Trends in Organized Crime, Smuggling, and International Security.
I’m delighted to launch my latest report: Troubled transitions and organised crime in Ethiopia and Tunisia.
Co-authored with Tadesse Simie Metekia, the report analyzes how troubled political transitions and democratic backsliding can impact organized crime. After laying out a theory, it delves into case studies from Ethiopia and Tunisia.
The report can be accessed here.
I'm delighted to announce my latest publication: "Largely fleeting and hardly convergent: Libyas crime-terror nexus", authored in collaboration with Mark Micallef.
Since the 2011 revolution, Libya has been a state beset by conflict and fragility. Much of the international community's focus on Libya has been on ramifications of this weakness: terrorism, organized crime, and the risk of a crime-terror nexus. However, despite international concerns and ample opportunity for a nexus to emerge in Libya between terrorist organizations and criminal groups, the striking feature of the post revolution years has been the general paucity of engagement between the two types of actors. ISIS attempts in Sirte to profiteer from criminals failed, in part because the group's limited geographic footprint was easily circumventable by criminal actors. In Sabratha, contrasting incentives between ISIS and criminal groups, and the military power of the criminals, enabled the expulsion of the terrorists. In southern Libya, in contrast, AQIM has endured by pursuing a low-key approach, which accommodated local communities and armed groups. The cases presented underscore that Libya, saturated as it is with well-armed actors that depend on the black economy for their funding, is a difficult context to access for foreign terrorist organizations seeking to profit from the country's illicit economy.
The chapter is available here, though it is behind a paywall: https://www.elgaronline.com/view/edcoll/9781788979290/9781788979290.00023.xml
Originally Published by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, Available Here.
“We’re polluting our own house and our own land. What are we going to drink?”
“You idiot. We’ll drink mineral water.”
Camorra Members discussing the dumping of toxic waste outside of Naples
A public health crisis is brewing in southern Italy. In the countryside around Naples, cancer rates have spiked, while in the city, the U.S. Navy has warned its personnel to avoid drinking the water. For decades the region’s Camorra organized crime group has engaged in a lucrative trash-for-cash racket, disposing of toxic waste for European industry at a fraction of the legal price. Burying the waste in the Neapolitan countryside has earned the clans billions of dollars. However, the Camorra is not alone in its involvement in the illicit disposal of toxic waste. As regulation have grown more stringent, and the cost of legal disposal have mounted, otherwise reputable firms have increasingly become entangled with organized crime groups throughout the world. As the situation in southern Italy shows, it is often innocent residents of the dumping zones who suffer most from the noxious trade.
The trade in toxic waste has existed for decades, with the industrial effluent from the developed world often exported to developing nations. However, two trends have driven the growth of illicit trade in toxic waste, and the involvement of organized crime groups. First, regulations and the cost of disposing of toxic waste have continued to mount. By and large this is a positive development, spurred by civil society and government concerns over the health and environmental impact of toxic waste disposal. However, regulations and the cost of toxic waste disposal differ dramatically between states. Some businesses have sought to financially profit from the regulatory heterogeneity, by shipping their waste to the least regulated, and thus most inexpensive, countries for processing. The second trend, efforts by the international community to restrict the legal trade in toxic waste, has emerged in response to business efforts to dispose of toxic waste on the cheap. However, despite international efforts the global trade in toxic waste continues. Efforts to restrict the legal trade have opened up a vast opportunity for global organized crime groups, who are able and all too willing to smuggle and dispose of the toxic effluent.
Camorra clans in Naples seem to have been early and enthusiastic adopters of the toxic waste business. In 1997, one Camorra member testified that millions of tons of waste were regularly moved to the areas outside of Naples and buried. The financial stakes of the market are huge. One NGO estimated the yearly value of illicit waste disposal in Italy at 16 billion Euros. Reportedly, the Camorra has begun to expand it waste disposal activities abroad, via shipments to Eastern Europe and East Asia.
The illicit trade is toxic waste is not a victimless crime. The toxicity of the products involved pose grave threats to both those involved in the trade, and the public at large. Over 100,000 were sickened in Côte d’Ivoire in 2006, when oil byproducts were dumped in Abidjan. A spectacular photo essay recently published on the largest e-waste dump in Ghana highlights the huge health risks for local workers and resident populations. In Italy, the illicit dumps outside of Naples are believed to have propelled a cancer epidemic. Wiretaps show that Camorra members involved in burying the waste knew the dangers it posed to the local community, yet they buried it anyway. While the Italian government has initiated efforts to clean up the waste, the public health challenge posed by the buried toxins is likely to endure.
Unfortunately, the illicit trade in toxic waste is likely to grow. The financial stakes are too high for international companies, the financial gains for organized crime groups too large to pass up, and the laws to soft to deter either the businessmen or the crime groups from engaging in the activity. As polities in Europe, North America, and East Asia buttress their regulations against toxic waste disposal, it is likely that the illicit trade will be routed to developing countries, posing grave health threats to the populations there. While there is no obvious panacea to the problem, the transnational nature of the illicit trade in toxic waste necessitates the strengthening of laws against illicit dumping in both exporting and importing countries, as well as robust international cooperation to identify what waste is being moved, to where, and who is responsible. Though such steps are only a preliminary effort, they will have a tangible and positive impact on public health for those who would otherwise be victimized by the greed of organized crime groups and their industrial partners.
