner Lindholm and Celina B. Realuyo show how all of these 

strategies are essential for fighting transnational organized crime.

The Attack on Sovereignty

Illicit networks, with their associated crime and violence, are undermining and co-opting whole 

states, capturing the instruments of statecraft and state power to use for their own benefit. Several authors in this book describe the causes and conditions that result in the loss of control by 

legitimate governments. John P. Sullivan discusses “the reconfiguration of power within states” 

and the impact of narcocultura. Fragile and consolidating states are at the greatest peril from the 

growing efficacy of illicit networks. With weak state institutions and incompetent or corrupt 

law enforcement organs, fragile and weak states often enjoy little support from their citizens. 

The public goods that states should provide such as personal security, dispute resolution, financial opportunity, and employment are as likely to be provided by cartels, gangs, militias, or 

insurgencies as by weak or fragile states. In countries where economies are stagnant and unable 

to provide gainful employment for burgeoning youth populations, illicit networks—that is, 

the agents of deviant globalization—have arguably as great a claim on public loyalty as the 

impotent state. As the state cannot ensure personal safety and public security, which instead 

are provided by gangs, cartels, or militias, the exclusive legitimacy of the state’s use of coercive 

force is dubious. In such cases, state sovereignty is supplanted by a different kind of legitimacy 

heralding a new and likely less benign sociopolitical order. 

States can also be destroyed from the inside. State corruption ranges from criminal penetration, infiltration, capture, and, in the direst cases, state criminalization. Michael Miklaucic 

and Moisés Naím seek to parse the varying degrees of criminalization of the state, while Vanda 

Felbab-Brown examines how illicit networks are pushing Afghanistan toward criminalization. 

In many cases, weak states may simply not have the ability to resist co-option by illicit organizations and networks. In other cases, violent nonstate actors can become a de facto government 

and provider of state services. In today’s world, there are growing numbers of illicit actors who 

have money, economic influence, and the ability to deploy violence.

Global power has become multipolar. Indeed, power has diffused and devolved to a wide 

range of nonstate actors within the global system and alongside the traditional holders of 

power, the states. While some of those actors—for example, international nongovernmental organizations and commercial enterprises—are undoubtedly quite comfortable working within 

the international system of nation-states, others are less benign, and some are even dedicated to 

overthrowing that system. Fighting this challenge to the state system is ever more daunting as 

states come to terms with their limited and declining capabilities. In most states, government 
xix

Introduction

bureaucracies remain hierarchical and stove-piped while illicit networks are node-centric, 

agile, and opportunistic. The future competitive advantage may lie with the nonstate groups. 

Fighting Back

Though national and international responses to the challenges described in this book may 

not have yet met the hopes of the more pessimistic contributors, key players are beginning to 

recognize the threats that converging illicit networks pose, and they are fighting back. To find 

new ways to tackle these threats, we must take a holistic look at what is currently being done 

by governments around the world. The U.S. Government and many multinational organizations are taking decisive steps to attack the networks. The White House’s 2011 Strategy to 

Combat Transnational Organized Crime (SCTOC) concludes that “criminal networks are not 

only expanding their operations, but they are also diversifying their activities. The result is a 

convergence of threats that have evolved to become more complex, volatile, and destabilizing.”2

The U.S. strategy is an important step toward setting clear priorities for U.S. Government 

actions against transnational organized crime. The challenge is in the implementation. Subsequent strategies and policies created and implemented to combat the threats posed by criminal 

networks should be connected to other focal points for the U.S. Government—particularly 

cybersecurity, counterterrorism, counterproliferation, building partner capacity, and strengthening governance. Holistic approaches that recognize transnational organized crime not as a 

stove-piped “law enforcement problem,” but as a nefarious feature of the global security environment that touches the whole world and has an impact on a multitude of vital U.S. interests, 

are the types of approaches most likely to succeed over the long term.

Implement an Interagency Response

Currently in the United States there is no long-term strategic planning system to synchronize 

all the elements of national power to meet the challenge of converging illicit networks. Furthermore, in an operational environment, where civilian agencies are the most appropriate lead 

with the military in support, there should be a campaign planning mechanism as well. In 2010, 

the U.S. Agency for International Development, the third “D” in the U.S. triad of Diplomacy, 

Defense, and Development, stood up a policy planning office, but this is only a small step 

toward inculcating a culture of planning within the civilian agencies. The State Department 

must improve this capability. In support of the SCTOC, the State Department is working to 

“build international consensus, multilateral cooperation, and public-private partnerships to 

defeat transnational organized crime.” This involves a broad range of bilateral, regional, and 

global programs and initiatives that help to strengthen international cooperation with other 

committed partners including key allies such as Australia and the United Kingdom. David 

Luna describes how such enhanced coordination enables the international community to 

dismantle criminal networks and combat the threats they pose not only through law enforcement efforts, but also by building up governance capacity, supporting committed reformers, 

and strengthening the ability of citizens—including journalists—to monitor public functions 

and hold leaders accountable for providing safety, effective public services, and efficient use of 
xx

Introduction

public resources. The Department of Defense Counternarcotics and Global Threats Strategy, 

derived from national strategic and military guidance, according to William F. Wechsler and 

Gary Barnabo, lays the foundation for how DOD supports the fight against transnational 

illicit networks. To ensure that the resources expended against illicit networks have maximum 

strategic impact, DOD must also link its efforts against transnational organized crime to other 

national security priorities and agencies.

Many other departments and agencies are involved in fighting transnational organized 

crime. The Treasury Department and various law enforcement agencies lead various aspects of 

the nonkinetic effort to drain the illicit economy. The SCTOC proposed to create a legislative 

package targeted at improving the authorities available to investigate, interdict, and prosecute 

the activities of top transnational criminal networks across the Federal Government and in 

partnership with state, local, tribal, and territorial levels, as well as with foreign partners. Under 

existing authorities, law enforcement agencies have the lead for transnational organized crime, 

while DOD and the State Department have the lead on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency issues; however, it is crucial that all agencies work together. Recently, we have seen that 

an increase in two-way support—from DOD to law enforcement and from law enforcement 

to the military—is a strategically important evolution in how the U.S. Government organizes 

to combat transnational organized crime. Moreover, the increased use of interagency task forces 

such as the Joint Interagency Task Force–South, whose success combating drug trafficking in 

the Caribbean is widely acknowledged, is another way to use the strengths and tools of various 

agencies. Such efforts must continue. Collaboration is ever more critical as we look to best use 

existing congressional authorities for each agency. 

Attack the Financial Resources

To stop international narcotics trafficking and money-laundering networks, we must limit 

their access to the global financial system. It is widely acknowledged that nearly 95 percent 

of money laundering goes undetected. Recent indictments of multiple banking institutions 

and convictions of a growing number of commercial banks are indicative of increased official 

initiative in this area, but are also likely reflective of the widespread presence of money-laundering activities. Stuart Levey, former Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial 

Intelligence, stated that “any financial institution that collaborates in illicit conduct on this scale 

risks losing its access to the United States.” We must make good on this threat. 

Speaking at the National Defense University in 2011, Treasury Department Assistant 

Secretary Daniel Glaser noted that analysts often cite the low cost of conducting a terrorist 

attack as a reason it is difficult to stop these networks, but that explanation neglects the 

cost of running and maintaining an illicit network. Salaries, training, logistics, bribes, and 

other expenses all expose the organization to potential vulnerabilities. The international 

community must be more proactive and determined in pursuing the money that enables 

these groups to operate. Governments must aggressively engage the financial sector and 

forge partnerships that will reduce the vulnerability of financial institutions and increase 

the efficacy of anti-money-laundering procedures. 
xxi

Introduction

Just looking at Mexico, billions of dollars pass through the U.S. border into that country 

each year. U.S. law enforcement efforts have traditionally focused on stopping the northward 

flow of illicit commodities and have neglected the southward flow of weapons and drug money back to Mexico. With bulk cash as the primary method for moving funds, we must work 

harder to increase our interdiction percentage above the current 1 percent of estimated total 

funds. Over the past 5 years, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control has 

taken steps to institutionalize measures to counter threat finance and protect the financial 

system from illicit actors using financial intelligence. Several programs aggressively target 

“super-fixers” and other enablers, rogue states, proliferators of weapons of mass destruction, 

money launderers, and drug traffickers among other targets. These programs track money 

flows and assist with the policy and criminal justice work of other U.S. Government agencies. 

Understand the Networks 

To best combat the threat posed by converging illicit networks, more intelligence is needed on 

the networks—their cultures, motivations, incentives, operations, and structures. Going further, the SCTOC specifically calls out for the need to improve signals intelligence and human 

intelligence collection on transnational organized crime. So far, we have heard of a handful of 

efforts to do this. Mapping these networks and their interactions, logistics, operations, personnel, and finances must be a key policy focus area in the future. Patrick Radden Keefe’s and 

Duncan Deville’s chapters offer starting points for further research, both on the networks and 

on the hubs that corral their behavior. 

From lawyers to scholars to practitioners, the contributors to this book represent a wide 

range of disciplines, agencies, and roles in the fight against transnational organized crime. By 

connecting these groups, we aim to continue to build the network. It is hoped that this book 

will continue the dialogue and stimulate new thinking on how both the U.S. interagency 

community and the broader international community can work together more effectively 

to attack the illicit networks and contain the threats posed by their globalization, horizontal 

diversification, and convergence.

Notes

1

 John Robb, Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization (New York: Wiley, 

2007); Australian Crime Commission, Organised Crime in Australia (Canberra: Australian Organised Crime 

Commission, 2011). 2 Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime: Addressing Converging Threats to National Security (Washington, DC: The White House, July 2011), cover letter by President Barack Obama.

Part I. 

A Clear and Present Danger

3

Chapter 1

Deviant Globalization

Nils Gilman, Jesse Goldhammer, and Steven Weber

The black market was a way of getting around government controls. It was a way 

of enabling the free market to work. It was a way of opening up, enabling people.1

—Milton Friedman

This chapter introduces the concept of deviant globalization.2

 The unpleasant underside of 

transnational integration, deviant globalization describes crossborder economic networks 

that produce, move, and consume things as various as narcotics and rare wildlife, looted antiquities and counterfeit goods, dirty money and toxic waste, as well as human beings in search of 

undocumented work and unorthodox sexual activities. This wide and thriving range of illicit 

services and industries takes place in the shadows of the formal, licit global economy, and its 

rapid growth is challenging traditional notions of wealth, development, and power. In sum, 

deviant globalization describes the way that entrepreneurs use the technical infrastructure of 

globalization to exploit gaps and differences in regulation and law enforcement of markets for 

repugnant goods and services.

Repugnance is an emotion that sometimes informs moral judgments. We recognize the 

reality of repugnance, but we take the view in this chapter that an analysis of the problem and 

prescriptions for what to do about it are best made within a more austere analytic frame. Some 

readers may find the use of standard economic terminology and concepts off-putting as we 

apply this logic to repugnant activities. We do not eschew or criticize moral judgments; we just 

believe they belong to a different kind of conversation. Ultimately, we argue that to give in to a 

moralizing impulse gets in the way of designing policy interventions that can most effectively 

mitigate the worst aspects of deviant globalization.

 The most critical point to understand about deviant globalization is that it is inextricably 

linked to and bound up with mainstream globalization: we cannot have one without the other. 

Both are market-driven activities. Both are enabled by the same globally integrated financial, 

communication, and transportation systems. Both break down boundaries—political, economic, cultural, social, and environmental—in a dynamic process of creative destruction. And 
4

Gilman, Goldhammer, and Weber

both are present in virtually every globalizing platform: we may be disgusted by men who go 

online to prearrange their sexual liaisons before their Thai holiday, but their use of the Internet 

as an information service is not technically different from someone prearranging a trek in Chiang Mai. Moreover, a Chinese shipping company delivering a container of illegally harvested 

Burmese hardwood to a furniture manufacturer in Italy may be doing something illicit, but 

that makes it no less a part of the synchronized global intermodal shipping system, and the 

burgeoning cell phone networks of Pakistan are just as useful to Afghan heroin wholesalers 

as they are to members of the Pakistani diaspora sending remittances to their families back 

home. The infrastructure of the global economy is dual-use and value-neutral. As these systems 

become increasingly efficient, interconnected, and indispensable, they help not only the formal 

global economy to grow but also its conjoined, deviant twin.

Consider the situation in Mexico today, which illustrates well the dynamics of deviant 

globalization. Whereas mainstream accounts of globalization’s economic impact on Mexico 

usually focus on topics such as maquiladoras (production facilities across the Mexican border 

that are tightly tied to export channels into the United States), wage arbitrage (the substitution 

of low-wage Mexican labor for American labor), and economic dependency on the United 

States, appreciating the significance of deviant globalization shifts the focus onto other flows, 

such as humans and drugs heading north, as well as guns and money heading south. Meeting 

Western appetites for illicit drugs has generated vast fortunes in Mexico. This drug money, 

in turn, funds a narcotics production, transshipment, and wholesaling industry that, by some 

estimates, directly employs upward of half a million people, larger than the entire Mexican oil 

and gas industry.3

 Whereas mainstream accounts of globalization’s political impact on Mexico 

emphasize the loss of sovereign governance capacity to the North American Free Trade Agreement, International Money Fund, and multinational corporations, examining Mexico through 

the lens of deviant globalization highlights the way that some drug-trafficking organizations 

have emerged as cripplers of supposedly sovereign governments to a far greater extent than 

structural adjustment programs ever have.4

The dynamic in Mexico is not some outlier or exception, but rather is emblematic of deviant globalization’s rapidly growing systemic threat to international stability and security. An 

incomplete understanding of the systemic nature of deviant globalization, however, continues 

to lead many governments to implement poorly designed policy interventions that in many 

cases are not only ineffective but also counterproductive.

We believe that policy can do better. Deviant globalization, like globalization more 

broadly, is a systems phenomenon that requires a systems-oriented solution. Powerful economic and political forces are driving (deviant) globalization forward. But many aspects of 

how those forces manifest in markets remain subject to shaping interventions. We need to 

understand these forces and their interdependencies before we pull policy levers. And, faced 

with complexity and hard choices, we must avoid adopting a kind of fatalistic attitude that 

cuts off debate and action. The fatalism we find most politically dysfunctional is to paint any 

argument that questions the status quo as calling for rampant, indiscriminate “legalization” 

of illicit businesses and using that objection to shut down alternatives. We argue later that 

particular aspects of deviant globalization would be better dealt with through simple legalization, but not all. Creative regulation and enforcement can serve as finely grained tools, with 
5

Deviant Globalization

lots of choices that governments and other transnational actors can make use of to advance 

their objectives. Our goal here is to illuminate the real stakes in the tough choices that deviant 

globalization presents.

What Is Deviant Globalization?

Deviant globalization, in the first place, is an economic phenomenon: it is that portion of 

the global economy that meets demand for goods and services that are illegal or considered 

repugnant in one place by using a supply from some other part of the world where morals are 

different or law enforcement is less effective.

Seen through this economic lens, a reasonable first question to ask is what creates the 

market opportunities for deviant globalization. The answer is we do. When we codify and 

institutionalize our moral outrage at selling sex by making prostitution illegal, for example, 

we create a market opportunity for those who kidnap women and smuggle them into sexual 

slavery. When we decide that methamphetamine is a danger to public health and prohibit 

it, we create opportunity for drug dealers who delight in the high profit margins as they fill 

illicit orders. When we ban the sale of organs in our domestic market, we create incentives 

for entrepreneurs to act as brokers or facilitators between physically desperate patients and 

economically desperate donors in poor countries. Every time a community or a nation, acting on the basis of its good faith and clear moral values, decides to “just say no,” it creates an 

opportunity for arbitrage.

Deviant globalization is thus an economic concept, but it is also a moral and legal one. 

Deviant globalization grows at the intersection of ethical difference and regulatory and law 

enforcement inefficiencies. Wherever there is a fundamental disagreement about what is right 

as well as a connection to the global market, deviant entrepreneurs pop up to meet the unfulfilled demand. In meeting our collective desires, they see the differences in notions of public 

good, morality, and health as bankable market opportunities. Neoliberalism’s wide-open, market-oriented rules may govern globalization, but the game gets played on a morally lumpy field.

In contrast to some mainstream theories of globalization, which depict it as a process that 

annihilates differences across space,5

 the concept of deviant globalization highlights the continued importance of spatial differences in the structure of the global economy. The pathways 

of deviant flows are determined by not only border security and state authority but also the 

particular factor endowments (that is, the amount of land, labor, capital, and entrepreneurship 

that a country possesses) that generate comparative advantage and arbitrage opportunities for 

deviant entrepreneurs. Appreciating the geographic particularities of deviant flows is therefore crucial. Deviant flows move through cities—in a de facto archipelago that runs from the 

inner metropolitan cities of the United States to the favelas of Rio de Janeiro to the banlieues

of Paris to the almost continuous urban slum belt that girds the Gulf of Guinea from Abidjan 

to Lagos. They move through towns and villages—along the cocaine supply route that links 

the mountains of Colombia to São Paulo and the waterways of West Africa to noses in the 

Netherlands. And they move through the “global nodes” that make up the world’s financial 

infrastructure—from Wall Street to London to Tokyo’s Nihombashi District. In sum, it is 
6

Gilman, Goldhammer, and Weber

possible to find manifestations of deviant globalization in almost every city, every household, 

every shipping lane and port, as well as almost every IP address connected to the global economy.

Mainstream Globalization Deviant Globalization

Companies such as Wal-Mart are using 

extraordinary supply-chain technologies to 

revolutionize logistics, generating jobs for 

workers in developing countries and bringing 

much cheaper mass-consumption goods to 

the global middle classes.

The same supply chain technologies are 

used to tune up the efficiency of the global 

supply chain for counterfeit goods. Many 

of the inputs for the factories that make 

counterfeits are competitively sourced on 

global markets at minimum price, and the 

products are transported with new efficiency 

to consumers.

The Internet facilitates the global distribution 

of information, enables the collective 

production of knowledge goods, and 

enhances freedom to speak and to listen.

The Internet has become the easiest entry 

point to global systems for hostile and 

exploitative technologies (malware); social 

exploits (scams and spam); the identification 

of remote targets for pederasts; and the 

dissemination of radical ideologies that 

oppose or negate freedoms.

Capital mobility across national borders 

improves the efficiency with which the global 

economy allocates investment and should 

thereby enhance productivity immediately 

and, in particular, over the long term.

Capital mobility makes all kinds of finance 

for illegal activities, including crime and 

terrorism, as well as the laundering of 

money from other illicit activities far easier 

and much more challenging for political 

authorities.

The spreading ideology of privatization and 

market allocation released a historic burst 

of entrepreneurial energy and raised on the 

order of a billion people out of abject poverty 

in less than a generation.

The same ideologies have lent legitimacy to 

the concept of “everything for sale” including 

human beings (both whole and in pieces). 

Privatization ideologies in particular have led 

to the collapse in public goods provision—

for example, by dumping waste and garbage 

“elsewhere.”

Why Deviant Globalization Matters

As the example of Mexico shows, it is a serious error to view deviant globalization as a mere 

sideshow to what “really matters” in the global political economy. On the contrary, we believe 

that deviant globalization is not only central to contemporary geopolitics, but is also actively 

changing the landscape and distribution of power in the world economy in ways nearly as profound as any openly visible politico-economic trend or event has since the end of the Cold War.6

Deviant globalization matters to the future of the global political economy for three 

interconnected reasons. First, it challenges cherished notions of what “development” and 

“entrepreneurship” are supposed to be all about. Nations, institutions, and nongovernmental 

organizations (NGOs) from the Global North dedicate huge amounts of time and immense 

sums of money trying to help nations of the Global South modernize, diversify, and grow 

their economies. Liberal proponents of mainstream globalization view these efforts as a set 

of market-building steps toward delivering on the promise of capitalism. Marxist opponents 

criticize development practices for fostering dependency and, paradoxically, a permanent state 
7

Deviant Globalization

of (at least relative) poverty. What liberals and Marxists agree on, however, is that the sorts of 

illicit economies encompassed by deviant globalization represent a form of economic parasitism that diverts developmental energy, capital accumulation, human assets, and other valuable 

resources away from more productive uses; instead of providing a platform for self-sustained 

growth, such deviant markets appear merely to line the pockets of gangsters.

But the role of the deviant entrepreneur in the development of the Global South is more 

complicated than this view would suggest. Simply put, deviant entrepreneurs are some of the 

most audacious experimenters, risk-takers, and innovators in today’s global economy. In their 

relentless search for competitive advantage, they engage in just about all of the activities that 

other entrepreneurs do—marketing, strategy, organizational design, product innovation, 

information management, financial analysis, and so on. In many cases, they create enormous 

profits that meaningfully contribute to local development while also extruding inefficiencies 

from huge markets.

In other words, what both liberals and Marxists fail to appreciate is that many people 

living in poor nations in the Global South are already engaged in radical experiments in actual 

development through deviant globalization. Moreover, participating in the production side of 

deviant globalization—one hopes as an entrepreneur, but at least as a worker—is a survival 

strategy for those without easy access to legitimate, sustainable market opportunities, which is 

to say the poor, the uneducated, and those in locations with ineffective or corrupt institutional 

support for mainstream business.7 Behind the backs of, and often despite, all those corporations and development NGOs as well as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, 

the poor are renting their bodies, selling their organs, stealing energy, stripping their natural 

environments of critical minerals and wildlife, manufacturing drugs, and accepting toxic waste 

not because they are evil people but because these jobs are often the fastest, best, easiest, and 

even in some cases the most sustainable way to make money. Even for the line workers in deviant industries, the money accumulated over a few years can often form a nest egg of capital 

to start more legitimate businesses.8

To make the claim that deviant globalization is a form of development is not to deny the 

awfulness and oppressiveness of many deviant industries, or the significant social and environmental externalities that deviant globalization often imposes, or the fact that many of the 

participants in deviant globalization are coerced into their roles. No doubt there are better and 

worse ways to improve one’s lot in life, but it is rare that participating in deviant globalization 

is the worst available choice. Mining coal in China, for example, may be a more “legitimate” 

profession than pirating ships off of the coast of Somalia, but it is debatable whether the 

former is a better job than the latter. Most important, whatever our normative feelings, both 

professions contribute to a kind of development.

Indeed, in many cases, states that host deviant industries recognize and embrace their 

developmental benefits. Consider the importance of sex tourism to the economies of countries 

such as Thailand, the Philippines, or Cuba. Except for sporadic crackdowns when international 

scrutiny grows too intense, these governments knowingly wink at sex tourism—it has been 

the foundation of much of their draw on the international tourism scene, and it is the source 

of significant quantities of hard currency. In practice, sex tourism is a tacit part of their developmental strategy. Just as many countries are willing to tolerate physical pollution as a way to 
8

Gilman, Goldhammer, and Weber

attract investment and jumpstart growth, so other countries are willing to tolerate what we 

might call social or moral pollution in order to achieve the same ends.9

Seen from this point of view, deviant industries are not just about crime; rather, they are 

wellsprings of innovation—“disruption” in Clayton Christensen’s sense, “creative destruction” 

in Joseph Schumpeter’s sense—for political economies that need investment and growth 

and that have a hard time producing them via licit channels. At the same time, of course, the 

sort of innovation that deviant entrepreneurs produce is not a direct substitute for the kind 

of development proposed by metropolitan NGOs. Deviant development is different along 

several crucial dimensions:

• It is less transparent and operates according to more fluid rules of the game because 

deviant innovators are, by definition, less constrained—but it also creates new 

degrees of freedom, allowing entrepreneurs to try things that they could hardly try 

elsewhere.

• It is less centered in formal organizations such as corporations because deviant entrepreneurs do not organize in that way until and unless they have to—but it also 

enhances flexibility and adaptability.

• It struggles to make, monitor, and enforce contracts because even if the normal 

instruments of enforcement are weak in developing country settings, deviant entrepreneurs have even less access to them. This can get in the way of bargaining, increase 

transaction costs, and the like—but it also spurs the development of “alternative” 

means of deal-making, monitoring, and enforcement. These alternatives often involve 

mass violence—though, to be clear, from the point of view of those participating in 

these markets, such incidents of violence are undesirable because they increase the 

cost of doing business.

• Its success does not result in the long-term production of public goods, both because the deviant entrepreneurs are (for reasons of selection bias if nothing else) 

not public-minded sorts and because the profits from deviant industries are rarely 

if ever taxed by the state, the classic provider of public goods—but what the state 

loses, local communities and organizations partly gain in the form of jobs and capital.

• It tends to foster mass antisocial behavior, such as corruption. While all entrepreneurs are risk-takers, deviant entrepreneurs, virtually by definition, have a heightened 

willingness to flout social norms and conventions. Their success in turn degrades 

respect for other social norms and conventions, which may be otherwise unrelated 

to the market in question, leading to generalized decay of the dominant social order.

Rather than representing a divergence from the liberal norm of licit growth in the formal 

economy, deviant globalization might better be conceived as a way for the globally excluded 

to find a space to be innovative, a space in which the rules of the game have not already been 

stacked against them. At the same time, this is no subversively heroic Robin Hood morality 
9

Deviant Globalization

tale. Today’s deviant globalizers are not proto-revolutionaries aiming to remake society in 

an inclusive and collectively progressive fashion. Rather, they are opportunists whose public 

personae and brands are built around unbridled capitalist spirits—living fast, dying hard, and 

letting the rest of the world go to hell. The form of development they are enacting, ironically, 

is in many respects an ultra-libertarian one—one that tacitly rejects what liberal political 

economy defines as “the public good,” and denies the need for any sort of state.

The second major reason why deviant globalization matters follows directly from the 

insight that this phenomenon is really the truest manifestation of libertarianism: deviant globalization degrades state power, erodes state capacity, corrodes state legitimacy, and, ultimately, 

undermines the foundations of mainstream globalization in ways that are only now being fully 

recognized. More specifically, deviant globalization is creating a new type of nonstate political 

actor, what John Robb calls a “global guerrilla,”10 the sort of super-empowered individuals 

whose geopolitical importance is only likely to grow in the coming decade.

Deviant entrepreneurs wield political power in three distinct ways. First, they have 

money. As we have seen, deviant entrepreneurs control huge, growing swathes of the global 

economy, operating most prominently in places where the state is hollowed or hollowing out. 

Again, corruption fueled by drug money on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border exemplifies 

this point.11 Second, many deviant entrepreneurs control and deploy a significant quota of 

violence—an occupational hazard for people working in extralegal industries, who cannot 

count on the state to adjudicate their contractual disputes. This use of violence brings deviant 

entrepreneurs into primal conflict with one of the state’s central sources of legitimacy, namely 

its monopoly (in principle) over the socially sanctioned use of force. Third, and most controversially, deviant entrepreneurs in some cases are emerging as private providers of security, 

health care, and infrastructure—that is, precisely the kind of goods that functional states are 

supposed to provide to their citizens. (However, since they are provided privately, to the deviant 

entrepreneurs’ personal constituents, they are not “public goods” in the sense of goods equally 

accessible to all citizens.) Hizballah in Lebanon, criminal syndicates in the favelas of Brazil, 

the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta in Nigeria, and narcotraffickers such 

as the Zetas in Mexico are all deviant entrepreneurs who not only have demonstrated they can 

shut down areas of their host states’ basic functional capacity, thereby upsetting global markets 

half a world away, but are also increasingly providing social services to local constituencies.

What makes these political actors unusual is that, rather that seeking to build or capture 

institutionalized state power, they thrive in (and indeed prefer) weak-state environments, and 

their activities reinforce the conditions of this weakness. Deviant entrepreneurs generally do 

not start out as political actors in the sense of actors who wish to control or usurp the state. In 

the first iteration, deviant globalization represents an entrepreneurial response to the failure 

of mainstream development: an effort by bootstrapping individuals to get ahead in a world 

where the state is no longer leading the way. Once these deviant industries take off, however, 

they begin to take on a political life of their own. The state weakness that was a permissive 

condition of deviant globalization’s initial local emergence becomes something that the now 

empowered deviant entrepreneurs seek to perpetuate and even exacerbate. They siphon off 

money, loyalty, and sometimes territory; they increase corruption; and they undermine the 

rule of law. They also force well-functioning states in the global system to spend an inordinate 
10

Gilman, Goldhammer, and Weber

amount of time, energy, and attention trying to control what comes in and out of their borders. 

Although deviant globalization may initially have flowered as a result of state hollowing, as 

it develops, it becomes a positive feedback loop in much the same way that many successful 

animal and plant species, as they invade a natural ecosystem, reshape their ecosystem in ways 

that improve their ability to exclude competitors.12

What is distinctive in this dynamic is that very few of these political actors have any interest in actually taking control of the formal institutions of the state. Deviant entrepreneurs 

have developed market niches in which extractable returns are more profitable, and frankly 

easier, than anything they could get by “owning” enough of the state functions to extract rents 

from those instead. Organizations such as the First Command of the Capital in Brazil, the 

‘Ndrangheta in Italy, or the drug cartels in Mexico have no interest in taking over the states 

in which they operate. Why would they want that? This would only mean that they would be 

expected to provide a much broader and less selective menu of services to everyone, including 

ungrateful and low-profit clients, those so-called citizens. None of these organizations plan to 

declare sovereign independence and file for membership in the United Nations. Corrupt the 

state? Of course. Own the state? No, thanks. What they want, simply, is to carve out autonomous spaces where they can do their business without state intervention.

This underscores a crucial point about deviant globalization: it does not thrive in truly 

“failed” states—that is, in places where the state has completely disappeared—but rather in 

weak but well-connected states, in which the deviant entrepreneur can establish a zone of 

autonomy while continuing to rely on the state for some of the vestigial services it continues to 

furnish.13 Alas, states and deviant entrepreneurs are unlikely to find a sustainable equilibrium. 

On the one hand, the more deviant industries grow, the more damage they do to the political 

legitimacy of the states within which the deviant entrepreneurs operate, thus undermining the 

capacity of the state to provide the infrastructure and services that the deviant entrepreneurs 

want to catch a free ride on. On the other hand, the people living in the semi-autonomous 

zones controlled by deviant entrepreneurs increasingly recognize those entrepreneurs rather 

than the hollowed out state as the real source of local power and authority—if for no other 

reason than the recognition that if you cannot beat them, you should join them. Of course, just 

because these deviant providers of alternative governance functions end up seeming “legitimate” 

in the eyes of local stakeholders (if only because of the economic “development” benefits they 

provide), this type of governance is usually poorly institutionalized and nontransparent about 

both ends and means. Nonetheless, as these groups take over functions that would have been 

expected of the state, their stakeholders increasingly lose interest in the hollowed-out formal 

state institutions.14 Thus, even though deviant entrepreneurs have no desire to kill their host 

state, they may end up precipitating a process whereby the state implodes catastrophically. 

Something like this took place in Colombia in the 1980s, in Zaire/Congo since the 1990s, 

and may be taking place in Mexico today.
11

Deviant Globalization

What Is to Be Done? Think Regulatory Harmonization, Not Eradication

So where does the concept of deviant globalization leave us from a policy perspective? Let us 

begin by naming what has not worked. Most contemporary policy efforts aimed at addressing 

deviant globalization are dysfunctional—along a spectrum from simply ineffective to stunningly self-defeating. America’s “war on drugs” is now recognized as overall an expensive and perhaps tragic failure. The U.S. Government has been fighting this (declared) war since the early 

1970s at an estimated cost so far of $2.5 trillion.15 Americans have rewritten criminal law, filled 

jails with convicts, deployed vast military capabilities abroad, revised the rules of city policing, 

and ruined millions of individual lives—and that is just the start. With some achievements 

(Colombia, Panama) notwithstanding, no one doubts who is losing this war. The winners, of 

course, have almost always been the narcotics supply chain entrepreneurs and their financiers.

Why have policymakers persisted so long with policies that clearly are not working? 

First, policymakers represent voting constituents, and these constituents, in general, put policymakers under intense pressure to make morality a primary lens through which to make 

policy choices. This involves labeling deviant entrepreneurs, their employees and associates, as 

well as their customers, as “bad actors” or simply as “criminals.” Unfortunately, this moralizing, 

criminological approach creates an analytic deficit: by focusing on quashing individuals, it loses 

sight of the complex dynamics of the system in which the actors participate. And ignoring 

the system dynamic creates a policy situation that at best devolves into the legal equivalent of 

whack-a-mole, or pushes the problem over the horizon to some other neighboring jurisdiction.

More commonly, however, the moralizing approach actually makes the problem worse 

because it strengthens the system in which the deviant entrepreneurs are operating, much like 

pouring partially effective antibiotics into a rich microbial ecology. Governments’ taking an 

aggressively prohibitionist approach are most likely to weed out weaker players, clearing the 

field for more clever, more ruthless deviant entrepreneurs. On the other hand, if governments 

are lucky, persistent, or powerful enough to take down some of the strongest deviant entrepreneurs, then they leave the second-tier players highly incentivized to evolve and innovate 

so as to avoid the mistakes of their predecessors. Adaptability is, after all, the hallmark of 

deviant globalization. Putting up roadblocks, such as a long, technically sophisticated fence at 

the U.S.-Mexico border, invites experimentation and risk-taking that leads to new and more 

effective smuggling routes for illegal immigrants, more powerful methamphetamines, and, 

ultimately, surprisingly (but not unpredictably) destructive outcomes.16 Policymakers who put 

selective pressure on deviant industries without considering how the system will compensate 

and adapt are almost sure to be surprised at just how much progress the deviant entrepreneurs 

will show in response.

Despite this seemingly pessimistic perspective, it is our view that policymaking around 

deviant globalization can improve. But achieving that goal requires making some self-conscious 

(and politically painful) decisions to stop doing the things that appease our moral outrage 

but are actually making the problem worse. The prerequisite of improved policy performance 

is for policymakers to stop treating deviant globalization as if it is a removable cancer in an 

otherwise healthy global economy. So long as we have market prohibitions in a morally lumpy, 

globally connected world, we will have deviant globalization. The next step is to play for gains 
12

Gilman, Goldhammer, and Weber

as we would in a strategic interdependence situation, an iterated game where the two sides can 

neither defeat nor control each other, but where each and every action taken affects the options 

that the other will have in the next round. In that context, there are real policy opportunities 

to curb the most pernicious of the deviant industries, to channel some of the deviant energy 

into less harmful channels, and to turn some of what deviant entrepreneurs know and are 

good at into goods that benefit a broader swathe of humanity and at lower cost. These are less 

ambitious but more realistic goals than the eradication of deviant globalization.

To be specific, policymakers should avoid indulging locally specific moral codes since that 

simply creates arbitrage opportunities for bad actors. Policymakers need to look critically at 

what their real options are: if they cannot universalize/globalize both the underlying moral 

principle and the regulatory/enforcement capacity, then they either have to put moral principles partially to the side or accept that the uneven efforts to impose them are likely to end up 

empowering bad actors who will profit off of moral outrage.17 In some cases, various degrees 

of legalization may prove helpful, as has been illustrated by American experimentation with 

liquor laws over the past century. In other cases, effective management of deviant globalization may require artful regulation and enforcement that increase transparency and reduce 

arbitrage opportunities. In other words, by attempting to create a globally uniform regulatory 

framework, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and 

Flora (referred to as CITES) for illicit wildlife trafficking and the Basel Convention for toxic 

waste (to cite two examples) are on the right track—though the latter has huge loopholes and 

the former does not address capacity issues.18 What is certain is that unilateral approaches are 

almost certainly doomed to failure because that is the source of the arbitrage opportunities 

that incent deviant entrepreneurs.

Analysts who treat deviant globalization as a systems problem are able to consider a wider 

range of options for managing its impacts including, practically speaking, making deviant 

globalization less harmful. Encouraging deviant entrepreneurs to exit a given line of business, 

for example, requires understanding the local economic, legal, and political conditions—and, 

just as important, how these local conditions form part of a global system—that create arbitrage opportunities for deviant entrepreneurs to exploit. Understanding the local opportunity 

structure facing these entrepreneurs creates policy levers for changing those structures, whether 

through strategic investment in improved local law enforcement (to focus on reducing the scope 

for arbitrage), improved scrutiny of the supply chain (to increase the cost of transportation of 

the good or service from its low cost point of origin to its destination), or enhancement of legitimate local economic opportunities (to reduce the relative attractions of the illicit business). 

Such analysis will also improve the ability to anticipate economic diversification strategies for 

deviant entrepreneurs, even absent interventions into the opportunity space.

Notes

1

 Milton Friedman, PBS interview, October 1, 2000, available at <www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/

shared/minitext/int_miltonfriedman.html>. 2

 This chapter is drawn in part from material in Nils Gilman, Jesse Goldhammer, and Steven Weber, eds., Deviant 

Globalization: Black Market Economy in the 21st Century (New York: Continuum Books, 2011). 
13

Deviant Globalization

3

 Philip Caputo, “The Fall of Mexico,” The Atlantic Monthly, December 2009. 4

 William Finnegan, “Silver or Lead: A Drug Cartel’s Reign of Terror,” The New Yorker, May 31, 2010. 5

 Cultural analyses of mainstream globalization tend to highlight this “deterritorializing” aspect of globalization; 

see, for example, John Tomlinson, Globalization and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); and 

Nikos Papastergiadis, The Turbulence of Migration: Globalization, Deterritorialization and Hybridity (New York: 

Wiley, 2000). 6

 Phil Williams, From the New Middle Ages to a New Dark Age: The Decline of the State and U.S. Strategy (Carlisle 

Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, June 2008). 7

 Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor (Cambridge: Harvard 

University Press, 2006). 8

 Jeremy Seabrook, Travels in the Skin Trade (London: Pluto Press, 2001), and Rachel G. Sacks, “Commercial Sex 

and the Single Girl: Women’s Empowerment through Economic Development in Thailand,” Development in Practice

7, no. 4 (1997), describe the way that Thai “bar girls” use savings from their days in prostitution to start sewing or 

hairdressing businesses back in their villages of origin. Another example is the way that rappers (legendarily) parlay 

profits from drug dealing into starting a recording company; see the obituary by Jon Pareles, “Eazy-E, 31, Performer 

Who Put Gangster Rap on the Charts,” The New York Times, March 28, 1995. 9

 Ryan Bishop and Lillian S. Robinson, Night Market: Sexual Cultures and the Thai Economic Miracle (New York: 

Routledge, 1999); and Vidyamali Samarasinghe, “Female Labor in Sex Trafficking: A Darker Side of Globalization,” 

in A Companion to Feminist Geography, ed. Lise Nelson and Joni Seager (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publications, 2005). 10 John Robb, Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization (Hoboken, NJ: John 

Wiley & Sons, 2007). 11 See Judith Miller, “The Mexicanization of American Law Enforcement,” City Journal 19, no. 4 (2009), available 

at <www.city-journal.org/2009/19_4_corruption.html>, quoting Robert Killebrew, a retired U.S. Army colonel 

and senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for a New American Security: “‘This is a national security 

problem that does not yet have a name’ . . . The drug lords . . . are seeking to ‘hollow out our institutions, just as they 

have in Mexico.’” 12 John P. Sullivan and Robert J. Bunker, “Drug Cartels, Street Gangs, and Warlords,” Small Wars & Insurgencies

13, no. 2 (2002); Max G. Manwaring, Street Gangs: The New Urban Insurgency (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic 

Studies Institute, 2005); and Enrique Desmond Arias, “The Dynamics of Criminal Governance: Networks and 

Social Order in Rio de Janeiro,” Journal of Latin American Studies 38, no. 2 (2006). 13 One critical misconception promoted by the liberal enthusiasts of globalization, most prominently by Thomas 

P.M. Barnett in The Pentagon’s New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century (Putnam, 2005) is that the 

cause of poverty and insecurity and ultimately state fragility is “disconnectedness” from the world economy. In fact, 

all of the most seriously “failed” states—Congo, Somalia, Afghanistan—are deeply connected to the global economy, albeit in ways that are hard to see clearly from London, New York, or Washington. While it is true that they 

remain weakly connected to the formal and legal parts of the global economy, such places are in fact highly deviantly 

connected—via the illicit trade in minerals, via piracy, or via the global drug trade, and so on. The crucial issue, in 

other words, is not connectedness or disconnectedness, but rather what kind of connectedness. 14 Diane E. Davis, “Irregular armed forces, shifting patterns of commitment, and fragmented sovereignty in the 

developing world,” Theory and Society 39, nos. 3–4 (2010). Globalization, by undermining national political institutions, also undermines the political centrality of national identity. But what appears to be replacing the national 

is not a “global” political identity (as “cosmopolitical” dreamers have hoped), but rather a return to more localized 

identities rooted in clan, sect, ethnicity, corporation, and gang. 15 Claire Suddath, “The War on Drugs,” Time, March 25, 2009. 16 Jerome H. Skolnick, “Rethinking the Drug Problem,” Daedalus 121, no. 3 (1992). 17 See Bruce Yandle, “Bootleggers & Baptists: The Education of a Regulatory Economist,” Regulation (May–June 

1983). 18 Jennifer Clapp, “Toxic Exports: Despite Global Treaties, Hazardous Waste Trade Continues,” in Deviant 

Globalization.

15

Chapter 2

Lawlessness and Disorder: An Emerging 

Paradigm for the 21st Century

Phil Williams

The 20th century will probably go down in history as the exemplar of geopolitical interstate conflict with two World Wars centered in Europe followed by over four decades of the 

Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union. The 21st century, in contrast, could 

well become a period of lawlessness and disorder—a century in which states are in long-term 

decline; new violent actors challenge states and one another; resources such as food, water, 

and energy become a central focus of violent competition and of large illicit markets; demographic and environmental trends pose challenges to sustainability, security, and stability; and 

the severity of problems is significantly increased by the interconnections and often perverse 

interactions among them, or what Thomas Homer-Dixon termed “negative synergies.”1

This agenda of challenges is highly diverse and complex, and these qualities alone could 

overload the management capacity of both individual states and the international community. Individual states, for the most part, are entering an era of retrenchment characterized by 

reduced budgets on everything from welfare to national security. While this might result in 

enhanced efficiencies and greater creativity, it could also reduce capacity and resilience at the 

national level. And even though there is broad agreement that many threats and challenges 

cannot be dealt with unilaterally, multilateral responses might prove equally problematic. 

Indeed, multilateral governance structures and strategies, while the darlings of liberal institutionalists, have inherent and fundamental weaknesses such as buck-passing, lowest-common 

denominator responses, and free riding. The search for international consensus often becomes 

no more than a cloak or a rationale for procrastination and inaction. Many states engage in 

cosmetic conformity with international norms and standards but tacitly defect from these 

regimes, violating agreements and ignoring obligations while continuing to pay lip service to 

the collective. In other words, both unilateral and multilateral approaches to emerging security 

challenges are likely to prove fundamentally inadequate.
16

Williams

Some commentators wholeheartedly reject such arguments. Indeed, many observers 

are sanguine about the current and emerging threat environment. It has been argued, in 

particular, that:

• the threat to states from networked actors, whether terrorists or criminals, has been 

greatly exaggerated and networks can be defeated by states that are largely composed 

of hierarchical bureaucratic organizations2

• the “core” of advanced economies is spreading both economic prosperity and stability 

to countries in the “gap” and gradually integrating them into a stable political and 

economic order3

• the United States currently is not confronting a clear and present danger but enjoying 

“clear and present safety.”4

Regarding the first of these arguments, it is hard to disagree with the assertion that 

networks can be defeated. Of course they can, but only after enormous and asymmetrical 

investment of time and resources, not to mention blood and treasure. U.S. military forces in 

Iraq, for example, ultimately adapted, and learned and internalized lessons more effectively 

than the fragmented insurgency opposing them.5 Indeed, one of the key lessons was that a 

networked insurgency provides opportunities for wedge-driving, something that was done to 

good effect in the Anbar Awakening.6 Yet even in Iraq, it is not clear that the defeat is absolute; 

the resilience and capacity for resurgence of both criminal and terrorist networks should not 

be ignored. Even when a network is completely dismantled, long-term consolidation of victory is sometimes confounded by what might be termed network succession, with one set of 

networked violent actors replacing another. For example, the Medellín and Cali cartels were 

defeated, but what was arguably their Colombian successor, the Revolutionary Armed Forces 

of Colombia (FARC) insurgency, as well as their Mexican successors, the Sinaloa Federation 

and the Zetas Organization, are if anything even more formidable. Moreover, when networks 

are a key component of illicit markets, destroying some of the networked organizations does 

not readily translate into anything more than a temporary disruption of the market. In some 

cases, such as Mexico, state success in weakening, decapitating, or destroying major drug-trafficking networks simply creates “vacancy chains” that encourage even greater violence among 

those that are left.7

The second thesis is little more than a modernized variant of Wilsonianism with an 

emphasis on the spread of free market economies as a major accompaniment to the powerful 

attraction of liberal democracies—both of which are deeply enshrined in the core states. Like 

traditional Wilsonianism, it suffers from a high degree of wishful thinking. Unfortunately, it is 

not clear that the core is integrating into the gap. In fact, the relationship between the core and 

gap seems to be going in the opposite direction from that envisaged by Thomas Barnett, with 

the gap enlarging at the expense of the core. Problems are spilling over from disorderly parts 

of the world into what are widely considered the zones of peace, stability, and order. What we 

are witnessing is not the success of the U.S. civilizing mission, but rather what Lillian Bobea 
17

Lawlessness and Disorder

termed “the revenge of the periphery,” a trend that is evident in illegal migration, transnational 

crime, terrorism, piracy, and even insurgency.8

The authors of the third argument regarding a clear and present safety do not actually 

deny the existence of complex security threats and challenges; rather, they argue that current 

threats are inflated and the responses are overly militarized while emerging threats are largely 

ignored, especially in terms of resource allocation.9 Their argument is far more compelling than 

the title of their article suggests, not least because the authors see clear and present safety as 

transitory. In their view, “the main global challenges facing the United States today are poorly 

resourced and given far less attention than ‘sexier’ problems, such as war and terrorism. These 

include climate change, pandemic diseases, global economic instability, and transnational 

criminal networks—all of which could serve as catalysts to severe and direct challenges to 

U.S. security interests.”10 This assessment is, in many respects, very compelling. The difficulty 

is that the more traditional security threats have not simply gone away to be replaced by a new 

set: new and old challenges coexist as part of a more crowded agenda in which traditional, 

resurgent, nascent, and truly novel and unfamiliar security threats demand attention in a climate dominated by economic austerity. Great power conflict, for example, has not disappeared 

and, as discussed below, against a backdrop of climate change and intensifying competition 

for diminishing natural resources could well come to the forefront again. Adversaries with the 

desire or capacity to do harm to the United States cannot be ignored now or in the future. The 

danger is that they will present new challenges more difficult to delineate, define, deter, and 

defend against. The inherent opportunity cost of managing one set of challenges inevitably 

results in attention and resource deficits in relation to other problems. In this connection, one 

of the most serious problems is the bias toward the familiar, which accentuates the inherent 

difficulties of “managing the unexpected.”11 Most of the emerging and nontraditional security 

challenges are novel or unfamiliar, extending well beyond the comfort zones of policymakers 

and officials. As such, they will likely prove impervious to the usual range of policy options 

embedded in standard operational procedures. Bureaucracy and budget managers are good at 

responding to routine and familiar challenges, but when the challenges are new and different, 

the level of competency tends to decline and resources are constrained at the very time they 

are most needed. 

Adversaries cannot be ignored. Nevertheless, one of the key assumptions of this chapter 

is that security challenges emanate not only from hostile actors and pernicious interactions 

such as security dilemmas and arms races, but also from certain conditions that promote 

violence and instability—and in turn are worsened by them. The United States, in particular, 

tends to be overtly focused on adversaries or enemies who are then typically characterized as 

embodiments of evil. A paradigm shift is needed to create at least an accompanying focus on 

the kinds of conditions and the confluence of trends that create instability, disorder, and chaos. 

Some of these conditions and trends might not be susceptible to preventive measures; even so, 

acknowledgment of their debilitating consequences might make it possible, under some circumstances, to develop mitigation strategies. Yet successful mitigation might be the exception 

rather than the rule, especially as more security challenges will likely fall into the category of 

wicked problems that are not amenable to easy or readily available solutions.
18

Williams

In this connection, not only is governance inadequate to meet the challenges, as discussed 

above, but also governance, or more accurately poor or insufficient governance, is one of the 

challenges. In fact, we are seeing a crisis of governance that was effectively delineated by James 

Rosenau in his seminal Turbulence in World Politics.

12 Rosenau’s analysis identified a crisis in 

authority structures that was immediately manifest in the collapse of the Soviet Union and 

the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact. During the two decades since then, more and more 

states have been characterized by weakness or fragility, and a few have actually fallen into the 

category of failed states. In other words, poor governance is itself a major source of instability, 

insecurity, and disorder. Indeed, many of the security challenges of the 21st century are likely 

to have more to do with inadequate governance than traditional great power rivalries.

Another important dimension of the emerging security environment is that unpredictable interactions among security challenges increase the potential for instability and disorder. 

Analysts have become quite skillful at identifying individual trends or silos of change but are 

far less adept at looking at the space between the silos and the ways in which different trends 

and challenges interact—often in surprising and highly damaging ways. What are too often 

treated as separate security threats and challenges are, in fact, interconnected in ways that 

increase the prospect for unexpected crises and unfavorable outcomes. Nowhere is this more 

obvious than in the favelas of Brazil.

Poverty has always been a problem, but in returning to the favelas after 30 years, Janice 

Perlman found that the pervasive impact of drugs and violence had transformed marginalization of the population into a reality and made it far more difficult for people to get out.13 Other 

observers have discussed the toxic mix of kids, drugs, and guns that exist in parts of Latin 

America and that have made some favelas more dangerous than war zones.14 Similarly, West 

Africa has long suffered from poverty, rapid urbanization and large slums, youth unemployment, corrupt governance, and weak institutions. In recent years, however, the influx of Latin 

American drug-trafficking organizations using the region as a transshipment point for cocaine 

en route to Europe has added an incendiary component to this already volatile mixture.15 This 

has been most evident in Guinea-Bissau. Since its independence in 1974, Guinea-Bissau has 

suffered from chronic instability and a series of military coups. In recent years, however, the 

drug trade has exacerbated the situation, with allegations that both political and military elites 

have assisted the drug-trafficking organizations. In April 2012, the civilian leadership was 

ousted in yet another military coup that some commentators believe was designed to protect 

military profits obtained through facilitating the drug trade.16

Against this background, this analysis identifies a set of global trends or megatrends, 

some of which have and will continue to shape the security environment, while others will 

determine the nature and the severity of the security challenges faced by the United States 

and the international community during the next several decades. The notion of megatrends 

typically refers to “great forces in societal development that will affect all areas—state, market 

and civil society—for many years to come. . . . In other words, megatrends are our knowledge 

about the probable future. Megatrends are the forces that define our present and future worlds, 

and the interaction between them is as important as each individual megatrend.”17 Sometimes 

megatrends will have an offsetting, softening, mitigating, or neutralizing impact on each other, 

yet they can also be mutually reinforcing in their impact, creating tipping points to disorder, 
19

Lawlessness and Disorder

insecurity, and illegality. The discussion of each of these megatrends is inevitably brief and 

superficial but perhaps sufficient to tease out the implications for security and the development 

of illicit activities and markets.

Few trends or developments, however, are wholly negative in their impact. Urbanization, 

for example, has some positive consequences. Cities are engines of growth, drivers of innovation, concentrations of cultural vitality, and, as Edward Glaese has argued, provide “the clearest 

path from poverty to prosperity.”18 Indeed, the urban poor are generally better off than the rural 

poor, which is why cities attract people from rural areas. Nevertheless, cities—as suggested 

below—also pose enormous challenges to security and stability. The issue is not an either/

or; it is about the mix of positives and negatives. And the argument here is that sensitivity to 

the negatives needs to increase significantly.

The Drivers of Insecurity and Illegality

Globalization

Much has already been written about globalization, which is readily understood in terms of 

an enormous increase in the speed, ease, and density of transactions, reduction of transaction 

costs for the movement of commodities, development of various kinds of global flows, and 

increased interactions of individuals, societies, and economies. Although many benefits accrue 

from globalization, it is clear that it has a serious downside. Globalization has increased insecurity in a variety of ways—challenging cultural identity, disrupting social and political norms, 

and increasing transnational global flows that no single government can control and that are 

increasingly difficult to monitor. Globalization has facilitated various forms of trafficking and 

empowered criminal enterprises, has had disruptive consequences that have created incentives 

for criminality, and has enabled criminals and other violent armed groups to share operational 

knowledge and, in some cases, to collaborate.

Indeed, globalization has become an important facilitator for transnational organized 

crime, drug traffickers, terrorists, and the like. Those involved in trafficking illegal commodities 

(prohibited, regulated, counterfeit, or stolen goods) including drugs, endangered species, small 

arms, nuclear material, cultural property, and counterfeit pharmaceuticals are able to hide them 

in the vast amount of licit trade, creating both needle-in-a-haystack and needle-in-a-needlestack challenges to state entities seeking to combat trafficking. Although Stephen Krasner is 

correct in his observation that states “have never been able to perfectly regulate transborder 

flows,” it is arguable that they have never before had to contend with the sheer volume, speed, 

and diversity of the people and commodities that cross their borders both legally and illegally.19 In many respects, the prosaic and unheralded symbol of globalization is the intermodal 

container, a development that has transformed the scale of global trade by reducing transaction 

costs and—in spite of such measures as the Container Security Initiative rolled out by U.S. 

Customs and Border Protection—largely denied states the ability to control what comes 

across their borders unless they are willing to place global trade on hold. As the author of the 

definitive history of the container noted:
20

Williams

With a single ship able to disgorge 3,000 40-foot-long containers in a matter of hours, 

and with a port such as Long Beach or Tokyo handling perhaps 10,000 loaded containers on the average workday, and with each container itself holding row after row 

of boxes stacked floor to ceiling, not even the most careful examiners have a remote 

prospect of inspecting it all. Containers can be just as efficient for smuggling undeclared 

merchandise, illegal drugs, undocumented immigrants, and terrorist bombs as for 

moving legitimate cargo.20

Consequently, what Carolyn Nordstrom termed “the illusion of inspection” is likely to remain 

the dominant approach with “taxes and tariffs” acting as “obstacles not obligations” and borders 

as boundaries not barriers.21

Globalization has also been as empowering for organized crime as it has for legitimate 

business. This is reflected in what might be termed an expanding and more diversified pool of 

criminal enterprises with a transnational reach and in some cases a global presence. Russian 

criminals, for example, have followed the sun, establishing themselves in Israel, Spain, Mexico, 

the Caribbean, and Thailand among other places.22 Chinese criminal organizations have a 

presence in North America and much of Europe as well as in their more traditional haunts in 

Asia. Perhaps no criminal organizations, however, are as ubiquitous as Nigerians, who operate 

in countries as diverse as China, Thailand, Paraguay, Holland, and Germany, and are involved 

in a mix of criminal activities ranging from drug trafficking and women trafficking to various 

forms of financial fraud. Mexican drug-trafficking organizations import precursor chemicals 

from China, work with a resurgent Sendero Luminoso in Peru, have branches, franchises, 

or affiliates in many U.S. cities, preserve links with the ’Ndrangheta in Italy, and maintain a 

presence in West Africa for moving cocaine to Europe.23

In addition to empowering organized crime and encouraging it to go transnational, 

globalization has had highly disruptive consequences for many societies, thereby ensuring a 

steady flow of recruits to criminal organizations. Globalization has winners and losers—and 

the pain for the losers can be enormous. In an odd way, organized crime can help to mitigate 

this pain. In zones of social and economic exclusion, informal and illegal markets provide 

critical safety nets while organized crime not only offers one of the few forms of employment 

but also provides a degree of governance and even public goods. In the absence of opportunities 

in the legal economy, people simply migrate to the illegal economy. As James Mittelman notes, 

“transnational organized crime groups operate below as well as beside the state by offering 

incentives to the marginalized segments of the population trying to cope with the adjustment costs of globalization. These groups reach down and out to the lower rungs of social 

structures—the impoverished—a substratum that does not lend itself to the easy strategies 

prescribed by the state.”24 While it is sometimes argued that globalization has slowed down as 

a result of economic recession, this merely reinforces the argument about organized crime as an 

alternative career path: where the licit economy is not providing jobs or career opportunities, 

people migrate to the illicit economy and opt for criminal careers.
21

Lawlessness and Disorder

Population Growth and Demographic Trends

Population growth will continue to be a driver for the next few decades. After passing 7 billion 

in late 2011, world population is expected to surpass 9 billion people by 2050 and—although 

the rate of increase will decline in the latter half of the century—to exceed 10 billion by 2100.25

Disentangling the impact of such increases on security, order, and stability is not easy. At the 

most obvious and simplistic level, increased population places new demands on the environment, but also on food, water, and energy supplies. Unless there are commensurate advances 

in food production, water availability, and the development of alternative energy sources, these 

areas will be subject to increased competition, supply deficits, and disruptions. Accordingly, 

they will look increasingly attractive to organized crime. This is discussed more fully below.

The issue, however, is not simply one of increasing numbers. As Jack Goldstone has noted, 

“international security will depend less on how many people inhabit the world than on how 

the global population is composed and distributed: where populations are declining and where 

they are growing, which countries are relatively older and which are more youthful, and how 

demographics will influence population movements across regions.”26 In this connection, as 

the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs has noted, “most of the additional 3 billion people from now to 2100 will enlarge the population of developing countries, 

which is projected to rise from 5.7 billion in 2011 to 8.0 billion in 2050.”27 In many of these 

countries, state capacity is limited, employment opportunities are constrained, and there is 

a significant gap between the “youth bulge” and available employment opportunities. Indeed, 

many developing countries are “faced with the necessity of providing education or employment 

to large cohorts of children and youth even as the current economic and financial crisis unfolds. 

The situation in the least developed countries is even more pressing because children under 15 

constitute 40 percent of their population and young people account for a further 20 percent.”28

The implications for security and stability are sobering. Young men, in particular, are a 

major source of violence and unrest in societies. In Latin America, and increasingly in parts of 

Africa, they have gravitated toward gangs, drugs, and guns, and there is nothing to suggest that 

such a trend will change as the youth population continues to increase. Urban youth with few 

prospects are not a force for stability in society. Gangs provide a sense of identity and belonging 

as well as a degree of empowerment and rationale for violence. For those who do not enter 

gangs, migration—legal or illegal—might appear an attractive option, and it seems likely that 

both human smuggling and human trafficking will experience major increases over the next few 

decades. As more and more young people look for opportunities simply not available in their 

countries of origin, unless developed countries liberalize immigration, the opportunities for 

criminal entrepreneurship in the people-moving business will increase significantly. This conclusion is reinforced by general migration trends. As a study by the United Kingdom Ministry 

of Defence has noted, “The number of international migrants has increased from a total of 75 

million a year in 1965, to 191 million a year in 2005 of whom around 10 million are refugees, 

and up to 40 million are illegal migrants. That number may grow to 230 million by 2050.”29

If young populations feed into criminal activities on the supply side, older populations 

might do so on the demand side. According to Jack Goldstone, “The European countries, 

Canada, the United States, Japan, South Korea, and even China are aging at unprecedented 
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rates. . . . In 2050, approximately 30 percent of Americans, Canadians, Chinese, and Europeans 

will be over 60, as will more than 40 percent of Japanese and South Koreans.”30 While there 

are concerns that this will lead to declines in productivity, one sector that will flourish is health 

care: “As populations age, they will demand more health care for longer periods of time.”31 When 

this is combined with the advances in medicine, it seems likely that the demand for replacement 

organs will increase. Although organ trafficking was long dismissed as an urban myth, it is clear 

that it has occurred in several countries. In one case in Kosovo, for instance, organized crime 

was clearly involved. According to one commentary, the organ-trafficking network “included 

criminals from countries such as . . . Moldova, Ukraine, Turkey, Russia and Israel.”32 Such cases 

are all too likely to expand in scope and frequency. After all, there are increasing numbers of 

young, healthy potential donors in the developing world, increasing numbers of potential recipients in the developed world, and more than enough criminal middlemen and unscrupulous 

healthcare workers willing to match them up regardless of laws and regulations.

Urbanization

Cities have always been engines of economic growth, repositories of wealth, power, and entrepreneurship, and centers of culture, scholarship, and innovation. But they have also been 

breeding grounds of disease, concentrations of poverty and crime, and drivers of instability 

and revolution. For a variety of reasons, the future development of cities is more likely to create 

negative rather than positive effects and precipitate instability rather than create order. Some 

urban areas will even degenerate into what Richard Norton has termed “feral cities,” which are 

effectively ungovernable and out of control.33 What makes this all the more important is that 

in the next few decades, there will be more cities, more larger cities, and more globally connected cities. Big cities mean big problems, and globally connected cities mean global problems. 

Before examining these problems in more detail, however, it is necessary to offer some brief 

observations about the growing importance of cities. The analysis then considers ways in which 

continued urbanization might impinge on stability and security.

One of the most dramatic facets of urbanization is the growth of megacities. Inclusion in 

this category requires 10 million or more inhabitants. Yet, as one scholar has noted:

The number increased dramatically from three megacities (Mexico City, New York, 

Tokyo) in 1975 to around 20 in 2007 and is projected to reach almost 30 worldwide 

by 2025. The emerging megacities whose populations range from five to ten million 

have likewise experienced a notable increase. The number is expected to increase 

from currently about 30 to almost 50 in 2025. Together, “established” and emerging 

megacities now account for roughly 15% of the world’s total urban population.34

The sheer size of such cities creates major environmental hazards, generates serious law and 

order problems especially in poorer areas of poorer cities, and strains infrastructures that are 

already overstretched. Yet the problem is not simply one of size; even smaller cities of a few 

million can become violent and dystopian as has happened in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and 

Caracas, Venezuela, both of which have seen homicide rates surpass 200 per 100,000.
23

Lawlessness and Disorder

The most important facet of the link between urbanization and security is probably the 

growth of slums. The UN-Habitat report on The State of the World’s Cities 2006/7 described 

slums as the “emerging human settlements of the 21st century.”35 The report also noted that 

“urbanization has become virtually synonymous with slum growth, especially in sub-Saharan 

Africa, Western Asia, and Southern Asia.”36 Characterized by lack of durable housing, sufficient living area, access to water and sanitation, and security against eviction, slums can be 

understood best in terms of Castell’s notion of zones of social and economic exclusion.37 They 

are generally areas where the state, in terms of the provision of services, is either minimalist or 

absent. Many arriving from rural areas in search of economic opportunity find that that they 

have merely traded rural destitution for urban destitution. In these circumstances, resentment 

and alienation are likely to be widespread. This dynamic was captured in 1996 by Wally 

N’Dow, head of the Habitat II Conference, who noted that there were already more than 600 

million people officially homeless or living in life-threatening urban conditions and warned 

that “a low-grade civil war is fought every day in the world’s urban centers. Many cities are 

collapsing. We risk a complete breakdown in cities. People feel alienated.”38 These comments, 

although remarkably prescient, were if anything an underestimation of the problem. If present 

trends continue, the world slum population will be 2 billion in 2030.39 In other words, by then 

the number of people living in the conditions highlighted by Dow will have more than tripled 

since he made his comments. 

Another key dimension is the enormous potential for pernicious interactions between 

urban growth on the one side and economic crises, high levels of unemployment, and weak and 

inadequate governance on the other.40 Although cities provide new opportunities for some, the 

zones of social and economic exclusion will expand enormously. Few cities in the developing 

world will have the capacity to generate sufficient jobs to meet the demand of their growing 

populations. And one group that tends to suffer disproportionately from unemployment 

consists of youths and young men. The problem here, as Thomas Homer-Dixon has observed, 

is that “underemployed, urbanized young men are an especially volatile group that can easily 

be drawn into organized crime.”41 They also provide the main recruitment pool for street 

gangs, terrorists, rioters, predatory criminals, and the like. In other words, the youth bulge has 

increasingly become an urban youth bulge with dangerous consequences. 

In many parts of the world, rapid urbanization has created such overwhelming problems 

that the state has simply stepped back and abandoned any pretense of providing governance 

in many of the massive slums. Although the Brazilian government is currently trying to re-introduce state power into selected favelas in Rio ahead of the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 

Olympic Games, the long-term success of this initiative remains uncertain. Elsewhere, large 

parts of many cities have become extremely hazardous for the instruments of state power 

and representatives of state authority, especially law enforcement and military forces. Cities 

in the 21st century will continue to provide enormous opportunities for “hit and run” tactics, 

disruption of efforts to establish the authority and legitimacy that are essential to state-building, and kidnappings and other criminal activities that help to fund insurgency and sectarian 

violence. The concomitant of this is the growth of fear and insecurity. In some cities, fear has 

become so pervasive that it has led to the creation of fortified communities and “protected 

enclaves.”42 Cities have become segmented with the fortified enclaves representing one type 
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of no-go zone and slums and high violence areas representing another. This segmentation or 

“spatial transformation” into “safe” and “dangerous” localities dramatically manifests the stark 

juxtaposition of wealth and poverty in cities.43 As such, it could well increase the long-term 

potential for violence. 

Unfortunately, the challenges of urbanization have not evoked a commensurate response. 

City governance, like state governance, is often corrupt, ineffective, and patchy at best. It is not 

surprising, therefore, that bottom-up or organic but informal governance mechanisms emerge 

as a substitute for governance from above. This is both positive and negative. It is positive in 

that it provides some degree of order, limited but real economic opportunities, and rudimentary services; it is negative in that the providers are often criminal organizations simply using 

paternalism to enhance their own security. This phenomenon is visible in the Cape Flats in 

South Africa where, as Andre Standing has noted, “the criminal economy delivers employment and goods to thousands of individuals who are socially excluded,” while the “criminal 

elite provides . . . ‘governance from below’ . . . by performing functions traditionally associated 

with the state.”44 These functions include dispute settlement, a degree of social protection, and 

even private philanthropy that is at least a partial substitute for state provision of welfare.45

If anything, the phenomenon is more striking in the slums of Kingston, Jamaica, where 

the “dons” provide employment, services, and protection and in some cases “enjoy respect 

and greater legitimacy than formal state actors and institutions.”46 In the favelas of Rio de 

Janeiro, the emergence of both the parallel economy and alternative forms of governance was 

well described by Elizabeth Leeds in the mid-1990s. Leeds emphasized that the organizers 

of the drug business “are first and foremost businessmen who are using the physical space of 

the favela . . . as the locus of operation for a highly lucrative informal-sector activity. For that 

space to be available and protected, they must offer something in return.”47 In other words, 

the provision of employment, services, and protection is based on self-interest rather than 

altruism. Nevertheless, it has provided benefits to communities that have been ignored by the 

state apart from their victimization and exploitation by corrupt police forces. The long-term 

consequence of alternative governance, however, is that the legitimacy of the state is further 

eroded while the power of organized crime and other violent armed groups that are also service 

providers is greatly enhanced. 

Natural Resources and Global Climate Change

Another factor that seems likely to be a source of disorder, criminality, and the expansion of 

illicit markets is the rapid depletion of global resources. Michael Klare, in a series of pioneering 

studies, has shown that natural resources such as oil, gas, and certain minerals and metals are 

becoming less readily available and, as such, are increasingly a source of contention both in 

interstate relations and within states as governments and corporations compete for what is left. 

In Klare’s words, this competition “will be ruthless, unrelenting, and severe. Every key player in 

the race for what’s left will do whatever it can to advance its own position, while striving without 

mercy to eliminate or subdue all the others.”48

Criminal organizations are likely to participate in this competition even if they are on 

the margins rather than at the center. In this connection, examples of criminal exploitation 
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Lawlessness and Disorder

of natural resources abound. The diversion, theft, and bunkering of oil (loading it from small 

vessels into tankers) in and off the coast of Nigeria’s Niger Delta is a major problem and is 

carried out by a mix of criminalized militias, corrupt military and civilian officials, and transnational criminal enterprises.49 Although the militias claim to pursue political agendas, the 

profit motive seems to have become increasingly important. Something similar appears to have 

happened in the Democratic Republic of the Congo where rebel groups have become deeply 

involved in the exploitation and smuggling of minerals such as cassiterite (tin), gold, coltan, and 

wolframite (tungsten), and at least some of the violence has been over the control of mining 

sites and smuggling routes.50 Another example is Iraq and the lack of copper resources in the 

Middle East. Because copper is not produced in the region, it can fetch high black market 

prices. After major U.S. combat operations in Iraq in 2003, the electric pylons that had been 

downed were systematically stripped of their copper, which was then smuggled elsewhere 

in the region, a process that reportedly reached “industrial scale” proportions.51 In the event, 

this complicated the task of restoring Iraq’s power grid. Another example of exploitation of 

minerals is the FARC, which in recent years has become heavily involved in both the extortion 

of gold mining companies and the illegal mining of gold. It is also possible that the FARC 

will become involved in illegal mining of coltan in Venezuela. Many of the coltan deposits 

are close to the Venezuelan border with Colombia in areas where the FARC has a significant 

presence.52 Consequently, it would be natural for the FARC to extend its activities into coltan 

mining. In other instances, criminal and armed groups are implicated in the timber trade, 

with some estimates suggesting that half of all tropical timber in the international market is 

either illegally logged or illegally exported.53 The point of all this is to emphasize that violent 

armed groups and criminal organizations of one kind or another are already deeply involved 

in exploiting natural resources. The end of easily accessed resources and the increase in prices 

that will result will encourage even more extensive involvement of organized crime either in 

the illegal exploitation of these resources or in the theft and diversion of products after they 

have been obtained legally. 

Closely linked to this are the possible consequences of global climate change. Although 

the scientific debate over global climate change is ongoing, it is clear that even if only some 

of the more moderate predictions are fulfilled, the consequences could be dire. According to 

one study, even the most conservative and cautious expected climate change scenario would 

bring in its wake “heightened internal and cross-border tensions caused by large-scale migration conflict sparked by resource scarcity, particularly in the weak and failing states of Africa; 

increased disease proliferation, which will have economic consequences; and some political 

reordering.”54 It is also very likely that even this level of global climate change would create 

disruptions and shortages of food and water. Gwynne Dyer has persuasively argued that “the 

first and most important impact of climate change on human civilization will be an acute and 

permanent crisis of food supply.”55 It is probable that climate change will create significant 

disruptions in agricultural production leading to a sporadic rather than steady supply of foodstuffs, significant increases in food prices, and a commensurate increase in political instability. 

Increased food prices are believed to have been one of the drivers of the Arab Spring and are 

typically associated with revolution and upheaval. 
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Water would also be at risk. Indeed, the coordinated if not collective judgment of the 

U.S. Intelligence Community suggests that “Between now and 2040, fresh water availability 

will not keep up with demand absent more effective management of water resources. Water 

problems will hinder the ability of key countries to produce food and generate energy, posing 

a risk to global food markets and hobbling economic growth.”56 One of the problems inhibiting more effective management of the water sector is that in many countries corruption in 

this sector is already pervasive and enduring. Even more seriously, water problems and the 

increasing scope and severity of droughts will be one of the more immediate consequences of 

global climate change. This in turn could create new conflicts or exacerbate existing conflicts. 

Cattle-raiding in East Africa, for example, has already reached new levels of violence as a result 

of an extended drought.57 Furthermore, “by 2020, between 75 million and 250 million people” 

in Africa will likely “be exposed to increased water stress due to climate change.”58 In some 

countries disputes over water frequently become violent. In Yemen, according to one report, 

water disputes account for as many as 4,000 deaths a year.59 And this pattern is likely to become 

prevalent elsewhere. As the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development noted:

Within states, at the local level, competition over water use, its availability and allocation can lead to low-scale violence, which can escalate into instability within states 

and across sub-regions. Tensions between citizens and authorities over water issues 

may initially manifest themselves in the form of civil disobedience. They may, however, 

also escalate into acts of sabotage and violent protest if adequate political participation 

is not possible.60

In other words, the linkages between water stress, violence, and political instability could all 

too easily become uncomfortably close. 

Disruption of food supply and shortages of water would also provide attractive new opportunities for criminal organizations. Indeed, the creation of large and lucrative illicit markets 

in licit products would be a natural response to temporary interruptions or permanent shortages. It is no accident that black markets emerge rapidly in the aftermath of war and disaster 

as they did in Germany and Japan in World War II. They also become features of wartime, 

as Peter Andreas illustrated so compellingly in his study of the siege of Sarajevo.61 In a world 

where demand for staple products significantly surpasses supply and shortages become the 

norm, black markets are likely to be large and enduring. The energy sector in some parts of the 

world (Russia, Nigeria, Iraq, and Mexico in particular) has already been infiltrated by organized crime. Water in refugee camps has long been a precious commodity and has sometimes 

been used for extortion. It is also worth noting that organized crime has already penetrated 

the food sector in some countries. According to Italy’s largest farmers’ association, “organized 

crime has spread its involvement through the entire food chain from acquisition of farmland to 

production, from transport to supermarkets,” with criminal groups often “undercutting prices 

paid to farmers for their products and inflating prices paid by consumers in food stores.”62 The 

result of sporadic food and water supplies would be to offer transnational criminal organizations unprecedented opportunities to embed themselves very deeply in sectors that, the Italian 
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example notwithstanding, have not traditionally been among their priorities including major 

areas of activity or markets of influence. 

The other development of particular relevance is the impact of rising sea levels on population movements. Rising sea levels are projected to have an impact on countries as diverse 

as Bangladesh and the United States as well as many African coastal states. It is the countries 

of South and Southeast Asia, however, that are most vulnerable, especially in the coastal lowlands of Bangladesh, China, Japan, Vietnam and Thailand. Many of these areas have a high 

population density. The implication is that widespread population displacement will occur and 

environmental refugees will become an increasing segment of the global refugee population. 

Climate change in general could expand the displaced population to unprecedented levels with 

short-term surges resulting from extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, hurricanes, 

and the like. Much, of course, will still depend on state responses. A broadly liberal policy 

toward the immigration of environmental refugees would allow the problem to be managed 

through legal means. If states adopt strict controls on immigration, which is likely given the 

political pressure on governments to look after their own populations, organized crime will 

receive an enormous boost for its human-smuggling activities. 

On top of all this, climate change could alter strategic relationships among great powers, 

lead to interstate water conflicts, and create new and unpredictable vectors for disease transmission. Unless states are able to manage the resulting crises with a higher degree of competence 

than existing governance mechanisms and institutions, which are already under considerable 

stress, they could rapidly become scapegoats and targets. And it is to the future of the state 

that attention must now be given. 

The Decline of the State and the Rise of Alternative Governance

States clearly retain the formalities of sovereignty and the capacity to impose laws and regulations that determine the incentives and opportunities as well as the obstacles for organized 

crime and traffickers of various commodities. Yet the Westphalian state as such is past its 

peak—a peak symbolized most dramatically in the total wars of the twentieth century. Indeed, 

states face two fundamental and interconnected challenges: they are often unable to meet the 

economic needs and expectations of their citizens, and they are unable to elicit the loyalty and 

allegiance of significant portions of these same citizens. 

The inability of most states to meet the needs of their citizens reflects the rise of complex or wicked problems that are resistant to short-term or ready solutions as well as what 

might be called the long-term demography of unemployment. The job creation capacity of 

most countries of the developing world is already modest at best and will become even less 

adequate to meet the needs of growing populations, while even in developed countries large 

segments of immigrant populations remain unemployed, underemployed, or employed only 

for the most menial tasks. For countries such as Nigeria, even if they succeed in overcoming 

the mix of corruption and incompetence that pervades governance structures, it is unlikely 

they will create sufficient opportunities for a rapidly growing population. The result is that the 

disenfranchised and alienated segments of society will grow, as will disputes over resources. 

This is also likely in other African societies where the state, rather than being above politics, 
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is simply the prize of politics. In these circumstances, politics becomes a zero-sum game and 

the distribution of the spoils is heavily skewed in the favor of the group, tribe, clan, ethnic, or 

sectarian faction in power. 

Even where “governance” is not a zero-sum game, however, the weaknesses of the state 

are often debilitating. These weaknesses can be understood in terms of capacity gaps and 

functional holes. Gaps in state capacity lead to an inability to carry out the “normal” and 

“expected” functions of the modern Westphalian state and to make adequate levels of public 

goods or collective provision for large parts of the citizenry. In Latin America, this has resulted 

in what Gabriel Marcella described as “inadequate public security forces, dysfunctional judicial 

systems, inadequate jails which become training schools for criminals, and deficiencies in other 

dimensions of state structure such as maintenance of infrastructure.”63 Indeed, Marcella goes 

on to argue that “at the turn of the 21st century, Latin American countries have essentially 

two states within their boundaries: the formal and the informal. They are separate entities 

often walled off from each other, though they interact with the informal state supporting the 

other.”64 Similar observations have been made by Rapley, who has argued not only that the 

state “lacks the largesse needed to buy the loyalty of an ever-increasing number of players,” 

but also that other informal forms and structures of governance move in to replace the state.65

“Where the State can no longer provide employment, build houses, pave roads or police the 

streets, or where the police are so woefully underpaid that they supplement their incomes from 

corruption, sometimes turning on the very citizens they are meant to protect, in such cases, 

private armies and mini-states might fill the vacuum left behind by a retreating state.”66 In this 

connection, it is worth emphasizing that one reason for the resurgence of Sendero Luminoso 

in Peru has been that in most respects, the state does not exist outside Lima. Other states too 

have leaders who hold the office of president or prime minister but are really little more than 

the mayor of the capital city. Indeed, in many countries in the developing world, the state has 

failed to expand its remit far beyond the capital in terms of either extraction or provision for 

the citizens. Such limitations put both the authority and legitimacy of the state into question. 

Even where governments have long been viable and effective and have enjoyed a high level 

of legitimacy, the state often appears to be in retreat. As reducing public debt becomes the first 

priority of governments, provision for social welfare and social safety nets is contracting. The 

welfare state was really limited to a small subset of countries and was fully embraced only in 

Western (and especially Northern) Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and even 

some of these states are backing away from the levels of support they provided in the last several decades. In some instances such as Greece and Great Britain, the retrenchment process 

has provoked mob violence. For its part, the United States, having gradually created a partial 

and symbolic set of safety nets, is now in the process of restricting and reducing them. In an 

era characterized by austerity and concerns over public debt, the reality of the welfare state is 

increasingly restricted. Ironically, however, the idea of the welfare state and the expectation that 

the state is the provider of public goods remains prevalent, setting the scene for continuous 

disappointment and ultimately serious disaffection.

Since the provision of collective goods, including public security, has in many instances 

been patchy and incomplete, with the current phase characterized by the entrenchment and 

withdrawal of the state, there are numerous opportunities for alternative forms of governance, 
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Lawlessness and Disorder

often local in scope and criminal in character, to emerge as challengers to the state. Sometimes 

the inadequacies and inequities of the state provoke insurgent movements; in other cases they 

encourage the rise of warlords, militias, and gangs; in yet other cases they offer incubating 

spaces for criminal organizations that extend patronage and even some forms of philanthropy 

out of self-interest rather than altruism. Whatever, the precise nature of these groups or the 

circumstances of their emergence, they typically fill at least some of the gaps left by the state. 

This trend is likely to continue so long as governments focus on debt reduction rather than 

the effective provision of a wide range of public goods. 

Another major problem for states stems from alternative loyalties of significant portions 

of the population. During much of the 20th century this problem seemed a thing of the past 

as nation and state became increasingly synonymous and wartime cohesion solidified relationships between states and their societies. Since the end of the Cold War, however, divisions 

and fissures within states have become increasingly apparent. Indeed, in some countries the 

lack of primary affiliation with the state and the resurgence of primordial loyalties—to family, 

clan, tribe, ethnic group, religion, or sect—has created a crisis of loyalty among significant and 

often growing segments of “national” populations. As David Ronfeldt has argued, “Even for 

modern societies that have advanced far beyond a tribal stage, the tribe remains not only the 

founding form but also the forever form and the ultimate fallback form.” 67 Indeed, “many of 

the world’s current trouble spots—in the Middle East, South Asia, the Balkans, the Caucasus, 

and Africa—are in societies so riven by embedded tribal and clan dynamics that the outlook 

remains terribly uncertain for them to build professional states and competitive businesses that 

are unencumbered by tribal and clan dynamics.”68 In Somalia, Iraq, Yemen, and Afghanistan, 

clans and tribes, to say the least, have complicated efforts to engage in state-making. Similarly, 

in some African countries tribal loyalties have a significant impact on both patronage networks 

and distribution of state resources. Tribes and clans and the warlords who sometimes lead 

them typically define both their interests and their identities in ways that implicitly or explicitly 

challenge notions of public interest and collective identity as symbolized in state structures 

and institutions.69 In turn, these definitions significantly skew patterns of resource allocation. 

The gap between favored beneficiaries and the rest of the population further undermines 

the legitimacy of the state while strengthening the legitimacy of those who have succeeded 

in tilting the playing field in favor of their tribe or clan. None of this should be surprising. 

As Zonabend has observed, “The lineage or clan is more than a group of relatives united by 

privileged ties; it is also a corporate group, whose members support each other, act together 

in all circumstances, whether ritual or everyday, jointly own and exploit assets and carry out, 

from generation to generation, the same political, religious or military functions.”70 Few states 

have this kind of unity except under conditions of total warfare. And the age of total warfare 

appears to have passed. 

Significantly, criminal organizations also exhibit some of these features of tribes and 

clans. Many criminal organizations, although certainly not all, have an ethnic, family, tribal, 

or even geographical basis. Even when that is not the case, bonding mechanisms—which can 

include time spent together in prison or simply working together in risky conditions—play an 

important role. This sense of affiliation to nonstate and often violent groups, while it sometimes 

coexists easily with loyalty to the state, can also subvert or weaken the state. Moreover, in an 
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era of state budgetary retrenchment, these alternative loyalties and the organizational forms 

that accompany them will become increasingly important. From the state perspective, this is 

a highly negative synergy. 

A closely related problem for the state is the rise of subnational and transnational challengers. In part this reflects the fact that many states have inadequate social control mechanisms 

and weak law enforcement and criminal justice systems. Yet there are other considerations 

that have also fed in to the rise of transnational criminal organizations. When states are 

failing or inadequate in terms of economic management and the provision of social welfare, 

the resulting functional holes create pressures and incentives for citizens to engage in criminal 

activities. Amid conditions of economic hardship, extralegal means of obtaining basic needs 

often become critical to survival. For countries in which there is no social safety net, resort to 

the informal economy and to illicit activities is a natural response of many citizens. From this 

perspective, the growth of organized crime and drug trafficking, along with the expansion 

of prostitution, can be understood as rational responses to dire economic conditions. Such 

activities are, in part, coping mechanisms in countries characterized by poverty, poor governance, and ineffective markets. Organized crime is a highly effective form of entrepreneurship, 

providing economic opportunities and multiplier benefits that would otherwise be absent in 

economies characterized by inadequate economic management. Illicit means of advancement 

offer opportunities that are simply not available in the licit economy. The difficulty, of course, 

is that the filling of functional spaces by organized crime exacerbates the weakness of the state.

In contrast, the power of criminal organizations (along with that of clans, warlords, and 

ethnic factions) is increased by connections outside the state. According to Shultz and Dew, 

“One of the more disturbing trends of non-state armed groups is the extent to which such 

groups, including these clan-based groups, are cooperating and collaborating with each other 

in networks that span national borders and include fellow tribal groups, criminal groups, and 

corrupt political elements.”71 Even where such collaboration does not occur, many criminal 

networks operate in a transnational manner, engaging in jurisdictional arbitrage both to 

maximize profits (selling illicit and trafficked commodities where the price is highest) and to 

minimize risk, often by operating de facto safe havens. Ironically, when necessary these groups 

use national sovereignty for defensive purpose even though their transnational (illicit) business 

activities trample all over sovereignty and respect for national borders. 

Consequences and Conclusions

The preceding discussion makes it hard to avoid the conclusion that the four sets of drivers 

examined and elucidated are providing a “perfect storm” that could have profoundly unsettling 

implications for future security and stability. First, it is very akin to the “coming anarchy” that 

Robert Kaplan warned about in his seminal article in 1994.72 Although most intelligence 

forecasts for the next several decades and beyond are deliberately nonalarmist and sometimes 

even bland in tone, there is an increasing recognition of the scope and severity of the challenges 

and the way in which they might interact. The interactions make each of the challenges less 

malleable. Wicked challenges become even more wicked when they intersect and overlap. As 

John Sullivan pointed out, the urban poor, for example, are likely to be the most significantly 
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harmed by global climate change, especially as many large urban centers are coastal and particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels and extreme weather events.73 Similarly, Global Business 

Network has captured the perverse and potentially disastrous interaction of these megatrends 

in a brilliant analysis focusing on the possible 

interplay of the collapse of civil order and the dynamics of urbanization. If a climate 

change-induced system disruption reduces the ability of the government to deliver political goods (Katrina being an obvious example), it also reduces political legitimacy and 

halts economic activity, thus driving local populations to rely upon primary loyalties 

(families, neighborhoods, religious organizations, gangs, etc.) for daily survival. This 

dynamic in the political system is often (and will increasingly be) played out in urban 

settings—physical spaces that require intensive external flows of goods and services 

to survive, and that are also highly (and increasingly) interconnected and networked 

via transport and telecommunications infrastructure. Collapsing civil order within 

urban settings will offer extreme economic rewards in the form of smuggling and black 

markets; indeed, these may be the only functioning markets, making virtually everyone 

in these spaces a “bad actor.” Those unwilling or unable to profit from the chaos will 

radiate outward through refugee flows, exporting social conflicts to adjacent locales.74

Second, even if the worst-case scenarios are avoided, in the continuing dialectic between 

the forces of order and the forces of disorder, it is clear that the latter are gaining strength 

while the limits of state power are increasingly apparent. The megatrends discussed above, for 

example, can hardly fail to be advantageous to violent nonstate armed groups. Not only will 

transnational criminal organizations be empowered by the availability of whole new sets of 

black market opportunities, but also groups engaged in political violence will almost invariably 

find criminal activities an increasingly attractive funding mechanism. At one level, this is old 

news. Several decades ago Paul Clare examining the IRA’s use of extortion described it as the 

organization’s “Capone discovery.”75 This has only become more pronounced since then as 

terrorist organizations and insurgencies have appropriated the methodologies of organized 

crime. Ironically, the more powerful and prominent these organizations become, and the more 

that is expected of them as an alternative form of governance, the more deeply implicated they 

become in criminal activities. For example “Hezbollah’s financial needs have grown alongside 

its increasing legitimacy . . . as it seeks to rebuild after its 2006 war with Israel and expand its 

portfolio of political and social service activities.”76 At the same time, Iranian direct support 

seems to have declined as a result of the sanctions imposed by the international community. 

“The result, analysts believe, has been a deeper reliance on criminal enterprises—especially the 

South American cocaine trade—and on a mechanism to move its ill-gotten cash around the 

world.” 77 Recent revelations about Hizballah’s connections to cocaine trafficking from Latin 

America to Europe through West Africa and in money laundering through the Lebanese 

Canadian Bank SAL certainly seem to bear this out. Although the extent of Hizballah’s direct 

involvement in trafficking—as opposed to taxing traffickers and benefitting from the activities 

of supporters such as convicted trafficker Chekry Harb—has not yet been determined, one 

investigator described the group as operating “like the Gambinos on steroids.”78
32

Williams

The corollary is that although some strong legitimate states will endure, even those will 

face a complex and potentially overwhelming set of challenges, while the number of what 

might be termed qualified, restricted, notional, or hollow and collapsed states will only increase. 

Moreover, many of the weaker states will be neutralized, penetrated, or in some cases even 

captured by organized crime or other violent armed groups. In effect, we will continue to see 

a world of formal state structures but at least some of these will be little more than fronts for 

criminal structures. The emphasis on state sovereignty will do little to obscure the dispersal 

of real authority and power among what Rapley described as “autonomous political agents, 

equipped with their own resource bases, which make them resistant to a reimposition of centralized control.”79 One of the corollaries of this is the increasing spread of disorder from the 

zone of weak states and feral cities in the developing world to the countries of the developed 

world. In effect, “the revenge of the periphery” will become even more pronounced. 

