Illicit Actors: Mapping Networks, Assessing Tactics Workshop in Washington, DC March 21, 2012

Transcription

1 Illicit Actors: Mapping Networks, Assessing Tactics Workshop in Washington, DC March 21, 2012 This workshop was made possible by Google Ideas and the generous support of the Robina Foundation for the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) International Institutions and Global Governance Program. Rapporteur: Isabella Bennett, IIGG Research Associate In the past two decades, globalization and technological developments have allowed criminals to internationalize operations and conduct illicit activities with unprecedented speed and scope. Meanwhile, law enforcement operations to suppress or keep track of these networks are bound by domestic borders with limited or no cooperation between nations to identify risks, investigate suspects, or prosecute offenders. At the same time, criminal networks have grown increasingly horizontal and flexible, and engage in multiple criminal sectors from drug smuggling and arms dealing to human trafficking and organ harvesting. Too often, both domestic and international efforts to combat the threat focus on one illicit category, diminishing their effectiveness. To break down these silos and explore new ways to challenge, expose, and disrupt coercive illicit networks, and simultaneously analyze how technology both contributes to transnational crime and might also be harnessed to combat it, Google Ideas and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) have launched the Illicit Networks Roundtable Series, beginning with the topic Illicit Actors: Mapping Networks, Assessing Tactics. The meeting, which took place on March 21, 2012, at the CFR office in Washington, DC, convened twenty experts in the broad field of transnational organized crime. The discussions will feed into a July 2012 summit, Illicit Networks: Forces in Opposition, convened by Google Ideas, which aims to combat the most egregious forms of transnational crime. The discussion began by highlighting the veritable revolution in communications that continues with remarkable speed. Eight months ago, twenty-four hours of video could be uploaded onto YouTube per minute. Four months later, that number had doubled to forty-eight hours of video, and by the time

2 of the meeting, had again grown to seventy-two hours uploaded per minute with 75 percent of YouTube s new content being uploaded from outside the United States. The exponential growth in information technology has facilitated swift changes in criminal tactics, which states are struggling to keep up with. On online fora, criminals around the world can share tactics or peddle their stolen goods like credit card data or child pornography. The rising reliance on computer systems for banking and business transactions provides criminals with new tools to both launder money and steal money through cyber crime. The Internet and cell phones also allow criminals to communicate more rapidly and more affordably between multiple nations or continents making transcontinental illicit operations more practical and profitable. Similarly, surveillance cameras can help police observe crimes, but criminals could also use them to intimidate citizens or threaten people who report activities to the police. All of these emerging trends severely complicate law enforcement efforts that remain subject to the Westphalian order of nation-states, while their adversaries hopscotch across sovereign jurisdictions. On the other hand, technology can also disadvantage transnational organized crime groups. It can empower migrants, for instance, who are at risk for abuse by criminal smugglers. Some experts argue that new technologies have always advantaged states and continue to be so today. For example, telephones made wire-tapping possible, and traffic makes it possible to monitor communication between criminals communicating (albeit with legal restrictions on both). Technology can also pacify criminal activity. Consider how cell phones have rendered the street level drug trade less violent, by moving the trade indoors. Moreover, some analysts contend that the recent growth of transnational crime is overstated. Nationstates have always confronted smuggling, for instance. The imposition of global prohibition regimes, they argue, has now increased smuggling in illegal commodities while globalization has liberalized trade rules and thus decreased demand for tariff-evading smuggling. Viewed in historical perspective, neither arms trafficking nor cigarette smuggling are new phenomena. For example, George Washington was as dependent on the illicit arms trade to equip his army as African warlords are today. From this perspective, selection bias has distorted perceptions of transnational crime. Likewise, some specialists argue that the conventional view that transnational crime is inherently violent is based on misconceptions. Two examples of peaceful illicit trade support the theory: domestic marijuana cultivation within the United States is peaceful on balance, and most smugglers convey their human cargo across borders without abusing them. Moreover, violence in Mexico has skyrocketed over the past six years, but the size of the drug trade remains the same suggesting that the drug trade itself is not causing the violence. Still, new demographic and environmental factors might yet magnify the violent and destabilizing impact of transnational crime, regardless of illicit trade s historical precursors. Current trends suggest that by 2030, two billion people will reside in slums across the world. Urbanization generally leads to

