What is Crime?
June 1, 2025
Trafficking: Cocaine
June 1, 2025
Four Types of Crimes
Part1
Crime is a punishable act by the state. It is a concept; in reality, crime does not exist; it is created by the state and punished. Crime is divided into four categories.
Personal Crime
Property Crime
Co-Weight Crime
Statutory Crime
Personal crime is an offence against the person and will result in physical or mental harm to another person. These include assault, kidnapping, and imprisonment. The victim often goes through trauma, and some stay with them for life.
Property crime do not always involve harm to another person, they involve inteference with another person’s right to own things, enjoy their property or have a nice car. Property crime includes stolen goods, like jewellery, cameras, TVs or audio equipment, forgery, false pretences.
Inculpate crimes means incomplete or crimes that were begun but not completed. These include attempt, solicitation conspiracy.
Statutory crimes are violations of a specific state or federal statute and can involve either property offences or personal offences. These include alcohol related crimes such as drunk driving and selling alcohol in some states in the USA, selling alcohol to a minor.
Part2
The different levels of seriousness for the crimes can be classified into felony and misdemeanour. Felonies are serious crimes such as murder, kidnapping and robbery and carry a year or more in prison.
On the other hand, less serious crimes such as shoplifting or drink and drive have sentenses of less than a year. State laws may further divide the categories of crimes into subcategories.
For example, a fence against the person may be divided into the categories of violent crimes and non-violent crimes. Some states also place sexual crimes into their category. These categories are also developed for sentencing.
Crimes can also be divided according to criminal intent. The major intent categories are general intent and specific intent crimes.
Crimes are not easily defined and there are many different types and variations. Remember, each country have their own laws and policies. What is a crime in the UK it may not be a crime in another country.
It is advisable, before you visit another country, to check their laws; you may be able to smoke marihuana or you may not. To avoid further complications with the country’s laws, you must check the country’s laws.
Legalmatch.com is one site where you can find details about each country’s or state’s laws.
Part3
Let’s analyse the definition of a crime as unstable concept. The United Nations Security Council has recently paid much attention to the threat posed by transnational organized crime. In the December 2009
Presidential Statement on Peace and Security in Africa,
“The Security Council invite(d) the Secretary-General to consider mainstreaming the issue of drug trafficking as a factor in conflict prevention strategies, conflict analysis, integrated missions’ assessment and planning and peacebuilding support”.
The Secretary-General, speaking at the African Union summit in January 2010, also emphasized the perils of illicit trafficking, particularly drugs. He noted that “Criminal networks are very skilled at taking advantage of institutional weaknesses on the ground.”
This paper illustrates what happens when transnational criminal activities intersect with a region’s governance problems. TOC can present a major challenge even where the state is strong, but when, for a variety of reasons, the rule of law is already weakened, it can pose a genuine threat to stability.
As this crime further undermines governance and stability, countries can become locked in a vicious circle where social trust is lost and economic growth is undermined. This challenge is sometimes overstated, but, as this paper illustrates, it is very real in some parts of the world.
Organised crime fuels insurgency and
Hampers peace building
Part4
The clearest examples are found in countries where insurgents draw funds from taxing, or even managing, organized criminal activities, particularly drug trafficking. South-West Asia, South-East Asia, and the Andean region are cases in point, and troubled areas in these regions have become the world’s leading sources of illicit drugs.
In the absence of the sort of outside funding found during the Cold War, rebel groups must derive their sustenance from the regions they control, and these unstable areas are often already enmeshed in drug trafficking.
The money associated with organized crime can be so great that militants may forget about their grievances and focus on satisfying their greed. Everywhere this is not true, drugs pay for bullets and provide a lifestyle to combatants that makes them less likely to come to the negotiating table.
Drugs trafficking is not the only organized crime activity that can keep a rebellion afloat, however. As the example of the Democratic Republic of the Congo illustrates, insurgents can harvest and traffic the natural resources present in the areas they control, generating incomes for warlords that dwarf what they could earn in peacetime.
Part5
Some of the world’s poorest countries have been robbed of their most valuable resources in this way, and untold environmental damage has been done. Africa is especially vulnerable to this type of abuse, as diamond-fuelled wars in Angola and Sierra Leone demonstrate. The oil-driven conflict in the Niger Delta provides a current example.