The third and closely related development is that good governance and the rule of law will 

become even more infrequent and restricted than they are at present. Most modern societies 

are at least nominally based on the rule of law and on the notion of the state providing security for its citizens not only against external military threats but also against internal criminal 

threats. Yet in more and more instances, not only is the state unable to provide for the security 

of its citizens at the domestic levels, but increasing portions of the population are seemingly 

becoming unwilling to obey laws or accept certain norms of behavior. This is a form of anomie, 

which is generally understood as a kind of behavioral sink, a degeneration of rules and norms 

and the emergence of forms of behavior unconstrained by standard notions of what is or is not 

acceptable. In some instances this collapse of social norms—which typically reinforce the rule 

of law—results from external shocks. In such cases, not only are the restraints removed but 

norms and inhibitions that were once in place no longer apply or guide behavior. This is partly 

because the penalties for noncompliance with the norms have suddenly been removed. Yet it 

also represents something much more fundamental: a willingness to put morality and decency 

to one side, a marked absence of respect for fellow citizens who become simply targets to be 

exploited for financial gain, and a readiness to engage in forms of behavior that are normally 

regarded as reprehensible. As defined by Passas, anomie is a withdrawal of allegiance from 

conventional norms and a weakening of these norms’ guiding power on behavior.80 In some 

cases, the descent into anomie is rapid; in others it is a long-term trend. Passas, for example, 

has argued that not all anomie should be linked to strain theory or seen as in terms of sudden 

collapse. Rather, he argues, it is often a result of structural contradictions in society, which 

create a gap between expectations and the opportunity to fulfill them—a gap that typically 

results in social deviance or criminality.81 The result, however, is the same: a decline of behavioral norms and standards, the spread of both organized and disorganized crime, and the 

growing pervasiveness of violence in society. An anomic world is one in which social capital is 

replaced by criminal capital, violence is no longer under the monopoly control of the state, and 

inhibitions on barbaric behavior (such as decapitations, mutilation of bodies, etc.) have largely 

disappeared. Some of the drug violence in northern Mexico has this quality. 

In many ways, Malcolm Gladwell’s notion of contagion accords fully with the notion of 

anomie and spreading criminality. Gladwell spends much time discussing the “stickiness” or 

attraction of certain ideas and forms of behavior.82 From this perspective, criminal careers as 
33

Lawlessness and Disorder

a source of employment appear very attractive in countries where opportunities in the legal 

economy are limited. Moreover, imitation and emulation are the order of the day. This is not 

surprising: those who behave within the law are disadvantaged compared to those who do not. 

Moreover, operating outside the law is likely to appear increasingly attractive in the event that 

urban expectations remain unfulfilled, states reduce the provision of collective goods, or energy 

interruptions and food and water shortages become the norm. 

It is possible to go even further: global anomie is becoming a problem at the state level 

as well as the individual level. This is apparent in the spread of corruption in government, 

in the development in many countries of a “political-criminal nexus” between the elites and 

organized crime, and the willingness of some governments to protect criminals and drug 

traffickers.83 Although some governments are willing to confront criminal organizations and 

seek to constrain criminal activities, others acquiesce because of weakness, accept corrupt 

payments as forms of rent, or even develop collusive and collaborative relationships with 

criminals. Sometimes organized crime takes over the state; in a few instances—Serbia under 

Milosevic, North Korea, Russia under Putin and a revitalized intelligence apparatus, and 

possibly Bulgaria—the state takes over organized crime. One of the best examples of how a 

state can succumb to the attractions of lawlessness is Guinea-Bissau, which, as discussed above, 

has become a transshipment hub for Latin American drug-trafficking organizations moving 

cocaine to the European Union. From one perspective, embracing this as an opportunity is a 

rational decision for a government and people with limited resources and a high level of dependence on a single commodity (cashew nut) for export. For a country that can attract little 

foreign direct investment, the influx of money associated with drugs can appear enormously 

attractive. But the result has been to increase tensions between political and military leaders, 

distort economic sectors, and make an already fragile country even less stable. Furthermore, the 

way in which Guinea-Bissau and other West African states have embraced the drug business 

suggests that the illicit global economy will become a much larger component of the overall 

economy. Indeed, in a complex system, positive feedback loops strengthen tendencies toward 

behavior that works and weaken those that do not. Criminal behavior works to a degree that 

makes it very attractive. Even states that emphasize the rule of law are not immune to this 

trend, as is evident simply by looking at the increase in corruption cases on the southwest 

border of the United States. All this could lead to a growing divide between states in which 

the rule of law remains intact and those in which it has broken down. Indeed, it is conceivable 

that the major global divide of the 21st century will be caused not by competing ideologies, the 

struggle for power, or the “clash of civilizations,” but by clashes between states that uphold law 

and order and those that are dominated by criminal interests and criminal authorities. This, 

in turn, would make it difficult to achieve the collective approach to common problems such 

as global climate change that is the only way in which strategies of mitigation (prevention is 

no longer an option if it ever was) might be successfully implemented. 

There is perhaps one ray of light in what is otherwise a very gloomy picture. Technology has 

the potential to inhibit or reverse some of the trends that have been identified in this analysis. 

Technologies that help to increase food production, facilitate better water management, reduce 

difficulties and costs of desalination, and offer cheaper and more plentiful sources of energy, for 

example, could confound some of the more dire predictions outlined above. Nevertheless, it 
34

Williams

would not be prudent to reply on magic bullets of this kind. Instead, the first step in avoiding a 

lawless century is to acknowledge the portents of a gathering storm. Yet there is little evidence 

of this in the United States, as the obsession with Iran, North Korea, and China is inexorably 

nudging airpower and seapower back to the center of U.S. strategy. Ironically, intelligence agencies are already highlighting the ways in which both current and emerging challenges suggest 

an alternative threat paradigm that goes well beyond the parameters of conventional strategic 

thinking. Unfortunately, these agencies appear to suffer from the same curse as Cassandra: in 

spite of being compelling, the warnings are largely being ignored. 

Notes

1

 Thomas Homer-Dixon, The Upside of Down (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2006), 106. 2

 Mette Eilstrup-Sangiovanni and Calvert Jones, “Assessing the Dangers of Illicit Networks: Why al-Qaida May 

Be Less Threatening Than Many Think,” International Security 33, no. 2 (2008), 7–44. 3

 Thomas P.M. Barnett, The Pentagon’s New Map (New York: Putnam, 2004). 4

 Micah Zenko and Michael A. Cohen, “Clear and Present Safety: The United States Is More Secure Than 

Washington Thinks,” Foreign Affairs (March/April 2012). 5

 Chad Serena, A Revolution in Military Adaptation: The U.S. Army in the Iraq War (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2011). 6

 Austin Long, “The Anbar Awakening,” Survival 50, no. 2 (April 2008), 67–94. 7

 The concept of vacancy chains is developed in H. Richard Friman, “Forging the vacancy chain: Law enforcement 

efforts and mobility in criminal economies,” Crime, Law and Social Change 41, no. 1 (February 2004), 53–77, and 

applied to Mexico in Phil Williams, “The Terrorism Debate Over Mexican Drug Trafficking Violence,” Terrorism 

and Political Violence 24, no. 2 (Special Issue: Intersections of Crime and Terror, 2012), 259–278. 8

 Private correspondence with author.

9

 Zenko and Cohen.

10 Ibid. 

11 Karl Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe, Managing the Unexpected: Assuring High Performance in an Age of Uncertainty (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001). 

12 James N. Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). 13 Janice Perlman, Favela: Four Decades of Living on the Edge in Rio de Janeiro (New York: Oxford University 

Press, 2010). 14 “Freedom from Fear in Urban Spaces: Discussion Paper,” Human Security Outreach Program, available 

at <geo.international.gc.ca/cip-pic/library/Freedom%20From%20Fear%20in%20Urban%20Spaces.pdf>. 15 James Cockayne and Phil Williams, The Invisible Tide: Towards an International Strategy to Deal with Drug 

Trafficking Through West Africa (New York: International Peace Institute, 2009). 16 Peter Fabricius, “West Africa hit by coups,” Daily News, April 24, 2012, available at <www.iol.co.za/dailynews/opinion/west-africa-hit-by-coups-1.1282707>. 17 Gitte Larsen, “Why Megatrends Matter,” available at <www.cifs.dk/scripts/artikel.asp?id=1469>.

18 Edward Glaese, The Triumph of the City (New York: Penguin, 2011), 1. 19 Stephen D. Krasner, “Abiding Sovereignty,” International Political Science Review 22, no. 3 (2001), 229–252. 20 Marc Levinson, The Box (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 7. 21 Carolyn Nordstrom, Global Outlaws (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 116, 159. 22 See Jonathan M. Winer and Phil Williams, “Russian Crime and Corruption in an Era of Globalization: Implications for the United States,” in Russia’s Uncertain Economic Future, ed. John E. Hardt, 97–124 (Washington, 

DC: M.E. Sharpe, 2003). 23 Grace Wyler, “Mexico’s Drug Cartels Are Spanning The Globe,” Business Insider, June 21, 2011, available at 

<http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-06-21/politics/30053839_1_mexican-cartels-sinaloa-european-markets>. 24 James Mittelman, The Globalization Syndrome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 210.
35

Lawlessness and Disorder

25 Department of Economic and Social Affairs: Population Division, World Population Prospects The 2010 

Revision—Highlights and Advance Tables (New York: United Nations [UN], 2011), xiii, hereafter cited as Population Division. 26 Jack A. Goldstone, “The New Population Bomb: The Four Megatrends That Will Change the World,” Foreign 

Affairs (January/February 2010), 31–43. 27 Population Division, xiii.

28 Ibid.

29 DDDC, UK Ministry of Defense, Global Strategic Trends—Out to 2040 (January 1910), 95. 30 Goldstone, 34.

31 Ibid., 35–36.

32 “Canadian man testifies at Kosovo organ trafficking trial,” CTV News, March 23, 2012, available at <www.

ctv.ca/CTVNews/World/20120323/Canadian-man-testifies-at-Kosovo-organ-trafficking-trial-120323/#ixzz1qdKZPeeI>. 33 Richard Norton, “Feral Cities,” Naval War College Review 56, no. 4 (Autumn 2003), 97–106, available at 

<www.nwc. navy.mil/press/Review/2003/Autumn/pdfs/art6-a03.pdf>. 34 Dirk Heinrichs et al., Risk Habitat Megacity (Berlin: Springer, 2012), 4. 35 UN-Habitat, State of the World’s Cities 2006/7 (London: Earthscan, 2006), 19. 36 Ibid., 11.

37 The notion of social exclusion is discussed in Manuel Castells, End of Millennium (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 

71–72. 38 Wally N’Dow, quoted in “The Urbanizing World: Megacities; Bane or Boon,” World Press Review (August 

1996), 8. 39 “Slum Dwellers to double by 2030: Millennium Development Goal Could Fall Short,” UN-Habitat, 21st

Session of the Governing Council, Nairobi, Kenya, April 16–20, 2007. 40 This point is emphasized by Thomas Homer-Dixon, “Standing Room Only,” Toronto Globe and Mail, March 

6, 2002, available at <www.homerdixon.com/download/why_population_growth.pdf>. 41 Ibid.

42 Karina Landman, “Alley-gating and neighbourhood gating: Are they two sides of the same face?” Paper 

delivered at the conference Gated Communities: Building Social Division or Safer Communities? Glasgow, September 

18–19, 2003, available at <www.csir.co.za/Built_environment/Planning_support_systems/gatedcomsa/docs/

Glasgow_paper_v5.pdf>. 43 Ibid.

44 Andre Standing, The social contradictions of organized crime on the Cape Flats, ISS Paper 74, June 2003, 7. 45 Ibid., 9.

46 Rivke Jaffe, “Between the street and the state: Crime and citizenship in urban Jamaica,” available at <www.

irmgard-coninx-stiftung.de/fileadmin/user_upload/pdf/urbanplanet/collective_identities/Jaffe_Essay.pdf>. 47 Elizabeth Leeds, “Cocaine and Parallel Polities in the Brazilian Urban Periphery: Constraints on Local-Level 

Democratization,” Latin American Research Review 31, no. 3 (1996), 75. 48 Michael T. Klare, The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources (New York: 

Macmillan, 2012). 49 The author has benefited on this issue from work done by two graduate students at the University of Pittsburgh, 

Tomas Malina and Brian Gray. 50 The author is grateful to Giacomo O’Neill, a graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh, for his research 

and analysis of this issue. 51 “Addressing Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking in Iraq: Report of the UNODC Fact Finding Mission,” 

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, August 5–18, 2003 (Vienna, August 25, 2003). 52 Edward Fox, “FARC Set to Exploit Venezuela ‘Conflict Mineral,’” March 12, 2012, available at <http://

insightcrime.org/insight-latest-news/item/2336-farc-set-to-exploit-venezuela-conflict-mineral>. 53 Tim Boekhout van Solinge, “Eco-Crime: The Tropical Timber Trade,” available at <www.rodolfocordero.

com/silvia/Lab-fall09/NESSF1011/Silvia/Boekhout%20%20timber%20crime.pdf>. 54 Kurt M. Campbell and Christine Parthemore, National Security and Climate Change in Perspective, in Climatic 

Cataclysm, ed. Kurt M. Campbell, 19 (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2008). 55 Gwynne Dyer, Climate Wars (Brunswick, Australia: Scribe, 2010), xi. 
36

Williams

56 “Global Water Security,” Intelligence Community Assessment, ICA 2012-08, February 2, 2012, available at 

<www.dni.gov/nic/ICA_Global%20Water%20Security.pdf>. 57 Christian Parenti, Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence (New York: Nation 

Books, 2011). 58 “Climate Change—Health and Environmental Effects: International Impacts,” U.S. Environmental Protection 

Agency, available at <www.epa.gov/climatechange/effects/international.html>. 59 “Under Pressure: Social Violence over Land and Water in Yemen,” Small Army Survey, Issue Brief Number 

2, October 2010, available at <www.yemen-ava.org/pdfs/Yemen-Armed-Violence-IB2-Social-violence-over-landand-water-in-Yemen.pdf>. 60 “Water and Violent Conflict,” OECD Development Assistance Committee, available at <resource_en_92767.

pdf>. 61 Peter Andreas, Blue Helmets, Black Markets (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008). 62 “Organized crime controls Italy’s food industry,” Reuters, January 19, 2012, available at <www.havocscope.

com/italy/>. 63 Gabriel Marcella, American Grand Strategy for Latin America in the Age of Resentment, SSI Monograph, No. 

10, available at <www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=811>. 64 Ibid., 24.

65 John Rapley, “Keynote Address—From Neo-Liberalism to the New Medievalism,” Australian National 

University Conference, Globalization and Governance in the Pacific Islands, October 2005. 66 Ibid.

67 David Ronfeldt, In Search of How Societies Work: Tribes—the First and Forever Form, RAND Working Papers 

(Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2006), 53, available at <www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/2007/RAND_WR433.

pdf>. 68 Ibid., 5.

69 William Reno, Warlord Politics and African States (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1998). 70 Quoted in Ronfeldt, 32.

71 Richard Shultz and Andrea Dew, Insurgents, Terrorists and Militias: The Warriors of Contemporary Combat

(New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 53. 72 Robert D. Kaplan, “The Coming Anarchy,” The Atlantic, February 1994, available at <www.theatlantic.com/

magazine/archive/1994/02/the-coming-anarchy/4670/>. 73 John P. Sullivan, “A Catastrophic Climate,” in Global Biosecurity: Threats and Responses, ed. Peter Katona, 

John P. Sullivan, and Michael D. Intriligator (New York: Routledge, 2010). 74 Nils Gilman, Doug Randall, Peter Schwartz, Impacts of Climate Change (San Francisco: Global Business 

Network, January 2007). 75 Paul K. Clare, Racketeering in Northern Ireland: A New Version of the Patriot Game (Chicago: Office of International Criminal Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago, 1989), 16. 76 Jo Becker, “Beirut Bank Seen as Hub of Hezbollah’s Financing,” The New York Times, December 14, 2011, 

available at <www.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/world/middleeast/beirut-bank-seen-as-a-hub-of-hezbollahs-financing.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0>. 77 Ibid. 

78 Ibid. 

79 Rapley. 

80 In this section, I have drawn heavily on Nikos Passas, “Global Anomie, Dysnomie, and Economic Crime: 

Hidden Consequences of Neoliberalism and Globalization in Russia and Around the World,” Social Justice 27, no. 

2 (2000), 16–44. 81 Ibid., 19.

82 Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point (New York: Back Bay, 2000). 83 R. Godson et al., “Political-Criminal Nexus,” Trends in Organized Crime 3, no. 1 (Autumn 1997). For a more 

recent analysis, see Moisés Naím, “Mafia States,” Foreign Affairs (May/June 2012), 100–111.
37

Chapter 3

Can We Estimate the Global Scale 

and Impact of Illicit Trade?

Justin Picard

The Need for a Better Measurement of Illicit Trade

 “Fighting a war” is the longstanding idea of how the problem of illicit markets should be 

addressed. President Richard Nixon initially coined the term war on drugs during a press 

conference in 1971, and it has since been adopted for other forms of trafficking such as counterfeiting and so-called modern slavery. But illicit trade is now increasingly characterized as a 

“whack-a-mole” problem:1 while the trade may decrease following successful law enforcement 

efforts, it usually resumes after a time or switches to a different illegal commodity. One might 

note, however, that Darwinian whack-a-mole is the order of the day, as enforcement efforts 

may have the perverse effect of facilitating the “selection” of the most apt or powerful criminals. 

According to Nils Gilman’s fourth rule on deviant globalization, “Once a deviant industry 

professionalizes, crackdown merely promotes innovation.”2

Two important themes of this book are that illicit markets are connected problems 

primarily driven by supply and demand, and that their impacts are more important than the 

criminal actors themselves. This chapter addresses the challenge of measuring the collective 

size and impact of illicit markets and networks. According to the 2011 White House Strategy 

to Combat Transnational Organized Crime, the issue appears to demand urgent policy attention: 

“The expanding size, scope, and influence of transnational organized crime and its impact on 

U.S. and international security and governance represent one of the most significant of those 

[21st-century] challenges.”3 Such statements on the size and growth of the problem and its 

impacts are often heard, but rarely supported with reliable statistics and sound measurement. 

One goal of this chapter is to set the foundations for which the qualitative claims that have been 

made on the size and harm caused by illicit activities can be translated into a quantitative form.

Certainly, some data are already available that suggest the impressive magnitude of illegal 

markets. For example, the Web site Havocscope.com aggregates publicly available sources of 
38

Picard

information on black markets. It provides multiple rankings of black market size by country, 

region, product, and market. By summing up various estimates of different illicit activities, 

it calculates that the size of the illicit global economy was between $1.69 trillion and $1.92 

trillion at the time of measurement.4 However, in its “Black Market Data Documentation 

and Standards,” Havocscope acknowledges that “the very nature of the black market creates 

information that is limited and difficult to verify. To be a credible platform, it is essential that 

all data presented by Havocscope is properly sourced,”5

 and that “all data listed within Havocscope is collected from credible public sources, such as newspapers, government reports and 

academic journals.”6 We do not question the fact that Havocscope is collecting and citing its 

sources very consistently, but more often than not the cited sources themselves do not explain 

how it came up with the data and figures, or how the statistics were produced. 

It is well known that measuring illicit markets involves developing statistics on activities 

that, by their nature, are intentionally difficult to observe. Unfortunately, the hidden nature 

of the phenomenon has led to the propagation of estimates based on poor methodologies, 

undisclosed or questionable assumptions, and biased or inaccessible data sets. The lack of 

reliability of current estimates, and their use and abuse for influencing policies, have led to 

a backlash from scholars, who challenge the dominant school of thought on the frightening 

development of criminal networks in a globalized world. With justification, they question the 

use of dubious statistics to influence the policy debate and perpetuate wrong perceptions of 

the issues. This politicization of numbers has become a topic of academic research in its own 

right, as a recent collection of essays demonstrates.7

For Peter Andreas, a professor of political science at Brown University, “Popular claims 

of loss of state control are overly alarmist and misleading and suffer from historical amnesia.”8

He continues, “At base, much of what makes organized crime transnational involves some form 

of profit-driven smuggling across borders. Transnational organized crime is therefore simply 

a new term for an old economic practice.”9 Thomas Naylor, a professor at McGill University 

specializing in the history of black markets, criticizes the assumption that “something called 

‘globalization’ and the accompanying spread of modern communications and transportation 

technology have been a godsend to criminal cartels. . . . The beauty of globalization is that, 

much as with organized crime, everyone can agree about its enormous impact because no one 

knows what it really is.”10 Naylor believes that “although it is certainly true that there is more 

economic crime across borders today, there is also much more legal business, and absolutely 

no proof that the ratio of illegal to legal business is increasing.”11

These contrarian statements cannot simply be brushed aside. Indeed, there are also 

valid arguments that illicit trade may be decreasing. As trade is progressively harmonized, 

import tariffs have globally decreased, reducing some of the incentives for smuggling. While 

technological innovations may be helping producers of illicit goods and traffickers, they also 

make it harder to hide illicit activities, as trails of evidence are not erased easily in the digital 

world. Technology also makes it easier, in principle at least, for law enforcement to cooperate, 

exchange information, and detect suspicious activities or illicit shipments. Therefore, one can 

argue that it is unproven, and indeed very difficult to prove, that illegal markets are increasing, 

at least in proportion with global economic activity. 
39

Global Scale and Impact of Illicit Trade

Yet if one considers the growth of illicit financial flows that have followed progressive 

financial deregulation in the last 50 years, which has facilitated the legitimization of criminal 

gains and corruption and tax evasion on a massive scale, it can be argued that the scope of the 

illicit economy is much larger than before, and its impacts extend far beyond illegal markets. In 

commenting on President Barack Obama’s plan to focus on tax havens to recover tax money, 

Raymond Baker and Eva Joly regretted that “the [Obama] administration is largely missing 

a far more devastating problem related to offshore finance: money gained from criminal and 

other illicit sources. With the use of tax havens and other elements of an increasingly complex 

‘shadow’ financial network, vast sums of illegal money are being shifted throughout the global 

economy virtually undetected.”12

This discussion indicates that a clear definition of the problem and better metrics on the 

scale and the impacts of illicit activities are badly needed. In fact, several ingenious techniques 

have been developed to measure illicit activities, leading to estimates that may not claim perfect 

accuracy but are at least scientifically substantiated and useful to a better understanding of the 

issue. The first contribution of this chapter, then, is to bring more transparency to some of the 

existing measurements of the following five illicit markets: illegal drugs, counterfeits, human 

trafficking and forced labor, excise goods, and environmental crime.

A prerequisite to measurement is to determine which elements should be included in 

the calculation. For that, it is essential to have a reasonable definition of the problem that 

facilitates classification. An implicit part of the definition is the name given to the problem: 

transnational organized crime refers essentially to groups or associations of criminals; global 

black markets are about illegal markets that circumvent prohibition, taxation, or regulations; 

illicit or deviant globalization can be understood as the set of illegal or unethical activities that 

can be related to the internationalization of economic activity—a vast category indeed. Yet 

terms like globalization and illicit are vague, with the latter allowing for many interpretations by 

referring to activities that are either illegal or merely scorned by society. And social norms are 

not uniform; therefore, what may qualify as illicit trade will vary according to the perspective 

taken. This is confirmed by a historical perspective on illicit trade: “Much of what we define 

today as illicit traffic was not criminalized a century ago and was not even considered a problem.”13 Therefore, illicit trade can be understood in a narrow way as the trade in certain illegal 

commodities, or far more broadly as including any illicit economic activity. For example, the 

Global Agenda Council on Illicit Trade proposed the following broad definition: “illicit trade 

involves money, goods or value gained from illegal and also from generally unethical activity.”14

Considering the different ways to name the problem and interpret it, we will not attempt to 

propose a one-size-fits-all definition. Rather, the second contribution of this chapter is to 

propose a framework in which different definitions can coexist. 

This chapter proposes to replace the usual measurement based on a summation of the 

revenues generated by the different illegal markets—a method that does not highlight the 

multiple dimensions of illicit trade and its connections to other major global issues. Thus the 

third contribution of this chapter is to suggest an impact-based measurement that draws on 

explicit and transparent assumptions to estimate how much a given issue is affected by illicit 

activities and networks. The new measurement focuses on the direct and indirect effects of 

illicit activities, such as the crime-related costs, and the social, political, and environmental 
40

Picard

harms. The economic value of impacts can also be estimated and aggregated in various ways. 

This measurement is applied to the five illegal markets mentioned above, yielding a total 

estimated economic cost of close to $1.5 trillion.

Statistics on Illicit Markets

This section reviews several of the most significant estimates of illicit activities, ordered by declining (claimed) market size, and assesses how much we should trust them. According to sociologist 

Joel Best, good statistics on social issues should be based on more than guessing. They should 

draw on clear and bounded definitions, reasonable measurement, and representative samples. 

As we shall see, fulfilling those requirements in the case of illicit markets is a fairly challenging 

task, as illicit activities are often hard to define or measure and intrinsically difficult to detect. 

Illegal Drugs

The leading international authority on illegal drugs, the United Nations Office on Drugs and 

Crime (UNODC), publishes a World Drug Report annually. The 2011 report estimates that 

in 2009, the retail value for the global cocaine market was $85 billion and the heroin market 

$68 billion.15 UNODC no longer publishes an estimate of the cannabis market, the last one 

in 2005 being $142 billion.16 The same 2005 report provided the last available estimate on the 

value of the global illicit drug market: a retail value of $322 billion. Unfortunately, the margin 

of error is not indicated even though a factor of 5 to 10 would not be uncommon between the 

low-end and the high-end range of such an estimate. For example, a former UNODC employee, Francisco Thoumi, relates that an unpublished study by Peter Reuter for the Financial 

Action Task Force “is probably the most serious attempt to ascertain the size of the world 

illegal drug market and resulted in an estimated range between $45 billion and $280 billion.”17

He notes that “the wide range of the estimates reflects the diversity in possible assumptions 

required at several stages in the production, smuggling, and marketing chain.”18

The illicit drug market can be measured by estimating either supply or demand. The 

possibility of using seizures is discussed in the next section on counterfeiting. Estimates of the 

drug market, whether based on supply or demand, are inherently imprecise for two reasons. 

First, they are based on multiplying different uncertain quantities, leading to an amplification 

effect on the overall uncertainty. Second, they require a series of assumptions that can be 

adjusted to greatly influence the end result. According to Thoumi:

Any estimate of the size of the illegal drug industry requires that a series of steps be 

taken and that assumptions be drawn at each one of them. These include estimates 

about coca and poppy acreage, the frequency of coca leaf harvests, the drug content in 

coca and opium, the quality of the chemists employed, the amounts of drugs seized, the 

amount consumed in different markets, and drug prices at each stage of the production 

and marketing chain.

 A 2010 RAND report on demand-side estimations of global drug markets19 calculates 

that global retail expenditures on cannabis range from €40 to €120 billion, with their best 
41

Global Scale and Impact of Illicit Trade

estimate being close to half of the previous global estimate of approximately €125 billion 

(USD142 billion). The report explains: “Total consumption, therefore, is constructed as the 

sum of user-specific amounts consumed in a given year. The amount consumed, in turn, is 

the product of the number of days in which the drug was reportedly consumed, the typical 

amount consumed on those days, and the number of users who fall into a specific user-group 

category.”20 Finally, it obtains total expenditure by multiplying the amount by the typical price.

The RAND report also notes: 

that the UNODC figures imply that retail cannabis expenditures in the U.S. are close 

to €40 billion—more than three times the figure we generate as our best estimate. 

This is not entirely surprising since the UNODC assumes that every past year user 

consumes on average 165 grams whereas we assume an average of 96 grams. Further, 

the UNODC applies an average retail price that is more than twice as high as the 

figure we use (€4.8 and €12.5, respectively).21

The point is that small differences between two methods on, say, the measurement of drug 

price and drug consumption can lead to strikingly different estimates. And in its conclusion, 

the same report notes that “surprisingly little is known about typical quantities consumed of 

illicit drugs, which makes generating demand-side estimates difficult.”

Calculating demand-side estimates is even harder for other drugs. According to the 

RAND report, “Given the popularity of cannabis across the globe, there is relatively more 

information available about cannabis prevalence and consumption patterns. Thus, more 

confidence can be placed in these estimates than those for the other drug markets.” However, 

for the two other major drugs, supply-side estimates can be more precise since, according 

to UNODC, “unlike opium and coca, for which relatively reliable production data can be 

obtained, estimates on cannabis production [are] often based on perception and scientifically 

valid monitoring systems are the exception.”22

Given the overall lack of reliability of estimates, or their large variations when indicated, 

one may wonder if knowing more precisely the size of the illicit drug markets is of such great 

importance. In its critique of existing drug estimates and their influence on drug policymaking, 

Reuter asks:

Does this mismeasurement [of the global drug market] matter? For those interested 

in the size of the underground economy, the answer is clearly yes; estimates of the largest illegal market are potentially of considerable significance. However, the estimates 

were not developed for those purposes but to help in the development of drug policy. If 

policymaking regarding drugs were rational, or at least as analytically driven as say 

monetary policy, then the exaggeration would be a serious problem.23

Regarding the contribution that more accurate figures on the drug market would have on 

our understanding of the impacts, Thoumi argues that “what has been important is not merely 

the size of the trade, but its ability to alter social behaviors, increase corruption and crime, 

and fund insurgent and counterinsurgent guerrillas. The size of the illegal drug industry is 
42

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not particularly relevant as a cause of these social developments.”24 In short, the effects of illicit 

markets matter more than their size. In the section below, where our proposed methodology 

to measure the impacts of illicit markets is presented, results of studies that measured the 

economic cost of illegal drugs will be used instead of the market size estimates.

Counterfeiting

In the early part of the last decade, 5–7 percent of international trade was the commonly used 

figure for counterfeiting. However, this estimate from the International Chamber of Commerce 

turned out to be, at best, an educated guess. At worst, it was seen as a conveniently large number 

created to draw attention to the problem. As this and other estimates came under severe criticism, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) was mandated 

to launch a study on counterfeiting in order to produce a more solid statistical estimate. Its 

2008 report stated that “analysis carried out in this report indicates that international trade in 

counterfeit and pirated products could have been up to USD 200 billion in 2005.” This figure 

was later updated to $250 billion based on 2005–2007 world trade data. This estimate appears 

lower than the previously cited figure, corresponding to a bit less than 2 percent of international 

trade. Also, strictly speaking, the basis of measurement is not the international trade value but 

the value of counterfeit goods reported by customs, which can be significantly higher than the 

shipment declared value.

Also there are very significant problems with the employed methodology, of which even 

the authors of the report seem to have been aware. They pessimistically noted, “The overall 

degree to which products are being counterfeited and pirated is unknown and there do not 

appear to be any methodologies that could be employed to develop an acceptable overall 

estimate.” As the team of economists and statisticians discovered when they started their 

study, little data were available and the lack of harmonization between data sets made it very 

difficult to combine them. With limited funding and considerable time pressure, the quickest 

way forward was to send questionnaires to custom agencies through the World Customs 

Organization to collect data on the estimated retail value of seizures.

The definition of counterfeiting used was based on the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Standard agreement, and it is the only definition compatible with custom seizure. However, 

this definition is far from being universally accepted because it disproportionately represents 

the interest of brand owners. The definition of counterfeiting is a subject of controversy that 

has resulted in intense debates and the freezing of anticounterfeiting efforts of the World 

Health Organization (WHO). It will suffice to say that from the standpoint of consumers, 

there are many situations where intellectual property (IP) infringement does not necessarily 

involve counterfeiting (for example, patent infringement). On the other hand, goods may be 

deliberately and fraudulently mislabeled to deceive consumers without necessarily infringing 

any intellectual property right.

There is also lack of clarity in the report on the basis for recording interceptions. Customs 

authorities have indeed used the declared customs value, the reported market value, or the 

legitimate item value. This is problematic because with counterfeit goods, there can be an order 

of magnitude difference between these estimates. 
43

Global Scale and Impact of Illicit Trade

Regardless, the study’s worst problem was with sampling. Because seizures are a very 

small part of the market, it makes no sense that seizures should be used to estimate overall 

market size. Certainly, interception data are useful in determining tendencies over time, the 

relative likelihood that counterfeits originate in certain countries, or whether they affect certain 

categories of products. However, it is not a reliable indicator for estimating the global extent of 

counterfeiting: extrapolating the volume of counterfeit trade from seizure data, even roughly, 

is impossible without knowing the interception rate. To produce an estimate, the OECD used 

the responses to its questionnaire, and calculated that “the value of interceptions/seizures from 

35 economies totaled USD 769 million in 2005.” Basic mathematics shows that it is simply not 

possible to infer the total traded value in counterfeit goods without knowing the interception 

rate of customs. Nevertheless, by making some unsubstantiated assumptions for the upper 

limit on the counterfeit export rate of certain categories of goods and for certain economies, 

OECD inferred a ceiling on counterfeit and pirated goods in world trade of $100 billion. The 

upper ceiling of $200 billion was reached by doubling this number to account for statistical 

uncertainties. The authors noted that this would mean customs only intercepted 0.5 percent of 

counterfeit goods on average. The purely hypothetical and speculative nature of the reasoning 

that led to the $200 billion upper ceiling is, however, not obvious in the first sentence of the 

executive summary: “Analysis carried out in this report indicates that international trade in 

counterfeit and pirated products could have been up to USD 200 billion in 2005.” 

Other studies have approximated the counterfeit market size by making assumptions on 

the customs interception rate. In its report The Globalization of Crime, UNODC estimates 

an interception rate of 7 percent for footwear entering Europe and, by extrapolating this rate 

to other goods, deduces that $8.2 billion in consumer products entered Europe in 2008. If 

this interception rate had been used for the OECD study, the value of international trade in 

counterfeit goods would drop from $200 billion to less than $15 billion. To be sure, if this 

number were circulated instead of the OECD number, counterfeiting would appear to be a 

much smaller problem to policymakers. 

However, not a single customs organization in the world reports its interception rate, and 

it is likely that most have little idea what this interception rate might be. In addition, according 

to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, which is the only indication that we 

have found in publicly accessible documents, there is evidence that this interception rate varies 

significantly by port of entry and type of product. Therefore, statistically speaking, it is not clear 

how an average interception rate of counterfeit goods could be computed. The same report 

also points out the relative infrequency of IP infringement. According to Customs and Border 

Protection’s (CBP’s) Compliance Measurement Program, a statistical sampling program, IP 

violations have been found in less than one-tenth of 1 percent of exams. Of 287,000 random 

exams, 0.06 percent had IP violations. It is unlikely that CBP detected all IP violations in those 

287,000 shipments. Nevertheless, combining this detection rate with the approximately $2 

trillion in imports for the United States, and assuming that counterfeit shipments have roughly 

the same international trade value as other shipments, the total international trade value of 

counterfeit goods going through U.S. customs each year would be a mere $1.2 billion. The 

point is not that IP violations are grossly overstated, but rather that if custom seizure data are 

useful to observe trends, they do not bring much clarity on the magnitude of counterfeiting. 
44

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The Government Accountability Office reviewed the current knowledge on the economic 

effects of counterfeiting and piracy. It concluded that three widely cited U.S. Government 

estimates of economic losses resulting from counterfeiting could not be substantiated due to 

the absence of underlying studies and highlighted the difficulties of coming up with reliable 

estimates on the global extent and impact of counterfeiting. The GAO review concluded that 

no single approach for quantifying impacts of counterfeiting and piracy can be used.

As early as 2002, a report for the European Commission had already established that 

“although many existing estimates of the size of the counterfeiting and piracy problems are 

based on extrapolating from the number of seizures, arrests or convictions made by enforcement agencies, we do not recommend this approach except in rare circumstances.” The only 

exceptions are when the detection rate is known to be high (over 75 percent) or can be known 

with confidence. In practice, those conditions are virtually never met. This same report develops 

a detailed methodology to estimate counterfeiting for each of 19 different industries, including 

an estimate of the costs. Unfortunately, there was no followup to the report.

The fundamental difficulty with estimating counterfeiting is that the brand owners are best 

positioned to know the significance and prevalence of the issue, or how to differentiate genuine 

articles from counterfeits. Generally speaking, however, the industry is unwilling to share the 

data it has collected, even though this is harming public health, consumers, and its own longterm interests. Industry associations, which have an interest in boasting large numbers, publicize 

estimates but often without any supporting methodology or access to underlying data. 

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) is one of the exceptions, as it publishes a detailed 

report annually on software piracy and has developed a methodology to measure the amount of 

counterfeit software. The BSA reaches its figure on the amount of unlicensed software by estimating how much personal computer software was deployed in a given year, estimating how much was 

paid for or otherwise legally acquired during the year, and then subtracting one from the other. 

The difference between these two quantities corresponds to the commercial value of installed 

illicit software, which was valued at $59 billion for 2010.25 The BSA does not attempt, however, 

to relate the official retail value of pirated software to the actual losses of the software industry.

Interestingly, this technique of differentials is somewhat analogous to such methods as 

the World Bank Residual Model, which estimate illicit financial flows. The difficulty of performing direct observation is partly circumvented by measuring two quantities such as supply 

and demand that should in principle be equal in the absence of illicit activity. The difference 

between these two quantities corresponds to the amount of illicit activity. We could imagine 

using this principle to measure illicit activities for which it is hard or costly to make direct 

observation, but which can be measured as a difference between an input and an output. For 

example, counterfeiting could in some cases be measured as the difference between the legitimate supply and the total demand (which includes counterfeits) if the two quantities can be 

known or approximated, as is the case for the amount of deployed software.

Excised Goods

While the illicit trade in cigarettes is the most studied black market for the purpose of excise 

tax avoidance, it is likely that other illicit markets in excisable goods amount to tens of billions more. Illicit trade in tobacco creates a black market that is or can be relatively accurately 
45

Global Scale and Impact of Illicit Trade

measured. Defining the problem is relatively straightforward: illicit tobacco is traded for the 

primary purpose of avoiding excise taxes, either by smuggling tobacco from low to high taxation states or countries, by counterfeiting, or by local tax evasion. Identifying illicit tobacco 

is generally easier than other industrial goods because there is usually a tax stamp, which in 

the case of fraud is either absent, counterfeit, or does not match its intended destination. Furthermore, many cigarette companies have implemented forensic or digital means to identify 

fraudulent packs. Unlike many illicit markets, there is little ambiguity in measurement as well: 

the direct cost is the amount of unpaid taxes to countries. For sampling, the tobacco industry 

has developed detailed methodologies for avoiding biases when sampling the market. 

After having been extensively involved and complicit in the illicit trade because “smuggled 

cigarettes have helped the companies expand sales, make inroads in markets they cannot enter legally, increase their market share in competition with rivals, keep cigarette prices down 

generally or win legal import status or production in another country,” tobacco companies 

now recognize illicit traders as an important competitor. Therefore, it is vital for them to 

understand the size, nature, and dynamics of the illicit segment. Having reliable metrics on 

illicit tobacco is seen as important for resource allocation purposes and for dialogue with the 

government. In many ways, this industry, despite being still perceived as backward-minded 

and uncooperative, is leading the way for other industries that are still somewhat reluctant to 

address their problems with illicit trade. 

By combining individual country estimates, a study prepared for the WHO conference 

on the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control estimated illicit trade at 10.7 percent of 

total cigarette sales, which could represent a loss to government revenue of $40 to 50 billion 

annually. However, accounting for the fact that a number of smokers of illicit cigarettes would 

quit if they had to pay the full price of excise taxes, governments could recover up to $31 billion. 

Human Trafficking

Various estimates have been produced on the global scale of human trafficking. A GAO report 

is an excellent starting point to gain insights on the way these estimates have been produced 

and their assumptions, strengths, and limitations. The report describes the methodologies, 

key assumptions, and limitations used by the U.S. Government, the International Labor Organization (ILO), UNODC, and the International Organization for Migration to produce 

their estimates.26 In particular, the report raises doubts about U.S. Government estimates 

that 600,000 to 800,000 persons are trafficked across international borders annually. On the 

other hand, the methodology developed by the ILO appears fairly rigorous, considering the 

complexity of producing a global value on such a complex phenomenon.27 In practice, there 

is often a very fine line between considering whether a person is in a forced labor or an overexploitation situation, or between choosing whether a person is being smuggled or trafficked 

(with concrete and sometimes cruel consequences for the concerned person in the latter case). 

To reduce the ambiguity as much as possible in determining whether a person is in a forced 

labor or trafficking situation, the ILO uses definitions adopted in international conventions 

and developed a typology of forced labor that reduces subjectivity in the classification of cases.

The ILO estimates that 12.3 million people were in forced labor situations between 1995 

and 2004. Of that number, 2.5 million were trafficked either internally or internationally. 
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The study was based on a variety of sources that include reported cases, which were validated 

by ILO experts. Forced labor is peculiar among illicit activities in that it extends over a long 

period, which allows for models that can be used to estimate the probability that events are 

reported over time. Therefore, it is theoretically possible to exhaustively review available sources, although this is not practical given the millions of publications that would need review. 

Therefore, an astute variation of the “capture-recapture” method was used. Capture-recapture 

methods are commonly employed in ecology to estimate population size when it is not possible to count all individuals present in the population, in which case an estimate of the total 

population can be inferred from the degree of overlap between different counts (the lower the 

overlap, the larger the estimate). Adapting this method, two separate teams searched for cases 

in a variety of databases for a period of 6 months and the estimate was extrapolated from the 

degree of overlap. 

The GAO report does point out a few methodological weaknesses, most notably on the 

extrapolations needed to overcome the gap between reported and unreported victims. Nevertheless, the transparency of assumptions, the effort to use a clear definition, and the overall 

availability of data sources provide a certain degree of confidence in this figure. The ILO has 

also used standard methods for estimating the annual revenue generated by the 2.5 million 

people in trafficked forced labor. The estimated annual profits are broken down by region of 

the world, and for sexual versus other commercial exploitation. The estimated total stands at 

$32 billion and represents an average revenue of $12,800 per person.28

Environmental Crime

According to TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, the value of legal, international wildlife trade was nearly $292.7 billion in 2005, based on declared import values. This 

includes timber ($190 billion), wild fisheries ($81.5 billion), and other wildlife ($21.2 billion), 

which includes plants, animal products, and live animals. Below we review the estimates on the 

global extent of illicit trade for each category.

Illegal logging can be defined broadly to include violations of any number of international, 

national, or local laws and regulations. However, as pointed out in a report prepared for the 

American Forest & Paper Association,29 if illegal logging clearly signifies legal abuses, there is 

considerable debate about what might be considered illegal. Some illegal activities “appropriately rise to a level of international concern,” such as harvesting without authority in designated 

national parks, without or in excess of concession permit limits, or violating international 

agreements such as CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of 

Wild Fauna and Flora). A 2004 report from the World Bank on forest sustainability placed 

the annual revenue loss to governments from failure to collect taxes from forest concessions 

at more than $5 billion, and the annual market value of losses from illegal cutting of forests 

at over $10 billion.30 While both elements are illegal, only the latter is directly contributing 

to deforestation, which places the illegal market at slightly more than 5 percent of the global 

market. However, the American Forest & Paper Associationreports that the World Bank estimate was published without reference to a supporting methodology, adding that “No matter 

how broad or narrow illegal forest activity might be interpreted, its extent is impossible to 

know with any degree of certainty. Reported estimates are generally supported only through 
47

Global Scale and Impact of Illicit Trade

anecdotal information and supposition.” Yet after making a review of the literature on illegal 

logging and checking whether the estimates are credible in light of trade and other relevant 

data, the report concludes that illegal logging represents on the order of 8–10 percent of global 

wood products trade.

Illegal Fisheries. A 2009 study was apparently the first attempt to undertake a worldwide 

analysis of illegal and unreported fishing.31 It finds that current illegal and unreported fishing 

losses worldwide are between $10 billion and $23.5 billion annually (mean value of $16.75 

billion, or 20.55 percent of declared import value), representing between 11 and 26 million 

tons. The study uses primary data sources from several key composite studies supplemented by 

country-specific studies. In the source studies, a number of different methods have been used 

to estimate the level of illegal fishing, including surveillance data, trade data, stock assessments 

based on survey data, and expert opinion. The price data used were those reported by the Food 

and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (UN).

The frequently cited global estimates ranging from $5 to $20 billion have no scientific 

basis. According to TRAFFIC, “Comprehensive trade data only exist for species covered by 

CITES—and even here problems with the accuracy of CITES trade reporting mean that 

trade data are indicative rather than actual.” 

Illegal Waste. A report from the European Union Network for the Implementation and 

Enforcement of Environmental Law presents a data-driven assessment of illegal waste in 

which 72 percent of the quantity (93 percent of declarations) of toxic waste exported to nonOECD countries in 2003 potentially constituted illegal trafficking,32 as the transporters did 

not have an approved notification. It nevertheless “highlights the lack of data on the scale and 

breadth of illegal waste movements.” Separately, an “International Crime Threat Assessment” 

prepared by the U.S. Government in 2000 estimated that criminal organizations earn $10 to 

$12 billion per year for dumping trash and hazardous waste materials.33 The source of this 

frequently cited estimate is not mentioned. 

Defining the Problem

The UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, which came into effect in late 

2003, is a reasonable starting point to develop a definition. The convention covers offenses with 

a transnational component as well as so-called serious crimes such as money laundering and 

corruption, which “are made in order obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material 

benefit.”34 An offense is transnational if (1) it is committed in more than one state, (2) it is 

committed in one state but planned from another state, (3) it involves a criminal group that 

has criminal activities in more than one state, or (4) it has substantial effects in another state. 

Paradoxically, as noted in UNODC’s threat assessment on transnational organized crime, 

“the Convention contains no precise definition of transnational organized crime,” and “the 

implied definition of ‘transnational organized crime’ encompasses virtually all profit-motivated 

criminal activities with international implications.” It is further recognized that such a broad 

definition “leaves the exact subject matter rather vague.” While the absence of a definition may 

be explained by the desire to integrate political sensitivities over illegal markets, it makes it 

more difficult to use the convention for measurement purposes. 
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In considering whether the definition of the problem should be articulated around the concept of transnational organized crime, one must note that many profit-driven criminal activities 

can occur within borders. Whether international ramifications are found does not necessarily 

affect the dynamics of the market or the motivations of its actors. For example, the counterfeiting 

of locally produced and consumed goods has become an important problem for China, forced 

labor and even human trafficking do not necessarily involve crossing borders, interstate cigarette 

smuggling is predominant in the United States, and cannabis is often consumed in the country 

of production, as it is bulky and can be grown nearly anywhere in the world. Ultimately, in a 

globalized world one might wonder whether being transnational is a helpful discriminant. The 

point here is not to minimize the importance of addressing the transnational component of 

organized crime, but whether this is a key characteristic of the problem. 

Still, according to UNODC’s threat assessment, if “failure to identify the market-driven 

dimension of organized crime, and particularly of transnational organized crime, is one of the 

reasons these problems can prove so intractable,” a definition focused on the concepts of market 

and profit might be more relevant. Here, Thomas Naylor’s theory of profit-driven35 crimes may 

offer a useful framework. He suggests a typology for profit-driven crimes, which includes three 

types of primary offenses: predatory crimes, market-based crimes, and economic crimes. The 

three types of offense are differentiated by 1) the nature of the transfer (wealth versus goods 

or service); 2) the basic act by which it is transferred (robbery, trafficking, or legal market); 

and 3) the method which is used (force, voluntary transfer, or fraud):

• Predatory crimes involve a transfer of wealth through an illegal act (robbery) and 

by using an illegal method (force or guile).

• Market-based crimes involve production and/or distribution of new goods and 

services that are inherently illegal. Market-based crimes can be subdivided into those 

involving evasion of regulations, taxes, and prohibitions. 

• Commercial crimes are committed by otherwise legitimate entrepreneurs, investors, and corporations in a normal business setting. They involve the application of 

illegal methods to the production of inherently legal goods and services that would 

otherwise be produced by someone else using legal methods.36

Table 1 summarizes the characteristics of primary offenses.37

Table 1. Characteristics of Profit-driven Crimes

Type Transfer of Basic Act Method

Predatory Wealth Illegal (theft) Illegal (force or guile)

Market-based Illegal goods and services Illegal (trafficking) Legal (market-exchange)

Commercial Legal goods and services Legal (market sale) Illegal (fraud)
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Global Scale and Impact of Illicit Trade

Table 2 shows examples of the three types of profit-driven crimes. 

Table 2. Examples of Profit-driven Crimes by Type

Type of Profit-driven Crime Examples

Predatory crime Cargo theft, maritime piracy, cyber theft or scams

Market-based crime Illegal drugs, counterfeiting, human trafficking, excise goods, 

illegal trade in wildlife 

Commercial crime

Avoiding taxes on legal goods, commercial tax evasion, using 

illegal methods to reduce costs or obtain contracts, violation 

of regulation on environmental, labor or safety standards, 

criminal negligence 

The advantage of Naylor’s classification of profit-driven crimes is that it can accommodate 

different views of the problem:

• concerned exclusively with market-based crimes where an illegal form of supply 

meets an illegal form of demand in order to avoid prohibitions, regulations, or 

taxations.

• covers predatory and market-based crimes as long as they have a transnational 

component.

• the standard definition of makes it essentially equivalent to illegal markets. A broader 

definition, such as the one given in the introduction, includes economic crime as well: 

in this case, a legitimate demand is met by illegitimate forms of supply, involving 

seemingly legitimate actors who in fact behave illegally. Depending on the understanding of “trade,” it may be limited to illicit flows of goods, or it may include people 

and services as well (for example, gambling), or it may include illicit financial flows.

• while we have not found an explicit definition, it apparently covers any type of 

profit-driven crime as long as the opportunity for the crime can be connected to 

the flows of globalization, defined as the cross-border integration of economic 

activity.38 Harmful economic activities are also covered if they would be considered 

illegal according to Western norms. As there is a fair level of subjectivity in deciding 

whether an illegal economic activity is related to globalization or not, and even 

more so in deciding whether a legal economic activity violates Western norms, we 

will consider for the sake of definition and measurement that deviant globalization 

covers all profit-driven crimes as long as they are transnational. We note that deviant globalization and the broader definition of illicit trade are quite similar overall.

Table 3 summarizes the different names given to the problem, the underlying view of the 

problem in a nutshell, the types of offenses, and whether certain conditions apply.
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Table 3. Comparison of Problem Definitions

Name of the 

Problem

Nutshell View of 

the Problem

Predatory 

Crimes

Marketbased 

Crimes

Commercial 

Crimes Condition

Global Black 

Markets

Imbalance 

between supply 

and demand 

No Yes No None

Transnational 

Organizational 

Crime 

Organized crime 

benefits from 

globalization

Yes Yes No Transnational 

crimes only

Illicit Trade 

(Narrow)

Imbalance 

between supply 

and demand

No Yes No

Can be 

restricted 

to flows of 

goods 

Illicit Trade 

(Broad)

Globalization and 

the legal business 

infrastructure are 

enablers of illicit 

activities

No Yes Yes None

Deviant 

Globalization

Globalization and 

the legal business 

infrastructure are 

enablers of illicit 

activities

Yes Yes Yes Transnational

For measurement purposes, the most practical definition is the one used for Global Black 

Markets, which considers only one category of profit-driven crimes without any condition. 

The condition of transnationality used for Transnational Organized Crime and Deviant 

Globalization increases the complexity of the classification and measurement as well. One 

could take the view that a majority of profit-driven crimes have one or more transnational 

features, in which case the condition can be essentially ignored. However, this is clearly not 

true for predatory crimes, and predatory crimes with an obvious transnational component 

have received much attention lately. While the rest of the chapter essentially focuses on global 

markets, we note that commercial crimes in particular deserve more attention.

While there are many subtleties to and implications of Naylor’s theory that are outside the 

scope of this chapter, let us make a few remarks. The different categories of offenses can be connected. “In some cases explicitly criminal acts and inherently legal ones are embedded together 

in a matrix of economic activity to such a degree that the two, while theoretically distinct, are 

mutually interdependent.” For example, illicit markets can be used to monetize the proceeds 

of predatory crimes, such as cargo theft, and certain offenses may overlap different categories: 

for example, intellectual property crime involves the misappropriation of intellectual capital 

by the counterfeiter (predatory crime), the sale of an illegal good (market-based crime), and a 

commercial crime if the IP-infringing good is sold to an unsuspecting customer. Therefore, a 

distinction is made between primary offenses, which is the primary act generating the money, 

and secondary offenses. However, as the complexity of global supply chains allows legitimate 
51

Global Scale and Impact of Illicit Trade

business to interact with criminals and more generally to participate in illegal markets, the 

frontier between market-based and commercial crimes is blurred.

Measuring Impacts

The usual way to measure the global impact of illicit activities is to sum up their respective 

market size. If the market size is not available, in general any monetary measurement associated with the market will be used. This allows a straightforward comparison between illicit 

markets, while a simple addition yields a global estimate. One must be cautious though, since 

as we have seen before, some of the illicit markets that claim the largest market value have the 

most questionable statistics.

The deeper problem, however, is that market values, even if they are correctly estimated, 

are only one indicator of the impacts, which does not necessarily provide a fair metric for 

comparison. Compared to the market in counterfeit goods and illegal drugs, the market in 

endangered species might be one to two orders of magnitude less, and the market in stolen 

organs three times smaller. However, one may question whether the harm they are causing 

is proportionally less significant, and therefore focusing on the illicit market size can be 

misleading. This is not to say that market size is not a useful figure. As we will see, it is a 

helpful starting point for measuring the degree of nuisance of organized crime, its corrosive 

impact on society and institutions, and the overall indirect impacts on trade. However, it 

is not necessarily a relevant indicator of general social, economic, or environmental harm. 

Therefore, in pursuing the goal of finding a global measurement of the scale and impact 

of illicit trade, we should consider adjusted methods for measuring the harm caused by 

different illicit activities. 

Any illicit market can have impacts in multiple categories. For example, counterfeiting 

creates costs and lost revenues for both businesses and government, causes job loss, and involves 

health and safety risks. It also creates intangible costs, such as a general loss of trust in institutions, and political tensions between states. And nearly any illicit market involves criminal 

activities that impact the security of citizens, undermine the authority of states, erode the social 

fabric, criminalize society, and generate an overall cost of crime that must be borne by society. 

As the types of impacts can be numerous, it is convenient to use the compact “direct/indirect 

impacts” typology from UNDOC.39 It is described in the following way: 

The real threat of organized crime cannot be reduced to the violence associated with 

criminal markets. Rather, it is best described under two headings: Direct impacts, 

which are essentially the reasons each criminal activity was prohibited in the first place; 

Indirect impacts, in particular the ways organized crime as a category undermines the 

state and legitimate commercial activity. 

According to this typology, direct impacts are specific to the direct externalities of a profit-driven 

crime, excluding the crime-related consequences.
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Connecting Illicit Market Size to Indirect Impacts

Crime-related consequences, or indirect impacts, are essentially generic to any illicit market. 

They include all costs that criminals inflict on society. While these are numerous and include 

social impacts such as the erosion of social fabric and the criminalization of society, they do not 

lend themselves to measurement. However, with no pretension to be exhaustive, it is possible 

to estimate the economic cost of many consequences of criminal activities. A study from the 

Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) found that in 2002, the societal costs of 

illicit drug use in the United States totaled $181 billion.40 The study divides costs into three 

categories: healthcare cost, productivity losses, and other effects (such as the criminal justice 

system), with each category containing multiple categories for which the costs are detailed. 

Subcategories of costs are also aggregated as being crime-related, or non-crime-related. For 

example, the category with largest impacts, productivity losses ($128 billion), has the following subcategories: premature death, drug abuse–related illness, institutionalization and 

hospitalization, productivity loss of victims of crime, incarceration, and crime careers. The first 

three categories are (essentially) non-crime-related, while the last three are obviously direct 

consequences of crime. The report shows that of the $181 billion in costs of drug abuse, about 

$108 billion (59.7 percent) are crime-related impacts. 

This number can be put in perspective with an estimate on the market size of $64 billion 

for the year 200041 (we have not found estimates after that year), which come from the same 

agency. For that year, crime-related costs were $98.7 billion. Combining the two estimates 

yields the conclusion that each dollar spent on the illegal drug market generated crime-related 

costs, or indirect impacts, of $1.54 (that is, 98.7 divided by 64). In the absence of in-depth 

studies on the economic impact of other illegal markets (at least to our knowledge), we will 

make the assumption that, as a first approximation, this ratio of 1.54, rounded to 1.5, can be 

used for other illegal markets. In other words, if an illegal market generates revenue of $10 

billion, it is in effect having an indirect impact valued at $15 billion. 

Applying the Methodology

In this section we apply the proposed methodology to estimate the overall cost of different 

illicit markets by referencing the data sets and studies we rely on while giving and justifying 

the assumptions that must be made to infer the estimates. 

Illegal Drugs

As a basis for calculation, we will use, instead of the previously mentioned ONDCP 2002 

report, a more recent U.S. Government report that used a similar methodology to obtain an 

estimate of $193 billion.42 This represents the total cost of drugs in the United States including 

direct and indirect impacts. Unfortunately, as noted in the ONDCP 2002 report, there have 

been very few studies on the total impact of drug abuse across the world. The UNODC World 

Drug reports provide country data on annual prevalence of drug abuse and on treatment demand, but the aim is to estimate the impact of drug abuse in other nations.
53

Global Scale and Impact of Illicit Trade

A simpler approach is to use gross domestic product (GDP) levels. The cost estimate of 

$181 billion in 2002 (about $650 per capita) is roughly equivalent to 1.7 percent of GDP. As 

the United States has a more severe drug abuse problem than most nations, we must use a different percentage for other nations. The ONDCP report cites different studies that obtained 

a cost estimate of 1.8 percent for the United Kingdom, 1.0 percent for Australia, 0.4 percent 

for Germany, and 0.2 percent for Canada. If we take as a very rough approximation an average 

worldwide cost outside the United States of 0.85 percent (the nonweighted average of these 

four countries), and considering that worldwide GDP outside the United States was $48.5 

trillion in 2011, the global cost of drug abuse outside the United States is estimated at $412 

billion. The worldwide total cost is therefore estimated at $605 billion.

We may alternatively make the assumption that the national cost of drug abuse is proportional to market size. UNODC’s World Drug Report 2005 made a regional breakdown 

of the global illicit drug, and North America was estimated to account for 44 percent of the 

world’s total drug sales at the retail level. Considering that the United States represents 85 

percent of North America’s GDP, we make the rough approximation that it accounts for 85 

percent of North America’s drug sales, and consequently for 37.4 percent of total worldwide 

drug sales. Therefore, the worldwide economic cost of drugs would be $516 billion (that is, 

$193 billion divided by 37.4 percent). 

As UNODC numbers are more recent and come from a systematic study of worldwide 

drug abuse, we will keep this estimate for the table. Using the ratio of 59.6 percent from the 

ONDCP 2002 report for the crime-related, indirect impacts, the economic cost of drugs 

is split into $308 billion that is crime-related, versus $208 billion that is not crime-related. 

Counterfeiting

Many of the economic costs of counterfeiting are difficult to capture. Furthermore, we showed 

that the current estimates of the global market in counterfeit goods are not reliable. Even if they 

were, they do not measure the actual illegal market size and revenues of traffickers since counterfeits can be sold at a considerably lower price than genuine goods. A study commissioned 

by BASCAP (Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy from the International 

Chamber of Commerce)43 attempts to measure the global social and economic impact of 

counterfeiting and piracy. However, a fair fraction of the overall estimate builds on the OECD 

estimate that we consider unreliable. In the absence of any valid number, a lower boundary 

can be inferred from what companies and institutions pay to protect themselves from counterfeiting: the market size is estimated in 2011 at approximately $15 billion in 2011 for security 

printing44 and $2 billion for brand protection devices,45 for a total of $17 billion. While it is 

obvious that counterfeiting imposes a much larger cost on society, the lack of reliable data and 

studies makes it very difficult to derive an overall cost. 

We may attempt to develop an estimate of the direct impacts of counterfeit medications. 

Artesunate is the only affordable and effective medication that can cure parcifarum malaria, a 

particularly deadly form of the disease found in Southeast Asia. A large survey in the region by 

the WHO, Interpol (popular name of the International Criminal Police Organization), and a 

coalition of scientists and health practitioners found that 49.9 percent of medications sold were 

counterfeit and ineffective.46 Such data can be used to estimate the number of people who may 
54

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have died because they have used ineffective counterfeit medications. A report uses a rough 

estimate of the percentage of counterfeit medications and the probability that untreated sick 

people will die from a given disease, to infer that for malaria, 250,000 people would die per year 

from counterfeit medications.47 The same report estimates that 450,000 people die because 

of ineffective treatment caused by counterfeit or substandard tuberculosis medication. While 

we stress that this is a rough estimate and the overall impact of counterfeit and substandard 

medications is far from being fully understood, those 700,000 deaths remain a reasonable 

calculation based on the available evidence. 

We may infer an economic cost for these deaths by using market estimates for the value 

of a statistic life (VSL). Typical VSL values in the United States are in the range of $5 million 

to $12 million (median of $7 million).48 Although VSL estimates are less well known for 

low-income countries, an elasticity of 1.0 is commonly used.49 The GDP per capita in the 

United States is around $50,000 per year, and the GDP per capita for low-income countries 

where most of these deaths occur is on the order of $2,000 per year. Therefore, using the median VSL of $7 million in the United States and an elasticity of 1.0, the VSL for low-income 

countries is estimated at $280,000. For this VSL, the total economic value of these deaths 

would be $196 billion. 

Human Trafficking

As we have seen earlier, human trafficking generates revenue at $32 billion per year. Using our 

cost of crime ratio of 1.5, this revenue pocketed by organized crime causes indirect impacts 

valued at $48 billion. Regarding direct impacts, a lower bound would be to consider the revenue of $32 billion of which victims of human trafficking are deprived. But a more accurate 

economic valuation of the harm might be to consider that victims are deprived of one year of 

quality life. Recent research shows that one year of quality life is worth on average $129,000 

in the United States, that is, 2.58 times the U.S. GDP per capita of $50,000.50 Assuming that 

trafficked people are deprived of 100 percent of a year of quality life, and that a year of quality 

life can be valued proportionally to GDP per capita, a rough economic valuation of those lost 

years of quality life would be given as follows: $32 billion x 2.58 = $83 billion.

Excised Goods

Each illicit package corresponds to a direct and precisely known loss of tax revenue. Government losses can be directly inferred from statistics on the number of illicit products on 

the market. This involves an addressable direct impact of $31 billion. The main other direct 

impact is related to public health: a report on tobacco taxation, using a transparent model 

that incorporates price elasticity of demand, calculates that if the illicit trade in tobacco was 

eliminated, consumption would drop by 2 percent. This would translate into 160,000 lives 

saved per year from 2030 onward. Given the estimated $193 billion per year in healthcare 

expenditures and productivity loss from smoking in the United States,51 a 2 percent drop in 

consumption would be worth close to $4 billion per year. On a worldwide basis, 2 percent of 

an estimated $500 billion each year in healthcare expenditures, productivity losses, and other 

costs52 would be worth $10 billion per year. The total direct impacts are therefore estimated at 

$41 billion. Regarding indirect impacts, we assume that organized crime captures 50 percent 
55

Global Scale and Impact of Illicit Trade

of the $50 billion in lost excise taxes (that is, illicit cigarettes are sold at half the regular price), 

and therefore makes a revenue of $25 billion. Using the cost of crime ratio of 1.5, we infer a 

loss of $37 billion.

Environmental Crime

To estimate the indirect impacts, one may add the estimates we reviewed for illegal logging (9 

percent of $190 billion, or $17 billion), illegal fishing (20.55 percent of $81.5 billion, or $17 

billion), other wildlife trade (roughly $5 billion), and the $11 billion for illegal toxic wastes.53

Acknowledging that the last two estimates are not based on detailed studies, this places the 

illegal market size at $50 billion. Using the cost of crime ratio, this results in crime-related 

impacts of $75 billion.

Calculating direct impacts of human activity on the environment, whether resulting from 

illicit activities or not, is a daunting task. To obtain an order of magnitude of these impacts, 

we suggest a generic approach that does not get into the specifics of a given environmental 

crime. It consists of using a first estimate for the total yearly value brought by ecosystem 

services, a second estimate for the rate of depletion of these ecosystems, and a third estimate 

on the proportion of that depletion caused by environmental crimes. The multiplication of 

these three values provides a rough approximation of the direct permanent losses caused by 

one year of environmental crimes. Yet ecosystem losses are permanent; therefore, we need to 

integrate future losses as well. For that we use standard economic techniques for the current 

value of future losses. More details are given below:

• Value of ecosystem services: a paper which was very influential in mainstreaming 

the economics of nature calculated that the annual value of ecosystem services is in 

the range of $16–54 trillion with an average of $33 trillion per year, or 183 percent 

of the global GDP.54 Global GDP was $18 trillion per year at the time of the study, 

and put in perspective with the current global GDP of $63 billion, this represents 

an annual value of ecosystem services of $115 trillion.

• Rate of depletion: While there is no such thing as a universal measurement of the 

rate of depletion of ecosystem resources, we may use as a first approximation the 

rate of depletion of forests, which are a fundamental pillar of our global ecosystem. 

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization publishes an annual report on the 

state of the world’s forests. The report of 2011 states that the annual change rate of 

forest area was −0.13 percent during the period 2000 to 2010 (versus −0.2 percent 

for 1990 to 2000).55 We will make the approximation that this rate of depletion 

generally applies to other ecosystem services. 

• Our review of various environmental crimes suggests that, according to the market, 

they represent approximately 10 percent to 25 percent of the total market activity. 

Based on that, we will consider that illicit trade contributes to 10 percent of the total 

depletion of ecosystem services. Therefore, each year $115 trillion × 0.13 percent × 
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10 percent = $14.95 billion of ecosystem services are that permanently destroyed 

by illicit trade.

• Using a discount factor of 3 percent per year for future losses, the net present value 

of the total economic losses in the future is 33.33 times this value, or $498 billion. 

In the previous calculation, the choice of the discount rate is critical. The Economics of 

Ecosystems and Biodiversity study states that “There are no purely economic guidelines for 

choosing a discount rate. Responsibility to future generations is a matter of ethics, best guesses 

about the well-being of those in future, and preserving life opportunities.”56 Yet a discount factor 

of 3 percent values the services provided by nature to future generations rather conservatively. 

Conflict Resources

When considering civil wars in which resources were used for funding, what matters is certainly not the value of the trade, which would probably be comparatively small anyway, but 

rather whether a link can be established between the illicit trade and the prolongation of the 

conflict. If one of the belligerents had no other source of funding, the link can be established 

and it seems reasonable to assume that the impact of illicit trading is the entire cost of war. If 

only a fraction of the war budget comes from the illicit trade, then a ratio of the value of the 

illicit trade to the total war budget can be applied. The costs of a civil war can also be estimated using econometric techniques, which provide a number from which the illicit trade ratio 

can be applied. Collier and Hoeffler estimate that it takes on average 21 years to get back to 

the GDP level that would have prevailed without the conflict.57 The total loss amounts to 

105 percent of initial GDP, plus 18 percent for increased military spending. Including costs 

for neighboring countries as well, the average civil war costs around 250 percent of GDP. 

With the average GDP of $20 billion for low-income countries affected by civil war, a rough 

estimate of the cost of a single war is around $50 billion, with a yearly loss of around $2.5 

billion. A very rough approximation of the global economic cost caused by conflict resources 

can be made by enumerating the number of conflicts driven by resources, something we will 

not attempt here. 

Summarizing Impacts

Table 4 summarizes direct and indirect impacts for five illegal markets. Direct impacts are 

valued at slightly more than $1,043 billion, while indirect impacts are valued at $468 billion. 

Environmental crimes and illegal drugs have the highest impacts, but their cost structure is very 

different, as a much higher proportion of the costs for the latter are crime-related. What makes 

environmental crimes so costly is that they have long-term future effects that are captured in 

the economic valuation. 
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Global Scale and Impact of Illicit Trade

Table 4. Impacts of Illegal Markets (billions of dollars)

Illegal Market Direct Impacts Indirect Impacts Total

Illegal Drugs

Non-crime-related 

economic cost for 

the United States 

normalized by its 

contribution to the 

global drug market

208

Crime-related 

economic cost for 

the United States 

normalized by its 

contribution to the 

global drug market

308 516

Human 

Trafficking 

Global loss of one year 

of quality life 83

Revenue of human 

traffickers multiplied 

by the cost of crime 

ratio

48 128

Excised Goods

Lost revenue to 

government plus health 

costs of illicit trade 41

Revenue of 

traffickers multiplied 

by the cost of crime 

ratio 

37 78

Environmental 

Crimes

Net present value of 

total future losses in 

ecosystem services 

caused by one year of 

environmental crimes 

498

Sum of market 

estimates multiplied 

by the cost of crime 

ratio

75 568

Counterfeits

Counterfeit medications 

in low-income countries, 

value of statistical life

expenditure for 

protection against 

counterfeiting

213 Unknown 213

Total 1,043 468 1,501

Conclusion

After arguing the importance of developing a better estimate of the global scale and impact of 

illicit trade, this chapter reviewed statistics on some of the major illegal markets, dissected the 

way they were constructed, and highlighted some of their limitations. The review uncovered 

different conceptual and empirical issues that must be addressed when defining, measuring, 

and sampling illegal markets. This helped to prepare the ground for the more ambitious task 

of developing a global estimate of illicit trade. 

What is not properly defined cannot be measured. Most terms used to define the problem, 

including transnational organized crime, illicit trade, and illicit or deviant globalization, lend 

themselves to rather vague and open-ended definitions. We proposed a framework adapted 

from Naylor’s theory of profit-driven crimes, in which different definitions or perceptions of 

the problem can be compared. Illegal markets appear as the common denominator of these 

different definitions, although we questioned the notion that being transnational is a key 

defining characteristic. 

We then focused on illegal markets and adopted UNODC’s direct/indirect classification 

of impacts. Direct impacts correspond to the fundamental reasons why a given trade is being 
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prohibited, taxed, or regulated. Indirect impacts include effects that are more diffuse or difficult 

to quantify (for example, erosion of the social fabric and the role of the state). We therefore 

decided to focus on crime-related effects for which means of quantification exist and that 

probably integrate at least some part of the intangible costs. Using the results of studies on the 

economic cost of drug abuse, we inferred that each dollar spent on the illicit drugs generates 

an overall cost of crime of slightly more than $1.50. As we do not dispose of equivalent studies 

for other illegal markets, we conjectured that this cost of crime over market size ratio could 

be applied to other markets. When estimates on market size exist, we can therefore estimate 

their indirect impact using this cost of crime ratio.

Measuring direct impacts requires making a number of assumptions regarding economic 

valuation of the harm, although in most cases we can rely on studies and data sets to support 

them. The method is applied to the five illegal markets studied at the beginning of the chapter, 

and also for conflict resources although a global estimate was not provided. Going through 

the calculations illustrated the various choices that need to be made on the data sources, as 

well as the assumptions that are necessary, especially when data are lacking and must be supplemented by data on a different region or a different illegal market. Furthermore, the data 

and statistics that were fed into the model count themselves on multiple data sources and 

assumptions, which in most cases were selected for their scientific legitimacy or because they 

were coming from the organizations that have the best access to field data. The outcome is an 

estimated impact on the order of more than $1.5 trillion per year. While this number does 

not claim precision and relies on spelled-out assumptions, it should be taken as suggestive of 

the order of magnitude of the impacts. Another observation is that the total market size of the 

five studied illegal markets used in the application of the model is a bit less than $300 billion. 

This is five times less than the estimated impacts, indicating that, indeed, the effects of illicit 

markets matter more than their size. 

Acknowledgments

The author would like to acknowledge that much of the intellectual input and stimulus for 

this chapter comes from discussions held at the World Economic Forum Global Agenda 

Council on Illicit Trade. Special thanks to Mariya Polner, Sandeep Chawla, Richard Danziger, Helena Leurent, and the editors for reading and providing extremely useful feedback 

on earlier versions.

Notes

1

 Whack-a-mole is an arcade game in which moles pop up from their holes at random, and the aim of the game 

is to force the individual moles back into their holes by hitting them directly on the head with a mallet; no matter 

how adept the player is at whacking the moles, they keep reappearing. The image of a “Whack-a-mole problem” is 

used when enforcement actions seem to have no lasting impact in addressing the problem. See, for example, Illicit 

Tobacco: Various Schemes Are Used to Evade Taxes and Fee, U.S. GAO Report GAO-11-313 (March 2011), available 

at <www.gao.gov/new.items/d11313.pdf>. 2

 Bruce Schneier, “The Global Illicit Economy,” Schneier on Security blog, September 8, 2009, available at 

<www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/09/the_global_illi.html>.
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Global Scale and Impact of Illicit Trade

3 Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime: Addressing Converging Threats to National Security

(Washington, DC: The White House, July 2011), available at <www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/2011-strategy-combat-transnational-organized-crime.pdf>. 4

 “Havocscope Black Market Ranking,” and “Havocscope Black Market Country Ranking,” Havocscope Global 

Black Market Information, October 16, 2011, available at <www.havocscope.com>. 5

 Ibid.

6

 Ibid.

7

 Peter Andreas and Kelly M. Greenhill, eds., Sex, Drugs, and Body Counts: The Politics of Numbers in Global 

Crime and Conflict (New York: Cornell University Press, 2010). 8

 Peter Andreas, “Illicit Globalization: Myths, Misconceptions, and Historical Lessons,” available at <www.

brown.edu/Departments/Political_Science/people/documents/Illicit_Globalization.pdf>. 9

 Ibid., 4.

10 R.T. Naylor, Wages of Crime Black Markets, Illegal Finance, and the Underworld Economy (New York: Cornell 

University Press, 2005), 4. 11 Ibid., 5.

12 Raymond Baker and Eva Joly, “Illicit Money: Can It Be Stopped?” in Deviant Globalization: Black Market Economy in the 21st Century, ed. Nils Gilman, Jesse Goldhammer, and Steven Weber, 233 (New York: The Continuum 

International Publishing Group, 2011). 13 Asif Efrat, Governing Guns, Preventing Plunder: International Cooperation Against Illicit Trade (Oxford: Oxford 

University Press, 2012). 14 World Economic Forum, “Global Agenda Council on Illicit Trade 2012,” available at <www.weforum.org/

content/global-agenda-council-illicit-trade-2011>. 15 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), “World Drug Report 2011,” available at <www.

unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/WDR2011/WDR2011-ExSum.pdf>. 16 UNODC, “World Drug Report 2005,” available at <www.unodc.org/pdf/WDR_2005/volume_1_ex_summary.pdf>. 17 Francisco Thoumi, “The numbers game: let’s all guess the size of the illegal drug industry,” The Journal of Drug 

Series (2005), available at <www.tomfeiling.com/archive/Thoumi_on_the_Numbers_Game.pdf>.

18 Ibid.

19 “Estimating the size of the global drug market: A demand-side approach,” RAND Technical Report TR711,

available at <www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/technical_reports/2009/RAND_TR711.pdf>. 20 Ibid., 9.

21 Ibid., 21.

22 UNODC, “World Drug Report 2006,” available at <www.unodc.org/pdf/WDR_2006/wdr2006_volume1.

pdf>. 23 P. Reuter, “The Mismeasurement of Illegal Drug Markets,” Exploring the Underground Economy (Kalamazoo, 

MI: Upjohn Institute, 1996), 63–80. 24 Ibid., 195.

25 Business Software Alliance, “Global Piracy Study,” available at <http://portal.bsa.org/globalpiracy2010/>. 26 Human Trafficking: Better Data, Strategy, and Reporting Needed to Enhance U.S. Antitrafficking Efforts Abroad, 

U.S. GAO Report GAO-06-82, available at <www.gao.gov/new.items/d06825.pdf>. 27 “ILO Minimum Estimate of Forced Labor in the World,” International Labor Organization 2005, available 

at <www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_norm/---declaration/documents/publication/wcms_081913.pdf>. 28 “A Global Alliance Against Forced Labor,” International Labor Organization 2005, available at <www.ilo.

org/public/english/standards/relm/ilc/ilc93/pdf/rep-i-b.pdf>. 29 American Forest & Paper Association, “Illegal Logging and Global Wood Markets: The Competitive Impacts 

on the U.S. Wood Products Industry,” available at <www.illegal-logging.info/uploads/afandpa.pdf>. 30 “Sustaining Forests: A Development Strategy,” World Bank 2004, available at <http://siteresources.

worldbank.org/INTFORESTS/Resources/SustainingForests.pdf>. 31 D. Agnew et al., “Estimating the Worldwide Extent of Illegal Fishing,” PLOS ONE, available at <www.

plosone.org/article/fetchObjectAttachment.action;jsessionid=980C237B77A322A650864BF5A9D3ECDB.

ambra01?uri=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0004570&representation=PDF>.
60

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32 “The Illegal Shipment of Waste Among Impel Member States,” IMPEL-TFS Threat Assessment Project 2005, 

available at <http://impel.eu/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/2006-x-Threat-Assessment-Final-Report.pdf>. 33 U.S. Government Interagency Working Group 2000, “International Crime Threat Assessment,” available at 

<www.fas.org/irp/threat/pub45270index.html>. 34 “United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime,” available at <www.unodc.org/

documents/treaties/UNTOC/Publications/TOC%20Convention/TOCebook-e.pdf>. 35 R.T. Naylor, “Towards a General Theory of Profit-Driven Crimes,” British Journal of Criminology 43 (2003), 

81–101. 36 Ibid.

37 Ibid.

38 Nils Gilman, Jesse Goldhammer, and Steven Weber, eds., Deviant Globalization (New York: The Continuum 

International Publishing Group, 2011). 39 “United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime,” available at <www.unodc.org/documents/treaties/UNTOC/Publications/TOC%20Convention/TOCebook-e.pdf>. 40 Executive Office of the President, Office of National Drug Control Policy, “The Economic Costs of Drug 

Abuse in the United States, 1992–2002,” available at <www.ncjrs.gov/ondcppubs/publications/pdf/economic_costs.pdf>. 41 Executive Office of the President of the United States 2001, “What America’s Users Spend on Illegal Drugs,” 

available at <www.abtassociates.com/reports/american_users_spend_2002.pdf>. 42 United States Department of Justice National Drug Center 2011, “The Economic Impact of Illicit Drug Use 

on American Society,” available at <www.justice.gov/ndic/pubs44/44731/44731p.pdf>. 43 International Chamber of Commerce BASCAP, “Estimating the global economic and social impacts of 

counterfeiting and piracy,” available at <www.iccwbo.org/uploadedFiles/BASCAP/Pages/Global%20Impacts%20

-%20Final.pdf>. 44 “The Future of Global Security Printing to 2013,” Pira International, available at <www.pira-international.

com/The-Future-of-Global-Security-Printing-to-2013.aspx>. 45 “The Future of Anti-Counterfeiting, Brand Protection and Security Packaging VI,” Pira International, available 

at <www.pira-international.com/future-of-anti-counterfeiting-brand-protection-and-security-packaging-vi.aspx>. 46 “Paul Newton et al., “A collaborative epidemiological investigation into the criminal fake artesunate trade in 

South East Asia,” PLOS Medicine 2008, available at <www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.

pmed.0050032>. 47 Julian Harris et al., “Keeping It Real; Combating the spread of fake drugs in poor countries,” International Policy 

Network 2009, available at <www.policynetwork.net/sites/default/files/keeping_it_real_2009.pdf>. 48 National Bureau of Economic Research, “The Value of a Statistical Life: A Critical Review of Market Estimates 

Throughout the World,” available at <www.nber.org/papers/w9487.pdf>. 49 J.K. Hammit, “The Income Elasticity of the Value per Statistical Life: Transferring Estimates between 

High and Low Income Population,” Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis 2011, accessed at <www.bepress.com/cgi/

viewcontent>. 50 “The Value of a Human Life: $129,000,” Time, May 20, 2008, available at <www.time.com/time/health/

article/0,8599,1808049,00.html>. 51 Illicit Tobacco: Various Schemes Are Used to Evade Taxes and Fee. 52 Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, “Toll of Tobacco Around the World,” available at <www.tobaccofreekids.

org/facts_issues/toll_global/>. 53 Berend H. Ruessink and Gerhard J.R. Wolters, “Combating Illegal Waste Shipments Through International 

Seaports,” available at <http://inece.org/conference/9/papers/RuessinkWolters_Netherlands_Final.pdf>. 54 R. Costanza et al., “The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital,” Nature Magazine, 1997, 

available at <www.coralreef.gov/mitigation/costanza_et_al_nature_1997.pdf>. 55 UN Food and Agriculture Organization, “State of the World’s Forests,” 2011, available at <www.fao.org/

docrep/013/i2000e/i2000e.pdf>. 56 John Gowdy, “Discounting, ethics, and options for maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem integrity,” available 

at <www.teebweb.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=WIzKzKAFsuE%3D&tabid=1018&language=en-US>. 57 Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, Civil War (Oxford, 2006), available at <http://users.ox.ac.uk/~econpco/

research/pdfs/Civil-War.pdf>.
Part II. 

Complex Illicit Operations

63

Chapter 4

The Illicit Supply Chain

Duncan Deville

I

n the age of globalization, the increased interconnectedness of the world allows individuals 

and groups to come together around common causes across national boundaries in order to 

form networks.1 No longer restricted by physical, geographical, or political borders, networks 

increasingly operate outside of traditional government controls. In some instances, these networks form with the purpose of challenging traditional government authority. These challenges 

are not always bad. Some networks develop for the purpose of promoting the advancement 

of society. In doing so, they put pressure on governments to address political and social issues 

that are otherwise ignored or overlooked.2

Although some networks can be ultimately beneficial to the state, others have emerged with 

the capacity—and often even the objective—to be detrimental to it. When the end goal of a 

network is the advancement of its own parochial agendas at the expense of society, it can become 

a danger to society and the state. Among the most dangerous networks are those comprised 

of individuals and organizations engaged in criminal activities. Due to the globalization of the 

marketplace, illicit products and activities are no longer localized problems confined to individual 

states. Instead, the scope of criminal activities has expanded to macroeconomic levels, infecting 

the global marketplace via illicit networks. These networks function outside of the traditional 

state framework, spreading their operations across multiple organizational and geographical 

boundaries. Accordingly, illicit networks have no allegiance to any one government, state, or 

society at large. Instead, these networks are driven by market forces; their loyalty is reserved only 

for whatever increases their profits.

The damage that illicit networks inflict on states stems from their extensive use of market 

mechanisms to advance parochial and often antisocial goals at the expense of society and the 

public good. Crime flourishes in unstable and chaotic environments. Thus, in order to expand 

unchallenged in the marketplace, the more powerful networks are not satisfied with merely 

evading government and law enforcement detection. Instead, they seek and encourage direct 

challenges to—and ultimately the erosion of—state authority. Where these challenges are 

successful, networks are better positioned to expand criminal enterprises without effective 

government interference. When they gain enough power, they may threaten the overall stability 

of the state, its region, and even the world at large.
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Deville

Operating Beyond the Traditional State Framework

In the past, government and law enforcement responses to crimes such as drug trafficking 

tended to focus on local criminal organizations with rigid hierarchical structures. In recent 

years, they have shifted their attention to global crime networks. Although their structures 

vary, these networks are driven more by market forces than the whims of individuals or specific 

groups. Therefore, even the successful targeting of individuals or specific groups may not have 

a significant impact on the larger network. The criminal activities will likely continue as long 

as the market and its incentives remain intact.3

While illicit activities are not typically localized to one state, the network’s central operations are usually set up in states where government authority can be easily evaded or undermined. Conflict, postconflict, and underdeveloped countries tend to be preferred locations for 

illicit network operations. In states currently in some form of ongoing conflict, illicit networks 

often choose to align themselves with antiregime elements, providing funding to antigovernment or terrorist groups in order to prolong or sustain the conflict environment in which they 

flourish. For example, opium production and trafficking operations in Afghanistan provide 

revenue and material support to insurgents in exchange for protection of the traffickers’ illicit 

activities.4 As a result of this alliance, the continued instability in Afghanistan’s primary poppy 

cultivation regions in the south and southwest has made it difficult for the government and 

law enforcement to devote any significant effort to containing drug-trafficking operations.5

In postconflict and underdeveloped countries with severely weakened government 

infrastructures, illicit networks may seek to infiltrate the government itself. In the most 

extreme cases, such target states may be degraded into sovereign criminal enterprises; states 

captured by narcotics-trafficking networks can devolve into “narco-states.” For example, after 

law enforcement agents made progress in restricting the flow of drugs to the European market 

through the Caribbean, Latin American drug barons moved their trafficking operations to 

the West African country of Guinea-Bissau. As one of the poorest countries in the world,6

Guinea-Bissau provided an ideal location. The weak government infrastructure made it easy 

for drug barons to infiltrate its ranks to the point where, in April 2010, the United States 

named two of the country’s senior military officials as drug kingpins.7

 According to a senior 

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) official, “A place like Guinea-Bissau is a failed 

state anyway, so it’s like moving into an empty house. . . . You walk in, buy the services you need 

from the government, army and people, and take over.”8 The Latin American drug-trafficking 

organizations did essentially that, effectively transforming the country into the world’s first 

narco-state.9

Illicit Networks as Commercial Supply Chains: The Mexican Example

As market-driven enterprises, if government and law enforcement efforts begin to threaten 

their profits, illicit networks will often take steps to better protect their activities including moving their operations to other states or regions. For instance, prior to 1990, Latin 

America–U.S. cocaine trafficking activities (production and transport) were centralized in 

Colombia. However, in the 1990s, Colombians began outsourcing most of their U.S. cocaine 
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The Illicit Supply Chain

business (that is, cocaine smuggling across the U.S. border and sales inside the United States) 

to Mexican illicit networks, more commonly known as cartels.10 During this transition, the 

Colombians retained production in Colombia and moved transport operations completely 

into Mexico. This change resulted in part from increased U.S.-Colombian law enforcement 

and military cooperation that began in the 1990s. Colombian cartel leaders especially began to 

fear extradition to the United States, the fate that befell Gilberto “the Chess Player” Rodríguez 

(then head of the Cali Cartel) and “Don Diego” Montoya (then head of the Norte Del Valle 

drug cartel). By shifting transport to Mexicans, the Colombians could keep a lower profile in 

the eyes of U.S. authorities. Although this new business model resulted in a revenue loss for 

the Colombians, the enormous profit margins to be made from coca plant growing, processing, 

and exporting to Mexico still allowed for sizable revenue.

The key lesson from this transition, however, is that while law enforcement agents were 

successful in curbing the activities of Colombian criminal organizations, cocaine trafficking 

in Latin America did not cease. As long as the market and its incentives remain, the larger 

illicit network will find a way to move its products to the marketplace. In this particular case, 

the major trafficking activities were moved to Mexico, where they continue to the present day.

Since market forces primarily drive illicit networks, the networks function and can be 

best understood as supply chains. In the traditional commercial world, a supply chain is a 

system that moves a product from the supplier to the customer. It typically involves people, 

organizations, processes, technology, and so forth. Wal-Mart is a commonly cited example of 

a successful traditional commercial supply chain. Its model revolves around keeping prices low 

for its consumers by purchasing goods directly from suppliers and bypassing all intermediaries. 

In the case of the Mexican illicit networks, the methodology used to transport the product 

to the market and the subsequent illicit proceeds back to Mexico is constantly evolving in 

response to government and law enforcement activities. However, while the methodology 

may change, the larger supply chain model remains the same. The illicit networks employ 

their “staff ” members to maintain distinct roles within the supply chain in order to enable 

key processes and functions to operate without interference from law enforcement. As long 

as these fundamental roles are not disrupted, the illicit network is able to adapt its activities 

to ensure the supply chain is not disrupted.

Like traditional commercial supply chains, illicit supply chains tend to be secure, redundant, and resilient to disruption. They are often designed with an extensive compartmentalization of operational knowledge throughout the layers of the various organizations involved. 

Furthermore, the end-to-end supply chain is designed with redundant nodes and simplified 

roles to limit the potential negative impact that any one individual or group of individuals can 

have on the success of the overall operation. In the Wal-Mart model, the organization limits 

negative impact by controlling virtually all aspects of the movement of goods from supplier to 

customer, bypassing the need to rely on any intermediaries that might slow down the system 

or add to the cost of its operations. In May 2010, Wal-Mart announced plans to become its 

own freight forwarder, which would further lower prices in its stores by cutting the cost it 

took for third parties to transport goods to its warehouses.11 By examining operations using a 

supply chain model, we can identify the interrelationships, logistics, and communications used 

by successful illicit networks. This model not only allows us to examine how illicit networks 
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function, but also leads us to a better understanding of how protection of these illicit supply 

chains undermines government efforts to contain them, as well as the larger detrimental effect 

illicit networks have on the state.

