Russian, Italian, Rumanian, British and Corsican syndicates simply respond to the new reality. It is not the Malina or the Mafia which created these opportunities, it is the state and multinational corporations. Nigerian drug traffickers are not responsible for the enormous recent increase in international trade or heightened flow of people across borders. They merely take advantage of the situation. When they collaborate with Asian heroin producers it does not signify the birth of a new international criminal order it merely reflects the same types of arrangements that are occurring in the business community at large.
Poppy growers can now market their products over a wider arena.
Nigerian smugglers have a mechanism in place to efficiently take advantage of new technologies and opportunities. Collaboration is as natural as a compact between U.S. car manufacturers and parts producers in Brazil or Mexico. But the fact remains that the Nigerian syndicates are firmly rooted in economic inequality and pervasive patterns of corruption that are distinctly Nigerian. The major issue is not collaboration between and among organized crime groups, but increased political corruption brought on by greater rewards from international commerce and weakened central governments whose powers have been surpassed and often usurped by multinational corporations. National sovereignty is not threatened by Colombian cartels, Southeast Asian warlords, Russian criminal entrepreneurs, or Zambian cattle poachers, it is threatened by pervasive and growing corruption and the increasing irrelevance of individual states in an international economy.