Abstract
In the chapter the author highlights the undesirable outcomes of doctrinaire law enforcement approaches and offers recommendations for the adoption of multifaceted policy responses. She argues that in order to design effective policy responses to organized crime and appropriately structure external assistance, it is important to stop thinking about crime solely as aberrant social activity to be suppressed, but instead think of crime as competition in state-making. A recognition that states often directly, not just indirectly foster and use crime, is equally important for devising successful strategies. In strong states that effectively address the needs of their societies, non-state entities cannot outcompete the state on a large scale. But in areas of socio-political marginalisation and poverty, non-state actors do—and they thus gain legitimacy within society.
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Notes
- 1.
For details, see, for example, Ronald D. Renard, Opium Reduction in Thailand, 1970–2000: A Thirty-Year Journey (Bangkok: UN Drug Control Programme Silkworm Books, 2001) and Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy, Opium: Uncovering the Politics of Poppy (London: I.B. Taurus, 2009), pp. 63–93.
- 2.
See, for example, Enrique Desmond Arias, ‘Trouble en Route: Drug Trafficking and Clientelism in Rio de Janeiro Shantytowns’, Qualitative Sociology, vol. 29, no. 4, 2006, pp. 427–445.
- 3.
For an excellent discussion of how to launch and expand such difficult and complicated efforts and identify partners for engagement in the context of pervasive corruption, see Camino Kavanagh, Getting Smart and Scaling Up: Responding to the Impact of Organised Crime on Governance in Developing Countries (New York: Centre for International Cooperation, 2013); and Brooke Stearns Lawson and Phyllis Dininio, ‘The Development Response to Drug Trafficking in Africa: A Programming Guide’, USAID, April 2013, http://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1860/Development_Response_to_Drug_Trafficking_in_Africa_Programming_Guide.pdf.
- 4.
Author’s interviews with US officials of the Department of State, Washington, DC, August 2012, of the Drug Enforcement Administration , Nairobi, April 2013, and UK officials of the Department for International Development, London, May 2013. See also, Cecilia Malmström, ‘The External Dimension of EU-Police Cooperation in West African Countries –Towards Global and Integrated International Policing’, Press Release Database, SPEECH/10/505, 30 September 2010, http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-10-505_en.htm and ‘Long-term Responses to Global Security Threats: Contributing to Security Capacity Building in Third Countries through the Instrument for Stability’, European Commission, March 2011, https://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/sites/devco/files/publication-long-term-responses-global-security-threats-2011_en.pdf.
- 5.
For more details see ‘Cocaine Route Programme’, European Union, http://www.cocaineroute.eu/.
- 6.
Charlie Savage and Thom Shanker, ‘U.S. Drug War Expands to Africa, a Newer Hub for Cartels’, New York Times, 21 July 2012; and ‘Memorandum for the Secretary of State: Presidential Determination on Major Drug Transit or Major Illicit Drug Producing Countries for Fiscal Year 2014’, The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, Presidential Determination No. 2013–14, 13 September 2013, http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/texttrans/2013/09/20130913282879.html#ixzz2glhlmqC1.
- 7.
Stearns Lawson and Dininio, ‘The Development Response to Drug Trafficking in Africa: A Programming Guide’.
- 8.
Adam Nossiter, ‘U.S. Sting That Snared Guinea-Bissau Ex-Admiral Shines Light on Drug Trade’, New York Times, 15 April 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/world/africa/us-sting-that-snared-guinea-bissau-ex-admiral-shines-light-on-drug-trade.html?_r=0.
- 9.
For an evaluation of CICIG’s effectiveness, see, for example, ‘La Comisión Internacional Contra La Impunidad en Guatemala: Un Estudio de Investigación de WOLA Sobre La Experiencia de la CICIG’, Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), March 2015, http://www.wola.org/sites/default/files/CICIG%203.25.pdf.
- 10.
Vanda Felbab-Brown, Despite Its Siren Song, High-Value Targeting Doesn’t Fit All: Matching Interdiction Patterns to Specific Narcoterrorism and Organized-Crime Contexts (Washington DC: The Brookings Institution, 1 October 2013).
- 11.
For a detailed evaluation of the Scorpions’ history and effectiveness, see, for example, Joey Berning and Moses Montesh, ‘Countering Corruption in South Africa: The Rise and Fall of the Scorpions and the Hawks’, South Africa Crime Quarterly, March 2012, pp. 3–10.
- 12.
Federico Varese, Mafias on the Move (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011).
- 13.
See, for example, Douglas Farah, ‘Fixers, Superfixers, and Shadow Facilitators: How Networks Connect’, in Jacqueline Brewer and Michael Miklaucic (eds.), Convergence: Illicit Networks and National Security in the Age of Globalization (Washington DC: NDU Press, 2013); Felbab-Brown, Shooting Up: Counterinsurgency and the War on Drugs.
- 14.
Kenneth Menkhaus and Jacob Shapiro, ‘Non-state Actors and Failed States: Lessons from Al Qaeda’s Experiences in the Horn of Africa’, in Anne Clunan and Harold Trinkunas (eds.), Ungoverned Spaces: Alternatives to State Authority in an Era of Softened Sovereignty (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010).
- 15.
As of summer of 2015, different factions within al-Shabaab had divergent opinions on whether to identify with the Islamic State. Author’s fieldwork in Somalia, spring 2015. See also, Vanda Felbab-Brown, ‘Saving Somalia (Again)’, Foreign Affairs, June 2015, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/somalia/2015-06-23/saving-somalia-again; and Stig Jarle Hansen, Al Shabaab in Somalia: The History and Ideology of a Militant Islamist Group (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
- 16.
For such analyses, see, for example, Tamara Makarenko, ‘The Crime–Terror Continuum: Tracing the Interplay between Transnational Organised Crime and Terrorism’, Global Crime, vol. 6, no. 1, February 2004, pp.129–145; Peng Wang, ‘The Crime-Terror Nexus: Transformation, Alliance, Convergence’, Asian Social Sciences, vol. 6, 2010, pp. 11–20; Chris Dishman, ‘The Leaderless Nexus: When Crime and Terror Converge’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, vol. 28, no. 3, 2005, pp. 237–252. See also Micklaucic and Brewer (eds.), Convergence: Illicit Networks and National Security in the Age of Globalization.
- 17.
How this conflict produced ineffective and counterproductive U.S. counterterrorism and state-building policies in Afghanistan, see Vanda Felbab-Brown, Aspiration and Ambivalence: Strategies and Realities of Counterinsurgency and State-Building in Afghanistan (Washington DC: The Brookings Institution Press, 2012).
- 18.
See, for example, Rachel Kleinfeld, Advancing the Rule of Law Abroad: Next Generation Reform (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2012).
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Felbab-Brown, V. (2018). A State-Building Response to Organized Crime, Illicit Economies, Hybrid Threats, and Hybrid Governance. In: Comolli, V. (eds) Organized Crime and Illicit Trade. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72968-8_6
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