The supply chains of global criminal networks are bidirectional; that is, one chain conveys contraband from supplier to demander while a reverse chain conveys payment from 

demander to supplier. In the case of Mexico, narcotics smuggling—which fuels corruption, 

weapons trafficking, kidnappings, and violent crime—has risen to disturbing levels over the 

past few years. Mexican cartels ship indigenous drugs (marijuana, methamphetamine, and 

others) and, as described above, imported drugs (principally Colombian cocaine) into the 

United States. According to the 2009 National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) National 

Drug Threat Assessment, bulk cash is the primary method used by Mexican drug-trafficking 

organizations to transport their proceeds from the U.S. market back to Latin America. The 

U.S. Department of Homeland Security estimates between $18 billion and $29 billion in 

cash is smuggled from the United States to Mexico annually, nearly all from drug sales.12 The 

primary recipients of illicit U.S.-generated gross drug revenue are the nodes along the supply 

chains of Mexican illicit networks. These proceeds are essential to sustain their operations, 

purchase additional drugs and supplies, and protect their activities in other ways including 

bribes to government and law enforcement officials.13 Without these proceeds, illicit networks 

would be forced to identify alternative methods to fund their operations, greatly reducing their 

power. The movement of bulk cash across the border is arguably the most important part of 

the Mexican illicit network supply chain.

Cash makes up the majority of drug revenue for obvious reasons; it is convenient and 

virtually untraceable. Cash is the preferred method of payment for the product on the street 

for the same reasons. To a large extent, cash facilitates an illicit network’s operations, making 

it more difficult for governments to detect and track the flow of illicit funds. Reliance on cash 

allows illicit networks to function in a shadow economy, operating in an unregulated sphere 

outside the global marketplace. In 2010, the Mexican government took steps to combat illicit 

networks’ use of cash to fund operations by introducing new regulations that limited the 

amount of U.S. currency allowed to be deposited into Mexican financial institutions. However, it is too early to determine whether such regulations will have a significant impact on 

drug-trafficking operations. Prepaid access cards have emerged as a potential alternative to 

both transporting and laundering money, and a 2010 report by the Department of Homeland 

Security noted that these cards might offer more advantages than cash due to their small size 

and lack of reporting requirements. As of this writing, however, neither Mexican nor U.S. law 

enforcement agents have observed wide use of prepaid cards by Mexican illicit networks.14

Moving such large amounts of bulk cash poses a complex logistical challenge for illicit 

networks. To transport this cash, network managers compartmentalize the activities, assigning 

discrete management responsibilities to different cells within the supply chain. Each cell has 

a fixed role or function it must perform that is integral to the overall success of the network. 

Roles include consolidating and counting proceeds at centralized counting houses, packing cash 

into vehicles, moving cash across the border, providing intelligence related to law enforcement 

whereabouts, and so forth.15
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The Illicit Supply Chain

For cash consolidation and the U.S. transport phase of the supply chain, network members take the drug proceeds to a regional centralized counting house. These houses are generally 

located in major U.S. cities such as Atlanta, Chicago, Boston, and Los Angeles.16 In October 

2011, Federal agents seized $200,000 in cash from a network of stash houses in Phoenix operated by members of the Sinaloa Cartel.17 During this phase, in addition to money counting, 

members typically convert smaller bills to $100 or $50 notes to reduce the bulk of the cash.18

The money remains in the counting house until it is ready to be transported across the border.

The next part of the supply chain is the preparation of the cash for transport into Mexico. 

After being converted to larger bills, the cash is vacuum-sealed into plastic bags and concealed 

in vehicles.19 Illicit networks typically conceal cash in the wheel walls, panels, and spare tire 

compartments. Sometimes cash is hidden in tractor-trailer trucks, which are also used to 

transport drugs into the United States from Mexico.20 In March 2011, during a routine traffic 

stop, Indianapolis police seized $500,000 from the hidden compartment of a truck’s ceiling. 

The cash was bound for a truck stop in McAllen, Texas.21 Drivers typically deliver the cash to 

a safe house along the border (as was the case in March 2011) or drive directly into Mexico.

The next node in the illicit cash supply chain is transporting proceeds across the border 

from the United States back to Mexico. To guard against seizure by Federal agents, network 

members frequently rotate cash transport vehicles. They also only ship a portion of their proceeds in any vehicle. Most vehicles will only carry between $150,000 and $500,000. Therefore, 

if a vehicle is stopped and cash is seized, the loss is not sufficient to render the overall operation 

unprofitable.22 The network typically has a group of rotating drivers responsible for driving 

the cash to a designated border town close to the drug-trafficking center of its organization.23

Times and locations of border crossings are chosen based on intelligence provided by lookouts 

(called halcones, or hawks). These halcones are responsible for carefully watching border traffic 

to spot any unusual patterns or searches. If they observe anything unusual, they will reroute 

the vehicles to another crossing.24 The illicit networks hold the advantage in this step of the 

chain since U.S. law enforcement has primarily focused on stopping the northward flow of 

contraband. According to U.S. and Mexican officials, although 10 percent of southbound 

vehicles are supposed to be stopped for a secondary screening, the actual number is far less.25

In a March 2011 report, the Government Accountability Office noted that the U.S. Customs 

and Border Protection (CBP) seized $67 million in illicit bulk cash at the border over the past 

2 years.26 Since NDIC estimates between $18 and $29 billion in cash is smuggled out of the 

country each year, the amount seized by U.S. officials is quite low at less than 1 percent. According to the same report, CBP efforts are limited by lack of staffing, effective infrastructure, 

and technology.27 As one U.S. official in El Paso admitted, “We are simply not configured to 

deal effectively with southbound traffic.”28

After the cash has been moved into Mexico, the final link in the supply chain is to break 

it down into smaller quantities to meet payroll, pay bribes, and compensate Colombian 

suppliers. This is estimated to take about half of the cash. The remainder is then integrated 

into the financial system using a variety of tactics. Often, the bulk cash is deposited into the 

Mexican banking system through centros cambiarios (currency exchange businesses), banks, 

retail stores, casinos, real estate purchases, and a variety of other money-laundering techniques. 

When needed, funds are repatriated back to the U.S. banking system through correspondent 
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banking and banknote sales to U.S. institutions.29 Cartel accountants supervise this process. 

One common tactic used by illicit networks is to launder drug proceeds through a system 

called the Black Market Peso Exchange (BMPE). In the BMPE, drug revenues are smuggled 

back into Mexico to be exchanged for pesos at a discounted rate. The peso brokers then use 

the dollars to buy products in the United States and ship them back to purchasers in Mexico. 

For example, in November 2011, U.S. Federal agents arrested Vikram Datta of Laredo, Texas, 

for laundering millions of dollars for the Sinaloa Cartel through his perfume business as part 

of a BMPE. Datta sold millions of dollars worth of perfume to corrupt buyers in Mexico since 

2009.30 According to prosecutors, he told an undercover agent that his responsibility was “just 

washing the whole money.”31 Over a 2-year investigation, Datta and other coconspirators 

deposited more than $25 million in American currency in dozens of bank accounts.32

These supply chain steps and roles are fairly standardized; however, the methods used to 

conduct the required activities change frequently. One example of their adaptability is their 

increasing use of emerging communication technologies (for example, Voice Over Internet 

Protocol, satellite technology, cell phones, and two-way radios) in the intelligence step of the 

chain. 33 By utilizing new modes of communication, cell members can anticipate law enforcement efforts and adjust their activities. In a 2010 interview, a U.S. official admitted that the 

cartels “have very good intelligence on our operations. We are always one step behind.”34 This 

advantage is largely rooted in the networks’ reliance on the supply chain model to effectively 

organize and preempt threats to their chains.

In the case of Mexican illicit networks, the collection and movement of bulk cash drug 

proceeds function as a supply chain that operates in opposition to both the Mexican and 

the U.S. governments. By adopting and adapting the structure of commercial supply chains 

for their own illicit activities, illicit networks have been able to position their operations in 

opposition to the state.

Damage to the State

Mexican illicit networks have largely replaced their Colombian counterparts as the primary 

drug-trafficking organizations in Latin America. As a result, Mexican cartels have enjoyed a 

significant increase in their profit share. To continue increasing profits, these networks have 

devoted greater and greater resources to protecting their market share and supply chain. For the 

supply chain to function effectively, each process step or role must be protected by the network. 

In the case of Mexico, enforcement typically takes the form of violence and/or corruption—

both of which severely undermine governance and the stability of the state.

Over the past 5 years, there has been a significant escalation in drug-related violence 

in Mexico. In 2010 alone, there were 11,583 drug-related murders (compared to 6,587 in 

2009).35 In the past 4 years, officials estimate that almost 40,000 have been killed in connection 

to drug-trafficking operations.36 This escalation may be strongly linked to the government’s 

efforts to curb illicit network activities.37 As market-driven enterprises, Mexican illicit networks have a strong incentive to protect their profits. Violence is an effective means to that 

end. The majority of drug-related murders stem from conflicts over control of smuggling 
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The Illicit Supply Chain

routes (both cash and product) between rival cartels.38 Any progress law enforcement agencies 

make in targeting smuggling routes typically leads to increased competition—usually violent—among illicit networks for control over the remaining routes. Mexican illicit networks 

increasingly resort to military tactics, utilizing heavy weaponry such as sniper rifles, grenades, 

and rocket-propelled grenades in attacks on rival cartel members as well as government and 

law enforcement officials.39

Government and law enforcement officials are also increasingly being targeted in retaliatory killings. For example, in June 2009, 12 federal police agents were tortured and killed and 

their bodies dumped in retaliation after the Mexican police arrested a high-ranking member of 

a cartel.40 Such activities demonstrate the lengths that illicit networks are willing to go to protect their market interests. When avoiding government detection is no longer an option, illicit 

networks openly challenge government efforts to contain them, as is occurring in Mexico today.

Violence is not the only tactic utilized by Mexico illicit networks to protect the effectiveness of the supply chain. Another way they ensure their activities are successful is infiltrating 

and corrupting the government itself. Much of this corruption is still enforced by violence. 

Many customs agents may collaborate with these networks at the border out of fear for their 

safety. Network agents have also succeeded in infiltrating local law enforcement units. In 2010, 

the Mexican government dismissed 3,200 members of its police force (10 percent of the total) 

due to corruption-related concerns.41 The city of Torreon fired 1,200 police officers in 2010 

once it was discovered that the city’s entire force had been infiltrated by cartels. According to 

Mayor Eduardo Olmos, cartel members “bribed, threatened and recruited [the police] and 

were able to use their radios, vehicles, weapons, bulletproof vests, everything. . . . The police 

relaxed their ethics and discipline and just gave in. In the end they weren’t working for them. 

They were them.”42 The more powerful Mexican illicit networks have expanded their scope 

beyond drug trafficking. In recent years, cartels have increasingly engaged in human smuggling 

and trafficking, prostitution, and kidnapping. Such activities allow illicit networks not only 

to further utilize their existing drug trafficking supply chain but also to further increase their 

political influence as well as their profits.

U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials have observed that drug cartels are increasingly moving into human-smuggling operations, forcing immigrants to act as “mules” to transport drugs and cash proceeds across the border. 43 According to the United Nations Office 

on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) 2010 transnational crime threat assessment report, 90 

percent of migrants who are smuggled into the United States have the help of a professional 

smuggler.44 While data are not available regarding the percentage of these migrants who are 

aided by cartels, the report notes that, since cartels control the majority of Mexican border 

towns, there is the high likelihood that a significant portion of these migrants must rely on 

the cartels to cross the border. Working with cartels, however, does not come without a price. 

Many illicit networks take advantage of the vulnerability of migrants by forcing them to work 

as a part of the drug-trafficking network. Even migrants who do not directly choose to work 

with the cartels may still find themselves the victims of cartel brutality. Approximately 18,000 

migrants are kidnapped each year with the aim of forcing them into servitude or extorting 

ransom payments from relatives.45 When migrants do not comply with the cartels, they are 
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often executed, which was the case in August 2010 when 72 migrants were allegedly killed by 

armed gangs in Tamaulipas.46

In addition to using human smuggling in support of their drug-trafficking operations, 

cartels have launched separate human-trafficking and prostitution enterprises to diversify their 

business and create additional profit lines. In July 2011, a U.S. Government official pointed 

to this shift in the cartels’ original business model, noting, “They realize [human trafficking] 

is a lucrative way to generate revenue, and it is low-risk.”47 With government efforts still 

largely focused on drug trafficking, human-trafficking convictions in Mexico remain rare.48

The diversification of cartel activities in Mexico reveals just how extensive their influence and 

power have become. Their drug-trafficking activities, which still fund the majority of their 

operations, are so well protected that they can expand into other illicit activities without fear 

of state interference.

Both violence and corruption have obvious impact on governance and the stability of a 

state. Regardless of how they choose to protect their activities, illicit networks are clearly undermining government authority across Mexico. One result is the growing exodus of Mexicans 

from their country to escape the increasing drug-related violence. Since 2006, an estimated 

125,000 middle- and upper-class Mexicans have fled their country for the United States.49

Collateral Costs

The damage inflicted by illicit networks can extend far beyond the borders of the state in which 

their main operations or headquarters are located. Although the damage may be greatest in the 

home state, in the age of globalization, no state is immune from criminal networks no matter 

where they are located. The convergence of criminal organizations to form illicit networks is 

a threat not only to political and economic stability in individual states, but also to stability 

across the globe.

While the most dramatic impacts of illicit network supply chains and operations in 

Mexico are felt in Mexico itself, their impacts are increasingly being felt in other states of 

the region, including the United States. In addition to targeting Mexican agents and police 

officials, illicit networks are often working to corrupt, and more frequently targeting, U.S. law 

enforcement agents at the border. At a Senate subcommittee hearing in June 2011, a CBP 

official testified that 127 U.S. customs agents had been indicted for crimes including cocaine 

trafficking and money laundering since 2004.50 In 2009, U.S. Customs Agent Luis Alarid was 

sentenced to prison after it was discovered that he had accepted over $200,000 in cash along 

with vehicles and electronics from cartel members in exchange for allowing vehicles carrying 

drugs to cross the border.51

In addition to corrupting customs agents, Mexico’s illicit networks have used violence 

against U.S. law enforcement officials and citizens to protect their activities from U.S. intervention, although so far not as much—at least not yet—as many fear. The number of U.S. 

law enforcement and citizen deaths and disappearances related to Mexico’s drug trafficking 

has increased in the past 5 years. According to State Department figures, “at least 106 U.S. 

residents were victims of ‘executions’ or ‘homicides’ directly related to drug battles in Mexico 

in 2010, compared to 79 in 2009 and 35 in 2007.”52 U.S. border towns have seen a sharp 
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The Illicit Supply Chain

increase in kidnappings and home invasions over the past few years. Moreover, Mexican illicit 

networks have begun to directly target U.S. law enforcement agents who threaten to impede 

their activities, instructing their members “to shoot and kill American border agents using AK47 assault rifles.”53 These tactics were on display in February 2011 when one U.S. immigration 

agent was killed after cartel members targeted and attacked his vehicle while he was driving 

on assignment in Mexico.54

Illicit networks may threaten stability in multiple states when they adapt their operations 

in response to law enforcement activities. For example, in response to the aggressive crackdown 

on drug trafficking by the Mexican and U.S. governments in Mexico itself, Mexican illicit networks have begun to move some of their operations into Central American countries where 

law enforcement and government capacity is substantially weaker.55 Honduras is one country 

that has been impacted by the shift. The 2009 military coup there facilitated the movement 

of some cartel activities into that country. The movement to Honduras was largely successful. 

Honduras was placed on the U.S. list of major illicit drug transit or major illicit drug producing 

countries for the first time in 2010.56

Cooperation between Mexican cartels and Middle Eastern terrorist networks has recently 

become an area of concern. In testimony before Congress, the former chief of operations and 

intelligence for the DEA stated:

Collaboration between Latin American drug cartels and groups such as Iran’s Quds 

Force and the Islamic terror group Hezbollah is growing far faster than most policymakers in Washington, DC, choose to admit. This increasing cooperation means that 

Iran’s al-Quds Force and its proxy Hezbollah have more opportunities to leverage the 

transportation, money laundering, arms trafficking, corruption, human trafficking and 

smuggling infrastructures of the Colombian and Mexican drug trafficking cartels.57

Similarly, former Ambassador to the Organization of American States Roger Noriega 

stated, “There are two parallel terror networks growing at an alarming rate in Latin America. 

One is operated by Hezbollah and its collaborators and the other is managed by a cadre of 

Quds operatives.”58 For example, in September 2011, a Mexican cartel was accused of cooperating with an Iranian Revolutionary Guard member plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in 

Washington. Earlier that year, Manssor Arbabsiar, working with Iranian Revolutionary Guard 

member Gholam Shakuri, through friends and relatives allegedly approached a member of the 

Zetas Cartel (who was actually a DEA informant). Arbabsiar and the informant are alleged 

to have worked out a deal under which Arbabsiar was to pay $1.5 million to the Zetas to kill 

the Saudi ambassador at a Washington restaurant.

In December 2011, a Lebanese drug kingpin was charged with working with the Mexican 

Zeta Cartel and Hizballah to launder large amounts of cash. Ayman Joumaa (also known as 

“Junior”) and his associates allegedly shipped an estimated 85,000 kilograms of cocaine into 

the United States and laundered more than $850 million in drug money coming out of Mexico 

from the Zeta Cartel through front companies and the Lebanese Canadian Bank. The two 

groups cooperated: Hizballah received cartel cash and protection in exchange for expertise in 

money laundering and explosives training for the Zetas.
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The White House unveiled its Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime in 

July 2011. The report underscored the seriousness of the risk that illicit networks pose to 

international security, noting the damage that networks are capable of if they gain enough 

power to penetrate or corrupt state institutions. To guard their market interests, illicit networks “insinuate themselves into the political process” through bribery and/or infiltrating 

financial and security industries.59 In doing so, these networks “build alliances with political 

leaders, financial institutions, law enforcement, foreign intelligence, and security agencies . . . 

exacerbating corruption and undermining governance, rule of law, judicial systems, free press, 

democratic institution-building, and transparency.”60

Conclusion

The challenge that increasingly global and diversified criminal networks pose to states and to 

the international system of states stems from the extensive and successful use of market mechanisms to serve parochial and antisocial ends at the expense of society and the public good. 

These networks function outside of the traditional state framework, working often in direct 

opposition to governments to protect their profits. When these networks gain sufficient power, 

they can infiltrate and corrupt governments. Meanwhile, states do not in most cases have the 

tools necessary to protect themselves from these corrupting agents. As UNODC spokesman 

Walter Kemp asked in February 2010, “How can an international system, created to deal with 

tensions between states, confront non-state actors who become rich, powerful, and dangerous 

by respecting neither laws nor borders?”61

To successfully counter the spread and cancerous impacts of illicit networks, governments 

must cooperate. As modern markets transcend individual state boundaries, so illicit networks 

operate increasingly beyond individual state boundaries and cannot be defeated ultimately within any individual state. Eradicating criminal organizations in one state is simply not enough 

to contain the larger illicit networks and their activities. Instead, law enforcement agencies 

must work together across state boundaries, sharing information and resources to break down 

supply chains and cut off network access to the global marketplace.

Acknowledgment

The author thanks Rachele Byrne for her assistance in preparation of this chapter.

Notes

1

 National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World (Washington, DC: Government 

Printing Office, November 2008). 2

 Ibid.

3

 Ibid.

4

 Department of State, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report 2011 (Washington, DC: Department of 

State, 2011). 5

 Ibid.
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The Illicit Supply Chain

6

 In 2010, Guinea-Bissau was ranked 175 out of 177 countries on the United Nations Human Development 

index. 7

 “U.S. Names Two Guinea-Bissau Military Men ‘Drug Kingpins,’“ BBC News, April 9, 2010, available at 

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8610924.stm>. 8

 Ed Vulliamy, “How a Tiny West African Country Became the World’s First Narco-State,” The Guardian, 

March 9, 2008, available at <www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/09/drugstrade>. 9

 Kevin Sullivan, “Route of Evil,” The Washington Post, May 25, 2008, available at <www.washingtonpost.com/

wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/24/AR2008052401676.html>. 10 The term cartel is used commonly to describe Mexican narcotics illicit networks, and this practice is adopted 

herein. In actuality, a cartel is a combination of independent organizations that unite to limit competition or fix prices 

(for example, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries). Mexican cartels are ruthlessly fighting one 

another for control of drug supply routes, so technically the term is incorrect. The term drug-trafficking organization

also falls short in that it fails to capture the other criminal activities the organization sometimes pursues (for example, 

human trafficking and prostitution). 11 Chris Burritt, “Why Wal-Mart wants to take the Driver’s Seat,” Bloomsburg Businessweek, May 2010, available 

at <www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_23/b4181017589330.htm>. 12 National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), National Drug Threat Assessment 2009, Product No. 2008-

Q0317-005 (Washington, DC: Department of Justice, 2008). 13 Douglas Farah, “Money Laundering and Bulk Cash Smuggling: Challenges for the Merida Initiative,” Working 

Paper on U.S.-Mexico Security Cooperation, The Woodrow Wilson International Institute for Scholars, Washington, DC, May 2010. 14 Ibid.

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid.

17 “70 tied to Mexico drug cartel busted in Arizona,” Reuters, October 31, 2011, available at <www.msnbc.msn.

com/id/45100583/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/t/tied-mexico-drug-cartel-busted-arizona/>. 18 Farah.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid.

21 Charlie Morasch, “Indiana drug seizure reveals Mexican cartels’ infiltration in states,” Land Line, October 

28, 2011. 22 Farah.

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid.

26 Government Accountability Office, Testimony Before the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, “Moving Illegal Proceeds: Opportunities Exist for Strengthening the Federal Government’s Efforts to Stem 

Cross-Border Currency Smuggling,” March 9, 2011. 27 Ibid.

28 Farah.

29 See Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Web site.

30 Julian Aguilar, “Money-Laundering Case Speaks to Border Fears,” The New York Times, November 12, 2011, 

available at <www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/us/a-money-laundering-case-in-laredo-speaks-to-the-fears-of-texasleaders.html?pagewanted=1>. 31 Ibid.

32 Ibid.

33 Farah.

34 Ibid.

35 Department of State.

36 “Mexico town’s police force resigns over drug attacks,” BBC News, August 4, 2011, available at <www.bbc.

co.uk/news/world-latin-america-14411672>. 37 Ibid.
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38 NDIC, National Drug Threat Assessment 2010, Product No. 2010-Q0317-001 (Washington, DC: Department of Justice, February 2010). 39 Department of State.

40 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), The Globalization of Crime: A Transnational Organized 

Crime Threat Assessment, 2010 (Vienna: UNODC, 2010). 41 “Mexico fires thousands of police to combat corruption,” Reuters, August 10, 2010, available at <www.reuters.

com/article/2010/08/30/us-mexico-drugs-police-idUSTRE67T52D20100830>. 42 Rory Caroll, “Mexico’s drugs war: in the city of death,” The Guardian, September 10, 2010, available at <www.

guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/16/mexico-drugs-war-massacre-in-torreon>. 43 Josh Meyer, “Mexico’s Drug War: Drug Cartels Raise the Stakes on Human Smuggling,” The Los Angeles 

Times, March 28, 2009.

44 UNODC.

45 Human Rights Watch, World Report 2011 (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2010), available at <www.hrw.

org/world-report-2011>. 46 Ibid.

47 Anne-Marie O’Connor, “Mexican cartels move into human trafficking,” The Washington Post, July 27, 

2011, available at <www.washingtonpost.com/world/americas/mexican-cartels-move-into-human-trafficking/2011/07/22/gIQArmPVcI_story.html>. 48 Ibid.

49 “Affluent Mexicans Flee Violence, Move to United States,” The Dallas Morning News, August 9, 2011, available 

at <www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/nation-world/s_750616.html>. 50 “U.S. goes after agents who moonlight for Mexican cartels,” Globalpost, July 10, 2011, available at <www.

globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/mexico/110708/us-border-agents-cartels-corruption>. 51 Randall C. Archibald, “Hired by Customs, but Working for Mexican Cartels,” The New York Times, December 

16, 2009, available at <www.nytimes.com/2009/12/18/us/18corrupt.html>. 52 Sevil Omer, “More Will Die: Mexico Drug War Claims U.S. Lives,” MSNBC.com, April 22, 2011, available 

at <www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42232161/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/t/more-will-die-mexico-drug-warsclaim-us-lives/>. 53 Ibid.

54 Barry Leibowitz, “Jaime Zapata, U.S. Immigration Agent, Shot Dead in Mexico in Apparent Ambush,” 

CBS News, February 16, 2011, available at <www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20032296-504083.html>. 55 Randall C. Archibald, “Drug Wars Push Deeper into Latin America,” The New York Times, March 23, 2011, 

available at <www.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/world/americas/24drugs.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=americas>.56 Ibid.

57 Michael A. Braun, former chief of operations and intelligence for DEA, testifying before the House Foreign 

Affairs Committee, February 2, 2012. 58 Ambassador Roger F. Noriega, visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, testifying before the House Committee on Homeland Security’s Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and 

Intelligence, July 7, 2011. 59 Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime: Addressing Converging Threats to National Security (Washington, DC: The White House, July 2011). 60 Ibid.

61 Walter Kemp, “Organized crime: a growing threat to security,” SIPRI.org, February 10, 2010, available at 

<www.sipri.org/media/newsletter/essay/feb10>.
75

Chapter 5

Fixers, Super Fixers, and Shadow 

Facilitators: How Networks Connect

Douglas Farah

The multibillion-dollar illicit trade of commodities (from cocaine to blood diamonds, weapons, and human beings) has many complexities, from creating or extracting the 

product, to moving the product to international markets, to delivering payments. The return 

cycle is equally complex including the types of payments used to acquire the commodities, 

from cash to weapons and other goods, the seller may need. This cycle relies on a specific 

group of individuals who act as facilitators in connecting different facets of the criminal and/

or terrorist networks of state and nonstate actors. This chapter addresses this crucial role of 

a cohort of actors—“fixers,” “super fixers,” and “shadow facilitators”1—in empowering social 

networks that operate within illicit commodity chains. 

These commodity chains often span significant geographic space and require multiple 

steps, in multiple countries, to be successfully completed. One individual, or even one criminal 

and/or terrorist group, seldom has the capacity to operate throughout this complex landscape. 

Instead they must turn to specialized individuals, often primarily motivated by economic incentives rather than ideology, who can navigate specific links in that chain. These individuals 

are the crucial bridges among different worlds that do not usually overlap. The often isolated 

and relatively unsophisticated procurers of commodities (for example, coca leaf growers and 

cocaine laboratory operators in The Chapare, in central Bolivia, or warlords who control 

lucrative mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo) do not have direct access to the 

markets for those commodities in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere. Those who can 

move the products often have no direct access to the money laundering, procurement, and 

transportation networks for the profits for those commodities. Payments are made not only 

with cash, but also with sophisticated weapons, chemicals, and other materials that need to 

be transported back to the source region or elsewhere.2

This chapter looks at two case studies of the “fixer” chain, using a model that has applicability in many parts of the world in building an understanding of illicit networks. The 

value of identifying these players is that this serves to identify crucial points of vulnerability 
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in disrupting multiple criminal activities simultaneously because the super fixers and shadow 

facilitators usually deal with more than one criminal network at a time. Eliminating them 

or removing them from operations can not only wound several networks with one blow, but 

also offer insight into the operations of multiple networks from an intelligence perspective. 

Evidence of this is that of the 43 foreign terrorist organizations listed by the Department of 

State, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) states that 19 have clearly established 

ties to drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs), and many more are suspected of having such 

ties.3

 As discussed below, in many of these cases the networks rely on the same super fixers 

and/or facilitators.

The first case is the relationship of Russian weapons trafficker Viktor Bout with Charles 

Taylor in Liberia, and the commodities-for-weapons trade in a highly criminalized state 

that had a significant impact on the conflicts in Sierra Leone and Liberia. The second is the 

enduring Cold War network of weapons supplies and suppliers consisting of Communist 

Party operatives in El Salvador and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) 

guerrillas, which is now primarily a commercial rather than ideological enterprise. This network enjoys growing support from the rapidly criminalizing Bolivarian states in the region, 

primarily Nicaragua and Venezuela.4

The term criminalized state refers to states where the senior leadership, on behalf of 

the state, is aware of and involved with—either actively or through passive acquiescence—

transnational criminal enterprises; where transnational organized crime (TOC) groups are 

used as an instrument of state power; and where levers of state power are incorporated into 

the operational structure of one or more TOC groups. The benefits may be for a particular 

political movement, theocratic goals, terrorist operations, or personal gain of those involved, 

or a combination of these factors.5 Few states are wholly criminalized. Most in this category 

operate along a continuum. At one end are strong but “criminal” states, with the state acting as 

a TOC partner or an important component of a TOC network. On the other end are weak 

and “captured” states where certain nodes of governmental authority, whether local or central, 

have been seized by TOCs, who in turn are the primary beneficiaries of the proceeds from the 

criminal activity—but the state, as an entity, is not part of the enterprise. 

This differs in important ways from the traditional look at “weak” or “failed” states, which 

assume that a government that is not exercising a positive presence and fulfilling certain basic 

functions (public security, education, infrastructure) does not represent a functioning state. In 

fact, such states can be highly efficient at the functions they choose to perform, particularly if 

they participate in an ongoing criminal enterprise. By choice, their weakness exists in the fields 

of positive state functions that are traditionally thought of as essentially sovereign functions, 

but not in other important areas.

One can understand the complexities of illicit trade best by viewing the pieces or nodes 

as part of a series of recombinant chains with links that can merge and decouple as necessary, 

rather than by looking at the purchase or exchange of commodities for cash or other goods as a 

series of individual transactions.6

 Many illicit goods pass through the same physical space, same 

border crossings, and same specialized groups of handlers for specific jobs. A ton of cocaine or 

a load of AK-47 assault rifles or 100 Chinese being smuggled to the United States will move 
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Fixers, Super Fixers, and Shadow Facilitators

through the same pipeline and the same choke points when moving from Latin America across 

the southern border of the United States. 

The flow of goods and cash for those goods is not linear, but circular (figure 1). Nor is 

the flow usually limited to a single commodity. In Liberia, for example, timber and diamonds 

flowed out through interrelated networks to different markets, while weapons, uniforms, food, 

and fuel flowed back through a trusted group of super fixers. 

In the cocaine trade, the drugs flow from South America to markets in the United States 

and Europe, often through the same channels as illicitly moving human beings, contraband, 

and other drugs such as marijuana. The return flow brings bulk cash, weapons, precursor 

chemicals, aircraft, and other products necessary to keep the business functioning.

The transient and sometimes fungible nature of these pipelines means they are often in 

flux and easily rerouted when obstacles arise in any part of the chain.7

 This makes them almost 

impossible to track at ground level in real time. Investigations usually offer a snapshot of what 

has taken place rather than a moving picture of how they are evolving.

Warlord

Control

Facilitators Brokers

Goods 

and Cash Commodity

Sale

Figure 1. Circular Flow of Goods and Cash

The “Fixer” Chain

Illicit networks often develop in times of conflict or in the absence of a positive state presence,8

where multiple porous borders and disdain for the often predatory and/or corrupt state have 

led to smuggling routes that have often endured for generations. These historic routes, in turn, 

engender the accompanying “cultures of contraband”9

 —particularly in border regions—that 

often lead to violence and the acceptance of illicit smuggling activities as a legitimate livelihood. 

For example, one of the primary routes to move cocaine across Honduras into El Salvador for 

onward movement to Mexico is controlled by the Cartel de Texis, named for the town of Texistepeque, where some of its leaders come from. Its operational territory along the Honduran 

border includes the once famous ruta del queso or “cheese route” used to smuggle Honduran 
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cheese into El Salvador at the turn of the 20th century, a smuggling route that has endured for 

a hundred years. 10

Within specific geographic spaces, usually controlled by nonstate armed actors, producers 

or extractors of illicit commodities rely first on “local fixers,” often traditional local elites or outsiders with significant business holdings in local areas, to supply the criminal state or nonstate 

armed actor with connections to the market and financial networks needed to extract and sell 

the commodity out of the area of production.11 For example, in Sierra Leone, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) relied on Lebanese diamond traders near their zones of control and 

authorized by Charles Taylor in neighboring Liberia to collect and pay for the diamonds that 

were mined.12 Demonstrating the enduring nature of these networks, the structure of this 

relationship between local miners and Lebanese diaspora diamond-smuggling networks was 

described by Graham Greene in his book The Heart of the Matter.

13

These local fixers knew the terrain and how to operate in conditions that would have 

been extremely hostile to outsiders, but they knew little beyond the world they inhabited. So 

they, in turn, had to rely on “super fixers” to move the diamonds to the international market. 

As will be examined below, Taylor had a small core of trusted super fixers who could move 

in the broader world, operate bank accounts, and seek out connections but did not have the 

capacity to actually provide and move the products he wanted.

For this they rely on international “shadow facilitators” who can move weapons and 

commodities, launder money, and obtain the fraudulent international documents such as end 

user certificates, passports, business registrations, shipping licenses, and other needed papers.

Many of the local social networks are surprisingly fungible and durable because they offer 

services critical to any incoming regime and are usually nonideological in their network-building. Driven largely by economic imperatives, the groups have proven skillful at adapting to new 

political realities and exploiting them. They flourish even in times of violence because they offer 

services that are essential in moving the commodities to market and ensuring in return that the 

regime (or nonstate actor) acquires the resources to enrich itself and maintain its government 

(or nonstate) hold on power in specific regions. These geographic regions necessarily include 

the “honey pot” regions, or regions where illicit goods such as cocaine or heroin can be produced 

or commodities such as diamonds and timber can be extracted. That honey pot is crucial for 

financing the ongoing conflict and for geographic control.14

Although usually not broadly known outside of local areas of operation, the internal 

balance of political power often shifts when a state or armed group loses control of its local 

fixer networks or the networks challenge the state for power. These networks are often made 

up of diaspora communities who remain at least somewhat separate from the local population 

and maintain strong ties to their homeland. While they often cannot aspire to direct political 

power in the countries where they live, they often, because of their external contacts, control 

key import-export sectors of the economy and have a range of contacts that are coveted and 

necessary to the regime.15

For example, in Liberia many of the most powerful businessmen, particularly from the 

Lebanese diaspora, who were supportive of the traditional political elites from the earlier 

regimes, worked for Samuel Doe after his 1981 coup despite his regime’s execution of many 

of the traditional political leaders.16 From Doe, they migrated to the Taylor structure in the 
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Fixers, Super Fixers, and Shadow Facilitators

early 1990s once it was clear that he was going to be the most powerful force in the civil war 

and post–civil war era. Taylor kept the businessmen’s loyalty until, in their rational cost-benefit analysis, they concluded that a change in government would benefit their own interests.

This adaptability of the transnational networks is one of the reasons postconflict expectations of deep social and economic changes are often left unmet. Postconflict regimes, particularly if controlled by forces that were traditionally nonstate armed actors, frequently have 

little governance experience and seldom have the knowledge or experience to operate without 

the help of these networks or simply find it easier to rely on them than to antagonize them. 

The U.S.-led occupation of Haiti in 1994 to restore President Jean-Bertrand Aristide 

provides a clear example. The occupying forces contracted almost exclusively with the families 

and networks that funded Aristide’s initial ouster because they had the port, fuel, and housing 

facilities the United States needed for its forces. With the new regimes hamstrung by their 

dependence on the old network, the promised economic reforms never materialized.17

But local elites do not survive in isolation. Rather they are—or become—part of a complex web of relationships that reach both backward (to the armed actor) and forward (to the 

international market). While local fixers can make themselves indispensable to the new regime 

and know how things operate internally in the region during or after conflict, they often lack 

the expertise to supply the honey pot controller, either a criminalized state or nonstate armed 

actor, with the more specialized services required.

While a local node of the network may know how to deliver rice or oil in adverse conditions or how to navigate the world of local militias, the same node may not know how 

to acquire a shipment of AK-47 assault rifles. Those who can provide those rifles from the 

international market and who are adept at breaking embargos or moving through the “gray 

market” arms bazaars want to sell the weapons but often do not know the lay of the local land 

and political structures.

It is in this niche that one finds a small group of super fixers (figure 2) who operate as 

intermediaries among these different groups, across multiple countries, at a handsome profit. 

These individuals—through family ties, successful smaller ventures in the past, personal 

charm, or a combination of these attributes—have ties to numerous elites across the region 

and to suppliers from the outside world. In the case of Liberia, many of these individuals were 

identified and can be traced. While this small group knows how to access local power brokers 

and make contacts in certain difficult markets, its members may not themselves have access 

to the specialized markets of weapons, helicopters, and the necessary paperwork or banking 

facilities to make deals happen.

A separate but sometimes overlapping ring of actors I refer to as shadow facilitators then 

comes into play to acquire the specialized equipment and paperwork on the world’s gray or 

black market, create or activate shell companies, and make the logistical arrangements to sell the 

commodity on the international market. The paperwork includes end-user certificates, which 

allow a government to appear to legally purchase weapons that may end up elsewhere; front 

companies to handle freight loading and delivery; offshore bank accounts to make the money 

untraceable; falsified flight routes to justify the time in the air; and air operations certificates 

to show that aircraft are certified airworthy.
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Local

Fixer

• Local elites

• Finance

• Supplies

•International

markets

• Transport

• Contracts

• Finance

• Weapons,

ammunition

• Special

equipment

•Fraudulent

Documents

International

Super Fixers

Shadow

Facilitator

Figure 2. The “Fixer” Chain

Few of these facilitators work exclusively in illegal activities. Of particular interest was 

Viktor Bout, a Russian weapons merchant convicted in November 2011 on multiple counts 

of attempting to supply a designated terrorist entity with weapons to kill American troops. Yet 

in previous years his air services were used by an array of governments and institutions even 

as they denounced his illicit activities. These included the U.S. Government for services in 

Iraq, the United Kingdom (UK) government for aid work in Africa, and the United Nations 

(UN) for its peacekeepers and World Food Program operations in the Democratic Republic 

of the Congo and elsewhere.18

Bout is also noteworthy because his contacts spanned such a wide array of conflicts. Not 

only did he supply warlords and criminal states with illicit arms shipments, but also terrorist 

networks from the Taliban in Afghanistan, to the FARC in Colombia, to Muammar Qadhafi 

in Libya, to Hizballah in Lebanon.19

In sub-Saharan Africa, he relied on several super fixers, depending on his geographic 

location. One of those relationships will be described below. In United Arab Emirates, other 

local fixers and super fixers helped him establish a presence in the free trade zone, repair 

facilities for his aircraft, and housing for his crews. 

The Taylor Liberian Fixer Networks

Charles Taylor of Liberia, currently standing trial at the Special Court for Sierra Leone in 

The Hague for crimes against humanity, offers a useful example of the symbiotic relationship 

among armed groups, a criminalized state, and those in the fixer chain.20

Several individuals had overlapping roles in different parts of the fixer chain. Among 

them were local fixer Gus Kouwenhoven, super fixer Sanjivan Ruprah, and shadow facilitator 

Viktor Bout operating along the lines in the model outlined above. 

All of the above have been named by the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission as responsible for economic crimes.21 They have also been named in various UN Panel 

of Experts reports and placed on the UN Security Council travel ban and asset forfeiture 

lists for being “threats to regional peace.”22 Because of the extensive documentation available 

on this network, it offers one of the most comprehensive looks at how the fixer chain works.

As a rebel warlord, Taylor gained control over forested territory along the country’s 

borders and used commodities to fund his insurgents, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia 

(NPFL), against the Liberian state (1989–1997). After he became president in 1997 and 

managed a remarkably efficient resource-extraction system, he continued to use revenue from 
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Fixers, Super Fixers, and Shadow Facilitators

commodity sales and bribes in exchange for concession allocations to fund his war against 

subsequent insurgencies against his rule (1997–2003). 

From December 1989 to 1997, Taylor waged a brutal and destructive war against the 

Liberian government and other warlords. In 1991, he helped to establish and train the RUF, 

a rebel group and proxy army in neighboring Sierra Leone. From the start he largely funded 

and pursued the wars through a desire to control the region’s lucrative natural resources, including timber, diamonds, iron ore, and rubber, though his two main sources of income were 

diamonds and timber.

Taylor always relied on illegally extracting and selling commodities to fund his armed 

efforts and viewed control of natural resources as a means of funding “Greater Liberia,” a territory he saw encompassing the bauxite region in neighboring Guinea and the diamond fields 

of neighboring Sierra Leone.23

Within a year of launching the insurgency, Taylor controlled most of the vital economic 

regions of Liberia and was taking in millions of dollars to buy weapons and pay his troops.24 In 

1996 the U.S. Government estimated that from 1990 to 1994 Taylor had “upwards of $75 million a year passing through his hands,” largely through selling timber and other commodities.25

Even after winning elections in 1997, Taylor was, in effect, not president of a country but 

was controlling what Robert Cooper has called the “pre-modern state,” meaning territory where

chaos is the norm and war is a way of life. Insofar as there is a government, it operates 

in a way similar to an organized crime syndicate. The pre-modern state may be too 

weak even to secure its home territory, let alone pose a threat internationally, but it can 

provide a base for non-state actors who may represent a danger in the post-modern 

world . . . notably drug, crime and terrorist syndicates.26

This “pre-modern state” did not preclude the development of sophisticated illicit networks. Indeed one could argue that the absence of functioning state institutions greatly 

empowered these networks because almost the entire basis of control depended on them.

The extensive financial, military, and political networks that Taylor established before 

and during his time as president were impressive. His network for acquiring weapons ranged 

from the Balkans to Central America, from Bulgaria to the Islamic Republic of Iran. His 

inner circle of financial advisers, local fixers, international facilitators, sanction busters, and 

weapons purchasers included American, Belgian, Dutch, Israeli, Lebanese, Libyan, Russian, 

Senegalese, and South African citizens. His access to these international criminal networks 

greatly increased the resources with which to prolong the carnage that his troops and his allies 

could inflict on the region.27

Taylor, like Doe before him, relied on the same essential economic groups partly, as William Reno states, because “they were so integrally connected to the exercise of violence.” These 

groups had been both privileged in their economic operations and cut out of the political power 

structure. This “selective access to rights to profits,” which Taylor could arbitrarily revoke if he 

wished, kept the franchise operators constantly beholden to him.28

Beginning in the early 20th century, Lebanese businessmen became the region’s primary 

diamond buyers from the alluvial mining regions largely because they were willing to run the 
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risk of living in the bush and transporting their valuable cargo to diamond markets, primarily 

in Antwerp, Belgium. They also knew how to move in the world of trade and finance, skills that 

few Liberians had at the time. Most of the mining activity took place in Sierra Leone, but as the 

war there gained momentum the financial center of power for the trade shifted to Monrovia.

The Lebanese family and clan structure in West Africa has endured in part because its 

members work hard to retain ties to their homeland and in part because, as outsiders to both 

the indigenous cultures and the elite Liberian-American culture,29 they banded together for 

the creation of reliable business networks. Much of this revolves around the import and export 

of commodities. For example, in the Liberia diaspora businessmen handled the importation 

of petroleum products, rice, vehicles, and chicken, as well as the diamond trade and much of 

the timber industry.

Lansana Gberie, in one study of the Lebanese diaspora in West Africa, noted their role:

The Lebanese in West Africa, even those born there, remained and continue to remain 

intensely aware of events in Lebanon. . . . In Lebanon they are referred to as “Africans.” 

Their loyalty, however, remains with the Middle East, and many have made regular 

contributions to factions in that region’s never-ending conflicts.30

Gus Kouwenhoven, a Dutch national, operated a logging company known as TIMCO 

on land controlled by Taylor’s NPFL insurgents during Liberia’s civil war, from which Taylor’s 

forces profited directly. This put him in the category of local fixer and local elite.31 Although 

not a member of the Lebanese diaspora, Kouwenhoven was part of the broader though small 

community of long-time foreign residents who had carved out different economic niches in 

the chaos of the nation’s civil wars. When Taylor became president, Kouwenhoven, who also 

owned the Hotel Africa in Monrovia, was given a privileged position in Taylor’s financial circle. 

On July 28, 1999, Kouwenhoven established the Liberian Forest Development Company 

in Monrovia, which was owned by two other companies, OTC and Royal Timber Corporation 

(RTC). While OTC’s owners were listed as three Indonesian-Chinese businessmen, RTC’s 

owners were listed as Kouwenhoven and Taylor.32 Robert Taylor, the president’s brother, as 

head of the Forest Development Authority in 1999 granted the company a logging concession 

of over 3 million acres, the largest concession by far in Liberia. OTC tripled Liberia’s timber 

exports from 1999 to 2000 and committed numerous violations by cutting undersized trees 

and by clear cutting.33

Taylor did not hide his interest in OTC, publicly dubbing the company his “pepperbush,” a 

local expression meaning something that is dear to one’s heart and profitable.34 Liberians joked 

that OTC stood for “Only Taylor Chops” because of the fierceness with which he defended the 

timber company and attacked those who questioned its operations.

The OTC concession was illegal because it was not approved by the Liberian legislature 

as required by law. When the concession was called into question, Taylor simply had the 

legislature pass the Strategic Commodities Act of 2000, which granted him the sole power to 

give and maintain concessions over all the nation’s natural resources.35

This is a central point in the relationships between local fixers and the government or insurgent warlord where they operate, whether state or nonstate: while providing that governing 
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Fixers, Super Fixers, and Shadow Facilitators

body with economic benefits, the fixer gets privileged access that enhances his own economic 

standing. It is a symbiotic relationship.

The way the OTC concession was granted shows an additional benefit of dealing with 

a criminalized state that is not subject to the rule of law or to normal checks and balances 

among the different branches of government. Operators received the concession and began 

to operate with no fear of legal sanction even though the concession was against Liberian law. 

When it became politically necessary to legitimize it, Taylor simply wrote a new law—certain 

to be passed by a legislature he controlled—in such a way as to legalize virtually anything he 

did with any commodity on behalf of the Liberian state. 

Various investigations by the UN, nongovernmental organizations, and the Truth and 

Reconciliation Commission have established that OTC and other logging companies both 

paid and fed Taylor’s militias and former combatants and helped Liberia evade UN sanctions. 

These militias, hired as security forces for logging companies, were often commanded by notorious NPFL commanders, and many of their members were charged with serious human 

rights abuses.36

These crosscurrents illustrate the costs for local businessmen in dealing with a criminal 

state. While reaping the benefits of such a system, they are also subject to its demands, which 

can change and become more excessive over time. There is no legal recourse.

Kouwenhoven, during his subsequent trial in Holland, described Taylor’s escalating 

demands for OTC to pay more cash and provide other services:

I did have contact with Taylor about OTC matters. . . . If he needed anything he would 

call me. . . . Most of the time it had to do with financial requests. After we had concluded the OTC agreements and he was prepared to give concessions to OTC to make it 

a profitable company, we were asked to make an advance payment of $5,000,000 

for future taxes. . . . So he would make all kinds of requests. Apart from that he asked 

us to send a number of tractors to his farm, or he said that he wanted a road, that he 

needed electricity and he would ask me if I could advance the money. He also simply 

asked for payments. . . . He called for me and told me that it was understood that the 

Liberian government and OTC had an official tax relationship. The regular government budget was not sufficient and they would ask businessmen for financial aid. He 

would receive 50 percent of royalties I received from OTC.37

Kouwenhoven later explained to a Dutch newspaper:

The president is like the top God. If it turns out that he needs money at the end of the 

year to pay his civil servants, he just calls at various businesses and asks them for an 

advance on next year’s tax. And in that way you help pay the civil servants’ salaries. 

This is not a “Kouwenhoven system”—everyone is involved in it.38

Despite this increase in demands for cash and services by Taylor, Kouwenhoven remained 

directly active in the weapons-for-commodities pipelines. While the Truth and Reconciliation 

Commission documented at least eight weapons shipments—six by ship and two by air—it 
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is the air shipments that most clearly show how local fixers such as Kouwenhoven, with Taylor’s approval, reached out to transnational super fixers such as Sanjivan Ruprah, who in turn 

tapped into the world of shadow facilitators.

Ruprah, a Kenyan of Indian descent, was one of the people documented as directly 

receiving payments for weapons from Borneo Jaya Pte Ltd., OTC’s parent company.39 He 

continues to operate and is a well-known super fixer in sub-Saharan Africa who has surfaced 

repeatedly in criminal investigations across the continent.40

Ruprah had worked with several private military companies and mining interests in the 

Democratic Republic of the Congo and was married to the sister of a leader of one of that 

country’s main Rwandan-backed military factions. Described as an “arms broker” in numerous 

UN reports,41 Ruprah had also directed the Kenyan office of Branch Energy, a company that 

in the early 1990s negotiated to obtain control of the diamond-mining rights of Sierra Leone. 

Branch Energy, through Ruprah, also introduced Executive Outcomes to the government of 

Sierra Leone, which used them to fight the RUF because its own forces were in such disarray. 

Executive Outcomes, made up largely of white, former special forces operatives from South 

Africa and Zimbabwe, pioneered the idea of hiring themselves out as mercenaries in exchange 

for extensive concessions in natural resources such as diamonds and timber.42

Ruprah, by his own admission, met Taylor in the mid-1990s in Burkina Faso, before 

Taylor was president. He was seen more frequently in Monrovia from 1999, often staying at 

Kouwenhoven’s Hotel Africa, where Taylor housed his privileged guests. Recognizing how 

valuable his services were (or could be), in 1999 Taylor issued Ruprah a diplomatic passport 

under the name of Samir M. Nasr. He also gave him the title of Deputy Commissioner of 

Maritime Affairs.

When Taylor was in desperate need of weapons and scrambling to acquire them from a 

variety of external sources, he, through Kouwenhoven, asked Ruprah for help, particularly in 

obtaining attack helicopters.43

Through his business dealings in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ruprah 

had made a connection that put him in touch with the next circle—the shadow facilitators. 

His contact was Viktor Bout, who was already active in Angola, the DRC, Rwanda, South 

Africa, and elsewhere. Dubbed the “Merchant of Death” by a senior British official following 

the discovery that Bout was arming multiple sides of several conflicts in Africa, Bout had 

made his mark by building an unrivaled air fleet that could deliver not only huge amounts of 

weapons but also sophisticated weapons systems and combat helicopters to armed groups. 

From the mid-1990s until his arrest in Thailand in 2008, Bout, a former Soviet intelligence 

officer, helped arm groups in Africa, Afghanistan, Colombia, and elsewhere.44

Ruprah introduced Bout to Taylor’s inner circle, a move that fundamentally altered the 

supply of weapons to both Liberia and to the RUF in Sierra Leone by giving both groups access 

to more sophisticated weapons, in greater volume and at lower cost. One of the favors Ruprah 

and Taylor offered Bout was the chance to register several dozen of his rogue aircraft in Liberia. 

Ruprah had taken advantage of operating in a criminal state and used his access to Taylor 

to be named the Liberian government’s Global Civil Aviation Agent Worldwide to further 

Bout’s goals. This position gave Ruprah access to the aircraft and possible control of it.45 “I 

was asked by an associate of Viktor’s to get involved in the Aviation registry of Liberia as both 
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Fixers, Super Fixers, and Shadow Facilitators

Viktor and him wanted to restructure the same and they felt there could be financial gain from 

the same,” he has stated.46

Bout was seeking to use the Liberian registry to hide his aircraft because the registry, in 

reality run from Kent, England, allowed aircraft owners to obtain online an internationally 

valid airworthiness certificate without having the aircraft inspected or disclosing their name.47

Within months, mutually beneficial transactions were flowing. As the UN Panel of 

Experts reported, on August 26, 1999, OTC’s parent company paid $500,000 for weapons 

deliveries to Taylor. The money was paid to San Air, a Bout company operating in the Sharjah, 

United Arab Emirates, “through Sanjivan Ruprah.”48 In this circular pipeline, the timber flowed 

out and the cash flowed in, then the cash flowed out as the weapons flowed in. 

The personal relationship between Ruprah and Bout, and then of those two with Taylor, 

was a crucial part of the network that was built on a level of personal trust as well as mutual 

financial interests. Something repeatedly said about Bout’s operations was that he personally 

closed deals with the heads of state or warlords with whom he dealt. 

The benefits, like the goods and profits, flowed in a circular manner. Taylor, operating a 

criminal state, could offer more than just cash benefits to national and international facilitators. 

The local fixer could acquire premium concessions, control of a port, and official protection in 

a violent and uncertain context. He, in turn, could bring in a super fixer who, besides cash and 

official protection, could acquire a diplomatic passport, which allowed him to travel around 

the world without being searched or detained. 

The super fixer could then use his access to both Taylor and the international facilitator 

to bring a beneficial relationship to all involved. Finally, the international facilitator could enter 

a lucrative market and access an aircraft registry that allowed him to hide his aircraft from 

scrutiny for several years. Indeed so vital was Bout to Taylor that he dubbed the arms merchant 

another of his pepper trees—untouchable. “Taylor would say that Bout was the root of his 

pepper tree, and without the root the tree dies,” said one Taylor confidant.49

Ramiro, the FARC, and the Bolivarian Revolution

On March 1, 2008, Colombian military and police forces launched a lightning strike into 

neighboring Ecuador, targeting a senior command post of the FARC guerrillas50 just inside 

Ecuadoran territory. While the attack caused a significant diplomatic rupture between Ecuador 

and its Bolivarian allies and Colombia, it achieved its main objective of killing Raúl Reyes,51 the 

FARC’s second in command and international spokesman. In addition to killing Reyes, the 

raid yielded an unexpected dividend—several hundred gigabytes of data stored on computers 

and flash drives. The contents were an historic archive of FARC internal and international 

communications going back almost a decade, offering unprecedented insight into the internal 

workings of the secretive group. Interpol, given access to the hard drives, verified they had not 

been tampered with by Colombian officials.

The documents outline the support the FARC has received from the Chávez government 

in Venezuela, including financing, joint business operations, and the establishment of political 

front groups to defend the FARC internationally. They also show the FARC gave several hundred thousand dollars to the presidential campaign of Ecuadoran president Rafael Correa and 
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had direct dealings with senior members of Correa’s national security cabinet. The archives 

also divulge the FARC’s dealings with members of Evo Morales’ government in Bolivia, Daniel 

Ortega in Nicaragua, and various other nonstate armed actors in Latin America and Europe.52

Also found in the cache were emails among different FARC commanders about the 

help they were receiving in acquiring sophisticated weapons from an individual identified as 

“Ramiro” in El Salvador, identified by Salvadoran, Colombian intelligence, and U.S. officials 

as the nom de guerre of José Luis Merino.53

Merino was a senior commander of the Communist Party (PC) during El Salvador’s 

civil war (1980–1992). The PC was the smallest of the five organizations that made up the 

Marxist-led Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (Frente Farabundo Martí Para la 

Liberación Nacional—FMLN). While the other four factions of the FMLN demobilized after 

the war, a significant cadre of the PC did not. They maintain arms caches, safe houses, and 

relationships with nonstate armed groups around the world to this day.54

As one report on the documents noted, 

The (FARC) documents also show that the FARC has an international support 

network stretching from Madrid to Mexico City, Buenos Aires to Berne. Merino, 

the documents suggest, is a key link in that international chain, the FARC’s man in 

El Salvador, and one of the architects of an arms deal that includes everything from 

sniper rifles to ground-to-air missiles.55

It is this network where one can again see the vital role played by the fixer chain in moving illicit weapons to a designated terrorist nonstate group deeply involved in global cocaine trafficking.

Merino’s PC is now the dominant faction of the FMLN coalition. The FMLN-backed 

candidate, Mauricio Funes, won the presidency in 2010. The former guerrilla group’s electoral 

triumph, the first since the signing of historic peace accords in 1992 that ended the 12-year 

conflict, was widely viewed as a key milestone in national reconciliation.

Merino, a former urban commando trained in Moscow, had maintained a low public 

profile during the campaign but emerged as a key power broker in the new government. His 

leadership position is derived largely from being the point man for receiving and distributing 

subsidized gasoline shipments from Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. The sale of the gasoline, given 

by Venezuela at a steeply discounted price then resold at party-owned gas stations, is a major 

source of income for the FMLN. 

While Merino has steadfastly refused to discuss the issue of weapons sales to the FARC, 

Funes said he had spoken to Merino about the emails and had been assured Merino had no 

involvement in weapons sales to the FARC.56

During the war, Merino commanded an elite urban commando unit that carried out 

several spectacular hits, including the 1989 assassination of attorney general Roberto García 

Alvarado. The assassination was carried out by men on a motorcycle who strapped an explosive 

to the roof of García’s car, killing him while the assassins sped away unhurt.57 The Salvadoran 

Truth Commission, which investigated the worst human rights abuses of the civil war as part 

of the peace agreements, did not name Merino but concluded the assassination was carried 

out by the armed branch of the PC.58
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Fixers, Super Fixers, and Shadow Facilitators

The spectacular rise in crime immediately after the war, particularly kidnappings, led 

to deep concern. A major investigation of postconflict armed groups in 1994 found that the 

“illegal armed groups” operating after the war had “morphed” into more sophisticated, complex 

organizations than had existed during the war and that, as self-financing entities, they had a 

strong economic component as well as political aspect to their operations.59

This PC group commanded by Merino is suspected of carrying out several high-profile 

kidnappings at the time, including the 1995 abduction of 14-year-old Saul Suster, the son of a 

prominent businessman and politician. Suster was kept in a tiny underground water tank for 

almost a year before being freed in exchange for $150,000.60 While Merino, who was widely 

reported to have planned the operation, was never charged with the crime, Raul Granillo, a 

former senior commander of the PC and Merino aide, along with one of his PC former lieutenants, were convicted of it. Granillo escaped arrest and remains at large.61

The relationship between Merino and the FARC appears to go back to the 1980s when 

the PC was in charge of the FMLN’s international relations and Merino regularly met with 

the FARC as members of the broad international Marxist revolutionary front.62

 After the war, the relationship appears to have revolved around mutually beneficial 

economic arrangements, many of them illegal. Glimpses of the broader network involved in 

these activities can be seen in the Reyes documents, although in many cases the final results 

of the discussion are not known. While the overall results of the efficiency of the network are 

inconclusive, the documents clearly show the role of the FARC fixers interacting with Merino, 

the super fixer able to reach into the outside world. In this case the identity of the shadow 

facilitator or facilitators is not clear, but Merino was reaching out to others to carry out the deal, 

in one case at least to a group of Australians with significant access to sophisticated weapons 

and means of transporting them.

In one 2003 email, Reyes suggests the FMLN and FARC carry out a joint kidnapping for 

$10 million to $20 million in Panama to raise money for the FMLN’s 2004 electoral campaign, 

although there is no record of such a kidnapping having occurred. The profits, the email said, 

would be “split down the middle.”

A 2004 missive describes a meeting of the FARC leadership with “Ramiro” and a Belgian 

associate in Caracas to discuss the FARC and FMLN obtaining Venezuelan government 

contracts through front companies to operate waste disposal and tourism industries. Interestingly, Merino then acquired a major interest in a waste disposal company, Capsa, which 

operates in 52 Salvadoran municipalities.63 In another email, Reyes recounts a 2005 meeting 

with “Ramiro,” who reportedly boasted that he had gained full control of the FMLN and was 

reorienting the party toward “the real conquest of power.” 

But the email that caused the most concern in El Salvador is from September 6, 2007, 

written by Iván Rios, a member of the FARC secretariat, to other secretariat members in 

which he lays out the multiple negotiations under way for new FARC weapons, including 

highly coveted surface-to-air missiles:

1. Yesterday I met two Australians who were brought here by Tino, thanks to the contact 

made by Ramiro [Salvador]. We have been talking to them [the Australians] since 

last year.
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2. They offer very favorable prices for everything we need: rifles, PKM machine guns, 

Russian Dragunovs with scopes for snipers, multiple grenade launchers, different 

munitions . . . RPGs [rocket propelled grenades], .50 [caliber] machine guns, and 

the missiles. All are made in Russia and China.

3. For transportation, they have a ship, with all its documents in order, and the cargo 

comes in containers. The crew is Filipino and does not know the contents, with the 

exception of the captain and first mate. They only need a secure port to land at.

4. They gave us a list of prices from last month, including transportation. They offer 

refurbished Chinese AKs that appear as used, but in reality are new, and were not 

distributed to the Chinese army, which developed a new line of weapons, for $175. 

AK 101 and 102, completely new, for $350. Dragunovs, new with scopes, $1,200. 

RPG launchers for $3,000 [and] grenades for $80. They say they have a thermobaric 

grenade that destroys everything in closed spaces (like the bombs the gringos use against 

Alqaeda hideouts) for $800. Chinese missiles (which they say are the most up-to-date 

at this time) with a 97 percent effective rate, $93,000, and $15,000 for the launchers. 

They say it is very easy to use, and they guarantee the training. If one of these missiles 

were identified inside Colombia it would cause them a lot of problems, but if, on the 

side, they include old Russian SA-7s [shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles], it 

would serve to confuse, mislead or at least give the impression that the guerrillas have 

weapons of different types, not just Chinese. The ammunition for AKs is 21 cents 

a round, but if we buy more than 3 million rounds, the price drops to 9 cents a unit.

5. They promised to give us an exact price on other material. Two months ago they sent 

me a price list (very favorable, for example, a used .50 [caliber] machine gun for $400, 

new for $3,000), but I didn’t take the list to the meeting place.

6. They do the purchasing without the need of a down payment, but when the merchandise is on the ship, they want 50 percent. When it is delivered they collect the other 50 

percent. The money moves through a bank in the Pacific, in an independent country 

where they can move money without any questions being asked. Once the cargo is 

shipped it can take one month, or a month and a half to arrive in Venezuela. They 

said we could have a representative, it doesn’t matter what nationality, on board the 

ship while it sails to its final destination.64

The above missive clearly lays out the different roles of the fixer community. The FARC 

leaders contact a trusted colleague who brings in extraregional actors who have access to the 

desired product as well as ways of moving the payment through international channels. As 

the final paragraph shows, the expected destination was to be an allied nation where few 

questions would be asked.
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Subsequent emails on November 12 and November 23 indicate that the Australians 

arrived in Venezuela to consummate the deal and Ríos said a person identified as “El Cojo” (The 

Cripple) was in charge of paying the first quota and logistics for whatever was to be delivered.

While the end result of what was delivered is unknown, as we will see, this network 

appears to be part of a regional pipeline moving illicit products and connecting parts of the 

PC to the FARC and elements of the former Sandinista intelligence structure in Nicaragua 

that remain active. In 2006 and again in 2011, Daniel Ortega, the leader of the triumphant 

Sandinista revolution in 1979, was reelected president of Nicaragua. 

Since at least the early 1990s, Ortega has maintained a cordial relationship with the 

FARC leadership. The alliance was first formed in the 1970s when Ortega led the Sandinista 

revolution that succeeded in taking power in Nicaragua in 1979. Throughout his first presidency (1979–1990), Ortega was at the center of revolutionary movements active throughout 

Latin America, including the FARC, in part because Nicaragua was the one state besides Cuba 

in the hemisphere where a Marxist revolution had triumphed.

In 1998, Ortega, as the head of the Sandinista party, awarded the Augusto Sandino 

medal, his party’s highest honor, to Manuel Marulanda, the commander in chief of the FARC, 

while visiting FARC headquarters in Colombia. Various emails in the Reyes documents are 

addressed to Ortega directly and indicate that, at least until he returned to the presidency, he 

maintained regular contact with the FARC leadership.65

In 2000, Ortega attended an international convention in Libya organized by Qadhafi for 

“political parties, revolutionary movements, liberation movements and progressive forces.”66

This meeting was significant because senior leaders of the FARC were also in attendance. 

The timing is important because it was at a point when the FARC was seriously looking to 

purchase surface-to-air missiles in order to have more effective defenses against the U.S.-supplied helicopters that were beginning to arrive in Colombia for the police and military as part 

of Plan Colombia.67

A September 4, 2000, email from Reyes’ computer addressed to Qadhafi and signed by 

Reyes offered a bold alliance and laid out the strategy:

Comrade Colonel Muammar Qadhafi, Great Leader of the World Mathaba, receive 

our revolutionary and Bolivarian greeting. We want to express our gratitude for the 

invitation that you gave us to visit your country and the hospitality you showed our 

delegation during the recent Summit of Heads of State, Governments, Parties and 

Organizations of the World Mathaba. We want to let you know that the FARC 

continues its struggle for the conquest of political power to govern Colombia. . . . As a 

member of the [FARC] high command I have been asked by the commander in chief 

to request from you a loan of 100 million dollar, repayable in five years. Our strategic 

objectives and circumstances of our war oblige us to seek weapons with greater range to 

resist our enemy’s advances. One of our primary needs is the purchase of surface-to-air 

missiles to repel and shoot down the combat aircraft. Our strategy is to take power 

through the revolutionary armed struggle.68
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Apparently, Qadhafi was not immediately responsive to the request, so the FARC tried 

to follow up on the request, this time through Daniel Ortega. In a February 22, 2003, note 

“From the Mountains of Colombia,” that was hand-delivered to Ortega, Reyes requested help:

Dear compañero Daniel, this is to send you my warm and effusive revolutionary greeting, 

and that of commander Manuel Marulanda. We also are writing to see if you have 

any information on the request we made to our Libyan comrades, which was made in 

writing in the name of the secretariat of the FARC, and which I signed. The Libyans 

said they would answer us, but we have not yet received any information. . . . While 

we were in Libya they explained to us that the political responsibility for carrying out 

Libya’s policies in the region [was] in the hands of Daniel Ortega. For that reason, we 

are approaching you, in hopes of obtaining an answer. . . . I also want to reaffirm to 

you that the primary priority of the FARC, in order to achieve greater success in its 

military operations against enemy troops, in order to take political power in Colombia, is acquiring anti-aircraft capabilities, in order to counteract the efficiency of the 

Colombian and U.S. aircraft against our troops.69

It is not clear what the result of the discussions were. According to documents obtained 

by La Prensa, Nicaragua’s most important newspaper, the key envoy between Ortega and 

the FARC is Luis Cabrera, the Nicaraguan ambassador in Cuba. Cabrera is a nationalized 

Argentine who has maintained a friendship with Ortega since the Sandinista revolution. 

Citing other documents from Reyes’s computer, the newspaper said FARC leaders had 

met numerous times with Cabrera, who promised the rebels any help within Nicaragua’s 

ability. He even offered to let the FARC establish a link on the Sandinista Web site in order 

to make it easier for people to get in touch with the organization. Reyes wrote to the FARC 

representatives in Havana not to forget to “visit the Nicaraguan ambassador with great frequency. Take him documents and express our appreciation for the stimulating statements of 

comandante Ortega.”70

In 2008, following the bombing of the Reyes camp, Ortega granted political asylum to 

Nubia Calderón, a leader of the FARC’s International Commission, who was wounded in 

the attack. In addition, FARC emissary Alberto Bermúdez was issued a Nicaraguan identity 

card by a member of Nicaragua’s Supreme Electoral Council. Bermúdez, known as “El Cojo,” 

is believed by Salvadoran and Colombian authorities to be the person mentioned above who 

received the FARC weapons shipment arranged by Merino.71

In this case, the lines among the different types of fixers are harder to draw, as is the case 

in most chains where roles are seldom as clearly delineated as they are conceptually. 

While the identities of all the players in this case are not known, the model is useful in 

understanding the overall structure. Merino, with his international contacts, falls into the 

super fixer category, while the FARC leadership falls more into the local fixer category. The 

shadow facilitators are not well known, although it is clear from Reyes documents that Chávez 

in Venezuela has played that role with the FARC and in hosting Merino’s meetings with the 

Australian providers and offering his services in setting up businesses and other opportunities 

that gave the FARC a broader international reach. Nicaragua’s Ortega also played a key role as 
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a shadow facilitator, empowering both the PC and the FARC to carry out business through 

Ramiro’s structure.

Conclusions

In order for transnational criminal pipelines and networks to function, different parts of 

the network need to communicate with each other and be able to supply mutually beneficial 

services and commodities. The fixers, or links, among different parts of the network provide 

this vital service.

Local fixers, often members of the local elites and/or entrenched diaspora communities, help move the illicit product from production in conflict zones, criminalized states, or 

territories not governed by the state to the internal market. Super fixers, those with broader 

international connections, can then move the product to the international market and provide 

some financial services. However, they rely on shadow facilitators to acquire the more complex 

and sophisticated equipment—often weapons or high-technology components that are not 

readily accessible through normal market channels.

The shadow facilitators usually deal with more than one criminal or terrorist network, 

providing rare and valuable services to multiple actors who may even be in conflict with each 

other. As the Viktor Bout case shows, if a dealer provides valuable enough services that are 

highly specialized, he can arm multiple sides of the same conflict and greatly increase his profits.

Because shadow facilitators’ international contacts and structures are so specialized and 

difficult to replace and operate for multiple groups, targeting them by law enforcement and 

intelligence communities should be a high priority. The DEA, in particular, has focused on 

this group. The high profile cases of Viktor Bout and Monzer al-Kassar,72 two of the world’s 

most elusive and powerful brokers in recent decades, show that operations can be undertaken 

and prosecuted successfully.

The impact in both cases was significant. Viktor Bout’s arrest crippled and grounded an 

air fleet that was supplying weapons across Africa, including Somalia, and seeking inroads into 

Latin America. Replacing items outside that network was possible but costly both financially 

and in time. Almost 4 years after his arrest (he was convicted in November 2011),73 no one has 

successfully put the pieces of the enterprise back together. In the al-Kassar case, the network 

also collapsed. In both cases, there are indications that other individuals have picked up pieces 

of the network, but in neither case has capacity emerged to offer anything like the full range of 

services these two super facilitators did.

However, much of the conventional strategy for combating TOC groups relies on conceiving of illicit networks as hierarchical organizations with a strong top-down structure. Rather 

than focusing on the links (individuals providing specific services) and mutual usefulness of 

different small, relatively flat networks that overlap and rely on many of the same specialists, 

the focus remains the kingpins.

In addition, the focus is almost exclusively on nonstate actors rather than on the role 

criminalized states also play in empowering these networks, particularly in the world of 

shadow facilitators.
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A more node- or fixer-centric understanding of transnational organized crime and terrorist networks can help identify and disrupt key elements of the pipelines that often deal with 

more than one group simultaneously. This means, as was clearly visible in the case of Viktor 

Bout, that targeting one shadow facilitator disrupted multiple supply chains in which he played 

a key role. While not eliminating the networks, such targeting makes them far less efficient, 

disrupts trusted relationships by forcing new actors to meet and interact, and raises the cost 

of the criminal networks for doing business. Targeting fixers is not a silver bullet, but it is one 

of the most efficient methods for weakening and disrupting illicit networks.

Notes

1 Shadow facilitators was first used as a term of art by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to describe those 

individuals deemed to be controlling central points of interaction among drug traffickers and other criminal organizations, such as weapons merchants. See Michael Braun, “Drug Trafficking and Middle Eastern Terrorist Groups: 

A Growing Nexus,” presented to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Washington, DC, July 25, 2008. 2

 For a more extensive look at how this chain operated in the Liberian timber and diamond trades, see Douglas 

Farah, “Transnational Crime, Social Networks and Forests: Using Natural Resources to Finance Conflicts and 

Post Conflict Violence,” Forests, Fragility and Conflict: Overview and Case Studies, Program for Forests, World Bank, 

June 2011, 67–112. 3

 Braun. 

4

 The self-declared Bolivarian states are led by Venezuela under president Hugo Chávez, and include Bolivia 

under Evo Morales, Ecuador under Rafael Correa, Nicaragua under Daniel Ortega, and several small Caribbean 

states. This bloc endorses a concept of socialism for the 21st century and strongly anti-U.S. positions, while working 

hard to build long-term alliances with Iran, China, and Russia to replace U.S. influence. 5

 For a more comprehensive look at the concept of criminalized states, see Douglas Farah, “Terrorist-Criminal 

Pipelines and Criminalized States: Emerging Alliances,” PRISM 2, no. 3 (June 2010), 15–32. 6

 Douglas Farah, “The Criminal-Terrorist Nexus and Its Pipelines,” Nine Eleven Finding Answers (NEFA) 

Foundation, presentation delivered to U.S. Special Operations Command Tampa, FL, January 14, 2008. 7

 Ibid.

8

 The descriptions of “positive” and “negative” sovereignty are drawn from Robert H. Jackson, Quasi-states: 

Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Jackson 

defines negative sovereignty as freedom from outside interference, the ability of a sovereign state to act independently, 

both in its external relations and internally, toward its people. Positive sovereignty is the acquisition and enjoyment of 

capacities, not merely immunities. In Jackson’s definition, it presupposes “capabilities which enable governments to 

be their own masters.” The absence of either type of sovereignty can lead to the collapse or absence of state control. 9

 For an examination of the “cultures of contraband” and their implications in the region, see Rebecca B. Galemba, 

“Cultures of Contraband: Contesting the Illegality at the Mexico-Guatemala Border,” Ph.D. dissertation, Brown 

University Department of Anthropology, May 2009. 10 Sergio Arauz, Óscar Martínez, and Efren Lemus, “El Cartel de Texis,” El Faro, May 16, 2011, available at 

<www.elfaro.net/es/201105/noticias/4079/>. 11 Richard Snyder and Ravi Bhavnani, “Diamonds, Blood and Taxes: A Revenue-Centered Framework for 

Explaining Political Order,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 49, no. 4 (2005), 563–597. 12 This description of the diamonds-for-weapons trade is drawn largely from the author’s fieldwork in Sierra 

Leone and Liberia as a correspondent for The Washington Post, and the investigations contained in Douglas Farah, 

Blood from Stones: The Secret Financial Network of Terror (New York: Broadway Books, 2004). 13 Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter (New York: Penguin Classics, republished 2004). 14 See William Reno, Warlord Politics and African State (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999), 221–223, for 

a look at how accidents, luck, and an individual’s learning ability all help shape how the armed actor or warlord 

responds to internal and external factors. 
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15 See Snyder and Bhavnani for a description of how the Lebanese diaspora community in Sierra Leone was 

both favored in diamond mining and marginalized socially for the regime’s benefit and how the balance of coercive 

power eventually shifted in favor of Lebanese merchants. 16 Reno, 82.

17 See Douglas Farah, “Haitian Elite Set to Profit from U.S. Presence,” The Washington Post, September 24, 

1994, A4. 18 Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun, Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes and the Man Who Makes War 

Possible (New York: J. Wiley and Sons, 2007). 19 Ibid.

20 The Special Court for Sierra Leone was established to try those most responsible for crimes against humanity 

committed in relation to the war in that country, but not for crimes committed in Liberia. Given Taylor’s role in 

arming and supplying the rebel RUF in Sierra Leone, he was indicted by the court. 21 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia, Title III: Economic Crimes and the Conflict, Exploitation and 

Abuse, vol. 3 of Final Report (Monrovia, 2009), 6–9.

22 See United Nations Security Council 2005a and 2005b. Kouwenhoven was arrested in Holland and convicted 

in June 2006 on charges of supplying weapons to the Taylor government via OTC in 2000–2003 and sentenced 

to 8 years in prison. An appeals court overturned the conviction in March 2008. See Agence France-Presse 2008. 

The Supreme Court, in turn, overturned the appeals court ruling and ordered a new trial, which began in December 

2010. See <http://allafrica.com/stories/201012230695.html>. 23 For a comprehensive look at how Taylor used commodities to fund his insurrection and presidency, see Arthur 

G. Blundell, “The Financial Flows That Fuel War,” Forests, Fragility and Conflict: Overview and Case Studies, Program 

for Forests, World Bank, June 2011, 113–156. 24 Stephen Ellis, The Mask of Anarchy: The Destruction of Liberia and the Religious Dimension of an African Civil 

War (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 90.

25 William Twadell, “Foreign Support for Liberian Factions,” Testimony before the International Relations 

Committee, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC, June 26, 1996. 26 Robert Cooper, “The Post-Modern State,” in Re-Ordering the World, ed. Mark Leonard, 11–20 (London: 

The Foreign Policy Centre, 2002), 18. 27 Coalition for International Justice, Following Taylor’s Money: A Path of War and Destruction (Washington, 

DC: Coalition for International Justice, 2005). 28 Reno, 98. 

29 The term “Americo-Liberian” refers to the former American slaves who settled in Liberia. Most did not 

originally come from that region in Africa, and they were culturally and linguistically distinct from the native groups 

already living in what became Liberia. The Americo-Liberians dominated political and cultural life in the nation. 

For a closer examination, see Ellis. 30 Lansana Gberie, War and Peace in Sierra Leone: Diamonds, Corruption and the Lebanese Connection, Occasional 

Paper No. 6 (Ottawa: Partnership Africa Canada, Diamond and Human Security Project, 2003). 31 Global Witness, Logging Off: How the Liberian Timber Industry Fuels Liberia’s Humanitarian Disaster and 

Threatens Sierra Leone (London: Global Witness, 2002), 17. 32 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia, 13.

33 Ibid.

34 “Nobody Plays with Taylor’s Pepperbush,” The Perspective, June 27, 2001, Monrovia, Liberia. 35 Global Witness,17.

36 The most comprehensive documentation of both the human rights abuses and weapons trafficking can be 

found at Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia, 19; Global Witness; and Douglas Farah, “Liberian Leader 

Again Finds Means to Hang On: Taylor Exploits Timber to Keep Power,” The Washington Post, June 4, 2002, A01. 37 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia, 18.

38 Marian Husken and Harry Lensink, “All This Misery Stems from One Source,” Vrij Nederland, March 10, 

2007. 39 United Nations Security Council, Report of the Panel of Experts on Liberia Submitted in Accordance with Resolution 1343, UNSC S/2001/1015, New York, October 26, 2001. 40 Farah and Braun, 156.
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41 The most relevant report is United Nations Security Council, Report of the Panel of Experts Pursuant to Resolution 1343, paragraph 19, “Concerning Liberia,” 92 and following. 42 Farah and Braun, 155–159.

43 United Nations Security Council, Report of the Panel of Experts Pursuant to Resolution 1343, 92 and following. 44 Farah and Braun. In November 2010 Bout was extradited to the United States to stand trial for allegedly 

planning to sell weapons to a designated terrorist organization. 45 United Nations Security Council, Report of the Panel of Experts Appointed Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 

1306, S/2000/1195, paragraph 19, in relation to Sierra Leone, New York, December 20, 2000. 

46 Ruprah email to author for Farah and Braun 2007, 159.

47 Farah and Braun, 159; UN Security Council 2000a, paragraphs. 142–143. 

48 UN Security Council 2001, paragraph 349.

49 Farah and Braun 2007, 162.

50 The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia—FARC) is 

the oldest insurgent group in the Western Hemisphere. Founded in 1964 as an offshoot of Liberal Party militias, 

the FARC is now considered by U.S. and Colombian officials to be one of the largest drug-trafficking organizations 

in the world. The FARC was designated a terrorist entity by the United States in 1997, a designation ratified by the 

European Union in 2001. See “FARC Terrorist Indicted for 2003 Grenade Attack on Americans in Colombia,” 

Department of Justice Press Release, September 7, 2004, available at <www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2004/September/04_crm_599.htm>; Official Journal of the European Union, Council Decision of December 21, 2005, available 

at <http://europa.eu.int/eurlex/lex/LexUriServ/site/en/oj/2005/l_340/l_34020051223en00640066.pdf>. For a 

more detailed look at the history of the FARC, see Douglas Farah, “The FARC in Transition: The Fatal Weakening 

of the Western Hemisphere’s Oldest Guerrilla Movement,” NEFA Foundation, July 2, 2008, available at <www.

nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/nefafarc0708.pdf>. For a look at the details of the raid and a complete analysis 

of the documentation found in the computers of Raúl Reyes, see “The FARC Files: Venezuela, Ecuador and the 

Secret Archives of ‘Raúl Reyes,’” An IISS Strategic Dossier, International Institute for Strategic Studies, May 2011. 51 Reyes’ real name was Luís Edgar Devia Silva, but he was known throughout his long militancy in the FARC 

as Reyes. He was the first member of the FARC’s general secretariat to be killed in a combat operation after more 

than four decades of combat. 52 “The FARC Files: Venezuela, Ecuador and the Secret Archives of ‘Raúl Reyes.’” The Colombian government 

gave the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a respected London-based security think tank, complete 

access to the Reyes files, which it then catalogued, organized, and printed. The quotations and references to these 

documents come from this work. 53 José de Córdoba, “Chávez Ally May Have Aided Colombian Guerrillas: Emails Seem to Tie Figure to a 

Weapons Deal,” The Wall Street Journal, August 28, 2008. 54 Author interviews with current and former PC members, San Salvador, September 2011.

55 José de Córdoba, “The Man Behind the Man,” Poder 360 Magazine, April 17, 2010. 56 Córdoba, “Chávez Ally May Have Aided Colombian Guerrillas.”

57 For details of Merino’s alleged ties, see Córdoba, “The Man Behind the Man”; Douglas Farah, “The FARC’s 

International Relations: A Network of Deception,” NEFA Foundation, September 22, 2008; Córdoba, “Chávez 

Ally May Have Aided Colombian Guerrillas.” 58 Belisario Betancur et al., “From Madness to Hope: The 12-year War in El Salvador,” Report of the Commission on the Truth for El Salvador, March 15, 1993, available at <www.usip.org/files/file/ElSalvador-Report.pdf>. 59 The investigation was carried out by a special commission formed in 1992 and composed of the nation’s 

human rights ombudsman, a representative of the United Nations Secretary General, and two representatives of 

the Salvadoran government. The commission was formed by a political agreement among all the major parties due 

to a resurgence in political violence after the signing of the historic peace accords. See “Informe del Grupo Conjunto 

Para la Investigación de Grupos Armados Ilegales con Motivación Politica en El Salvador,” El Salvador, July 28, 

1994, available at <www.uca.edu.sv/publica/idhuca/grupo.html>. 60 For a more complete look at Merino and the role of the Communist Party, both with the FARC and with 

criminal activities, see Córdoba, “Chávez Ally May Have Aided Colombian Guerrillas.” 61 Juan O. Tamayo, “Left-Right Distrust Festers in a ‘Pacified’ El Salvador,” Miami Herald, November 12, 1997. 62 Author interviews with current and former FMLN leaders in San Salvador, El Salvador, September 2011.

63 Córdoba, “The Man Behind the Man.”
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Fixers, Super Fixers, and Shadow Facilitators

64 The Reyes documents cited are in possession of the author.

65 Following Ortega’s disputed electoral triumph in November 2011, the FARC published a congratulatory 

communiqué lauding Ortega and recalling their historically close relationship. “In this moment of triumph how can 

we fail to recall that memorable scene in Caguán when you gave the Augusto Cesar Sandino medal to our unforgettable leader Manuel Marulanda. We have always carried pride in our chests for that deep honor which speaks to us 

of the broad vision of a man who considers himself to be a spiritual son of Bolivar.” Available at <http://anncol.info/

index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=695:saludo-a-daniel-ortega&catid=71:movies&Itemid=589>. 66 José de Córdoba, “Ortega’s Old Friendships are Liabilities as Election Nears,” The Wall Street Journal, October 

19, 2001. 67 Plan Colombia is a multibillion dollar program through which the United States has funded the expansion, 

retraining, and arming of the Colombian national police and military. Begun in 1999, at the end of the Clinton 

administration, it has continued with bipartisan congressional support through the Bush years. 68 Letter to Qadhafi, in possession of NEFA Foundation. It can also be seen at Octavio Enriquez, “Ortega, Puente 

Entre Gaddafi y las FARC,” La Prensa, June 27, 2008. 69 Letter to Daniel Ortega, in possession of the NEFA Foundation. It can also be seen at Octavio Enriquez, 

“Ortega, Puente Entre Gaddafi y las FARC.” 70 Octavio Enriquez, “Contacto Está en La Habana,” La Prensa, June 28, 2008, available at <laprensa.com.ni/

archivo/2008/junio/28/noticias/nacionales/268624_print.shtml>. In addition to this support, La Prensa reported 

that a well-known Nicaraguan painter, Genaro Lugo, helped a senior FARC official identified as Alberto Bermudez 

obtain Nicaraguan identity papers, something Lugo admitted to doing. This is interesting because the incident was 

described in Reyes’ papers. 71 U.S. Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2008: Nicaragua, April 30, 2009, available at <www.

unhcr.org/refworld/docid/49fac6b5c.html>, and author interviews. 72 For a look at the story of Monser al-Kassar’s long career as a shadow facilitator and weapons dealer, as well as his 

arrest and conviction, see Patrick Radden Keefe, “The Trafficker: The Decades-long Battle to Catch an International 

Arms Broker,” The New Yorker, February 8, 2010. 73 Noah Rosenberg, “Guilty Verdict in Russian Arms Trial,” The New York Times, November 2, 2011.

97

Chapter 6

The Geography of Badness: Mapping 

the Hubs of the Illicit Global Economy

Patrick Radden Keefe

Suppose, for a moment, that you have come into possession of a small quantity of weapons-grade uranium. Perhaps you filched it from one of the casually-guarded facilities scattered across the former Soviet Union. You are desperate, or just unscrupulous, so you decide 

to take this precious bit of lethal contraband and sell it on the open market. Once you have 

devised a method for transporting the material without tipping off the authorities or exposing 

yourself to incapacitating levels of radiation, you will find yourself confronted with a further 

predicament: where do you transport it to? You are told that there is robust international demand for fissile material and that well-financed terrorist groups, select state governments, and 

a multitude of shady middlemen and brokers are all seeking precisely the sort of product you 

have to sell. But where are they? How do you connect with them? In the global black market 

for the raw ingredients of a nuclear bomb, where do buyers and sellers meet?

The answer, as often as not, is Turkey. Situated at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, 

with ready access both to the former Soviet Union and to the Middle East, Turkey has been 

a vital conduit of global trade, licit and otherwise, for centuries. “Turkey is the world’s grand 

bazaar,” William Langewiesche remarks, “[and] it is hardly surprising that in recent years people 

have gone there looking to sell their nuclear goods.”1

 With its advantageous location, official 

corruption, weak penal code, and porous frontiers, the country offers an appealing logistical 

way station for smugglers of various stripes. By some accounts, as much as 75 percent of the 

narcotics entering Western Europe either originates in or transits through Turkey.2 So it 

should come as no surprise that in the murky underworld of clandestine nuclear transactions, 

Turkey has emerged as perhaps the dominant venue of exchange. There were over a hundred 

reported incidents of nuclear smuggling in the country during the first decade after the Cold 

War alone3

 (though in many instances, the material exchanged did not ultimately turn out to be 

dangerous). “It is a well-known rumor,” Georgia’s chief nuclear investigator Archil Pavlenishvili 

observes, “that you can sell anything in Turkey.”4
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If, as Phil Williams contends, organized crime is “best understood as the continuation 

of commerce by other means,” and transnational criminal groups are “the illicit counterparts 

of multinational corporations,” then it stands to reason that like their legitimate cousins, underworld entrepreneurs might come to rely, in their global activities, upon certain especially 

convenient logistical hubs.5 Whether your cargo is narcotics or light arms, undocumented 

people or dirty money, endangered species or highly enriched uranium, you will find that 

some geographic locales prove to be especially congenial and can function as a staging area or 

transshipment point or even a base of operations.

One fundamental insight in the emerging study of illicit networks is the notion that 

underworld enterprises are mobile, even migratory; as nimble, dispersed, adaptive networks, 

they can tailor their logistical footprints to the supply of raw goods and labor, the demands 

of a global market, the shifting regulatory atmosphere in any given region, and pressures both 

from competition and from law enforcement. Perhaps the most famous exemplar of this new 

brand of globetrotting criminality, the arms broker Viktor Bout, initially based his operations 

in Belgium. When authorities there began scrutinizing his munitions flights into war-torn 

African countries, Bout simply relocated to the United Arab Emirates, then to South Africa, 

and eventually to Moscow.6

Federico Varese has recently questioned the assumption that criminal organizations 

can easily relocate from one country to another, noting that “transplantation is fraught with 

difficulties.”7 And to be sure, we must be careful not to overstate the case: the very ad hoc, 

decentralized nature of contemporary criminal networks renders some of the more alarmist 

accounts of a rapacious campaign of coordinated expansion less than credible. But because 

Varese’s critique focuses on traditional, geographically-rooted, hierarchical mafias whose primary revenue stream is the collection of extortion, it overlooks the very networked attributes 

that allow an enterprise like Viktor Bout’s to migrate. In my own study of the “snakeheads” of 

southeast China, who in recent decades have smuggled hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants to destinations around the planet, I discovered a pronounced tendency on 

the part of these immigration brokers to identify and exploit certain locations such as Bangkok and Guatemala.8

 Whether it is gunrunners like Bout, snakeheads moving migrants, or 

nuclear proliferators like A.Q. Kahn, some black market entrepreneurs have demonstrated an 

extraordinarily sophisticated ability to engage in what Williams calls “jurisdictional arbitrage.”9

Today, organized criminal groups from Nigeria alone are reportedly active in no fewer than 

60 countries.10

If we can agree that transnational criminal networks are mobile, and that like legitimate 

multinationals they will migrate their operations to especially appealing locations, then it 

stands to reason that some of these jurisdictions will emerge as hubs in the underground 

economy. Given that by some estimates the illicit international economy may now account 

for as much as 15 to 20 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP), you would think 

that tallying the major geographic centers of this thriving shadow market would be an easy 

and noncontroversial exercise.11 The existence of places that are especially susceptible to transnational organized crime has certainly been acknowledged, in a casual way, in the literature 

of illicit networks. Observers have referred to these locations, variously as “geopolitical black 

holes,”12 “twilight zones,”13 and “pseudo-states.”14
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But surprisingly, given the central role these hubs play as both engines and enablers of 

illicit global commerce, there has been little rigorous empirical scholarship on how a city, 

country, or region becomes a black market mecca.15 While there is hardly room here for the 

kind of sustained, methodical inquiry that is ultimately required, I will seek in this chapter to 

initiate a discussion of the geography of the illicit global economy by exploring what features 

make some places congenial to underworld actors and others not.