3 more concentrated populations of impoverished people who are dependent on purchasing goods and services, as well as to higher levels of income inequality. Together, these factors can increase crime rates. In addition, projections indicate that reliable supplies of food, water, and oil will also decline in many areas of the globe and will encourage black markets and associated violence to grow. By one estimate, the Italian mafia already controls 5 percent of the food supply in Italy and that proportion is expected to increase. There is little debate over the extraordinary diversity of criminal associations. The range of illegal activities is broad from high profile crimes like drug trafficking to less obvious activities such as illegal minerals trade or smuggling cigarettes across borders to evade taxes. The majority of illicit operations engage in a variety of crimes across this broad spectrum, and once a pipeline is established, criminals are adept at switching among product lines. In terms of structure, there is broad consensus that the term organized crime is largely deceptive, and does not reflect the diversity and fluidity of criminal operations today. Rather than large organizations with global reach, criminal organizations today tend to be fragmented, decentralized, local, and regional. Such groups often outsource particular functions to unemployed or otherwise desperate locals. Indeed, many organized crime groups are more determined to control a territory than to profit from illegal trade and traffic more on the local markets but are mistakenly labeled international traffickers because of their involvement in local illicit trade. At times, organized crime groups are only interested in taxing illicit transactions undertaken by other actors. One model divides today s criminal organizations into four categories: Core structures are top down, and include one top leader. Mesh networks comprise a number of critical actors of equal importance that are spread out geographically or offer similar contributions. Broker networks rely upon a few necessary individuals to facilitate transactions (such as arms brokers). Finally, flux networks consist of two or three entities that constantly disperse and then regroup periodically based on circumstances, but often with a changed membership. For law enforcement, identifying which types of networks operate in a region or specific type of crime, and how to effectively combat them, is critical. Furthermore, attempts to combat organized crime must adequately analyze local perceptions of those crimes, as well as the particular motivations to engage in relevant criminal activities. In many cases, transnational crime is labor intensive, providing myriad employment opportunities to impoverished communities. The activities themselves may be formally illegal, but they may be regarded as legitimate by a critical mass of the population. Indeed, citizens resent efforts to suppress transnational crime especially if the negative consequences of transnational crime are not experienced locally (e.g. poppy cultivation for heroin) or if the criminal network provides essential social services. Often, the illicit networks serve as an alternative form of governance in states, or areas of states, where local institutions are weak or nonexistent. Consequently, the fight against illicit networks could be framed as a competition between states and crime for the allegiance of the population and thus requires states to deliver basic services more assiduously.

4 At the same time, illicit activity is not necessarily anti-state, and in fact, supports the state in many cases. Governing structures of certain regimes, major business operations, or pockets of elites are often involved in crime especially in the developing world and former Soviet Union. Indeed, some states come to rely heavily on profits from crime. At the extreme, such states can be conceived of as a mafia-bazaar, and their citizens can be wholly accustomed to these arrangements. In such circumstances, attempting to bolster traditional law enforcement or judicial institutions to suppress crime will yield little success, given the pervasive corruption that exists. The fight against international terrorist groups may provide some lessons for combating illicit criminal networks. After the September 11 attacks, the U.S. government instituted a whole-ofgovernment approach, and succeeded in breaking down many of the silos that divided knowledge about terrorist groups and their specific cultural contexts. In addition, government databases have identified hundreds of thousands of individuals who might meet the definition of terrorist, and the intelligence community has devised methods to parse out high-level threats. Though the fight remains imperfect, law enforcement agencies could learn from the counterterrorist experience and build upon it. However, the often-referenced crime-terror nexus should be analyzed carefully. While criminal groups and terrorist groups have reportedly adopted each other s strategies or cooperated at times, their goals remain distinct and a true alliance may be improbable. For, terrorist groups ultimately seek attention for their political beliefs and engage in high-profile operations while criminal groups benefit from flying under the radar, in pursuit of financial profit. While analysts have developed a rich range of concepts to describe and analyze illicit networks, hard data required to forge realistic and effective responses from governments and civil society is lacking. Currently, organizations such as the United Nations (UN) Office on Drugs and Crime provide the most reliable estimates of the scope of various criminal activities. But even these figures rely heavily on guesswork and can be extremely politicized. According to stipulations in the UN Convention on Transnational Organized Crime (Palermo Convention), UN member states review crime estimates for their own country. In the process some states have been known to exaggerate the evidence to earn more funding because of a heightened threat, or conversely, report a diminished threat in order to portray success. Independent media that attempt to map flows in their communities are often threatened and forced to stop. After being aggregated, official statistics are often inflated repeatedly, and many figures are suspiciously round. Countries have not agreed upon methodology to gather or analyze available data, and there is no consensus on what kind of data to use. The dearth of empirics is the critical gap in efforts to combat transnational organized crime. In an era of fiscal austerity, funding for local governments, foreign aid, and international organizations are all likely to decline, suggesting that strategies must allocate resources to fight the worst kinds of harm. In order to translate theories and concepts into action, countries need reliable datasets on crime, ethnographic studies, and figures on the nexus between crime and terrorism. Trustworthy sources

5 must develop innovative methods that permit officials to accurately map not only the supply, demand, and transit of illicit commodities, but also critical price points, social norms within illicit networks, and relationships among criminals. Based on the rich discussion, the group identified three major gaps in the current arsenal to fight transnational crime. First, the relationship between technology and crime, and violence and crime is often poorly understood (or incorrectly understood), and must be studied more systematically. Second, processes for data collection and data sharing must be improved, so that nations and nongovernmental actors can properly respond to the threat of transnational crime. Finally, the international community must devote resources to analyze the real, on-the-ground impact and effectiveness of existing policies, share best practices between nations and regions, and innovate new strategies to fight international crime.