The map opposite overlays some of the major trafficking flows discussed in this paper with some of the stability challenges experienced around the world. It illustrates the interplay between conflict, both current and recent, as well as global trafficking flows. The presence of United Nations Peacekeepers in many of the post-conflict areas highlights the importance of the issue for the international community.
Organized crime can become even more important when rebels gain exclusive control of a portion of a country. The pseudo-states thus created have no international accountability and, particularly when strategically placed, often become trafficking husband retail centres for all manner of illicit goods and services. They also continue to pose a threat to national and international security, providing safe haven for international fugitives, including terrorists.
A large number of UN peace missions are operating in regions affected by transnational organized crime, including West Africa (UNOCI in Côte d’Ivoire, UNMIL in Liberia, UNOGBIS in Guinea-Bissau, UNIPSIL in Sierra Leone and UNOWA for West Africa as a whole),
Central Africa (MONUC in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Bounce in the Central African Republic), East Africa (Somalia), South-West and Central Asia (UNAMA in Afghanistan, UNRCCA in Central Asia), and Southeast Europe (UNMIK in Kosovo).
Global stability challenges require both
local and global solutions
Part7
In all these cases, the criminal activity is transnational because the main sources and destinations of contraband are typically found in different parts of the world. The profits from drug trafficking, for example, are drawn from consumers in the wealthiest nations.
In absolute terms, transnational organized crime is strongest in the richest countries, but its share of total economic activity there is so small that it does not rise to become a substantial threat to state security
But when this wealth is levelled against countries with much smaller economies, organized crime is given the resources to overwhelm local law enforcement.
To cope, these agencies need international support for local interventions. All affected countries must play their part, but these are truly transnational problems, and require transnational solutions, where all aspects of the market are assessed and addressed strategically.
Too often, organized crime is seen only as a national law enforcement problem. Because the criminal justice system is focused on putting individual criminals in prison, efforts against organized crime tend to focus on organized groups.
But the markets are much bigger than the people who presently ply them; cocaine has been trafficked from the Andean region for over three decades, and while the groups involved have changed over time, the flow continues. So to do the security challenges it creates.
The success of the Kimberley Process3in stopping the flow of blood diamonds from West Africa illustrates how strategic measures designed to tackle the entire transnational market can be far more effective than armed interventions at the national level.
Organised crime undermines the rule of law
law through violence and corruption
Part6
But conflict zones are not the only places where transnational organized crime can pose a threat to the state. There are several areas around the world where criminals have become so powerful that, rather than seeking to evade the government, they begin to directly confront it. In these cases, pattern of symptoms is typically manifest.
Investigators, prosecutors, and judges who pursue organized criminals are threatened and killed. Journalists and activists may also be targeted. Corruption is detected at the highest levels of government, and law enforcement can become paralysed by mistrust. Portions of the country may effectively drift beyond state control.
This is the situation presently confronted in some parts of Central America and West Africa, both of which have suffered from a long history of violence and instability. Drug trafficking can also have a catastrophic effect on local violence level.
Drug “wars” can rival some conflicts in terms of body counts. Of the countries with the highest murder rates in the world today, many are primary drug source or transit countries. Most of these are discussed in the regional profiles that follow.
Organized criminals generally do not seek to topple the state, but they can provoke a reaction that can also threaten long-term peace prospects.
A clear sign that crime has become a national security threat comes when exceptional legal and security measures are taken, including calling on the military to help-establish the government’s authority
While sometimes necessary to reacquire lost territory, the long-term use of regular military forces to police civilian populations presents risks for the rule of law and civil liberties.
Military and police officials may become frustrated with a corrupt or ineffective criminal justice system and begin to engage in extrajudicial executions. The public may form civilian vigilante groups as well. Over time, these paramilitary vigilantes can become as big a security challenge as the criminals they were formed to combat.
Part8
Of course, sound national law enforcement remains essential, and has proven effective in reducing stability-threatening organized crime problems to more manageable proportions.
For example, from the1970s to the early 1990s, fuelled by money gained in processing and trafficking heroin to the United States, Cosa Nostra was able to threaten the stability of Italy, a G8 country and the third largest economy in Europe.
In a situation very similar to that faced in Central America today, these transnational criminals sought to undermine public will to combat them by assassinating several high-ranking public officials and engaging in a bombing campaign throughout the country.