The Role of Hubs in a Networked World

It took a while for observers to grasp the revolution that has transformed global crime over the 

last few decades, but the study of globalized crime and illicit networks has gradually come into 

focus. One of the bedrock notions at the heart of this emerging field is the idea that a new breed 

of illicit, transnational, nonstate actors has been very busy in recent years, and that whether 

they are ideological terrorist groups or profit-driven criminals, they share certain characteristics 

at the level of their organizational DNA. They are networks.16

A decade ago, John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt described a new kind of nonhierarchical 

adversary: “dispersed organizations, small groups, and individuals who communicate, coordinate, and conduct their campaigns in an internetted manner, often without a precise central 

command.”17 In the language of networks, each criminal actor came to represent a node in a 

dispersed associational map. The associations between these nodes can be described as links.

18

Much of the early scholarship on illicit networks focused on the democratic character of 

these structures. Whereas traditional mafias, like nation-states, were entrenched and hierarchical, networks often had a flatter, more fluid, and adaptive leadership structure. This quality 

made them especially robust and difficult to attack because the removal of any one node in a 

criminal or terrorist network might have only a limited impact.

Still, even in a decentralized network, all nodes are not created equal. Physicist Albert-László 

Barabási has shown that some nodes serve as points of connection for a disproportionate number 

of links. These nodes come to function as hubs. Imagine the difference between a map of the 

highways in the United States and a map of the air traffic routes. On the road map, cities are 

the nodes and the highways connecting them are the links. Each major city has at least one 

link to the highway system, but there are no cities served by hundreds of highways. So most of 

the nodes are fairly similar, with roughly the same number of links. But an airline map looks 

different. In order to operate efficiently, airlines route flights through certain hubs. So on a 

map of air traffic, a few specific nodes, such as Houston, Denver, or New York, will stand out 

with an exponentially larger number of links as they connect the vast majority of the airports 

around the country.19

In the same way Continental Airlines, Amazon.com, and United Parcel Service construct 

their delivery routes around a handful of critical hubs, black marketeers come to rely on some 

locations more than others. In some instances, this may simply be a matter of cultivating a few 

contacts on the ground in the jurisdiction in question who can make the relevant payments to 

ensure that a shipment of contraband passes through unmolested. But in other cases, criminal 

actors will come to base a large part of their business in these hubs, staging their shipments 

there, sourcing otherwise hard-to-come-by documentation, or laundering their money.
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Keefe

For those seeking to study or combat illicit networks, the importance of these geographic hubs cannot be overstated. All it takes is one lax jurisdiction to create a wormhole 

that undermines the legitimate international system in its entirety. If one nation is willing to 

issue fake end-user certificates or genuine passports for a fee, or a handful of border guards 

are prepared to look the other way at a checkpoint, it won’t matter how studiously the rest of 

the world honors national and international anti-smuggling regulations. If, for instance, word 

gets out that Guatemala is a back door into the United States—and we live in a world in 

which there are few barriers preventing the enterprising and mobile criminal or terrorist from 

simply making his way to Guatemala—then the laudable work of the U.S. Coast Guard off 

the Florida Keys and the Canadian Mounties at Boundary Bay is sadly beside the point. So 

the critical question, both in terms of understanding the present landscape of vulnerabilities 

and of developing some rudimentary method for predicting those vulnerabilities that might 

emerge tomorrow, is “Why Guatemala?”

Hubs versus Havens

“There are so many forgotten places, out of government control, too scary for investors and 

tourists,” Antonio Maria Costa, head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 

(UNODC), told the UN Security Council in 2010. “These are precisely the places where 

smugglers, insurgents and terrorists operate.”20 Costa’s general point is unassailable; in 2003, 

the Central Intelligence Agency identified some 50 “lawless zones” around the world that 

might be conducive to illegal activity.21 But he paints with too broad a brush, a common tendency when describing criminal and terrorist networks, which has resulted in some degree of 

conceptual confusion. Costa’s characterization of underworld hubs brings to mind the 9/11 

Commission’s description of terrorist “safe havens” as “areas that combine rugged terrain, weak 

governance, room to hide or receive supplies, and low population density with a town or city 

near enough to allow necessary interaction with the outside world.”22 But criminal hubs and 

terrorist safe havens are not necessarily the same thing.

Given some of the organizational similarities shared by terrorist and criminal networks, 

along with the fact that many terrorist groups use crime to finance their activities, there is 

an understandable tendency to discuss the two in the same breath. It is also unquestionably 

the case that jurisdictions such as Dubai have served as an instrumental facilitation point for 

criminals and terrorists alike. But really, there is little reason to believe that in seeking a base 

of operations or a key logistical hub, terrorists and smugglers would be looking for the same 

thing.23 It has become something of a cliché over the last decade that weak or failed states are 

especially attractive to terrorists and criminal groups. Even in the particular case of terrorism, 

this has not always proven to be the case, but when it comes to crime, the assertion is often 

flat-out wrong. Whereas a terrorist group in Afghanistan or Somalia might benefit from the 

lawlessness and anonymity afforded by state failure, transnational criminal organizations rely 

for their very existence on some baseline level of infrastructure and services. In fact, many of 

the dominant hubs in the illicit global economy can be found in the major cities of relatively 

coherent states. As Stewart Patrick suggests in his book Weak Links—which is the most sus-
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The Geography of Badness

tained examination to date of the geography of illicit transnational activity—“the relationship 

between state fragility and cross-border criminality is variable and complicated.”24

A multitude of different factors will influence whether or not a given corner of the globe 

becomes a magnet for criminality, and the strength or weakness of the state in question is 

just one variable in a highly dynamic situation. Indeed, so many factors influence the level 

of cross-border criminality in a given country or region that the exercise of classifying the 

relevant vectors may degenerate into something akin to Justice Potter Stewart’s test for identifying pornography: I know an illicit economic hub when I see one. Consider the description 

of post-Soviet Ukraine’s emergence as a black market hub from former Deputy Assistant 

Secretary of State Jonathan Winer: “There’s concentrated power, resources in very few hands, 

no oversight, no separate functioning judiciary, a huge porous border, huge inherited military 

facilities, lots of airstrips, a bunch of old planes.” What made Ukraine so attractive to underworld elements, in Winer’s view, was its role as “a one-stop shopping infrastructure for anyone 

who wants to buy anything.”25 He also notes the concentration of power—a feature that is not 

associated with the kind of state failure that often characterizes terrorist safe havens. Winer 

memorably characterized Ukraine as “the epicenter of global badness,” and the country remains 

a major venue for numerous forms of illicit activity. In seeking to identify other critical locales 

in the illicit global economy, it should be possible to make some general observations about 

the characteristic features of a criminal hub.

Hallmarks of a Criminal Hub

In 2003, the Library of Congress published a study called Nations Hospitable to Organized 

Crime and Terrorism. The study feels somewhat dated today; it was a product of the immediate aftermath of the attacks of 9/11, perhaps not the most conducive environment for a sober 

assessment of the relevant threats. But it provides a thoughtful examination of some of the 

general characteristics that might render a country appealing to professional criminals:

The main domestic elements making a nation “hospitable” to transnational crime and 

terrorism are official corruption, incomplete or weak legislation, poor enforcement of 

existing laws, non-transparent financial institutions, unfavorable economic conditions, 

lack of respect for the rule of law in society, and poorly guarded national borders. . . . 

Such purely domestic factors often are exacerbated by a nation’s geographic location 

(along a key narcotics trafficking route or in a region where arms trafficking is prolific, 

for example) or the influence of regional geopolitical issues such as a long-standing 

territorial dispute.26

Notwithstanding the fact that the study has unhelpfully conflated terrorism and crime, 

this list of variables is a useful starting point, which I would adapt somewhat to comprise the 

items below. My own list is hardly meant to be exhaustive. Rather, it is a provisional effort to 

explore how these dynamics affect transnational crime in particular, which will, I hope, suggest 

some avenues for future research.
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Keefe

Partial State Degradation

From the perspective of a transnational criminal organization that is primarily in the business 

of making money by moving contraband products of one sort or another, the prospect of doing 

business in a failed state is a dubious one. These criminal entrepreneurs rely on access to the 

global marketplace, which, in turn, necessitates some baseline level of infrastructure. Geopolitical black holes can be “remote and relatively isolated from the main power centers,” Moisés 

Naím suggests. He adds, “But surprisingly, they are extremely well connected to the markets 

in other continents where they place their lucrative illicit exports.”27 This is not to suggest that 

criminals are not attracted to some degree of state degradation. Because international commerce is such an important element of transnational organized crime, a failure or a refusal by 

the relevant authorities to police their own borders creates a decisive strategic advantage for 

smugglers. Likewise, a diminished willingness or capacity on the part of law enforcement to 

crack down on criminality can be a major enticement for transnational criminal actors. As UN 

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon pointed out in 2010, “Criminal networks are very skilled at 

taking advantage of institutional weaknesses on the ground,” and there is no doubt that this 

is the case.28

Because they are motivated primarily by profit rather than political or religious ideology, 

and they are often running extensive, high-margin operations, transnational criminal organizations will likely be repelled by a degree of state failure that results in isolation from the 

broad currents of global communications and commerce, or an unacceptable level of anarchy 

or uncertainty on the ground. According to UNODC, Colombian drug traffickers first began 

routing large quantities of cocaine via West Africa in 2004. Countries such as Guinea-Bissau, 

Guinea, and Mali provided an ideal transshipment point for narcotics bound for Europe. On 

the surface, West Africa would appear to be an ideal location for a criminal hub. Many states are 

barely functioning, so the cartels could channel vast quantities of product through unguarded 

ports and airstrips and onward to the lucrative markets of Europe. By 2008, Western officials 

estimated that $300 million worth of cocaine, the equivalent of Guinea-Bissau’s entire GDP, 

was moving through the country each month.

29

Then a funny thing happened. Just as international authorities were beginning to awaken 

to the emerging narcotics hub in West Africa, but before any concerned parties had the chance 

to conduct a sustained or vigorous crackdown, the flow of cocaine that had been stampeding 

through the country quite suddenly began to taper off. After 2008, “both maritime seizures 

and airport seizures on flights originating in West Africa virtually disappeared,” according to 

UNODC. One speculative explanation offered by UN officials is that the corruption-corroded, coup-prone nations of West Africa may actually have proven too politically unstable for 

risk-averse Colombian traffickers.30 Antonio Mazzitelli, head of UNODC programs in West 

Africa, reasoned that the region had grown so fragile that even drug runners were abandoning 

it. “They don’t need a failed state,” he says. “They need a weak state.”31

This is a key distinction, and one which is often elided in discussions that conflate criminals and terrorists. The ideal locale for a transnational criminal organization is one which 

boasts many of the advantages of a strong, functioning state, such as modern infrastructure and 

communications, a banking system, and enough rule of law to make life generally predictable. 
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The Geography of Badness

In fact, many of the major hubs in the illicit global economy are also hubs of the licit economy. 

Bangkok, for instance, has long been appealing to human smugglers, weapons traffickers, 

document forgers, and other transnational criminals precisely because it is a regional hub for 

legitimate transportation and a prominent shipping center with a major international airport. 

Because of the size of the licit economy in Thailand, Bangkok can absorb a high degree of 

criminality without becoming completely overrun by, or identified, with it. This is not always 

the case with more fragile states, and here we arrive at another key dynamic: while transnational criminals may not be attracted to outright state failure, once they arrive in a state that 

is already weak, their very presence can hasten the further degradation of sovereign control. 

Mexico is a large and prosperous enough country that even in the context of a raging drug 

war, the basic rule of law widely persists, the state continues to function up to a point, and the 

country continues to enjoy both tourism and foreign direct investment.

In recent years, Mexico’s drug cartels have begun to expand southward into neighboring 

Guatemala, which is already arguably on the brink of state failure.32 In recent years, Guatemala’s murder rate has been a multiple of Mexico’s; a 2007 study by the UN and the World Bank 

ranked it the third most murderous country in the world with 97 percent of its homicides 

unsolved.33 Whereas Mexico struggles with drug cartels but for the most part maintains the 

basic functions of a viable state, sovereign authority in Guatemala, such as it is, will likely erode 

even further as the cartels become entrenched. Similarly, Kenya can assimilate the presence of 

East African criminal groups, whereas the existing disorder in Somalia is only exacerbated by 

their activities. Think of crossborder criminality as a kind of virus: in searching for a host, it 

naturally gravitates to weakness. But whereas a big and only somewhat weak state like Mexico 

or Kenya is robust enough to live with the virus without succumbing to it, an already demoralized state like Guatemala or Somalia is much more vulnerable. So corrosive is the influence of 

transnational organized crime that even if black market entrepreneurs aren’t attracted to state 

failure, they may ultimately induce it. Occasionally, the virus simply kills its host.

Borderlands and Breakaway States

Importantly, these hosts are not always nation-states per se. Hubs of illicit activity often develop 

in areas of overlapping or contested sovereignty. Consider the Tri-Border Area, where Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay meet. Though none of its constituent nations is itself a fragile state, 

the Tri-Border Area has long been a notorious hotbed of black market activity. It “provides a 

haven that is geographically, socially, economically, and politically highly conducive for allowing 

the activities of organized crime, Islamic terrorist groups, and corrupt officials,” the Library of 

Congress report observed in 2003. “Those groups are supported by drug and arms trafficking, 

money laundering, and other lucrative criminal activities.”34 Paraguay’s Ciudad del Este has 

long been a vibrant hub of licit commerce, generating some $13 billion in merchandise sales 

in 2000. But it also serves as a clearinghouse for counterfeit goods and has been the subject of 

longstanding rumors (though not as much in the way of verifiable information) about fundraising for Islamic extremism. The 2003 report identifies “Brazilian and Paraguayan mafias” 

that are active in the area, “as well as non-indigenous syndicates from Chile, Colombia, Corsica, 

Ghana, Italy, Ivory Coast, Japan, Korea, Lebanon, Nigeria, Russia, and Taiwan.”35
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Keefe

A more recent study hypothesizes that beyond this famous triple border, other areas 

where the sovereign boundaries of three nations converge, like the point where Brazil meets 

Peru and Bolivia, or Colombia and Venezuela, are also conducive to organized crime.36 It may 

be that simple geography dictates these conditions—that any location with ready access to 

three different countries will diminish accountability and increase the likelihood that criminal actors can find border authorities willing to take a bribe. It may be that a development 

disparity between neighboring countries will give rise to elevated levels of smuggling. Another 

explanation is that conditions of overlapping or contested authority are inherently congenial 

to transnational organized crime.

Another type of jurisdiction in which black market economies tend to flourish is the 

breakaway state. The former Soviet Union’s answer to the Tri-Border Area in South America 

may well be the Republic of Moldova’s Transnistria. An area the size of Rhode Island that 

broke from Moldova in 1990, Transnistria functions as an unrecognized state within the 

geographic borders of Moldova. You will not find Transnistria on a map, and according to international law, it does not exist. Yet during the Cold War, the area hosted Russia’s Fourteenth 

Army, and today this unrecognized republic holds one of the most extensive arms stockpiles 

in all of Europe.37 “During the last 15 years, the Transnistria area became a black hole,” Oazu 

Nantoi, of Moldova’s Institute of Public Policy, says. “There is smuggling of alcohol, tobacco, 

human beings, drugs, and . . . arms trafficking.”38 The breakaway Georgian republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia have come to serve a similar function for transnational criminal 

activity. Residents of Abkhazia reportedly joke that it is “the world’s biggest duty free shop.”39

Corruption

If there is a sine qua non for transnational criminal activity, it is probably official corruption. 

Graft is the oxygen of organized crime, and kickbacks are a commonplace in most of the 

global hubs of the illicit economy. The connection between corruption and illicit activity has 

been fairly well explored elsewhere, so there is no need to dwell on it at length here, but if one 

appealing quality for a criminal organization on the move is a semifunctioning state, it follows 

that criminal actors will want to neutralize or co-opt those state functions which might impact 

their business through well-placed bribes. Depending on the level of corruption in the country 

in question, and the skill and resources of the briber, corrupt accomplices can often be secured 

at the very highest levels of government—indeed, even in the very organs of government whose 

mission it is to crack down on crime. In 2006, the head of Guatemala’s drug enforcement 

agency, along with his deputy and another top counternarcotics official, pled guilty to charges 

of conspiring to ship cocaine to the United States.40 In 2009, Guatemala’s President, Álvaro 

Colom, fired the director general of the national police along with three other senior officials 

after a large quantity of cocaine and cash that was under their supervision went missing.41

The only scenario in which corruption does not need to be present for an area to become 

an illicit economic hub is one in which activity that might otherwise be regarded as illegal or 

corrupt has simply been legislated into respectability. Think of bank secrecy, for instance. In 

Switzerland and a host of offshore tax havens, the circumstances that allow for the illegal laundering of criminal proceeds are themselves actually legal. When laws differ from one locality 
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The Geography of Badness

to the next, particularly when the laws in question pertain to the ease and efficiency of money 

laundering, capital will move in large quantities, an illustration of jurisdictional arbitrage at 

its most efficient. A banking haven need not suffer from high levels of corruption to attract a 

criminal element. In these jurisdictions, the rule of law manages to accommodate criminality, 

perhaps because the corruption we find in these places does not manifest itself in a departure 

from the legal codes. The corruption is written into the law itself.

Poverty

Closely linked to corruption, poverty is often but not always a feature of areas that become 

criminal hubs. It seems beyond dispute that if the standard of living were higher and legitimate vocational prospects were more plentiful in southern Afghanistan, say, or in Somalia, 

we might expect fewer people to go into poppy cultivation or maritime piracy. But in part because the global demand for narcotics and other forms of contraband tends to emanate from 

prosperous developed nations, it would be a mistake to draw too strong a parallel between the 

poverty of nations and their appeal to cross-border criminal elements. In a destitute country, 

crime may appear to loom large because it is often one of the few viable revenue streams 

available. But in fact, most illicit transnational activity unfolds in wealthy countries, where it 

is simply obscured by the white noise of a booming legitimate economy. “In absolute terms, 

transnational organized crime is strongest in the richest countries,” a recent UNODC report 

points out, “but its share of total economic activity there is so small that it does not rise to 

become a substantial threat.”42

Here again we are confronted by the dynamic nature of criminal hubs: while poverty is 

only sometimes a prerequisite for transnational organized crime in a given region, if poverty 

is a problem in the place in question, criminal activity will often exacerbate it. Poverty may 

drive young Somali men into maritime piracy, but as piracy renders the Somali coast unsafe, 

it begins to diminish the likelihood that alternative lines of work, like fishing or shipping, 

might be an option. Piracy also frustrates efforts by the international community to deliver 

aid to Somalia by ship. These developments exacerbate the poverty, which, in turn, drives 

more people into piracy.

The dynamics can become self-perpetuating to the point where organized crime can 

actually derail international development programs. Epic quantities of aid money channeled 

into Afghanistan are simply diverted outright by corrupt officials and siphoned out of the 

country by cash couriers. Between 2007 and 2010, more than $3 billion in cash was openly 

flown out of Kabul International Airport, a sum so vast that even allowing for legitimate 

transfers by Afghans of honest cash and the profits drawn from drug-smuggling and other 

illicit activities, it surely reflects large amounts of international money that was designated for 

reconstruction.43 In another example of the pernicious effects that organized crime can have 

on economic development, a 2005 report by UNODC concluded that one explanation for the 

relatively low levels of development investment in Africa is “the perception among investors 

that the rule of law does not prevail” there.44 Thus, as with state weakness, the relationship 

between poverty and organized crime appears to be highly dynamic.
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An Informal Economy

Of course, many African countries share with Afghanistan an especially vital feature in the 

facilitation of organized crime: they tend to have robust informal economies. In Afghanistan, 

as much as 90 percent of the economy remains effectively “off the books.” A 2006 UNODC 

study found that 60 percent of fund transfers in the country were drug-related, while as many 

as 90 percent of the hawala money remittance brokers in Kandahar and Helmand provinces 

were involved in drug transactions.45 (Hawala is an informal banking system widely used in 

Afghanistan and other parts of Asia.) Most of the cash that leaves Kabul International Airport 

each day goes to Dubai, which, with its largely unregulated financial markets, its gold souk, and 

its army of hawaladars, has emerged as a crucial nexus in the illicit global economy—a kind of 

anonymous transit lounge for capital in which clean and dirty money are liberally intermingled.

Dubai has labored in recent years to shrug off its post-9/11 image as a cashpoint and 

playground for terrorists and criminals, but the fact remains that funds for the 9/11 hijackers 

and the East African embassy bombers were transferred through the city. Dubai played a key 

role in A.Q. Khan’s black market proliferation network, and half of all applications to purchase 

U.S. military equipment that originate from Dubai are reportedly from bogus companies.46

The major figures of Indian organized crime have operated in recent years not from India, 

but from Dubai.47 And Iran is, in the words of one U.S. official, “building a bomb through 

Dubai.”48 Efforts by U.S. authorities to get Dubai to crack down on cash couriers transporting 

large volumes of illicit funds into the United Arab Emirates have been unsuccessful. A recent 

proposal by U.S. law enforcement to create a training program to teach inspectors at the airport 

to spot suspicious couriers was blocked by Dubai’s Central Bank.49

From Thailand to Transnistria, from Equatorial Guinea to Guatemala, an informal 

economy is as crucial an ingredient as corruption for an underworld economic hub because 

the fungibility of cash and other commodities in an underground marketplace allows criminal 

enterprises to launder their proceeds.

Tribes and Kinship Networks

One common theme that links a number of the key attributes of a criminal hub is a certain 

tendency to dismiss the prerogatives and institutions of state power as somewhat arbitrary, or 

even irrelevant. Just as porous border areas and breakaway republics signify the absurdity of 

the lines and boundaries of official cartography in the face of very different facts on the ground, 

a common feature in many criminal hubs is the existence of tribal or kinship networks, and 

the power structures and struggles associated with them, which have a tendency to trump the 

authority of the state. Much of the expansion of transnational criminal networks in recent 

decades was driven by loosely dispersed diasporic networks. From the former Yugoslavia to 

the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, transnational criminal actors may find a 

congenial base of operations in what the Library of Congress study characterized as “societies 

based on family and clan ties that have resisted the rule of law.”50 These societies themselves 

can provide a haven for certain types of criminality, but these kinship networks are also global, 

and whether it is Fujianese snakeheads in Bangkok or Lebanese traders in Ciudad del Este, 
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The Geography of Badness

ethnic and cultural networks often furnish the transnational links that enable global criminal 

enterprises to thrive.

State Capture, Rogue States, and the Criminal State

One final factor that is worth mentioning is the propensity for some states to become either 

so thoroughly corrupted or so alienated from the international system that they do not merely 

abet criminal activity but actively perpetuate or even authorize and control it. By some estimates, North Korea’s senior leadership gleans roughly $1 billion each year from illicit activities. 

Government trucks reportedly transport the opium harvested in North Hamgyong province 

to a factory outside Pyongyang where it is processed by a government-owned firm.51 Iran’s 

smuggling industry, meanwhile, is estimated to generate some $12 billion a year, much of it 

controlled by the Revolutionary Guard.52 When government authorities are not merely abdicating their role as guarantors of the rule of law, but deliberately engaging in the illicit global 

economy themselves, we are confronted with an especially powerful engine of black market 

commerce, the criminalized state.53

Naming, Shaming, Co-opting, and Further Study

The above list of factors hopefully can serve as a starting point for further research. To date, 

studies of illicit networks have tended to focus either on a kind of mile-wide and inch-deep 

perusal of the broad contours of the globalization of crime, or alternatively, on inch-wide and 

mile-deep examinations of the particular characteristics of specific countries or illegal trades. 

But as the study of illicit networks broadens and matures, the geography of the illicit global 

economy should merit further research. Identifying the attributes of criminal hubs, and distinguishing them from terrorist safe havens, can serve an important function for scholars (in 

clarifying our understanding of the dynamics of black markets and the migration of crime) 

and for practitioners (in suggesting law enforcement and diplomatic responses). A close study 

of illicit economic hubs may occasionally suggest shifting our focus from one problem area to 

another. Just as aid money disappearing from Afghanistan is funneled to the hub in Dubai, 

a close study of the financial networks of Somali pirates might lead not to the failed state of 

Somalia, but rather to Kenya where the ransom proceeds are often invested.

Nor should Americans be surprised if, in pursuing the links of the illicit economy, they 

find themselves confronted by major hubs that may be familiar: New York, Atlanta, or Los 

Angeles, for instance. Until quite recently, Wachovia Bank, which is now part of Wells Fargo, 

was serving as a major facilitator for Mexican drug cartels.54 As Raymond Baker, director of 

Global Financial Integrity, wrote recently, “We cannot succeed in curtailing part of these flows 

while at the same time facilitating other parts of these flows.”55 Just as drugs move into the 

United States, assault rifles and laundered money move back out to Mexico. So in identifying 

and reforming the hubs of the shadow economy, we must be careful not to neglect our own.
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Notes

1

 William Langewiesche, The Atomic Bazaar: The Rise of the Nuclear Poor (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 

2007), 24–25. 2

 Library of Congress, Nations Hospitable to Organized Crime and Terrorism (hereinafter, Nations report), Federal 

Research Division, October 2003. 3

 Lyudmila Zaitseva, “Illicit Trafficking in the Southern Tier and Turkey since 1999: A Shift from Europe?” 

The Nonproliferation Review 9, no. 3 (Fall–Winter 2002). 4

 Lawrence Scott Sheets, “A Smuggler’s Story,” The Atlantic, April 2008. 5

 Phil Williams, “Crime, Illicit Markets and Money Laundering,” in Managing Global Issues: Lessons Learned, 

ed. Chantal de Jonge Oudraat and P.J. Simmons (New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2001). 6

 See Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun, Merchant of Death: Guns, Planes and the Man Who Makes War Possible

(New York: J. Wiley and Sons, 2007). 7

 Federico Varese, Mafias on the Move: How Organized Crime Conquers New Territories (Princeton, NJ: Princeton 

University Press, 2011), 4. 8

 See Patrick Radden Keefe, The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream

(New York: Doubleday, 2009); and Patrick Radden Keefe, “Snakeheads and Smuggling: The Dynamics of Illegal 

Chinese Immigration,” World Policy Journal 26, no. 1 (2009). 9

 Phil Williams, “Transnational Criminal Networks,” in Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and 

Militancy, ed. John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2001). 10 Stewart Patrick, Weak Links: Fragile States, Global Threats, and International Security (New York: Oxford 

University Press, 2011), 138. 11 Misha Glenny, McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld (New York: Knopf, 2008), xv. 12 Moisés Naím, Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats Are Hijacking the Global Economy (New York: 

Doubleday, 2006), 261. 13 Timothy Luke and Gearóid Ó Tuathail, “The Fraying Modern Map: Failed States and Contraband Capitalism,” Geopolitics 3, no. 3 (Winter 1998). 14 John O’Loughlin, “Pseudo-States as Harbingers of a Post-Modern Geopolitics: The Example of the 

Trans-Dniester Moldovan Republic (TMR),” Geopolitics 3, no. 1 (Summer 1998). 15 One conspicuous recent exception is Stewart Patrick’s Weak Links. 16 See Malcolm Sparrow, “The Application of Network Analysis to Criminal Intelligence: An Assessment of the 

Prospects,” Social Networks 13, no. 3 (1991); Williams, “Transnational Criminal Networks.” 17 John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, “The Advent of Netwar (Revisited),” in Networks and Netwars: The Future 

of Terror, Crime, and Militancy, ed. John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, 6 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2001). 18 For a general introduction to the science of networks, see Duncan Watts, Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected 

Age (New York: Norton, 2003). Also see Patrick Radden Keefe, “Can Network Theory Thwart Terrorists?” New 

York Times Magazine, March 12, 2006. 19 Albert-László Barabási, Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, 

Science, and Everyday Life (New York: Penguin, 2003), 51. 20 Louis Charbonneau, “Global Gangs Exploit Blind Spots for Trafficking: UN,” Reuters, February 10, 2010.

21 Patrick, 4.

22 The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United 

States (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2004), 366.

23 For an exploration of the types of features that make a given jurisdiction appealing for terrorist, as distinct 

from criminal, groups, see Rem Korteweg, “Black Holes: On Terrorist Sanctuaries and Governmental Weakness,” 

Civil Wars 10, no. 1 (March 2008). 24 Patrick, 13.

25 Peter Landesman, “Arms and the Man,” New York Times Magazine, August 17, 2003. 26 Library of Congress, Nations report. 27 “Illicit Networks Operate at the Frontiers of Globalization,” interview with Moisés Naím, Brown Journal of 

World Affairs 16, no. 1 (Fall/Winter 2009). 28 Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, “An Agenda for Prosperity and Peace,” Remarks to the Summit of the 

African Union, January 31, 2010.
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The Geography of Badness

29 Patrick, 151.

30 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Crime and Instability: Case Studies of Transnational 

Threats, February 2010, available at <www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/Studies/Crime_and_instability_2010_final_26march.pdf>. 31 Patrick, 151.

32 See “The Rot Spreads,” The Economist, January 20, 2011. 33 David Grann, “A Murder Foretold,” The New Yorker, April 4, 2011. 34 Library of Congress, Nations report. 35 Ibid.

36 Southern Pulse Report, “Ungoverned Spaces in the Americas, Part 1,” July 8, 2011, available at <www.

southernpulse.com>. 37 Glenny, 91–96; Helen Fox, “Trans-Dniester’s Surreal Life,” BBC, September 2, 2005.

38 Fox.

39 Sheets.

40 Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), “Former Guatemalan Senior Anti-Narcotics Officers Plead Guilty 

to Conspiracy to Manufacture and Distribute Cocaine,” press release, September 8, 2006. 41 UNODC, Crime and Instability. 42 Ibid.

43 Matthew Rosenberg, “Corruption Suspected in Airlift of Billions from Kabul,” The Wall Street Journal, June 

25, 2010. 44 UNODC, “Crime and Development in Africa,” June 2005.

45 UNODC, Crime and Instability. 46 See Angela Giuffrida, “Dubai Labors Under Money Laundering Image,” The New York Times, December 1, 

2010; Patrick Radden Keefe, “Quartermasters of Terror,” New York Review of Books 52, no. 2, February 10, 2005; 

“An Unlikely Criminal Crossroads,” U.S. News & World Report, November 11, 2005. 47 Library of Congress, Nations report. 48 “An Unlikely Criminal Crossroads.”

49 U.S. Senate, Foreign Relations Committee, “Afghanistan’s Narco War: Breaking the Link Between Drug 

Traffickers and Insurgents” (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2009). 50 Library of Congress, Nations report. 51 Bill Powell and Adam Zagorin, “The Tony Soprano of North Korea,” Time, July 12, 2007; also see Sheena 

Chesnut, “Illicit Activity and Proliferation: North Korean Smuggling Networks,” International Security 32, no. 1 

(Summer 2007); Paul Rexton Kan, Bruce Bechtol, Jr., and Robert M. Collins, Criminal Sovereignty: Understanding 

North Korea’s Illicit Activities (Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College, April 12, 2010). 52 Babak Dehghanpisheh, “Smugglers for the State,” Newsweek, July 10, 2010. 53 Robert Killebrew and Jennifer Bernal, Crime Wars: Gangs, Cartels and U.S. National Security (Washington, 

DC: Center for a New American Security, 2010). 54 Ed Vulliamy, “How a Big U.S. Bank Laundered Billions from Mexico’s Murderous Drug Gangs,” The Observer, April 2, 2011.

55 Quoted in Jeremy Haken, “Transnational Crime in the Developing World,” Global Financial Integrity, February 8, 2011.

111

Chapter 7

Threat Finance: A Critical 

Enabler for Illicit Networks

Danielle Camner Lindholm and Celina B. Realuyo

Money alone sets all the world in motion.

—Publilius Syrus (100 b.c.), Maxim 656

Endless money forms the sinews of war.

—Cicero (106 b.c.– 43 b.c.), Philippics

Through globalization, the free flow of goods, services, capital, ideas, and technology has positively transformed our lives in an increasingly interconnected world. Simultaneously, 

these same catalysts have allowed bad actors to enrich themselves at the expense of the prosperity, security, and integrity of the global community. These actors, and the illicit networks in 

which they typically function, actively seek out governance gaps, socioeconomic vulnerabilities, 

and character weaknesses as openings to conduct their nefarious activities and expand their 

power and influence throughout the world. No region, country, or community is immune. 

While we know that illicit networks are enabled by multiple factors, financing is essential for 

anything they do and enhances their power. Money is the oxygen that brings the activities to life 

of any licit or illicit organization. Finances sustain these entities and provide a window—and 

perhaps a vulnerable entry point—into these shadowy organizations.

“Following the money trail” has become a critical crosscutting component for countercrime, counternarcotics, and counterterrorism efforts against illicit networks. We define the 

financing of all these illicit activities as threat finance. In combating threat finance and associated networks, the international community must collaborate and employ all the instruments 

of national power to dismantle, degrade, disrupt, and deter illicit networks. These instruments include diplomatic, military, intelligence, information, law enforcement, economic, 

and financial tools that can be applied alone or in combination to counter national security 
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threats including transnational crime, terrorism, and the proliferation of weapons of mass 

destruction. Such countermeasures have been successfully leveraged at the local, national, 

and international levels to combat and degrade illicit networks around the globe; however, 

these must be continually revamped to keep up with the resourcefulness of illicit actors as 

they adapt to and circumvent countermeasures.

This chapter focuses on financing as an enabler of all things illicit and the financial front 

of efforts to combat illicit networks. We will begin with an overview of the threat posed by 

illicit finance and how illicit actors raise, move, and hide their money. Subsequently, national 

and international strategies to combat threat finance through law enforcement and intelligence 

operations, public designations, international cooperation, and capacity-building programs will 

be examined. We will demonstrate how “following the money trail” enhances law enforcement 

investigations and intelligence analyses to root out illicit actors and their financiers. Finally, we 

will underscore the importance of recognizing threat finance as a key enabler of illicit networks 

and the critical need to combat illicit finance.

The Nature of Threat Finance

Threat finance encompasses money laundering and terrorist financing by illicit networks and 

endangers the integrity of financial systems around the world. Threat finance is employed by 

rogue nations, terrorist facilitators, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferators, money 

launderers, drug kingpins, and others who endanger national security.

As the July 2011 Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime (SCTOC) states, 

the political reach and financial power of transnational organized crime groups allow them to 

corrupt governments, undermine state stability and sovereignty, subvert and degrade democratic and financial institutions, and threaten strategic markets and the global financial system. 

The participation of organized criminals in licit markets undermines legitimate competition 

and market reliability and transparency. Their laundering activities and use of violence, fraud, 

and corruption create an unfair competitive advantage that drives out honest businesspeople 

while distorting and possibly destabilizing strategic markets. This is particularly threatening 

because of the entry of transnational organized crime (TOC)–linked businesses into sensitive 

markets such as energy, telecommunications, and precious metals.1

 Furthermore, terrorists and 

insurgents are increasingly turning to criminal networks or engaging in traditional criminal 

activities to generate funding and acquire logistical support. This relationship is frequently 

referred to as the growing “crime-terror nexus with groups like Hezbollah, Al Qaeda in the 

Islamic Maghreb, and the FARC [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia] in Colombia.” 

Transnational organized crime also undermines the integrity of the interconnected trading, 

transportation, and transactional systems that move people and commerce throughout the 

global economy and across our borders.2

Money Laundering. According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, money laundering generally refers to financial transactions by which criminals, including terrorist organizations, disguise their identities and the proceeds, sources, and nature of their illicit activities. 

Money laundering facilitates a broad range of serious underlying criminal offenses and 
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ultimately threatens the trustworthiness of the financial system.3 It is the process of making 

financial proceeds from illicit activities appear legal through the following three stages:

In the initial stage of money laundering—placement—the launderer introduces his 

“dirty” illegal profits into the legitimate financial system. This might be done by breaking up 

large amounts of cash into less conspicuous sums that are then deposited directly into bank 

accounts, or by purchasing a series of monetary instruments (checks, money orders, etc.) that 

are then collected and deposited into accounts at other locations.

After the funds have entered the financial system, the second stage—layering—takes 

place. The launderer engages in a series of conversions or movements of the funds to distance 

them from their sources. The funds might be channeled through the purchase and sales of 

investment instruments, or the launderer might simply wire the funds through a series of accounts at various banks across the globe. This use of widely scattered accounts for laundering is 

especially prevalent in jurisdictions that do not cooperate in money-laundering investigations. 

In some instances, the launderer disguises the transfers as payments for goods or services, 

giving them a legitimate appearance.

Having successfully processed his criminal profits through the first two phases, the 

launderer then moves them to the third stage—integration—in which the now “clean” funds 

reenter the legitimate economy. The launderer might choose to invest the funds into real estate, 

luxury assets, or business ventures.4

Terrorist Financing. Terrorist financing refers to the processing of funds to sponsor or 

facilitate terrorist activity. A terrorist group, like any other criminal organization, builds and 

maintains an infrastructure to facilitate the development of sources of funding, channel those 

funds to the providers of materials and services to the organization, and possibly launder the 

funds used in financing the terrorist activity or resulting from that same activity. 

Terrorist organizations derive income from a variety of sources, often combining both 

lawful and unlawful funding. The agents involved do not always know the illegitimate end of 

that income. The forms of financing can be grouped in two types: 

Financial support comes in the form of donations, community solicitation, and other 

fundraising initiatives. It may originate with states and large organizations or individuals.

Revenue-generating activities provide income derived from criminal activities such as 

kidnapping, extortion, smuggling, and fraud. Income may also be derived from legitimate 

economic activities such as diamond trading or real estate investment.5

As demonstrated, criminal and terrorist financing are similar in that “they often exploit 

the same vulnerabilities in financial systems that allow for anonymity and non-transparency 

in the execution of financial transactions.”6 For the purposes of studying the financial activities 

of illicit networks, these similarities (and crossover via the crime-terror nexus) outweigh the 

differences.

Common Modes of Threat Finance

Financing is essential for any organization and its activities, and this axiom applies equally 

to illicit networks. Their activities can be categorized into operational and support activities. 

Operational activities include surveillance and reconnaissance, rehearsal, final preparations, 
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and execution of the actual illicit activity (for example, a terrorist attack, cybercrime, or drug 

deal). Support activities entail security, propaganda/marketing, recruitment and retention of 

personnel, fundraising, procurement, transportation and travel, safe havens, multiple identities, 

communications, money services, and training. All of these activities require financing. In the 

case of terrorism, while the actual cost of a terrorist attack can be merely in the thousands of 

dollars, developing and sustaining a terrorist network requires millions of dollars. So how do 

illicit networks raise, move, and hide their money?

Over the years, illicit networks have relied on a broad spectrum of methods to fund their 

networks and operations. While money laundering entails disguising identities and funds 

obtained through illicit activities, terrorist financing does not always involve “dirty money,” 

which complicates the challenges for the intelligence and law enforcement communities. 

The attacks of September 11, 2001, brought to light how al Qaeda and its affiliated groups 

exploited the international financial system to finance its preparations for and execution of 

the attacks. In the decade since, we have observed how terrorist groups have turned to a range 

of funding sources and mechanisms to move or conceal these funds to circumvent heightened 

government and private sector vigilance and the oversight of traditional banking. While these 

methods are frequently black-market opportunities tailored to meet illicit needs, they are 

more often adaptations of legitimate commercial tools (such as technologies designed to ease 

access to consumers) that are diverted or abused for nefarious purposes. With the good comes 

the bad, and as the following examples demonstrate, every innovation or convenience for the 

public provides a new opportunity for enterprising criminals. This list is not exhaustive by any 

means. The alternatives available to criminal organizations are limited only by their ingenuity.

Nongovernmental Organizations and Charities

Most charitable organizations and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are legitimate 

groups dedicated to their stated altruistic goals. However, due to this same generous mission 

and the often-opaque nature of their organizational structures and finances, they make attractive targets for illicit actors including terrorists, criminals, and corrupt politicians looking to 

move their assets. According to the Financial Action Task Force report Money Laundering Typologies 2002–2003, charities may have served as a cover for moving funds to support terrorist 

activities, usually on an international basis, in addition to serving as a direct source of income. 

For example, according to court documents, the Global Relief Foundation, an Illinois-based 

charity, sent more than 90 percent of its donations abroad, and, according to the Department 

of Justice (DOJ) the foundation has connections to and has provided support and assistance 

to individuals associated with Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda network, and other known 

terrorist groups.7

 The Global Relief Foundation has also been linked to financial transactions 

with the Holy Land Foundation, another charity that has been accused of supporting terrorism. 

Similarly, the DOJ asserts that the Illinois-based Benevolence International Foundation moved 

charitable contributions fraudulently solicited from donors in the United States to locations 

abroad to support terrorist activities since the foundation had offices worldwide through which 

it could facilitate the global movement of its funds.8

 These activities occur with or without the 

donors’ knowledge. The charities and NGOs can serve as “fronts” for the illicit purpose, or the 
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donations that were intended by donors for legitimate activities may be diverted by charity 

executives for criminal uses.

Cash Couriers/Bulk Cash Smuggling

Cash is king! Despite newer methods to move and hide money, the exchange of paper currency 

is still regarded as the dominant and preferred mode of payment across the globe, especially 

for transnational criminal organizations like drug cartels. Cash couriers and bulk cash smuggling are an attractive mode of moving money and facilitating money laundering and terrorist 

financing. It usually occurs in U.S. dollars and euros, which are widely accepted as international 

currency and can always be converted. There is often no traceable paper trail and no third party 

such as a bank official to become suspicious of the transaction, and the terrorist or criminal can 

control the movement of that money. However, the costs of couriers and equipment, the risk 

of the courier stealing the money, the risk of informants within the network, and losses due to 

border searches or government inquiries that could compromise the network or mission are 

omnipresent vulnerabilities in the transnational organized crime supply chain. Physically, too, 

cash can be large, heavy, and difficult to conceal: 1 million dollar bills weigh just over 1 ton and 

$1 million in $100 bills weighs about 22 pounds.9

In the United States, bulk cash smuggling is a money-laundering and terrorism-financing 

facilitation technique that is designed to bypass financial transparency reporting requirements.10 Often, the currency is smuggled into or out of the United States concealed in personal 

effects, secreted in shipping containers, or transported in bulk across the border via vehicle, 

vessel, or aircraft. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), some of the 9/11 

hijackers allegedly used bulk cash as one method to transfer funds. Furthermore, in response 

to the 9/11 events, U.S. Customs initiated an outbound-currency operation, Operation Oasis, 

to refocus its efforts to target 23 identified nations involved in money laundering. According 

to the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 

between October 1, 2001, and August 8, 2003, Operation Oasis seized more than $28 million 

in bulk cash. However, while some of the cases involved were linked to terrorism, Homeland 

Security officials were unable to determine the precise number and the extent to which these 

cases involved terrorist financing. Bulk cash smuggling across the porous borders of Iraq has 

been used by al Qaeda in Iraq to finance foreign fighters.11

According to the U.S. National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), bulk cash seizures in 

the United States alone totaled $798 million from January 2008 through August 2010. These 

seizures were mostly related to drug-trafficking cases involving Mexican-based transnational 

criminal organizations. Demonstrating the size and significance of the bulk cash operations 

related to the illicit drug trade, however, is the negligible effect that these seemingly large seizures have had on stemming transnational criminal operations. NDIC stated in its National 

Drug Assessment Report 2011 that “bulk cash interdiction efforts have not impacted overall 

TCO operations to a significant extent.”12 While U.S. counternarcotics strategies focus on 

drug interdiction efforts, they now track proceeds from narcotics trafficking that empower 

transnational criminal organizations to control global supply routes and corrupt government 

authorities. As a result, U.S. agencies including the Drug Enforcement Administration 
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(DEA) and the DHS continue to aggressively pursue the detection and disruption of bulk 

cash smuggling operations.

Alternative Remittance Systems

Illicit networks including terrorist groups use an informal banking system known as hawala to 

move their assets in some regions, owing to the system’s nontransparent and liquid nature. A 

remittance is a transfer of money by a foreign worker to his or her home country. An informal 

banking system is one in which money is received for the purpose of making it, or an equivalent 

value, payable to a third party in another geographic location whether or not in the same form. 

Such transfers generally take place outside the conventional banking system through nonbank 

money services businesses or other, often unregulated and undocumented, business entities 

whose primary activity may not be the transmission of money. Traditionally, expatriates—traders and immigrant laborers—used informal banking systems to send money home from or to 

countries lacking formal and secure banking systems. Informal systems are still used by immigrant ethnic populations in the United States and elsewhere today. Such systems are based on 

trust and the extensive use of connections such as family relationships or regional affiliations. 

These systems also often involve transactions to remote areas with no formal banking system or 

to countries with weak financial regulations, such as in Somalia, where the Al Barakaat informal banking system moved funds for al Qaeda. Figure 1 provides an example of how a simple 

hawala transaction can occur.13 It is believed that the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks of 

November 2008 relied on hawala transactions to fund their operations.14

Trade-Based Money Laundering

Trade-based money laundering is the movement of illicit funds through commercial transactions and organizations that are or appear to be legitimate. This might involve practices such as 

padding or underreporting of the amounts of invoiced goods or services (for example, shipping 

more items than documented to allow the recipient to profit from resale); repeating invoices 

(for example, delivering one set of items but receiving payment for two sets); falsification of receipts (for example, the goods shipped are described as a less expensive item when they’re really 

something more costly); and sales of commodities above or below market. The transactions 

can be simple (two parties colluding to use a commercial transaction to deflate the value of an 

exchange to benefit from the difference between the resulting understatement in cost and the 

value of the goods on the open market) or complex (involving multiple parties in numerous nations knowingly or unknowingly involved in the fraudulent aspects of the transactions). They 

may also involve trade that is hard to detect or accurately price, such as artwork or unusual 

services. The key is that these practices take advantage of commercial opportunities to hide 

their intended purpose and to mix illegally obtained funds into the legitimate financial system.

A well-known version of this mode is the “black market peso exchange” (BMPE) popular with 

South American transnational organized crime. BMPE is regarded as the “most commonly 

used money laundering method among Colombian transnational criminal organizations” 

and plays a major role in the movement of funds for Mexican criminal organizations as well.15
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Threat Finance

To transfer drug proceeds back to a cartel’s home country, the funds earned internationally 

must be converted back to the preferred domestic currency. Nonbank institutions conduct 

legal currency exchanges for their customers, but through a series of both licit and illicit transactions, they can also move funds from “bad” to “good” for the benefit of the criminal client or 

Person in

Country A

Step 1

Step 3

Step 2

Step 4

Hawaladar in

Country A

Settling of

Accounts

Hawaladar in

Country B

Recipient in

Country B

Step 1. A Person in Country A would like to send money to a recipient in 

Country B. The person in Country A contacts a hawaladar, a hawala operator, 

in Country A and gives the operator money and instructions to deliver the 

equivalent value to the recipient in Country B.

Step 2. The hawaladar in Country A contacts the counterpart hawaladar in 

Country B via fax, email, telephone, or other method and communicates the 

instructions.

Step 3. The hawaladar in Country B then contacts the recipient in Country B 

and through verication by some code passed from the person in Country A to 

the recipient in Country B, delivers the equivalent value (in foreign currency or 

some commodity), less a transaction fee, to the recipient in Country B.

Step 4. Over time, the accounts between the two hawaladars may become 

unbalanced and must be settled in some manner. Hawaladars use a variety of 

methods to settle their accounts, including reciprocal payments to customers, 

physical movement of money, wire transfer or check, payment for goods to be 

traded, trade or smuggling of precious stones or metals such as gold and 

diamonds, and invoice manipulation.

Sources: GAO, using information from the Department of the Treasury, the Financial Action Task Force 

on Money Laundering (FATF), Interpol, U.S. law enforcement, and other experts.

Figure 1. A Simple Hawala Transaction
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owner. There are variations, but typically the BMPE involves the foreign-based money house 

matching traffickers selling drug dollars for pesos with Colombian merchants who are selling 

pesos for dollars to buy U.S. merchandise. As the middleman, the exchange house buys and 

sells the drug dollars at a profit. The string of transactions provides the cartel with the ability 

to move its proceeds without having to engage in the risky transnational transport of large 

quantities of bulk cash.16

Law enforcement agencies are cognizant of many of these methods, but given the total 

volume of international trade, legal and otherwise, it is impossible to screen and detect fraud 

in every transaction. In addition, the variations and opportunities for the fraud of over- and 

under-invoicing goods and services used to mask the illegitimately gained money on behalf of 

the illicit networks are ever-changing; once detected, the “whack-a-mole” game simply moves 

to another method or vehicle. Regulations demanding reporting as well as education and 

outreach to private-sector staff who might encounter such fraud are helpful but are neither 

foolproof nor a deterrent against this mode.

Prepaid Instruments

Prepaid cards have become fixtures in our daily lives, from the retail gift cards we receive during 

the holiday season, to the reloadable expense cards college students are given by their parents, 

to wages distributed via stored-value card to employees and soldiers. The total market for these 

cards was projected to reach nearly $550 billion by 2012.17 Consumers appreciate prepaid cards 

as a convenient means of transferring and carrying funds without the hassles of the paperwork 

and background checks that are required for debit and credit cards. Issuers and retailers love 

them because they attract customers, particularly from the hard-to-reach unbanked segment18

(that is, those without bank accounts often due to their lack of legal identification).

Criminals find them similarly appealing, especially due to the fact that many can be 

loaded and reloaded with minimal oversight and maximum anonymity. They can be carried 

legally across the border without being declared or seized as well.19 According to the NDIC, 

for example, in 2009, Colombian drug traffickers in the Philadelphia area were found to be 

using prepaid cards to launder and carry their illicit proceeds. The cartels preferred the cards 

to the Black Market Peso Exchange because of the ease of movement and the more favorable 

rates once they exchanged the dollars for Colombian pesos.20 Hackers from Eastern Europe 

also found prepaid payroll cards useful when they stole money from a Royal Bank of Scotland 

payment processing division. In only 12 hours, the criminals loaded the stolen account information onto cloned ATM cards; through their network, they withdrew money from 2,100 

ATMs in 280 cities worldwide.21

Some of these cards’ vulnerabilities may be limited soon due to new U.S. Federal regulations. One recently finalized rule requires reporting from some of the vendors within the 

prepaid instruments supply chain.22 According to James H. Freis, Jr., Director of the Financial 

Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), an agency of the Treasury Department, the regulation is designed to “provide a balance to empower law enforcement with the information 

needed to attack money laundering, terrorist financing, and other illicit transactions through 

the financial system while preserving innovation and the many legitimate uses and societal 
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benefits offered by prepaid access.”23 There are plans in place to begin regulating the international transport of prepaid access products, as well, per a notice of proposed rulemaking issued 

on October 11, 2011.24

Mobile Payments

For many years, consumers worldwide have been using their mobile phones to make basic 

monetary exchanges through simple transactions such as trading phone minutes and downloading ringtones. The availability and variety of payment options and services are proliferating 

as smart phone usage with Web access increases (especially in developed countries with disposable income). Studies suggest that 35 percent of Americans currently own smart phones,25

an increase from 17 percent of adults in 2009.26 Whether one uses a phone as a mobile wallet 

that is preloaded with currency, or as a tool to access bank or phone accounts for payments, or 

as a vehicle for financial transactions via text/SMS, Web browsers, or applications (“apps”), 

the phone may become the consumer’s financial settlement method of choice. Long available in 

countries like India, Mexico, Kenya, and Afghanistan (with varying models and degrees of use), 

the explosion of mobile services in the United States and globally is imminent. One projection 

sets the mobile payments market at U.S. $630 billion globally by 2014.27

The extent of criminal abuse of mobile payments is unknown at this time. What is certain 

is that where there is money, there are criminals. Phone-based transactions can be more secure 

than other means of financial transfer (for example, credit cards, which often leave the account 

holder for use and are widely targeted by criminals who copy or steal the account access). 

Nonetheless, the same malware that infects a desktop computer can and increasingly will affect 

smart phones, making transactions vulnerable to abuse. “Apps” can be infected, passwords can 

be stolen, and “phishing” emails and “smishing” texts can solicit personal information. (Antivirus software is not widely used on smart phones because, at this stage in product history, to 

run it constantly would drain the phone battery and limit the device’s convenience.) A new 

study found that mobile malware for Android phones alone increased by 400 percent in the 

18 months between the summer of 2010 and the report’s release in May 2011.28 The biggest 

vulnerability, however, may be the user who is unaware of the threat or is typically more relaxed 

with connections made via social-networking tools. For example, a SANS Technology Institute 

poll determined that 85 percent of smart phone users do not scan their devices to search for 

malware from downloads and other sources.29 There is a concern, too, that monetary sums 

aside, some mobile transactions are not traceable or recordable to the extent needed by law enforcement or intelligence to disrupt or prosecute those committing illicit activities. Simply put, 

mobile payment systems can be considered the “Wild West” for savvy criminal organizations.

Virtual Payments

It may sound odd that virtual currency in a cartoon-like Internet space could have real-world 

monetary value. This is the case, however, with Linden Dollars, the monetary unit within 

the “Second Life” online community. Players in these worlds can earn or pass virtual dollars 

through activities online (for example, by creating a virtual bar at which your virtual customers 
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pay you virtual dollars for your virtual food, drink, and entertainment) and can cash out for 

real-world currency. (As of October 29, 2011, for example, one online site was exchanging 286 

Second Life Lindens [SLL] per U.S. dollar and 392 per euro.30) There are dozens of similar 

online-based financial transaction services available, many of which use the Open Metaverse 

Currency—OM¢—and which trade through online currency exchanges or even virtual ATMs 

within their multiuser virtual worlds.

Other Web-based sources of currency exchange such as bitcoin (“no prerequisites or 

arbitrary limits”31) and paysafecard (“personal details not required”32) can be a concern for law 

enforcement and intelligence agencies. These exchanges cater to those whose goal is to remain 

anonymous in their financial transactions, typically consumers who want to avoid the compliance checks common to traditional banking systems. These activities can be hard to trace, are 

unregulated or less regulated, and are thus popular with Internet-savvy criminals. (A Twitter 

post on July 27, 2011, from LulzSec, a hacker group, recommended to like-minded colleagues: 

“Get yourself a slice of MyBitCoin, Liberty Reserve, WebMoney, Neteller, Moneybookers, 

and start using prepaid credit and gift cards” to avoid detection.)

In the case of E-Gold, a digital currency firm, the U.S. Government alleged that the 

company’s untraceable exchanges had become “a preferred means of payment for child pornography distributors, identity thieves, online scammers, and other criminals around the world to 

launder their illegal income anonymously.”33 In 2008, its directors pleaded guilty to charges of 

money laundering and running an unregistered money service business.34 Assistant Director 

James E. Finch, of the FBI’s Cyber Division, summed up the original charges by observing that, 

“the advent of new electronic currency systems increases the risk that criminals, and possibly 

terrorists, will exploit these systems to launder money and transfer funds globally to avoid law 

enforcement scrutiny and circumvent banking regulations and reporting.”35

Combating Threat Finance

Recognizing financing as the lifeblood of illicit networks, the United States and its international allies have developed multidimensional strategies and measures to combat threat financing. 

International cooperation, institutional capacity-building, public-private partnerships, and 

intelligence and law enforcement operations are key components of these counterthreat 

financing strategies.

The Use of Financial Intelligence

At the Treasury Department, the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence marshals 

the department’s intelligence and enforcement functions to protect the financial system 

against illicit use and combat rogue nations, terrorist facilitators, WMD proliferators, money 

launderers, drug kingpins, and other national security threats.36 After the 9/11 attacks, the 

Treasury Department established the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) to identify, 

track, and pursue terrorists such as al Qaeda and their networks. The Treasury Department 

is uniquely positioned to track terrorist money flows and assist in broader U.S. Government 

efforts to uncover terrorist cells and map terrorist networks at home and around the world.37
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Since the start of the program, the TFTP has provided thousands of valuable leads to U.S. 

Government agencies and other governments that have aided in the prevention or investigation of many of the most visible and violent terrorist attacks and attempted attacks of the past 

decade.

As part of its vital national security mission, the Treasury Department issues subpoenas 

to the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a Belgium-based company with U.S. offices that operates a worldwide messaging system used to 

transmit financial transaction information and seek information on suspected international 

terrorists and their networks. Under the terms of the subpoenas, the U.S. Government may 

only review information as part of specific terrorism investigations. SWIFT information 

greatly enhances our ability to map out terrorist networks, often filling in missing links in an 

investigative chain. The U.S. Government acts on this information and, for counterterrorism 

purposes only, shares leads generated by the TFTP with relevant governments’ counterterrorism authorities in order to target and disrupt the activities of terrorists and their supporters. 

By following the money trail, the TFTP has allowed the United States and its allies to identify 

and locate operatives and their financiers, chart terrorist networks, and help keep money out 

of their hands.38

A successful case of following the money trail and leveraging financial intelligence uncovered the terror-crime nexus between Lebanese Hizballah and drug-trafficking rings. In 

February 2011, the United States accused one of Lebanon’s famously secretive banks, Beirut 

Bank, of laundering money for an international cocaine ring with ties to Hizballah, the Shi’ite 

militant group. In the wake of the bank’s exposure and arranged sale, its ledgers offer evidence 

of an intricate global money-laundering apparatus that, with the bank as its hub, appeared to 

let Hizballah move huge sums into the legitimate financial system despite sanctions aimed at 

cutting off its economic lifeblood.39

For the United States, taking down the bank was part of a long-running strategy of 

deploying financial weapons to fight terrorism. The account of the serpentine 6-year inquiry 

and what has since been revealed is based on interviews with government, law enforcement, 

and banking officials across three continents as well as intelligence reports and police and 

corporate records.40 From the Treasury Department’s perspective, the case is a victory in the 

battle against terrorism financing. Lebanon’s Central Bank showed that it was willing to shut 

down the Lebanese Canadian Bank and sell it to a “responsible owner,” said Daniel L. Glaser, 

assistant Treasury secretary for terrorism financing. An important avenue to Hizballah has 

been blocked.41

The Afghan Threat Finance Cell

This use of financial intelligence reaches across the interagency and across borders. As an 

example, threat financing is one of the focus areas in U.S. and coalition counterterrorism 

and counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan. It is believed that the drug trade, ancillary 

crimes, and extortion, as well as foreign donations, are funding the insurgency. Tracking illicit 

funding has been challenging as the Taliban and its affiliates have diversified their fundraising 

activities and modes of moving money.42 Richard Barrett, Director of the United Nations 
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Taliban and al Qaeda monitoring team, explained that “The Taliban and related groups 

should be seen as opportunistic when it comes to finances; they are involved on the local level 

in anything that makes money.”43

One of the more innovative interdisciplinary approaches to “following the money trail” 

to combat illicit financing has been the establishment by the Departments of Defense and 

Treasury of threat finance cells in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2009, the United States stood up 

the Afghan Threat Finance Cell (ATFC), a multiagency organization with specialists from the 

Departments of Defense, Justice, and Treasury, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), FBI, and 

DEA to gather intelligence on how the insurgency finances its operations and how to disrupt 

its funding.44 More specifically, the ATFC seeks to identify and disrupt financial networks 

related to terrorism, the Taliban, narcotics trafficking, and corruption. Led by the DEA, 

with Treasury serving as co-deputy, nearly 60 ATFC personnel are embedded with military 

commands across Afghanistan to improve the targeting of the insurgents’ financial structure. 

Specially vetted Afghan authorities have also partnered with the ATFC on raids of hawalas 

suspected of illicit financial activities, including insurgent finance, narcotics trafficking, and 

corruption. This cooperation has resulted in the collection and analysis of tens of thousands 

of financial documents.45

Since Afghanistan does not have a traditional banking system or a well-developed financial system, the ATFC has been scrutinizing the hawala networks in Afghanistan and greater 

South Asia and investigating donations from abroad and international transfers. The ATFC 

has constructively complemented the fight against the Taliban and related insurgents on the 

financial front. The threat finance cell has also uncovered cases of graft and corruption and 

contributed to increased transparency and oversight of foreign assistance to Afghanistan. For 

example, on February 18, 2011, the Department of the Treasury designated the New Ansari 

Money Exchange as a major money-laundering vehicle for Afghan narcotics-trafficking organizations, along with 15 affiliated individuals and entities under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin 

Designation Act (Kingpin Act). The sanctions were issued after an investigation by Treasury 

Department officials, the DEA, and the ATFC traced money movements from Afghanistan 

to Dubai. As DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart remarked,

The New Ansari network is yet another example of money launderers exploiting 

legitimate financial systems to launder their ill-gotten gains, including illicit drug 

proceeds, as part of their criminal enterprise; cash is the ultimate commodity for these 

criminal networks, and these proceeds often fuel insurgent activity and corruption, 

while undermining the authority of developing governments.

Stuart Levey, Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, noted that 

“Today’s designation is another important step in our ongoing efforts to target money laundering and narcotics trafficking activity in Afghanistan. We will continue to work to expose 

the funding and support mechanisms for such illicit activity, and to take actions to safeguard 

the U.S. and Afghan financial sectors from abuse.”46 This case is illustrative of the successful 

interagency and international efforts to combat illicit financing in Afghanistan to curb support 

for the insurgency. While they may not put the insurgents out of business, these efforts have 
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played a key role in degrading their networks and disrupting their activities and have provided 

AFTC members with exploitable vulnerabilities for future pursuit.

Law Enforcement Investigations

In its efforts to challenge drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs) and other illicit networks, 

the DEA considers illicit finance as a critical enabler of the drug trade. It has identified major 

money-laundering threats relating to movement of drug proceeds to Mexico as follows:

• Bulk currency smuggling to include the transportation organizations that service 

the Mexican DTOs

• Mexican currency exchange houses, referred to as Casas de Cambio and Centros 

Cambiario

• The remission of drug proceeds through U.S.-based money remitters.

DEA has formulated a strategy that includes intelligence-based enforcement, as well 

as domestic and international collaborative efforts, to target the movement of bulk currency 

and ultimately attack the command and control targets in the United States and Mexico. By 

working closely with Federal, state, and local law enforcement counterparts in the United 

States and Mexico, DEA exploits the intelligence from bulk currency interdictions to identify, 

target, and ultimately prosecute the command and control targets on either side of the border.

To carry out the strategy, DEA, through the Office of Financial Operations, has established a number of national initiatives that target bulk currency smuggling and the remittance 

of drug money through U.S. wire remitters. In October 2004, DEA instituted the Bulk 

Currency Initiative, an information-sharing vehicle through which state and local counterparts can share the information they obtain from making a currency seizure, whether along 

the Nation’s highways or in operation at an airport. Information obtained by DEA in this 

manner can often be tied to other investigations throughout the world. The currency seizure 

itself then becomes an overt act in the drug conspiracy investigation and can help to identify 

other coconspirators within a DTO who were previously unknown. This initiative resulted 

in an increase in DEA’s currency seizures for FY2005 of over $80 million, from $259 million 

to $339.6 million, an increase of 31 percent.

To coordinate multijurisdictional bulk currency investigations, DEA’s Special Operations 

Division (SOD) instituted the Money Trail Initiative. In the first year and a half, the initiative 

was responsible for the dismantlement of six national organizations involved in the transportation of bulk currency drug proceeds from various points in the United States to Mexico. As 

of July 2006, this initiative resulted in the arrest of 418 defendants and the seizure of $65.4 

million in U.S. currency, $14.5 million in assets, 59.6 metric tons of marijuana, 9.7 metric tons 

of cocaine, 126.7 kilograms of methamphetamine, 9 kilograms of heroin, 249 vehicles, and 77 

weapons. One of these SOD investigations, Operation Choque, resulted in the identification 

and arrest of Mexican cartel leaders Oscar, Miguel, and Luis Arriola-Marquez and the dismantlement of their organization, which, based on ledgers seized by Mexican authorities, was 
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responsible for smuggling at least 14,000 kilos of cocaine into the United States and smuggling 

$240 million back. Based on information supplied by DEA, Mexican authorities have seized 

over $18 million of the Arriola-Marquez organization’s assets.47

More recently, “DEA has been working with Mexican authorities to gather and use 

information about these criminal organizations to counter the threats they pose to both of 

our countries,” according to DEA spokesman Lawrence Payne. “As a result of this cooperation 

DEA has seized illicit transnational criminal organization money all around the world.”48 In 

FY2010, DEA maintained 21 money-laundering investigative groups to support its Financial Attack Strategy. Through several national initiatives focused on targeting the bulk cash 

derived from drug proceeds, DEA seized $736.7 million in FY2010. Further, DEA denied 

total revenue of nearly $3 billion from drug-trafficking and money-laundering organizations 

through asset and drug seizures that fiscal year.49

Following the bulk cash smuggling trail has been an effective tool in combating transnational organized crime and other illicit actors complementing intelligence and law enforcement 

operations.

International Cooperation Through the Financial Action Task Force

One of the most effective efforts to combat money laundering and terrorist financing has 

been shepherded by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) over the past 30 years. The task 

force was established by the G-7 Summit in 1989 and charged with the mission to develop 

and promote policies to combat money laundering at first and then terrorist financing in the 

wake of the 9/11 attacks. FATF is therefore a “policy-making body” that works to generate 

the political will to bring about national legislative and regulatory reforms in these areas.50 Its 

primary role is to set standards for global anti-money-laundering efforts and for combating 

the financing of terrorism and to ensure the effective implementation of these standards in all 

jurisdictions. Enhanced global compliance with the standards reduces the money-laundering/

financing-of-terrorism risks to the international financial system and increases transparency 

and effective international cooperation.51

The FATF monitors members’ progress in implementing necessary measures, reviews 

money-laundering and terrorist-financing techniques and countermeasures, and promotes 

the adoption and implementation of appropriate measures globally. In performing these activities, the FATF collaborates with other international bodies involved in combating money 

laundering and the financing of terrorism. FATF is best known for its “40 Recommendations 

on Money Laundering” and the “Nine Special Recommendations on Terrorist Financing.”52

The success of the FATF can be attributed to the Non-Cooperating Countries and 

Territories (NCCT) Initiative from 2000–2006, aimed at reducing the vulnerability of 

the financial system to money laundering by ensuring that all financial centers adopt and 

implement measures for the prevention, detection, and punishment of money laundering 

according to internationally recognized standards. Countries that were examined and failed 

to meet international standards were placed on the NCCT list and deemed jurisdictions of 

money-laundering concern.53 This “name and shame” process underscored the threat of money 

laundering and terrorist financing and encouraged countries to respect and uphold FATF’s 
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international standards. FATF’s NCCT sanctions impede a country’s ability to do business 

in the international financial system and discourage investors from engaging in a country of 

money-laundering concern. This was the case for Indonesia and Burma, which had to reinforce 

their anti-money-laundering measures. To get delisted, countries must take remedial steps 

to address their deficiencies ranging from amending anti-money-laundering legislation to 

reinforcing their bank regulatory regime.

The FATF “Nine Special Recommendations on Terrorist Financing” are:54

• ratification and implementation of UN instruments

• criminalizing the financing of terrorism and associated money laundering

• freezing and confiscating terrorist assets

• reporting suspicious transactions related to terrorism

• international cooperation

• alternative remittance

• wire transfers

• nonprofit organizations

• cash couriers.

Public-Private Sector Partnerships

In addition to interagency cooperation, law enforcement, military, intelligence, and other government authorities benefit greatly from collaboration with the private sector. By facilitating 

information-sharing among these groups, these relationships provide both public and private 

sector participants with knowledge that limits the access illicit networks have to legitimate 

financial systems. The private sector benefits from receiving timely and relevant information 

that protects its internal business interests from threats posed by terrorists and criminal 

groups. This may include information about bad actors, identified trends, red flags to detect 

criminal acts, and tips on when to contact regulatory or law enforcement authorities regarding 

dubious customers or transactions. They also have the enhanced opportunity to participate in 

the protection of their industries, the free-enterprise ecosystem, and the Nation as a whole—a 

patriotic and rational choice that most organizations and their leaders strive to embrace.

Conversely, businesses, nonprofit organizations, and academia share information and 

perspectives with public sector entities that are vital to the protection of national security and 

critical infrastructure. This assistance can come through mandatory or voluntary regulatory 

relationships including the reporting of suspicious activities surrounding business transactions. 
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When fully pursued by government agencies, it also includes knowledge about industry practices and trends that can aid in the detection of illicit networks, the identification of vulnerabilities, and the prediction of future attempts to circumvent the systems’ protections. Further, 

the private sector shares best and worst practices in managing business operations, including 

human capital, finance and accounting, and program management, which helps public sector 

entities to improve the management of their own resources and to better understand the parallel operational structures used by the illicit networks. Where applicable, the private sector 

can impart an understanding of, and sense of preparedness regarding, promising technologies 

and services on the horizon that have the potential to be exploited by illicit networks. Finally, 

these groups are forums where interested parties can forge trust and partnerships prior to a 

crisis—a resource- and time-conserving opportunity that can speed reaction to new threats.

In recognition of these advantages, the U.S. Government–sponsored Financial Intelligence and Information Sharing (FIIS) Working Group regularly brings together executives 

from financial institutions, intelligence agencies, academic institutions, law enforcement 

agencies, and the military. Members of the forum informally discuss relevant topics, including 

protection of critical financial infrastructure, prevention of fraud, and obstruction of terror 

finance and money laundering. FIIS meetings and the relationships formed therein facilitate 

information flow from government to industry and vice versa, and help bridge the cultural 

gaps often found between the private and public sectors. The FIIS is an outgrowth of the 

Financial Industry Committee of the Analyst/Private Sector Pilot Project, a project of the 

Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s Office of Private Sector Partnerships. The 

6-month pilot project united intelligence analysts with members of industry to facilitate better 

information-sharing and protection of this facet of American critical infrastructure.55

U.S. Special Operations Command’s (USSOCOM) Counter Threat Finance (CTF) 

Working Group is another successful example of partnership both among agencies and 

between the public and private sectors. In September 2001, USSOCOM was delegated the 

responsibility to synchronize U.S. agencies focused on operations within the bounds of the 

“War on Terror.” To achieve this goal, several interagency working groups were founded to 

bring together action officers and policy leaders from U.S. agencies engaged in a select group 

of activities. In 2005, USSOCOM recognized that Department of Defense (DOD) support 

aimed at attacking the financial networks of terrorists and associated criminal support networks represented a tangible opportunity to diminish the adversaries’ power and influence, and 

incorporated CTF as one of these working groups. Meeting twice annually, the DOD CTF 

Working Group creates personal connections and coordinates the planning and resource capabilities resident within DOD that are lacking within other agencies and departments. Finding 

that expertise from the financial and technology communities would benefit the discussion, 

this particular segment of the synchronization mission took what was an unusual step and 

declassified many of their meetings to allow experts from industry, think tanks, universities, 

nonprofit organizations, and other relevant sectors to join the conversation.56

On August 19, 2010, DOD Directive 5205.14, “DoD Counter Threat Finance Policy,”57

formally designated the commander of USSOCOM as the Defense Department Lead 

Component for synchronizing counterthreat finance activities across DOD in support of the 

broader whole-of-government effort to tackle illicit funding activities. Furthermore, DOD 
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Directive 5205.14 charged the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) with providing a critical 

intelligence component—the Joint Threat Finance Intelligence ( JTFI) Office—dedicated 

to the DOD CTF mission. In October 2011, the JTFI office within DIA joined USSOCOM’s CTF effort. The command continues to proactively pursue private-sector partners to contribute to additional facets of its mission of providing direct support to a global 

whole-of-government effort. Overall, these private-sector individuals and the organizations 

they represent have supported DOD efforts to identify immediate threats and aid the working group members in planning for imminent vulnerabilities from foreseeable technological 

trends in the financial community. Over the last 4 years alone, the USSOCOM CTF Working Group has supported over 300 Executive Orders and UN Security Council Resolution 

designations, provided critical leads that led to over 50 CTF-related arrests and warrants, and 

been instrumental in the seizure of over $500 million. Since no sector and no community is 

immune from threat finance, public-private sector partnerships that detect new methods of 

money laundering and threat finance and devise effective and timely countermeasures are a 

critical component of strategies to combat the financing of illicit networks.

Conclusion

Financing is the lifeblood of any organization, licit or illicit. While globalization and financial innovation have provided consumers unprecedented conveniences to finance their daily 

activities, illicit actors have capitalized on these very developments to expand their criminal 

enterprises. Illicit networks through their terrorist, insurgent, and criminal activities undermine democratic institutions, governments, and international markets and present national 

security threats to nations around the world. For all of these activities, financing is the engine 

of growth and is therefore a critical enabler of illicit networks.

To finance themselves, illicit actors engage in a broad spectrum of activities to raise, move, 

and disguise money that are difficult to detect and disrupt. They include cash couriers, bulk 

cash smuggling, alternative remittance systems, charitable organizations, trade-based money 

laundering, and mobile and virtual payments. These modes of finance are ever evolving, and 

illicit actors are the first to take advantage of gaps in government regulation and oversight of 

these new methods. Since illicit networks use their capital to keep score and wield influence 

to undermine, corrupt, and co-opt state actors, attacking their financing is a key component 

of any strategy to fight illicit networks.

To combat threat finance, governments have developed complex interagency and international counterterrorism and countercrime strategies that struggle to keep up with all 

the financial innovation and illicit actors’ creativity—in other words, networks to fight the 

networks. These strategies include law enforcement and intelligence operations that “follow 

the money trail” to pursue and prosecute illicit actors. Since September 11, 2001, financial 

intelligence has become a fundamental component of counterterrorism and countercrime 

efforts to detect, disrupt, and deter illicit networks, as evidenced through the Treasury Department’s Terrorist Finance Tracking Program against al Qaeda, Hizballah, and their affiliates. 

Further afield, the mission of the Afghan Threat Finance Cell against the Taliban and the 

insurgency in Afghanistan has directly contributed to U.S. and coalition counterinsurgency 
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and counterterrorism operations. International initiatives such as those undertaken by the 

Financial Action Task Force have raised awareness of the detrimental effects of illicit financing 

on international financial markets and promoted increased regulation and oversight to safeguard the international financial system. Since illicit actors threaten all sectors of society, the 

private sector must be aware of these threats and engage in combating transnational organized 

crime and illicit networks. Through public-private sector partnerships, we can glean a better 

understanding of financial innovation’s advantages and disadvantages and of how illicit actors 

might be financing themselves. While illicit finance will never be fully eliminated, it is a key 

enabler of illicit networks that must be met head-on through comprehensive and collaborative 

strategies that engage a whole-of-nation approach.

Notes

1 Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime: Addressing Converging Threats to National Security (Washington, DC: The White House, July 2011), available at <www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/nsc/transnational-crime/threat>. 2

 Ibid.

3

 Treasury Department Web site, available at <www.treasury.gov/resource-center/terrorist-illicit-finance/

Pages/Money-Laundering.aspx>. 4

 Financial Action Task Force Web site, available at <www.fatf.org>.

5

 Jean-François Thony, “Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing: An Overview,” Current Developments in 

Monetary and Financial Law 3 (Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund Publications, 2002), available at 

<www.imf.org/external/np/leg/sem/2002/cdmfl/eng/thony.pdf>. 6

 International Monetary Fund, Fact Sheet, “The IMF and the Fight Against Money Laundering and the Financing of Terrorism,” August 31, 2011, available at <www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/aml.htm>. 7

 Global Relief Foundation v. Paul H. O’Neil et al., 207 F. Supp. 2d 779, U.S. District Court, Northern District 

of Illinois, Eastern Division, June 11, 2002. 8

 U.S. v. Enaam Arnaout, Case No. 02CR892, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois, Eastern 

Division, April 2002. 9

 “How Much Does a Million Dollars Weigh?” Fivecentnickel.com, available at <www.fivecentnickel.

com/2006/02/07/how-much-does-a-million-dollars-weigh/>. 10 Financial transparency reporting requires Currency and Monetary Instrument Reports, which obligate the 

filer to declare if he or she is transporting $10,000 or more in cash or monetary instruments across the border. 11 Rohan Gunaratna, “The Evolution of Al Qaeda,” in Countering the Financing of Terrorism, ed. Thomas J. 

Biersteker and Sue E. Eckert, 58–59 (New York: Routledge, 2008). 12 National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), National Drug Threat Assessment Report 2011 (Washington, 

DC: Department of Justice, NDIC, 2011), 40, available at <www.justice.gov/ndic/pubs44/44849/44849p.pdf>. 13 According to the Department of Justice, Al Barakaat operated a hybrid hawala in which its informal system 

interconnected with the formal banking system. Because Al Barakaat also used financial institutions, law enforcement was able to trace the transactions to Somalia by analyzing Suspicious Activity Reports generated by the banks 

pursuant to their obligations under the 1970 Bank Secrecy Act [Pub. L. No. 91-508, 84 Stat. 1114 (1970) (codified 

as amended in 12 U.S.C. §§ 1829(b), 1951–1959 (2000); 31 U.S.C. §§ 5311–5330 (2000)]. 14 Douglas Farah, “A Bit More on Dawood Ibrahim and Why He Matters,” December 11, 2008, available at 

<www.douglasfarah.com/article/429/a-bit-more-on-dawood-ibrahim-and-why-he-matters.com>. 15 NDIC, Report (2011), 40. 16 The Financial Action Task Force offers a useful demonstration of this process and related case studies, available 

at <www.fatf-gafi.org/dataoecd/60/25/37038272.pdf>. 17 Mercator Advisory Group, “Seventh Annual Prepaid Card Forecast,” available at <www.mercatoradvisorygroup.com/index.php?doc=news&action=view_item&type=2&id=571>.
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18 Per 2009 statistics, the unbanked make up 7.7 percent, or 9 million U.S households. This amounts to 17 

million American adults. See “2009 FDIC Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households,” (December 2009), 

available at <www.fdic.gov/householdsurvey/2009/index.html>. 19 Prepaid or “Stored Value” cards are not defined as “monetary instruments” under U.S. law and thus they 

cannot be seized under requirements to declare currency upon crossing the U.S. border. 20 “Philadelphia/Camden High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Drug Market Analysis 2009,” NDIC, February 

2009, available at <www.justice.gov/ndic/pubs32/32787/abuse.htm#foot3>. 21 “Hackers Indicted in Widespread ATM Heist,” The Wall Street Journal, November 11, 2009, available at 

<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125786711092441245.html>. 22 Specifically to address these issues, and as ordered by Congress via the “Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009,” a new rule by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network 

(FinCEN), an agency of the Treasury Department, will change how cards are issued, reloaded, and reported in the 

United States; this rule also renamed stored-value cards or prepaid cards and related instruments as “prepaid access 

products,” available at <www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-07-29/pdf/2011-19116.pdf>. 23 “FinCEN Issues Prepaid Access Final Rule Balancing the Needs of Law Enforcement and Industry,” July 26, 

2011, available at <www.fincen.gov/news_room/nr/html/20110726b.html>. 24 “Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, Amendment to the Bank Secrecy Act Regulations—Definition 

of ‘Monetary Instrument,’” October 11, 2011, available at <www.fincen.gov/statutes_regs/frn/pdf/Prepaid_at_

the_Border_NPRM.pdf>. 25 Aaron Smith, “Smartphone Adoption and Usage,” Pew Research Center, July 11, 2011, available at <http://

pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Smartphones.aspx>. 26 Charles Golvin, “2009: Year of The Smartphone—Kinda,” Forrester, January 4, 2010, available at <http://

blogs.forrester.com/consumer_product_strategy/2010/01/2009-year-of-the-smartphone-kinda.html>. 27 Juniper Research Limited, “mPay, mShop, mTransfer!” available at <http://juniperresearch.com/whitepapers/

mPay_mShop_mTransfer>. 28 Juniper Networks Global Threat Center (GTC), “Malicious Mobile Threats Report 2010/2011,” May 10, 

2011. 29 Christopher Carboni, “Thoughts on Malware for Mobile Devices—Part 2,” Internet Storm Center Diary, 

SANS Technology Institute, July 12, 2010, available at <http://isc.sans.edu/diary.html?storyid=9160&rss>. 30 Moneyslex virtual exchange, Web site, available at <http://moneyslex.com/lindendollar2.php>.

31 Bitcoin Web site, available at <www.weusecoins.com>.

32 Paysafecard Web site, available at <www.paysafecard.com/us/us-paysafecard/>.

33 Department of Justice, Press Release, April 27, 2007, available at <www.justice.gov/criminal/cybercrime/

egoldIndict.htm>. 34 Stephanie Condon, “Judge spares E-Gold directors jail time,” Cnet.com, November 20, 2008, available at 

<http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10104677-38.html>. 35 Ibid.

36 Treasury Department, “Terrorist Finance Tracking Program,” Fact Sheet, August 2, 2010, available at <www.

treasury.gov/resource-center/terrorist-illicit-finance/Terrorist-Finance-Tracking/Documents/TFTP%20Fact%20

Sheet%20revised%20-%20%288-8-11%29.pdf>. 37 Ibid.

38 Ibid.

39 Jo Becker, “Beirut Bank Seen as a Hub of Hezbollah’s Financing,” The New York Times, December 13, 2011. 40 Ibid.

41 Ibid.

42 Craig Whitlock, “Diverse Sources Fund Insurgency in Afghanistan,” The Washington Post, September 29, 2009. 43 Catherine Collins with Ashraf Ali, “Financing the Taliban: Tracing the Dollars Behind the Insurgencies in 

Afghanistan and Pakistan,” New America Foundation, April 19, 2010, available at <www.newamerica.net/publications/policy/financing_the_taliban>. 44 Ibid.

45 Treasury Department, “Fact Sheet: Combating the Financing of Terrorism, Disrupting Terrorism at Its 

Core,” available at <www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/tg1291.aspx>.
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Lindholm and Realuyo

46 Treasury Department, “Treasury Designates New Ansari Money Exchange,” Press Release, available at 

<www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/tg1071.aspx>; and “U.S. Sanctions Target Afghan Money 

Laundering,” Associated Press, February 18, 2011, available at <www.foxnews.com/world/2011/02/18/sanctions-money-exchange-outfit-afghanistan/>. 47 Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Web site, available at <www.justice.gov/dea/index.shtml>.

48 Terry Frieden, “DEA defends money-laundering operations with Mexicans,” CNN.com, January 9, 2012, 

available at <http://articles.cnn.com/2012-01-09/us/us_dea-money-laundering_1_dea-agents-drug-trafficking-laundering?_s=PM:US>. 49 Office of National Drug Control Policy, “International Money Laundering and Asset Forfeiture,” available at 

<www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp/international-money-laundering-and-asset-forfeiture>. 50 Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Web site, available at <www.fatf.org>.

51 FATF, “High-Risk and Non-Cooperative Jurisdictions,” available at <www.fatf-gafi.org/document/52/0,3

746,en_32250379_32236992_48468340_1_1_1_1,00.html>. 52 FATF Web site.

53 FATF, “High-Risk and Non-Cooperative Jurisdictions.”

54 Ibid.

55 In addition to the Financial Industry Committee, the Analyst/Private Sector Pilot Project also included 

committees focused on issues such as nuclear, cyber, and ground transportation security. 56 Data derived from interviews at U.S. Special Operations Command, Tampa, Florida.

57 Department of Defense, “DoD Counter Threat Finance Policy,” DOD Directive 5205.14 (Washington, DC: 

DOD, August 19, 2010, incorporating Change 1, November 16, 2012).
131

Chapter 8

Money Laundering into Real Estate

Louise Shelley

Money laundering into real estate (MLRE) did not end with the movement of organized crime investment into Las Vegas even though many real estate professionals would like 

to think otherwise.1 Rather, MLRE is an enduring but insufficiently recognized international 

problem. Corrupt leaders, organized crime groups, and terrorist organizations channel large 

quantities of illicitly obtained funds into real estate daily as a way to disguise the criminal 

origin of their proceeds and to integrate them into the formal economy.2 These illicit funds 

are invested into residential and commercial real estate as well as into farmlands and tourist 

properties, often allowing the criminals and corrupt politicians to enjoy the profits of their 

criminal activities.3 Thus money launderers are able to conceal the revenues from illicit activities while acquiring valuable and appreciating investments from which they benefit, thereby 

doubling their gains. MLRE has a long history because it has typically been a relatively safe 

and prestigious investment.

MLRE by criminal groups and corrupt officials has been identified on every continent but 

has failed to command the attention it deserves as a criminal activity. Part of the explanation 

may be that this form of money laundering can have significant benefits for the recipient country by contributing to construction, adding jobs, and bringing investment into the economy.

Terrorist groups have laundered money into real estate in the Middle East as well as 

other regions.4

 Both commercial and residential real estate are conducive to money laundering 

because of the easy mixing of legitimate and illegitimate funds. The consequences of money 

laundered into real estate are distinct from the sums that remain in cash or cash equivalents. 

Purchase of expensive homes by crime figures and corrupt officials shows very visually that 

crime really does pay. Economic bubbles can be exacerbated by MLRE and ordinary citizens 

can be priced out of markets distorted by money launderers.5 This was very evident in Japan in 

the late 1980s. Japan was then the world’s second largest economy, and “ambitious and capable 

yakuza [traditional Japanese crime organizations] members were themselves involved heavily 

in real-estate and stock-market speculation.”6

 Estimates of one-third to one-half of the bad 

debt that strangled economic growth was tied to the yakuza.

7

 Environmental destruction and 

overconstruction are characteristics of real estate construction undertaken to launder money, 

as will be discussed.8

 Moreover, MLRE has often been more beneficial to criminals than 
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Shelley

other forms of investment in the legitimate economy, as property can provide a base for other 

criminal operations and/or a steady parallel income stream.

The absence or deficiencies of legislation targeting real estate money laundering make it 

an attractive arena for corrupt officials and criminals. Corrupt officials are more interested in 

enjoying and preserving capital while organized criminals more frequently launder money to 

hide capital, generate revenue streams, and facilitate their illicit activities. Therefore, they often 

choose different types of property in which to launder their investments.

The failure to recognize and acknowledge the extent of the problem has resulted in little 

if any pressure on the real estate community to regulate itself in this arena, unlike banking 

and other financial sectors. Moreover, the absence of will among many real estate professionals 

in many parts of the world to conduct due diligence regarding their clients, and the absence 

of sanctions for complicity in money laundering in real estate, have exacerbated the problem. 

Furthermore, no sanctions have been imposed on other professionals allied with the real estate 

business, such as notaries and mortgage brokers, who have facilitated this laundering.

This chapter analyzes the global problem of MLRE. Even though there are certain locales 

particularly known for this problem such as the Mediterranean coast of Spain and France, 

Sicily, Dubai, and the high-end resort areas in Mexico, MLRE occurs in diverse locales in both 

the developed and developing worlds.

Although there are no definitive global studies, the problem of MLRE appears to have 

increased in frequency since restrictions were tightened on other financial transactions 

post-September 11, 2001. This has been possible because in some countries and regions 

lacking adequate controls, cash can be used to purchase real estate.