Originally Published by the World Peace Foundation Reinventing Peace Blog
By Matt Herbert and David Knoll
The MT Smyrni, a Liberian flagged Tanker, was sailing 250 nautical miles off the Omani coast when pirates were sighted. The pirates closed fast, attacking with automatic weapons. The crew was able to drive the pirates off once, but a second attack overwhelmed the Smyrni. Within moments the vessel had been commandeered, the 26 crewmembers kidnapped, and a new course set towards the Somali coast. The ship’s owners were contacted, ransom negotiation initiated, and its crew held hostage to hedge against attempts to forcefully free the vessel. Ten months later the pirates received $9.5 million dollars, and the owners of the Smyrni received their ship back.
The attack on the MT Smyrni is hardly unique. Over the last eight years, Somali pirates have emerged as perhaps the most successful maritime brigands of the modern age. Between 2005 and 2011, they hijacked 218 vessels and held 3,741 sailors hostage. Their operations peaked between 2010 and 2012, when roughly 3,000 Somali pirates extorted $429.37 million for the global shipping community.
Somali pirates operate well out into the Indian Ocean, extending from the Bab El Mandab Strait to the Maldives. In at least one case, Somali pirates were encountered off the south Indian coast. In an era of increasingly globalized and professionalized crime, Somalia’s pirates have demonstrated that opportunities for lucrative illicit gain still exist on the high seas, albeit without eye patches and peg legs.
Their attention grabbing, large-scale attacks served to remind the world that piracy is not dead, but has simply changed forms. Apart from the direct costs of the ransoms, shippers faced increased insurance premiums on vessels sailing past Somalia. In some cases, shipping companies chose to reroute vessels away from the western Indian Ocean all together, at considerable expense and time. Some estimates peg the annual impact of Somali piracy on the global economy at $18 billion.
The high cost of Somali piracy begs the question: how have they been able to achieve such success? Analyses of Somali piracy have focused on the structural dynamics in Somalia. The most frequently cited enabling factor is weak state authority. Minimal state presence allows pirates to organize and operate with little fear of arrest or interdiction. State weakness also impedes the growth of legitimate industries, incentivizing young men to turn to piracy.
Other analyses have focused on the availability of ships off the coast of Somalia. International shipping relies heavily on the Suez Canal and Bab El Mandab Strait as a shortcut from the Mediterranean to South and East Asia. Add in the tankers moving oil from the Persian Gulf to South and East Asia, and the waters of the Western Indian Ocean are packed with all manner of high value vessels. Despite the threats posed by Somali pirates, it is economically prohibitive for most shipping companies to reroute their cargo, ensuring that prey remains aplenty for pirates.
These structural factors are important in explaining the emergence of Somali piracy, but they are ineffective in explaining its economic success. Somali pirate attacks regularly yield million dollar payoffs. By comparison, pirates in other areas of the globe are often lucky if they can get ten thousand dollars. The main driver of this differential is the innovative nature of Somali pirate operations.
Traditionally, pirates hijacked vessels to steal money, cargo, the ship, or kidnap individuals onboard. These methods all involve a risk-reward tradeoff. Stealing shipboard items such as money or small amounts of cargo is low risk, but not lucrative. Alternatively, trying to steal an entire ship and reregister it is lucrative, but unlikely to be successful and could involve state violence. A large proportion of pirate attacks are basically opportunistic crimes – one or two pirates slipping on board an anchored vessel, stealing money or goods from the ship, and rapidly fleeing. The pirates perpetrating such attacks are generally unorganized and unskilled.
Somali pirates, by contrast, are highly organized groups of men who hold specialized skills. The Somali model is encapsulated in the MT Smyrni episode. Pirates use motherships — often hijacked fishing vessels — and small skiffs to stalk vessels steaming through the Indian Ocean. Once spotted, the pirates use speed and violence to swarm the target and take it over. It is then steered back to the Somali coast, where the vessel’s owner is contacted and a ransom demanded.
The detention of the vessel’s crew creates a hostage situation, deterring attempts by military forces to regain control. Instead major shipping companies pay the ransom quickly to ensure the safety of the crew and to get the ship back into revenue generating status. Once the ransom has been paid, the vessel and its crew is released, and the pirates return to the sea try again.
While the Somali model of piracy involves aspects of traditional operational models of piracy, including vessel hijacking and crew kidnapping, it differs in how it leverages value from its victims. Instead of having to engage in the messy task of selling a vessel, or the non-lucrative seizure of the currency aboard, the Somali pirates have realized that simply extorting international shipping companies can garner large profits. The companies in turn are incentivized to negotiate by the high value of the ships seized, the physical threat to the crew, and the significant cost of their vessel being idled. The cost of an idle vessel can be particularly acute, with some estimates putting the daily cost at $17,500 for a bulk carrier.
The hijack-ransom is shocking in its simplicity and impressive in its profitability. What makes this method effective is not simply the enabling conditions, but the innovative operational methods that have been introduced. The recent success of the international community to slow Somali piracy might convince some that the threat has been removed, however the factors that produced hijack-ransom piracy are in place in other regions indicating that Somali-style piracy could be poised to spread. A forthcoming post will address how hijack-ransom piracy might proliferate.