Resolute action against the mafia brought this onslaught to an end. While Cosa Nostrand the other regional Italian mafias still exist, Sicily is no longer a transhipment point for heroin, and direct attacks against the state are few
To experience these sorts of results, affected states must be supported in strengthening their domestic institutions, but this must be done in the context of an international strategy aimed at addressing the entire trafficking flow.
While Sicily ceased to be a major heroin hub, the problem moved on to other regions. Over time, the problem may be displaced to precisely those areas least capable of coping, where organised crime can pose a significant challenge to the state
Part9
What this report includes The following pages look in more detail at the ways transnational organized crime is posing a challenge to stability in areas around the world. In particular, a number of case studies are presented in four main chapters, concerning:
- the impact of cocaine trafficking on the Andean Region, Mesoamerica and West Africa;
• the impact of heroin trafficking on South-West/Central Asia, South-East Europe and Southeast Asia;
• the impact of minerals smuggling on Central Africa; and
• the impact of maritime piracy on the Horn of Africa.
Each of these discussions will look first at the major TOC problem confronting the region; though many of these regions are subject to multiple contraband flows, a single one is usually dominant, particularly about its impact on political stability. Next, the history, sometimes quite protracted, of instability in the region is explored.
Finally, the interaction between these two factors –the organized crime problem and political stability– is described. Many other examples could have been included, but these are some of the best-known instances for which there are supporting data.
Part10
Other areas, including Aceh (Indonesia), Sri Lanka, or the Philippines, have similarly been affected. There is virtually no region of the world with stability problems where organized crime is not an issue.
Most of these examples involve drug trafficking, for the simple reason that drug trafficking generates greater revenues than any other form of transnational criminal activity in the world today. In addition to health and social consequences they bring, drugs provide the economic clout for insurgents and organized criminals to confront the state.
Therapy for arms and bribes. Competition for these profits is typically violent, and the targets for this violence can easily shift from rival traffickers to officials and other members of the public
There are a variety of reasons why other forms of trafficking are less relevant. Some forms of transnational organized crime that generate high revenues, such as human trafficking to Europe, do not concentrate this wealth sufficiently to pose a stability threat.
Firearms trafficking was specifically excluded as a topic in this report. Weapons are a necessary part of armed violence, of course, but the transfer of weapons is usually episodic, rather than part of sustained flow.
The weapons themselves are dangerous, but the organized criminal activity of trafficking them rarely affects a region’s stability
Trafficing Cocaine
Part10
Most of the world’s illicit cocaine supply comes from the Andean region, primarily from or through Colombia. However, Colombia is also the country which has made most progress over the last few years in curbing the threats to national and international security emerging from drug production and trafficking.
Colombian traffickers started out in the cannabis trade, flying locally produced marijuana to the Us market. In the 1970s, they lost this market to cannabis produced closer to the consumer but were sufficiently well-connected at that stage to capitalize on the growing market for cocaine. Drawing their raw materials from Bolivia and Peru, they processed the drug and exported it on a massive scale, and by the late 1970s, Colombia was the world’s number one source of cocaine.
The 1980s saw the emergence of the Medellin and the Cali “cartels”: large, structured organizations that controlled most of the market. Prices for cocaine were high at the time, as was consumption, and very shortly a huge amount of wealth was concentrated in a small number of hands.
This allowed the cartel members to wield tremendous corrupting power and gain political influence. There were a series of scandals where high ranking politicians and civil servants were linked to the cartels. The destruction of these cartels became an urgent national security issue, and, with international cooperation and assistance, they were dismantled in the first half of the 1990s.
This did not stop the drug trade, but it did significantly reduce its political influence. Many smaller criminal organizations emerged, sometimes also referred to as ‘cartelises’. The emergence of these groups, in combination with increased efforts to curb the transport of raw materials from Peru and Bolivia, led to increased coca cultivation in Colombia in the second half of the 1990s. By1997, Colombia became the world’s largest source of coca leaf.
Around this time, the Colombian groups began to face some serious challenges.
Part11
First, prompted in part by evidence that insurgent groups were taxing the trade, the Government intensified its eradication efforts. The area under coca cultivation fell from 163,300 ha in 2000 to 81,800 ha in 2008, mainly due to eradication.
During the same time, however, yields increased, due to the introduction of more efficient farming and processing techniques, before declining again in recent years. In sum, Colombian cocaine production declined by 38%between 2000 and 2008.