Defining the Problem

Money-laundering experts define three phases of laundering—placement, layering, and integration. Placement involves the introduction of dirty money into the system. Layering occurs 

when the money is already in the system and the audit trail is deliberately obscured. Integration

occurs when the money is already functioning within the system. Real estate can be used at all 

stages of the laundering process. Money laundering in real estate can occur in the placement 

stage, where the launderer places the illegally obtained funds into real estate construction or 

into a house or a commercial real estate purchase. Transactions in the layering stage are intended to obscure any financial (traceable) links between the funds and their original criminal 

sources. In this stage, laundering typically occurs by moving funds in and out of offshore bank 

accounts. Overseas, the money may be used for real estate investments or may assume the form 

of a foreign bank loan to buy a house, when the loan is in reality the purchaser’s own money 

parked overseas. Finally, the goal of integration is to create a “history” showing that funds were 

acquired legally. In the integration phase, the criminal places money in the real estate sector 

and is not interested in trading in real estate but in investing.9

Many aspects of money laundering have been thoroughly investigated. A significant body 

of literature examines laundering through banks, shell companies, offshore vehicles, and more 

unusual instruments such as art and coins. Surprisingly, there has been very little research done 

on the real estate market as a vehicle for money launderers. The few research studies of the 
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Money Laundering into Real Estate

problem are limited primarily to Denmark and Italy. Indeed, there is little systematic research 

examining this problem anywhere outside Europe.

At the same time, a number of significant prosecutions reveal that the profits of organized 

crime are often invested in real estate. That is particularly true of investigations into human 

trafficking, whose proceeds have been traced by European law enforcement agencies to villas in 

Romania and to hotels, bars, and restaurants in Turkey and the Netherlands.10 A major prosecution of Russian organized crime in Germany revealed many expensive real estate purchases 

in the Stuttgart area by members of a well-known post-Soviet crime group.11

This analysis is based on interviews with top law enforcement personnel from Europol, 

the United States, Latin America, Asia, and Australia. It also draws on the expertise of members of the Global Agenda Council on Organized Crime of the World Economic Forum 

(whose members are leading international scholars and practitioners on money laundering 

and transnational crime). Reports, legal documents, and the limited scholarly literature have 

been used to the extent possible.

The slim research on money laundering and real estate means it is not possible to know 

the extent to which different facilitators are involved in real estate money laundering. Available 

cases, primarily from Canada and Europe, reveal that some lawyers, real estate agents and 

brokers, notaries, property management and rental firms, and managers of holiday parks either 

knowingly or unknowingly facilitate MLRE.12 But without more comprehensive research, it is 

impossible to determine which are the most important facilitators of MLRE. Canadian investigation revealed that real estate professionals are among the financial professionals most likely 

to encounter criminal proceeds (see figure). But there were not a large number of Canadian 

cases for analysis. Moreover, comparable data is not available from elsewhere.13

4.7%

Professionals Who Came into Contact with the Proceeds of Crime

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%

67.8%

3.4%

6.0%

8.7%

11.4%

38.3%

49.7%

59.1%

70% 80% 90% 100%

Deposit institution staff

Insurance Agent

Lawyer

Real estate professional

Automoblie dealer/agent

Accountant

Currency exchange staff

Securities dealer

Other

Source: Margaret Beare and Stephen Schneider, Money Laundering in Canada: Chasing Dirty and 

Dangerous Dollars (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 135.
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Shelley

In countries with less strict regulations over financial transactions, particularly in the 

developing world, profits from crime may be placed directly into investments in restaurants, 

hotels, and other commercial properties.

Politically Exposed Persons (PEPS) represent a unique case and set of money-laundering 

patterns. According to the Wolfsberg Principles addressing money laundering, which were 

adopted by 11 global banks, PEPS are described as

persons who perform important public functions for a state. The definition used by 

regulators or in guidance is usually very general and leaves room for interpretation. For 

example the Swiss Federal Banking Commission in its guidelines on money laundering 

uses the term “person occupying an important public function,” the U.S. interagency 

guidance uses “senior foreign political figure” and the BIS paper Customer due diligence 

for banks says “potentates.”

The term should be understood to include persons whose current or former position 

can attract publicity beyond the borders of the country concerned and whose financial 

circumstances may be the subject of additional public interest. In specific cases, local 

factors in the country concerned, such as the political and social environment, should 

be considered when deciding whether a person falls within the definition.14

A review of examples by the author as well as some of the analyses done by Global 

Witness15 suggest that MLRE involving Politically Exposed Persons more frequently flows 

through banks than funds derived directly from criminal activity. Banks may be hesitant to 

reject the accounts of some Politically Exposed Persons when the political leaders of Western 

powers interact with those same political leaders.16

The Multiple Consequences of MLRE

Money laundering into real estate differs from other forms of laundering activity. Especially 

in the residential real estate market, such activity can be a sign of “having made it.” This contrasts with other types of laundering which have a more utilitarian function—simply hiding 

capital. Therefore, this form of laundering has at least a dual purpose—cleaning the money 

and enjoying the proceeds of crime and corruption. But as will be discussed, it can serve other 

purposes by providing a base on which to mount operations, thereby compounding the harms 

of the initial criminal activity.

Criminals show their success by buying valuable real estate—beautiful estates and villas 

as well as elegant and/or popular bars and nightclubs.17 Criminological research as well as 

popular songs in the criminal culture, especially among Latin American crime groups, shows 

that visible signs of wealth serve as important tools for recruiting members into the criminal 

enterprise. Not surprisingly, this is especially true of impressionable youth. Real estate is one 

of these signs of success. Money laundering into ostentatious homes is a dramatic force for 

destabilization as it shows that leaders can enjoy the fruits of corruption. Popular anger and 

revulsion at the wealth and opulent homes of corrupt figures including political leaders can be 
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Money Laundering into Real Estate

a source of major discontent within the population, particularly in poor countries. Revelations 

of the sumptuous property of Arab leaders, for example, helped fuel popular resentment before 

the Arab Spring.

An activist in Gabon with assistance from Transparency International and Sherpa 

successfully initiated legal action to freeze 73 properties purchased by the families of African 

dictators from Gabon and two other African countries.18 The French Supreme Court froze 

these properties in an unprecedented legal action against the French assets of PEPs.

Among the many other financial consequences of money laundering into real estate is the 

exacerbation of economic bubbles. For example, this was seen in Japan before the long-term 

recession. Yakuza members and organizations moved large amounts of their assets into commercial real estate, driving up prices. This bubble could not be sustained and many commercial 

loans were not repaid to the banks as Yakuza members had key roles in the directorates of the 

banks.19 The same phenomenon was observed more recently in Dubai. Little scrutiny was given 

to the source of assets used to buy apartments, villas, and offices in the rapidly developing property market in Dubai. As investigations have shown, money from corrupt officials poured out 

of Afghanistan into Dubai, and the recent arrest of post-Soviet drug kingpin Kamchy Kolbaev 

in United Arab Emirates (UAE) is illustrative of the criminal capital that has been invested 

in the economy there. The illicit capital fueling the real estate boom may have contributed to 

the instability of the markets and the sharp decline of property values.20

MLRE can increase prices, making it impossible for local individuals to acquire real 

estate. The threefold growth of property prices in Mombasa, Kenya, within 5 years made it 

increasingly difficult for middle-income families to buy homes.

21 In the mid-2000s, according 

to the Economist, South Africa had the largest price increase in housing of any major market 

analyzed.22 The President of the Financial Action Task Force stated in 2005 that he suspected 

money laundering was one of the reasons for the sharp increase in property prices there.

Money laundering can result in overconstruction of expensive housing and hotels. 

Properties23 stay vacant for years because individuals cannot afford to buy or stay in them. 

The vacant hotel phenomenon can be seen in Central America and several Soviet successor 

states. The housing boom in Turkey, facilitated in part by the laundering of drug and human 

trafficking proceeds, has resulted in overconstruction and empty housing in some coastal areas.

MLRE can also result in severe violations of environmental regulations and destruction of 

protected habitats. This has been a widespread phenomenon in southern Italy. Already in the 

mid-1990s, citizen groups were established to combat the destructive environmental impact 

of housing in areas too close to the sea or other fragile terrains.24 As a result of this citizen 

mobilization, some illegally constructed housing has been torn down, especially in periods of 

government crackdowns on the Mafia.

Money laundering into construction companies can drive out legitimate investors who 

cannot obtain bank credits or compete against money launderers with so much disposable cash. 

These cash-rich investors move money not only into the property, but into the companies that 

will construct new developments, thereby increasing their laundering options.

These practices do not always involve high-end properties. Money laundering into 

lower-end property may lead to decay and increased crime in urban areas.25 In some cases, 

properties are bought to launder the money and then left vacant. This has been observed in 
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Shelley

such diverse environments as rural Ohio and central Tokyo.26 Such decay may be allowed so 

the criminal investors can subsequently buy neighboring properties at depressed costs, thereby 

increasing their territorial influence.27

MLRE may yield profits or other tangible benefits allowing launderers to sustain their 

activities while simultaneously providing stability and security for their investments. This has 

been seen in Mexico, major cities in the United States, and Italy.28 Therefore, although many 

forms of laundering cost launderers 10 to 20 percent of the sums they seek to clean, this rule 

does not always apply in the real estate sector. An advantage of laundering into real estate is 

often that there is not even a cost of laundering, but rather ongoing financial benefits derived 

from property-based revenue streams. Moreover, money laundering into apartments can be 

used to facilitate the work of drug traffickers who can use these venues for production of drugs 

and as warehouses for drug distribution.29 These buildings can also be used to house illegal 

workers who are sometimes exploited in the criminal businesses of apartment owners.30 Or 

as in one Arizona case, they may be used as safe houses for migrant smuggling.

Money laundering into hotel construction and tourism businesses may facilitate other illicit activity of organized crime groups such as human trafficking. This has been seen in tourist 

areas in Spain and Turkey where drug money has moved into the hotel sector.31 In Southeast 

Asia, Japanese organized crime investment in the hotel sector has facilitated sex tourism.

Money laundering into farms and ranches can distort agricultural prices. In Colombia 

drug traffickers chose not to invest in agricultural lands that demanded constant cultivation. 

Instead, they invested in cattle ranches, resulting in depressed beef prices as their desire was 

not to engage in profitable cattle farming but merely to launder their money.32

Diverse Environments in Which MLRE Occurs

MLRE is a transnational phenomenon spanning the developing and developed worlds. Money 

moves from the developed world into properties in the developing world and vice versa. The 

mobility of capital makes it difficult for financial professionals to know their customers.33 Moreover, money moves among different regions within the developed and the developing worlds.

The extent to which criminals and corrupt officials launder money into real estate depends on the “cultures” of organized crime groups and the effectiveness of the regulatory and 

confiscation policies of particular countries. In cultures where investments traditionally occur 

in property, there is a greater likelihood that money laundering will occur in all forms of real 

estate both in their home region and abroad.34 Therefore, investment patterns of criminals 

reflect those of legitimate investors.

In the case of corrupt government officials, especially those from poor countries and 

conflict regions, expensive properties are often acquired in developed countries or havens 

such as the Gulf states.

With transnational crime groups, laundering can occur in their countries of origin as well 

as in areas where they plan on further or future operations. The former has been seen by British 

officials investigating welfare fraud and child trafficking.35 Romanian criminals profiting from 

human trafficking crimes in the United Kingdom built enormous villas with the proceeds of 

their crimes. But this phenomenon was not confined to the UK.36
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Money Laundering into Real Estate

Yakuza have become global investors in real estate. They have invested in golf courses and 

land in Hawaii and in hotels, resorts, and other commercial properties throughout Southeast 

Asia. This property facilitates their activities in the area of sex tourism.37

MLRE occurs most easily in cash-based economies where there is no regulated price 

market and no specific property acquisition requirements. This is the case throughout Latin 

America and in many parts of Asia and Africa. These features make countries in these regions 

especially vulnerable to money-laundering abuse in both the commercial and residential real 

estate markets.

In many real estate markets in the developing world, laundering opportunities are enhanced by uncertainty in the actual market value of property and the long-term tradition of 

speculation in real estate markets. Real estate offers many comparative advantages relative to 

financial instruments as it allows launderers to dispose of considerable sums of money through 

construction, yet also derive a subsequent income flow, particularly in markets where housing 

is in high demand.38 Real estate also produces steady returns of clean money from tourists 

staying at hotels and resorts.

In diverse regions of the world, real estate such as apartments, garages, and warehouses 

can also be used to conduct criminal activities.39 As one European analyst concluded, “To sum 

up, the real estate sector is by its very nature complex and prone to criminal abuse.”40

Earlier Patterns of Money Laundering

MLRE has evolved over the decades as criminals adapt to changes in regulations and market 

conditions and become more skilled global investors. Earlier identified examples show that 

most investment in real estate by criminal organizations has been conducted closer to home. 

Criminals tended to choose environments that they were familiar with.

In the 1970s, Colombian crime groups were accumulating significant amounts of capital. A major investment strategy was the purchase of large tracts of rural property as well as 

valuable commercial real estate in Bogota. This influx of capital as a result of laundering led 

to a rapid escalation of commercial real estate prices.41 The phenomenon of laundering money 

into property extended for decades; the attorney general’s office of Colombia estimates that 

$10 billion was laundered into real estate between 1997 and 2004 and only a fraction of this 

was confiscated.42

The experience of the Colombian groups in using property as a major vehicle to dispose 

of drug proceeds was subsequently replicated by Mexican drug cartels. Mexican cartels moved 

money and drugs into and through Cancun and other resorts. This provided them a steady 

revenue stream.43

The utility of property as an investment vehicle has also been observed in Asia and 

Europe. Japanese yakuza moved into multiple real estate markets forcing rapidly escalating 

purchasing prices. Individuals who refused to sell their homes to yakuza-associated real 

estate investors faced severe harassment. Banks could not collect on the large loans made to 

yakuza property developers, leading to large uncollectable loans for the banking sector that 

have been calculated as high as 40 percent of nonperforming loans, contributing to Japan’s 

so-called lost decade.44
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Organized crime groups acquired agricultural lands in Sicily, villas on the Sicilian coast, 

and real estate in Naples. From the 1980s to 2000, real estate was the major asset seized by 

the Italian state from Italian organized crime groups. Post-1993, money laundering was no 

longer concentrated in the major urban areas of the south but spread to secondary and tertiary 

cities in that region.45

In the Netherlands, proceeds from extensive trade in drugs as well as human trafficking 

have provided significant revenues for criminals. As early as 1996, the Dutch national organized crime report determined that through their illegally acquired property, organized crime 

groups had acquired control over Amsterdam’s red light district. Amsterdam had by this time 

become a major center for international organized crime.46

The United States has a long tradition of organized crime laundering money into real 

estate. Organized crime groups have owned significant property in such cities as Las Vegas 

and New York since the 1930s. Organized crime money lies at the very heart of Las Vegas’s 

historical development. Indeed, pension funds diverted by organized crime from the Teamsters 

Union helped to establish the city.47

Recently Identified Patterns of MLRE (post-2000)

With greater scrutiny over banks and other financial instruments since the financial controls 

enacted after September 11, 2001, real estate has become an especially important investment 

vehicle for organized crime. In some parts of the world such as the Middle East, Russia, and 

Africa, cash can be moved directly into real estate. Suitcases of cash are used to pay for transactions. In more developed markets such as the United States and Europe, money laundered 

into real estate appears more often to be a secondary transaction after it has already entered 

into banks or another part of the financial system.

In Europe, with its long-term traditions of maintaining assets in residential and commercial real estate, property remains a favored investment by crime figures. It may have become 

more popular after 9/11 because of increased scrutiny of bank financial records.48 In this 

respect, the investment patterns of those who participate in the illicit economy are no different 

from those in the legitimate economy. An analysis of over 50 cases of money laundering in the 

Netherlands revealed that in 30 to 40 percent of the identified cases, laundering had occurred 

by way of immovable property.49 An Italian study of all property confiscated from organized 

crime revealed that laundering into real estate was no longer confined to the south but had 

spread throughout Italy including the north.50 This is a consequence of the movement of organized crime groups out of their traditional strongholds in the south into the more lucrative and 

attractive markets of northern Italy. As previously mentioned, the illicit assets of corrupt African 

dictators have been found in France and the revelations of the Arab Spring have provided evidence of Libyan, Turkish, and Egyptian leaders and their families transferring their countries’ 

looted assets and the proceeds of their corrupt activities into European real estate markets.

The United States continues to serve as an investment destination for the funds of foreign 

corrupt leaders. Money stolen by corrupt foreign leaders is often destined for high-end real 

estate that can be enjoyed by the launderers and their families. Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavel Lazarenko bought a $7 million home in California and was charged and prosecuted 
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Money Laundering into Real Estate

for money laundering in 2004.51 A recent Senate investigation examined four cases of MLRE 

by Politically Exposed Persons from Africa. These were high-level officials such as Teodoro 

Obiang, a son of the president of Equitorial Guinea, and their families.52

In Africa as well, there is now significant evidence of laundering by organized crime 

groups into local property markets. In recent years, the population growth rates of several 

African countries have been among the highest in the world. Illicit money from neighboring 

countries flows into countries with high growth rates such as Kenya. This phenomenon is also 

identified in southern parts of western Africa where growth rates are not as high as in Kenya. 

Ransom money associated with the piracy attacks off the coast of Somalia has also contributed 

to the recent real estate boom in Nairobi. New cocaine transport routes through West Africa 

have also contributed to a real estate boom in that region. Expensive villas have been built with 

drug proceeds in Guinea-Bissau, for example, a poverty stricken country with no legitimate 

source of funds for such construction.53 Money has flowed from other parts of Africa and Asia 

into real estate in South Africa as well because of its well-developed infrastructure.54

There are certain locales that, because of their large-scale real estate development and 

failure to scrutinize the source of funds, have become magnets for laundering money. Two 

examples, as previously mentioned, are the southern coast of Turkey and Dubai in UAE. 

Large-scale development has occurred on the Mediterranean and Aegean coasts of Turkey 

because real estate purchases can be made in cash, soaking up tens of millions of dollars that 

flow back from criminal enterprises in Western Europe.55 The proceeds of corruption and 

the drug trade in Afghanistan are laundered in real estate, particularly in commercial and residential real estate in UAE, notably Dubai.56 Money from organized crime in the post-Soviet 

area is also laundered there. As previously mentioned, Central Asian drug kingpin Kamchy 

Kolbaev was arrested in his villa in Dubai. The profits from a very large case of fraud against 

the Russian government committed by law enforcement officials following a corporate raid 

against the Hermitage Company resulted in profits in the tens if not hundreds of millions of 

dollars for the perpetrators.57 The Russian lawyer for the Hermitage firm who opposed the 

fraud died in prison after being convicted of trumped-up charges. Some of the stolen money 

has been traced to expensive properties owned by the perpetrators in Dubai.58

Latin American drug organizations continue to launder money into real estate both in 

their home states and abroad. Members of Colombian and Mexican drug cartels continue to 

launder money in their own countries but also place it in Central and South America. Favorite locales are Argentina and Venezuela.59 Money laundering into Uruguayan real estate has 

also become a major problem. A recent study reports that 90 percent of money laundering in 

Uruguay occurs through real estate.60 Panama has been singled out for money laundering in 

the real estate sector,61 and Honduras has unoccupied hotels, a phenomenon also visible in 

Argentina and other Latin American countries.62

In the United States, as previously mentioned, drug cartels are using their profits to 

buy property, particularly in border states. Canada has also identified drug traffickers using 

property across Canada as a vehicle for money laundering.63

Distinct patterns have been noted since 2008 and the start of the financial crisis. The 

sharp decline of real estate prices has been exploited by criminals for both their operational 

benefit and to purchase real estate at sharp discounts. Banking regulation encourages criminals 
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to keep their assets in cash, enabling them to quickly take advantage of low prices. Criminals, 

therefore, have been major beneficiaries of the crisis because many of them held cash and have 

not been negatively affected by stock market declines. This has occurred in the United States 

and in some depressed markets in Southern and Northern Europe.64 In Italy, the Mafia is now 

estimated to control 7 percent of the economy and extorts and works through construction 

businesses and urban properties, particularly in Rome.65

U.S. authorities have estimated that approximately $19 billion in cash returns to Mexico 

annually as a consequence of drug sales in the United States. In one well publicized case, over 

$200 million in dollar bills was found in a single property in Mexico City.66 Mexican drug 

organizations operating in both the United States and Mexico have benefited from this cash 

liquidity. They have been ready to buy from motivated property sellers at reduced and often 

distressed prices.

Under these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that investigations by the office of 

the Attorney General of Arizona have discovered that Mexican crime groups are buying 

depressed properties in Arizona and are then using the purchased buildings as safe houses 

for their human smuggling operations. In this way, they are taking advantage of low cost real 

estate that can then be used to benefit their criminal activity. This is more ambitious than most 

money laundering, which merely seeks to move money obtained in the illegitimate economy 

into the legitimate system. Real estate can disguise the illicit proceeds of crime but can also 

simultaneously embed transnational crime within the community.

How Is Money Moved into Real Estate Investment?

There is insufficient research and analysis to fully reveal how money is laundered into real 

estate. Knowledge of how real estate markets work in different parts of the world can provide 

some insight. Distinct patterns appear to exist in both the developing and developed worlds. 

In the more highly regulated developed countries, there is little likelihood that a full real estate 

purchase will be exclusively in cash, requiring a physical transfer of bills. In many parts of the 

developing world, on the other hand, cash payments are normal.

In developed countries, financial institutions have to be the initial point of the laundering 

process for most real estate transactions because suitcases of cash are automatically suspect 

and should trigger reports of suspicious financial transactions. Yet in some cases, cash payments outside the regular banking system may be provided for part of the purchase price. For 

example, 10 percent of the purchase price may be paid in cash outside the formal transaction 

thereby permitting the purchaser to launder smaller amounts of money even in the more 

regulated markets.67

False documents play a key role in the laundering process in Europe. Europol reports that 

false documents are used to conduct mortgage fraud in the purchase of premises.68

The reason the yakuza have been able to launder such large quantities in Japanese real 

estate is that they are key actors in the banking sector, owning shares of banks and sitting on 

the boards of directors of institutions. They have been able to move their money through the 

banks they control and obtain loans for future construction, demonstrating that MLRE is far 

from limited to developing countries and indeed occurs on a large scale even in the world’s 
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currently third largest economy. Even though the yakuza have been hurt financially in the 

past by the decline of real estate, they continue to be major players in valuable commercial 

real estate markets in Tokyo and elsewhere in Japan.69 Many multinational companies buy, 

partner, and sell to companies controlled or dominated by Japanese organized crime as they 

seek a stake in the Japanese economy.

In parts of the developing world where cash easily enters real estate markets, there are a 

variety of ways in which money is transferred to the desired destination. These include wire 

transfers,70 the use of cash couriers and underground banking procedures such as the hawala 

system (particularly present in Africa and the Middle East), and alternative remittance systems 

directly or through third parties. In the Sneep case, involving human traffickers operating in 

the Netherlands, couriers carried cash to Antalya, Turkey, where it was retained and used to 

make real estate purchases in the region’s booming economy.71 In the Dubai markets discussed 

earlier, large shipments of cash from Afghanistan were used to buy villas. Yet in the Dubai 

markets, money was not necessarily laundered in cash. As in the Hermitage case, the illegally 

obtained money was first deposited in a Swiss bank and transferred to Dubai.72

In many parts of the world, the individual buying the property with money derived 

from criminal or corrupt activity seeks to disguise his/her identity.73 In both developed and 

developing country markets, efforts are made to separate the identity of the purchaser from 

the individual on the property register. This can be done in several ways. Lawyers and others 

in positions of trust can purchase property as front people for the real owners. Especially in 

the case of corrupt officials, properties are bought under false names or by relatives or close 

associates. A ready sign of laundering in many geographic contexts is that a company is established and then used as a vehicle to launder money into real estate. Once the purchase is 

made, the company is liquidated.

The absence of transparency in ownership documents and the ability of front companies 

to buy property and hide actual owners make trafficking into real estate a very viable option 

for laundering significant sums.

Conclusions

This chapter has focused primarily on the mechanisms by which large amounts of illicitly 

obtained money are invested in both residential and commercial real estate markets globally. 

The ease with which criminal organizations do this on such a large scale, as is apparent with 

yakuza laundering into Japan’s highly developed and valuable real estate market, indicate that 

money laundering through real estate transactions should be an important concern if one is 

trying to improve the transparency of international financial markets and investment vehicles.

MLRE is also connected to core themes of the global political economy including disparity of income, access to decent housing, and problems of quality of urban life in densely 

populated areas. The ability of corrupt leaders to steal so much from their countries and to 

launder their money into valuable properties overseas contributes to stunted economic development in many countries and to destabilizing income disparities. The price bubbles created 

by laundering that have been seen in parts of Africa as well in other markets deny ordinary 

citizens access to adequate housing. In cities, and especially in large cities in the developing 
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world where organized crime groups are major investors, criminal economic control of territory 

through ownership of residential and commercial property undermines and determines the 

quality of life in the community.

The global financial crisis that began in 2008 was caused, in part, by problems in the 

real estate market and inflated valuations. Fraud and organized crime played a role in these 

market manipulations in some regions of the world. But as cash-rich investors in the extended 

recession, they have the possibility to position themselves for growth and to facilitate their 

operations in the future.

As the global financial community works to establish regulation to prevent such future 

financial crises, the impact and role of organized crime and corrupt elites in real estate markets 

should be carefully examined. Market reforms must include greater oversight of the sources 

of funds entering into real estate markets just as they do for other financial markets. There 

must be greater accountability and reporting requirements for real estate professionals who 

facilitate MLRE. Market analyses must also address susceptibility to money laundering. 

Greater transparency is required in land registries, privatizations, and property transfers. Law 

enforcement must follow the money trails into both commercial and residential real estate and 

seize properties as they do other laundered assets. They must give higher priority to countering 

the placement of money in real estate and the ongoing revenue streams going to the organized 

criminals who own residential and commercial real estate.

In Italy, properties that have been confiscated from organized crime are used for the 

social good. Farms once owned by the Mafia have been used to provide work for individuals 

with special needs. Villas have been used as social centers for children and for other functions 

in the community. In contrast to countries that just sell the confiscated properties linked to 

organized crime, the Sicilian experience has another purpose: to ensure that “crime does not 

pay” and properties that once served people who harmed others now serve the public good.74

This concept could be replicated in other communities that seek to wrest authority away from 

organized criminal organizations.

The decade since 9/11 has seen much attention placed on regulation of banks and global 

financial markets. As the collapse of the real estate bubble worldwide has shown, there must 

be much greater attention paid to real estate markets and to funds used for real estate investment. Little has been done to institutionalize the recommendations of the Financial Action 

Task Force (the chief international body addressing money laundering) to ensure that real 

estate markets are properly regulated and guarded against money laundering. Harmonized 

measures have not been put in place to ensure that real estate professionals, lawyers, notaries, 

and accountants are accountable and understand their responsibility to “know their customers.” There is an absence of reporting worldwide on financial irregularities and laundering in 

real estate markets. Not enough has been done to ensure that real estate professionals make 

countering money laundering a higher priority. This is a difficult time to enhance requirements 

when sales are down and customers are hard to find, yet it is needed if the global financial 

community is to prevent future crises.

Failing to take these steps has consequences for society that transcend the present financial crisis. They include loss of homes, displacement of people, and a more precarious life in 

communities in which organized crime groups are major investors. As the events of the Arab 
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Spring are assessed, it is evident that MLRE by corrupt leaders was a galvanizing force for the 

anger citizens felt at the waste, corruption, and self-indulgence of their leadership.

As we examine the forces for financial and political stability in the first decades of the 21st

century, it is clear that abuse, corruption, and money laundering into domestic and commercial 

real estate have played an important role in destabilizing markets and societies. The abuses of 

property markets deserve greater attention and must be more fully integrated into efforts to 

regulate markets and establish transparency and accountability.

Acknowledgment

This chapter has been developed from a report prepared by the author for the Organized 

Crime Global Agenda Council of the World Economic Forum. The author appreciates the 

support of the council members who provided sources to conduct this research and also highlighted important trends they observed in their own regions.

Notes

1

 Based on interviews with specialists in real estate at the Global Agenda Council meeting of the World Economic 

Forum, Fall 2010. 2

 Mary Beth Sheridan, “Oxon Hill Development Has Ties to Terror,” The Washington Post, April 19, 2004, 

available at <www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A22576-2004Apr18¬Found=true>. 3

 Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, “Suspected Money Laundering in the Residential Real Estate 

Industry: An Assessment Based upon Suspicious Activity Report Filing Analysis,” Washington, DC, April 2008. 4

 Money laundering into real estate by terrorist groups has been observed in the Middle East. See Joe Becker, 

“Lebanese Bank Seen as a Hub of Hezbollah’s Financing,” The New York Times, December 13, 2011, available 

at <www.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/world/middleeast/beirut-bank-seen-as-a-hub-of-hezbollahs-financing.

html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=hizbollah%20and%20money%20laundering&st=cse>. 5

 Illustrative of this is the real estate sector in Dubai, which received money from Afghanistan and elsewhere that 

contributed to inflated prices. Dexter Filkins, “Depositors Panic over Bank Crisis in Afghanistan,” The New York 

Times, December 2, 2010, available at <www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/world/asia/03kabul.html?scp=5&sq=afghan%20laundering%20into%20Dubai&st=cse>. It also had one of the steepest corrections in its real estate with 

drops of over 40 percent when the bubble burst. For a discussion of the aftermath, see Liz Alderman, “After Crisis, 

Dubai Keeps Building, But Soberly,” The New York Times, September 29, 2010, available at <www.nytimes.

com/2010/09/30/business/global/30dubai.html?ref=mohammedbinrashidalmaktoum>. 6

 Peter B.E. Hill, The Japanese Mafia: Yakuza, Law, and the State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 185. 7

 Ibid., 186–187; also discussed by Grant Newsham, “Yakuza Influence on the Japanese Financial Sector: Security and Solvency in Japan,” April 25, 2011, at Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center, George 

Mason University, Fairfax, VA, available at <http://traccc.gmu.edu/events/previously-hosted-events/>. 8

 See the Web site of the Italian environmental organization Legambiente (League for the Environment) that 

has been closely following the illegal construction of the Mafia since the 1990s. A whole section of its site is devoted 

to this topic. See <www.legambiente.it/temi/ecomafia>; also see Shasta Darlington, “Italian ‘Eco-Mafia’ Booms, 

Outstrips Economy,” Reuters, June 1, 2005, available at <www.enn.com/top_stories/article/1675>. 9

 Brigitte Unger et al., Detecting Criminal Investment in the Dutch Real Estate Sector (Dutch Ministry of Finance, 

Justice and Interior Affairs, January 2010), 202–203; Brigitte Unger and Joras Ferweda, Money Laundering in the 

Real Estate Sector, Suspicious Properties (Cheltenham, UK, and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2011).
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10 Reports at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and United Nations Office on 

Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Expert Seminar on Leveraging Anti-Money Laundering Regimes to Combat Human 

Trafficking, October 3–4, 2011, Vienna; Louise I. Shelley, Human Trafficking: A Global Perspective (Cambridge: 

Cambridge University Press, 2010). 11 Stuttgart Public Prosecutor’s office, statement of charges against members of the Izmailovskaya organized 

crime group, March 15, 2007. 12 Margaret Beare and Stephen Schneider, Money Laundering in Canada: Chasing Dirty and Dangerous Dollars

(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007); Unger et al.; and Europol, Organized Crime Threat Assessment 

(OCTA) 2011, The Hague, the Netherlands, May 4, 2011, available at <www.europol.europa.eu/content/press/

europol-organised-crime-threat-assessment-2011-429>. 13 Beare and Schneider.

14 Web site available at <www.wolfsberg-principles.com/faq-persons.html>.

15 Global Witness, Undue Diligence: How Banks Do Business with Corrupt Regimes, March 11, 2009, available at 

<www.globalwitness.org/library/undue-diligence-how-banks-do-business-corrupt-regimes>. 16 Interviews with European money-laundering specialists, Fall 2011.

17 Unger et al., 51.

18 Basel Institute on Governance, available at <www.assetrecovery.org/kc/node/4418aa8c-12f8-11de-b174-

1f0207abe99a.9>. 19 Hill, 177–247.

20 J.D. and Aman Agarwal, “Keynote Address on Money Laundering: The Real Estate Bubble,” available at 

<www.mse.ac.in/.../20070629-MLREB%20(AFFI%20%20BSE).pdf>; “Kyrgyz Crime Czar Arrested in UAE,” 

July 22, 2011, available at <www.universalnewswires.com/centralasia/viewstory.aspx?id=4497>. 21 Denis Gathanju, “Laundered ransoms cause Kenyan property boom,” Baird Maritime, February 25, 2010, 

available at <www.bairdmaritime.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=%20article&id=5693:piracy-cash-lands-in-kenya-property-market-in-nairobi-skyrockets-&catid=113:ports-and-shipping&Itemid=208>. 22 Charles Goredema, ed., “Money Laundering Experiences,” ISS Monograph no. 124, June 2006, available at 

<www.issafrica.org/pgcontent.php?UID=1690>, 21. 23 Financial Action Task Force/Groupe d’action Financière, Money Laundering & Terrorist Financing through the 

Real Estate Sector, 2007, 27, identifies hotels and luxury resorts as prime targets for money launderers. 24 The Legambiente (League for the Environment) and its work discussed in note 9 illustrate this. 25 Unger et al., results based on analysis by the mayor of Maastricht, 49.

26 Katrin Anacker, “Big Flipping Schemes in Small Cities? The Case of Mansfield, Ohio,” Housing and Society

36, no. 1 (2009), 5–28; interview with vice president of major investment firm in Tokyo responsible for monitoring 

investments. 27 Interview conducted by World Economic Forum members.

28 On Mexico, see Jana Schroeder, “Illegal finance animates Mexico’s narco-cartels. So why isn’t it being attacked?” 

available at <www.borderlandbeat.com/2011/04/mexicos-drug-money-addiction.html>; Ernesto Savona, “Exploring OC Portfolio Investments for Rethinking Confiscation Policies,” presentation at Pan-European High Level Conference on Asset Recovery Offices, Budapest, March 7–8, 2011, on the Italian experience; and Howard Abadinsky, 

Organized Crime, 7th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2003), 235–236, on the United States. 29 Unger et al., 174.

30 Ibid., 177.

31 Dutch criminal investigations have reported that the proceeds of the drug trade are returning to Turkey for 

hotel and real estate construction in Istanbul and on the coasts. 32 Francisco Thoumi, The Political Economy & Illegal Drugs in Colombia (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1995). 33 This is illustrated by the problem in some of the smaller Gulf states that were once closed communities. As 

they open up their real estate projects to international investors, they do not have the capacity or the skills to vet 

their international customers. Interview with money-laundering specialist who served in a Gulf state, January 2012. 34 Savona and discussions with financial crime investigators.

35 Report of Jennifer MacLeod, Europol representative at the OSCE and UNODC Expert Seminar on Leveraging Anti-Money Laundering Regimes to Combat Human Trafficking, October 3–4, 2011, Vienna.
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36 Financial Action Task Force, “Risks Arising from Trafficking of Human Beings and Smuggling of Migrants,” July 

2011, available at <www.fatf-gafi.org/document/41/0,3746,en_32250379_32237202_48412265_1_1_1_1,00.

html>. 37 Shared Hope International, Demand: A Comparative Examination of Sex Tourism and Trafficking in Jamaica, 

Japan, the Netherlands and the United States, July 2007, 113–141, available at <www.sharedhope.org/Resources/

demand.aspx>. 38 Unger et al., 14; also, yakuza are deeply involved in construction through supply of labor and protection. See 

Hill, 96. 39 Ibid., 13; H. Nelen, “Real estate and serious forms of crime,” International Journal of Social Economics 35, no. 

10 (2008), 751–761. 40 Unger et al., 26.

41 Thoumi, 60, 237–238.

42 International Crisis Group, War and Drugs in Colombia, Latin America Report no. 11, January 27, 2005, 26. 43 “Cancun Mayor Gregorio Sanchez Faces Drug Charges,” available at <www.bbc.co.uk/news/10209580>.

44 Hill, 185–190; David Kaplan and Alec Dubro, Yakuza: Japan’s Criminal Underworld, expanded edition 

(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003), 196–220. 45 Savona, slides 11–41.

46 Unger et al.; Unger and Ferweda, 2011.

47 Abadinsky, 235–236.

48 See Savona on spread of the phenomenon.

49 Unger et al., 14.

50 Savona.

51 Pavel Lazarenko money-laundering case; to see other reports on money laundering into real estate by corrupt 

officials, see Basel Institute of Governance, available at <www.assetrecovery.org/kc/node/1698185c-4768-11dda453-b75b81bfd63e.html>. 52 U.S. Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, “Keeping Foreign Corruption Out of the United States: 

Four Case Histories,” February 4, 2010, available at <http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Hearing&Hearing_ID=dd873712-eb12-4ff7-ae1a-cbbc99b19b52>. 53 Ashley Neese Bybee, Narco State or Failed State? Narcotics and Politics in Guinea-Bissau, dissertation, School 

of Public Policy, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, September 2011. 54 Intergovernmental Action Group Against Money Laundering in West Africa, 2008, available at <www.giaba.

org/index.php?type=c&id=37&mod=2&men=1>. 55 Illustrative is the Sneep case in the Netherlands, a multiyear investigation of a large-scale human trafficking 

ring in which cash and other payments were transferred back to Antalya for investment in nightclubs, hotels, and 

other businesses. The form of transfer and the destination were ascertained by wiretaps. Presentation by Inge 

Schepers, National Prosecutor for Human Trafficking, Netherlands; the Prosecutor at the OSCE and UNODC 

Expert Seminar on Leveraging Anti-Money Laundering Regimes to Combat Human Trafficking, October 3–4, 

2011, Vienna, and subsequent discussion of the case with Ms. Schepers. 56 Brad Reagan, “Afghan Central Bank Calls on UAE for Help in Freezing Assets,” September 15, 2010, available 

at <www.thenational.ae/business/afghan-central-bank-calls-on-uae-for-help-in-freezing-assets>. 57 Carl Mortished, “Bill Browder: At Home after Mean Streets of Moscow,” The Sunday Times, August 4, 

2008, available at <http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/

article4453893.ece>. 58 “Hermitage Reveals Russian Police Fraud,” available at <www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok6ljV-WfRw>. Also, 

conversation with a lawyer who helped trace the money, October 2011. 59 Web site available at <www.wantedsa.com/index.php?option=com_content&view...id...www.cfatf-gafic.org/.../Venezuela_3rd_Round_MER_(Final)_English.pdf;en.mercopress.com/.../argentina-under-pressure-to-approve-anti-money-laundering-legislation;www.gatewaytosouthamerica-newsblog.com/.../new-argentine-rules-against-money-laundering/>. 60 Web sites available at <www.antilavadodedinero.com/wap/new_det.php?id=2304>; and <www.knowyourcountry.com/uruguay1111.html>. 61 Web site available at <primapanama.blogs.com/_panama.../how-serious-a-problem-is-money-laundering-in-panama.html>.
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62 The author has seen these unoccupied hotels. They were pointed out by local specialists on corruption.

63 Agarwal and Agarwal, 24.

64 Interview with a member of the staff of the President of the NATO Army Armaments Group (NAAG), Fall 

2011; Frances D’Emilio, “Italy’s Mafia Thrives in Global Financial Meltdown,” Associated Press, April 25, 2009, 

available at <www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D97PHLVO0>; Walter Kego, Erik Leijonmarck, and Alexandru 

Molcean, eds., Organized Crime and the Financial Crisis: Recent Trends in the Baltic Sea Region (Stockholm: Institute 

for Security and Development Policy, 2011), 36, as well as a more general discussion of the problem. 65 Nick Pisa, “Mafia is now Italy’s ‘biggest bank’—and they’re squeezing the life out of small business (quite 

literally),” Daily Mail, January 12, 2012, available at <www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2085209/Mafia-ItalysNo-1-bank-profits-100bn-year.html>. 66 Illustrative of this is the house found in Mexico with $205 million in cash. See Hector Tobar and Carlos 

Martinez, “Mexico meth raid yields $205 million in U.S. cash,” The Los Angeles Times, March 17, 2007, available at 

http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-meth17mar17,0,709967.story>. 67 Interview with individual selling real estate in Europe.

68 Europol, OCTA, 2011, 13.

69 Hill; Kaplan and Dubro and expertise provided by members of the organized crime group of the World 

Economic Forum. 70 Report on Romania in OSCE and UNODC, Expert Seminar on Leveraging Anti-Money Laundering Regimes 

to Combat Human Trafficking, October 3–4, 2011, Vienna; Shelley. 71 In markets such as Turkey, the actual sale price of the house is never reflected on the deed of sale, allowing 

ample opportunities for laundering money. 72 Discussions with a Swiss banking expert, October 2011.

73 In some countries where corrupt officials know there is no capacity to investigate their activity or to recover 

assets overseas, they make no effort to disguise their identity in making purchases overseas. The author, around 2000, 

did training with the anticorruption commission in Honduras. Through working with the online property registrations for the city of Miami, it was possible to locate the undeclared homes of many of the country’s top politicians. 

There was no attempt to disguise these purchases by themselves or their family members. 74 In 2000, the author toured both rural agricultural and urban properties in Sicily that have been confiscated 

and saw how they have been turned into institutions that serve the community. 
Part III. 

The Attack on Sovereignty

149

Chapter 9

The Criminal State

Michael Miklaucic and Moisés Naím

Corruption in public administration dates from time immemorial. And though agencies such as Transparency International rate some states as more or less corrupt than others, 

no state is above, beyond, or immune to public corruption. One need only review the serial 

revelations of corruption within the governments of the District of Columbia, Spain, or 

Hong Kong in recent years to see that it can and does happen everywhere. However, as this 

book argues throughout, the recent proliferating interaction among criminal, terrorist, and 

insurgent networks and the exponentially greater magnitude of their commerce made possible 

by the processes of globalization have moved the overall threat posed by state collusion with 

transnational illicit networks from the status of international nuisance to a substantial threat 

to the contemporary international order.

While corruption and criminalization are outcomes of human agency and choice, the 

most threatening aspect of the current situation is not the morally fallen individual. The 

corruption and criminality we describe in this book is, rather, the presence of intensively 

networked international organizations engaged in a full range of illicit activities including 

trafficking in all manner of contraband and counterfeit. This book describes the emergence 

of such networks from the shadows of the criminal world into the world of national and 

international security.

This chapter examines a frequently mentioned but infrequently elaborated new and 

disturbing development: the emergence of the criminal state. We begin with a prefatory discussion of some of the impediments to clear analysis and understanding of converging criminal 

networks, as well as the unique obstacles to full comprehension that criminal states pose. These 

have been iterated in previous works of one of the authors,1

 but they bear reiteration to serve 

as the backdrop for the further discussion. We argue that state criminalization exists along a 

spectrum characterized by varying degrees of corruption and various functions of corruption 

within the state. At one end of the spectrum is “criminal penetration,” which occurs when an 

illicit network, be it criminal, terrorist, or insurgent, is able to place “one of its own” into the 

state structure. That agent may carry out formal functions on behalf of the state but also carries 

out actions in support of an illicit network or criminal enterprise. “Criminal infiltration” occurs 

when the infection has spread throughout the state apparatus within the given country, and the 
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Miklaucic and Naím 

linkages to external illicit networks proliferate. When this penetration becomes pervasive and 

affects critical nodes of decisionmaking, it becomes an advanced pathology of dysfunctional 

governance characterized by the presence of criminals and criminal agents in positions of 

state authority where they facilitate and implement criminal activities for the illicit networks 

for which they ultimately work, thus undermining the pillars of government legitimacy and 

functionality. We describe “Criminal capture” as the condition of dysfunctional governance in 

which criminal agents are so sufficiently prominent in positions of state authority that their 

criminal actions cannot effectively be restrained by the state. At some point, it may become 

part of state or substate institutional doctrine to engage in illicit activity. At this level, the 

state is not only subverted by illicit elements but is directly complicit in those activities and 

endorses those activities. Pervasive institutionalization defines the fully “Criminal sovereign,”

which functions effectively as a criminal enterprise with the apparatus of the state itself engaged directly in criminal activity as a matter of policy. Such a state exists outside the realm of 

the family of states, which is governed if only nominally by the international law regime and 

associated norms. Such a state is a threat to all other states, to the international rule-based 

system of states, and to the contemporary structure of global order. To animate this spectrum, 

we discuss examples of the various stages along the spectrum.

Conceptual Challenges

Networks of criminals, smugglers, counterfeiters, insurgents, and terrorists are not a new 

phenomenon. Indeed, such networks have operated on the criminal fringe of communities 

in all societies and at all times. These vocations are surely among the oldest professions. Yet 

our understanding of the operations and structures of the organizations that dominate these 

trades is woefully inadequate. In this field, we are at a very primitive level of conceptual development. Indeed, we are only beginning to know what we need to understand. There is a 

crippling shortage of reliable data regarding the operations and structures of illicit networks. 

When data are available, we lack tested and proven tools to interpret them. This does not refer 

to technically advanced computer models, but to the absence of the fundamental conceptual 

models required for a disciplined analytic approach. Even concepts as basic as “licit” and “illicit” 

remain contested. A basic and widely accepted taxonomy of the objects of study—illicit networks and organizations—is lacking.

This conceptual underdevelopment has many causes, but professional, bureaucratic, 

and international fragmentation are important sources of confusion and poor analysis when 

studying transnational illicit networks. Sociologists perceive the phenomena from the vantage 

point of intellectual frameworks and models emerging from their discipline, emphasizing the 

dynamics of collective human behavior. Criminologists are prone to view transnational criminal 

networks as an extension of individual criminality, best addressed within a law enforcement 

framework. Anthropologists, political scientists, and international relations specialists all 

perceive the phenomenon through the lenses of their disciplines; none owns it, yet none can 

dismiss it. This leads inevitably to conceptual confusion, competing models, and interdisciplinary competition for the right to claim the correct or best analysis.
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The Criminal State

As the various intellectual disciplines approach transnational illicit networks from their 

niched perspectives, so do the different professions engaged in the fight against them. If you 

speak with lawyers, you will discover that they see a world that the people in finance do not see, 

or see in a completely different way. If you are speaking with finance professionals, you will find 

that they perceive the problems in a way completely unlike those in law enforcement. Those 

officials responsible for containing the international trade in counterfeits see yet a different 

world—they worry about different things and use different tools than people who are worried 

about international licit trade.

The many agencies involved in countering transnational criminal networks in each country have their own organizational cultures, methods, mandates, authorities, and idiosyncrasies. 

In the United States, the effort to counter illicit networks involves the State Department, 

Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Treasury Department, and 

Department of Justice, as well as national intelligence organizations such as the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Defense Intelligence Agency. Also 

involved are specialized agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau 

of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. 

Law enforcement organizations typically understand their challenge as building cases against 

individuals, whereas military organizations see the challenge in terms of a battle campaign. 

Information sharing—or more specifically, intelligence sharing—among civilian and military, 

intelligence, and operational agencies can be very strained. Problems of effective collaboration—exacerbated by differing interests, cultures, mandates, authorities, jurisdictions, and 

methods—complicate and compromise effective action against illicit networks.

Finally, the conceptual seams created by different perceptions of illicit networks and illicit 

commerce within different countries confound multilateral and even bilateral efforts to address 

the problem. In some countries, narcotic trafficking is seen as a supply problem—others see 

it as a demand problem. Some countries view counterfeiting as a violation of international 

law and norms—others view it as a jobs program. Borders are heaven—they are nirvana for 

traffickers and for the illicit networks in which they function. National borders are what create 

the price differentials that drive the immense profits of illicit commerce. They also provide 

the shields for criminals to hide behind, guarding them from law enforcement agencies and 

governments seeking to disrupt their activities. Of course, there are coordinating mechanisms 

and alliances between agencies from different governments. But for any government agency to 

work in an alien jurisdiction is exceedingly challenging. To operate outside our national habitat, 

we require a full array of equipment and infrastructure. For any government official working 

in another country, there are many difficulties. Even ambassadors depend on a panoply of 

regulations, conventions, and institutional arrangements to operate. So while for governments, 

borders are very confining, for traffickers borders are what justify their existence, protect them, 

make their life possible, and make their business profitable.

Our understanding of transnational illicit networks, and of the challenges they represent, 

is clouded by three critical delusions. The first is that crime is crime, and it has been with us 

throughout human history, and that in this regard, “There is nothing new under the sun.” The 

Bible chronicles many cases of crime, black markets, and smuggling—all is part of the human 

experience. Unfortunately, this is a delusion—the wrong way to think about it. The velocity and 
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magnitude of illicit commerce today are unprecedented. Estimates of the global black market 

range from 2 to 25 percent of global product. The mobility of illicit commodities shipped in 

vast quantities via standardized shipping container units, and thus hidden, across the world is 

unprecedented. And the interconnections between illicit networks defying historical geographical, cultural, and motivational barriers are unprecedented. Ultimately, the clear and present 

danger constituted by these threats is something quite new under the sun.

A second debilitating delusion is that illicit networks and their activities are all about 

crime and criminals. We argue it is no longer merely about crime; it is beyond crime. Today it 

is about criminalized states and the future configuration of power within the state system. If 

you approach this challenge as merely a problem of crime and criminals, the traditional way 

of dealing with it requires the typical institutions: law enforcement, courts, and jails. Today’s 

challenge is about incentives and reinforcing the value of service in the public interest and the 

integrity of public administration. These and other normative values must be incubated and 

fortified in schools, churches, community organizations, and in the media through the disciplined application of incentives and disincentives. The delusion that you can deal with these 

issues only through traditional ways of crime fighting is very dangerous.

The third delusion is that illicit behavior is an aberration and the people involved in this 

business are deviants. The notion of essential deviant character has its origins in the work of 

Cesare Lombroso’s theory of “anthropological criminology.”2

 Essentially, the argument is that 

you are a criminal if you are deviant. In many countries, normalcy is defined by involvement in 

what we are here calling illicit networks and illicit commerce. Approximately 8 to 10 percent 

of China’s gross domestic product (GDP) is associated with the manufacture and export of 

counterfeit goods. This endeavor involves a lot of people, a lot of families, and a lot of economic 

activities related to something we call crime. For them, it is their daily life. Sixty percent of Afghanistan’s GDP is associated with poppy production, cultivation, and distribution. How many 

workers does this require? China and Afghanistan are two prominent country examples, but, in 

fact, every day millions of people all over the world wake up, go to work, work all day, and bring 

bread to their families, all thanks to doing something we label a criminal activity. Moreover, the 

counterfeit commodities and contraband they produce are consumed by ordinary individuals 

throughout the world, sometimes unknowingly, but very often in full knowledge of their illicit 

origin—for instance, when a packet of counterfeit cigarettes is purchased or a counterfeit car 

part is installed. Are all of these consumers deviants as well? Are the multitudes of gardeners, 

farm and restaurant workers, and nannies working illegally all deviants?

Ambiguity pervades this field. Three specific ambiguities that make analysis particularly 

difficult are the blurring between legal and illegal politics, between the legal and illegal private 

sector, and between legal and illegal philanthropy. The transnational criminal organizations 

that animate global illicit networks are businesses. For any highly regulated big business, it is 

absolutely normal to dedicate part of its revenues to influencing the regulators. The financial, 

pharmaceutical, defense, and food industries—indeed, all industry groups—engage in such 

activity. Public institutions including universities, hospitals, and media organizations do the 

same. In some countries, this is called corruption; in others, it is called lobbying. In the United 

States, the practice of using some of your business revenue to influence the very government 

officials who make decisions affecting your bottom line is pervasive. If a company that we 
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respect and whose products we routinely use (for example, Ford, Chevron, Microsoft, Google, 

Citigroup, or Harvard University) does this, why would we expect criminal enterprises not 

to do it as well? Because these companies are heavily regulated and their survival depends on 

governmental rules, it would be unreasonable to expect them not to try to influence those 

rules. The same applies to criminal enterprises, but to a much larger and dangerous extent. 

This represents the gray area between criminal enterprises and politics.

A fundamental rule of doing business and investing is diversification. If you have substantial assets and much of your revenue comes from a highly risky but high-yield activity, it 

is normal to take some of your accumulated profits and put them in a less risky activity. That 

is why many large criminal enterprises are investing in licit business activities. They invest in 

banks and in shipping, real estate, and trucking companies to support and expand their illicit 

activities. In other cases, they are just happy owners of lucrative and licit enterprises. When 

the ill-gotten gains of illicit commerce are recycled through normal and legal means into the 

financial system and generate additional revenue, is the knock-on activity licit or illicit? The 

answer to this important question differs country by country. This ambiguity between licit 

and illicit enterprise is very difficult to disentangle.

A third ambiguity is in the field of philanthropy. It is normal for large corporations to have 

significant philanthropic activities. They fund sports clubs, museums, hospitals, and schools 

with a broad range of concerns. If you look at the list of the owners of soccer clubs in the 

Balkans, you will see an amazing overlap between the ownership of these sports institutions 

that are part of the pride of the nation and the “most wanted” list. Recall that Pablo Escobar, 

a pioneer in the area of criminal philanthropy, started a lot of these activities in the 1980s in 

Medellín, Colombia. Though best known as the murderous leader of the Medellín Cartel, he 

was well known locally as one of the main providers of social services, sports activities, and 

protection for local youth. Hizballah, in Lebanon, is famous for its local provision of public 

services normally expected from the state, including public protection, home loans, public 

sanitation, and social welfare. Moreover, you will find that drug traffickers provide many of 

the social services in Brazil. You might also investigate the list of major financial supporters of 

big museums in Russia or Ukraine. The ambiguity between the philanthropy that we know 

and admire and the philanthropy that is undertaken by these criminal networks confuses the 

terrain for those trying to combat illicit networks.

Governments Give Way, Introducing the Criminal State

The international criminal networks that trade in all sorts of counterfeit and contraband—

drugs, humans, weapons, illegal timber, pharmaceuticals, car parts, cigarettes, etc.—have 

become so large, so global, so powerful, and so politically connected that they have evolved into 

a threat potentially greater even than that from international terrorism. Yet while terrorism 

looms large in the global security dialog, international criminal networks often continue to 

be seen dismissively as just crime, criminals, and law enforcement issues. These perceptions 

reinforce other characteristics of the field, for example, the profound asymmetry between 

those in charge of containing the growth of these illicit enterprises and the enterprises themselves. We are dealing with entrepreneurs who are at the forefront of globalization. These 
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are groups and individuals that see international opportunities earlier than most of us, even 

earlier than other multinationals. They are capable of recruiting and hiring some of the best 

talent in the world; they can afford highly trained and talented professionals in information 

technology, law, finance, and banking, as well as politicians, journalists, generals, judges, and 

diplomats. Meanwhile, the government agencies that have to deal with them are often highly 

resource-constrained.

By the way, we are not talking about the U.S. Government or the governments of its 

wealthy allies. The greatest threat is to governments in the developing world that have very 

limited resources and multiple compelling and competing demands on those resources. 

Many of these nations, though often small and poor, are the partners upon which we must 

increasingly depend to support our efforts in counterterrorism, combating transnational crime, 

providing humanitarian and disaster relief, peacekeeping efforts, and meeting other emerging 

challenges. These include not-so-small countries such as Mexico, Nigeria, and Iraq. Even in 

the case of the United States, there is an asymmetry between the capabilities, resources, dynamism, and speed of networked illicit organizations and networks and those of the agencies 

tasked to combat them.

Looking back over the past generation one cannot easily find many instances of strategic 

success in the struggle against illicit networks. There have undoubtedly been successful campaigns against specific organizations or individuals. One can find instances in which a law 

enforcement agency or a government has neutralized a specific network or ring or taken down 

notorious individuals. People go to jail—some are executed—and networks are dismantled. But 

any government would be very hard-pressed to show even one market for illicit internationally 

traded goods or activities in their country that is smaller today than it was 20 years ago. The 

Medellín and Cali cartels that once terrorized Colombia have been dismantled, and the poster 

child drug lord Pablo Escobar was killed. Yet the enterprise was replaced by a less monopolistic 

(or duopolistic) arrangement and the quantity of cocaine coming from Colombia has not decreased. Indeed globally, “Long-term seizure trends show that cocaine, heroin, and morphine as 

well as cannabis seizures—in volume terms—almost doubled between 1998 and 2009, while 

seizures of ATS [amphetamine-type stimulants] more than tripled over the same period.”3

According to a much-cited 2008 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 

report, “The share of counterfeit and pirated goods in world trade is estimated to have increased 

from 1.85 percent in 2000 to 1.95 percent in 2007.”4 More recent estimates project the global 

value of counterfeit and pirated goods could reach $1.77 trillion by 2015. The same growth 

trend is likely to be found in illicit trafficking in persons, weapons, natural resources (for example, 

timber, minerals, and wildlife), and cultural items (art and archeological items, among others).

States and governments around the world are losing the battle. Moreover, the problem has 

evolved beyond criminal networks. It has evolved beyond even the convergence, globalization, 

and diversification of illicit networks described and discussed throughout this book. What we 

must worry about today and tomorrow is the emergence of criminal states; governments that 

have succumbed to this scourge and been taken over by criminals, and in fact governments 

that have become themselves criminal enterprises. Our collective lack of understanding of 

how criminal enterprises become governments, and how some governments have taken over 

criminal enterprises not to dismantle them but to use them for their financial, political, and 
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military advantage, represents a dangerous gap. Criminals are becoming politicians and government officials. And top government officials and political leaders are doubling as the heads 

of vast and often international criminal enterprises.

The term criminal state has been used to characterize countries as diverse as North Korea, 

Russia, and Guinea-Bissau. What exactly do we mean by “criminal state”? In the simplest terms, a 

criminal is one who has committed (or has been convicted of committing) a crime. By extension, 

a criminal state is a state that has committed a crime. But we mean more than that; by criminal 

state we generally imply systematic behavior and systemic characteristics. We certainly mean more 

than mere complicity in illegal acts by corrupt individuals encumbering official positions, though 

that is perhaps where we should begin. We are implying an ongoing pattern of engagement in 

activities that contravene international law. Criminal state implies not only an ongoing pattern 

of criminal behavior by individuals, but by a large number of officials, or even by whole organs 

of the state apparatus, and the deployment of governmental assets and resources in support of 

criminal undertakings. In some cases—which we will describe in this chapter—organs of the 

state will even have formal assigned responsibility for engaging in criminal activities.

Rachel Locke suggests that criminal networks interact with the state in three ways: 1) 

corruption describes a relationship in which a state permits or condones the actions of illicit 

networks; 2) infiltration is a symbiotic relationship in which agents of illicit organizations or 

networks are positioned within the government itself; and 3) competition is the situation in 

which the state attempts to enforce its primacy over illicit organizations and networks.5 In 

only the second characterization—infiltration—is the state itself directly complicit in the 

illicit activity. This typology, though useful in other contexts, is not effective in disaggregating 

the complex of phenomena described broadly as criminal states. It ignores the situation in 

which the state itself is the criminal agent, as opposed to just a few individuals at high levels.

Michael Hanlon defines criminal states as “organizations that fulfill the role of the state, 

even though they are not recognized as an official governing authority.”6 This definition seems 

inherently problematic though, as he specifically distinguishes the organizations he is describing (revolutionary movements) from the existing state apparatus, arguing that the former has 

usurped certain narrow roles of the latter. But the autonomous state itself remains in this 

construct—perhaps not effective, but not criminal either. This line of analysis is followed by 

Cockayne and Lupel, who distinguish between predatory groups that compete with the state 

in open conflict, parasitic groups that extract rents from populations and authority structures, 

and symbiotic groups that “coexist with existing authority structures, either through overlaps 

of membership or through other clandestine arrangements of reciprocity and joint venture 

arrangements.”7

 In this analysis the symbiotic groups would come closest to our understanding 

of the criminal state. If symbiosis is understood as a process, its advanced stages, in which the 

state and the criminal organization cannot be distinguished, constitute a level of criminalization of the state itself.

Bayart, Ellis, and Hibou provide a more comprehensive definition of criminal state:

The criminalization of politics and of the state may be regarded as the routinization, at 

the very heart of political and governmental institutions and circuits, of practices whose 

criminal nature is patent, whether as defined by the law of the country in question, 
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or as defined by the norms of international law and international organizations or 

as so viewed by the international community, and most particularly that constituted 

by aid donors.8

This is closer to the approach we take, as it pins criminal complicity not merely on actors 

external to the formal state apparatus, but on the state itself. The authors further identify 

six indicators of state criminalization that collectively provide what might be thought of as a 

comprehensive state criminalization profile:

• the use for private purposes of the legitimate organs of state violence by those in 

authority, and the function of such violence as an instrument in the service of their 

strategies of accumulation of wealth

• the existence of a hidden, collective structure of power which surrounds and even 

controls the official occupant of the most senior political office, and which benefits 

from the privatization of the legitimate means of coercion, or is able with impunity 

to have recourse to a private and illegitimate apparatus of violence, notably in the 

form or organized gangs

• the participation by this collective and semiclandestine power structure in economic 

activities considered to be criminal in international law, or which are so classified by 

international organizations or in terms of moral codes that enjoy wide international 

currency

• the insertion of such economic activities in international networks of crime

• an osmosis between a historically constituted culture that is specific to the conduct 

of such activities in any given society and the transnational cultural repertoires that 

serve as vehicles for processes of globalization

• the macroeconomic and macropolitical importance, as distinct from the occasional 

or marginal role, of such practices on the part of power holders and of these activities 

of accumulation in the overall architecture of a given society.9

However, by their own admission very few African states—and by implication other 

states—fulfill the criteria they propose as characterizing the criminal state. This attempt at a 

comprehensive definition is perhaps overreaching in that by its comprehensiveness it renders 

itself inapplicable to many of the states we might wish to cover in a discourse on criminal states. 

Though nuanced and useful in creating an intelligible narrative, it assumes a binary distinction 

between the criminal and the noncriminal state. Perhaps the discussion need not necessarily 

be focused on labeling a state criminal or noncriminal, but rather on elaborating on the degree 

of criminalization in the state.

Some authors have focused on the morphology of criminal states. Bunker and Bunker 

distinguish four criminal state forms “derived from jihadi insurgency, state failure-lawless 
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zones, criminal takeover, and oligarchic regimes.”10 An innovative attribute of this framework 

is its inclusion of criminal states animated by religious or ideological motivations, such as 

Afghanistan’s Taliban or Lebanon’s Hizballah. These differ from the typical assumption of the 

venal motivations of criminals and criminal states. According to this pair of scholars, “Such a 

state is anathema to the modern state-form and criminal in its orientation because, ultimately, 

it was to merge with other conquered territories to form the new Caliphate envisioned by 

al-Qaeda.”11 Less persuasive is their description of criminal states emerging from state failure 

and lawless zones. It can be argued that what they are describing here is a condition arising 

from the absence of a state, rather than an entity engaged in criminal activity.

What we propose below is an exploratory effort to disaggregate further the basket of 

states referred to as criminal states, based not on their motivations or morphology but on their 

degree of criminalization. We have argued elsewhere that “increasingly, fighting transnational 

crime must mean more than curbing the traffic of counterfeit goods, drugs, weapons, and 

people; it must also involve preventing and reversing the criminalization of governments.”12

Likewise, to preserve the sovereignty of legitimate states, we must prevent and reverse this 

corrosive process. But to meet these challenges, we must distinguish between states with 

corrupt officials, states that operate large-scale criminal enterprises, and states that are themselves large-scale criminal enterprises. The typology developed below is intended to assist in 

this effort at differentiation. Four characterizations are proposed to describe differing levels 

of criminal network entanglement with the state. To be clear, the dynamics of transition from 

one level of criminal consolidation to another must be the focus of future research. We do not 

assume that these levels represent a linear progression in which a state progresses from one 

level to the next with inevitability. We do not yet know if that is true. We merely know that 

there are different degrees of state criminality and that effectively preventing or reversing the 

further decline into criminalization will require a full array of tools and approaches, as well as 

a high degree of sensitivity to individual case and context-specificity.

Criminal Penetration

As noted above, corruption and illicit networks exist in all states alongside the normal complement of governmental and civil society structures and networks. Their presence may be more 

or less extensive, more or less corrosive, and more or less disruptive, but they are always there. 

In some states there may be a terrorist or insurgent presence alongside traditional criminal 

networks and organizations. Though terrorists, insurgents, and criminals do not inevitably 

interact, it is well known that their mutual hesitation to interact has declined and such interactions are becoming more common. At a certain point, what we might call the normal—or an 

acceptable level of—consolidation among illicit networks within a state is exceeded, and a process of erosion or atrophy of the state itself may begin and the legitimacy of the state, already 

often tenuous, becomes even further compromised in the eyes of its citizens. The presence or 

expansion of criminality becomes an international security threat when the impact of criminal, 

insurgent, or terrorist activity is felt in other states. And such cross-border effects inevitably 

become dramatically more likely when groups on either side of a border establish persistent 

connectivity and interaction.
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While disturbing, this is not the essence of the criminal state phenomenon. It is when 

the governing apparatus of the state itself is co-opted and even transformed—thus giving 

access to public resources and other assets to non- or even antigovernment interests—that 

we encounter the criminal state. A customs agent in the pay of contraband traffickers may 

compromise an inspection. A tax official may be paid to overlook money-laundering activity. 

A judge may be on retainer to protect the interests of criminals or other agents acting against 

the public interest. Such penetration pits the assets and resources of the state against the public 

interest, a central characteristic of a criminal state.

South Africa

In 2006, the heads of 152 nations met in Brazil for the 75th general assembly of the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol), one of the few institutions we have to deal globally 

with what is inherently a global problem. The opening ceremony was addressed by South 

African Mr. Jackie Selebi, at the time the National Commissioner of the South African Police 

Service and President of Interpol. He said that the Interpol mission is to ensure and promote 

the widest possible mutual assistance among all criminal authorities globally, and that we need 

to find systems to make sure that our borders and border controls are on a firm footing. This is a 

very noble cause. Ironically, at the very moment he was speaking the Commissioner had another 

job—shielding drug traffickers from police scrutiny in South Africa. Today Mr. Selebi is in jail 

in South Africa, convicted of profiting personally from the activities of international drug trafficker Glenn Agliotti. He was effectively an embedded agent of a drug-trafficking organization.

Is South Africa a criminal state? It is a state struggling with profound economic problems 

and a painful and not yet completed political transition from its apartheid past, but it would be 

unfair to label South Africa a criminal state. In the Failed State Index for 2012, South Africa 

ranks 115 out of 178 states in terms of vulnerability to state failure13—a reasonable ranking 

given South Africa’s history, economy, and demographic profile. Unquestionably the major 

organs of the South African state—the legislature, the judiciary, the executive, the army, and the 

police—have instances of corruption, but none appears to engage in a pervasive and persistent 

pattern of violation of the law or of the public interest. South Africa has retained its Freedom 

House designation as a “free” country since the mid-1990s.14 Transparency International 

ranked South Africa 64th of 183 countries surveyed in 2011 for perceived corruption—not 

a glowing recommendation, yet not abysmal either.15 However, with corrupt individuals like 

Selebi, criminal penetration has begun. And the proof is that he was caught and imprisoned. 

The same is true in Mexico, where the state still has the will and capability to attack powerful 

cartels even though the government has been penetrated.

Criminal Infiltration

Russia

The Russia that emerged from the ashes of the USSR in 1991 was already permeated by 

corruption and deeply rooted organized crime—a legacy of the “400 year history of Russia’s 

peculiar administrative bureaucracy . . . especially shaped into its current form during the 
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seven decades of Soviet hegemony that ended in 1991.”16 Organized crime remains pervasive 

throughout Russia today, but its nature has evolved. “Now, you have a bunch of law enforcement 

people who are essentially organized criminals with unlimited power to ruin lives, take property 

and do whatever they like and that’s far worse than I have ever seen in Russia before. Russia is 

essentially a criminal state now.”17 While this characterization of Russia as a criminal state may 

be an exaggeration by an individual involved in a legal dispute, criminality has metastasized 

throughout the Russian state. A study under the auspices of the U.S. National Institute of Justice (NIJ) states, “What is unique in this situation is the degree to which criminal groups have 

infiltrated the political process. The Uralmash and central groups in particular have succeeded 

in electing political candidates favorably disposed towards them, in opposing other candidates, 

and even in electing their own members to office.”18 This is not only true in the Urals, but has 

parallels in St. Petersburg, Moscow, the Far East, and all other regions. What is distinctive here 

is that illicit organizations are “electing their own members to office.” Once illicit networks are 

able to infiltrate “their own members” into positions of governmental responsibility they can 

subvert the legitimate intent of the state from the inside for ulterior—criminal—purposes.

While Russian state institutions continue to engage in traditional governmental activities—making and enforcing laws, adjudicating disputes, providing services admittedly often 

without competence or efficiency—the government often practices either neglect or complicity 

with illicit network activity throughout the country. It is ranked by Transparency International 

as 143 out of 183 in terms of the perception of public corruption.19 The NIJ report goes on 

to say, “These abuses are not idiosyncratic to particular persons who happen to be in power at 

a particular time; they are endemic to the system of power.”20 This situation corresponds to 

Locke’s “corruption,” or “infiltration.”21

Russia would appear to represent a more pervasive criminalization of the state than 

South Africa, where an individual or several individuals were abusing state power for illicit 

purposes, yet the legitimacy of the state itself has not been fatally compromised. Where Russia 

differs from South Africa is in the degree to which it has become delegitimized within its own 

population. What does this mean? How do we know when a state has been delegitimized? 

As noted, the public perception of corruption in Russia is significantly greater than in South 

Africa, Russia ranking 143rd out of 183 countries, compared to 64th for South Africa (the 

lower score corresponding to a public perception of less corruption). Inevitably such a judgment must be subjective—that is, it is the opinion of the analyst; however, there is some work 

toward measuring state legitimacy through the use of substitutive variables. Gilley measures 

state legitimacy in terms of public perceptions of state legality and moral justification, as well 

as public “acts of consent” that reflect recognition of state authority and compliance with its 

requirements. By Gilley’s methodology, South Africa ranks 19th out of 72 countries in legitimacy, following immediately behind Australia, Spain, and Britain. Russia, on the other hand, 

ranks 72nd out of 72 countries, falling just behind Armenia and Pakistan.22

Kenya

The case of Kenya is illustrative if ambiguous. Kenya is by some measures a successful African 

state, ranked “partly free” by Freedom House, and demonstrating acceptable economic performance that led the World Bank to say, “with growth at 5 percent, Kenya’s per capita income 
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now exceeds US$800 for the first time, and the country is firmly on the path to Middle Income 

status.”23 Yet despite this reported respectable political and economic performance, Kenya 

exhibits the characteristics of advanced criminal infiltration, with a very low level of legitimacy 

as perceived by Kenyans. According to the Fund for Peace, it ranks 16th most prone to state 

failure out of 180 states, with a very poor score for “legitimacy,” one of the 12 indicators utilized 

by Fund for Peace in constructing the “Failed States Index.”24 Reporting on a 1-year study 

of transnational organized crime, Gastrow concludes, “Criminal networks have penetrated 

the political class and there are growing concerns about their ability to fund elections and to 

exercise influence in parliament and in procurement processes.”25 Gastrow describes “a slow 

degeneration [of state institutions] until it becomes clear that they are no longer functional.”26

Ambiguity arises, however, with respect to the degree to which Kenyan authorities are 

able to resist the gradual process of criminalization and execute effective countermeasures 

against embedded criminal interests. Gastrow argues that “impunity is rife for political and 

government elites and hardly any prosecutions for transnational organized crime have taken 

place.”27 Furthermore, “Kenya’s police no longer have the capacity to effectively to investigate 

and prosecute powerful suspected organized crime figures.”28 Yet ultimately, Gastrow equivocates, “Even though Kenya is experiencing high levels of corruption and organized crime, it 

would be wrong to conclude that it has reached the stage where a central function of its political 

and government institutions is to routinely engage in criminal practices.”29 It therefore fails to 

meet the “routinization standard” set out by Bayart, Ellis, and Hibou,30 leading Gastrow to 

state, “The research findings do not justify Kenya being labeled as a criminalized state, but its 

foundations are under attack.”31

Criminal Capture

A significant threshold is crossed when the commercial interests of corrupt individuals or specific organizations give way to institutional imperatives that support illicit activity. In the case 

of South Africa, clearly Selebi was acting in his own self-interest and was under no duress from 

the state or its organizations to do so. Others have likely been doing the same, but not to the 

degree that the fundamental legitimacy of the state is compromised. In Russia, organized crime 

and transnational illicit networks are prolific and have infiltrated many state organs. Indeed, 

the Kremlin itself houses many top-level “coordinators.” However, though the legitimacy of the 

Russian state—already questionable for a variety of reasons—may be further compromised 

in the view of many or even most Russians, the state maintains independence and the ability 

to pursue effective countermeasures against illicit networks. Russia suffers from, but is not 

yet hostage to, the illicit networks it tolerates or engages. This is a threshold point—while the 

Russian state does not systematically or effectively impede the activities of illicit networks, 

when there is any doubt of who is in charge, the state can and does enforce its will. Indeed, 

Russian President Putin has shown the capacity and persistent willingness to demonstrate that 

no power in Russia can stand up to the power of the presidency. The state thus keeps control 

of those illicit networks it “owns.”

It is this latter capacity, to take effective countermeasures against embedded illicit networks, that suggests Kenya is not yet a captured state. Gastrow acknowledges that “despite 
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Kenya’s huge problems with issues of corruption, crime and governance, there is a critical mass 

of senior government officials in place that is determined to get to the root of these problems 

in order to solve them. . . . These officials and the departments they work in have real potential 

to make Kenya succeed in its fight against corruption and organized crime.”32 The ability to 

fight back to cure itself demonstrates state resilience and resistance to capture.

The captured state has lost the capacity to take effective action against embedded illicit 

networks. Hellman and Kaufmann define state capture as, “the efforts of firms to shape the 

laws, policies, and regulations of the state to their own advantage by providing illicit private 

gains to public officials.”33 The data underlying their path-breaking work was drawn from 

the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey, conducted under the joint 

auspices of the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development 

(EBRD), and consists of interviews with owners and managers of hundreds of firms in the 

EBRD area. In cases of state capture, the state is caught in a vicious cycle of misgovernance 

from which it cannot extract itself and in which it suffers damage it is unable to repair. “Institutional reforms necessary to improve governance are undermined by collusion between 

powerful firms and state officials who reap substantial private gains from the continuation 

of weak governance.”34

While pioneering, their focus on interactions between ordinary firms and state officials 

limits the utility of their analysis by excluding the complex and even more insidious interactions between the state and entities outside the ordinary market economy, such as organized 

crime groups. Kupferschmidt expands Hellman and Kaufmann’s definition by developing 

a matrix of 13 cases of “strategic uses of illicit political finance used toward state capture.”35

In this expanded conceptualization, the agents of state capture include warlords, organized 

crime, drug cartels, guerrillas, rebel groups, oligarchs, and rogue governmental elements, as 

well as corporations. The matrix includes countries as diverse as Afghanistan, Colombia, 

Guinea-Bissau, Italy, and the United States.

Venezuela

The Kupferschmidt matrix does not purport to be a comprehensive register of state capture 

but rather offers an illustrative sample. It does not include the interesting case of Venezuela. 

General Henry Rangel Silva currently serves as the Venezuelan Minister of Defense. In 2008, 

the U.S. Treasury ordered the freezing of Silva’s U.S. accounts due to his involvement in 

assisting the Colombian terrorist organization FARC with their narcotrafficking enterprise. 

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Venezuela now accounts for 

more than half of the cocaine shipments to Europe, often via Africa. The cocaine produced in 

Andean countries goes to Venezuela and from there to Europe, mostly via Africa. In the past 

decade, Venezuela has become the heart of a vast clandestine network that moves cocaine in 

great quantities around the world. Maps of flights of private planes going from the Caribbean 

to Africa show that in 2000 there was almost no traffic, while today there is a dense network 

of flights. This evidence strongly supports the case that Venezuela is well along in becoming 

a criminal state.

The question is whether Venezuela has the capacity to heal itself or has been irreversibly 

captured. Obviously, a change of regime could have a significant impact on this question. 
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However, under the current regime of Hugo Chávez, the answer appears to be no. Farah 

argues that a criminal state is one

where the senior leadership is aware of and involved—either actively or through passive acquiescence—on behalf of the state in transitional criminal enterprises, where 

TOC [transnational organized crime] is used as an instrument of statecraft, and 

where levels of state power are incorporated into the operational structure of one or 

more TOC groups.36

Arguably, this definition fuses two distinct phenomena; the participation either passive 

or active of senior officials in criminal activity, and the convergence of state and criminal organizations as crime is used as a tool of statecraft and state organs become functional parts of 

criminal operations. Venezuela clearly meets Farah’s first criterion: senior officials are involved 

both actively and passively in a wide range of criminal activities. At this point in time it is no 

longer clear to what degree President Chávez remains in control. He undoubtedly continues 

steadfast in pursuit of his Bolivarian project, which though we may find it repulsive and 

misguided is not inherently criminal. However, Venezuela may have passed the point where 

Chávez’s will is sufficient to clean up the country, or at least effectively counter the criminal 

activity within its borders.

Guinea-Bissau

Guinea-Bissau, on the other hand, may have crossed over the threshold. This small West 

African state is deeply mired in narcotics trafficking, serving as a major transit point between 

source regions in Latin America and demand centers in Europe and the United States. It is 

among the least developed countries in the world, ranking 176th out of 187 countries in the 

“2011 Human Development Index” published by the UN Development Programme.37 Under 

the Drug Kingpin Act, Washington has imposed financial sanctions on several members of the 

ruling elite, including air force head Ibraima Papa Camara and former navy chief Jose Americo 

Bubo Na Tchuto.38 Guinea-Bissau ranks 154th out of 172 in the Transparency International 

“Corruption Perceptions Index” for 2011.39 Though not ranked in the Gilley state legitimacy 

index, the succession of military coups in recent years and the absence of state capacity in 

virtually all sectors should cast doubt on any pretense to legitimacy. If we accept the above, we 

can comfortably place Guinea-Bissau in the ranks of criminally infested states.

Does Guinea-Bissau have the ability to fight back? The evidence suggests not. Symptomatic is a 2006 case in which two Latin Americans were detained while in possession of 670 kg 

of cocaine. The army secured their release and the disposition of the cocaine went unknown. 

In 2007 Guinea-Bissau police were able to seize 635 kg of cocaine, but “traffickers escaped with 

the remainder of the consignment believed to total around 2.5 mega ton of cocaine [which had 

been flown into a military airstrip] because police did not have the manpower or vehicles to 

give chase.”40 Government spokespersons routinely dismiss allegations of official involvement 

while acknowledging the state is woefully unequipped to meet the challenge.
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The Criminal State

Criminal Sovereignty

The conceptualizations of state capture above might be characterized as agent-centric. This 

level of criminalization goes beyond individual or even a multiplicity of agents; it is the dynamic 

of institutionalization. This is to say that the very institutions of the state are subject to subversion and perverse evolution, becoming in the process criminal enterprises. Thompson explains:

[L]ike all forms of corruption, the institutional kind involves the improper use of public 

office for private purposes. But unlike individual corruption, it encompasses conduct that 

under certain conditions is a necessary or even desirable part of institutional duties. . . . 

What makes the conduct improper is institutional in the sense that it violates principles 

that promote the distinctive purposes of the institution. It is still individuals who are 

the agents of institutional corruption and individuals who should be held accountable 

for it, but their actions implicate the institution in a way that the actions of the agents 

of individual corruption do not.41

In her robust description of state capture, Grzymala-Busse builds her definition around 

four strategies; clientelism, predation, redistribution without democratic competition, and 

capture of state assets under competitive conditions:

All these strategies involve the formation of distinct state institutions and capacities. 

State seizure does not simply corrode the state. Although extractive rulers seek to 

maximize their discretion by weakening regulation and oversight, they also construct 

rules and durable practices of redistribution, budgeting, and authority. It is not simply 

the case that “clientelism thrives when government institutions are weak” (Manzetti 

& Wilson, 2007, p. 955), but rather, that specific institutions are built to serve the 

extractive goals of rulers, sometimes with unintended consequences (Tilly, 1992).42

This builds on Hellman, Kaufmann, Kupferschmidt, and Thompson by further clarifying 

the malignant evolution of the state institutions themselves within the process of advanced 

criminalization and previews a sound characterization of the criminal state. In the criminal 

state, individuals are no longer able to function effectively without bending to or even supporting the new, illicit organizational mission. Indeed, to resist complicity in the criminal mission 

generally entails significant personal risk and cost or even loss of life.

Charles Taylor’s Liberia

Convicted war criminal Charles Taylor was president of Liberia from 1997 to 2003 and controlled most of the territory of the small West African state from the early 1990s on. During 

that period, he effectively turned the apparatus of the state into a criminal enterprise for the 

private enrichment of himself and his cronies through extraction of national resources. He also 

exploited political instability in neighboring countries to extend his reach into their resource 

bases. Farah writes, “What set Taylor apart was his ability to connect the state apparatus with 

different criminal and terrorist groups in order to form a single enterprise—an enterprise 
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Miklaucic and Naím 

that would benefit its members tremendously, but threaten the stability of West Africa and 

eventually the world.”43

During his administration, Taylor incorporated the security services, state administration 

agencies, natural resource management, and the economic and financial organs of the state into 

a criminal enterprise. This is not a case of corrupt officials presiding over criminal enterprises 

that operate outside the reach of the state, but the transformation of the state into a criminal 

enterprise with no other purpose than its criminal agenda. Under Taylor, the customs and immigration services and passport agency supported the international transit of known criminals 

in league with Taylor and his accomplices. They were also critical in making Liberia a meeting 

place and safe haven for terrorists, criminals, insurgents, and the like. The shipping and aircraft 

registries were used to provide cover for criminal air and seafaring fleets transporting all manner of contraband. In the words of the late Liberian journalist Tom Kamara, Taylor created “a 

criminal state with the capacity of extending its wings around West Africa and beyond. Illegal 

passports issuance, money laundering, the proliferation of dubious banks, and drug trafficking 

are finding an accommodating environment in Liberia.”44 It is the fusion of the state with the 

illicit networks comprised of insurgent groups (such as the Revolutionary United Front), transnational terrorist organizations (such as al Qaeda), and transnational criminal organizations 

that distinguish the criminal state. Taylor’s Liberia became “a functioning criminal enterprise 

while continuing to enjoy—and use for illegal purposes—many of the international benefits 

of statehood (e.g., the ability to issue recognized diplomatic passports, maintain shipping and 

airplane registries, control border entry and exit points, and collect taxes.”45

North Korea

Perhaps the most extreme example of a criminal state is the People’s Democratic Republic of 

Korea (DPRK). The DPRK government is reportedly directly involved in a wide range of 

transnational criminal activities sanctioned at the very highest level of the state, and implicating officials at all levels. These activities include illicit drug production and trafficking, foreign 

currency counterfeiting, trafficking in counterfeit cigarettes and pharmaceuticals, insurance 

fraud, and trafficking in humans, among others. Estimates of the illicit revenues from these 

activities range from $500 million to $1 billion per year.46 What is distinctive about North 

Korea is the degree to which the state apparatus has been converted to criminal enterprise. 

This conversion involves the DPRK diplomatic service, the security services, many organs of 

public administration, the public manufacturing and agricultural sectors, state-owned trading 

companies, and unique state organs established explicitly for the purpose of criminal activity.

The criminalization of the North Korean state has taken place over a long period. As 

early as 1976, 17 North Korean diplomats were expelled from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, 

and Finland for trafficking in black market cigarettes, liquor, and hashish. According to the 

Danish Prime Minister, their actions were not for personal gain, implying that the actions were 

sanctioned by their masters in Pyongyang.47 With the discontinuation of substantial subsidies 

from the defunct Soviet Union in 1991, followed by deteriorating economic conditions and 

the famine of 1994–1998, and perhaps influenced by the leadership succession from Kim Il 

Sung to Kim Jong Il in 1994, state criminalization appears to have accelerated throughout 

the 1990s. Perl, writing in 2004, stated, “Since 1976, North Korea has been linked to over 
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The Criminal State

50 verifiable incidents involving drug seizures in at least 20 countries. A significant number 

of these cases involved arrest or detention of North Korean diplomats or officials.”48 Indeed, 

overseas missions and embassies are essentially used as autonomous profit centers responsible 

for covering their own costs in country and sending excess revenues back to Pyongyang.49

An extraordinary office known as Bureau 39 (or Office 39) was established in 1974 to 

generate foreign currency by whatever means necessary on behalf of the regime. “To commit 

its criminal acts, Office 39 uses the powers and resources of a nation-state—merchant and 

military vessels, diplomatic and embassy posts, as well as state run companies and collective 

farms.”50 Thus, criminal activity is not ancillary to the work of Bureau 39 or the corruption of 

specific officials; it is rather the primary function of the organization. Bureau 39 runs numerous 

front companies with offices throughout the world and “is involved in drug production and 

distribution, smuggling, money laundering, currency counterfeiting and product piracy and 

illegal gold trafficking.”51 This is the signature attribute of a criminal state. As Kan, Bechtol, 

and Collins write, “North Korea directs its national instruments of power to commit crimes 

in other states.”52 Bureau 39 is the hub of this extensive criminal enterprise, managing the 

complicit organizations, activities and processes, and revenue.

In North Korea, we do not have a case of criminals penetrating and infiltrating the 

state. It is not the case in the DPRK that criminals have become sovereigns and attained the 

prerogatives of sovereignty. Rather it is the state itself —the sovereign—that is the criminal. 

Criminal enterprise is its purpose and there can be no personal success for a North Korean 

official who defies this institutional imperative. Again quoting Kan, Bechtol, and Collins:

North Korea practices a form of “criminal sovereignty” that is unique in the contemporary international security arena. North Korea uses state sovereignty to protect 

itself from external interference in its domestic affairs while dedicating a portion of its 

government and the KWP [Korean Workers’ Party] to carrying out illicit international activities in defiance of international law and the domestic laws of numerous 

other nations.53

This completes the spectrum ranging from criminal penetration, common to most if 

not all states, to the level of criminal infestation leading to loss of legitimacy, criminal capture 

in which the state is helpless to repair or reform itself, to criminal sovereignty; the state as 

criminal. Is this level of criminal sovereignty unique to North Korea? It is doubtful. Charles 

Taylor’s Liberia, Saddam’s Iraq, and others past and present may have been criminalized to 

this extent, but deeper examination is necessary. Ironically, in the case of North Korea the 

combination of endemic economic failure and comprehensive international sanctions drives 

it farther into the realm of transnational crime and illicit networks. Its networks for trafficking 

contraband and counterfeit items, money laundering, etc., are extensive. “These networks are 

adaptive, resilient, covert, and widespread; they could be put to use for the transfer of nuclear 

material from North Korea to other dangerous regimes or to violent nonstate actors.”54 The 

existence of these networks combined with the DPRK’s track record of operating in flagrant 

violation of the international rule-based system, including its 2003 withdrawal from the 

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, justify grave trepidation.
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An Existential Threat

What are existential threats? Are they limited to those that result in mushroom clouds? 

Throughout the Cold War years, the Soviet Union, with its terrifying military machine, was 

clearly perceived as a clear and present threat to U.S. national and international security. But 

also perceived as posing an existential threat was the international spread of the Marxist/

Communist ideology. The Soviet threat led to substantial institutional innovation within the 

United States and the West, such as the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. 

It also resulted in various tools the U.S. Government created largely to fight the ideological 

battle against the existential threat posed by international communism, such as the U.S. Agency for International Development, U.S. Information Agency, Radio Free Europe, and Radio 

Liberty. Though these latter efforts were not notably effective, they indicated the magnitude 

of the threat perceived.

Spanish prosecutor Jose Grinda Gonzalez was responsible for investigating organized 

crime particularly coming from Russia, Eastern Europe, Ukraine, Belarus, Chechnya, and 

elsewhere. In Grinda’s view, in the nations he calls mafia states the interlocking networks of 

criminals and political leaders is vast, deep, and permanent. One cannot differentiate between 

the activities of the government and organized criminal groups; they are one in the same. He 

reports examples of going after some criminals and criminal groups and discovering that he 

was not only dealing with them; they were able to mobilize their nations’ diplomats, military, 

governments, judiciary, and so on. “Here I am, a prosecutor, a magistrate in Spain, but on the 

other side of me I face the best lawyers that can be hired in Spain and I face nation-states that 

are deploying diplomats, the military, intelligence and spies.” This invokes the point made 

above concerning asymmetry and underscores the challenges we face in containing, let alone 

reversing, the decay within the global rule-based system of states.

Does the emergence of criminal states pose an existential threat to U.S. national interests 

or to international security or is this just a marginal issue? We believe unequivocally that this 

threat is at the least very substantial, and has the potential to become existential if the trends 

it generates remained effectively unchallenged. Although our analytic, policy, development, 

and military communities are still at a very primitive stage of understanding and intellectual 

development, the evidence of risk is pervasive and frightening. While not measurable in megatons or body counts, the rapid erosion of a fundamental principle of modern governance—the 

dedication of the state to the public interest—is an insidious threat to the state system as we 

know it. The proliferation of criminal states would represent a profound disruption in the 

contemporary system for the preservation of global order.

We need to be selective and prioritize the greatest threats, perhaps even letting go for the 

time being those that might be characterized as nuisance risks. If we have scarce resources, what 

should we prioritize? Should we spend time, money, and other resources pursuing those who 

produce and sell counterfeit children’s books or dedicate those resources to pursuing people 

who are trafficking in children? Should we put the same effort into going after people who are 

stealing Microsoft software and plagiarizing and copying programs and apps as we put into 

the effort to stop people from selling centrifuges for nuclear enrichment on the black market?
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The Criminal State

Fighting these illicit networks is no longer about drugs, counterfeits, weapons, terrorists, 

or insurgents. It is about defending the integrity of the system of viable sovereign states and the 

fundamental structure of global order. The challenge is preventing and reversing the criminalization of states and governments. In meeting the emerging challenges of the 21st century, we 

cannot be everywhere, do everything, prevent every wrong, and protect every right. There is 

absolutely no hope in fighting everything, from the counterfeiting of Harry Potter books and 

Prada bags, to trafficking of humans, narcotics, and every other kind of contraband, and to 

countering terrorism, insurgency, and the many other destructive activities of illicit networks 

around the world. We must be selective. Concentrating on preserving the legitimacy and sovereignty of governments and of the rule-based structure of global order must be the priority. 

Many states have already suffered criminal infestation and are well on their way to criminal 

state capture or even criminal sovereignty. These are the same governments on which the 

United States and other countries must depend as partners in the struggle against international 

terrorism, transnational organized crime, and other emerging international security challenges. 

These often-feeble states must deal with the international financial system and its regulatory 

system. They will have to deal with fighting poverty and with developing alliances to deal with 

the long litany of problems that are no longer amenable to solutions by any country acting 

alone. The need for global collaboration has never been greater, nor has the risk to our potential 

partners as they lose ground in the struggle to maintain sovereignty free of criminalization.

Notes

1

 Moisés Naím, “Mafia States: Organized Crime Takes Office,” Foreign Affairs 91, no. 3 (May/June 2012); see 

also, Moisés Naím, Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats Are Hijacking the Global Economy (New York: 

Doubleday, 2006). 2

 Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909) was an Italian criminologist who founded the “Italian positivist school of 

criminology.” His key argument was that criminal nature is inherited and represents a regression from normal 

human development. 3

 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), “2011 World Drug Report”(New York: UNODC), 22. 4

 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), The Economic Impact of Counterfeiting 

and Piracy 2008 (Paris: OECD), available at <www.oecd.org/sti/counterfeiting>. 5

 Rachel Locke, Organized Crime, Conflict and Fragility: A New Approach (New York: International Peace 

Institute, July 2012). 6

 Michael Hanlon, “The Cooption of Revolutionary Movements into Criminal States,” January 25, 2009, available 

at <http://bss.sfsu.edu/economics/newsevents/pacdev/Papers/Hanlon.pdf>. 7

 James Cockayne and Adam Lupel, “Introduction: Rethinking the Relationship Between Peace Operations and 

Organized Crime,” International Peacekeeping 16, no. 1 (February 2009), 4–19. 8

 Jean-François Bayart, Stephen Ellis, and Béatrice Hibou, The Criminalization of the State in Africa (Bloomington: 

Indiana University Press, 1999). 9

 Ibid.

10 Robert J. Bunker and Pamela L. Bunker, “Defining Criminal States,” Global Crime 7, nos. 3–4 (August–November, 2006). 11 Ibid.

12 Naím, “Mafia States.”

13 Fund for Peace, “Failed States Index 2012,” available at <www.fundforpeace.org>.

14 South Africa has maintained a Freedom House rating of at least 2/2 since 1994–1995. See Freedom House 

Web site, available at <www.freedomhouse.org/report-types/freedom-world>.
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Miklaucic and Naím 

15 Transparency International, “Corruption Perceptions Index 2011,” available at <http://cpi.transparency.

org/cpi2011/results/>. 16 James O. Finckenauer and Yuri A. Voronin, The Threat of Russian Organized Crime (Washington, DC: 

National Institute of Justice, June 2001). 17 Statement of William Browder, chief executive officer of Hermitage Capital Management, BBC News, 

November 23, 2009. 18 Finckenauer and Voronin.

19 “Corruption Perceptions Index 2011.”

20 Ibid.; see also, Mark Galeotti, “The Criminalization of Russian State Security,” in Criminal States and Criminal 

Soldiers, ed. Robert J. Bunker (London: Routledge, 2008). 21 Rachel Locke.

22 Bruce Gilley, “The Meaning and Measure of State Legitimacy: Results for 72 Countries,” European Journal of 

Political Research 45 (2006), 499–525. 23 The World Bank, “Kenya Economic Update,” 6th ed., June 2012. 24 “Failed States Index 2012.”

25 Peter Gastrow, Termites at Work: A Report on Transnational Organized Crime and State Erosion in Kenya 

(New York: International Peace Institute, 2011). 26 Ibid.

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid.

30 Bayart, Ellis, and Hibou.

31 Gastrow.

32 Ibid.

33 Joel Hellman and Daniel Kaufmann, “Confronting the Challenge of State Capture in Transition Economies,” 

Finance and Development 38, no. 3 (International Monetary Fund, September 2001). 34 Ibid.

35 David Kupferschmidt, Illicit Political Finance and State Capture (Stockholm: International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, August 21, 2009). 36 Douglas Farah, Transnational Organized Crime, Terrorism, and Criminalized States: An Emerging Tier-One 

National Security Priority (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, July 2012), available at <www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/download.cfm?q=1117>. 37 United Nations Development Program (UNDP), “2011 Human Development Index,” Human Development 

Report 2011: Sustainability and Equity, A Better Future for All (New York: UNDP, November 2, 2011). 38 BBC News, April 9, 2010, available at <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8610924.stm>.

39 “Corruption Perceptions Index 2011.”

40 UNODC, Cocaine Trafficking in Western Africa (New York: UNODC, October 2007). 41 Dennis F. Thompson, Ethics in Congress: From Individual to Institutional Corruption (Washington, DC: 

Brookings Institution Press, 1995). 42 Anna Grzymala-Busse, “Beyond Clientelism: Incumbent State Capture and State Formation,” Comparative 

Political Studies 41, nos. 4–5 (April/May 2008), 638–673. 43 Douglas Farah, A Volatile Mix: Non-State Actors and Criminal States (Washington, DC: Center for American 

Progress, October 2004). 44 Tom Saah Kamara, “Liberia: The Emergence of a Criminal State,” ThePerspective.org, July 2000, available at 

<www.theperspective.org/criminalstate.html>. 45 Farah, A Volatile Mix. 46 Liana Sun Wyler and Dick K. Nanto, North Korean Crime-for-Profit Activities, RL33885 (Washington, DC: 

Congressional Research Service, August 25, 2008), available at <www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL33885.pdf>. 47 Ludington Daily News, November 10, 1976. 48 Raphael Perl, “State Crime: The North Korean Drug Trade,” Global Crime 6, no. 1 (February 2004). 49 David L. Asher, “The North Korean Criminal State, Its Ties to Organized Crime, and the Possibility of WMD 

Proliferation,” Policy Forum Online 05-92A (Berkeley: Nautilus Institute, November 15, 2005).
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The Criminal State

50 Paul Rexton Kan, Bruce E. Bechtol, Jr., and Robert M. Collins, Criminal Sovereignty: Understanding North 

Korea’s Illicit International Activities (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, March 2010). 51 Mark Galeotti, “Criminalization of the DPRK,” Jane’s Intelligence Review 13 (March 2001), 10–11. 52 Kan, Bechtol, Jr., and Collins.

53 Ibid.

54 Ibid.

171

Chapter 10

How Illicit Networks Impact Sovereignty

John P. Sullivan

This chapter examines the problématique of illicit networks and transnational crime’s impact on sovereignty.1 Transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) and gangs challenge states 

and sovereignty in a variety of ways. These include eroding state solvency through corruption, 

subtle co-option of state officials and institutions, direct assault on state functions, and in 

the worst case, state capture or failure under the threat of criminal challengers. Rarely do 

criminal enterprises totally supplant states; rather they change the nature of state functioning. 

This chapter looks at how gangs and TCOs influence state change at local, state, federal, and 

transnational levels. It specifically examines networked TCOs and transnational gangs in 

Mexico and Latin America to gauge the current and emerging threats to state functions, and 

the reconfiguration of power within states.

State reconfiguration, including co-option, and the rise of criminal enclaves result from 

the growth and proliferation of lawless or other-governed zones—including failed communities or failed zones—through corruption and the application of force by private nonstate 

armies. As part of this exploration, the concept of “criminal insurgency” will be examined 

in the context of a “battle for the parallel state” (dual sovereignty) and the potential rise of 

“narco-states” and “narco-networks.” The chapter illuminates the logic structure of criminal 

state-challengers as they attempt to establish “neo-feudal” governance structures.

We begin with an examination of deviant globalization and dark side actors using 

examples from Mexico and Latin America. The discussion then looks at narcocultura and 

state-making potentials. Finally, we examine the impact on the state and the contours of state 

reconfiguration, and the potential—or actuality—of gangs and criminal cartels to emerge 

as new warmaking and potentially networked state-making entities. Within this construct, 

criminal insurgency is defined as a means of removing the criminal enterprise from the control of the state, enabling it to pursue its goals to dominate the illicit economy. Here the illicit 

economy and globalization converge, conferring advantages to criminal enterprises.2

 Despite 

this economic agenda, a political agenda also emerges. As a result, gangs and TCOs become 

political actors influencing the reconfiguration of states.

Essentially, the chapter is concerned with the potential for illicit networks to reconfigure 

states. Such reconfiguration could include erosion of state capacity (or the exploitation of a 
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Sullivan

state capacity gap), corrupting and co-opting state organs (government, the police, the judiciary) in all or part of the state through the development of criminal enclaves, or, at the extreme 

edge, state failure. State reconfiguration appears to be a more common outcome than abject 

state capture or state failure.3 While failure and reconfiguration may appear to be the same 

phenomenon, they have distinct features. State capture (StC) involves criminals subverting 

and seizing control of key political functions at the central or national level (politicians, judges, 

police, etc.) through corruption. Co-opted state reconfiguration (CStR) involves the systematic 

alteration of governance to benefit the criminal enterprise.4

Co-opted state reconfiguration is a distinct, advanced form of state capture. CStR involves the participation of lawful and unlawful groups seeking economic, criminal, judicial, 

and political benefits together with a quest for social legitimacy. Coercion, political alliances 

(complementing or replacing bribery), and impacts on all branches and levels of government are 

core features of this dynamic. As Garay and Salcedo-Albarán argue, “The ‘co-opted reconfiguration’ concept accepts that co-optation can be carried out in any direction. In a CStR situation, 

it is therefore possible to find scenarios in which legal agents—candidates or officials—are 

co-opting illegal agents— paramilitary or subversive groups—and vice versa.”5 In a CStR 

process, state institutions are manipulated and even reconfigured from inside. When officials 

are being captured and manipulated from outside, it is reproduced as an StC situation.6 TCOs 

as deviant social networks exploit both dynamics.

Deviant Social Networks and Deviant Globalization

Social networks are important elements of contemporary social and political processes. 

Certainly this is not new; social networks have been around since man began assembling in 

political groups at all levels of society. Yet the information age is bringing important changes to 

the nature of networks. Members of networks can communicate across vast distances in real 

time, changing the pace and shape of their individual and collective influence. The importance 

of information age networks is a key to understanding emerging conflict.

David Ronfeldt has argued that societies have moved through four distinct (albeit 

overlapping) phases of organization: tribes, institutions, markets, and networks.7

 Ronfeldt 

and Arquilla discussed the conflict and security dimensions of networks and netwar in 

their landmark collection Networks and Netwars.

8

 Netwar is essentially an emergent form of 

low-intensity conflict, crime, and activism waged by social networked actors, including TCOs, 

terrorists, and gangsters. Manuel Castells has also outlined the rise of the networked, information society in his landmark trilogy The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture.

9

Specifically, Castells envisioned the emergence of powerful global criminal networks as one 

facet of the shift to a new state/sovereignty structure where the state no longer controlled all 

aspects of the economy and society. Networks currently take two shapes: positive networks 

that inform civil society and dark side or negative networks that exploit society. These dark 

side actors are essentially “criminal netwarriors.”

Transnational gangs and cartels operating as netwarriors are a threat to the sovereignty 

of nations. “When states fail to deliver public services and security, criminals fill the vacuum.”10

This situation leads to a “time of anomalies and transitions,” according to Juan Carlos Garzón. 
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How Illicit Networks Impact Sovereignty

Complex criminal networks where multiple criminal factions interact by “cooperating and 

competing for the control of illicit markets are impacting democratic environments and transforming themselves into a real force that could end up determining the destiny of institutions 

and communities.”11 A consequence of TCO action is diminished state capacity. TCOs are 

thus challenging the sovereignty and solvency of states

Dark Side Actors

Transnational crime, gangs, terrorism, and insurgency are threats influencing the current and 

future conflict environment.12 These separate—and increasingly linked or networked—threats 

result in a diffuse security environment that blurs distinctions between crime and war. A consequence of this convergence is the rise of new political and economic actors including gangs 

and TCOs that alter the internal and external security dynamics of states and the relationship 

between states and their citizens.

Global cities are home to transnational criminals and global gangs.13 Specifically, “Third 

Generation gangs” (3 GEN) are developing increased complexity and impact. 3 GEN gangs 

differ from First Generation gangs, which are essentially turf organizations that engage in 

opportunistic crimes, and the more market-focused Second Generation gangs that sometimes 

operate on a national level. 3 GEN gangs are internationalized, networked, and complicated 

structures that evolve mercenary or political aims.14 In the Americas, maras frequently fit the 

third generation definition operating at the high ends of three continua: internationalization, 

sophistication, and politicization (see figure15). Maras are essentially gangs; they are separate 

from cartels (which are more evolved enterprises that generally seek to dominate the illicit 

economy), although both interact. Maras frequently interact with, and are allied with, cartels 

to serve as transnational subcontractors or mercenaries for cartel organizations.

Generations of Gangs

limited Politicization evolved

local Internationalization global

 1st Generation 2nd Generation 3rd Generation

turf gang drug gang mercenary gang

turf protection market protection power/nancial acquisition

proto-netwarrior emerging netwarrior netwarrior

less sophisticated Sophistication more sophisticated

Source: John P. Sullivan, “Third Generation Street Gangs: Turf, Cartels, and Net Warriors,”Transnational 

Organized Crime 3, no. 3, Autumn 1997.
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Sullivan

The maras frequently mentioned in this context, including Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) 

and Eighteenth Street (M-18), both originally from Los Angeles, now operate throughout 

North and Central America. Some discount the complex, networked nature of these gangs, but 

sensitive investigations have shown intricate, networked command and control relationships 

operating along a line of communication known as the “Bloody Triangle,” which refers to Los 

Angeles, San Salvador, and Northern Virginia, where jailhouse coordinators in all three locations collaborate to authorize “green lights” for gang assassinations.16 In addition to domination 

of criminal turf, marascan exhibit evolved political and/or mercenary aims. These dimensions 

are usually present within specific cliques (nodes or subelements) of the mara network rather 

than an enterprise-wide objective.

Cartels and Gangs: Criminal Insurgencies in Mexico and Central America

Mexico’s drug war has killed an estimated 40,000 persons since 2006 when President Felipe 

Calderón declared war on the cartels.17 “Mexico is imploding in a series of interlocking ‘criminal 

insurgencies’ culminating in a virtual civil war.”18 The wars are primarily the result of battles 

among drug cartels. The aim is to dominate criminal enterprise and control the “plazas” or drug 

corridors, as well as battles with the state—both police and military—in order to operate freely. 

As noted in one paper:

The cartels are joined by a variety of gangs in the quest to dominate the global criminal 

opportunity space. Third generation gangs—that is, gangs like Mara Salvatrucha 

(MS-13) that have transcended operating on localized turf with a simple market focus 

to operate across borders and challenge political structures—are both partners and 

foot soldiers for the dominant cartels. Gangs and cartels seek profit and are not driven 

by ideology. But the ungoverned, lawless zones they leave in their wake provide fertile 

ground for extremists and terrorists to exploit.19

This is not to say that cartels and gangs aren’t potentially insurgent. They can and do 

have insurgent potential and are actively challenging the state in parts of Mexico and Latin 

America. The cartels, while not driven by explicit ideology, are actively seeking power and 

reconfiguring the state (CStR).

The current levels and scope of network interconnectivity among Mexico’s “criminal netwarriors” are complex and ever shifting. Los Zetas, initially an enforcement arm of the Gulf 

Cartel, now operates as an independent enterprise while cross-border gangs vie for a piece of 

the action and alliances morph and shift as the battle of “all against all” progresses.

The shifting alliances of Mexican drug cartels seem to be leading to the rise of competing 

alliances or “mega cartels.” The Mexican daily Excélsior reports that SEDENA (the Mexican 

national defense/intelligence organization) assesses that eight drug-trafficking organizations 

in Mexico are potentially uniting to form two competing blocs in order to gain control of 

the “narco-sphere.”20 Currently, the largest players in the drug war in Mexico are the Sinaloa 

Cartel and Los Zetas.21 Other cartels and gangs are present in the conflict and the tensions of 

all-against-all remain, but the spoils may be favoring these two major blocs.
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An example of the networked cooperation among criminal gangs is found in the recent 

disclosure of a joint hit squad comprised of gangsters from Los Linces (a La Linea/Juárez Cartel 

enforcer cell) and Barrio Azteca (a Texas-based street/prison gang hybrid). Daniel Borunda of 

the El Paso Times writes about the joint cell: “A hit team described as the shock troops of the 

Juárez drug cartel and Azteca gangsters are suspected of being involved in the recent massacre 

of students in Juárez, according to information from the Chihuahua state attorney general.”22

The emergence of a hit squad composed of formerly competing factions is indicative of the 

trend toward networked cooperation and an example of organizational adaptation.

Drug cartels threaten to turn Mexico into a “narco-state” with rising lawlessness that 

echoes 1990s-era Colombia. According to a recent feature in the Arizona Republic, Mexico’s 

drug war “has exposed criminal networks more ingrained than most Americans could imagine: 

Hidden economies that employ up to one-fifth of the people in some Mexican states. Business 

empires that include holdings as everyday as gyms and a day-care center.”23 Essentially, the 

cartels have adapted, improved their armaments, and are perfecting simultaneous terrorist-style 

attacks resulting in pockets of ungovernability. Even President Calderón, who once angrily 

rebutted suggestions that Mexico was becoming a “failed state,” is now describing his crackdown 

as a fight for territory and “the very authority of the state.”24

In “Killing for kudos—the brutal face of Mexico’s 21st-century war,” Ed Vulliamy looked at 

barbarism in Mexico’s drug war in the aftermath of the January 2010 slaughter of 16 teenagers 

in Juárez. That “bloodfest” was the culmination of the bloodiest month to date in the battle 

of the border drug cartels. Vulliamy found that “this brutality defines a war very much of its 

time, the first 21st-century war, because it is, in the end, about nothing.”25 In actuality, the war 

does have an aim; the quest for raw power with the objective of rolling back state authority. 

Vulliamy also emphasized the power of new media: “Mexico’s war is fought through YouTube 

and mobile phones as well as back-room torture chambers. Cartels and killers use YouTube 

to threaten rivals and public officials, and boast of their killings, or set up rogue websites to 

broadcast their savagery.”26

The reach of new media, combined with the power of illicit economic circuits, allows 

Mexico’s cartels to operate throughout North America, Central America, and South America, 

with their tentacles reaching into Africa and Europe.

The interaction among TCOs, enforcer groups, gangs, and potentially conventional 

terrorists deserves scrutiny. As noted in one article:

Terrorists, gangs, and organized crime can exist as independent threats, but increasingly, they interact in a number of ways. Terrorists or insurgents may exploit organized 

crime; criminal gangs may act as middlemen in small arms, explosives or human 

trafficking; drugs may finance operations; and actors on both sides of the house may 

facilitate or conduct attacks for each other.27

Mexico is currently embroiled in a protracted drug war. Mexican drug cartels and allied 

gangs are currently challenging states and substate polities (in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, 

and beyond) to capitalize on lucrative illicit global economic markets. As a consequence of 

the exploitation of these global economic flows, the cartels are waging war on each other and 
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state institutions to gain control of the illicit economy. Essentially, they are waging a “criminal 

insurgency” against the states and their institutions. In doing so, they are becoming political 

as well as economic actors. Criminal insurgency is a battle for power; essentially it results in 

a struggle for who governs.28

Criminal insurgencies can exist at several levels:

• Local insurgencies in a single neighborhood or “failed community” where gangs 

dominate local turf and political, economic, and social life. The criminal enterprise 

collects taxes and exercises a near-monopoly on violence. TCOs and gangs foster 

a perception that they are community protectors (i.e., “social bandits”). The criminal gang is seeking to develop a criminal enclave or criminal “free-state.” Since the 

nominal state is never fully supplanted, development of a parallel state or “dual 

sovereignty” is the goal.

• A battle for the parallel state where cartels and gangs battle over their own operational space, but violence spills over to affect the public at large and the police and 

military forces that seek to contain the violence and curb the erosion of governmental 

authority in the criminal enclave or criminal enterprise.

• Combating the state where criminal enterprises directly confront the state to secure 

or sustain an independent range of action. The cartels are active belligerents against 

the state.

• State implosion when high-intensity criminal violence spirals out of control. This potential would be the cumulative effect of sustained, unchecked criminal violence and 

criminal subversion of state legitimacy through endemic corruption and co-option.29

Criminal insurgency is directed toward retaining freedom of action for the criminal 

enterprise. TCOs and gangs may directly attack the state to co-opt or corrupt its political 

processes. The tools or methods of criminal insurgency include:

• symbolic and instrumental violence including attacks on journalists, police, the 

military, and elected and judicial officials (targeted assassinations and mass attacks)

• exerting control over turf through violence and social cleansing, resulting in refugees 

and internally displaced persons

• information operations including corpse-messaging, narcocorridos, narcomantas/

narcopintas (banners and graffiti), narcomensajes (communiqués), manefesacions

(demonstrations), narcobloqueos (blockades), and leventons (express kidnappings)

• utilitarian provision of social goods

• resource extraction
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• usurping state fiscal roles (street taxation, extortion)

• co-opting and corrupting government actors

• use of marked vehicles, uniforms, and insignia to confer legitimacy

• usurping the protective security (enforcement and punishment) role of the state

• promulgation of alternative identity narratives (including narcocultura) to secure 

legitimacy and community support (or tolerance) including adopting the mantle 

of social bandit.30

In El Salvador, both cartels and maras are adopting the mantle of social bandit. For example, National Public Radio (NPR) News reports, “In El Salvador, there’s fear that the Mexican 

cartels are aligning themselves with the country’s ubiquitous street gangs.” The two main gangs, 

MS-13 and M-18, are so powerful and volatile that their members get sent to separate prisons. 

Impoverished neighborhoods in the capital, San Salvador, are clearly divided turf, belonging to 

one gang or the other. The maras violently and effectively rule their turf, “controlling street-level 

drug sales, charging residents for security and battling to exclude their rivals.”31

According to the NPR report:

The maras could offer—and according to some security analysts, already are offering—the Mexican cartels access to a vast criminal network. The maras have stashes 

of weapons, established communications networks and ruthless foot soldiers who have 

no qualms about smuggling drugs or assassinating rivals—for a price. . . .

Blue [an MS gangster] talks of the MS as a social organization that protects the “civilians” in the neighborhood. They help get water lines connected. They’re refurbishing 

the community hall. To him, it’s normal that residents have to pay rent to the gang 

for these services.

Essentially, in El Salvador gang leaders are stating that they are social workers and that 

their gangs are providing social goods. While reporting for his three-part series on drug trafficking in Central America, NPR’s Jason Beaubien spoke at length with “Blue,” the second in 

command of the Mara Salvatrucha gang in El Salvador. Beaubien reported that

gang members “really believe that they are doing good in the community. They believe 

that their gang structure . . . replaces what the state isn’t giving”—security, water, a 

community hall. If Mexican cartels move in to work with the gangs in El Salvador . . . 

the power and money from the Mexicans combined with the organizational structure 

of the gangs would create “a terrible, terrible combination.”32
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Diane Davis provides insight into the dynamics of the situation. According to Davis, 

“Mexico’s cartels constitute ‘irregular armed forces’—well-organized, flexible urban gangs 

that make money smuggling drugs and other goods—buttressed by Mexico’s socioeconomic 

problems.”33 The cartels, Davis contends, are different from rebel groups. They do not seek to 

remove the whole government, but instead to usurp some of its functions. In doing so, they 

use violence to protect their “clandestine networks of capital accumulation.”34 This leads some 

analysts (including Davis) to perceive that Mexico’s drug wars involve physically dispersed, 

evolving organizations that could be viewed more as self-sustaining networks than antistate 

insurgents.35 That conception is challenged here. The cartels are not antistate insurgents in 

the conventional sense. They are criminal insurgents who challenge the state in a quest for 

economic and raw political power. They are not seeking to replace the state, but rather to 

remove the state’s authority over their operations. As a consequence, they are engaged in state 

reconfiguration (CStR) and become “accidental insurgents” with the potential to become new 

state-making entities.

Narcocultura, Social Bandits, and State-making

Davis also observed: “[The] random and targeted violence increasingly perpetrated by ‘irregular’ 

armed forces poses a direct challenge to state legitimacy and national sovereignty.”36 According 

to her analysis, cartels and gangs are “transnational non-state armed actors who use violence 

to accumulate capital and secure economic dominion, and whose activities reveal alternative 

networks of commitment, power, authority, and even self-governance.”37

This situation has clear neofeudal dimensions. Consider Los Zetasin light of feudalism. 

Alfredo Corchado, a journalist covering Mexico’s drug wars, points out indicators of cartel 

(especially Zeta) erosion of state institutions. These include territorial control and neofeudalism. Corchado explained, “Beset by violence and corruption, Guatemala teeters on the edge 

of being a failed state. In recent years, Guatemala has proved to be especially vulnerable to the 

Zetas, who rule over communities across the country like tiny fiefdoms.”38 Concrete examples 

of neofeudal characteristics include maintaining private armies, collecting taxes, extracting 

resources, and dominating local political and community organizations, as well as paying 

tribute to other criminal enterprises and government actors to retain freedom of movement 

within their sphere of influence.

Corchado observes that by leveraging the proceeds from billions of dollars in drug profits 

from U.S. sales, Mexican organized crime groups have taken control in parts of Guatemala, 

forming alliances with local criminal groups and undermining that state’s fragile democracy. 

In Mexico, the Zetas now control chunks of territory in the Yucatan peninsula, northwestern 

Durango state, and the northern states of Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, and Coahuila (all bordering Texas).39

The result is “other governed spaces,” “neo-feudal zones,” and “criminal enclaves.” In a report 

entitled “Drug cartels taking over government roles in parts of Mexico,” Corchado explored 

cartel intrusion into sovereignty. He found:
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The “police” for the Zetas paramilitary cartel are so numerous here—upward of 

3,000, according to one estimate—that they far outnumber the official force, and their 

appearance further sets them apart. The omnipresent cartel spotters are one aspect of 

what experts describe as the emergence of virtual parallel governments in places like 

Nuevo Laredo and Ciudad Juarez—criminal groups that levy taxes, gather intelligence, muzzle the media, run businesses and impose a version of order that serves 

their criminal goals.40

As a consequence, “entire regions of Mexico are effectively controlled by nonstate actors, 

i.e., multipurpose criminal organizations,” according to Howard Campbell, an anthropologist 

and expert on drug cartels at the University of Texas at El Paso. “These criminal groups have 

morphed from being strictly drug cartels into a kind of alternative society and economy. . . . 

They are the dominant forces of coercion, tax the population, steal from or control utilities 

such as gasoline, sell their own products and are the ultimate decision-makers in the territories 

they control.”41

Narcocultura

Narcocultura is a form of social-environmental modification. Specifically, alternative belief 

systems are exploited by gangs and cartels to alter primary loyalties and erode the authority 

and legitimacy of the state. Narcocultura is instrumental in reshaping sovereignty. By creating 

alternative identity narratives, illicit networks project their power and offer themselves as 

an alternative to traditional state structures. Myths, folk songs (narcocorridos), imagery, and 

identity symbols (including patrons, heroes, and saints) are used to bolster the legitimacy and 

influence of the TCOs and gangs.

Guillermoprieta defines narcocultura as:

The production of symbols, rituals and artifacts—slang, religious cults, music, consumer goods—that allow people involved in the drug trade to recognize themselves 

as part of a community, to establish a hierarchy in which the acts they are required to 

perform acquire positive value and to absorb the terror inherent in their line of work.42

According to Bunker and Bunker, social environmental modification is an element of 

nonstate warfare. “This warfare—manifesting itself in ‘criminal insurgencies’ derived from 

groups of gang, cartel, and mercenary networks—promotes new forms of state organization 

drawn from criminally based social and political norms and behaviors.”43 Key elements of 

social/environmental modification by the aforementioned authors include alternative worship 

or veneration of “narco-saints,” symbolic violence (including beheadings and corpse messaging—attaching a message to a corpse), and the use of narcocorridos (epic folk songs) and social 

media to spread messages and confer legitimacy on a cartel.

The mantle of “social bandit” confers legitimacy on the gangs’ or cartels’ actions within the 

community they by necessity dominate.44 La Familia, Los Cabelleros Templarios, the Sinaloa 

Cartel, and even Los Zetas have embraced this role through skillful use of information 
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operations and utilitarian provision of social goods to delegitimize their adversaries (rival 

gangs and the state alike). This is a potent example of the assertion authority and the use of 

alternative identity narratives as a means of stealing the mantle of sovereignty from the state.

The control of territorial space—ranging from “failed communities” to “failed regions”—

is a critical element of the erosion of state capacity. This includes the exploitation of weak 

governance and areas (known as “lawless zones,” “ungoverned spaces,” “other governed spaces,” 

or “zones of impunity”) where state challengers have created parallel or dual sovereignty, or 

“criminal enclaves,” in a neofeudal political arrangement. The use of instrumental violence, 

corruption, information operations (including attacks on journalists, alternative identity 

narratives including narcocultura, and assuming the mantle of social bandit), street taxation, 

and provision of social goods in a utilitarian fashion are among the tools employed by criminal 

actors to secure their freedom of movement and erode the authority of the state.

Impact on the State

Specific variables/indicators that are germane to understanding the impact of TCOs and 

networked criminal enclaves on the state include: violence both among cartels and directed at 

the state, corruption, degree of transparency, cartel/gang reach, effectiveness of governance/

policing, community stability, effectiveness of economic regulation, and the degree of territorial 

control (loss or gain by the state vs. cartels).

The impact of transnational criminal enterprises on state capacity, control of territory, and 

legitimacy is critical. All of these activities occur across time. Some changes are slow-moving, 

while some are rapid in their expression. Key factors in the pace of change include:

• social/environmental modification (such as the use of social networking media—

Facebook and Twitter—propaganda/information operations, e.g., narcomantas and 

narcocorridos) to further a criminal gang’s perceived social legitimacy

• connections (or network connectivity) between and among criminal enterprises (i.e., 

nodal analysis and social network analysis)

• impact of illicit economic circuits (including connections among criminal actors) 

on the legitimacy of borders in global cities and border zones, as well as criminal 

penetration and reach

• usurpation of state fiscal roles (taxes, tariffs) by criminal enterprises through street 

taxation, protection rackets, and other diversion of public goods or funds

• force including the use of instrumental and symbolic criminal violence (armed attacks, terrorist campaigns, “corpse messaging,” kidnapping, attacks on police, attacks 

on journalists and public officials, and the development and employment of private 

armies) challenging the state’s monopoly on legitimate force.
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These factors are evident in three crucial spatial settings: networked diasporas, border 

zones, and criminal enclaves (themselves often the result of the first two).

Networked Diasporas

Terrorists, organized criminal enterprises, and transnational gangs increasingly operate across 

borders as global nonstate actors. This transnational dimension of crime and extremism makes 

coordination of foreign and domestic intelligence and law enforcement operations essential. 

Frequently, transnational criminal and terrorist actors find sanctuary in overseas diaspora 

communities. While this is not new (the Mafia or Costa Nostra in the United States is a classic 

case of Sicilian immigrants banding together and forming the nucleus of criminal gangs and 

enterprises), Russian mafiya gangs, Chinese triads, and now Mexican cartels and others operate 

globally. The information age allows these groups to coordinate and synchronize operations 

and make alliances in new ways. This includes the use of new media to transmit messages; 

announce alliances, attacks, and operations (including beheadings and corpse messaging or 

the use of symbolic brutality); broadcast threats and challenges; solicit recruits and alternative 

identity narratives (i.e., narcocultura); and transmit operational directives across multiple areas 

of operations in real or chosen time.

Networked diasporas are one consequence of the information age and require attention. 

Diaspora communities can provide extremists with a permissive environment favoring the 

emergence of extremist cells. Radical enclaves may arise within diaspora communities and 

serve as catalysts for broader radicalization. When linked to lawless zones and other radical 

enclaves through social networks and Internet media, a powerful “networked diaspora” results.45

Border Zones

Border zones are frequently areas where dark side actors and criminal netwarriors can gain a 

foothold. As such, they serve as incubators of conflict. Criminal gangs, insurgents, and terrorists exploit weak state presence to forge a parallel state and pursue their criminal enterprises. 

Their efforts are frequently sustained by fear, violence, and brutality.46 For example, in Mexico, 

the northern frontier with the United States and southern border with Guatemala are contested zones. These zones have become the center of gravity for Mexico’s drug cartels. These 

drug-smuggling corridors and plazas translink the borders. The bloody competition over these 

plazas and the spread of criminal reach and power throughout the state and across frontiers 

are significant security concerns.

Border zones in Latin America, for example, are at risk of territorial capture by armed 

groups and narcotrafficking networks. As Ivan Briscoe observed, government authority in 

these zones has been “hollowed out” and replaced by evolving global-local networks of criminal 

authority.47 As noted by Sullivan and Elkus:

Border zones, such as Guatemala’s Petén province, and sparsely policed areas like the 

Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua are incubators of instability and ideal venues for refueling, 

repackaging product, and warehousing drug stockpiles. While this was first realized in 
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Guatemala and Honduras, El Salvador, Panama and Costa Rica, indeed all Central 

America, are currently at risk of being caught in the “cross-border” spillover of Mexico’s 

drug wars. Controlling these border zones is key to transnational gangs and cartels. 

Los Zetas, for example, not only train in sparsely populated border areas, they seek to 

sustain military control of the frontier and adjoining terrain on both sides of Mexico’s 

southern border between Chiapas and Guatemala.48

The informal economies that have emerged in Latin American border zones demonstrate the transition of states that is emerging from the twin engines of globalization and the 

information age. The shift of government authority from the state (or in cases where the state 

has always been weak, the rise of criminal governance) to dark side criminal actors/criminal 

netwarriors is a consequence of globalization impacting loose frontier economies that serve 

as in-between zones for illicit goods within a common regional network. This exploitation 

of regional economic circuits, albeit illicit, illustrates the transition into a reconfiguration of 

power within the state, where traditional informal networks link with globalized forms of 

illicit commerce to create a new base of power.

Criminal Enclaves

In Mexico and parts of Central America, cartels and gangs have gained control over specific 

plazas ranging from a few city blocks to entire states or subnational regions. Exploiting weak 

state capacity in urban slums or rural border zones49 either from the aftermath of civil war 

(Central America) or during the transition from one party rule (Mexico), criminal mafias of 

various stripes have exploited the vacuum of power. In Mexico, for example, the drug-trafficking organizations were traditionally moderated by the ruling party, the Partido Revolucionario 

Institucional (PRI). The end of the PRI monopoly on power allowed the cartels to seek new 

business and political arrangements. Cartels, now free from the influence of the PRI, could 

strike independent arrangements with local political actors. This freedom converged with the 

increasing globalization of crime. As a result, organized crime could then establish boundaries 

for the authorities, not the other way around.50

Drug cartels and criminal gangs are challenging the legitimacy and solvency of the state 

at the local, state, and national levels in Mexico and Central America. As Max Manwaring 

stipulated, these state challengers are applying the “Sullivan-Bunker Cocktail,” where nonstate 

actors challenge the de facto sovereignty of nations.51 In Manwaring’s interpretation, gangs and 

irregular networked attackers can challenge nation-states by using complicity, intimidation, 

and corruption to subtly co-opt and control individual bureaucrats and gain effective control 

over a given enclave.

Essentially, the cartels and their networked 3 GEN gang affiliates exploit weak zones of 

governance, expanding their criminal turf into effective areas of control. They start by corrupting weak officials, co-opting the institutions of government and civil society through violence 

and bribes. They attack police, military forces, judges, mayors, and journalists to leverage their 

sway, communicate their primacy through information operations, and cultivate alternative 

social memes adapting environmental and social conditions toward their goals. Then they 
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conduct social cleansing, killing those who get in their way and forcing others out of their area 

of operations; they are then able to effectively collect taxes, extract wealth and resources such 

as the diversion of oil and gas from Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX, Mexico’s state-owned 

petroleum company), and basically control the territory.

This situation allowed a range of networked, local, and transnational criminal enterprises—gangs and cartels—to seize new criminal, economic, social, and political opportunities. 

Parallel or “dual sovereignty” over large swaths of the state was the result.52 Provision of social 

goods (often wearing the mantle of social bandits) is one manifestation of increasing cartel 

power. Often this provision of social goods is purely utilitarian. The cartels seek to appease 

the populace to gain their complicity in fending off the state’s enforcement imperative.53 As a 

consequence, the cartels are exerting real territorial control:

Mexico’s periphery has become a lawless wasteland controlled largely by the drug cartels, but the disorder is rapidly spreading into the interior. In a cruel parody of the “inkblot” strategy employed by counterinsurgents in Iraq, ungoverned spaces controlled by 

insurgents multiply as the territorial fabric of the Mexican state continues to dissolve.54

This territorial control varies in scope from a few blocks or colonias to entire regions. 

The cartels and gangs need to provide social goods to sustain their impunity, consolidate 

their power, and ultimately expand their reach through displacement of the state or political 

accommodation—whichever comes first. Accordingly, they apply a “reverse inkblot” strategy 

to alter states.

Leveraging the power gained by dominating the plazas and criminal enclaves, these 

criminal networks have the opportunity to expand their domains by exerting dual sovereignty 

or actual political control over their corrupt vassals to forge narco-states. In either case, their 

expanding reach challenges nations and polities at all levels, potentially ushering in new forms 

of stratified (or dual/parallel) sovereignty. These may very well become network-states.

The “Network-State”

These new power configurations may result in new forms of sovereignty or new state forms—

that is, new ways of organizing state power. Philip Bobbitt argues that this will be the “market 

state,”55 Ronfeldt envisions a “nexus-state” ruled by “cyberocracy,”56 and others, such as Sullivan 

and Elkus, make the case for the network-state, arguing, “States are not so much declining, 

failing and yielding as transforming their very nature. The network is the right metaphor to 

grasping the new state’s complexity.”57 Network-states would share greater portions of power 

with transnational organizations, civil society actors, other states, and substate organs. Power 

would not be concentrated only in single geographic states, but certain state functions would 

transcend the boundaries of single states and state confederations. This is already occurring, as 

in the case of the suprastate European Union and multilateral institutions such as the World 

Trade Organization.

The capture, control, or disruption of strategic nodes in the global system and the intersections between them can have cascading effects. For instance, Saskia Sassen expands on the 
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notion of border zones to posit a growing “frontier zone,” a zone of difference where identities, 

allegiances, and organizational forms exist in a state of constant flux. This state of flux is the 

consequence of far-reaching economic trends resulting in a structural “hollowing” of many state 

functions while bolstering the state’s executive branch and its emphasis on internal security.58

This hollowing out of state function is accompanied by an extranational stratification of state 

function. According to Sassen, a “much overlooked feature of the current period is the multiplication of a broad range of partial, often highly specialized, global assemblages of bits of 

territory, authority, and rights.”59 These fractal bits are increasingly contested, with states and 

(in the case discussed here) criminal enterprises seeking their own “market” shares.

The potential for a state centralizing power is an insight found in Ronfeldt’s exploration 

of the “nexus-state.” Centralized information controls can become a systematic apparatus of 

control to dominate or manipulate the populace. Essentially, the state becomes the decentralized arbiter of network protocols that define the nodal interactions among a complicated 

set of networks, actors, and relationships. The state continues to exist, but control over key 

functions is transferred to cities, corporations, and issue-specific transnational organizations. 

Here is the crux of the battle between states and nonstate criminal netwarriors, between the 

light side and dark side networks. Which set of organizational entities will dominate the shift 

to new state forms?

Conclusion

State change and shifts in sovereignty are a potential consequence of the erosion of state 

authority, legitimacy, and capacity. Outcomes of such shifts could include failed states, the 

capture of state authority by transnational criminals, and the emergence of new state forms. 

Insurgencies, high-intensity crime, and criminal insurgencies that challenge state legitimacy 

and inhibit governance are a key national and global security issue.

“State failure” is one potential outcome of insolvent governance (the inability of weak 

states and corrupt state officials to sustain legitimacy and effectively govern) and extreme 

instability. This issue has been a concern to the global security and intelligence communities 

for several years (specifically since the implosion of the Somali state). According to King and 

Zeng, the term “refers to the complete or partial collapse of state authority. . . . Failed states 

have governments with little political authority or ability to impose the rule of law. They are 

usually associated with widespread crime, violent conflict, or severe humanitarian crises, and 

they may threaten the stability of neighboring countries.”60 While the absolute failure of an 

entire state is the extreme outcome, erosion of state capacity, the establishment of criminal 

enclaves, and ultimately the overall reconfiguration of power within the state (or “substate 

failure”) are likely outcomes.

Nonstate actors such as TCOs, gangs, warlords, private armies, terrorists, and insurgent 

networks on the dark side, and private military or security corporations, global corporations, 

civil society, nongovernmental organizations, and evolving state, substate, and suprastate institutions on the light side, demand the development of new security and intelligence structures 

to ensure global stability and human security.61 These structures and mechanisms are needed to 
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address the direct assaults on state functions. More analysis is needed to define the appropriate 

structures to negotiate this transition.

This is a battle for information and real power among global networks, social media 

groups, and nongovernmental organizations to secure political power. Illicit networks are 

controlling turf and capturing state functions, including the legitimate protective security roles 

of the state, assuming the power to enforce their will and punish those who do not comply. This 

is a battle that favors the agile and those with the will to use brute strength and force (cyber 

or otherwise). The criminal netwarriors increasingly employ barbarization and high-order 

violence combined with information operations to seize the initiative and embrace the mantle 

of social bandit to confer legitimacy on themselves and their enterprises. States must adapt 

and react to these changes and challenges to sovereignty in order to maintain collective security 

and retain effective control of their territory, borders, and populace.

Notes

1

 This chapter draws from my ongoing research into the impact of transnational organized crime on sovereignty. Specifically, it recaps three prior papers: John P. Sullivan, “Social Networks and Counternetwar Response,” 

presented to the Panel on Security, Resilience, and Global Networks at the 51st Annual International Studies 

Association Convention in New Orleans, February 20, 2010; “Intelligence, Sovereignty, Criminal Insurgency, and 

Drug Cartels,” presented to the Panel on Intelligence Indicators for State Change and Shifting Sovereignty at the 

52nd Annual International Studies Association Convention, Montreal, March 18, 2011; and “From Drug Wars to 

Criminal Insurgency: Mexican Cartels, Criminal Enclaves, and Criminal Insurgency in Mexico and Central America: 

Implications for Global Security,” presented to the Seminar on Netwars and Peacenets, Institute of Global Studies, 

Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris, June 27–28, 2011. 2

 See Nils Gilman, Jesse Goldhammer, and Steven Weber, eds., Deviant Globalization: Black Market Economy 

in the 21st Century (New York: Continuum, 2011). My contribution, chapter 16, “Future Conflict: Criminal Insurgencies, Gangs and Intelligence,” complements the analysis found in this chapter. 3

 See Luis Jorge Garay-Salamanca, Eduardo Salcedo-Albarán, and Isaac De León-Beltrán, Illicit Networks Reconfiguring States: Social Network Analysis of Colombian and Mexican Cases (Bogota: METODO, 2010). 4

 Luis Jorge Garay and Eduardo Salcedo-Albarán, “State Capture and Co-opted State Reconfiguration,” in 

“Drug Trafficking, Corruption and State,” prepublication draft, 2011, 29–31. 5

 Ibid., 31.

6

 Ibid.

7

 See David Ronfeldt, Visions from Two Theories, available at <http://twotheories.blogspot.com/>, for a comprehensive view of his network social theory. 8

 John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, eds., Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy

(Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2001). 9

 See Manuel Castells, The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture: The Rise of the Network Society, Vol. 

I (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010); The Power of Identity, Vol. II (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004); and The 

End of Millennium, Vol. III (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008). 10 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, “The Globalization of Crime: A Transnational Organized Crime 

Threat Assessment,” June 2010. 11 Juan Carlos Garzón, Mafia & Co.: The Criminal Networks in Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia (Washington, DC: 

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Latin American Program, 2008). 12 See John P. Sullivan, “Public-Private Intelligence Models for Responding to the Privatization of Violence,” 

paper presented to Intelligence Studies Section of the International Studies Association (ISA), 2007 ISA Annual 

Convention, Chicago, February 28–March 3, 2007, as a complement to this chapter. Also see Robert J. Bunker, ed., 

Non-State Threats and Future Wars (London: Frank Cass, 2003), and Robert J. Bunker, ed., Networks, Terrorism and 

Global Insurgency (London: Routledge, 2005), for a detailed discussion of the global threat environment.
186

Sullivan

13 See John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus, “Global cities–global gangs,” openDemocracy.net, December 2, 2009, available at <www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/john-p-sullivan-adam-elkus/global-cities-%E2%80%93-global-gangs>. 14 See John P. Sullivan, “Transnational Gangs: The Impact of Third Generation Gangs in Central America,” 

Air and Space Power Journal, Spanish Edition, July 2008, available at <www.airpower.au.af.mil/apjinternational/

apj-s/2008/2tri08/sullivaneng.htm>. 15 John P. Sullivan, “Third Generation Street Gangs: Turf, Cartels, and Net Warriors,” Transnational Organized Crime 3, no. 3 (Autumn 1997). See also John P. Sullivan, “Future Conflict: Criminal Insurgencies, Gangs 

and Intelligence,” Small Wars Journal, May 31, 2009, available at <http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2009/05/

future-conflict-criminal-insur/>. 16 Personal interview with gang intelligence investigators, identities withheld for operational security. See also 

Samuel Logan, This Is for the Mara Salvatrucha (New York: Hyperion Books, 2009), and the This Is for the Mara 

Salvatrucha Web site, available at <http://www.thisisforthemarasalvatrucha.com/index.html>. 17 The Mexican press speculates that between 38,000 and over 40,000 persons have been killed in the conflict 

since 2006. In January 2011, the Mexican government pegged the toll at 34,600. No official updates have been 

provided since. See “Mexico Debates Drug War Death Toll Figure amid Government Silence,” Latin America News 

Dispatch, June 3, 2011, available at <http://latindispatch.com/2011/06/03/mexico-debates-drug-war-death-tollfigure-amid-government-silence/>. 18 John P. Sullivan, “Criminal Netwarriors in Mexico’s Drug Wars,” GroupIntel, December 22, 2008, available 

at <www.groupintel.com/2008/12/22/criminal-netwarriors-in-mexico’s-drug-wars/>. 19 Ibid.

20 John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus, “Cartel v. Cartel: Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency,” Small Wars Journal, 

February 1, 2010, available at <http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2010/02/cartel-v-cartel-mexicos-crimin/>. 21 “2 powerful cartels dominate Mexico drug war,” CBS News, October 1, 2011, available at <www.cbsnews.

com/2102-501715_162-20114298.html>. 22 Daniel Borunda, “‘Lynxes,’ Azteca formed hit squad: birthday party attack directed by cartel, gang,” El Paso 

Times, February 11, 2010, available at <www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_14378578>.

23 Chris Hawley, “Drug cartels tighten grip; Mexico becoming ‘narco-state,’” Arizona Republic, February 7, 2010, 

available at <www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2010/02/07/20100207mexico-lawlessness.html>. 24 Ibid.

25 Ed Vulliamy, “Killing for kudos—the brutal face of Mexico’s 21st-century war,” The Guardian/Observer, 

February 7, 2010, available at <www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/07/mexico-drug-war>. 26 Ibid.

27 Sullivan, “Criminal Netwarriors in Mexico’s Drug Wars.”

28 See John P. Sullivan and Robert J. Bunker, “Rethinking insurgency: criminality, spirituality, and societal warfare 

in the Americas,” Small Wars & Insurgencies 22, no. 5 (December 2011), 742–763. 29 John P. Sullivan, “Post-Modern Social Banditry: Criminal Violence or Criminal Insurgency?” paper presented 

at conference, Drug Trafficking, Violence, and Instability in Mexico, Colombia, and the Caribbean: Implications 

for U.S. National Security, co-hosted by University of Pittsburgh’s Matthew B. Ridgway Center for International 

Security Studies and Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, in Pittsburgh, PA, October 29, 2009. 30 Sullivan, “Intelligence, Sovereignty, Criminal Insurgency, and Drug Cartels.”

31 Jason Beaubien, “El Salvador Fears Ties Between Cartels, Street Gangs,” NPR News, June 1, 2011.

32 Mark Memmott, “In El Salvador: Gang Leaders Who Say They’re Social Workers,” The two-way (NPR 

News Blog), available at <http://m.npr.org/story/136858037>. 33 Diane Davis is quoted in Peter Dizikes, “An altered state,” PHYSORG.com, available at <http://phys.org/

news190880266.html>. 34 Ibid.

35 Ibid.

36 Diane E. Davis, “Irregular Armed Forces, Shifting Patterns of Commitment, and Fragmented Sovereignty in 

the Developing World,” Theory and Society, MIT Open Access Article, April 19, 2010. 37 Ibid.

38 Alfredo Corchado, “Traffic in illegal drugs spawns violence and corruption on path north,” Bellingham Herald, 

April 28, 2011. 39 Ibid.
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How Illicit Networks Impact Sovereignty

40 Alfredo Corchado, “Drug cartels taking over government roles in parts of Mexico,” Vancouver Sun, May 4, 2011. 41 Ibid.

42 Alma Guillermoprieto, “The Narcovirus,” Berkeley Review of Latin American Studies, Spring 2009, 3–9, 

available at <www.clas.berkeley.edu/Publications/Review/...pdf/BRLAS-Spring2009-full.pdf>. Also see Alma 

Guillermoprieto, “Days of the Dead: The New Narcocultura,” The New Yorker, November 10, 2008, available at 

<www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/11/10/081110fa_fact_guillermoprieto>. 43 Pamela L. Bunker and Robert J. Bunker, “The Spiritual Significance of ¿Plata O Plomo?” Small Wars Journal,

May 27, 2010, available at <http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/the-spiritual-significance-of-¿plata-o-plomo>. 44 See Eric Hobsbawn, Bandits (New York: The New Press, 2000). 45 See John P. Sullivan, “Policing Networked Diasporas,” Small Wars Journal, July 9, 2007, available at <http://

smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/07/policing-networked-diasporas/>. 46 See John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus, “Border zones and insecurity in the Americas,” openDemocracy.

net, November 24, 2009, available at <www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/john-p-sullivan-adam-elkus/border-zones-and-insecurity-in-americas>. 47 See Ivan Briscoe, “Trouble on the Borders: Latin America’s New Conflict Zones,” Madrid: FRIDE, July 2008, 

available at <www.humansecuritygateway.com/documents/FRIDE_LatinAmerica_troubleontheborders.pdf>. 48 Sullivan and Elkus, “Border zones and insecurity in the Americas.”

49 Border zones are potential incubators of conflict. Criminal gangs exploit weak state presence to forge a parallel 

state and prosecute their criminal enterprises sustained by fear, violence, and brutality. See Sullivan and Elkus, 

“Border zones and insecurity in the Americas.” 50 The Institutional Revolutionary Party (known as the PRI in Spanish) traditionally set all power boundaries in 

Mexican political and economic life, both legal and illicit. That changed with the implementation of a true multiparty 

state. The criminal mafias exploited that new power-generating opportunity. See Nik Steinberg, “The Monster and Monterrey: The Politics and Cartels of Mexico’s Drug War,” The Nation, May 25, 2011, available at <www.thenation.com>. 51 See Max G. Manwaring, “Sovereignty Under Siege: Gangs and other Criminal Organizations in Central 

America and Mexico,” Air & Space Power Journal—Spanish Edition, July 1, 2008, available at <www.airpower.au.af.

mil/apjinterntional//apj-s/2008/2tri08/manwaringeng.htm>. 52 Michoacán was an early example of emerging cartel political action. In that state, La Familia forged a parallel 

government generating employment, keeping order, providing social and civic goods, collecting (street) taxes, and 

co-opting legitimate governmental administrative and security functions. See George W. Grayson, La Familia Drug 

Cartel: Implications for U.S.-Mexican Security (Carlisle Barracks, PA: U.S. Army War College, Strategic Studies 

Institute, December 2010). Los Zetas started providing similar social goods in 2010–2011, leading the author to 

observe that they were acting as “accidental insurgents.” 53 See Shawn Teresa Flanigan, “Violent Providers: Comparing Public Service Provision by Middle Eastern 

Insurgent Organizations and Mexican Drug Cartels,” 52nd Annual ISA Convention. 54 John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus, “Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency,” Defense and the National Interest and 

Small Wars Journal, November 9, 2008, available at <http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2008/11/mexicos-criminal-insurgency/>. 55 Philip Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History (New York: Knopf, 2002); and 

Philip Bobbitt, Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-First Century (New York: Knopf, 2008). 56 David Ronfeldt and Danielle Varda, “The Prospects for Cyberocracy (Revisited),” Social Science Research 

Network, December 1, 2008, available at <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1325809>. 57 See John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus, “Security in the network-state,” openDemocracy.net, October 6, 2009, 

available at <www.opendemocracy.net/article/state-change-sovereignty-and-global-security>. 58 See Saskia Sassen, “The new executive politics: a democratic challenge,” openDemocracy.net, June 28, 2009, 

available at <www.opendemocracy.net/article/the-new-executive-politics-a-democratic-challenge>; and Sullivan 

and Elkus, “Security in the network-state.” 59 Saskia Sassen, “Neither global nor national: novel assemblages of territory, authority and rights,” Ethics & 

Global Politics 1, no. 1–2 (2008), 61. 60 Gary King and Langche Zeng, “Improving Forecasts of State failure,” World Politics 53 (July 2001), 623–658. 61 John P. Sullivan, “Fusing Terrorism Security and Response,” in Countering Terrorism and WMD: Creating 

a Global Counter-terrorism Network, ed. Peter Katona, Michael D. Intriligator, and John P. Sullivan, 272–288 

(London: Routledge, 2006).

189

Chapter 11

Counterinsurgency, Counternarcotics, 

and Illicit Economies in Afghanistan: 

Lessons for State-Building

Vanda Felbab-Brown

Since 2001, Afghanistan has become synonymous with the narco-state and the spread of crime and illegality. In 2007 and 2008, the Afghan drug economy reached levels unprecedented since at least World War II. Although the drug economy has declined since, the 

decrease has largely been driven by the saturation of the global drug market and by poppy crop 

disease rather than the policies of the international community and the Afghan government. 

Although several other illicit economies thrive in Afghanistan including the smuggling of legal 

goods, narcotics receive by far the most attention because they generate the largest profits and 

the greatest international opprobrium.

Narcotics production and counternarcotics policies in Afghanistan are of critical importance not only for drug control there and worldwide, but also for security, reconstruction, 

and rule-of-law efforts in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, many of the counternarcotics policies 

adopted after 9/11 not only failed to reduce the size and scope of the illicit economy in 

Afghanistan but also had serious counterproductive effects on peace, state-building, and 

economic reconstruction.

In 2009, the Obama administration wisely decided to scale back eradication efforts in 

Afghanistan, courageously breaking with 30 years of counternarcotics policies that focused 

on ineffective forced eradication of illicit crops as a way to reduce the supply of drugs and to 

bankrupt belligerents. But the effectiveness of its counternarcotics policies there—interdiction 

focused on Taliban-linked traffickers and alternative livelihoods efforts—has been challenged 

by implementation difficulties and is ultimately dependent on major progress in improving 

the security situation and governance in Afghanistan. As of fall 2011, governance in Afghanistan had been steadily deteriorating, with corruption and ethnic tensions rising and political 

patronage networks becoming more exclusionary, while any security improvements following 
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the 2010 U.S. military surge remain extremely fragile. A civil war post-2014 remains a very 

likely outcome, with the corollary thriving of the drug trade.

This chapter first details the evolution of U.S. counternarcotics policy in Afghanistan 

since 2001, situating the changes in the policy within two conceptual frameworks. Next, it 

describes how the Obama administration broke with the dominant counternarcotics framework in an attempt to synchronize counternarcotics policies with its counterinsurgency 

efforts. That section also analyzes the implementation challenges President Barack Obama’s 

counternarcotics strategy encountered—from the side effects of its interdiction focus, to 

poor governance and the inability to decide whether and how to combat broader corruption 

in Afghanistan, to defining alternative livelihoods efforts as narrow buying support programs 

rather than long-term sustainable development. Next, the chapter considers the likely security 

and political conditions in Afghanistan after a reduction in U.S. combat forces there in 2014. 

Subsequently, it explores two oft-ignored but potentially problematic side effects of any future 

counternarcotics success in Afghanistan: what illegal economy may replace the opium poppy 

economy if it is reduced, and where the opium poppy economy is likely to shift. In conclusion, 

the chapter offers broader lessons for dealing with illicit economies in the context of counterinsurgency and state-building.

Evolution of Counternarcotics Policy in Afghanistan Since 2001

The initial objective of U.S. intervention in 2001 was to degrade al Qaeda capabilities and 

institute regime change in Afghanistan. Dealing with the illicit economy was not considered 

integral to those military objectives. Thus, until 2003, U.S. counternarcotics policy in Afghanistan was essentially laissez-faire. The military understood that it would not be able to obtain 

intelligence on the Taliban and al Qaeda if it tried to eradicate poppy production. Meanwhile, 

to provide intelligence on the Taliban and to carry out direct military operations against the 

Taliban and al Qaeda, it relied on key warlords who had often been deeply involved in the drug 

economy since the 1980s.1

Under the concept of “lead nations” for the international assistance mission in Afghanistan, with specific countries assigned responsibility for specific sectors, the United Kingdom 

(UK) was tasked in 2002 with managing the international counternarcotics effort. Sensitive to 

the political problems of eliminating the rural population’s livelihood, the UK at first deployed 

a “compensated eradication” program. Thus, during the 2002–2003 poppy growing season, 

the UK promised to pay farmers $350 for each jerib (unit of area) of poppies they themselves 

eradicated, with $71.75 million committed for the program.2 From the outset, the policy was 

plagued by problems including corruption and moral hazards, and the policy was aborted in 

less than a year.3

By 2004, increased interdiction was undertaken instead. Its goal was to target large traffickers and processing laboratories. Immediately, however, the effort was manipulated by local 

Afghan strongmen to eliminate drug competition and ethnic/tribal rivals. Instead of targeting 

top echelons of the drug economy, many of which had considerable political clout, interdiction 

operations were largely conducted against small, vulnerable traders who could neither suffi-
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ciently bribe nor adequately intimidate the interdiction teams and their supervisors within 

the Afghan government. The result was a significant vertical integration of the drug industry.4

The other—again undesirable—effect of the interdiction effort was that it allowed the 

Taliban to integrate itself back into the Afghan drug trade. Having recouped in Pakistan, the 

Taliban was once again needed to provide protection to traffickers targeted by interdiction.5

Alarmed by the spread of opium poppy cultivation, some public officials in the United 

States in 2004 and 2005 also started calling for a strong poppy eradication campaign including 

aerial spraying.6

 From 2004 to 2009, manual eradication was carried out by central Afghan 

units trained by DynCorp International as well as by regional governors and their forces. 

That immediately ignited violent strikes and social protests. Another wave of eradication took 

place in 2005 and achieved a reduction in poppy cultivation. Most of the reduction was due 

to cultivation suppression in Nangarhar Province, traditionally one of the largest producing 

areas, which in 2004 produced approximately a quarter of all Afghan opium. Through promises of alternative development and threats of imprisonment, production there was slashed 

by 90 percent.7

Alternative livelihoods never materialized for many. The cash-for-work programs reached 

only a small percentage of the population in Nangarhar, mainly those living close to cities. The 

overall pauperization of the population there was devastating.8 Unable to repay debts, many 

farmers were forced to sell daughters as young as 3 years old as brides or abscond to Pakistan, 

where refugees have frequently ended up in the radical Deobandi madrasas, refilling the ranks 

of the Taliban.

Apart from incorporating the displaced farmers into their ranks, the Taliban also began 

to protect the opium fields in addition to protecting traffickers. In fact, the antagonized poppy 

farmers came to constitute a strong and key base of support for the Taliban, denying intelligence to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) while providing it to the Taliban.9

One of the standard myths about Afghanistan’s drug economy is that the Taliban forces 

farmers to grow poppies. That is almost never the case. Rather, the Taliban presence both 

enables and necessitates poppy cultivation as insecurity may interfere with farmers’ ability 

to get legal crops to markets. However, such interference also often comes from the Afghan 

National Police (ANP), which often extorts farmers along illegal checkpoints until the “taxes 

and tolls” exceed the possible profits to be made in a legal market.10 Farmers can avoid such 

extortion regarding opium because traders often pick up opium at the farm gate. Rather than 

being forced by the Taliban to grow poppies (to the extent that farmers are “forced” at all), pressure comes more from the economic, security, and political constraints they face. For example, 

access to loans, which many Afghan households need to cope during the winter months and 

to buy both consumer goods and durables, is linked to opium. Similarly, many sharecroppers 

are only able to rent land if they dedicate a portion of their acreage to opium poppy cultivation 

so they can pay landowners in opium and have valued collateral; legal crops such as wheat are 

not considered to be collateral of any value.

Like interdiction, eradication has been plagued by massive corruption problems, with 

powerful elites able to bribe or coerce their way out of having their opium poppy fields 

destroyed. The elites can also direct eradication against their political opponents, with the 
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Felbab-Brown 

poorest farmers, who are most vulnerable to the Taliban’s mobilization, bearing the brunt of 

eradication.11

Moreover, the reductions in opium poppy cultivation due to eradication have not been 

sustained. By 2007, cultivation in Nangarhar reached nearly the same level as before the 2005 

eradication campaign.12 Since then, Governor Gul Agha Sherzai has managed to keep cultivation negligible by a combination of buy-offs of influential maliks (tribal elders), promises of 

alternative livelihoods, and threats of eradication of the poppy crops and imprisonment. While 

farmers close to the provincial capital of Jalalabad have often managed to cope by switching 

to vegetable crops, increased dairy production, and working in cash-for-work construction 

programs, those distant from the provincial center, such as in the districts of Achin, Khogyani, and Shinwar, have suffered great economic deprivation. As their income has crashed by 

as much as 80 percent, and no alternative livelihoods programs have been available to them, 

their political restlessness has steadily grown.13 Those areas have seen great levels of instability; 

intensified tribal conflict over land, water, and access to resource handouts from the international community; rebellions of young men against the local maliks supporting eradication; 

physical attacks on eradication teams; intense Taliban mobilization; and increased flows of 

militants into and through the province from Pakistan.

By 2009, eradication had the following effects: It did not bankrupt the Taliban. In fact, 

the Taliban reconstituted itself in Pakistan between 2002 and 2004 without access to large 

profits from drugs, rebuilding its material base largely from donations from Pakistan and the 

Middle East and from profits from another illicit economy—the illegal traffic of licit goods 

between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Rather, eradication strengthened the Taliban physically 

by driving economic refugees into its hands. Eradication also alienated the local population 

from the national government as well as from local tribal elites who agreed to eradication 

efforts, thus creating a key opening for Taliban mobilization.14 Crucially, eradication critically 

undermined the motivation of the local population to provide intelligence on the Taliban to the 

counterinsurgents; instead, it motivated the population to provide intelligence to the Taliban. 

Moreover, the local eradicators themselves were in a position to best profit from counternarcotics policies, being able to eliminate competition—commercial and political alike—and alter 

market concentration and prices, at least in the short term, within their region of operations.

Although alternative livelihoods programs were part of the counternarcotics package, 

they were clearly a secondary and inconsistent mechanism designed to partially alleviate the 

pain that eradication brought to many rural households. Alternative livelihoods programs 

were slow to reach most of the population. To the extent they were extended, it was primarily 

in areas that had experienced eradication, but many areas subject to bans on cultivation or 

eradication did not receive any livelihood assistance programs. Where alternative livelihoods 

programs were extended, they did not sufficiently relieve the immediate economic losses, nor 

did they address the structural drivers of opium poppy cultivation. A legal microcredit system, 

for example, was absent in most of Afghanistan. The lack of security, along with increasing 

insurgency in southern Afghanistan, halted many of the alternative livelihoods projects. 

Although some areas, such as Helmand, had been showered with aid, much of it failed to 

reach ordinary farmers.15 Projects such as the Kajaki Dam, the centerpiece of the U.S. Agency 

for International Development (USAID) efforts in the south for much of the 2000s, while 
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Lessons for State-Building

important in the long or even medium run, frequently made little difference in the immediate 

economic conditions of the farmers at the village level and failed to be completed because of 

insecurity. At the same time, economic development programs even in the more permissive 

environments, such as northern Afghanistan, often simply did not materialize, although bans 

on poppy cultivation were secured through promises of alternative livelihoods.16

U.S. Counternarcotics Policy in Afghanistan

Recognizing the counterproductive effects of eradication, the Obama administration broke 

with decades of U.S. counternarcotics policies and defunded centrally led eradication in 

Afghanistan.17 Although the U.S. Government continues to provide limited funding and 

technical assistance to Afghan governors who decide to proceed with eradication, the two 

core components of the administration’s counternarcotics policy have been 1) interdiction of 

Taliban-linked drug traffickers and 2) rural development. Scaling back eradication strongly 

enhanced the new counterinsurgency policy focus on providing security to the rural population. However, success in reducing instability and the size of the drug economy also depends 

on the actual operationalizing of the strategy.

The interdiction element has been geared primarily toward Taliban-linked traffickers. 

ISAF units from countries that want to participate in the interdiction program—mainly U.S. 

and UK forces—have concentrated on reducing flows of weapons, money, drugs, precursor 

agents, and improvised explosive device (IED) components, with the goal of degrading the 

Taliban’s finances and physical resources. Although hundreds of interdiction raids have now 

been conducted, especially in the south, and large quantities of opium and IEDs have been 

seized, it is questionable whether the impact on the Taliban’s resource flows has been more 

than local. Large-scale military operations to clear the Taliban from particular areas, such as 

in Marja, Helmand, have also affected the insurgents’ funding capacity and resource flows in 

those areas. But so far, the cumulative effects of the narcotics interdiction effort to suppress 

financial flows—including both generalized anti-Taliban interdiction and raids solely dedicated 

to counternarcotics—do not appear to be affecting the Taliban at the strategic level. Taliban 

fund-raising policy has long been to tax any economic activity in areas where the insurgents 

operate—for example, sheep herding in the north, illegal logging in the east, or National 

Solidarity Program projects in the center. The strongest effect of focusing interdiction on 

Taliban-linked traffickers appears to be, at least temporarily, to disrupt Taliban logistical chains 

because many of its logistical operatives handle both IED materials and drugs and because 

most raids are dual-use. In combination with ISAF’s targeting focus on mid-level commanders, 

prioritization of the counternarcotics-interdiction focus is probably palpably complicating the 

Taliban’s operational capacity in the south, where both the military surge and counternarcotics 

efforts have been prioritized.

Whatever its benefits regarding disrupting Taliban logistical chains, the interdiction 

policy has had two negative side effects. First, under the dual-use interdiction policy—which 

combines searching for mid-level Taliban commanders and “mere” supporters with searching 

for drugs—opium seizures have become too prevalent. The great frequency of night raids18

and the tendency to seize or destroy any opium found in any searched household has blurred 
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Felbab-Brown 

the strategic distinction between traffickers and farmers. Since most rural Afghans do not have 

access to and do not trust a banking system, these families hold their life savings and assets in 

opium. ISAF interdiction searches that destroy any found opium, perhaps under the belief 

that they are destroying Taliban stockpiles, are in fact often wiping out the entire savings of 

an Afghan household. Thus, in areas that have been subject to intense interdiction raids such 

as Marja and Nad Ali, the effects of supposedly “selective” and politically sensitive interdiction 

have come to resemble the effects of blanket eradication. The consequences have been the same: 

intense alienation of the local population from ISAF forces and the central government.19

Second, the interdiction policy signals to Afghan power brokers that the best way to 

conduct the drug business is to be a member of the Karzai government, further undermining 

the domestic legitimacy of the Kabul government and compromising the rule of law. But 

tackling corruption in Afghanistan is no easy task because of the international community’s 

continuing dependence on problematic but “useful” interlocutors, competing priorities, and 

the domestic political sensitivities and debts of the Karzai government.

Beyond the matter of the drug trade, ISAF’s reliance on corrupt and abusive warlords 

for intelligence, logistics, and direct counterterrorism operations often comes at the price of 

ignoring governance issues. Some of the most notorious power brokers, such as Ahmed Wali 

Karzai (before his assassination in July 2011), Matullah Khan, and Gul Agha Shirzai, know 

how to get things done to facilitate international operations in Afghanistan. The internationals are often too isolated behind the Hesco gravel bags at their compounds to be aware how 

rapacious and discriminatory some of their key Afghan interlocutors have been, or they just 

choose to ignore their problematic aspects.

Especially early on, the Obama administration accorded great importance to fighting 

corruption by building up various civilian structures, such as the Major Crime Task Force, 

and ultimately similar equivalent units within ISAF, such as its anticorruption task force, 

Shafafiyat. But it often demanded reform with an intensity that ignored the realities and 

political complexities of a system in which the highest to the lowest government officials, line 

ministries, banking centers, and most international contracts are pervaded by corruption.20

The Obama administration’s anticorruption campaign thus secured dramatic promises from 

President Hamid Karzai to tackle corruption with little actual follow-up. Moreover, the lack of 

prioritization as to which corruption needs to be addressed first and cannot be compromised 

often ignores the political debts President Karzai owes and his internal entanglements and 

dependencies. Karzai thus often seeks to reverse such anticorruption efforts as indictments of 

powerful corrupt officials and the development of the anticorruption and anticrime institutions 

the international community is trying to stand up.21 His efforts often succeed.

But as the Obama administration began to scale down its military presence in Afghanistan, U.S. officials started vacillating once again in their determination to take on corruption. 

Many in the U.S. Government have begun to argue that tackling corruption is a luxury 

the United States can no longer afford; instead it needs to prioritize stability. This school 

of thought holds that limiting the military mission mostly to remotely-delivered airborne 

counterterrorist strikes could permit working through the local warlords and power brokers 

instead of being obsessed with their criminal entanglements and discriminatory practices and 

the means they used to acquire their power.22
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Lessons for State-Building

Meanwhile, absent a coherent policy on corruption, the Obama administration and ISAF 

have failed to develop mechanisms and structures to work around and marginalize the problematic power brokers and often continue to be dependent on their services. As a high-ranking 

ISAF official in Kandahar told me in the fall of 2010, “In the current struggle for Kandahar, 

our nightmare is having to take on the Taliban and Wali [the then-alive Ahmed Wali Karzai] 

at the same time. But we understand that he has alienated some people in Kandahar.” He 

went on to enthusiastically describe how then-Colonel Abdul Razziq—a notorious power 

broker and smuggler from Spin Boldak—recently cleared Mahlajat, a troubled subdistrict 

of Kandahar City, of the Taliban, “something even the Soviets couldn’t do.”23 ISAF has since 

brought Razziq to Arghandab and other areas of Kandahar to conduct military operations 

and he has been named police chief in the city. A former high official of the U.S. Provincial 

Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in Kandahar explained the difficulties the international community has faced when trying to impose redlines on power brokers such as Razziq. There was 

to be no undermining of provincial and district officials and no interference with the Peace 

Jirga (a body established by President Karzai to set up the broad framework for reconciliation 

with the Taliban) or with parliamentary elections. “But very quickly they violated all of the 

redlines we gave them. But they are effective in getting things done. We can’t go after them at 

the same time as we are fighting the Taliban. When the Taliban is defeated, the Afghans will 

take care of the power brokers themselves.”

The infusion of tens of billions of dollars of foreign aid has also generated corruption.24

Large amounts of aid money appear to have been siphoned off by clever power brokers.25

At other times, these financial flows have strengthened existing power brokers, who can get 

their hands on the money and who have developed vested interests in preventing others and 

the population at large from accessing these financial flows.26 Some of the contract wars in 

places like Kandahar have been actual wars with rival businessmen linked to prominent tribes 

and power brokers, such as the Popolzais and Ahmed Wali Karzai on the one hand and the 

Barakzais and Gul Agha Shirzai on the other, physically shooting each other to get access to the 

contract money and setting up coercive monopolies under the guise of business associations to 

control the rents.27 At other times, the aid flows have given rise to new “khans,” further undermining both traditional institutions and the official government the international community 

has struggled to stand up. Many have financially profited from the insecurity that generates 

demands for private security companies and militias and that prevent effective monitoring.28

The international community’s strategy has thus oscillated between tolerating corruption for the sake of other goals—with the justification that Afghans are used to corruption 

anyway—or confronting it head on, but with little effectiveness. Ignoring corruption is often 

justified as prioritizing stability, but since corruption and the lack of rule of law are key mobilizing mechanisms for the Taliban and a source of Afghans’ anger with their government, it is 

doubtful that stability can be achieved without addressing at least the most egregious abuse.

Yet the system is so pervasively corrupt and so deeply and intricately linked to key structures of power and networks of influence that some prioritization of anticorruption focus 

is required. Such prioritization could include a focus on systematic tribal discrimination, 

corruption and ethnic discrimination in Afghan National Security Forces, corruption that 

undermines fragile legal markets such as illegal road tolls, and massive fraud in the banking 
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system. Intolerable to most Afghans is not that they are required to pay bribes but that the 

bribes exceed tolerable norms, such as high and unpredictable extortion along illegal ANP 

checkpoints that take away all the profit from legal crops the farmers want to transport to 

markets.

Much of the corruption that is deeply grating to local populations and is thus politically 

explosive derives from the fact that dominant power brokers privilege their networks and 

tribes while marginalizing others and preventing them from getting access to international 

contracts and other economic opportunities. In Kandahar, for example, most legal and illegal 

economic activity is divided between the Karzai and Shirzai families, with few others being 

able to cut in. In Uruzgan, Matullah Khan has systematically discriminated against the Ghilzai 

Pashtuns, blocking their access to markets, imposing higher toll taxes on them, and denying 

them access to national government resources.29 Anticorruption efforts need to focus on limiting such narrow patronage networks and on making sure that entire tribes and subtribes are 

not isolated. The political crisis surrounding the massive theft at the Kabul Bank once again 

drove home to ordinary Afghans that the privileged few, such as a narrow network around 

Vice President Mohammad Fahim, key northern leaders, and President Karzai’s family, could 

steal hundreds of millions of dollars from public funds as well as money belonging to poor 

Afghans with almost complete impunity.30

The corruption in the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) is similarly linked to 

narrow patronage networks. Not only do anticorruption efforts need to ensure that commanders do not steal the wages of ordinary soldiers, but they also need to target commanders 

who systematically discriminate against soldiers from rival ethnic groups, for example by 

disproportionately placing them in the most dangerous areas.31 A failure to mitigate the ethnic 

factionalizing of the Afghanistan National Army could be a crucial contributor to a post-2014 

civil war in Afghanistan. Finally, influential power brokers whose economic and political power 

is threatened by better governance must not be permitted to undermine effective local officials, 

such as committed district police chiefs and district governors.

Buying Love versus Sustainable Development

Economic development efforts by the international community, including alternative livelihood 

efforts, have been plagued by vacillation between two competing understandings of the purpose 

of economic development projects. Is the purpose to buy off the population and wean it away 

from insurgents or to produce long-term sustainable development?

The buy-off concept has included quick-impact projects carried out by the U.S. military 

with money from the Commander’s Emergency Response Program (CERP) or through the 

PRTs32 as well as so-called “economic stabilization projects,” also known as the District Delivery 

Program or District Stabilization Framework, carried out by USAID. The latter were designed 

as short-term cash-for-work programs lasting weeks or, at most, months. Their goals have 

been to keep Afghan males employed so economic necessities do not drive them to join the 

Taliban and to secure the allegiance of the population, which ideally will provide intelligence 

on the insurgents. Under this concept, U.S. economic development efforts have prioritized the 

most violent areas. Accordingly, the vast majority of the $250 million 2010 USAID budget 
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for Afghanistan went to only two provinces, Kandahar and Helmand.33 In Helmand’s Nawa 

district, for example, USAID spent upward of $30 million within 9 months in what some 

dubbed “[the] carpet bombing of Nawa with cash.”34 With Nawa’s 75,000 people, such aid 

amounts to $400 per person, while Afghanistan’s per capita income is only $300 a year.

Although U.S. Government officials emphasize that these stabilization programs have 

generated tens of thousands of jobs in the south, many of the efforts have been short lived, such 

as canal cleaning, grain storage, road building, and small grants to buy seeds and fertilizers.35

Characteristically, they collapse as soon as the money runs out, often in the span of several 

weeks. Nor has adequate consideration been given to the development of assured markets. 

Consequently, much of the produce cultivated under the USAID-contracted programs could 

rot before it was sold.

There is also little evidence that these programs have secured the allegiance of the population to either the Afghan government or to ISAF forces, or that they resulted in increased 

intelligence about the Taliban.36 As many of these programs were budgeted to run only 

through October or December 2010, their closure sometimes antagonized the population by 

disappointing raised expectations. Another half billion dollars of U.S. aid was allocated for 

southern Afghanistan in 2011.

Because of the complexity and opacity of Afghanistan’s political, economic, and contracting scene, many of these international programs have continued to flow to problematic, discriminatory, and corrupt power brokers, generating further resentment within the population 

and intensifying Afghanistan’s rampant corruption and lack of accountability. At other times, 

they have spurred new tribal rivalries and community tensions.37

Nor have these programs yet addressed the structural deficiencies of the rural economy 

including the drivers of poppy cultivation. A microcredit system, for example, continues to 

be lacking throughout much of the country. In fact, many of the stabilization efforts, such as 

wheat distribution and grant programs, directly undermine some of the long-term imperatives 

for addressing the structural market deficiencies, such as the development of microcredit or 

the establishment of local seed banks and seed markets and rural enterprise and value-added 

chains. Shortcuts such as the Food Zone in Helmand and similar wheat distribution schemes 

elsewhere are symptomatic of the minimal short-term economic and security payoffs (but 

substantial medium-term costs) mode with which the international community has operated. 

The result has been persistent deep market deficiencies and compromised rule of law.38

There is a delicate three-way balance among long-term development, the need to generate 

support within the population and alleviate short-term economic deprivation, and state-building. A counternarcotics “alternative livelihoods” program provides a telling example. Aware of 

the deeply destabilizing effects of poppy suppression in the absence of alternative livelihoods 

and yet under pressure to reduce poppy cultivation, Helmand Governor Mohammad Gulab 

Mangal, widely acclaimed as a competent and committed governor, launched a wheat-seed 

distribution project during the 2008–2009 growing season. Farmers were handed free wheat 

seeds to discourage them from growing poppies. This program proved popular with the segments of the Helmand population who received the free wheat, and the program was emulated 

throughout Afghanistan and continued in 2010.
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Poppy cultivation did decrease in Helmand in 2009, and many enthusiastically attributed 

it to the wheat distribution program rather than low opium prices. Yet there are good reasons to 

doubt the effectiveness of the program, at least concerning development and even governance. 

Because of land density issues, the lack of sustainability of the favorable wheat-to-opium price 

ratios under which the program took effect, and the limited ability of wheat cultivation to 

generate employment, wheat turned out to be a singularly inappropriate replacement crop.39

Indeed, much of the wheat seed ended up being sold in markets rather than sown.

Due to the insecurity prevailing in Helmand at the time, the program was undertaken 

without any field assessment of what drives poppy cultivation in particular areas of the province and in Afghanistan more broadly.40 Although this was a deficient process in which policy 

was developed without understanding the causes of the problem it was trying to address, the 

program was popular because most people welcome free handouts. It also became politically 

manipulated by local administrators and tribal elders who sought to strengthen their power. 

Although the program was deficient from a development perspective, it brought immediate 

political benefits to those who sponsored it including the political machinery of President Hamid Karzai, who was seeking reelection. Good governance was thus equated with immediate 

handouts and their political payoffs without regard for long-term economic development, best 

practices, and optimal decisionmaking processes.

At the same time, the wheat program and other economic stabilization programs often 

heightened expectations of free handouts from the central government and the international 

community without being economically viable and sustainable and without requiring commitments from the local community. Thus, many of the CERP and stabilization programs have 

encouraged the Afghans to expect payoffs for any activity consistent with the interests of the 

international community even if the activity is also in their own interest.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on the other hand, have required strong 

community participation and commitments to the development projects. Modeled similarly, 

the approach of the Dutch PRT in Uruzgan (at least until its forces withdrew in 2010) was 

particularly effective in limiting both the locals’ expectations of free handouts and communal 

and intertribal tensions over the distribution of external assistance. The Dutch insisted that 

the entire community sanction any economic project and that the PRT only contribute the 

resources or technical knowledge that the community lacked. Thus the community had to 

identify and carry out all that it could execute in the project on its own, and the Dutch PRT 

and partner nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) would supply only the rest.41

Despite such examples, political pressures from the bottom up continue to reinforce 

ISAF’s predilection for short-term, quick-impact projects. Sustainable development requires 

a lot of time, but the Afghan population has been highly impatient to see some minimal 

improvements and has often demanded handout programs without regard for long-term 

sustainability and desirability.42 At least some Afghan government officials, however, have 

become dissatisfied with the short-term cash-for-work programs and are demanding that 

foreign aid be instead structured as capacity-building and long-term development projects.

Persistent though reduced insecurity even in high-profile focus areas such as Marja and 

Arghandab can threaten even the limited short-term “stabilization” programs. The Taliban has 

strongly intensified its campaign to assassinate government officials, international contractors, 
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and NGO representatives and their Afghan counterparts who are cooperating with ISAF 

or the Kabul government; and both the implementers and the Afghan beneficiaries of these 

programs have been killed. This intimidation campaign has scared some Afghans away from 

participating in the programs and may result in local Afghan officials and internationals once 

more locking themselves up in their compounds as they did before the surge.43 U.S. and ISAF 

officials emphasize that in cleared areas in the south, shops have reopened on the streets and 

bazaars seem livelier. Yet shopkeepers often say they are trying to make as much money as 

possible in a short window of opportunity because they expect security to deteriorate again.44

Thus, even for these stabilization programs, security is a critical prerequisite.

Post-2014 Political and Poppy Dispensation

How sustainable and effective the current counternarcotics and anticorruption efforts will be 

overwhelmingly depends on the stability of the country and its political dispensation post2014. Although major security improvements have been achieved in the south where the surge 

forces were concentrated, the east of the country has become at best a strategic stalemate. A 

major withdrawal of U.S. forces from the south to insert them into the troubled east can jeopardize all the fragile and costly improvements already made. Among other issues, any increased 

insecurity in the south will undermine counternarcotics efforts. Meanwhile, security in the 

north has been steadily deteriorating over the past 3 years with the Taliban insurgency, insecurity linked to official and unofficial militias45 such as the Afghan Local Police, and accelerating 

crime. All three sources of insecurity reinforce conditions for the return of large-scale illicit 

economies, be it poppy cultivation as in the early 2000s, marijuana cultivation, or other forms 

of smuggling and extortion. How much and where security deteriorates following U.S. troop 

withdrawal will in turn depend on the effectiveness of the Afghan National Security Forces 

the United States has been trying to build up. Their strength and ability to withstand ethnic 

fragmentation have yet to be seen.

Overall, 2014 will bring about a triple shock. Not only will ISAF forces be substantially 

reduced, but U.S. funding will inevitably decline due to the drawdown of the military presence 

as well as economic conditions at home. For a country that is still overwhelmingly dependent 

on foreign aid and illegal economies for its revenues, the outcome will be a massive economic 

shrinkage. One likely result is intensification of Afghanistan’s multiple illegal economies and 

a greater dependence on them for jobs. Although various initiatives are now under way to 

cushion the shock, such as efforts to build a new Silk Road through Afghanistan and exploit 

the country’s vast mineral riches, there are no easy ways to generate revenues and employment 

over the next 3 years. Moreover, 2014 is also the year of another presidential election and hence 

will see major power infighting whether or not Karzai seeks to retain power. The fight over 

the remaining rents of the ending political dispensation and the need to consolidate support 

camps in anticipation of the shaky future—and hence to deliver spoils to them to assure their 

allegiance—will not be conducive to good governance. Even with the new U.S. emphasis on 

negotiations with the Taliban, the most likely scenario under current conditions is a civil war.46

Even short of such a disastrous outcome, any deterioration of security and shrinking of the 

current legal economies in Afghanistan will undermine counternarcotics efforts.
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Should a civil war be avoided and should counternarcotics efforts suddenly and miraculously destroy the poppy economy in Afghanistan—whether through fungicide-based 

eradication or speedily effective rural development—two critical “what-then” questions need 

to be built into policy analysis. First, what illicit economy would replace the existing opium 

economy in Afghanistan? And second, to what country would opium production shift?

What Replacement Illicit Economy Would Emerge?

Illicit economies rarely simply disappear. The presence of a large illicit economy not only 

satisfies the socioeconomic needs of the population, it also generates widespread smuggling 

knowhow, extensive criminal networks, and numerous powerful actors with vested interests 

in the preservation of the illicit economy. These actors include criminal and belligerent groups, 

corrupt government officials, and political power brokers. This infrastructure of crime can 

easily be transferred from one illicit economy to another. In Colombia, the drug trade built on 

several decades of smuggling cigarettes, household goods, marijuana, and emeralds. Many of 

the original smugglers emerged as prominent Colombian drug capos.47 In Myanmar, the eradication of opium poppies since the late 1990s (crucially helped by overproduction in Afghanistan) gave rise to an extensive production of methamphetamines, rampant illicit logging, and a 

massive increase in the illegal trade in wildlife. In Thailand, where the most effective alternative 

livelihoods programs in the world to date eliminated poppy cultivation, heroin smuggling and 

meth production have been thriving. In Afghanistan itself, the illegal drug economy was built 

on decades of smuggling including extensive smuggling of legal goods and gems, illegal logging, 

and illegal trade in wildlife.

Apart from cannabis, which has already replaced opium cultivation in areas subject to 

bans, such as Balkh,48 the least dangerous and potentially most easily suppressible illicit replacement economy would be just such an increase in the illicit trade of licit goods. This traffic 

exists as a result of the Afghan Transit Trade Agreement, under which goods can be imported 

into Pakistan duty-free for reexport into Afghanistan. Goods are then smuggled with profit 

back into Pakistan, and smugglers avoid Pakistani tariffs.49 Although profits from the illicit 

traffic (at times $1 billion per year)50 could rival those from drugs, if Pakistan and Afghanistan 

set their tariffs at the same level, this trade would disappear. Already today, as in the 1990s, 

smuggling generates extensive revenues for the Taliban and others.

A more ominous illicit replacement economy would be the production of synthetic 

drugs such as methamphetamines. Afghanistan would face stiff competition from Myanmar, 

Thailand, and Mexico, but the global market for synthetic drugs is rapidly growing, and 

Afghanistan could likely cut in on it. In that case, the country would still suffer from all the 

same political, economic, and social vices of illegal drug production, as is the case with opium 

cultivation. But the rural population would be left destitute since the production of synthetic 

drugs is much less labor-intensive than the cultivation of opium and hence could employ only 

a tiny fraction of the farmers and laborers of the opium economy. At the same time, large traffickers, corrupt government officials, and belligerent groups could easily maintain the level of 

income the opium economy affords them. Moreover, the production of synthetic drugs would 

be considerably harder to detect and disrupt. Rather than hoping that the overall criminal 
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economy in Afghanistan can be eliminated, policymakers need to ask themselves what type 

of illicit economy is least detrimental to the objective of stabilizing Afghanistan and other 

key objectives. Correspondingly, efforts to disrupt the other illegal economies—those most 

disruptive of the key objectives—need to be maximized.