The second challenge faced by the Colombian trafficking organizations in the late 1990s was the loss of control over their primary destination market: the USA. Mexican traffickers, who had previously been little more than transportation agents for the Colombians, began to assume control of everything from importation to street sales, seizing the most lucrative segments of the trafficking chain.
This loss was partly due to the reduced size of the Colombian groups, and partly to new extradition rules, which made Colombian traffickers reluctant to be associated with direct shipments to the USA.
The Mexican traffickers had been paid for their services in kind for some time, and they took advantage of their numeric superiority and long experience in trafficking to reduce their former bosses to mere suppliers.
This left the Colombian traffickers looking for new markets to explore, and they found a ready one in Europe. The size of the European cocaine market doubled between 1998 and 2008.
While Colombian traffickers now cooperate with a wide range of groups in Europe, they still maintain a dominant role in supplying the European market. In parallel, traffickers in Peru and Bolivia began to manufacture cocaine.
By 2008, about half of the world’s finished cocaine products originated in these two countries and was shipped to the growing markets of South America and Europe. Powder cocaine destined for Europe is often shipped via Brazil and various West African and Southern African countries.
Criminal groups in Peru and Bolivia are, in general, only involved in shipping the cocaine within the region to neighbouring countries, where international syndicates take over the trafficking.
Security/governance situation
Part12
Colombia has long been the most developed and most industrialized country in the Andean Community. But Colombia also suffers from a highly unequal distribution of wealth and has had a long history of political violence. In the nineteenth century more than 50 armed conflicts emerged between and within the traditional political parties.
Twentieth century started with the Guerra de Losail Días (One Thousand Day War) of 1899-1902, costing the lives of some 100,000 Colombians.
Another wave of conflict was dubbed La Violencia(the Violence), an undeclared civil war over the1946-58 period that claimed some 300,000 lives. Leftist guerilla groups emerged in the mid-1960s.
Several of the left-wing rebel groups later joined the political system, leaving the Furzes Armadas Revolutionaries de Colombia (FARC) and the Ejercito de Liberation Nacional (ELN) as the two main guerilla forces.
Right-wing paramilitaries emerged in the 1980s, initially to protect the interests of the large farmers and other business owners. By 1997, the paramilitary groups amalgamated under the umbrella of the
Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC). The ‘services’ of the paramilitary groups were, however, also sought by various organized crime groups to protect their smuggling activities.
Part13
Eventually, thaub itself emerged as a key organizer of cocaine trafficking. The country’s overall security situation deteriorated around 2000, as the FARC, the ELN and the us started to control ever larger parts of the Colombian territory, partly financed through drug money. With the strong decline in coca cultivation over the 2000-2008 period, and the regaining of the territory by the Government, the security situation improved again.
Starting in 2003, many members of the Auwers demobilized through an amnesty process, which included a promise not to be extradited to the USA. But, as described below, the threat has not passed, and the country continues the struggle to control all of its sovereign territory
The main security threats for Peru have been the activities of the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path),a Maoist group which started its operations in the Ayacucho region of Peru, close to the coca cultivation centres of Apurimac-Ene.
Its activities were later concentrated in the Huallaga valley, Peru’s largest coca producing area (Alto Huallaga). The leader of the Shining Path was arrested in 1992 and the rebel group started to disintegrate.
Links with drug trafficking groups, however, enabled the Shining Path to survive. In line with growing coca cultivation in recent years, sporadic attacks against army patrols increased again after 2006.
Linkages between TOC and stability threats
Part14
The progress made in Colombia over the last few years in reducing the threats emerging from then arco-business has been impressive, as shown above. Nonetheless, the overall situation remains fragile. Without the continuation of efforts, Colombia could fall back to where it was a few years ago. As the cocaine economy expanded, the number of homicides rose in Colombia from around 5,000 per year in the late 1970s to some 30,000 in the early1990s.9
But when the large cartels were dismantled in the early 1990s, violence began to decline again. The smaller groups assumed a lower profile and avoided open confrontations with the authorities. Large amounts of cocaine continued to flow out of the country, but homicides declined from around28,000 in 1993 to 23,000 in 1998
This trend was briefly reversed in the late 1990s, as both the insurgents and the paramilitaries increased their role in the drug business. The left-wing groups have primarily taxed coca cultivation in the areas under their control, with the FARC engaging in some manufacture and local trafficking to neighbouring Venezuela and Ecuador.
The paramilitary groups, on the other hand, increasingly focused on providing services to trafficking groups, and even trafficking themselves. At the beginning of twenty-first century, the AUC reportedly made some 70% of its total income from drug related activities, mostly related to the cocaine business. The international reach of the AUC tended to be much larger than that of the FARC, extending to Mexico and in some cases to the USA.
When the Colombian Government began to regain territory lost to the militants, the homicide rate began to decline again. Important areas controlled by the FARC, including some of the country’s cocoa producing areas, were recovered.
The number of persons enlisted in the insurgent groups in Colombia (excluding the AUC) declined from 33,800persons in 2002 to 13,200 in 2007. From 2003, the Government also began to dismantle the 32,000-strong AUC.
As a result, the number of homicides in Colombia fell by some 45% between 2002 and2008 to 16,000 persons, the lowest number over the last two decades. Similar trends to those seen in Colombia over the last few years can also be observed in Peru.
In line with a massive decline of coca cultivation in the1990s, terrorist incidents, mostly related to the activities of the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) operating out of the main coca cultivation areas of the country, declined drastically.
While revenues from the cocaine business declined, overall economic development improved. In Peru, GDP grew by 4% per year over the 1990-2000period, that is, more than the overall economic growth in Latin America and the Caribbean over the same period (3.3% per year).
Similarly, the Colombian economy grew on average, by 4.4% per year over the 2000-2008 period, which was above the average for the Latin America and Caribbean region (3.6%). In parallel, corruption declined in Colombia.
In 1999, Transparency International rated Colombia the country most affected by corruption in South America.
Part15
By 2009, it had the second-best rating, second only to Chile.11
Despite these remarkable achievements, the danger has not passed, and the armed groups have not been eliminated. The Shining Path in Peru is still active and has been launching attacks, particularly after2006.
In Colombia, there were illegal armed groups in 79% of the municipalities where coca was cultivated in 2008, while in non-coca growing areas the proportion was significantly lower (27%).12 There are also indications that some of the former members of the dismantled AUC have re-organized themselves to become full-fledged cocaine-trafficking organizations.
Out of the 31,700 persons that were enlisted in the various AUC groups in 2003, around 4,800 persons may have become members in the new paramilitary/trafficking organizations.13There have even been claims that elements in the FARC and the AUC are collaborating in producing cocaine.
As the situation in Colombia improves, the situation in neighbouring Venezuela appears to be in decline. The single largest cocaine seizure in 2008was 4.1 tons of cocaine seized from a commercial vessel coming from Venezuela, and 2.5 tons were also seized on a fishing boat coming from that country.
According to the new Maritime Analysis Operation Centre (MAOC-N), more than half(51%) of all intercepted shipments in the Atlantic (67 maritime events over the 2006-08 period) started their journey in Venezuela.
Direct shipments from Colombia, in contrast, accounted for just 5%.15 Venezuela’s murder rate has risen in recent years, and is now among the highest in the world. Its standing in the Transparency International rankings has also dropped.
At the same time, all available information suggests that profits made by Venezuelan organized crime groups are still substantially lower than those made by Colombian organized crime groups.
Trafficking to markets in both North America and Europe may have generated Colombian drug traffickers some US$6.6 billion in sales (US$6 billion in gross profits) in 2008.16 This is more than twice as much as the US$2.7 billion of gross profits generated by Afghan opiate traders in 2008.
The gross profits made by the Colombian groups were, however, equivalent to only 2.5% of Colombia’s GDP in 2008, while the equivalent ratio in Afghanistan 26%.
Colombia has long struggled with this intractable blend of organized crime and insurgency, and while it has received international assistance, much of this has been aimed at drug interdiction within the country itself. Significant progress has been made by Colombia in recent years, but much more could be done on addressing the entire trafficking chain through better coordinated international efforts.
The problems linked to Colombia’s cocaine production not only have implications for Colombia itself but also for several other countries, including neighbouring Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama, other countries of Central America, most countries of the Caribbean, Mexico, the USA as well as countries in Western Africa and Europe.
Colombia’s problems have been aggravated by factors outside its control, and this instability has likewise had an impact on areas outside its jurisdiction. To address a problem that affects South America, Central America, North America, Europe, Africa, and the rest of the world, a global strategic plan to combat the cocaine trade is needed.
Main transnational organised crime threats
Part16
There are many transnational organised crime threats affecting West Africa, including the trafficking of cocaine, natural resources (including oil), cigarettes, counterfeit medication, women, small arms, toxic waste, and migrant workers. Of these, two forms of contraband currently pose a real threat to the stability of states in the region: cocaine and natural resources.
The other organized crime problems are serious for other reasons, but they do not concentrate enough money into a small enough number of hands to pose a real challenge to the state.
Large-scale cocaine trafficking through the region was first detected in 2004, symptomatic of a shift in The centre of gravity of the global market from the USA to Europe. West African traffickers had long been active in the small-scale import and marketing of cocaine in Europe, as they have been in many other parts of the world. But around this time, individuals
Based in West Africa began to provide logistic assistance to Colombian traffickers in organizing their maritime shipments to Europe from at least two hubs: one centred on Guinea-Bissau and Guinea in the north, and one centred on the Bight of Benin in the south, both involving Nigerian nationals. Mother ships from South America could unload
cargoes to smaller craft from the coast, and the cocaine could be stored, repackaged, and redirected to European buyers from this vantage.
In exchange for their services, it is believed that the West Africans were paid in kind: they were allowed to retain up to one third of the shipment to traffic on their own behalf, which they did mainly via commercial air couriers.
By 2008, the situation began to change. Heightened international awareness of the threat made trafficking via West Africa more difficult.
In addition, a series of events shifted the political terrain in the northern hub. In August 2008, the head of the navy of Guinea-Bissau fled the country under allegations that he was orchestrating a coup d’état.
in December 2008, the man who had ruled Guinea for 24 years died, and a military cabal took control, later arresting two of the dictator’s sons and several prominent officials for their involvement in drug trafficking.
In March 2009, the head of the army of Guinea-Bissau was murdered, and, shortly afterward, in an apparent reprisal attack, so was the president. Finally, a series of very large seizures of cocaine disappeared while in police custody.
Part17
The owners of these shipments, Colombian traffickers, may have concluded that their West African partners had decided to keep 100%, rather than one third, of the consignment and terminated relations on this basis.
Whatever the cause, both maritime seizures and airport seizures on flights originating in West Africa virtually disappeared at the end of 2008Some trans-Atlantic traffic may have shifted to private aircraft, however, as the recent crash of a Boeing 727 jet in central Mali suggests.
Some may be trafficked by means as yet undiscovered.
The cocaine trade through West Africa continues, but apparently at a reduced rate of perhaps 25 tons per year, with a retail market value of US$ 6.8 billion at destination in 2008.
However, there is anecdotal information from law enforcement circles that cocaine trafficking via West Africa may have started to increase again in late 2009 and in 2010 as traffickers are trying out new routes, including shipments via the Sahara for transit destinations in northern Africa and final destinations in Europe West Africa has also been affected by trafficking of natural resources.
One of the best documented cases involved the trafficking of diamonds from SierraLeone, often via Liberia, with the funds supporting the rebel Revolutionary United Front and the criminal regime of Charles Taylor.
While this trade has largely been tamed due to the end of the war and the implementation of the Kimberley
Process, an older trafficking flow endures: the illegal “bunkering” of oil from the Niger Delta in Nigeria. Oil was discovered in Nigeria in 1956 and has played an important role in domestic politics since that time.
During the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970), the rebel Igbo Biafrans devised simplified ways of refining the high-quality crude of the Delta, allowing local marketing of stolen oil. Today, oil bunkering is inextricably entangled in the militant struggle in the Niger Delta.
A series of organised armed groups have demanded the Government and the international oil companies give a larger share of the wealth of their land to the local people and to compensate them for damage done to waterways and farmland.
These militants fund themselves through a variety of criminal activities, including the kidnapping of oil company employees, but their mainstay has long been the trade in stolen oil.
The stability/governance situation
Part18
West Africa is one of the the poorest and least stable regions on earth. All but three of the 16 countries in this region are on the United Nations list of the “least developed countries”, including the five countries with the very lowest levels of human development.
Since independence, West Africa has experienced at least 58 coups and attempted coups, some very recent, such as the 18 February 2010
coup in Niger. There remain many active rebel groups in the region.
At present, of the 15 nations of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), about half are experiencing some form of instability.
Longstanding insurgencies are found in Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Mali, Niger and, arguably, Nigeria. Both Sierra Leone and Liberia are continuing to recover from brutal civil wars.
Mauritania and Guinea recently experienced coups d’état, and the president
of Guinea-Bissau was murdered by his own troops.
According to one recent rating of the 25 countries with the highest risks of instability globally, nine were in West Africa: Niger, Mali, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau, Côte d’Ivoire and Benin.
The United Nations maintains a number of political and peace missions in the region, including the United Nations Office for West Africa (UNOWA), The United Nations Peacebuilding Support Office In Guinea-Bissau (UNOGBIS), the United Nations Integrated Peacebuilding Office in Sierra Leone, United Nations Operation in Côte d’Ivoire (UNOCI) and the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL).
Part20
There have been allegations that rebels in the north of Mali and Niger have been involved in trans-Saharan trafficking, but little evidence is currently
available on this flow In contrast, oil bunkering in Nigeria has been very
much a rebel activity from the start, although the political objectives of the thieves have always been vague.
The Niger Delta rebels argue that their portion of the country has been left undeveloped and subjected to environmental abuses, even as Nigeria’s most valuable resource is extracted from the Delta.
But as time has passed, it has become difficult to distinguish those with political motivations from those with financial ones. The integrity of the oil
Trade is particularly important to regional stability because Nigeria accounts for over half the population of the region and over 60% of the regional GDP.
Oil comprises 95% of Nigeria’s foreign exchange earnings and up to 80% of budgetary revenues.21 In turn, Nigeria is a key trading partner for the other countries of the region, so a large share of the region’s population is dependent on the oil sector.
Thousands have died in the armed struggle, which itself has absorbed a large amount of national security resources From August to October 2009, Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua offered a pardon and cash payments to rebels who laid down their arms, and many of the most prominent leaders took him up on this offer.
The major militant umbrella group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) declared a ceasefire at the same time. But in February 2010, MEND retracted this ceasefire, calling the amnesty process a “sham” and warning the oil companies to prepare for “all-out onslaught”.
Linkages between TOC and stability threats
Part19
The conflict and the smuggling continue. The countries of West Africa need help in strengthening their capacity to resist transnational organized crime. Recent efforts against the cocaine trade, with the support of the international community, have shown promising results. But, rich or poor,
there isn’t a region in the world that can be entirely shielded against transnational organized crime.
West Africa remains particularly exposed, and the region will continue to face serious potential threats to governance and stability so long as transnational contraband markets are not addressed.
The greatest danger posed by cocaine is its extreme value compared to that of local economies. This allows traffickers to penetrate to the very highest levels of government and the military. Law enforcement officials can be offered more than they could earn in a lifetime simply to look the other way. This extreme leverage has allowed traffickers to operate with very little resistance from the state, and therefore little need to resort to violence.
There appears to have been some violence in elite circles as rivals
compete for access to these profits, however. For example, in Guinea-Bissau, several journalists and activists have had to flee the country or go into hiding after they received death threats for reporting on military involvement in drug trafficking.
Both the then head of the army and the head of the navy appear to have been involved in making these threats. From 2007 onwards, high level officials have made similar accusations, including the Interior Minister and the head of the Judicial Police, but none has been able to challenge the military.
Drugs have been detected arriving on military air strips, military officers have been arrested in possession of hundreds of kilograms of cocaine, and there have been several armed stand-offs between police and military forces concerning drug shipments.
Drugs seized by the police are confiscated by the military and then disappear. Accused soldiers, as well as foreign traffickers, are simply released from custody. In July 2008, both the Attorney General and the Minister of Justice said they had received death threats related to investigations into a cocaine seizure.
The killing of the president and the army chief of Staff in March 2009 appears to have been motivated more by personal rivalry between the two men than by trafficking, although the latter was said to have accused the former of involvement before the 2008 elections
The nature of the alleged coup plotby the head of the navy is even less clear. But giventhe evidence of corruption and the relative sizes of the contraband and the economy, virtually every political conflict has criminal undertones. Guinea-Bissau is not unique in this respect.
In Guinea, the presidential guard, commanded by one of the president’s sons, appears to have been involved in drug trafficking, alongside several high-ranking public security officials.
Another of his sons has also been accused of involvement. In SierraLeone, the Minister of Transportation resigned after his brother was the country’s largest cocaine seizure.
Given their close ties to national officials, it is perhaps not surprising that there is little evidence of insurgents dealing in the drug.