Where Would Poppy Cultivation Move?

The second what-then question of vital importance for the United States is what country 

opium cultivation would shift to. Given high world demand for illicit opiates, suppression 

of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan would not leave a highly lucrative market unsatiated but 

would simply move the industry elsewhere. Unlike coca, the opium poppy is a very adaptable 

plant that can be grown under a variety of climactic conditions. Theoretically, its cultivation 

could spread to many areas—Central Asia, back to the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia, 

or West Africa.51

By far the worst scenario from the U.S. strategic perspective would be the shift of poppy 

cultivation to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), Khyber-Pakhtunkwa, or even 

Punjab in Pakistan. For over 20 years, Pakistan has been a major heroin refining and smuggling 

hub in the region. It has an extensive hawala system that includes moving drug profits. Today, 

these territories also have extensive and well-organized Salafi insurgency and terrorist groups 

that seek to limit the reach of the Pakistani state and topple the government. A relocation of 

extensive poppy cultivation there would be highly detrimental to U.S. interests since it would 

contribute to a critical undermining of the state and fuel jihadi insurgency. Such a shift would 

not only increase profit possibilities for Pakistani belligerents, but also provide them with 

significant political capital by allowing them to become important local employers sponsoring 

a labor-intensive economy in areas with minimal employment opportunities.

Nor is Pakistan a newcomer to the drug trade. During the heyday of illicit poppy cultivation in Pakistan in the 1980s, the opium poppy was grown in FATA and the then–Northwest 

Frontier Province (now renamed Khyber-Pakhtunkwa). Opium poppy cultivation often 

involved entire tribes and represented the bulk of the local economy in these highly isolated 

(geographically, politically, and economically) places.52 Pakistan was also the locus of heroin 

production and smuggling, with prominent and official actors such as Pakistan’s military and 

the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate deeply involved in the heroin trade.53

U.S.-sponsored eradication during the 1980s generated violent protests and political 

costs too high even for the military dictatorship of General Zia ul Haq.54 In the 1990s, strong 

emphasis was thus placed on generating legal economic alternatives to wean Pakistani tribes 

from drugs. Consisting mainly of small rural infrastructure projects and special economic 

opportunity zones (similar to those for textiles promoted by the current U.S. administration 

in Pakistan), the programs linked isolated areas better with the rest of Pakistan and increased 

local populations’ identification with the Pakistani state.

In 2002, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) declared Pakistan 

cultivation-free. However, the dominant reason for the decline in opium poppy cultivation 

was not counternarcotics efforts, whether eradication or alternative development, but rather 

the wholesale shift of cultivation to Afghanistan during the 1990s.
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Moreover, the positive political and economic effects of alternative development efforts in 

Pakistan frequently proved ephemeral and failed to generate sustainable employment. Many 

participants have continued to be consigned to subsistence agriculture, trucking, and smuggling 

and to migration to other parts of Pakistan such as Karachi, or to Dubai.55

This extensive drug-trade network, the history of poppy cultivation, and poor central-government control over the border regions with Afghanistan make Pakistan a likely candidate for 

vastly increased poppy cultivation if Afghan production is disrupted. Some opium cultivation 

has already emerged in Baluchistan, Khyber, Kohistan, and Kala Dhaka. Given the lack of 

systematic drug surveys in those and other areas of Pakistan, the extent of cultivation there is 

difficult to gauge, but some assessments report a resurgence of cultivation up to 2,000 hectares 

in recent years. It may well be more, given the lack of economic alternatives in the area, the 

history of opium poppy cultivation there, and the fact that the level of poppy cultivation in 

Kashmir on both sides of the Line of Control is estimated at 8,000 hectares.56

There is little evidence today that either the Afghan Taliban or the Pakistani Taliban 

(including Tehrik-i-Taliban-Pakistan and Tehrik-e-Nafaz-e-Sharia-Mohammadi) has systematically penetrated the slightly resurgent opium poppy cultivation in FATA and Khyber-Pakhtunkwa, even though they may have penetrated trafficking in drugs and precursor agents in 

Pakistan. Instead, it appears that the main sources of the Pakistani Taliban’s income include: 

smuggling in legal goods, charging tolls and protection fees, taxation of all economic activity 

in the areas in which they operate—some being highly profitable, such as marble mining, 

theft and resale of North Atlantic Treaty Organization supplies heading to Afghanistan via 

Pakistan, illicit logging, and fundraising in Pakistan and the Middle East.57 While profits from 

such a diverse portfolio can equal or even surpass profits from drugs, the main downside from 

the perspective of belligerent actors is that these economic activities are not labor-intensive. 

Consequently, unlike when belligerent groups sponsor the highly labor-intensive cultivation of 

opium poppies, the jihadi groups in Pakistan cannot present themselves as large-scale providers 

of employment to the local population.

If extensive poppy cultivation shifted to Pakistan, the consequences for U.S. national 

security would be extremely serious. FATA and parts of Khyber-Pakhtunkwa, as the jihadi 

takeover of Swat and Malakand in spring 2009 revealed, are already the hub for anti-American 

jihadists. Salafi insurgency and global terrorism networks have been leaking into and taking 

root in southern Punjab and go beyond the Lashkar-i-Taiba or Jaish-i-Mohammad presence.

Not only could al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist groups there profit financially from drug 

trafficking and money laundering, but ready access to cultivation (which these groups, unlike 

the Taliban, do not have as long as cultivation is centered in Afghanistan) would allow them 

to provide an economically superior livelihood to vastly undeveloped regions in Pakistan and 

thus obtain significant political capital within the population. Their calls to jihad against the 

Pakistani state would gain greater resonance with the tribal population. What these groups 

now can provide to the population are ideological succor and promises of martyrdom.

If production shifted to Pakistan, the sponsorship of cultivation would allow these groups 

to distribute significant real-time economic benefits to the population, a key source of legitimacy. Just as happened in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the jihadists would be able to outperform 

traditional tribal elites in providing for the population’s needs. The sponsorship of relocated 
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opium cultivation would allow the jihadists to offset the potential losses of support resulting 

from these attacks on the tribal elite.

Government efforts at eradication would generate protests and uprisings, cementing the 

bond between the jihadists and the population and weakening the already tenuous legitimacy of Islamabad. Weak central government presence there (military and otherwise) would 

compromise counternarcotics efforts, but eradication would greatly undermine even modest 

counterterrorism and stabilization efforts by the government. Given the existence of militancy 

in the likely poppy regions, forced eradication would greatly fuel militancy and generate far 

greater negative security externalities than it did in the 1980s and early 1990s when social 

protest had not congealed into a highly organized form, social networks were not premobilized, 

and pernicious political entrepreneurs were not at the ready to capitalize on social discontent.

Because of the continuing geographic, political, and social isolation of these areas, the 

lack of rule of law and the paucity of productive assets (both physical resources and human 

capital), generating employment opportunities there will be highly challenging under the best 

of circumstances.

A large-scale shift of opium poppy cultivation to Pakistan in the near and medium term 

would thus contribute to a further critical weakening of the state and undermine its control 

of and even reach to some of the most jihadi-susceptible areas in Pakistan. Such a large-scale 

shift of cultivation would also likely leak into Baluchistan, where heroin processing facilities 

and trafficking networks are already extensive. It would thus enable Baluchi nationalists to tap 

into the drug economy and strengthen the Baluchi insurgency in a multifaceted way, further 

threatening the territorial integrity of Pakistan and diverting the state’s attention from the 

jihadi threat. Assisting the government of Pakistan today in both rural development in the 

critical regions and overall in enhancing the effectiveness of its interdiction and law enforcement capacity has the potential of reducing the security and political threats that could result 

from such a relocation.

Critically, in devising counternarcotics policy in any particular locale, policymakers also 

need to consider where the drug economy is likely to shift and whether that would be even 

more detrimental to their objectives than the current location of the illicit economy with all 

the problems it generates there.

Conclusions and Broader Policy Lessons

The Obama administration is finally in synch with the counterinsurgency effort. But persisting 

insecurity and often problematic operationalizing of the overarching counternarcotics strategy 

on the ground have limited its effectiveness in reducing Afghanistan’s drug economy. Much 

of the strategy, such as rural development, ultimately depends on substantial and lasting improvements in security. Even then, substantial reduction in the size and significance of the drug 

economy will take several decades.

What lessons can be drawn from the case of Afghanistan for the involvement of international peacekeeping forces in tackling illicit economies? And how do efforts against illicit 

economies, such as the drug trade, interact with state-building efforts?
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During conflict situations, peacekeeping and counterinsurgency forces should resist calls 

for their involvement in the eradication of illicit crops. Such involvement will antagonize the 

rural population, which is the center of gravity of counterinsurgency, and inhibit intelligence 

gathering. Although counternarcotics policy is not the sole determinant of the population’s 

allegiance, and other factors, such as avoiding civilian casualties and providing consistent and 

robust security against the insurgents’ reprisals, are also critical, counternarcotics policies are 

crucial since they strike at the economic survival of the population. Ultimately, the ability to feed 

one’s family is as important from the perspective of survival as the threat of physical violence.

For success against illicit economies, it is essential to address corruption and poor governance. Indeed, strengthening good governance is a requisite for counterinsurgency and 

stabilization as well as economic reconstruction and counternarcotics efforts themselves. 

At the core of most of these efforts lies a process of building positive linkages between the 

population and the state.

Thus, for example, efforts against illicit economies such as the drug trade should be 

left only to specialized, constantly-vetted, and closely-monitored law enforcement units. To 

avoid the temptations of corruption, attacks on police by organized crime and militants, and 

alienation of the broader population from the police, regular police should be removed from 

counternarcotics efforts, including interdiction. Instead, broad police reform should be geared 

toward building trust so the population can see official law enforcement as a legitimate state 

representative delivering essential security, order, and justice.58

It is critical that policies against illicit economies be cognizant of the complex political 

dynamics that illicit economies generate. Embracing policies against illicit economies without 

paying close attention to their complex and multiple political effects can lead to counterproductive entanglement in local disputes, especially in places where the complexity and intensity of 

tribal, ethnic, and regional tensions and other local cleavages overlay the illicit economy. Illicit 

economies are deeply embedded in local social and political arrangements, especially where 

legal economies, official political arrangements, law enforcement capacity, and overall state 

presence are weak. Without recognizing this social embeddedness, policies to tackle illicit 

economies easily turn counterproductive and generate negative externalities and unanticipated 

second and third order effects that can negatively reverberate in other domains and within 

other networks.

Nonetheless, peacekeeping and counterinsurgency forces do have a large and, indeed, 

fundamental role in reducing illicit economies—delivering security. No matter what counternarcotics efforts will be undertaken, be they iron-fisted eradication or alternative livelihood, 

they will not be effective in reducing the illicit economy unless firm security throughout the 

entire territory has been established. The state needs to be strengthened and conflict must be 

ended before efforts against illicit economies, such as large-scale eradication of illicit crops, 

can be achieved.

International peacekeeping forces need to understand that the more the legal economy in 

the theater of intervention is destroyed, the more robust and deeply ensconced the illicit economy will be. Prominent military and political actors in the region—possible allies or proxies 

of the intervention forces—will also very likely be deeply involved in the illicit economy, and 

their power will be inextricably linked to their ability to use the illicit economy to provide for 
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the population’s elemental needs.59 Conversely, however, the engagement of intervention forces 

with such actors will have profound effects on the shape of and power distribution within the 

illicit economy, and thus within the country itself.

Expanding the mission of international peacekeeping forces beyond the provision of 

security to direct efforts to reduce illicit economies and corruption demands that the international peacekeeping forces have a very detailed understanding of the intricacies of the local 

illicit networks and economy and their nexus to violent conflict, to the political and socioeconomic structures in the country, and to peace. Accordingly, enlargement of the traditional, 

more limited role of peacekeeping forces requires that the mission has a continual and robust 

information-gathering component that constantly monitors the effects of the policies against 

illicit economies on the political and economic distribution of power and on stability and development. It is therefore important to provide the peacekeeping forces with a robust analytical 

support component that would include economic, agricultural, and anthropology experts. 

But it is also important to recognize that the staying power of the international peacekeeping 

forces will always be inherently limited and that efforts to suppress illicit economies will only 

be sustainable if the population and its political representatives have the economic and political 

incentives to support such policies.

Regarding nonmilitary operations, such as economic reconstruction, it is vital that the 

international community scale down its expectations of how rapidly legal economies can 

replace illicit ones. Even when the basic economic infrastructure is present and intact, the 

growth of the legal economies may well coincide with the continuing flourishing of the illegal 

enterprises. But certainly in areas where the basic structural requirements for a legal economy 

are absent, as is true in the majority of the world’s large-scale drug cultivation areas, efforts to 

boost alternative livelihoods are likely to take decades.

Moreover, a seeming success in suppressing an illicit economy in a particular region 

can easily lead to its transformation into a differently-organized illicit economy, which could 

be no less dangerous to the state and possibly the larger international community than the 

original economy. Nonetheless, efforts to boost licit livelihoods represent the only available 

source-country option to reduce illicit economies without resorting to substantial, lasting, 

and costly repression.

Counternarcotics efforts are indeed a key component of stabilization and reconstruction 

in Afghanistan and in any country where licit livelihoods have been decimated and an illicit 

narcotics economy thrives and intermingles with violent conflict. However, premature and 

inappropriate efforts against such an illicit economy, be it drugs or other commodities, greatly 

complicate counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and stabilization objectives. Hence, they 

ultimately also jeopardize economic reconstruction and political consolidation.

Notes

1

 See, for example, Anne Barnard and Farah Stockman, “U.S. Weighs Role in Heroin War in Afghanistan,” 

Boston Globe, October 20, 2004; and Michael E. O’Hanlon, “A Flawed Masterpiece,” Foreign Affairs 81, no. 3 (May/

June 2002), 47–63.
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2

 Adam Pain, “Opium Trading Systems in Helmand and Ghor,” Afghan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU), 

Issues Paper Series (Kabul: AREU, January 2006), available at <www.areu.org.af/Uploads/EditionPdfs/601E-Opium%20Trading%20Systems-IP-print.pdf>. 3

 John F. Burns, “Afghan Warlords Squeeze Profits from the War on Drugs, Critics Say,” The New York Times, 

May 5, 2002. 4

 Pain.

5

 Carlotta Gall, “Taliban Rebels Still Menacing Afghan South,” The New York Times, March 2, 2006. 6

 Robert B. Charles, Assistant Secretary for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, “Afghanistan: 

Are the British Counternarcotics Efforts Going Wobbly?” Testimony Before the House Committee on Government 

Reform Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources, 108th Cong., 2nd sess., April 1, 2004, 

available at <www.useu.be/Article.asp?ID=90CBBA80-50B2-4939-8E76-FC1C3C041D2B>. 7

 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), “The Opium Situation in Afghanistan as of 29 August 

2005,” (UNODC 2005), available at <www.unodc.org/pdf/afghanistan_2005/opium-afghanistan_2005-08-26.

pdf>. 8

 David Mansfield, “Pariah or Poverty? The Opium Ban in the Province of Nangarhar in the 2004–05 Growing 

Season and Its Impact on Rural Livelihood Strategies,” Project for Alternative Livelihoods (PAL), PAL Internal 

Document No. 11 (Jalalabad: German Agency for Technical Cooperation Project for Alternative Livelihoods in 

Eastern Afghanistan, June 2005). 9

 For details, see Vanda Felbab-Brown, Shooting Up: Counterinsurgency and the War on Drugs (Washington, 

DC: The Brookings Institution, 2010), 149–154. 10 Author interviews in Uruzgan and Kandahar, Spring 2009.

11 See David Mansfield and Adam Pain, “Evidence from the Field: Understanding Changing Levels of Opium 

Poppy Cultivation in Afghanistan,” AREU Briefing Paper Series (Kabul: AREU, November 2007); and Barnett 

R. Rubin and Jake Sherman, Counter-Narcotics to Stabilize Afghanistan: The False Promise of Crop Eradication (New 

York: Center on International Cooperation, February 2008), available at <www.cic.nyu.edu/afghanistan/docs/

counternarcoticsfinal.pdf>. 12 UNODC, Afghanistan Opium Survey 2006, September 2006, available at <www.unodc.org/unodc/index.

html>; UNODC, Afghanistan Opium Survey 2007. 13 See David Mansfield, “The Ban on Opium Production across Nangarhar—A Risk Too Far,” author’s copy, 

Harvard University, March 8, 2010. 14 For analysis of the social control structures, see Olivier Roy, Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan (Cambridge: 

Cambridge University Press, 1990). 15 See, for example, Joel Hafvenstein, Opium Season: A Year on the Afghan Frontier (Guilford, CT: The Lyons 

Press, 2007); and Holly Barnes Higgins, “The Road to Helmand,” The Washington Post, February 4, 2007. 16 See, for example, Adam Pain, “‘Let Them Eat Promises’: Closing the Opium Poppy Fields in Balkh and Its 

Consequences,” AREU Case Study Series (Kabul: AREU, December 2008). 17 Provincial governors in Afghanistan can choose to engage in their own eradication efforts. During 2010, 

2,316 hectares were eradicated in Afghanistan under this governor-led program; UNODC, Afghanistan Opium 

Survey 2010, 1. 18 Night raids have been extremely controversial. Many Afghans believe the raids violate both key cultural norms 

as well as human rights. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, on the other hand, has considered the raids one 

of its most important counterinsurgency tactics. The controversy escalated until, on January 2012, President Hamid 

Karzai delayed signing a strategic partnership agreement with the United States because of his refusal to tolerate 

further night raids. For a human rights perspective on the night raids, see Open Society Foundations and the Liaison Office, The Cost of Kill/Capture: Impact of the Night Raid Surge on Afghan Civilians (New York: Open Society 

Foundations, September 19, 2011), available at <www.opensocietyfoundations.org/>. 19 For details, see David Mansfield, “Managing Concurrent and Repeated Risks: Explaining the Reductions in 

Opium Production in Central Helmand Between 2008 and 2011” (Kabul: AREU, August 2011), available at <www.

areu.org.af/EditionDetails.aspx?EditionId=558&ParentId=7&ContentId=7&Lang=en-us>. 20 On banking sector corruption and Western anti-money-laundering efforts, see, for example, Matthew Rosenberg, “Corruption Suspected in Airlift of Billions in Cash from Kabul,” The Wall Street Journal, June 25, 2010; Greg 

Miller and Ernesto Londono, “U.S. Officials Say Karzai Aides Are Derailing Corruption Cases Involving Elite,” 

The Washington Post, June 28, 2010.
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21 Miller and Londono.

22 See, for example, interview with unnamed U.S. officials in Greg Jaffe, “U.S. to Temper Stance on Afghan 

Corruption,” The Washington Post, September 4, 2010; Greg Miller and Joshua Partlow, “CIA Making Secret 

Payments to Members of Karzai Administration,” The Washington Post, August 27, 2010; and Dexter Filkins and 

Mark Mazzetti, “Key Karzai Aide in Corruption Inquiry Is Linked to CIA,” The New York Times, August 25, 2010. 23 Author’s interview with an International Security Assistance Force official, Kandahar, September 2010.

24 As of January 2010, the United States alone had allocated more than $51 billion to Afghanistan, with more 

than half going to Afghan National Security Forces. See Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction 

(SIGAR), “Quarterly Report to the United States Congress,” July 30, 2010, available at <www.sigar.mil/pdf/

quarterlyreports/2010-07-30qr.pdf>, 43; and Kenneth Katzman, Afghanistan: Post-Taliban Governance, Security, 

and U.S. Policy, RL30588 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2010), available at <www.fas.org/

sgp/crs/row/RL30588.pdf>, 77–78. In 2011, the plan was to raise the U.S. contribution to $71 billion. See, for 

example, Brett Blackledge, Richard Lardner, and Deb Reichmann, “After Years of Rebuilding, Most Afghans Lack 

Power,” Huffington Post, July 19, 2010. The majority of the aid goes to building Afghan security forces. 25 Matthew Rosenberg.

26 See, for example, Dexter Filkins, “With U.S. Aid, Warlord Builds Afghan Empire,” The New York Times, 

June 5, 2010. 27 Following congressional inquiries into the corruption associated with the international contracts, the Shafafiyat

anticorruption task force is also supposed to tackle this type of corruption. See Carlotta Gall, “Kandahar, a Battlefield 

Even Before U.S. Offensive,” The New York Times, March 26, 2010. 28 For how intense such “insecurity-pays” dynamics are in central Afghanistan, see International Crisis Group 

(ICG), The Insurgency in Afghanistan’s Heartland, Asia Report No. 207, June 27, 2011, available at <www.crisisgroup.

org/en/regions/asia/south-asia/afghanistan/207-the-insurgency-in-afghanistans-heartland.aspx>. 29 Author’s interviews in Kandahar, Uruzgan, and Kabul, Spring 2009 and Fall 2010.

30 For details, see Dexter Filkins, “The Afghan Bank Heist,” The New Yorker, February 14, 2011, available at 

<www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/14/110214fa_fact_filkins>. 31 Author’s interviews in Helmand, Spring 2009. For a detailed study of the ethnic factionalization in the Afghan 

National Army, see ICG, A Force in Fragments: Reconstituting the Afghan National Army, Asia Report No. 190, May 

12, 2010, available at <www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/asia/south-asia/afghanistan/190-a-force-in-fragments-reconstituting-the-afghan-national-army.aspx>. 32 Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) leaders have the authority to disburse up to $25,000 for individual 

projects and up to $100,000 per month. 33 Rajiv Chandrasekaran, “In Afghan Region, U.S. Spreads the Cash to Fight the Taliban,” The Washington 

Post, May 31, 2010; and Karen DeYoung, “Results of Kandahar Offensive May Affect Future U.S. Moves,” The 

Washington Post, May 23, 2010. 34 Ibid.

35 Author’s interviews with U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) contractors and implementing 

contractor, nongovernmental organization (NGO) representatives, and Afghan government officials, maliks, and 

businessmen in Kandahar and Kabul, September 2010. 36 See, for example, Andrew Wilder, “A ‘Weapons System’ Based on Wishful Thinking,” The Boston Globe, 

September 16, 2009. 37 Chandrasekaran; USAID also envisions spending about $140 million to help settle property disputes. That 

would be an immense and highly strategic accomplishment, yet it is a very difficult undertaking, as is building a land 

cadastre in Afghanistan. 38 For details about the problematic and inadequate wheat distribution and similar programs, see David Mansfield, “Sustaining the Decline: Understanding the Nature of Change in Rural Livelihoods of Opium Growing 

Households in the 2008/09 Growing Season,” Report for the Afghan Drugs Interdepartmental Unit of the UK 

Government, May 2009, available at <www.fco.gov.uk/resources/en/pdf/pdf21/drivers-report-0809>; Vanda 

Felbab-Brown, “The Obama Administration’s New Counternarcotics Strategy in Afghanistan: Its Promises and 

Potential Pitfalls,” Brookings Policy Brief Series, No. 171 (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, September 

2009), available at <www.brookings.edu/papers/2009/09_afghanistan_felbabbrown.aspx>; and Joel Hafvenstein, “The Helmand Food Zone Fiasco,” Registan.net, August 26, 2010, available at <www.registan.net/index.

php/2010/08/26/helmand-food-zone-fiasco/>.
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39 For details, see Felbab-Brown, “Counternarcotics Policy”; Mansfield, “Sustaining the Decline”; and Christopher 

Ward and William Byrd, “Afghanistan’s Opium Drug Economy,” Working Paper Series, Report No. SASPR-5 

(Washington, DC: The World Bank, December 2004). 40 Author’s interviews with counternarcotics officials in southern Afghanistan and Washington, DC, Spring 

2009. 41 Author’s interviews with Dutch PRT members and Uruzgan government officials and NGOs, Uruzgan, 

Spring 2009. 42 For the difficult choices in balancing a number of objectives and considerations in deciding between “quick-impact” but unsustainable projects or long-term development, see, for example, the complex decisionmaking regarding 

whether to bring power generators to Kandahar to satisfy the population, complicate the Taliban movements in the 

city, and reduce crime, even though the generators will be dependent on an outside fuel supply—or wait without 

electricity while the Kajaki Dam and power lines are completed. The latter approach is sustainable, but insecurity 

prevents the completion of the project. For details, see Rajiv Chandrasekaran, “U.S. Military, Diplomats at Odds 

Over How to Resolve Kandahar’s Electricity Woes,” The Washington Post, April 23, 2010; and Blackledge, Lardner, 

and Reichmann. 43 Author’s interviews with USAID contractors, NGOs, and their Afghan counterparts in Kandahar and 

Kabul, September 2010. See also Rajiv Chandrasekaran, “‘Still a Long Way to Go’ for U.S. Operation in Marja, 

Afghanistan,” The Washington Post, June 10, 2010. 44 Author’s interviews with Afghan shopkeepers, September 2010.

45 For a prominent critique of the militia program, which nonetheless does not sufficiently distinguish between 

the Afghan Local Police and the other militias, see Human Rights Watch, “‘Just Don’t Call It a Militia’: Impunity, 

Militias, and the ‘Afghan Local Police,’” (New York: Human Rights Watch, September 2011), available at <www.

hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/afghanistan0911webwcover.pdf>. 46 For details on the various political and security trends as well as negotiations with the Taliban, see Vanda 

Felbab-Brown, “Afghanistan Ten Years after 9/11: Counterterrorism Accomplishments while a Civil War Is 

Lurking?” (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, September 6, 2011). 47 Francisco E. Thoumi, Illegal Drugs, Economy, and Society in the Andes (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson 

Center Press, and Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003). 48 Cannabis production has also spread to areas of poppy cultivation since under current prices its profits can 

surpass opium poppies and since it is subject to far less law enforcement suppression than the opium poppy economy. 

For details, see UNODC, Afghanistan Cannabis Survey 2010, June 2010. 49 For details on how such smuggling generates profits, see Felbab-Brown, Shooting Up, 122–124. 50 Frederik Balfour, “Dark Days for a Black Market: Afghanistan and Pakistan Rely Heavily on Smuggling,” Business Week, October 15, 2001, available at <http://businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_42/b3753016.htm>. 51 For a discussion of these drug markets and their history of production and trade, see Vanda Felbab-Brown, 

“The Drug-Conflict Nexus in South Asia: Beyond Taliban Profits and Afghanistan,” in The Afghanistan-Pakistan 

Theater: Militant Islam, Security, and Stability,ed. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Clifford May, 90–112 (Washington, 

DC: Foundation for Defense of Democracies, May 2010); and Vanda Felbab-Brown, “West African Drug Trade in 

the Context of Illicit Economies and Poor Governance” (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, October 14, 

2010), available at <www.brookings.edu/speeches/2010/1014_africa_drug_trade_felbabbrown.aspx>. 52 Amir Zada Asad and Robert Harris, The Politics and Economics of Drug Production on the Pakistan-Afghanistan 

Border (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003); and Nigel J.R. Allan, “Opium Production in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” 

in Dangerous Harvest: Drug Plants and the Transformation of Indigenous Landscapes, ed. Michael K. Steinberg, Joseph 

J. Hobbs, and Kent Mathewson, 133–152 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 53 Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade (New York: Lawrence 

Hill Books, 2003, rev. ed.), 484–485; and Ikramul Haq, “Pak-Afghan Drug Trade in Historical Perspective,” Asian 

Survey 36, no. 10 (October 1996), 945–963.

54 Lawrence Lifschultz, “Inside the Kingdom of Heroin,” The Nation, November 14, 1988. 55 Author’s interviews with former civilian and military officials in North-West Frontier Province, Fall 2008 

and Spring 2009. 56 Author’s interviews with UNODC, Indian, and Pakistani officials, in New York, Kashmir, India, and Washington, DC (Spring, Summer, and Fall 2008).
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57 See, for example, Syed Irfan Ashraf, “Militancy and the Black Economy,” Dawn, March 22, 2009; Sabrina 

Taversine, “Organized Crime in Pakistan Feeds Taliban,” The New York Times, August 29, 2009; and Pir Zubair 

Shah and Jane Perlez, “Pakistan Marble Helps Taliban Stay in Business,” The New York Times, July 14, 2008. 58 For more details, see Vanda Felbab-Brown, “Conceptualizing Crime as Competition in State-Making and 

Designing an Effective Response,” speech at Conference on Illicit Trafficking Activities in the Western Hemisphere, 

Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies and Office of National Drug Control Policy, available at <www.brookings.

edu/speeches/2010/0521_illegal_economies_felbabbrown.aspx>. 59 For a more extensive discussion of power brokers’ and states’ linkages to an illicit economy, including a postwar 

illicit economy, see Vanda Felbab-Brown, “Rules and Regulations in Ungoverned Spaces: Illicit Economies, Criminals 

and Belligerents,” in Ungoverned Spaces: Alternatives to State Authority in an Era of Softened Sovereignty, ed. Harold 

Trinkunas and Anne Clunnan, 175–192 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010).

Part IV. 

Fighting Back

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Chapter 12

Fighting Networks with Networks 

David M. Luna

There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give 

rise to more melodies than can ever be heard. There are not more than five primary colors 

(blue, yellow, red, white, and black), yet in combination they produce more hues than can 

ever be seen. . . . In battle, there are not more than two methods of attack—the direct and 

the indirect; yet these two in combination give rise to an endless series of maneuvers.

—Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Over the past decade, transnational organized crime has expanded in size, scope, and menace, destabilizing globalized economies and markets alike and creating insecurity in 

communities around the world. As criminal entrepreneurs and transnational illicit networks 

hijack the technological, financial, and communications advances of globalization for illicit 

gains, they continue to present new harms to the governance and security of all nations. The 

proliferation of these networks and the convergence of their illicit activities threaten not only 

the interdependent commercial, transportation, and transactional systems that facilitate free 

trade and the movement of people throughout the global economy, but are jeopardizing governance structures, economic development, security, and supply chain integrity.

Today’s global threat environment is characterized by convergence: the merging and 

blending of an ever-expanding array of illicit actors and networks. In an interconnected world, 

the pipelines linking these threat actors and networks cut across borders, infiltrate and corrupt 

licit markets, penetrate fragile governments, and undercut the interests and security of our 

partners across the international community. The direct links among specific illicit actors are 

of increasing concern, as well as the growing illegal economy that supports and enables corrupt 

officials, criminals, terrorists, and insurgents.

The global illicit economy is becoming increasingly flush with cash derived from a wide 

spectrum of illicit activities: narcotics, kidnapping-for-ransom, arms trafficking, human smuggling and trafficking, the trade in stolen and counterfeit goods, bribery, and money laundering. 

According to some estimates, the illegal economy accounts for 8 to 15 percent of world gross 
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domestic product. The wide availability of unregulated cash provides not only a safe haven and 

exploitable sanctuaries for illicit forces, but also illicit liquidity for corrupt officials, criminals, 

and terrorists to mingle, operate, and do business with, either with one another or on their own. 

And too often, these criminal and illicit actors and networks are staging operations without 

fear of reprisal from law enforcement.

Convergence defines the global economy today. The world we live in is one in which legal 

business transactions and legitimate commerce both facilitate and feed off the illegal economy, 

one in which illegal arms brokers and narcotics kingpins are acting in practice as the new chief 

executive officers and venture capitalists. From Wall Street to other financial centers across 

the globe, illicit networks are infiltrating and corrupting licit markets.

In this globalized, networked world, the uneven application of cross-border enforcement 

enables illicit networks to arbitrage differences in regulatory policies to extract maximum illegal 

profits. Policy levers activated in one country frequently have the undesired effect of driving 

crime from that country into another where regulation and enforcement are less stringent. 

The trade in illicit goods, people, arms, and services behaves much like a tide as it crosses 

oceans, crashing around obstacles, seeking cracks in the levees, converging with other flows, 

and flooding anywhere that is not protected.

From Sinaloa to Tirana to Caracas to Lagos, as transnational criminal organizations and 

“third-generation gangs”—gangs that have morphed from local groups of individual actors to 

cross-border, networked entities that toe the line between crime and war—increasingly forge 

alliances with corrupt government officials, undermine competition in key global markets, and 

diversify their illicit portfolios with ventures into legitimate commerce, they are unraveling the 

social fabric of the community of nations.

It is therefore critical that the international community work together in a coordinated 

manner to staunch this flow and dismantle the criminal opportunity structure at every node, 

pipeline, and channel across the global illicit landscape. By combining forces in response 

to the relentless convergence of illicit threat networks and reducing their ability to exploit 

market opportunities, we will have a much greater chance of success if we target their center 

of gravity in this landscape including their financial flows—the whole indeed can be greater 

than the sum of all parts. Collective action can be harnessed via an array of responses to disassemble today’s formidable criminal and terrorist adversaries by disrupting their pipelines 

and ill-gotten financial assets. This chapter outlines some of the innovative approaches and 

partnerships the U.S. State Department is developing to combat today’s illicit networks and 

converging threats globally.

Translating Threat Awareness into Threat Management

The United States has recently taken steps to make countering the convergence of illicit threats 

a national security priority. On July 25, 2011, the White House released the Strategy to Combat 

Transnational Organized Crime: Addressing Converging Threats to National Security (SCTOC), 

which aims to protect Americans and citizens of partner nations from violence and exploitation 

at the hands of transnational criminal networks.
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Before an audience that included heads and senior officials from the U.S. Departments of 

Justice, Homeland Security, State, the Treasury, and other law enforcement, security, and intelligence agencies, at the White House ceremony to unveil the SCTOC, then–Under Secretary 

of State Williams Burns (now Deputy Secretary of State) articulated the adverse impact of 

transnational criminal threats on U.S. foreign policy:

Organized crime, in its many forms, is a threat to decent, hardworking people across 

the world. It empowers warlords, criminals, and corrupt officials. It erodes stability, 

security and good governance. It undermines legitimate economic activity and the rule 

of law. It undermines the integrity of vital governmental institutions meant to protect 

peace and security. It costs economies tax revenue and promotes a culture of impunity. 

It undercuts our fight against poverty and slows sustainable development.

While the problem of transnational illicit networks is as ancient as the trade routes 

that many such networks still employ today, the United States and its partners recognize the 

importance of net-centric partnerships to confront converging threats and the lethal nexus of 

organized crime, corruption, and terrorism along global illicit pathways and financial hubs.

Of growing concern are illicit financial hubs and the complicity of today’s banks and 

market-based facilitators and super fixers—such as lawyers, accountants, black market 

procurers of commodities and services, and cross-border transport movers. Illicit financial 

hubs and sanctuaries help to create the permissive environment that enables illicit funds to 

enter through vulnerable points in the system and be transferred very rapidly, often with 

little control or regulation, anywhere in the world. All it takes is a single illicit actor or bank 

to accept an unsavory client for illicit funds or goods to spread and disguise themselves 

across the globe.

These illicit channels are also allowing kleptocrats, criminals, and in some cases terrorists 

or their sympathizers to inject billions of dollars of illicit wealth into the stream of licit commerce and business, corrupting markets, financial institutions, officials, and communities. The 

international community can no longer turn a blind eye on the complicity of facilitators and 

super fixers who perhaps unwittingly construct illicit financial hubs and permissive sanctuaries 

by converting illicit financial flows into licit investments and legal liquid assets, or injecting 

illicit goods into legitimate commerce.

Breaking the corruptive power of transnational illicit networks will be a key area of focus 

for the United States under the new SCTOC, and the State Department will work with international partners to expose criminal activities hidden behind legitimate fronts, investigate 

actors and networks that run afoul of U.S. laws, protect strategic markets and the integrity 

of the global financial system, and employ all elements of national power and public-private 

partnerships to dismantle criminal organizations and cross-border networks.

For those nations that may lack the necessary means and capabilities to combat today’s 

transnational criminal threats, the United States is committed to assisting these partners—

especially those that have the will to fulfill their international law enforcement commitments—to develop stronger law enforcement and criminal justice institutions necessary for 

ensuring the rule of law. As the SCTOC underscores, the State Department will spearhead a 
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renewed multilateral diplomacy, leveraging bilateral and global partnerships to elevate the importance of combating transnational organized crime as a key area of cooperation internationally.

Globalization and Horizontal Diversification of Illicit Networks

Since the end of the Cold War, the world has witnessed the expansion of transnational criminal 

organizations beyond their traditional boundaries. They are quick to identify new opportunities and spread into new geographic areas where national and international responses have 

yet to pose a credible threat to the survival of their operations. No region is immune. Today, 

the major organized crime groups have become even more global in reach, operating not only 

in the United States and Latin America, but also in West Africa, Southeast Europe, Asia, and 

Russia, integrating within and across networks in all regions of the world.

Central America and West Africa have become central areas of concern as safe havens for 

converging threats where trafficking in drugs, people, weapons, and other illicit commodities 

fuels instability and insecurity. Colombian drug cartels, which have long been viewed as a 

major security threat in the Western Hemisphere, are now expanding their activities beyond 

traditional areas of operation. Multi-ton shipments of Colombian cocaine now flow through 

West Africa as a transit point for moving the product to Europe and beyond. At the same 

time, West African drug traffickers have recently been spotted moving South American cocaine 

as far away as South Asia. West African drug mules have been caught at ports of entry from 

Florida to Thailand. Piracy in the waters off the Horn of Africa remains a serious challenge 

to humanitarian aid and commerce, and the problem is getting worse. Piracy presents a clear 

and present danger to the international maritime shipping industry, on which much of the 

global economy depends; to fragile political progress and development in Somalia; and to 

humanitarian assistance and trade in the region.

The security threats of today are more sophisticated and complex than in the past; 

converging threat networks are forming alliances where previously the parties acted alone. 

The illicit proceeds of global drug trafficking are among the funds used for arms trafficking 

to the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, while drug 

traffickers themselves engage in countless other illicit activities—from antiquities smuggling to 

human trafficking—to launder money. Ideologically motivated terrorists such as al Qaeda in 

the Islamic Maghreb, Lebanese Hizballah, and al-Shabaab in the Horn of Africa are in some 

instances engaging with or benefiting from criminal organizations following a strict profit 

motive, and in other situations becoming criminal entrepreneurs in their own right, engaging 

in actions such as kidnapping for ransom.

Traders in illicit goods poison legitimate supply chains, markets, and communities with 

low-quality counterfeits, inherently illicit goods such as narcotics, and illegally procured 

goods such as blood diamonds that are traded on the black market. In some cases, organized 

criminal groups seize control of a legitimate supply chain or exploit the legitimate global 

financial infrastructure to launder the proceeds of crime. Today’s enhanced communications 

and cyber technologies allow cyber criminals in one part of the world to cooperate with virtual 

accomplices across the globe in real time. Most worryingly, threats such as international arms 
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and narcotics trafficking, transnational organized crime, and terrorism are no longer acting in 

isolation, but converging faster than governments can deploy responses to keep up with them.

Third-party facilitators grease the revolving door between converging threat networks. 

One type of criminal activity often depends on, stimulates, and feeds the capacity for a wide 

range of illicit conduct. Transnational criminal organizations may strike up a relationship 

with technical experts who occupy a gray zone between the underworld and the legitimate 

market, such as lawyers, business owners, bankers, scientists, and other specialists. Some of 

the best-known facilitators are full-time brokers. These facilitators are crucial to the ability 

of illicit networks to move goods, launder money, and acquire funding, falsified documents, 

weapons, and logistical support.

Other groups have entrenched themselves in so many diversified criminal activities that 

they can no longer be identified by a single specialty. Some drug cartels previously specializing 

in cocaine are now also involved in intellectual property rights theft, wildlife trafficking, and 

human smuggling. Human smugglers are involved in the production of fraudulent documents, 

corrupting public officials, money laundering, drug smuggling, and facilitating clandestine 

terrorist travel. Local mafias are involved in international financial fraud schemes. Somali 

pirates are believed to be involved in many other criminal activities including smuggling, arms 

trafficking, and human trafficking. The interwoven strands of such illicit transactions make 

it almost impossible to separate one from the other, like unzipping a double helix of DNA 

using a pair of scissors.

These networks are structured more fluidly than traditional hierarchical organized crime 

syndicates, and this makes them strategically more difficult to target. Network organizers are 

harder to identify than syndicate leaders, and the loose links among network elements can 

impede efforts to identify the full range of activities in which they are involved. Some transnational criminal groups, such as the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang, have been networked, 

loosely coordinated organizations since their inception, while traditional organized crime 

groups such as the Albanian Mafia, Chinese Triads, and Japanese Yakuza are increasingly 

restructuring their vertical organizations into horizontal networks.

The Convergence of International Crime and Terror Pipelines

The nexus between organized criminal activity and terrorist groups has long been debated 

and remains a threat requiring urgent attention. The Department of Justice reports that 31 of 

the 71 organizations on its fiscal year 2011 Consolidated Priority Organization Targets list, 

which includes the most significant international drug-trafficking organizations threatening 

the United States, are associated with terrorist groups. Criminal syndicates have long been 

known to support terrorist groups by facilitating their clandestine transborder movements, 

weapons smuggling, and forging of documents. Of particular concern would be the ability 

of some of these groups to acquire radioactive materials or chemical and biological weapons.

Despite differences in motivation and ideology, terrorists and insurgents increasingly 

turn to criminal networks to acquire financial and logistical support. These crime-terror 

pipelines run two ways. In one direction, terrorist organizations overcome differences in 

motivation and ideology as they turn to transnational illicit networks such as drug-trafficking 
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organizations or facilitators for logistical support. In the other direction, terrorists and insurgent groups are increasingly evolving into criminal entrepreneurs in their own right, engaging 

in a wide range of illicit activities to finance their operations. Some criminal networks, such 

as Los Zetas in Mexico, are not only expanding their operations, but also diversifying their 

methods to include terrorist-like tactics and campaigns of violence.

U.S. and Colombian law enforcement investigators have recently uncovered some links 

between South American cocaine traffickers and some individuals associated with the Lebanon-based terrorist organization Hizballah. According to news reports, this transnational 

ring launders hundreds of millions of drug dollars each year, funneling illicit funds through 

free trade zones in Panama and Hong Kong in order to “clean” the money and using other 

methods of laundering in other parts of the world including Africa and Canada. The South 

American ring has allegedly paid Hizballah a percentage of its profits.

Owing to pressure from the United States and committed international partners to 

implement a no-tolerance policy against the state sponsorship of terror since September 11, 

2001, al Qaeda and other terrorist groups have resorted to illicit activities to finance their 

operations including drug dealing (prior to the Madrid bombings of 2004), credit card theft, 

and insurance scams. It does not take much: the BBC, Washington Post, and other investigative 

news sources have reported that the cost of executing a terrorist attack has fallen dramatically 

over the past decade, from Bali to Amman to Madrid to London.

Further media reports suggest that despite their ideological aversion to common criminal 

activity, terrorist organizations operating in the Middle East and North Africa do engage in 

crime when it is necessary to achieve their objectives, particularly arms and narcotics trafficking, smuggling goods and commodities, migrant smuggling, trafficking in persons, extortion, 

kidnapping, intellectual property theft, counterfeiting, fraud, credit theft, armed robbery, and 

money laundering, which is nearly identical to terrorist financing. It has also been reported in 

the press that drug kingpin Dawood Ibrahim, head of the D-Company hybrid organization, 

has helped finance the terror activities of Lashkar-e-Taiba, which has launched terrorist attacks 

in Mumbai and other cities across South Asia.

The illegal economy that has grown globally is making it increasingly difficult to shut off 

the spigot used to finance terrorism, at least through traditional means. As terrorist groups 

mimic the tactics of organized crime, international counterterrorism efforts need to incorporate 

law enforcement tools as part of a global strategic response. Along these lines, preventing the 

criminal facilitation of terrorist activities was identified as a priority in the 2011 Strategy to 

Combat Transnational Organized Crime, and preventing the collaboration between criminal 

and terrorist networks and depriving them of their critical resources and infrastructure, such 

as funding, logistical support, safe havens, and the procurement of illicit materiel, were highlighted as major objectives.

Smart Power Diplomacy: Fighting Networks with Networks

The illicit networks and converging threat networks outlined above necessitate strong responses and partnerships. Fighting transnational crime and dismantling illicit networks is 

not something that any one government or agency can do alone. As underscored by President 
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Obama, “This strategy is organized around a single, unifying principle: To build, balance, and 

integrate the tools of American power to combat transnational organized crime and related 

threats to our national security—and urge our partners to do the same.”

The State Department is working across the U.S. Government to improve internal cooperation and build domestic security and law enforcement networks to fight illicit networks. In 

support of the SCTOC, the State Department is working to “build international consensus, 

multilateral cooperation, and public-private partnerships to defeat transnational organized 

crime.” This involves a broad range of bilateral, regional, and global programs and initiatives 

that help to strengthen international cooperation with other committed partners.

The State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs 

(INL), which is responsible for international counternarcotics and countercrime issues, leads 

diplomatic efforts to raise awareness of the destabilizing impact of transnational organized 

criminal activities to the community of nations and to strengthen global efforts to combat these 

threats. Enhanced coordination enables the international community to dismantle criminal 

networks and combat the threats they pose not only through law enforcement efforts, but 

also by building up governance capacity, supporting committed reformers, and strengthening 

the ability of citizens—including journalists—to monitor public functions and hold leaders 

accountable for providing safety, effective public services, and efficient use of public resources.

CARSI, WACSI, CACI

At the regional level, the State Department is developing innovative partnerships with governments through platforms such as the Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI), 

the West Africa Cooperative Security Initiative (WACSI), and the Central Asia Counter-narcotics Initiative (CACI) to coordinate investigations, support prosecutions, and build collective 

capacity to identify, disrupt, and dismantle transnational organized crime groups.

In places like Central America, traffickers and criminal gangs now facilitate the flow of 

up to 95 percent of all cocaine reaching the United States. CARSI will help to improve citizen 

safety by reducing the ability of criminal organizations to destabilize governments, threaten 

public safety, and spread illicit drugs, guns, and other transnational threats to Central America, 

its neighbors, and the United States. In partnership with the Central American Integration 

System (SICA), the United States and other donor nations and multilateral organizations 

participating in the Group of Friends of Central America are working more closely than ever 

before to ensure that citizen security assistance is well coordinated and aligned with regional 

priorities set forth in SICA’s Central America Security Strategy.

West Africa faces a growing danger from transnational criminal organizations, particularly narcotics traffickers, whose activities threaten the collective security and regional stability 

interests of the United States, its African partners, and the international community. Illicit 

markets and those who profit from them weaken public institutions, foster corruption, and 

foment violence. To address this threat, U.S. Government agencies collaborated to create 

WACSI. In consultation with African and international partners, the United States will seek 

opportunities to complement and enable regional and national initiatives that seek to achieve 

similar objectives. WACSI will implement a multilayered approach that will target certain 

nations to strengthen anchor country capacities, invest in future anticrime partnerships, and 
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build on regional and interregional networks to effectively support the efforts of the United 

States’ African partners to address their assorted challenges.

Central Asian states on the Afghan border also face a significant threat from illicit narcotic 

drugs transiting from Afghanistan. Violent extremist groups from Afghanistan and Pakistan 

threaten stability in the region, with drug trafficking providing a significant source of their 

funding. The U.S. Government is partnering with Central Asian states directly to counter 

these threats. The CACI will improve the ability of Central Asian countries to disrupt drug 

trafficking networks originating in Afghanistan and dismantle related criminal organizations 

through effective investigation, prosecution, and conviction of mid- to high-level traffickers. 

CACI will also focus on regional cooperation and help establish counternarcotics task forces 

that will serve as an impetus for further reform, facilitate increased information-sharing, and 

form a foundation for further institutional capacity-building.

Transpacific Networks on Dismantling Transnational Illicit Networks

The State Department is also developing more dynamic interregional partnerships that 

strengthen cross-border cooperation including with Australia, New Zealand, and other committed jurisdictions. For example, in November 2009, the State Department sponsored, with 

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Trans-Pacific Symposium on Dismantling 

Transnational Illicit Networks, in Honolulu. This event brought together participants from 

approximately 25 economies from Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific Islands, as well as 

senior representatives from international organizations such as the Asia-Pacific Economic 

Cooperation (APEC), the Organization of American States (OAS), the Asia-Pacific Group 

on Money-Laundering, the International Criminal Police Organization commonly known as 

Interpol, and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The United States 

was represented by senior officials from the Departments of Justice, Treasury, Homeland Security, State, Defense, and their law enforcement components including the Joint Interagency 

Task Force–West and U.S. Pacific Command.

Out of the Trans-Pacific Symposium emerged many ideas on ways to better equip 

participating countries against illicit threats across the region. These include devising more 

strategic frameworks and information-sharing arrangements, leveraging international cooperation across regional and global law enforcement networks, strengthening capacity-building in 

law enforcement, coordinating joint investigations to target “money conduits” and corruption 

nodes, and securing borders.

In November 2010, the United States and New Zealand cohosted a follow-up workshop 

to the 2009 Trans-Pacific Symposium, in Christchurch, which brought together partners to 

discuss further interagency cooperation on combating transnational illicit networks including 

pressing challenges such as narcotics trafficking, counterfeit medicines, trafficking in persons, 

illegal logging, money laundering, and the corruption that facilitates illicit trade. Transpacific 

participants have now formed a Trans-Pacific Network, which convenes regularly to work 

across borders on the transnational criminal threats across the Pacific and to develop joint 

and coordinated strategies and share case studies and effective practices to help achieve better 

interagency coordination at the national level.
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In October, the Trans-Pacific Network met for a third time, in Phuket, Thailand. More 

than 125 law enforcement and other government officials from 30 Asia-Pacific economies and 

representatives of regional and international organizations participated. The Phuket workshop 

was cohosted by the governments of Thailand and the United States, in partnership with 

The Colombo Plan and other international partners. Law enforcement officials from across 

the transpacific region underscored the growing sophistication and increasing joint ventures 

among illicit organizations from regions such as Asia, West Africa, Latin America, the Middle 

East, and Eurasia.

It was noted that while regional law enforcement agencies had made significant narcotics 

seizures, arrests, and confiscations and recovery of bulk cash related to drug trafficking in their 

cross-border operations, participants were growing increasingly concerned about the expansion and influence of Latin American cartels, West African gangs, and Iranian-based criminal 

organizations in the Asia-Pacific region. In the other direction, discussion also focused on the 

growing threat posed by Chinese organized crime syndicates across the Americas. Another 

concern raised was the high purity of drugs such as Afghan heroin, compared to the impurities 

and toxic cutting agents present in Latin American crack cocaine, causing a public health crisis 

that aggravates regionalized drug epidemics.

The Trans-Pacific workshop in Phuket also placed a priority on environmental crimes, 

specifically illicit logging and associated trade. The objective of this session was to provide 

participants with a greater understanding and ability to practically respond to the broad array 

of illegal logging and related enforcement issues in the region. Discussion focused on ways 

to establish an interregional network to enhance cross-sector regional cooperation to combat 

criminal networks illicitly trading in illegally harvested or stolen timber. Partners emphasized 

the need to reinforce commitments to strengthen forest law enforcement sectors and criminal 

justice communities both within and across national borders. This included the need to take 

concrete measures to combat illicit logging and associated trade in three areas: prevention, 

detection, and suppression.

Falsified or fake medicines, medical products, and other dangerous counterfeits and defective and tainted products imperil the safety of our citizens and shake market confidence. The 

illicit trade of these counterfeit products is another profitable area for transnational criminals, 

especially given its high reward/low risk calculus. Another of the streams at the Trans-Pacific 

workshop in Phuket focused on how dangerous counterfeits continue to enter regional and 

global supply chains and markets, with harmful impacts on communities, healthcare institutions, and businesses. Participants have carried the momentum of this discussion into other 

fora such as APEC, where the Anti-Corruption and Transparency Experts Working Group 

has begun to focus on counterfeit pharmaceuticals as a major threat to the health and safety 

of APEC communities and markets.

Transpacific partners agreed, in essence, to shut down illicit markets, put criminal entrepreneurs out of business, and continue to cooperate across borders to dismantle transnational 

criminal threats and illicit networks. In addition to showcasing case studies and sharing best 

practices, partners agreed to further leverage intelligence- and information-sharing arrangements; promote mutual legal assistance that enables evidence-sharing to assist in carrying 

out investigations and prosecutions; expand capacity-building efforts at the interregional, 
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subregional, and bilateral levels that help to combat cross-border crime and corruption; and 

synchronize regional transnational crime units with fusion centers and other intelligence-based 

regional policing efforts. The United States is working with Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, 

and other partners to coordinate a fourth meeting of the Trans-Pacific initiative, in 2013.

Trans-Atlantic Symposium on Dismantling Transnational Illicit Networks

The United States hosted a similar event in May 2011—the Trans-Atlantic Symposium—

with the European Union (EU) to generate partnerships to address threat convergence across 

the trans-Atlantic region. Held in Lisbon, Portugal, the EU and U.S. joint initiative brought 

together 300 senior law enforcement and judicial officials from 65 countries including 

representatives from the United States, the European Union and its member states, Latin 

America, Canada, the Caribbean, and West Africa. Senior representatives of international 

and regional organizations included officials from the G8, UNODC, Economic Community 

of West African States, OAS, the World Customs Organization, Interpol, European Police 

Office (Europol), and the Intergovernmental Action Group Against Money Laundering in 

West Africa.

The Symposium launched an interregional dialogue among senior European, U.S., West 

African, and Latin American law enforcement and judicial officials on ways to strengthen international cooperation to combat transnational criminal threats and illicit networks that span 

the Atlantic. It focused on cross-border crimes and illicit routes including drugs, arms, human 

smuggling/trafficking, money laundering and illicit finance, corruption, and maritime crimes.

The co-organizers were the EU’s European External Action Service working in close 

collaboration with the European Commission and the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement.

The theme of the Trans-Atlantic Symposium was “Fighting Networks with Networks,” 

building on the theme of the Trans-Pacific Symposium. Participants agreed on a new cooperative platform to counter transnational criminal threats that includes:

• launching an informal transatlantic network of regional networks of law enforcement 

and judicial practitioners that could be interconnected to facilitate intelligence- and 

information-sharing arrangements and mutual legal assistance to assist in carrying 

out cross-border investigations and prosecution

• developing a clearer picture of transnational crime trends across the Atlantic including the presence and activities of illicit networks and their illicit financial flows so 

government agencies can develop more effective strategies to address transnational 

threats and deploy the most effective investigative techniques to disrupt them

• combating high-level corruption and denying safe haven including visas, to illicit 

actors
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• examining the establishment of sound mechanisms to trace the flow of criminally 

derived funds and to prevent illicit networks from benefitting from the proceeds 

of crime

• strengthening collective capacities to counter transregional threats including synergies between multilateral and regional efforts as well as operational and information 

centers, with emphasis on West Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean

• improving our understanding of emerging threats, especially identifying gaps and 

needs, and promoting public awareness of the real costs to governments and their 

citizens of the insecurity, the loss of revenue, trade, and investment, and the risks to 

health and safety caused by the activities of illicit networks

• promoting the implementation and best use of the available international instruments including the United Nations Conventions regarding the Control of Drugs 

and Corruption (UNCAC) and Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC), as 

well as the Financial Action Task Force principles on combating money laundering 

and terrorist financing

• leveraging partnerships with key Latin American states to help build capacity in 

West Africa

• examining ways in which international scientific collaboration could promote research, data collection, and analysis of the scale and scope of transnational organized 

crime and the evaluation of law enforcement practices to ensure their effectiveness.

The network of law enforcement and judicial officials launched at the Trans-Atlantic 

Symposium has continued to meet and coordinate on the most pressing security threats. The 

United States, United Kingdom, and other committed jurisdictions have been especially active 

at countering the convergence of illicit threats as part of a shared global security agenda. In 

June 2012, the United States hosted the Trans-Atlantic Dialogue to Combat Crime-Terror 

Pipelines, in Washington, DC, to strengthen international cooperation to identify and disrupt 

the collusion of criminal and terrorist networks across the Atlantic threat theater. The Dialogue 

examined ways to explore smart law enforcement tools, strategic capabilities and sanctions, and 

levers to shine the light on an unholy alliance of illicit actors and their money pipelines, maximize information sharing, and facilitate the development of concrete policy recommendations.

Among the Dialogue’s final recommendations for further discussion are:

• build a transatlantic network: combine joint national capabilities to develop an anticipatory approach to crime-terror interaction, and coordinate actions to mitigate 

the current threats posed by adaptive actors and hybrid networks

• paint the crime-terror panorama: reevaluate the traditional separation of terrorism 

and organized crime as distinct threats
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• drain the illicit economy: strengthen nonkinetic methods, especially financial tools 

and criminal justice responses, to target corrupt actors and illicit pathways and follow 

the money to disrupt and dismantle pipelines, target their facilitators, and eliminate 

their financial resources

• elevate transnational crime as a national and international security threat: governments should treat transnational organized crime as a national and international 

security priority, taking into account the relative long-term impacts of organized 

crime and terrorism based on a common understanding of shared threats; possible 

actions may include sanctioning terrorist groups as transnational criminal organizations where there is intelligence and evidence that specific terrorist groups are 

engaged in criminal enterprise

• target the facilitators: examine legislative powers and other means to combat corruption; some participants argued in favor of treating facilitators of crime and 

terrorism—from individuals such as professional arms brokers to corporate entities 

such as banks engaged in money laundering or facilitating terrorism financing—as 

criminal actors in their own right

• expose safe havens and sanctuaries: coordinate efforts to identify and uproot safe 

havens and exploitable sanctuaries that enable criminals, terrorists, and other illicit 

actors and networks to corrupt governments, access illegal markets, and stage operations without fear of reprisal from law enforcement; expose and prevent conditions 

for nesting illicit forces with criminalized states

• invest in evidence-based research and analysis: develop evidence-based research to 

target and dismantle crime-terror pipelines at key nodes and along major pathways 

including mapping, data analysis, network analysis, forecasting, and other analytic 

tools in both unclassified and classified formats

• strengthen international consensus: build a common understanding of crime-terror 

pipelines across borders and promote bilateral and multilateral partnerships to carry 

out operations and investigations and share information and intelligence

• safeguard private sector investment: form public-private partnerships to enable the 

public and private sectors to exchange relevant information on organized crime 

groups in certain markets that threaten the integrity of supply chains or the ability 

of companies to make sustainable, responsible investments

• promote international development: employ all tools of power and persuasion by 

integrating policies and programs aimed at improving governance, economic development, and foreign direct investment with policies targeting crime and terror 

networks.
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Combating Wildlife Trafficking and Dismantling Transnational Illicit Networks

The discussion on environmental crimes that took center stage at the Trans-Pacific Symposium in 

Phuket has continued, focusing on specific threats on a regional and transregional basis. In April 

2012, the United States partnered with the government of Gabon to host a Sub-Regional Workshop for Central Africa on Wildlife Trafficking and Dismantling Transnational Illicit Networks, 

in Libreville, Gabon, to address growing concerns about the threats posed to communities, ecosystems, institutions, and markets by poaching and trafficking in protected and endangered wildlife.

Today, 30 percent of the species hunted in the Congo Basin are threatened. Heavily armed 

poachers operating in central Africa—who have attacked law enforcement and military personnel—have become a threat to the national security of Central African countries. Furthermore, 

poaching and wildlife trafficking are largely intertwined with other criminal activities of transnational illicit networks that contribute to the insecurity and instability of economies globally 

and hinder sustainable development strategies including efforts to preserve national resources 

and the promotion of ecotourism as a source of revenue for governments and communities.

Approximately 150 Central African government officials, law enforcement personnel, 

and members of nongovernmental and international conservation organizations from Central 

African and Asian countries including China worked together during the 3-day workshop 

in Libreville to share ideas and best practices for antipoaching. The workshop facilitated the 

exchange of information and shared best practices to foster and develop innovative responses 

to stem the poaching and cross-border trafficking of endangered and protected wildlife by 

involving agencies throughout governments. In addition, participants discussed ways to protect 

biodiversity through leveraging partnerships with other countries and nongovernmental and 

international organizations from other regions to dismantle illicit networks. At the end of the 

workshop, participants committed to establishing a wildlife enforcement network to intensify 

and coordinate antipoaching efforts in Central Africa. The Gabon workshop provided key 

momentum within the international community on combating wildlife trafficking and related 

corruption and cross-border crime.

Other Global Partnerships and Multilateral Cooperation

By building cooperative platforms and networks incrementally, the United States continues to 

promote smart power diplomacy to generate greater collective action, joint cases, and strategic 

approaches with international partners to combat transnational criminal threats. Washington 

is also working multilaterally and bilaterally with committed international partners to combat 

the growing wave of crime and other illicit threats and to employ diplomatic tools and technical assistance to disrupt and dismantle transnational threat networks, including helping to 

strengthen law enforcement, judicial, legal, and security institutions.

G-8. In recent years, the Group of Eight (G-8) has played a leading international role in 

articulating the harms and destabilizing factors posed by transnational threats—terrorism, 

organized crime, nuclear proliferation, and corruption—and how they contributed to domestic 

and international destabilization and challenges to global security, required greater synergies and 

ideas for the G-8 and international community to enhance the security toolbox to preempt and 

counter transnational threats, and encouraged stronger joint intergovernmental coordination 
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to combat the assets of the criminal and terrorist organizations. From G-8 summits in L’Aquila 

(Italy) in 2009, Huntsville, Ontario (Canada) 2010, Deauville (France) 2011, and Camp David, 

Maryland (United States) 2012, G-8 leaders have continued to reaffirm their commitment to 

combating transnational organized crime and the UNTOC.

OAS Summit of the Americas. At the Fifth and Sixth Summits of the Americas, held in 

Port-of-Spain, capital of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, in 2009, and in Cartagena, 

Colombia, in 2012, President Barack Obama and other hemispheric leaders agreed to fight 

all forms of transnational organized crime, drug and arms trafficking, trafficking in persons 

and migrant smuggling, money laundering, corruption, terrorism, kidnapping, gang violence, 

and technology related crimes including cyber crime. The United States is also working with 

OAS member states to implement a Hemispheric Plan of Action to Combat Transnational 

Organized Crime, which was approved by the Permanent Council of the OAS in 2006 and 

includes a series of actions to enhance coordination, increase the capacity of law enforcement 

to implement mechanisms to combat organized crime, and promote information sharing, 

among others. In Cartagena, the heads of state and government acknowledged how transnational criminal organizations were increasingly expanding beyond drug trafficking to other 

criminal activities, with increased levels of violence. They expressed concern that national 

responses were not sufficient to combat cross-border threats and agreed to join forces and 

leverage capabilities against transnational organized crime.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The North Atlantic Council has long 

expressed its willingness to cooperate on combating “global threats, such as terrorism, the 

proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, their means of delivery and cyber attacks” and to 

work together on “other challenges such as energy security, climate change, as well as instability 

emanating from fragile and failed states,” which have a negative impact not only on NATO 

member states but the international community as a whole.

APEC/ASEAN. The United States is working with other APEC and Association of 

Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) economies to combat corruption and illicit trade, dismantle transnational illicit networks, and protect economies from abuse of the U.S. financial 

system by leveraging financial intelligence and law enforcement cooperation related to corrupt 

payments and illicit financial flows. Economies across the Asia-Pacific region continue to focus 

on ways to combat terrorism, prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and 

strengthen international capacities to combat piracy and armed robbery at sea. The United 

States is working with other economies in the region to strengthen interregional capabilities 

and to develop transpacific cooperation to combat transnational terrorism, crime, illicit finance, 

and corruption and to dismantle threat networks including through the Trans-Pacific Network. The United States and Cambodia will cohost an APEC-ASEAN Pathfinder Project 

in 2013 to combat corruption and illicit trade.

Other International Organizations. The United States continues to advance leadership 

internationally and to strengthen global partnerships to combat transnational threats globally 

including at the United Nations, World Bank, Financial Action Task Force, Organisation for 

Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Interpol, Contact Group on Piracy 

off the Coast of Somalia, and numerous regional intergovernmental fora around the world.
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Leveraging International Conventions

As transnational organized crime globalizes, the United States and other jurisdictions have 

made great strides in globalizing the fight against it and also the corruption that facilitates it. 

UNTOC (the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime) and its Protocols 

for the first time require criminalization of a broad range of activities by crime groups, while 

UNCAC (the UN Convention against Corruption), requires the criminalization of bribery 

and other corrupt conduct and taking preventive measures. These two international legal 

instruments complement each other to establish a broad, virtually global framework for intergovernmental legal cooperation.

These instruments have already been used successfully by many governments to facilitate 

extraditions, mutual legal assistance, the transfer of sentenced persons, joint investigations, and 

special investigative techniques to combat transnational organized crime, but their reach must 

be extended. By ratifying and, more importantly, fully implementing both UNTOC and UNCAC, jurisdictions not only demonstrate their commitment to staying ahead of the criminals, 

but arm themselves with the assistance and information other signatory states can provide.

Ratifying the global treaty is not sufficient, however. The State Department encourages 

and helps states strengthen domestic laws to deny criminals, their associates, and family 

members safe haven and access to illicit assets including use of visa authority to deny visas for 

entry. Out of UNTOC and UNCAC have come laws prohibiting organized criminal actors 

and kleptocrats from enjoying the fruits of their illicit profits, including owning real estate, establishing businesses, or investing abroad. To dismantle their networks, the State Department 

aims to mobilize all available legal means to disrupt their logistics, supply chains, and army of 

professionals—money launderers, lawyers, accountants, and others—who help move money 

and bribe corrupt public officials.

Bilateral Cooperation: High-Level Meetings and Technical Assistance

President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton continue to have frank discussions 

and elevate the importance of combating transnational threats with their counterparts, including recently with Afghanistan, Australia, Brazil (through the Open Government Partnership), 

China, Colombia, India, Iraq, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and 

others, with the goal of strengthening bilateral and international cooperation in areas such as 

terrorism, organized crime, corruption, narcotrafficking, and threat convergence areas.

To counter transnational threats, INL has employed an integrated approach of U.S. 

assistance programs, from traditional prevention, law enforcement, and counternarcotics 

programs, to anticorruption, judicial reform, antigang, community policing, and corrections 

efforts. In addition to a whole-of-government approach, INL coordinates effectively with others in the U.S. Government who work with communities, civil society, and the private sector, 

recognizing that security solutions require a whole-of-society approach, and also ensuring that 

partner nations have the ability to protect their citizens and deal with crime and violence so 

these issues are handled effectively by law enforcement and other means and do not become 

global security threats.
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The following represent examples of bilateral partnerships the State Department has 

helped facilitate.

Mexico. News reports arrive daily from Mexico with shocking stories of killings and 

violence, but the Mexican government, with assistance from the United States through the 

Mérida Initiative, has achieved significant results. Approximately $1.6 billion in contributions 

for Mérida since its inception have helped Mexico, together with its U.S. partner agencies, to 

continue turning the tables on the cartels. Through bilateral law enforcement cooperation, 47 

high-value targets have been arrested or removed in Mexico since December 2009, including 

25 of the country’s top 37 most wanted criminals. This aggressive and coordinated approach to 

dismantle and disrupt the drug cartels has included an institutional focus on all elements of the 

justice sector and civil society. Thanks to the Mérida Initiative, the government is empowered 

to transform the security forces and strengthen government institutions in order to confront 

trafficking organizations and associated crime and maintain public trust and citizen security.

Colombia. In Colombia, the United States is working to reduce the amount of cocaine 

entering the United States by supporting Colombian-led counternarcotics programs that are 

closely coordinated with alternative development. As follow-on to Plan Colombia, the United 

States has continued its partnership with the government of Colombia to consolidate the 

gains made over the past decade. Out of this cooperation has arisen the Colombia Strategic 

Development Initiative (CSDI), which provides for civilian institution-building, rule of law, 

and alternative development programs, as well as security and counternarcotics efforts in 

those areas where poverty, violence, and illicit cultivation or drug trafficking persist and have 

historically converged. The State Department is supporting these endeavors with significantly 

reduced resource levels. Further resources will be needed to sustain and consolidate past gains.

U.S. efforts in Colombia pay dividends regionally as well. With the capacity that the 

government of Colombia has developed over the years, Colombia is now contributing its 

hard-learned lessons to address similar security concerns elsewhere in the region. Colombia 

today is no longer just a recipient of security assistance, but an active exporter. Since 2009, the 

Colombian National Police, the closest U.S. partner in promoting citizen security throughout 

the region, has trained nearly 10,000 police from across Latin America in areas such as criminal 

investigation skills, personnel protection, and anti-kidnapping, among other critical law enforcement disciplines. Colombia’s participation in improving security and reducing instability 

throughout the hemisphere by providing needed training is an enormous return on the U.S. 

investment in that country and is precisely the type of smart power diplomacy and approach 

to security promoted by Secretary Clinton.

Afghanistan. Despite progress by the Afghan government in reducing opium poppy 

cultivation by 22 percent to 123,000 hectares through the provision of alternative sources of 

income and increased public information about the perils of poppy, the drug trade continues to 

undermine economic reconstruction and weaken the rule of law, and poses a threat to regional 

stability. INL continues to support programs that will expand interdiction and drug demand 

reduction activities into additional provinces, and strengthen the political will of the central and 

provincial governments to increase support for licit agriculture. The United States will continue 

to disrupt and dismantle the narcotics-insurgent-corruption nexus by enhancing the capacity 

and sustainability of specialized investigative and interdiction units of the Counter-Narcotics 
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Police of Afghanistan to collect intelligence, target drug traffickers, and disrupt processing 

operations and trafficking networks. INL is also working to tackle the culture of impunity 

and expand access to the state justice sector by increasing gender justice capacity, reducing 

corruption, and building public demand for rule of law and individual legal rights.

Indonesia. Indonesia is a strategic partner of the United States with growing regional 

and global influence. It is also home to the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah and has been the 

target of several deadly terrorist attacks over the past decade. Since the start of INL assistance 

in 2000, the government of Indonesia has embraced institutional reform of its law enforcement 

organizations and criminal justice system. The continued development of an effective civilian 

police force and support of prosecutorial and judicial reform will ensure that Jakarta remains 

a key partner with Washington in combating transnational crime and terrorism. For example, 

INL continues to work closely and successfully with the national police. The first police units 

that responded to the July 2009 attacks on the Marriot and Ritz Carlton hotels in Jakarta 

were trained through INL programs. The unit that ultimately brought down the mastermind 

behind those bombings, Noordin Top, was also trained by and worked closely with the United 

States for many years. Noordin had ties to Jemaah Islamiyah as well as to al Qaeda.

International Law Enforcement Academies.INL reinforces these bilateral programs and 

others through a worldwide network of International Law Enforcement Academies (ILEAs), 

which provide training for local and regional law enforcement officials to combat international 

drug trafficking, criminality, and terrorism. Serving four regions—Europe, Africa, South 

America, and Asia—the ILEAs help protect American citizens and business by improving 

law enforcement at the source, buttressing democratic governance through the rule of law, 

enhancing the functioning of free markets through improved legislation and law enforcement, 

and increasing social, political, and economic stability.

Converging Public-Private Partnerships to Fight Converging Threats

It is vital that the international law enforcement community begin to think creatively in examining threat linkages. Even as the capability of the United States and its partners to disrupt 

illicit networks develops, criminals are constantly adapting their practices to avoid detection. 

The problem is too large for any one government to solve. It requires a net-centric approach at 

the bilateral, subregional, regional, and global levels based on information-sharing and coordination to break the financial strength of criminal and terrorist networks, disrupt illicit trafficking networks, defeat transnational criminal and terrorist organizations, fight government 

corruption, strengthen the rule of law, and bolster judicial and security systems.

Effective public-private partnerships are the key to achieving a whole-of-society response 

to crime. The United States is reaching out directly to the international business community 

and the general public to drive home the fact that nations and individuals share a common 

enemy in transnational organized crime and have a stake in addressing it.

Strategic public-private partnerships are key for one obvious reason: the overwhelming 

majority of industries and businesses are privately owned. Far more often than not, it is the 

private sector that first encounters intrusions, theft, extortion, and other forms of organized 

criminal disturbance. Over 90 percent of the world’s information technology infrastructure 
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rests in private hands. Private sector actors are the first responders in dealing with transnational 

organized crime. As such, they have timely information at their disposal on how organized 

crime is attempting to hijack the global economy from the ground up.

Governments can play a role in encouraging industry groups to develop and share best 

practices and standards for preventing organized criminal infiltration. This is a growing 

problem around the world. Certain key industries are increasingly facing unfair competition 

from organized crime networks seeking to burrow their way into the legitimate economy. Organized crime must not be allowed to capitalize on the gains of globalization and undermine 

the benefits of rule-based, competitive trading systems.

Governments must help businesses perform due diligence in ensuring that criminally 

influenced businesses are kept out of the global supply chain. Businesses must adopt internal 

security measures to make themselves harder targets for global crime. The growing infiltration 

of transnational crime into licit industry and commerce is a threat to the expansion of open 

markets and global trading regimes that underpin the modern global economy. Bringing the 

rule of law to the international flow of goods and services is essential in order to have a longterm impact against transnational crime.

Public-Private Partnerships to Combat Illicit Trade and Illegal Economy

The illegal economy poses an existential threat when it begins to create criminalized markets 

and captured states, which launches a downward, entropic spiral toward greater insecurity 

and instability. In countries that have been corrupted by criminal networks, market- and 

state-building become less attainable, economic growth is stunted, efforts toward development 

and poverty eradication are stifled, and foreign direct investment is deterred.

The United States is supporting the OECD, the World Economic Forum (WEF), and 

other international partners to provide knowledge-based platforms for international public and 

private stakeholders to raise awareness of the threat posed by illicit trade and illegal economy 

to economic growth, development, and global security, and to share experience on practical 

approaches to the control of illicit activities as well as of the negative externalities of the illicit 

economy. Engaging the public and private sectors through innovative public-private partnerships will be particularly important for securing the integrity of the global supply chains and 

for ensuring long-term sustainable licit commerce and productive markets.

The steep rise in mobility of goods, people, capital, and information that has accompanied globalization is largely comprised of lawful and beneficial exchanges, but an increasing 

share is illicit. Criminal entrepreneurs and illicit networks sometimes use or exploit legitimate 

businesses and legitimate global supply chains to carry out financial frauds, industrial espionage, money laundering, and other illicit activities. Hundreds of billions of dollars of revenue 

from these activities flow through the global economy every year, distorting local economies, 

diminishing legitimate business revenues, deteriorating social conditions, and fueling conflicts.

Public-private partnerships ensure the support and cooperation of the businesses and 

other market actors whose legitimate revenues are threatened by illicit trade and the illegal 

economy. These partnerships can also help create legitimate markets to replace and shut down 

illegal markets. Nurturing a network of government and business leaders who support inno-
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vation in the vibrant sectors of tomorrow—such as computer and high engineering industries 

and biomedical, green energy, and other emergent technologies—and harnessing the ideas, 

talents, and human potential of communities, can help governments and entrepreneurs alike 

create the right governance conditions across sectors for new markets and investment frontiers 

to thrive globally.

Public-private partnerships such as those advanced by the OECD and WEF will help 

articulate the harms and risks posed by transnational illicit networks and provide the mutual 

expertise that is critical to understanding the interaction among illicit and legitimate flows 

of goods, people, capital, and information. By identifying and assessing key risks and harms, 

both public and private sectors can better focus on what market vulnerabilities they need to 

mitigate with the goal of driving criminal entrepreneurs and illicit networks out of business 

and incentivizing willing compliance with laws and regulations to promote and grow legitimate 

global trading networks.

Conclusion

Secretary Clinton has often spoken of the need to build what she calls a “global 

architecture of cooperation” to solve the problems that no one country can solve alone. 

Certainly, this is true of the challenge before us. Transnational organized crime is 

a threat that endangers communities across the world including our own. The State 

Department remains determined, working closely with all of our interagency partners, 

to translate common interest into common action that makes us all safer.

—Under Secretary of State William J. Burns, July 20, 2011

Through multilateral fora and bilateral partnership, the United States is joining forces with 

global partners to take the fight directly to today’s transnational threats, dismantle their networks, unravel the illicit financial nodes that sustain a web of criminality and corruption, develop strong law enforcement and multidisciplinary threat mitigation capabilities, and enhance 

cooperation with businesses through public-private partnerships.

The State Department remains committed to working with other governments and other 

committed international partners to meet the cross-border security challenges from transnational criminal and terrorist organizations facing all nations. As President Obama underscored 

in the July 2011 Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime, the United States is keen 

to forge new partnerships based on shared responsibility. The threats and challenges facing the 

world today are real and complex. As illicit networks converge, the solution for governments 

is to converge along with them, synchronize efforts across borders, and develop networks to 

fight and defeat a common threat, protect our borders and homeland, and anchor sustainable 

partnerships vital for shared prosperity and security across economies and markets.
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Luna

Author’s Note

In honor and memory of Ambassador Chris Stevens and all patriots, civilian and military, 

who give their lives for our country to courageously advance our democratic values and ideals 

including to end tyranny and combat terrorism and violent crime, promote freedom and the 

rule of law, and safeguard security so that people can build a better world that nurtures sustainable peace, progress, and human dignity. Their sacrifice is never forgotten and strengthens 

our resolve.
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Chapter 13

The Department of Defense’s Role in 

Combating Transnational Organized Crime

William F. Wechsler and Gary Barnabo

Transnational organized crime (TOC) is altering the face of national security and changing the character of the battlespace. Loose networks of criminals operate across international boundaries with impunity, and their actions are more violent, deadly, and destabilizing 

than in any previous time. Once viewed primarily through the lens of law enforcement as 

drug cartels, transnational criminal organizations now engage in a web of overlapping illegal 

activities, from cybercrime to trafficking in persons, money laundering, and distribution of 

materials for weapons of mass destruction. As the power and influence of these organizations 

have grown, their ability to undermine, corrode, and destabilize governments has increased. 

The links forged among criminal groups, terrorist movements, and insurgencies have resulted 

in a new type of adversary: hybrid, ever-evolving networks that are criminal, violent, and, at 

times, politically motivated and blend into the landscape of a globalization-dominated world. 

Hybrid networks adapt their structures and activities faster than countries can combat their 

threats. These adversaries have become the new normal, compelling governments toward 

integrated, innovative approaches to countering the growing dangers posed by transnational 

organized crime.

The Character of Transnational Organized Crime

For decades, drug trafficking was the dominant lens through which the United States viewed 

TOC. In the 1970s and 1980s, the flow of illicit narcotics into the United States was deemed 

a major risk to the health and safety of Americans, and the government expended massive 

resources to curtail both the supply of and the demand for illegal drugs. Supply side reduction 

strategies emphasized degrading the capabilities of Western Hemisphere drug-trafficking 

organizations—highly capable, violent, centralized, and hierarchical organizations often led 

by charismatic kingpins. Pablo Escobar and the Medellín Cartel, for example, were emblematic 

of the type of threat facing the United States.
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The drug-trafficking organization–centered paradigm for understanding the threat from TOC 

was already anachronistic by the 1990s as the character of transnational criminal groups began 

changing in three critical ways. First, drug-trafficking organizations diversified their activities. 

Taking advantage of the hallmarks of globalization such as open borders, rapid increases in 

the volume and speed of global trade, and the dissemination of technology tools, criminal organizations that once dealt almost exclusively in narcotics began trafficking in small arms and 

light weapons, people, counterfeit goods, and money, while continuing to ship vast quantities of 

drugs along an expanding set of transportation routes. These groups recognized the additional 

profits and operational flexibility that a broader range of trafficking activities could provide.

Second, transnational criminal organizations harnessed new methods of doing business. 

Criminal groups began penetrating the licit global marketplace, subverting and distorting legitimate markets and economic activity. These groups became adroit at harnessing information 

technology tools, seizing the opportunities presented by the accelerating velocity of information flows, the proliferation of online money transfer, and the general anonymity of virtual 

exchange to increase the scale and scope of their activities while spreading or reducing the risk 

of detection. Cyberspace is now a central arena for TOC: it enables vital elements of criminal 

transactions, such as communications and financial exchange, at low risk. Moreover, the increased virtual nature of some transnational criminal organizations has created deep overlaps 

and synergies between legal and illegal activities: the same networks that facilitate legitimate 

international business transactions are used for crime. Consequently, it is increasingly difficult 

for governments to identify, target, and degrade the activities of transnational criminal groups.

Third, the structure of transnational criminal organizations changed. Reflective of globalization’s trends, centralized criminal groups have, in many cases, yielded to dispersed networks 

of criminal agents. They have become loose, amorphous, highly adaptable networks that are 

decentralized and flat, and emphasize ad hoc partnerships defined by the opportunity of the 

moment rather than top-down, command-and-control hierarchies. These characteristics have 

rendered transnational criminal organizations more flexible and agile than the government 

agencies chartered with degrading or defeating them. In the context of the Department of 

Defense (DOD), criminal networks cut across geographic combatant commands, which are 

responsible for the employment of military capabilities in distinct regions. Criminals who 

operate across multiple combatant commands present challenges for DOD in synchronizing 

its efforts to understand and address their activities. These realities demand new approaches 

that are networked, whole-of-government, and adaptable.

Together, these shifts have generated a more threatening set of challenges to national and 

international security. Transnational criminal organizations co-opt government officials and 

elites, corrode the legitimacy of government institutions, and increasingly have the propensity 

and ability to use national infrastructures to further their activities. In some cases, these groups 

threaten and challenge the state’s control of its territory. Guinea-Bissau in Africa is on the verge 

of becoming a narco-state. Transnistria, a region of Moldova controlled by a separatist regime, 

has been deeply penetrated by organized crime. And closer to home, certain governments in 

the Western Hemisphere are increasingly challenged to preserve citizen security from the 

insidious effects of criminal organizations, such as corruption and large-scale violence.
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Combating Transnational Organized Crime

Criminal networks are increasingly merging, blending, and cooperating with other 

nefarious and violent nonstate actors including terrorist organizations and insurgent movements. Crime is used to finance terrorism and is often how insurgencies raise revenue to 

pay individual cadres. Terrorists and insurgents can tap into the global illicit marketplace to 

underwrite their activities and acquire weapons and other supplies vital to their operations. 

Criminals, in their search for profits, will turn almost anywhere for revenue. The net effect is 

a crime-terror-insurgency nexus.

Examples of this nexus abound. As of November 2011, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had linked 19 of the 49 organizations on the State Department’s list of Foreign 

Terrorist Organizations to the drug trade.1

 Similarly, in 2010, 29 of the 63 organizations on 

the Justice Department’s Consolidated Priority Organization Targets list, which includes key 

drug trafficking and criminal organizations, had associations with terrorism.2 In January 2012, 

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper concluded that “Terrorists and insurgents will 

increasingly turn to crime and criminal networks for funding and logistics, in part because of 

U.S. and Western success in attacking other sources of their funding. The criminal connections and activities of Hezbollah and al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb illustrate this trend.”3

Global crime networks coalesce with members of radical political movements in ungoverned 

border regions in Central and South America; similar blending has occurred in the Balkans.

The crime-terror-insurgent nexus is changing the global security landscape and, more 

importantly for DOD, is also altering the character of the battlespace. In Afghanistan, the 

Taliban and a variety of criminal networks often operate in lockstep; illicit activities are an 

important funding stream for the Taliban and its offshoots. Moreover, drug incomes corrupt 

politicians, alienating populations who then become vulnerable to the messages of the Taliban 

and its ilk. Crime and corruption thus perpetuate the Afghan insurgency and threaten coalition 

forces’ ability to consolidate security gains and establish conditions for long-term stability. Of 

direct concern to DOD are the criminal networks that provide the materials and financial 

and logistical support for improvised explosive devices, which are among the most significant 

threats to U.S. and allied troops in Afghanistan.

More generally, hybrid criminal-terror-insurgent threats are forcing DOD to adapt its approaches to conflict and adjust the type and level of resources it deploys around the world. War 

against nebulous, networked threats that operate at the seams of war, instability, and peace; blur 

the illicit and licit; and simultaneously display the characteristics of criminals, terrorists, and 

insurgents requires DOD to think innovatively about how it plans, organizes, and operates.

A New Impetus for Combating Transnational Organized Crime

Largely because of the changing character of transnational criminal organizations, the national 

security threats posed by TOC have expanded and become more dangerous. This finding is at 

the core of the Obama administration’s July 2011 Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized 

Crime, which concludes that “criminal networks are not only expanding their operations, but 

they are also diversifying their activities. The result is a convergence of threats that have evolved 

to become more complex, volatile, and destabilizing.”4

 In a clear articulation of the U.S. Government’s position, the strategy declares that transnational organized crime poses “a significant 
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threat to national security.”5 It directs the government to “build, balance, and integrate the tools 

of American power to combat transnational organized crime and related threats to national 

security—and to urge our foreign partners to do the same.”6

The strategy is a call to action: it compels the U.S. Government, including DOD, to reframe and refocus its efforts in combating TOC. Importantly, the strategy addresses organized 

crime and drug trafficking as increasingly intertwined threats, laying the foundation for a broad 

approach to global crime that rightfully retains a core focus on counternarcotics but widens 

the aperture by recognizing the diversification of global criminal activity and its relationship 

with other irregular threats.

Transnational criminal organizations are the essence of a networked threat. Not only are 

criminal entities themselves networked, but they also rely on support networks—transportation, financial, human capital, logistics, and communications—to enable their activities. It 

follows that U.S. Government efforts to combat organized crime should emphasize counternetwork approaches. Disrupting networks, particularly those associated with financial flows—

vital enablers of any criminal activity—through multifaceted targeting of key network nodes, 

be they individuals, institutions, or even specific trafficking routes, can have a broad positive 

impact on degrading criminal organizations. Employing these counternetwork approaches, 

however, requires the government to assume the characteristics of a network, integrating the 

capabilities of diverse interagency stakeholders and adjusting approaches as rapidly as the adversary changes tactics. Only when our policy responses and actions in the field are as adaptive 

as the threat will we see true progress against transnational organized crime.

DOD’s Supporting and Evolving Role

DOD supports law enforcement, other U.S. agencies, and foreign partners in combating 

transnational organized crime. The U.S. Government and its partners address transnational 

criminal threats primarily through law enforcement channels, capacity-building efforts, diplomacy with key partner states, intelligence and analytical efforts, and the use of innovative policy 

tools such as counterthreat finance capabilities. Because it is in a supporting role, DOD rarely 

leads these efforts, but it offers unique capabilities and resources that strengthen overall U.S. 

Government approaches against criminal networks. As the threat has morphed, however, there 

have been important instances of law enforcement agencies supporting DOD operations. The 

Afghanistan Threat Finance Cell, for example, is run by law enforcement entities and provides 

direct support to military operations in Afghanistan. Support that cuts both ways—from 

DOD to law enforcement and from law enforcement to the military—is a strategically important evolution in how the U.S. Government organizes to combat TOC.

The Department of Defense can provide intelligence and equipment to support law 

enforcement efforts against transnational criminal organizations. DOD’s focus, however, 

has typically been on counternarcotics missions—historically in the Western Hemisphere 

and over the past decade in Afghanistan and the surrounding region. As described above, the 

nexus among criminals, terrorists, and insurgents is increasingly visible as our adversaries forge 

hybrid organizational and operational models, suggesting that counterterrorism initiatives in 

the future should incorporate a greater emphasis on combating the nexus with TOC.
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Combating Transnational Organized Crime

Moreover, the traditional emphasis on counterdrug missions will also continue to shift 

due to the blurring of illicit narcotics production and trafficking and other forms of transnational crime. Criminal networks that traffic in drugs more often than not also deal in small 

arms, light weapons, precursor chemicals, people, or bulk cash. This is certainly the case of 

organized crime groups such as Los Zetas, the Sinaloa Cartel, and Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), 

which operate across the Western Hemisphere and have tentacles reaching into Europe and 

Asia, and the illicit networks that crisscross Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Central Asia. 

Not all transnational criminal organizations undertake the full spectrum of illegal activity, 

but it is increasingly rare to see major crime groups confine their business strictly to one type 

of criminality.

Spectrum of Support

The evolution of many drug-trafficking organizations into diversified criminal groups has 

driven a shift in DOD’s mission focus. The Department now provides support to law enforcement, other U.S. Government agencies, and foreign partners across a spectrum of operations 

and activities: military-to-military assistance, capacity-building and training to partner states, 

intelligence support to law enforcement, support to the development of institutions that convene interagency stakeholders in whole-of-government approaches to combating the national 

security threats TOC present, and, as a last resort, direct military action against terrorist or 

insurgent groups that also engage in crime. DOD is not often the most visible government 

agency combating transnational organized crime, and this is entirely proper for a Department 

in a supporting role. But the lack of attention it receives for its efforts against TOC does not 

diminish the importance of its contributions.

The extent and success of DOD support in the fight against TOC are best understood 

through examples at various points on the spectrum.

Military-to-Military Support

In the 1980s and 1990s, Colombia faced a full-blown challenge to the viability of the state. 

Several armed criminal-insurgent groups waged an active campaign against the government, 

engaging in major terrorist attacks, kidnapping, extortion, and all phases of the drug trade. In 

the late 1990s, there was widespread belief that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia 

(FARC) would seize Bogota. For 20 years, Colombian drug-trafficking organizations exported 

cocaine to the United States in staggering quantities, and it appeared almost impossible to 

make a dent in the drug trafficking and organized crime emanating from that country.

Over time, however, the political will among Colombian leaders, supported by a sustained 

U.S. Government interagency effort, resulted in a remarkable impact against the FARC and 

related criminal-insurgent activity in Colombia. DOD was a vital enabler of Colombia’s success, helping its security forces overcome critical capability gaps. The Department’s sustained 

counternarcotics and security assistance delivered military training, tactical and operational 

support, capacity-building on intelligence sharing, and information operations, equipment, 

and human rights training. The Department’s engagements assisted the Colombian military 

in turning the tide against the FARC and other violent criminal groups that sought to capture 
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the state. Colombia is now an exporter of security in the region, providing military training at 

the request of regional and international organizations and collaborating with both neighboring states and other countries as far afield as Turkey to share its lessons learned and provide 

capacity-building assistance for combating narcotics and TOC, as well as citizen security, 

peacekeeping operations, disaster response, and the strengthening of defense institutions. Its 

special operations forces are now considered to be among the best of their kind in many circles. 

The lessons learned from Colombia’s successes are regularly applied to U.S. Government efforts 

in support of Mexico, Afghanistan, and other partners. DOD was just one U.S. Government 

actor among many that provided support to Colombia, but its military-to-military collaboration was a vital part of perhaps the first whole-of-government approach to combating TOC.

Building Partner Capacity

DOD’s capacity-building efforts with foreign partners are widespread. Capacity-building and 

training of security forces, which serve a variety of national security objectives, are often areas 

in which DOD has a comparative advantage vis-à-vis other departments and agencies. As 

transnational criminal organizations expand their presence in regions such as West Africa and 

Southeast Asia, the Department’s ability to support an ever-greater array of partner nations is 

more and more valuable. DOD’s role in training, equipping, and in some cases operating alongside partner countries’ security forces is the bedrock of building these states’ capacity to combat 

TOC over the long term. DOD also partners with U.S. law enforcement agencies to support 

the improvement of policing capacity in key partner states. Given resource constraints, support 

for military-to-military and law enforcement capacity-building is in many cases a particularly 

effective use of limited resources. It amounts to a long-term investment and provides partner 

countries with the skills and tools that allow them, rather than the United States, to assume 

the burden of combating TOC in and around their territory.

The impact of DOD initiatives is clear in numerous cases. In Indonesia, a sprawling 

archipelago across which multiple criminal organizations and terrorist groups operate, Joint 

Interagency Task Force–West (JIATF-W) activities have increased the capacity of Indonesian 

security forces to fight a broad range of transnational threats including criminal organizations 

trafficking in narcotics and precursor chemicals and terrorist and insurgent movements seeking 

safe space from which to operate. JIATF-W support to Indonesia’s National Narcotics Board 

has resulted in the construction of facilities at a counternarcotics academy used by various 

elements of the Indonesian security forces. In Liberia, a strategic location in a region that has 

experienced growth in trafficking and transnational crime, DOD support has focused on 

capacity-building in two principal areas: maritime security (primarily through rebuilding the 

Liberian Coast Guard) and support to the newly formed Transnational Crime Unit. United 

States Africa Command (USAFRICOM) supported the renovation of a Liberian Coast 

Guard base of operations, which included construction of a boat ramp/launch facility, floating 

pier, and security fence. In addition, USAFRICOM has sponsored attendance by Liberian 

Coast Guard personnel at various U.S. Coast Guard training courses that support Liberia’s 

maritime security operations.
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Combating Transnational Organized Crime

Military Intelligence Support to Law Enforcement

Network mapping has become widely recognized as a key enabler in combating transnational 

organized crime. Criminal organizations use multiple, overlapping transportation, logistics, 

and financial networks to do business. Financial networks are particularly vital since money 

is central to all criminal activities. Consequently, DOD has expanded its military intelligence 

support to law enforcement on counterthreat finance initiatives that seek to identify, penetrate, 

and exploit the critical nodes in the complex financial systems that enable global illicit networks. 

DOD recognizes that countering the financial flows that facilitate trafficking groups, criminal 

organizations, terrorists, and insurgents will produce cascading positive effects across the range 

of networks these nefarious actors use.

A particular strength of DOD is integrating various forms of all-source intelligence to 

facilitate a network-based approach to targeting. This is the approach used in the Afghan 

Threat Finance Cell, through which DOD supports the DEA, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of the Treasury, and other U.S. Government partners to identify insurgent 

financiers, disrupt front companies, develop actionable financial intelligence, freeze and seize 

illicit funds, and build criminal cases. These actions are vital to degrading and diminishing 

the power of criminal-terrorist networks by enabling a judicial endgame—the prosecution 

of adversaries, which often removes them from the battlefield for far longer than typical military-led raids. The Afghan Threat Finance Cell is also designed to provide direct support to 

the government of Afghanistan’s efforts to reclaim tainted money moving around the country, 

which further undercuts the power of insurgent and terrorist networks. Importantly, these 

types of approaches can be replicated and DOD’s experiences in Afghanistan have equipped it 

with new tools, techniques, and institutional skill sets that add to the overall set of capabilities 

the Department offers in support of law enforcement.

Direct Military Action with a Counter-Network Focus

In Afghanistan, DOD is taking direct action against a hybrid insurgent-criminal adversary in 

partnership with law enforcement agencies and the government of Afghanistan. Over the past 

10 years, there has been an evolution in how the Department thinks about and approaches 

its missions there. DOD—and the interagency—have shifted from the paradigm that crime 

oriented around narcotics production was an indelible feature of the national landscape but 

disconnected from operations against al Qaeda and the Taliban, to a recognition that corruption, narcotics production and trafficking, criminal organizations, and insurgency and terror are 

mutually enabling and reinforcing and cannot be addressed in isolation. Ultimately, organized 

crime and corruption threaten the viability of the Afghan state.

Consequently, DOD actions in Afghanistan emphasize counternetwork approaches: 

attacking, degrading, and defeating the criminal networks that sustain the insurgency and 

undermine the legitimacy and capacity of the Afghan government. Counterinsurgency, 

counter–transnational organization crime missions, counterthreat finance activities, and capacity-building efforts are part of an integrated U.S. Government effort led, in many cases, by 

DOD. The Department’s role in the operation of the Afghan Threat Finance Cell is a critical 

contribution to whole-of-government approaches to combating hybrid criminal-insurgent 
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enemies in Afghanistan. The Interagency Operations Coordination Center, a joint U.S.–

United Kingdom center that provides law enforcement targeting support and operational 

coordination for counternarcotics and counter–illicit networks operations in Afghanistan, is 

a broader example of successful whole-of-government initiatives to counter organized crime 

that also include the participation of key U.S. allies.

The Department of Defense has also adapted its policies in Afghanistan to address the 

convergence of crime and insurgency more effectively. In 2008, DOD changed its policy to enable U.S. forces to provide direct support to counternarcotics missions conducted by the DEA 

and its Afghan counterparts. This shift in policy has led to a number of successful operations, 

such as Khafa Khardan, during which U.S. and coalition forces operating under the International Security Assistance Force enabled 94 counterdrug operations by Afghan counterdrug 

law enforcement units and their mentors in a 30-day period.

DOD possesses significant convening power outside of Afghanistan. Through organizations such as the Joint Interagency Task Force–South ( JIATF-S) and JIATF-W, DOD 

has brought key U.S. agencies together in pursuit of common objectives. These hubs of collaboration facilitate fast and flexible responses to the range of threats posed by transnational 

organized crime. They are prime examples of the government assuming the characteristics 

of a network—essentially creating a network among myriad U.S. Government agencies in 

one location—to combat a networked threat. While its traditional emphasis has been on 

counternarcotics, particularly the interdiction of illegal drugs, JIATF-S is a resounding success. In 2009, it accounted for more than 40 percent of global cocaine interdiction, and in the 

past two decades it has deprived criminal organizations of nearly $200 billion in profits.7

 Its 

success stems in large part from the long-term, sustained, and institutionalized integration 

of effort among law enforcement, DOD, and intelligence. Indeed, it may be that DOD’s role 

in establishing the institutional architecture that enables agencies to work together as part of 

a unified, whole-of-government approach is actually the most significant contribution it has 

made in the fight against transnational organized crime and related national security threats.

Entities such as the JIATFs are not easy to create, and success does not stem from standing up an organization, calling it “joint,” and staffing it from across the interagency. Impact and 

sustainability require a set of conditions, beginning with a clear overlap in vital interests so 

that stakeholders see the value of enduring participation, and a shared commitment to unified 

action around the issues affecting those interests. Next, it is critical to develop and implement 

strong cross-organizational structures that bring order and discipline to execution of critical 

tasks. Finally, the organization must be adaptive, adjusting its approaches based on evolutions, 

transformations, and shocks to the “issue set” it is chartered to address. DOD leadership has 

fostered these conditions in the JIATFs, turning them into highly effective interagency hubs 

that are models for replication.

New Challenges and Paradigms of Support

Five years ago, the Mexican government directed its military to increase its traditional role 

of supporting law enforcement while Mexico undertook reforms to strengthen police, the 

judicial system, and related institutions. These measures were largely necessitated by Mexican 

transnational criminal organizations’ diversification beyond drug trafficking into kidnapping, 
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extortion, smuggling persons, and other crimes. As the Mexican government disrupted transnational criminal organizations, these groups increasingly fought for market share, escalating 

violence against one another, targeting Mexican security forces using military-like weapons, 

tactics, and techniques, and endangering the civilian population in the process. Mexican 

criminal organizations also expanded their operations into Central America and have reached 

into the United States, penetrating cities such as Chicago, Detroit, and Atlanta, far from the 

border. The diversification of criminal activity and the increase in violence forced the Mexican 

military to assume even more prominent roles, while simultaneously transforming themselves 

to become more capable of protecting the public from hybrid, irregular threats.

The Way Forward

As the spectrum demonstrates, DOD tailors the type of support it provides to law enforcement, other U.S. Government agencies, and foreign partners. Given the ever-evolving character 

of transnational organized crime, this adaptability allows DOD to have significant strategic 

impact in a range of circumstances. There are risks, however, of overextension and redundancy. 

Providing support across a wide spectrum of efforts demands that DOD carefully prioritize 

the specific activities it undertakes—a prescient requirement as resources shrink.

DOD has taken important steps toward setting clear priorities for its actions against 

transnational organized crime. The Department’s Counternarcotics and Global Threats Strategy, derived from national strategic and military guidance, is a key departure point for how 

DOD combats transnational organized crime. But this strategy is not exhaustive. There are 

manifestations of organized crime such as cybercrime, financial crimes, and state-sponsored 

illicit activities that DOD has not yet fully integrated into its strategy and policy development. 

Doing so will be critical to ensuring that the resources expended against criminal organizations 

have maximum strategic impact.

The Department must also link its efforts against transnational organized crime with other national security priorities. The strategies and policies created and implemented to combat 

the threats posed by criminal networks should be connected to other focal points for DOD 

and the U.S. Government—particularly cybersecurity, counterterrorism, counterproliferation, 

building partner capacity, and strengthening governance. Holistic approaches that recognize 

transnational organized crime not as a stovepiped problem but as a nefarious feature of the 

global security environment that touches the whole world and impacts a multitude of vital 

U.S. interests are the types most likely to succeed over the long term.

DOD understands that the most important prerequisite to success against transnational 

organized crime is organizational flexibility and adaptability. As the character of transnational 

criminal organizations continues to change and DOD and its U.S. Government partners hone 

their understanding of the types of national security threats these groups pose, we must be 

able to shift our strategies, priorities, policies, operations, and tactics for combating them. To 

fail in our mission because DOD is unable to organize itself properly is unacceptable, yet it 

remains a risk if we do not assume the characteristics of flexible, flat organizations.
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Notes

1

 Statement of Derek S. Maltz, Special Agent in Charge of the Special Operations Division, Drug Enforcement 

Administration, before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Terrorism, Non-Proliferation, and Crime, 

November 17, 2011. 2 Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime: Addressing Converging Threats to National Security (Washington, DC: The White House, July 2011), 6. 3

 James Clapper, Unclassified Statement for the Record on the Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. 

Intelligence Community for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, January 31, 2012. 4 Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime, cover letter by President Barack Obama. 5

 Ibid., 1.

6

 Ibid.

7

 Evan Munsing and Christopher J. Lamb, Joint Interagency Task Force–South: The Best Known, Least Understood 

Interagency Success, Strategic Perspectives No. 5, Center for Strategic Research, Institute for National Strategic 

Studies (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, June 2011), 3.
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Chapter 14

Collaborating to Combat Illicit 

Networks Through Interagency 

and International Efforts

Celina B. Realuyo

Introduction

This chapter examines collaborative efforts among U.S. agencies, partner nations, and multilateral organizations to address the hybrid threats posed by illicit networks through the diplomatic, development, and defense lenses of national security in the Western Hemisphere. The 

resourcefulness, adaptability, impunity, and ability of illicit networks to circumvent countermeasures make them a formidable foe for governments. Since illicit actors have expanded 

their activities throughout the global commons, in the air, land, sea, and cyberspace domains, 

nations must devise comprehensive and multidimensional strategies and policies to combat 

the transnational threats posed by these illicit networks.

The initiatives discussed here focus on programs in the Western Hemisphere to tackle 

the converging threat of transnational organized crime (TOC) and other illicit networks, 

undertaken by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Organization 

of American States (OAS), Central American Regional Security Initiative (CARSI), and 

U.S. Southern Command’s Joint Interagency Task Force–South. Each of these endeavors 

represents models for collaborations that require political will, institutional capacity, mechanisms, resources, and measures of effectiveness for success. These instructive examples of 

interagency and international collaboration in the Americas underscore the continued need 

to foster communities of interest to comprehend illicit networks and devise more effective 

strategies to counter them as they further evolve and threaten the national security of the 

United States and its allies.

Based on analysis of these examples, the following recommendations are offered for 

consideration by policymakers:
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Realuyo

• Promote collaborative models for security and development that include the following critical elements: political will, institutions, mechanisms to assess threats and 

deliver countermeasures, resources, and measures of effectiveness to ensure success 

against illicit networks.

• Ensure that international conventions, agreements, and strategies are accompanied 

with robust action plans and are adequately resourced in order to restrict illicit actors’ 

operations and enablers.

• Encourage greater donor coordination so that all these security and development 

programs complement rather than duplicate each other. Given the level of political 

will demonstrated across these organizations, there should be an interest in allocating resources and building capacity in the specific geographic areas most vulnerable 

to transnational organized crime.

The Nature of the Threat of Illicit Networks

Throughout history, governments have been responsible for ensuring and promoting security, prosperity, and governance. The unprecedented pace of change in a globalized world 

has challenged these basic missions of the nation-state. From demographic pressures to an 

increasingly interconnected global economy, and from the race for resources to information 

overload, governments are struggling to cope with what Harvard University scholar Joseph 

Nye calls “the diffusion of power” in the 21st century. Governments are faced with a broad 

spectrum of national security threats that emanate from nonstate actors as well as traditional 

nation-states. Illicit networks that include transnational crime organizations, drug traffickers, 

gangs, and terrorist groups are among these nonstate actors. While illicit activities have been 

with us since ancient times, what is novel today is the pervasive, prolific, and converging nature 

of illicit networks around the world. These networks threaten the rule of law, government 

institutions, the economy, and society. In the words of Supreme Allied Commander Europe, 

Admiral James Stavridis, “Just as legitimate governments and businesses have embraced the 

advances of globalization, so too have illicit traffickers harnessed the benefits of globalization to 

press forward their illicit activities.”1

 Illicit activities such as drug, arms, contraband, and human 

trafficking are nothing new; however, their velocity, scale, and associated violence as a result of 

globalization have made these transnational crimes national security concerns.

Illicit Networks Capitalize on Global Supply Chains

Illicit networks seek to navigate, infiltrate, and/or dominate global supply chains to further 

their activities and enhance their power. They actually thrive in open societies with the free flow 

of goods, people, and capital. Just like licit businesses, illicit networks are matching the supply 

and demand for goods, services, capital, and information for their clients. Illicit actors utilize 

and even seek to control or co-opt supply chains around the world to facilitate the movement 

of “bad people and bad things” such as drugs, guns, and counterfeit goods.
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Collaborating to Combat Illicit Networks

Regardless of industry or geography, there are four critical elements of any global supply 

chain whose integrity must be preserved and protected at all costs:

1. Materiel: What is being moved through the supply chain? People, goods, commodities, services, data? Where are those materials coming from and destined for?

2. Manpower: Who controls and staffs the supply chain? Who are the key enablers of 

that supply chain? Who is in control of these mechanisms or modes of conveyance?

3. Money: Who is funding the supply chain? What business model is being used to 

generate revenue? Where is the financing originating from and directed to?

4. Mechanisms: What modes of conveyance are used by the supply chain? Are people, 

goods, and services moving by land, air, sea, or cyberspace? How is the supply chain 

organized?2

Figure 1. The New Global Security Enviroment

National Security Threats from Illicit Networks

Illicit Activities

Prosperity

Security

Society

Governance

Narcotics

Trafcking

Financial

Crimes

Cybercrimes

Corruption/

Extortion

Counterfeiting

Arms

Trafcking

Human

Trafcking

While each of these four critical elements of global supply chains has its unique features, 

the security of each is vital to safeguarding supply chains. Who is securing these elements? 

Global competition has led the private sector to identify and adopt the most efficient means 

of matching supply and demand for goods, services, and information, and to incorporate 

risk management mechanisms;3 similarly, illicit networks have adopted these best practices. 

Unfortunately, international safety standards and government control of global supply chains 

still lag far behind.

Illicit actors are well aware of these weaknesses and exploit them to further their interests; 

they capitalize on gaps in governance, regulations, and oversight to bolster their enterprises. 

Illicit networks easily adapt to their changing operating environment. They often operate as 

service providers for each other. For transnational criminal organizations, maximizing profits 

is paramount. Their activities distort global markets and pricing, undermine consumer confidence, and even endanger consumers around the world, as in the case of counterfeit drugs. As 
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a result of globalization, the sheer volume and velocity of international trade make it virtually 

impossible to control and secure global supply chains. Nevertheless, governments must keep 

abreast of the ways illicit actors are exploiting the increasingly borderless world and identify 

the vulnerabilities of global supply chains. Accordingly, governments must develop measures 

to combat illicit networks by leveraging and safeguarding the four critical elements of supply 

chains: materiel, manpower, money, and mechanisms. New strategies to combat transnational organized crime and illicit networks, including those discussed below, are increasingly 

addressing these challenges.

Figure 2. Global Supply Chain Management

Four Critical Elements

What Is Moving?

What Resources Are Accessed?

How Is Technology Used?

Who Is Moving?

Who Is in Control?

Who Is Enabling?

Who Is Funding?

How Is Revenue Generated?

Where Is Money Going?

What Modes of Conveyance?

Land, Air, Sea Routes?

What about Cyberspace?

Materiel Manpower

Money Mechanisms

Strategies to Combat Transnational Organized Crime and Illicit Networks

Governments at the local, national, regional, and multilateral levels must devise holistic strategies to address the complex, adaptive, and converging transnational security threats from illicit 

networks. Several efforts are underway to promote interagency and international collaboration 

to address transnational organized crime and illicit networks and promote security in the 

Western Hemisphere. These regional efforts will be examined through the lenses of national 

strategy, diplomacy, development, and defense and security.

The May 2010 National Security Strategy aptly acknowledges and describes the convergence of threats posed by illicit networks:

Transnational criminal threats and illicit trafficking networks continue to expand 

dramatically in size, scope, and influence—posing significant national security challenges for the United States and our partner countries. These threats cross borders and 

continents and undermine the stability of nations, subverting government institutions 

through corruption and harming citizens worldwide. Transnational criminal organizations have accumulated unprecedented wealth and power through trafficking and other 

illicit activities, penetrating legitimate financial systems and destabilizing commercial 

markets. They extend their reach by forming alliances with government officials and 

some state security services. The crime-terror nexus is a serious concern as terrorists 

use criminal networks for logistical support and funding. Increasingly, these networks 
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are involved in cyber crime, which cost consumers billions of dollars annually, while 

undermining global confidence in the international financial system.4

Combating transnational criminal and trafficking networks requires a multidimensional strategy that safeguards citizens, breaks the financial strength of criminal and 

terrorist networks, disrupts illicit trafficking networks, defeats transnational criminal 

organizations, fights government corruption, strengthens the rule of law, bolsters 

judicial systems, and improves transparency. While these are major challenges, the 

United States will be able to devise and execute a collective strategy with other nations 

facing the same threats.5

Recognizing transnational organized crime as a national security threat, the United 

States issued its most recent Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime, in July 2011, 

which seeks to build, balance, and integrate the tools of American power to combat transnational organized crime and related threats to U.S. national security. The strategy posits that 

transnational organized crime threatens U.S. interests by taking advantage of failed states 

or contested spaces; forging alliances with corrupt foreign government officials and some 

foreign intelligence services; destabilizing political, financial, and security institutions in 

fragile states; undermining competition in world strategic markets; using cyber technologies 

and other methods to perpetrate sophisticated frauds; creating the potential for the transfer 

of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to terrorists; and expanding narcotrafficking and 

human and weapons smuggling networks. Terrorists and insurgents increasingly are turning 

to criminal networks to generate funding and acquire logistical support. TOC also threatens 

the interconnected trading, transportation, and transactional systems that move people and 

commerce throughout the global economy and across our borders.6

The strategy’s key policy objectives are to:

1. protect Americans and our partners from the harm, violence, and exploitation of 

transnational criminal networks

2. help partner countries strengthen governance and transparency, break the corruptive 

power of transnational criminal networks, and sever state-crime alliances

3. break the economic power of transnational criminal networks and protect strategic 

markets and the U.S. financial system from TOC penetration and abuse

4. defeat transnational criminal networks that pose the greatest threat to national 

security by targeting their infrastructures, depriving them of their enabling means, 

and preventing the criminal facilitation of terrorist activities

5. build international consensus, multilateral cooperation, and public-private partnerships to defeat transnational organized crime.

Key actions of the strategy include:
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• reduce the demand for illicit drugs in the United States, thereby denying funding 

to illicit trafficking organizations

• continue to attack drug trafficking and distribution networks and their enabling 

means within the United States to reduce the availability of illicit drugs

• sever the illicit flow across U.S. borders of people, weapons, currency, and other illicit 

finance through investigations and prosecutions of key TOC leadership, as well as 

through targeting enabling means and infrastructure of TOC networks

• identify and take action against corporate and governmental corruption within the 

United States

• work with Congress to secure ratification of the Inter-American Convention against 

the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives 

and Other Related Materials

• seek accession to the Protocol against the Illicit Manufacturing and Trafficking 

in Firearms, Their Parts and Components and Ammunition, supplementing the 

United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime.

Other priority actions seek to: enhance intelligence and information sharing; protect 

the financial system and strategic markets against transnational organized crime; strengthen 

interdiction, investigations, and prosecutions; disrupt drug trafficking and its facilitation of 

other transnational threats; and build international capacity, cooperation, and partnerships.7

This new strategy elevates transnational organized crime to a national security threat and 

focuses attention on the destructive effects of TOC on U.S. interests at home and abroad. In 

the past, organized crime had been considered and handled as a local law enforcement issue. 

The new strategy seeks to better organize and coordinate interagency efforts within the U.S. 

Government to address transnational organized crime and promote international cooperation 

against this global threat.

Prior to the publication of this strategy, U.S. agencies such as the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice, State, and Treasury as well as the law enforcement and intelligence 

communities had been actively countering, pursuing, and prosecuting transnational criminal 

organizations for years. From border controls to banking regulations, roles and responsibilities to combat illicit activities have been carved out for these agencies in their respective areas 

of expertise. Those who investigate and research transnational organized crime and illicit 

networks, both inside and outside of government, expected bolder language and guidance on 

how this new strategy would synchronize and coordinate U.S. efforts to combat TOC across 

the government. However, as of this writing, the U.S. Government has not issued an implementation plan for this new strategy. The strategy does not create a new government agency, 

establish a White House czar position, allocate additional funding, or empower a lead agency.
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Collaborating to Combat Illicit Networks

Perhaps the greatest challenge to the implementation of the 2011 Strategy to Combat 

Transnational Organized Crime is not the adversary of illicit actors, but rather the fiscal state 

of the United States. Some, including former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral 

Mike Mullen, consider the national debt as the greatest threat to U.S. national security.8 In 

this age of fiscal austerity, it is unclear how these agencies charged with combating TOC can 

match the resources and ingenuity of these illicit actors and “do even more with less.” With 

a limited and if not diminishing budget, the U.S. interagency community will need to seek 

more innovative and efficient ways to confront and combat transnational organized crime.

On the Diplomatic Front: United Nations Initiatives

Palermo Convention and Protocols. The United Nations (UN) Convention against 

Transnational Organized Crime, known as the Palermo Convention, is the main international 

instrument to counter organized crime and promote coordinated international cooperation. It 

was adopted in December 2000 in Palermo, Italy, and was complemented by three protocols 

that target trafficking in persons, especially women and children, smuggling of migrants, and 

the illicit manufacturing and trafficking of firearms.9 The Palermo Convention establishes 

transnational organized crime as a threat to all UN member nations and sets forth common 

definitions and language to characterize activities that constitute this phenomenon.

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. As the guardian of the Palermo Convention, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) helps countries create the 

domestic legal framework to investigate criminal offences related to organized crime and 

prosecute offenders, and adopt new frameworks for extradition, mutual legal assistance, and 

international law enforcement cooperation.10 UNODC is a global leader in the fight against 

illicit drugs and international crime. Established in 1997 through a merger between the United 

Nations Drug Control Program and the Center for International Crime Prevention, UNODC 

is headquartered in Vienna, with 54 field offices covering more than 150 countries around 

the world. It relies on voluntary contributions, mainly from governments, for 90 percent of its 

budget.11 UNODC is one of the world’s leading sources of reliable data, analysis, and forensic 

science services related to illicit drugs and crime. Its publications include the annual World 

Drug Report, U.N. Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, 2009, the 2010 report Corruption in 

Afghanistan: Bribery as Reported by Victims, and the 2011 Global Afghan Opium Trade: Threat 

Assessment. UNODC also provides practical tools and resources for policymakers, legislators, 

and criminal justice professionals.12

The UNODC work program is supported by three pillars. First, field-based technical 

cooperation projects enhance the capacity of member states to counteract illicit drugs, crime, 

and terrorism. Second, research and analytical work increases knowledge and understanding of 

drugs and crime issues and expands the evidence base for policy and operational decisions. And 

third, normative work assists states in the ratification and implementation of the relevant international treaties, the development of domestic legislation on drugs, crime, and terrorism, and 

the provision of secretariat and substantive services to the treaty-based and governing bodies.13

UNODC offers specialized assistance and expertise in the following areas:
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• Organized crime and trafficking: UNODC helps governments react to the instability and insecurity caused by crimes such as the smuggling of illicit drugs, weapons, 

natural resources, counterfeit goods, and human beings between countries and 

continents. It also addresses emerging forms of crime such as cybercrime, trafficking 

in cultural artifacts, and environmental crime.

• Corruption: Corruption is a major impediment to economic and social development. 

UNODC partners with the public and private sectors, as well as civil society, to 

loosen the grip that corrupt individuals have on government, national borders, and 

trading channels. In recent years, the office has stepped up its efforts to help states 

recover assets stolen by corrupt officials.

• Crime prevention and criminal justice reform: UNODC promotes the use of 

training manuals and the adoption of codes of conduct and standards and norms 

that aim to guarantee that the accused, the guilty, and the victims can all rely on a 

criminal justice system that is fair and grounded on human rights values. A strong 

rule of law will also instill confidence among citizens in the effectiveness of the courts 

and the humanness of the prisons.

• Drug abuse prevention and health: Through educational campaigns and by basing 

its approach on scientific findings, UNODC tries to convince young people not to 

use illicit drugs, drug-dependent people to seek treatment, and governments to see 

drug use as a health problem, not a crime.

• Terrorism prevention: UNODC is moving toward a more programmatic approach 

that involves developing long-term, customized assistance to entities involved in 

investigating and adjudicating cases linked to terrorism.14

UNODC’s consolidated budget for drugs and crime for the biennium 2010–2011 

amounted to $468.3 million. Voluntary contributions are budgeted for $425.7 million, of 

which 64 percent is for the drugs program and 36 percent for the crime program. The United 

States was the second largest country contributor after Colombia, contributing $34.3 million 

to UNODC funding in 2010.15

The UNODC 2010 Annual Report “showed how health, security, and justice are the 

antidotes to drugs, crime and terrorism,” according to UNODC Executive Director Antonio 

Maria Costa. It featured the organization’s work on promoting drug treatment and alternative 

development, improving criminal justice, strengthening integrity, and reducing vulnerability to 

crime.16 To combat transnational organized crime, UNODC developed the Serious Organized 

Crime Threat Assessment Handbook to give policymakers tools for assessing immediate threats, 

the direction of current trends, and likely future challenges so that they can implement effective 

strategies to combat organized crime. In April 2010, Brazil hosted the Twelfth United Nations 

Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice to consider comprehensive strategies for 

addressing global challenges to crime prevention and criminal justice systems, in particular 
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those related to the treatment of prisoners, juvenile justice, the prevention of urban crime, 

smuggling of migrants, trafficking in persons, money laundering, terrorism, and cybercrime.

In its anticorruption efforts, state parties to the UN Convention against Corruption met 

in Doha, Qatar, in November 2009, and agreed to establish a mechanism to review implementation of the Convention against Corruption. Under the new mechanism, all state parties will 

be reviewed every 5 years on the fulfillment of their obligations under the convention. On the 

basis of self-assessments and peer review, the mechanism will help identify gaps in national 

anticorruption laws and practices. The convention’s new monitoring mechanism represented a 

major breakthrough in the global campaign against corruption. To address human trafficking, 

UNODC developed, in cooperation with the Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking, a 

model law to guide UN member states in preparing national laws against trafficking in persons.17

In 2009, UNODC launched an international drug treatment and care initiative in partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO) that is a landmark in the development 

of a comprehensive, integrated, health-based approach to drug policy. The UNODC-WHO 

Joint Programme on Drug Dependence Treatment and Care aims to provide humane and 

accessible care to greater numbers of people with drug dependence and drug-related diseases 

(particularly HIV/AIDS) in low- and middle-income countries, resulting in their rehabilitation and reintegration into society.18

As an example of UNODC’s more recent initiatives, UNODC Executive Director Yury 

Fedotov inaugurated the Center of Excellence for Crime Statistics on Governance, Victims 

of Crime, Public Security and Justice on October 1, 2011, in Mexico City. The center will 

develop field surveys, share knowledge in the area of crime statistics, and organize an annual 

international conference on statistics. Fedotov stated:

As criminal gangs and drug trafficking rings become more sophisticated in their 

quest to avoid detection and escape justice, we support the Mexican Government in 

strengthening and sharing data collection methods relating to governance, victims of 

crime, public security and justice so that it—and other countries—can better respond 

to these threats.

The Executive Director also noted:

We must all remember that organized crime has become transnational and borderless; 

it is no longer a problem of just one country. Therefore, this center of excellence will 

help to assist in the government’s response to crime in Mexico, and its findings will 

also be crucial to regional and international authorities and organizations fighting 

transnational organized crime.19

UNODC’s broad spectrum of activities, like the Center of Excellence for Crime Statistics in Mexico City, demonstrates constructive bilateral and multilateral engagements 

directed against transnational organized crime and illicit networks that should continue as 

these threats mutate and converge in the new global security environment. Since many of 

the UNODC programs are dedicated to strengthening institutions to fight drugs and crime 
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around the world, and their results are usually not immediate, it is difficult to evaluate their 

effectiveness. Moreover, as most programs are executed in partnership with host governments 

and other multilateral or nongovernmental organizations, determining the return on UNODC 

investments is challenging. While the mission of UNODC is noble, it would be helpful if the 

organization could provide more information about its programming and institute measures 

of effectiveness to better demonstrate the impact against transnational organized crime, and 

determine better which programs actually worked.

On the Diplomatic Front: Organization of American States Initiatives

The Organization of American States (OAS) has been combating the phenomenon of illicit 

networks in the Americas at the multilateral level through three vehicles: the Hemispheric Plan 

of Action against Transnational Organized Crime, the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control 

Commission (CICAD), and the Inter-American Committee against Terrorism (CICTE). The 

OAS early on recognized that the threat of illicit activities was transnational in nature and required dynamic political, social, economic, and security initiatives to respond to illicit networks.

OAS Hemispheric Plan of Action against Transnational Organized Crime

The OAS Hemispheric Plan of Action against Transnational Organized Crime was adopted 

in October 2006 to promote the application by OAS member states of the United Nations 

Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (Palermo Convention) and the Protocols thereto: the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially 

Women and Children; the Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air; 

and the Protocol against the Illicit Manufacturing and Trafficking in Firearms, Their Parts and 

Components and Ammunition. Its general objectives are to:

1. prevent and combat transnational organized crime, in full observance of human 

rights, using as a frame of reference the Palermo Convention and the three additional 

protocols

2. enhance cooperation in the areas of prevention, investigation, prosecution of, and 

judicial decisions related to, transnational organized crime

3. encourage coordination among OAS bodies responsible for issues related to combating 

transnational organized crime and cooperation among those bodies with UNODC 

4. strengthen national, subregional, and regional capacities and capabilities to deal with 

transnational organized crime.

The Hemispheric Plan of Action put forth specific actions in the following areas: national 

strategies against transnational organized crime, legal instruments, law enforcement matters, 

training, information-sharing, and international cooperation and assistance.20

Despite initial enthusiasm about the Plan of Action, the OAS Technical Group on 

Transnational Crime has only met on three occasions: Mexico City, in July 2007, Washington, 
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DC, in October 2009, and Trinidad and Tobago, in November 2011.21 At the November 

2011 meeting, OAS Secretary for Multidimensional Security Adam Blackwell said that 

international crime is “everyone’s problem, it occurs in developed and developing countries 

where poverty, inequality, social and political exclusion and governance challenges are both 

causes and consequences of the problem.” Those at the meeting debated and offered some 

recommendations on police management in the hemisphere, a fundamental issue in improving 

security for citizens in the Americas.22 OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza explained 

that “police forces are tasked with the great responsibility of being the primary representatives 

of the state in guaranteeing compliance with the rule of law, within a community in a large 

or small community,” for which he stressed that “the importance of fostering institutional 

capacity development to ensure effective response by the police in a democratic framework” 

cannot be overestimated.23

While the OAS Hemispheric Plan of Action against Transnational Organized Crime 

is well intentioned, it is not clear what has actually been accomplished, as data regarding its 

programming are limited. Many of these OAS meetings issue communiqués that sound 

promising, but actions speak louder than words. To further complicate matters, OAS member 

states are hard-pressed to fund and staff new initiatives in support of the Plan of Action given 

the global economic recession and resource constraints.

Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission

To address the challenging issues of narcotics trafficking and drug abuse in the Western 

Hemisphere, the OAS established an agency known as CICAD, the Inter-American Drug 

Abuse Control Commission, in 1986. It focuses on strengthening the human and institutional 

capabilities and channeling the collective efforts of its member states to reduce the production, 

trafficking, and use of illegal drugs.24 CICAD received almost $3 million of its $7.8 million 

total 2010 budget from the United States to counter the trafficking and abuse of illegal drugs, 

including methamphetamine.25 Its specific activities seek to:

• prevent and treat substance abuse

• reduce the supply and availability of illicit drugs

• strengthen national drug control institutions and machinery

• improve money-laundering control laws and practice

• develop alternate sources of income for growers of coca, poppy, and marijuana

• assist member governments in improving their data gathering and analysis on all 

aspects of the drug issue

• help member states and the hemisphere as a whole measure their progress over time 

in addressing the drug problem.26
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For more than 10 years, the OAS/CICAD Multilateral Evaluation Mechanism (MEM) 

has strengthened regional and subregional collaboration on all levels including drug awareness 

and treatment approaches, information data collection, sharing and harmonizing counternarcotics and crime legislative models, extradition practices, and other control measures. The 

MEM deploys the expertise of independent peer reviewers from all OAS countries, which has 

resulted in hundreds of recommendations that individual countries and CICAD are taking 

concrete and effective measures to implement.27

Carrying out the MEM recommendations is an essential part of the toolkit that allows 

OAS countries to work as a cohesive force against the dual threats of drugs and crime. The 

MEM focuses on institution-building, demand reduction, supply reduction, control measures, 

and international cooperation. Notably, the MEM evaluation country reports, published in 

2010, prompted the independent hemispheric experts who draft the reports to make over 

a third of their recommendations in the area of narcotics control measures. These recommendations for action include establishing and/or refining laws and regulations to control 

weapons, ammunition, and related material to stem the growing violence posed by illegal 

drugs and crime.28

On May 3, 2010, a new Hemispheric Drug Strategy was adopted by CICAD in Washington, DC, which updates the Anti-Drug Strategy in the Hemisphere, originally approved by the 

OAS General Assembly in 1997. Its 52 articles cover five aspects: Institutional Strengthening, 

Demand Reduction, Supply Reduction, Control Measures, and International Cooperation.29

In May 2011, the OAS adopted the Hemispheric Plan of Action on Drugs, 2011–2015, to 

assist member nations in implementing the Hemispheric Drug Strategy30 on the demand and 

supply sides of the problem.

Among its various programs, CICAD continued to carry out its activities in anti-money 

laundering and combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) throughout Latin America 

and the Caribbean in 2010. CICAD’s AML/CFT training programs seek to enhance the 

knowledge and capabilities of judges, prosecutors, public defenders, law enforcement agents, 

and financial intelligence unit analysts. CICAD’s Anti-Money Laundering Section organized 

17 seminars and workshops in 14 countries in 2010, training nearly 700 judges, prosecutors, 

law enforcement officers, financial intelligence unit analysts, and forfeited assets administration 

officers, among other participants. It partnered with UNODC, the Stolen Assets Recovery 

initiative of the World Bank, the World Bank Institute, Spain’s ministry of interior, and the 

Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs of the Department of State, 

as well as the OAS’s Inter-American Committee Against Terrorism (CICTE) and the governments of CICAD member states.

CICAD also coordinated with the UNODC Legal Assistance Program for Latin America and the Caribbean, Interpol, and the South American Financial Action Task Force (GAFISUD) in setting up the Asset Recovery Network of GAFISUD as a vehicle for exchanging 

information about the identification and recovery of assets, products, or instruments of 

transnational illicit activities. This initiative is based on the guidelines of CARIN (Camden 

Assets Recovery Inter-Agency Network) in Europe.31

In November 2011, CICAD celebrated its 50th session and the 25th anniversary of the 

commission, in Buenos Aires, where OAS Secretary Adam Blackwell said, “Ties between 
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drugs, crime, violence and weapons are evident and demand greater coordination among the 

countries of the region to be able to face them with a comprehensive and multilateral approach.” 

Secretary Blackwell added that “drug demand reduction through education” would be one of 

CICAD’s working pillars. During this meeting, CICAD agreed to expand some of its most 

innovative programs to other regions, such as Central America and the Caribbean. The project 

for the establishment of Drug Treatment Courts was highlighted. These courts, which seek 

to improve the quality of treatment to drug-dependent offenders, received strong support 

from the member states, several of which requested that OAS implement pilot programs in 

their territories. The countries also highlighted the use of scientific evidence produced in the 

Inter-American Drug Observatory as a pillar for the establishment of public policies in the 

field, and they requested that the CICAD Executive Secretariat continue working toward 

strengthening national information systems.32

Inter-American Committee against Terrorism

The OAS also has a separate entity charged with the counterterrorism mission in the Americas. 

In 2002, CICTE (the Inter-American Committee against Terrorism) established an Executive 

Secretariat within the OAS General Secretariat after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 

2001. Its mission is to promote and develop cooperation among member states to prevent, 

combat, and eliminate terrorism in accordance with the principles of the OAS Charter and the 

Inter-American Convention against Terrorism. The CICTE Secretariat has developed a full 

range of technical assistance and capacity-building programs to help OAS member states to 

prevent, combat, and eliminate terrorism. CICTE oversees 10 programs divided into six broad 

program areas: border controls, financial controls, critical infrastructure protection, legislative 

assistance and consultations, crisis management exercises, and policy development and coordination. The latter program is devoted to promoting international cooperation and coordination 

with other international, regional, and subregional bodies, as well as the private sector.33

More specifically, CICTE enhances the exchange of terror-related information among 

member states, including the establishment of an inter-American database on terrorism issues; 

assists member states in drafting appropriate counterterrorism legislation; compiles bilateral, 

subregional, regional, and multilateral counterterrorism treaties and agreements signed by 

member states; promotes universal adherence to international counterterrorism conventions; 

enhances border cooperation and travel documentation security measures; and develops 

activities for training and crisis management.

These OAS multilateral security programs to counter the threat of illicit networks (including drug-trafficking organizations and terrorist groups) illustrate the potential but also 

the inherent challenges of multilateral cooperation. Since many of the strategies and policies to 

address illicit phenomena including drug, arms, and human trafficking are national, the OAS is 

hard-pressed to dictate solution sets to sovereign nation-states. Several countries in the region 

have limited resources to confront drug-trafficking organizations that are often better trained 

and equipped than government forces. The situation is further complicated by the problematic 

history of those Latin American countries that have transitioned from military dictatorships to 

democratic governments responsible for safeguarding the rule of law. There remain deep-seated 

suspicions of the role of defense and security forces, and trepidation concerning abuses of 
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power and corruption by these forces if they are employed against illicit networks. Therefore, 

the OAS serves as a forum and catalyst for member states to better understand the threat of 

transnational organized crime and illicit networks and to share resources and best practices 

to foster regional security, while incorporating measures of effectiveness to evaluate the real 

impact of OAS programming.

On the Development Front

Central America has become the unfortunate victim of the aggressive counternarcotics campaigns of the governments of Colombia and Mexico. As illicit actors have perceived more risks 

in operating in Colombia and Mexico, they have stepped up their activities in Central America. 

Increasing flows of narcotics through Central America have been contributing to rising levels 

of violence and the corruption of government officials, which are weakening citizens’ support 

for democratic governance and the rule of law. Violence is particularly intense in the “northern 

triangle” countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, which have some of the highest 

homicide rates in the world. Citizens of nearly every Central American nation now rank public insecurity as the top problem facing their countries. Given the transnational character of 

criminal organizations and their abilities to exploit ungoverned spaces, some analysts assert 

that insecurity in Central America poses a threat to the United States.34

The Central American Integration System (SICA) is a regional organization with a 

Secretariat in El Salvador, composed of the governments of Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, 

Guatemala, Honduras, and Panama. Its Security Commission was created in 1995 to develop 

and carry out regional security efforts to combat illicit networks among other transnational 

threats. On April 14, 2011, Secretary General of SICA Juan Daniel Aleman presented the 

new regional security strategy to the Group of Friends in Support of the Central American 

Security Strategy, which included ministers and vice ministers of defense, security, and foreign 

affairs including Guatemalan Defense Minister Abraham Valenzuela, U.S. Assistant Secretary 

of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Arturo Valenzuela, Guatemalan Deputy Minister 

of the Presidency Mauricio Boraschi, Canadian Assistant Deputy Minister for the Americas 

Jon Allen, and Nicaraguan National Police First Commissioner Aminta Granera.

The four pillars of the regional security strategy are Prevention, Combating Crime, Rehabilitation and Reintegration, and Institutional Strengthening. This strategy is based on the 

premise that security in Central America is a shared responsibility, and one of the key principles 

is that it implies an interconnected chain between local, national, and regional actions from a 

perspective of resource allocations and should take advantage of synergies, according to Aleman.35 SICA’s strategy will require close cooperation between Central American countries and 

the international community to achieve success in the fight against violence and is yet another 

example of multilateral partnerships to combat the convergence of threats from illicit networks.

The United States recognizes that its efforts in Colombia and Mexico have provided 

incentives for criminal groups to move into Central America and other areas where they can 

exploit institutional weaknesses to continue their operations. In response, the Obama administration has made ensuring the safety and security of all citizens one of the four overarching 

priorities of U.S. policy in Latin America and has sought to develop collaborative partnerships 
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with countries throughout the hemisphere. These partnerships have taken the form of bilateral 

security cooperation with countries such as Colombia and Mexico, as well as regional programs 

such as the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative and the Central America Regional Security 

Initiative (CARSI).36

Central America Regional Security Initiative

On the diplomatic and development front, the U.S.-sponsored CARSI seeks to promote 

citizen security and socioeconomic development as a direct response to the growing threat of 

illicit networks. CARSI was originally created in 2007 as part of the Mexico-focused counterdrug and anticrime assistance package known as the Mérida Initiative.37 CARSI not only 

provides equipment, training, and technical assistance to support immediate law enforcement 

and interdiction operations, but also seeks to strengthen the capacities of governmental institutions to address security challenges and the underlying economic and social conditions that 

contribute to them.38

The five goals of CARSI are to:

1. create safe streets for the citizens in the region

2. disrupt the movement of criminals and contraband within and between the nations 

of Central America 

3. support the development of strong, capable, and accountable Central American 

governments 

4. reestablish effective state presence and security in communities at risk 

5. foster enhanced levels of security and rule of law coordination and cooperation 

between the nations of the region.39

CARSI’s collaborative efforts to combat illicit networks in Central America include 

programming in the narcotics interdiction, law enforcement support, institutional capacity-building, and prevention arenas. In addition to traditional “train and equip” programs, 

U.S. assistance provided through CARSI also supports specialized law enforcement units 

that are vetted by, and work with, U.S. personnel to investigate and disrupt the operations of 

transnational gangs and trafficking networks. Led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 

Transnational Anti-Gang (TAG) units, which were first created in El Salvador in 2007, are 

now expanding to Guatemala and Honduras with CARSI support. Similarly, Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the State Department’s 

INL also have vetted unit programs throughout Central America. Among other activities, 

they conduct complex investigations into money laundering, bulk cash smuggling, and the 

trafficking of narcotics, firearms, and persons.40

In Central America through the CARSI program, the International Law Enforcement 

Training Academy in El Salvador trained approximately 450 law enforcement officers from 

the seven CARSI countries in 2010. In just 3 months of 2010, the TAG unit in El Salvador 
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Realuyo

handled 141 investigative leads and disseminated information to domestic and international 

law enforcement agencies. Customs and Border Protection, working with CARSI national 

border forces, conducted assessments of more than 30 land, sea, and air entry points throughout the region and has provided training using nonintrusive inspection equipment provided 

by the State Department.41

State Department/INL and the United States Agency for International Development 

(USAID) community-policing programs are designed to build institutional capacity and local 

confidence in police forces by converting them into more community-based, service-oriented 

organizations. One such program, the Villa Nueva model precinct in Guatemala, is being 

replicated with CARSI funding as a result of its success in establishing popular trust and 

reducing violence. To improve the investigative capacity of Central American nations, CARSI 

has supported assessments of forensic laboratories, the implementation of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives’ eTrace system to track firearms, and the expansion of 

the FBI’s Central America Fingerprint Exchange, which assists partner nations in developing 

fingerprint and biometric capabilities. CARSI also seeks to reduce impunity by improving the 

efficiency and effectiveness of Central American judicial systems.42

In 2010, USAID continued its efforts in crime and violence prevention, working with 

local and national governments, civil society, and community leaders to build comprehensive 

prevention approaches and provide opportunities for youth who are at risk of becoming 

involved in the narcotics trade and substance abuse. Through its management of CARSI 

funds in the Economic and Social Development Fund for Central America, USAID supports 

prevention programs by providing educational, recreational, and vocational opportunities for 

at-risk youth. In El Salvador, for example, USAID’s Community-Based Crime and Violence 

Prevention Project works in 12 municipalities to strengthen the capacities of local governments, civil organizations, community leaders, and youth to address the problems of crime 

and violence.43 These comprehensive political, judicial, economic, and social programs under 

CARSI are intended to reinforce the rule of law, economic development, and democratic 

institutions. They are aimed at addressing the complex threats posed by illicit networks by 

working with different segments of the society.

Perhaps one of the greatest challenges for this important mission in Central America is 

U.S. funding in an age of fiscal austerity and the rate at which the programs are being implemented. Since fiscal year (FY) 2008, the United States has provided Central America with 

$361.5 million through Mérida/CARSI, and the Obama administration has requested an 

additional $100 million for CARSI in FY2012.44 The Department of State has not released 

any information since March 2011, at which point 88 percent of the funds appropriated between FY2008 and FY2010 had been obligated and 19 percent had been expended.45

At the June 2011 SICA conference, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that 

U.S. funding for the Central America Citizen Security Partnership would exceed $290 million 

in FY2011.46 The $290 million pledge includes the $101.5 million being provided through 

CARSI as well as all other bilateral and regional U.S. assistance being provided to support 

security efforts in the region in FY2011. Many experts on Central America are concerned that 

this will be insufficient to help Central American nations to realize rule of law, prosperity, and 

democracy in the face of the formidable illicit networks operating in the region. Not only do 
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Collaborating to Combat Illicit Networks

Central American countries lack financial resources; they also require human resources and 

capacity to implement these security and development programs.

On the Defense and Security Front

In the Western Hemisphere, narcotics trafficking and its associated violence represent the 

gravest threat from illicit networks and pose a formidable challenge for government, defense, 

and security forces. For decades, Washington has invested significant resources in both the 

demand and supply side of counternarcotics efforts known as the “war on drugs.” The United 

States and its partner nations have made significant strides in interdicting illicit drug trafficking 

in the Americas, but the international drug trade continues to flourish. In June 2011, the Global 

Commission on Drug Policy, whose members include former UN Secretary General Kofi 

Annan, three former Latin American presidents (of Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia), former 

Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, former U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz, Virgin 

Group Founder Richard Branson, and Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou declared 

that the global war on drugs has failed after 40 years.47

USSOUTHCOM’s Counter Illicit Trafficking Mandate

The United States Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM), located in Miami, Florida, is 

one of nine joint unified combatant commands in the Department of Defense. It is responsible for providing contingency planning, operations, and security cooperation for Central and 

South America, the Caribbean (except U.S. commonwealths, territories, and possessions), 

and Cuba, as well as force protection of U.S. military resources at these locations. It is also responsible for ensuring the defense of the Panama Canal and canal area. According to the “2020 

Command Strategy: Partnership for the Americas,” issued in July 2010, USSOUTHCOM’s 

strategic objectives are to defend the United States and its interests, foster regional security, 

and be an enduring partner of choice in support of a peaceful and prosperous region. Its areas 

of focus are Counter Illicit Trafficking (CIT), Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Relief, and 

Peacekeeping Operations.

The primary mission of USSOUTHCOM’s CIT efforts is to support the interdiction 

of drug trafficking. USSOUTHCOM collaborates with other agencies and nations to support interdiction of transnational criminal organizations through detection and monitoring, 

information-sharing, and partner nation capacity-building. All efforts are focused to achieve 

U.S. National Drug Control Strategy interdiction goals.

The Department of Defense is the lead Federal agency in efforts to detect and monitor 

aerial and maritime transit of illegal drugs toward the United States. Joint Interagency Task 

Force–South (JIATF-South) is the national task force that serves as the catalyst for integrated 

and synchronized interagency counter-illicit trafficking operations. It is responsible for the 

detection and monitoring of suspect air and maritime drug activity in the Caribbean Sea, Gulf 

of Mexico, and the eastern Pacific. JIATF-South also collects, processes, and disseminates 

counter-drug information for interagency and partner nation operations. Using information 

gathered by JIATF-South–coordinated operations, U.S. law enforcement agencies and partner 

nations take the lead in interdicting drug runners. U.S. military interdiction involvement, if any, 
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is in support of those law enforcement agencies. Typically, U.S. military personnel are involved 

in supporting an interdiction during maritime operations in international waters, where U.S. 

Navy ships and helicopters patrol and intercept suspected traffickers. The actual interdictions—

boarding, search, seizures, and arrests—are led and conducted by embarked U.S. Coast Guard 

Law Enforcement Detachments or partner nation drug law enforcement agencies.

The U.S. military commits a variety of forces in the region to support detection and 

monitoring efforts:

• Maritime: Normally, U.S. Navy, U.S. Coast Guard, and partner nation (British, 

French, Dutch, Canadian, and Colombian) ships patrol the waters in the Caribbean 

Sea, Gulf of Mexico, and the eastern Pacific on a year-round basis. Embarked on 

U.S. and at times allied nation naval vessels are Coast Guard Law Enforcement 

Detachments who take the lead during operations to board suspected vessels, seize 

illegal drugs, and apprehend suspects.

• Air: JIATF-South utilizes U.S. military, interagency, and partner nation aircraft 

that are strategically located throughout the region and at two Cooperative Security 

Locations in Comalapa, El Salvador, and in Curacao and Aruba, formerly part of the 

Netherlands Antilles. These aircraft, in cooperation with partner nations and U.S. 

agencies, fly persistent missions to monitor areas with a history of illicit trafficking. 

The U.S. aircraft offer unique surveillance capabilities that complement the counter–illicit trafficking efforts of U.S. and partner nation law enforcement agencies.

• Other: USSOUTHCOM also provides support to partner nations through training, information-sharing, and technological and resource assistance.

JIATF-South: Structure and Operations

Focused on countering illicit trafficking, JIATF-South exemplifies perhaps the best model of 

interagency and international efforts to combat the convergence of illicit networks, with a proven 

20-year track record. JIATF-South is a combined military-civilian task force charged with the 

mission to combat illicit trafficking in Latin America and the Caribbean. While JIATF-South reports to USSOUTHCOM, it pursues its four-pronged mission of detection, monitoring, interdiction, and apprehension with international partners.48 Over the past 20 years, JIATF-South 

has arrested some 4,600 traffickers, captured nearly 1,100 vessels, and deprived drug cartels of 

an estimated $190 billion in profits.49 Former USSOUTHCOM Commander and current 

Supreme Allied Commander Europe Admiral James Stavridis considers JIATF-South “a national treasure” and the “crown jewel of Southcom”50 that demonstrates a whole-of-government 

approach to converging transnational threats such as illicit networks.

JIATF-South is a joint, interagency, international, combined, and allied team comprised 

of professionals from all four Services of the U.S. military, nine U.S. agencies (including intelligence and law enforcement), and 13 partner nations including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, 

Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Mexico, the Netherlands, Peru, 

Spain, and the United Kingdom.51 JIATF-South’s area of responsibility covers nearly 42 mil-
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Collaborating to Combat Illicit Networks

lion square miles. Using information from law enforcement agencies, JIATF-South detects and 

monitors suspect aircraft and maritime vessels in the Caribbean Basin and eastern Pacific and 

then provides this information to international and interagency partners who have the authority to interdict illicit shipments and arrest members of transnational criminal organizations. 

In 2010, JIATF-South and international and interagency partners were directly responsible 

for interdicting 142 metric tons of cocaine and 3,419 pounds of marijuana and making 309 

arrests, denying transnational criminal organizations an estimated $2.8 billion in revenue.52

According to the 2011 publication Joint Interagency Task Force–South: The Best Known, 

Least Understood Interagency Success, the accomplishments of JIATF-South over the past two 

decades can be attributed to the following lessons learned:

• Get a mandate from higher authority. The mission and team had sufficient legitimacy 

with a clear mandate from senior civilian and military authorities.

• Tailor a holistic solution set to a discrete problem. The mission was discrete and clearly 

identified (stop drug trafficking from entering the United States) with measurable 

outcomes (that is, number of arrests, interdictions, vessels boarded, and drug confiscations).
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• Know your partners. A better understanding of partners, their interests, capabilities, 

and limitations fostered true collaboration and cooperation and unity of effort.

• Get resources.

• Build networks.

The report also noted several mistakes to avoid:

• don’t command the presence of interagency personnel on your team

• don’t segregate interagency staff in separate buildings

• don’t disrespect smaller partners; they can make big contributions

• don’t demand binding agreements on cooperation (at least initially)

• don’t ignore any partner’s need to feel they make a contribution

• don’t make binding decisions without substantial vetting and support

• don’t forget to build a culture of trust and empowerment

• don’t take credit for collaborative success.53

JIATF-South is considered one of the best models of interagency and international 

cooperation to counter transnational threats. It is a team that blends experience, professionalism, and knowledge that is greater than the sum of its individual parts, according to Admiral 

Stavridis.54 JIATF-South has executed successful interdiction operations that illustrate how 

a culture of collaboration that incorporates military, intelligence, and law enforcement capabilities can combat the convergence of threats posed by illicit networks. However, it is not 

apparent how easily this model with over 20 years of experience can be replicated in terms of 

human and financial resources as well as collaborative culture.

Fostering Collaborative Models to Combat Illicit Networks

Illicit networks that include criminals, terrorists, and facilitators have brokered strategic alliances to promote their interests, threatening the rule of law, global supply chains, and free and 

fair markets around the world. To counter the convergence of these threats, governments need 

to develop interagency and international strategies that leverage the diplomatic, development, 

intelligence, military, and law enforcement instruments of national power. To this end, collaborative models for security and development require the following critical elements: political 

will, institutions, mechanisms to assess threats and deliver countermeasures, resources, and 

measures of effectiveness to ensure success against illicit networks.

All of the international and interagency initiatives examined in this chapter demonstrate 

the political will to combat illicit networks. In 2000, the United Nations formally recognized 
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Collaborating to Combat Illicit Networks

the threat from illicit networks with the adoption of the UN Convention against Transnational 

Organized Crime and has engaged in many activities to combat drug trafficking and organized 

crime through the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. On the U.S. front, the 2011 Strategy to 

Combat Transnational Organized Crime represents a significant development in acknowledging 

the national security threat and advocating interagency collaboration and international cooperation to counter global crime. However, an implementation plan with specific undertakings 

for the U.S. interagency and measures of effectiveness has yet to be published as of this writing. 

Publicly realizing the threat from illicit networks to the peace and prosperity of nation-states 

and global markets is not enough. These international conventions, agreements, and strategies 

must be accompanied with action plans and be adequately resourced in order to restrict illicit 

actors’ operating environment and enablers.

Figure 5. Critical Elements for Effective 

Collaborative Models

Political

Will

Resources Mechanisms

Measure of

Effectiveness Institutions

Figure 4. To Combat Illicit Networks

Foster Collaboration and Communities of Interest

at the National, Regional, and International Levels

Facilitators

Terrorists Criminals

Intelligence

Military Law

Enforcement
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Table 1. Critical Elements for Effective Collaborative 

Models in the Western Hemisphere

Collaborative 

Model

Political 

Will Institutions Mechanisms Resources

Measures 

of Success

U.S. Counter–

Transnational 

Organized Crime

Yes Yes Yes Yes Some

United Nations 

Office on Drugs 

and Crime

Yes Yes Yes Yes Unclear

Organization of 

American States Yes Yes Some Some Unclear

Central America 

Regional Security

Initiative

Yes Yes Limited Insufficient Unclear

Joint Interagency 

Task Force–South Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

In the Western Hemisphere, diplomatic, development, and defense initiatives to combat 

illicit networks are underway through the UN, OAS, CARSI, and USSOUTHCOM’s 

JIATF-South as described above. These collaborative models focus on the operational and 

preventive countermeasures to confront illicit actors and promote security and development. 

Current efforts under the auspices of multilateral institutions such as UNODC and OAS 

are noteworthy and laudable, but they lack measures of effectiveness that make it difficult 

to determine their real countercrime impact and their ability to establish rule of law and 

socioeconomic opportunities. Meanwhile, CARSI will require more financial and human 

resources to carry out law enforcement and socioeconomic development programs to combat 

transnational criminal organizations. In contrast, JIATF-South has enjoyed a 20-year track 

record of progress against illicit trafficking. It has all the critical elements of a collaborative 

model: commitment, institutions, mechanisms, resources, and metrics, as well as a strong interagency and international culture that has developed over its lifetime. All of these initiatives 

to combat illicit networks in the Americas are ongoing but appear to be executed in parallel. 

In this resource-constrained environment, greater donor coordination would ensure that all 

these security and development programs complement rather than duplicate each other. Given 

the level of political will demonstrated across these organizations, there should be an interest 

in allocating resources and building capacity in the specific geographic areas most vulnerable 

to transnational organized crime.

Globalization has benefited the private, public, and civic sectors of society over the past 

few decades. We have witnessed extraordinary rates of economic growth with significant 

advances in international trade, capital markets, science, and technology. Meanwhile, illicit 

networks have leveraged the processes and new opportunities arising from globalization and 

capitalized on weak institutions and gaps in governance around the world to expand their 

enterprises. In the Western Hemisphere, illicit networks have been increasingly engaged in 

drug, arms, counterfeiting, and human-trafficking activities that have been accompanied by 
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Collaborating to Combat Illicit Networks

unprecedented levels of violence. Consequently, the threat of transnational organized crime 

and illicit networks has become a national security concern to the United States and its allies.

Since illicit networks threaten citizen safety and economic security, governments must 

engage the public, private, and civic sectors to diminish and defeat the power and influence of 

transnational organized crime and illicit actors. As John Aquilla, at the Naval Postgraduate 

School, explains, “It takes a network to defeat a network.” In that vein, governments around 

the world must build networks that promote interagency and international collaboration 

to combat the convergence of illicit networks and the national security threats they pose to 

the international community. To ensure success, the initiatives undertaken to combat illicit 

networks must be supported by political commitment, institutions, mechanisms, financial 

and human resources, and measures of effectiveness to promote security and development.

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this chapter are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy 

or position of the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, the National Defense University, 

the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

Notes

1

 James G. Stavridis, Partnership for the Americas: Western Hemisphere Strategy and U.S. Southern Command

(Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 2010), 84. 2

 Celina B. Realuyo, “Securing Global Supply Chains in an Age of Uncertainty: Focus on Food Safety,” George 

Mason University Center for Critical Infrastructure and Homeland Security Critical Infrastructure Report 10, no. 1 (July 

2011), available at <http://cip.gmu.edu/archive/CIPHS_TheCIPReport_July2011_SupplyChain.pdf>. 3

 Ibid.

4National Security Strategy (Washington, DC: The White House, May 2010), 49, available at <www.whitehouse.

gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/national_security_strategy.pdf>. 5

 Ibid.

6 Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime: Addressing Coverging Threats to National Security (Washington, DC: The White House, July 2011), available at <www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/Strategy_to_Combat_Transnational_Organized_Crime_July_2011.pdf>. 7

 Ibid.

8

 Michael J. Caden, “National Debt Poses Security Threat, Mullen Says,” American Forces Press Service, August 

28, 2010, available at <www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=60621>. 9

 United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, December 2000.

10 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), “Promoting Health, Security, and Justice: Cutting 

the Threads of Drugs, Crime, and Terrorism,” 2010 Annual Report, 19, available at <www.unodc.org/documents/

frontpage/UNODC_Annual_Report_2010_LowRes.pdf>. 11 Ibid.

12 Ibid., 55.

13 UNODC, “About UNODC,” available at <www.unodc.org/unodc/en/about-unodc/index.html?ref=menutop>. 14 Ibid.

15 UNODC, “Funds and Partners,” available at <www.unodc.org/unodc/en/donors/index.html>.

16 UNODC, “UNODC 2010 Annual Report Released,” April 8, 2010, available at <www.unodc.org/unodc/

en/frontpage/2010/April/unodc-2010-annual-report-released.html>. 17 UNODC, “Promoting Health, Security, and Justice,” 22.
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Realuyo

18 Ibid.

19 UNODC, “UNODC Head Inaugurates Centre of Excellence in Statistics in Mexico,” October 1, 2011, 

available at <www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/2011/October/unodc-head-inaugurates-statistics-centre-of-excellence-in-mexico.html?ref=fs4>. 20 Organization of American States (OAS), “Hemispheric Plan of Action against Transnational Organized 

Crime,” Res. 908, October 25, 2006, available at <www.oas.org/consejo/resolutions/res908.asp>. 21 OAS Committee on Hemispheric Security, “Transnational Organized Crime as a Multidimensional Threat: 

Promoting Full Implementation of the Hemispheric Plan of Action against Transnational Organized Crime,” 

concept paper roundtable discussion, April 18–19, 2005, available at <www.oas.org/csh/english/TOC.asp>. 22 “OAS meets to analyze progress against organized crime,” Infosur Hoy, November 17, 2011, available at 

<http://infosurhoy.com/cocoon/saii/xhtml/en_GB/newsbriefs/saii/newsbriefs/2011/11/17/newsbrief-05>. 23 “OAS analyses hemispheric progress against transnational organized crime,” Caribbean News Now, November 

18, 2011, available at <www.caribbeannewsnow.com/headline-OAS-analyses-hemispheric-progress-against-transnational-organized-crime-8793.html>. 24 Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD), “Mission Statement,” available at <www.cicad.

oas.org/Main/Template.asp?File=/Main/AboutCICAD/about_eng.asp>. 25 OAS/CICAD, “2010 Annual Report of the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission to the 41st Regular Session of the General Assembly of the OAS,” available at <www.cicad.oas.org/AnnualReports/2010/1861-AnualReport_ENG-rev1.pdf>. 26 Ibid.

27 U.S. Department of State, Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, “International 

Narcotics Control Strategy Report 2011,” vol. 1, March 2011, 15, available at <www.state.gov/documents/organization/156575.pdf>. 28 Ibid., 15.

29 James F. Mack, “New Hemispheric Drug Strategy,” OAS/CICAD, June 2010, available at <www.cicad.oas.

org/en/basicdocuments/Hemispheric%20Drug%20Strategy100603.pdf>. 30 OAS/CICAD, “Hemispheric Plan of Action on Drugs, 2011–2015,” May 4–6, 2011, available at <www.

cicad.oas.org/apps/Document.aspx?Id=1091>. 31 U.S. Department of State, Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, “International 

Narcotics Control Strategy Report 2011,” vol. 2, March 2011, 29, available at <http://photos.state.gov/libraries/

mauritius/320773/PDF_documents/incsr_2011.pdf>. 32 OAS/CICAD, “Next Multilateral Evaluation Mechanism Round gets framework for evaluation,” available 

at <www.cicad.oas.org/Main/Template.asp?File=/main/news/update_eng.asp>. 33 OAS Inter-American Committee Against Terrorism (CICTE), “History,” available at <http://cicte.oas.

org/rev/en/about/History.asp>. 34 Peter J. Meyer and Clare Ribando Seelke, “Central America Regional Security Initiative: Background and 

Policy Issues for Congress,” Congressional Research Service, R41731, March 30, 2011, available at <www.fas.org/

sgp/crs/row/R41731.pdf>. 35 “SICA presents Central American citizen security strategy to the international community,” Inter-American 

Development Bank News, April 14, 2011, available at <www.iadb.org/mobile/news/detail.cfm?lang=en&id=9345>. 36 Testimony of Arturo A. Valenzuela, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, U.S. 

Department of State, before the Senate Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, Peace Corps, and Global 

Narcotics Affairs, February 17, 2011. 37 Meyer and Seelke, “Central America Regional Security Initiative,” March 30, 2011.

38 U.S. National Drug Control Strategy (Washington, DC: The White House, 2011), 76, available at <www.

whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/ondcp/ndcs2011.pdf>. 39 U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs, “The Central America Regional Security Initiative: A 

Shared Partnership Fact Sheet,” August, 5, 2010, available at <www.state.gov/r/pa/scp/fs/2010/145747.htm>. 40 Meyer and Seelke, 25.

41 “U.S. National Drug Control Strategy,” 2011, 78.

42 Meyer and Seelke, 25.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid.
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Collaborating to Combat Illicit Networks

45 Ibid., 28.

46 Hillary Clinton, “Remarks at the Central American Security Conference (SICA),” U.S. Department of State, 

June 22, 2011. 47 “Global war on drugs ‘has failed’ say former leaders,” BBC, June 2, 2011, available at <www.bbc.co.uk/news/

world-us-canada-13624303>. 48 Dialogo staff, “The Tip of the Spear: JIATF-South in Action,” 2010, available at <www.dialogo-americas.

com/en_GB/articles/rmisa/features/viewpoint/2010/10/01/feature-02>. 49 Stavridis, 68.

50 Ibid., 69.

51 Ibid., 68.

52 Douglas M. Fraser, Commander, U.S. Southern Command, “Posture Statement before the 112th Congress 

House Armed Services Committee,” March 30, 2011, available at <www.southcom.mil/newsroom/Documents/

SOUTHCOM%202011%20Posture%20Statement.pdf>. 53 Evan Munsing and Christopher J. Lamb, Joint Interagency Task Force–South: The Best Known, Least Understood 

Interagency Success, INSS Strategic Perspectives No. 5 (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 2011), 

83–85, available at <www.ndu.edu/press/lib/pdf/strategic-perspectives/Strategic-Perspectives-5.pdf>. 54 Stavridis, 68.

269

About the Contributors

Michael Miklaucic is the director of research, information, and publications in the Center for 

Complex Operations (CCO), Institute for National Strategic Studies, at the National Defense 

University. He is also the editor of PRISM, the journal of CCO. Prior to this assignment, Mr. 

Miklaucic served in various positions at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and Department of State, including USAID representative on the Civilian Response 

Corps Inter-Agency Task Force; senior program officer in the USAID Office of Democracy 

and Governance; and rule-of-law specialist in the Center for Democracy and Governance. 

During 2002–2003, he served as Department of State deputy for war crimes issues. He 

received his education from the University of California, London School of Economics, and 

School for Advanced International Studies. Mr. Miklaucic is an adjunct professor of U.S. 

foreign policy at American University and adjunct professor of conflict and development at 

George Mason University.

Jacqueline Brewer is an analyst in the Center for Complex Operations, Institute for National 

Strategic Studies, at the National Defense University. She is responsible for a wide range of activities including research and project development targeted at preparing U.S. Government and 

multinational partners for interagency operations. She previously worked in the private sector 

supporting the State Department’s Bureau of Near East Affairs/Iraq and the U.S. National 

Security Council on Iraq rule-of-law issues. She has also worked with various Department of 

Defense educational organizations to coordinate and design curriculum for operational training 

programs. Ms. Brewer received a B.A. in international studies and an M.A. in international 

affairs, both from American University.

Gary Barnabo is a consultant with Booz Allen Hamilton. He advises the Office of the Deputy 

Assistant Secretary of Defense for Counternarcotics and Global Threats on policy and strategy 

issues related to transnational organized crime and illicit networks. Mr. Barnabo has supported 

clients in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and the 

intelligence community by analyzing and designing policy approaches to complex national 

security challenges. He also serves as the president of Young Professionals in Foreign Policy, a 

Washington, DC–based nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that fosters the next generation 

of foreign policy leaders.
270

About the Contributors

Duncan Deville leads the commercial Anti-Money Laundering/Counter-Terrorist Financing 

Compliance Program (AML/CTF) at Booz Allen Hamilton. Previously, he was a senior 

financial enforcement advisor with the Treasury Department’s Office of International Affairs 

and mentored various units on compliance with AML/CTF standards. He served with the 

Department of Defense in Baghdad, leading rule-of-law efforts by training Iraqi judges and 

prosecutors until sovereignty was transferred. Prior to this, he was a visiting scholar at Harvard Law School and consultant to the RAND Corporation on criminal justice matters. Mr. 

Deville served as a prosecutor for over a dozen years, including as assistant U.S. attorney with 

the Organized Crime Strike Force in Los Angeles. He also held long-term posts in Moscow 

and Yerevan, Armenia, for the Justice Department. Mr. Deville is an Adjunct Professor of Law 

at Georgetown University, with graduate degrees from Oxford, Harvard, and the University 

of Denver, and an undergraduate degree from the University of Louisiana. His articles have 

appeared in the law reviews of Columbia University, The George Washington University, 

Harvard, Stanford, and University of Chicago, as well as in the Boston Globe, Moscow Times, 

The New York Times, Washington Times, and numerous business publications.

Douglas Farah is a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center and 

adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. In his 18 years as a foreign 

correspondent and investigative reporter for The Washington Post, he covered the drug war in 

the Andean region, the Medellín and Cali cartels, the Colombian and Mexican drug mafias, 

Russian organized crime in Latin America and the Caribbean, Mexican drug cartels in the 

United States, and drug-related banks in the Caribbean. He has also written on the civil wars in 

Sierra Leone and Liberia, the network of agents who profited from those conflicts and the diamonds-for-weapons trade, al Qaeda’s ties to the networks, and the financial network of Osama 

bin Laden. Mr. Farah has a B.A. in Latin American studies and B.S. in journalism from the 

University of Kansas. As bureau chief in El Salvador for United Press International, he covered 

the civil war there and U.S.-backed Contra rebels in Honduras, winning numerous prizes for 

investigative work on death squads and drug trafficking. He wrote Blood from Stones: The Secret 

Financial Network of Terror (Broadway Books, 2004) and, with Stephen Braun, Merchant of 

Death: Money, Guns, Planes and the Man Who Makes War Possible ( J. Wiley and Sons, 2007).

Vanda Felbab-Brown is an expert on international and internal conflict issues and their management, including counterinsurgency. Her research centers on the interaction between illicit 

economies and military conflict. Dr. Felbab-Brown is a fellow in foreign policy and a fellow in 

the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution where she focuses on South 

Asia, Burma, the Andean region, Mexico, and Somalia. She is the author of Shooting Up: 

Counterinsurgency and the War on Drugs (Brookings Institution Press, December 2009), as 

well as numerous articles and reports on illicit economies, crime, insurgency, and state-building 

around the world. She has conducted field work in Afghanistan, Burma, Colombia, Mexico, 

Burma, Brazil, India, and Morocco. A regular commentator in U.S. and international media, 

Dr. Felbab-Brown frequently testifies before Congress. She received a Ph.D. in political science 

from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.A. from Harvard University.
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About the Contributors

Nils Gilman is with the consulting firm Monitor 360, where he focuses on economic development and national security. He has led projects on topics such as the security implications 

of climate change, diverse cultures of hackers, and the global narcotics trade. Prior to joining 

Monitor 360 in 2006, Dr. Gilman spent 6 years leading competitive intelligence and product marketing teams at enterprise software companies. He holds a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in 

intellectual history from the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of Mandarins 

of the Future (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003) and coeditor of Deviant Globalization (The Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011), which explores how globalized 

black market economies are challenging traditional state authority. Dr. Gilman is also coeditor 

of Humanity, an international journal of human rights, humanitarianism, and development.

Jesse Goldhammer is a partner at the Monitor Group and the firm Monitor 360, where he 

helps public- and private-sector clients engage in strategic, analytic, organizational, and institutional transformation. Dr. Goldhammer has spent the past 20 years bringing together unique 

people, ideas, and approaches to devise lasting and effective solutions to vexing problems. 

These solutions include developing novel analytic approaches to understand and reframe 

client challenges, using human networks to leverage alternative and unorthodox perspectives, 

and designing training programs to propagate new strategies and tradecraft. Having come to 

Monitor through Global Business Network, Dr. Goldhammer is also an expert in scenario 

planning, has taught scenario-planning courses, and published “Four Futures for China Inc.” 

in Business 2.0. He holds a B.A. in social science from the University of California at Berkeley, 

an M.A. in political science from New York University, and a Ph.D. in political science from 

Berkeley. An accomplished instructor and expert in modern political theory, Dr. Goldhammer 

is the author of The Headless Republic (Cornell University Press, 2005) and coeditor of Deviant 

Globalization (The Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011).

Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer at The New Yorker and fellow at the Century Foundation where his research and writing focus on transnational crime, international security, and 

foreign affairs. He is the author of The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld 

and the American Dream (Knopf-Doubleday, 2009) and Chatter: Uncovering the Echelon Surveillance Network and the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping (Random House, 2005), along 

with numerous book chapters on espionage, national security, and illicit networks. From 2010 

to 2011, he served as a special advisor in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy where 

he focused on crime, corruption, and rule-of-law issues. His articles and op-eds have appeared 

in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, Legal Affairs, Boston Globe, WIRED, 

World Policy Journal, and others. A former Marshall scholar and Guggenheim fellow, Mr. Keefe 

received an M.A. in international relations from Cambridge University, M.A. in new media and 

information systems from the London School of Economics, and J.D. from Yale Law School.

Danielle Camner Lindholm is a technical director in the BAE Systems Intelligence and Security 

Sector. As an expert in the economic and commercial aspects of national security, Ms. Lindholm 

plays a strategic role in activities related to hybrid/transnational threats, including threat finance, 

illicit networks, and anti-money-laundering issues. She has also worked as country manager for 
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About the Contributors

Middle East and North Africa regions for the U.S. Trade and Development Agency; special 

assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business, and Agricultural Affairs; 

advisor for international economic policy at the National Economic Council; and senior policy 

advisor to a Congressman, responsible for financial services, national and homeland security, 

and foreign affairs. Before joining BAE Systems, Ms. Lindholm was vice president for policy 

at Business Executives for National Security, where she worked with Treasury, the Defense 

Department, Drug Enforcement Administration, combatant commands, and the private sector 

to develop solutions and share information on potential vulnerabilities in the financial services 

sector. Ms. Lindholm holds a B.A. from Tufts University and a J.D. from the University of Miami. She is a member of the District of Columbia and Florida Bars and cochairs the American 

Bar Association’s International Anti–Money Laundering Committee.

David M. Luna is director of Anti-Crime Programs at the Department of State’s Bureau 

of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL). Mr. Luna helps coordinate 

diplomatic initiatives on national security that disrupt and dismantle transnational criminal 

networks. He leads INL teams to combat international organized crime, corruption/kleptocracy, money laundering, terrorist financing, intellectual property rights and cyber-crimes, 

and smuggling/trafficking crimes that impact U.S. homeland security. Over 12 years at the 

Department of State, Mr. Luna has chaired numerous U.S. interagency working groups, National Security Council policy subcommittees, and multilateral policy coordinating groups. 

His previous experience includes professional stints with Congress and U.S. executive agencies responsible for public integrity investigations, as well as legal, legislative, domestic policy, 

foreign affairs, national security, and international economic development issues. A graduate 

of the U.S. Army War College, he received a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and a 

J.D. from The Columbus School of Law at the Catholic University of America.

Moisés Naím is senior associate in the international economics program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and chief international columnist for El País, Spain’s largest 

newspaper. Dr. Naím has written extensively on international economics and global politics, 

economic development, and the unintended consequences of globalization including books 

such as Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats Are Hijacking the Global Economy

(Doubleday, 2006). He was Venezuela’s minister of Trade and Industry, director of Venezuela’s 

Central Bank, and executive director of the World Bank. He has held positions as professor of 

business and economics, dean of Venezuela’s main business school, the Instituto de Estudios 

Superiores de Administración, and guest lecturer in many U.S. and European universities. Dr. 

Naím was editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy magazine. He is the chairman of the board of both 

the Group of Fifty (G-50) and Population Action International and a member of the board 

of directors of the National Endowment for Democracy and the International Crisis Group. 

He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Justin Picard is chief scientist at Advanced Track & Trace in France. He has invented disruptive 

technologies that protect billions of products and documents from counterfeiting and tampering. Mr. Picard has written numerous papers and patents on document security, anticounter-
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About the Contributors

feiting, artificial intelligence, and illicit trade, and is a frequent speaker on anticounterfeiting 

technologies. In 2009, Mr. Picard and his company were selected as a World Economic Forum 

Technology Pioneer. Since 2009, he has been a member of the World Economic Forum Global 

Agenda Council on Illicit Trade, and is also a member of the Evian Group. Mr. Picard manages 

the Web site illicittrade.org, a compilation of information on illicit trade and of the work of 

the Global Agenda Council on Illicit Trade.

Celina B. Realuyo is an assistant professor of national security affairs in the Center for 

Hemispheric Defense Studies at the National Defense University. Ms. Realuyo teaches 

courses on U.S. national security, globalization, counterterrorism, and transnational criminal 

organizations. She is an expert on geopolitical risks in the 21st century, global supply chains, 

international financial systems, terrorist financing, and money laundering. Ms. Realuyo served 

as the director of counterterrorism finance programs at the State Department’s Office of the 

Coordinator for Counterterrorism. Prior to returning to Washington, DC, Ms. Realuyo was a 

private banker with Goldman Sachs in London. She began her career as a U.S. Foreign Service 

Officer with overseas assignments in Madrid, Panama, and the U.S. Mission to the North 

Atlantic Treaty Organization in Brussels, and served in the State Department’s Operations 

Center, National Security Council’s White House Situation Room, and as special assistant 

to the Secretary of State. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, International 

Institute for Strategic Studies, Women in International Security, and Professional Risk Managers International Association. Ms. Realuyo holds an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business 

School, an M.A. in international relations from The Johns Hopkins University School of 

Advanced International Studies, and a B.S. in foreign service from Georgetown University.

Louise Shelley is a professor in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University. She 

founded and directs the Terrorism, Transnational Crime, and Corruption Center (TraCCC). 

She is an expert on the relationship among terrorism, organized crime, and corruption as well 

as human trafficking. Dr. Shelley’s research has focused primarily on the former Soviet Union. 

She is the recipient of the Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Humanities, IREX, 

Kennan Institute, and Fulbright Fellowships and received a MacArthur Grant to establish the 

Russian Organized Crime Study Centers. She is the author most recently of Human Trafficking: A Global Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2010), as well as 10 other books. She 

has written numerous articles and book chapters on all aspects of transnational crime and 

corruption. Dr. Shelley has run large-scale programs in the former Soviet Union on organized 

crime and corruption for the last 15 years. She served on the Global Agenda Council on Illicit 

Trade of the World Economic Forum and was the first cochair of its Council on Organized 

Crime. Dr. Shelley holds an M.A. in criminology and a Ph.D. in sociology from the University 

of Pennsylvania.

Admiral James G. Stavridis, USN, assumed duties as commander of U.S. European Command 

and as Supreme Allied Commander Europe, in early summer 2009. He is a distinguished 

graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. A surface warfare officer, Admiral Stavridis commanded 

the USS Barry (DDG 52) from 1993 to 1995. In 1998, he commanded Destroyer Squadron 
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About the Contributors

21 and deployed to the Arabian Gulf, winning the Navy League’s John Paul Jones Award for 

Inspirational Leadership. From 2002 to 2004, he commanded the USS Enterprise carrier 

strike group, conducting combat operations in the Arabian Gulf in support of Operations Iraqi 

Freedom and Enduring Freedom. He commanded U.S. Southern Command and has served as a 

strategic and long-range planner on the staffs of the Chief of Naval Operations and Chairman 

of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He has served as the executive assistant to the Secretary of the 

Navy and the senior military assistant to the Secretary of Defense. Admiral Stavridis earned 

a Ph.D. and MALD from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, 

where he won the Gullion Prize as outstanding student in 1984. He is also a distinguished 

graduate of both the National and Naval war colleges.

John P. Sullivan is a career police officer. He currently serves as a lieutenant with the Los Angeles Sheriff ’s Department. He is also an adjunct researcher at the Vortex Foundation in Bogotá, 

Colombia; senior research fellow in the Center for Advanced Studies on Terrorism; and senior 

fellow with the Small Wars Journal’s El Centro. He is coeditor of Countering Terrorism and 

WMD: Creating a Global Counter-Terrorism Network (Routledge, 2006), and Global Biosecurity: Threats and Responses (Routledge, 2010). He is coauthor of Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency: 

A Small Wars Journal–El Centro Anthology (iUniverse, 2011). His current research focus is 

the impact of transnational organized crime on sovereignty in Mexico and other countries.

Steven Weber is a specialist in international relations with expertise in international and 

national security; the impact of technology on national systems of innovation, defense, and 

deterrence; and the political economy of knowledge-intensive industries. Trained in history 

and international development at Washington University and medicine and political science at 

Stanford, Mr. Weber joined the University of California at Berkeley faculty in 1989. As senior 

policy advisor with the Glover Park Group in Washington, DC, he consults with government 

agencies, multinational firms, and nongovernmental organizations on foreign policy, risk 

analysis, strategy, and forecasting. Mr. Weber’s major publications include The Success of Open 

Source (Harvard University Press, April 2004), Cooperation and Discord in U.S.-Soviet Arms 

Control (Princeton University Press, 1991), and Globalization and the European Political Economy (Columbia University Press, 2001) as well as numerous articles and chapters in the areas 

of U.S. foreign policy, the political economy of trade and technology, politics of the post–Cold 

War world, and European integration. With colleague Bruce Jentleson of Duke University, 

Mr. Weber directs the New Era Foreign Policy Project. Their latest publication is The End 

of Arrogance: America in the Global Competition of Ideas (Harvard University Press, 2010).

William F. Wechsler is the deputy assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and 

Combating Terrorism. Mr. Wechsler is the primary lead for Defense Department policies, 

plans, authorities, and resources related to special operations and irregular warfare, with special emphasis on counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, unconventional warfare, information 

operations, and sensitive special operations. Before taking this position, Mr. Wechsler served 

for over 3 years as deputy assistant Secretary of Defense for Counternarcotics and Global 

Threats. In that role, he focused on integrating law enforcement operations into our military 
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About the Contributors

campaign plans in Afghanistan, institutionalizing the Defense Department’s counterthreat 

finance structures and doctrine, and substantially increasing budget support for capacity-building in Mexico. Mr. Wechsler also served as special advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury, 

on the staff of the National Security Council, and as special assistant to the Chairman of the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff. Before rejoining the Defense Department, he was managing director of 

Greenwich Associates, a management consultancy to the financial services industry, where he 

led the firm’s global asset management practice.

Phil Williams is Wesley W. Posvar Professor and director of the Matthew B. Ridgway Center 

for International Security Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. Professor Williams has 

published extensively in the field of international security, including books on crisis management, the U.S. Senate, troops in Europe, and superpower détente. He has edited volumes on 

Russian organized crime, human trafficking, and combating transnational crime. From 2001 

to 2002, he was a visiting scientist at the Community Emergency Response Teams program, 

where he worked on cybercrime and infrastructure protection. From 2007 to 2009, he was 

a visiting professor in the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College where 

he published two monographs: From the New Middle Ages to a New Dark Age: The Decline 

of the State and U.S. Strategy (2008), and Criminals, Militias and Insurgents: Organized Crime 

in Iraq (2009). In 2009, he coauthored (with James Cockayne) a study for the International 

Peace Institute titled The Invisible Tide: Towards an International Strategy to Deal with Drug 

Trafficking Through West Africa. 




“Throughout my years in government combating illicit networks of all kinds, 

including terrorist groups, groups that traffic in women and weapons of mass 

destruction precursors, organized cyber-criminal cartels, and narcotics syndicates, 

I was struck by how often different networks overlapped, a phenomenon that has 

only increased with time. The converged threats that pose the greatest danger to 

national security today require integrated responses that bring together disparate 

elements of government both domestically and internationally. Convergence

provides research-driven insight and concrete and practical recommendations for 

how governments can best confront these emerging threats.”

—Richard A. Clarke

Chairman, Good Harbor Security Risk Management

Former U.S. National Coordinator for Security, 

Infrastructure Protection, and Counterterrorism

“There are regrettably few studies that take a holistic look at the overlapping 

scourge of illicit networks. There are even fewer that examine the national security 

threats they represent. Convergence is an excellent contribution aimed at filling 

these twin gaps. Miklaucic and Brewer have brought together an insightful, 

engaging collection of articles written by those on the frontlines of cutting-edge 

research. They are to be applauded for avoiding the typical siloed approach to 

targeting the challenge and making concrete recommendations for how the 

international community, led by the United States, should fight back.”

—Scott Carpenter

Deputy Director, Google Ideas

Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State

“In one eye-popping example after another, Convergence shows how shadowy, 

illicit networks have exploited globalization to commandeer the world economy 

and subvert state sovereignty around the globe. By adapting the latest information 

technology, infiltrating global supply chains and banking systems, and exploiting 

the world’s conflict zones, transnational criminal groups have become the first-tier 

threat to international order and U.S. national security. Combating this scourge, 

the authors of this invaluable volume suggest, will require creating a parallel ‘licit’ 

network of national authorities and multilateral institutions that can map illicit 

trafficking networks and crack down on the facilitators, money launderers, and 

logistical hubs on which they rely.”

—Stewart Patrick

Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations