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Deadly Dynamics: Crime and the Coronavirus in Latin America

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by Leah Grace

Security forces around the world have taken on new duties amid the crisis of the coronavirus pandemic (Image credit: Gerd Altmann/Pixabay)

 

The COVID-19 pandemic not only represents a global public health crisis but has also created serious political and security challenges. In Latin America, legal and illicit economies alike have been hit hard by a massive slowdown in global production and consumption, leaving most organised crime groups unusually vulnerable and exposed. These conditions offer opportunities for governments to deal a considerable blow to these criminal networks that wield enormous amounts of power in their territories. Examples include the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) in Mexico, the Columbian guerilla group the National Liberation Army (ELN), and the Barrio 18 street gang, which operates throughout Central America. However, evidence from the region shows that criminal are rapidly adapting to the challenges of the pandemic and are in fact taking advantage of the overwhelmed state authorities to consolidate their power.

As the lockdown of several national economies brings businesses to a halt and threatens the livelihoods of billions of employees, it also has significant repercussions for transnational drug trade and other illicit flows. Drug cartels across Latin America have seen their access to major markets and supply chains curbed by border closures and the shutdown of transatlantic travel. A reliance on imported chemicals from China has negatively impacted the production of fentanyl and methamphetamine in Mexico. In Colombia, narcotraffickers are struggling to transport their cocaine supply to European markets due to a grounding of air traffic. In countries such as Nicaragua, where many people live from day to day, selling drugs locally has also become a challenge as local populations can no longer afford to buy the commodity.

In Europe and the United States, drug shortages at street level caused by both the disruption of supply and transportation chains and the imposition of national lockdown measures, which forced sellers and consumers to remain indoors, has led to a sharp increase in prices. As drug-dealers demonstrate their adaptability by adopting unorthodox strategies, such as delivering drugs in takeaway orders, they reap the rewards of these price inflations. In the long-term, however, restrictions on mobility and the continued closure of entertainment and hospitality venues are likely to deal a significant blow to drug markets.

As local businesses close, criminal groups face challenges in collecting their routine extortion payments. Some Central American gangs, such as the Barrio 18 Revolucionarios in San Salvador, have announced that they will waive extortion payments from informal vendors due to the massive decrease in earnings caused by lockdown measures. Others, however, have been less understanding. Mexican and Guatemalan cartels continue to harass and intimidate local businesses despite the pandemic. Since extortion constitutes the main important source of income for many criminal groups and street gangs, it is likely that even the more lenient ones will resort to increasingly violent measures to collect their fees.

Lockdowns and border closures have also created new illicit business opportunities. The closing of borders on key migration routes has increased the demand for human smuggling services – and their profitability. Before the most recent border closure on March 14 due to Covid-19, over 50,000 Venezuelans legally crossed into Colombia each day. Now, people rely solely on illegal border crossings (trochas), controlled by criminal groups such as Los Rastrojos, who charge fees for use of the route. In Central America, the sealing of borders has forced migrants to depend even more heavily on smugglers, who have seized the opportunity to charge $200 dollars per person for “safe” passage from El Salvador and Honduras to Guatemala.

Violence and insecurity

Lockdown measures have led to a general reduction in street crime and robbery as criminals become more conspicuous and their targets more scarce. El Salvador, the country with the highest homicide rate in the world, reported two days without murders immediately following the imposition of obligatory quarantine measures.

However, violence has intensified in many other countries due to the diversion of armed security forces to pandemic-related issues. Data from Brazil suggests an increase in lethal crime and homicide during the lockdown as gangs and other criminal groups continue to engage in turf wars and violent confrontations. In Colombia, both departments on the Pacific coast and frontier regions with Venezuela, an area with a long history of state absence and illegal activity by armed groups, have witnessed violent clashes between criminal gangs and the guerilla group ELN. Targeted civilian murders have also increased in the country. In the week that cities introduced quarantine measures, three community leaders were killed. Fellow activists cited the disruption to normal security protocols as putting social leaders, often targeted due to their work against lucrative illegal businesses, in positions of heightened vulnerability.

The pandemic’s dominance in minds and media across the world has also provided cover for crime groups to act with impunity, consolidating their power as they do so. Militia groups in Rio de Janeiro, who count former police officers as members and enjoy the support of some local politicians, have seized upon this distraction to increase their political influence in the city.

Criminal governance

The current pandemic is exacerbating socioeconomic stresses. As frustrations and fear grow, ineffective government responses are likely to erode trust in state institutions. Non-state actors are already stepping up to fill the gaps of state presence and provision. As Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, continues to play down the severity of the pandemic, drug-dealing gangs in some of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas have imposed their own curfews and hygiene measures to help combat the spread of the virus in the overcrowded and unsanitary conditions of the slums. Such forms of informal criminal governance are likely to benefit the gangs by securing their power and legitimacy in local communities.

In El Salvador, cells of the Barrio 18 gang wielded their influence over local populations first to defy and then to enforce government lockdown orders. Initially, they ensured that markets in the capital city continued to operate, as these are a vital source of livelihood for many Salvadorans and provide a constant flow of extortion payments. They later changed tactics and began enforcing lockdown measures at gunpoint.

In San Luis Potosí and Tamaulipas, Mexico, the CJNG and Golfo cartels handed out food parcels to communities in boxes emblazoned with their groups’ insignia. Such deliveries are both a means to gain support from local populations and a challenge to local gangs, especially when made in disputed territories or in areas outside normal zones of operation.

A golden opportunity?

Criminal non-state armed groups across Latin America have demonstrated their influence, adaptability, and resilience in the face of COVID-19. However, even they are not immune to the impact of the pandemic, which will continue to hinder their business opportunities and restrict their ability to work undetected. Now is the time for governments to strike in a regionally coordinated effort to take out organised crime networks whilst they are at their most vulnerable. Missing such an opportunity could further bolster the power of these groups and limited the capacity of the state to deal with the region’s already severe problem of organised crime in the future.

However, the exploitation of security gaps by Latin American criminal organisation due to the diversion of resources and attention to the global health crisis may prove too much for overwhelmed states. Criminal networks are likely to bounce back from the current crisis, possibly with strengthened support bases and additional areas under their control.

Leah is an MA student in Conflict, Security and Development at the King’s War Studies Department. Her main research interests include war-to-peace transitions, organised crime, and urban violence. She primarily works on conflict-affected countries in Latin America and Central Africa.

Organised crime and terrorism Part IV: Setting examples: Violence as communication in Mexico’s Cartel War

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This is the fourth, and final, piece in Strife’s four-part series exploring the relationship between organised crime and terrorism in a 21st century security environment. The first, second, and third parts can be found here, here, and here, respectively.

By: Joe Atkins

Fire engulfs a casino in Monterrey, killing 52 people. Source: BBC News.

Too often, some conflicts attract attention only when something abnormally brutal happens. This occurred in Nigeria, when the terrorist group Boko Haram kidnapped 276 girls on 14 April 2014, shocking international audiences. This happened also, some months later, in Mexico. There, in the state of Guerrero, 43 students were kidnapped on 20 September 2014. Two weeks later, local police forces found a mass grave, with the charred and tortured bodies of 28 of them. Mexico’s Attorney General claimed that the former mayor of the town of Iguala ordered the massacre, in cooperation with the local cartel, Guerreros Unidos. A year after the fact, however, an international committee, appointed by the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights, expressed serious concerns regarding the Attorney General’s account of the event[1]. This sparked doubts about the reliability of this version, which affirms that members of the Guerreros Unidos killed the students, took them to a dump, and burned their bodies. Reports about the federal police’s monitoring activity of the students casted a shadow on this episode of brutality[2].

The massacre of the 43 students of Guerrero was a particularly notorious case, even for crime-ridden Mexico. It attracted international attention, constituting a major embarrassment for President Enrique Peña Nieto’s government. Outside observers, however, face a daunting task when they try to make sense of Mexico’s highly intense violence, made even more difficult given the complexity of the conflict itself. It is no surprise that some commentators simply dismiss violence as devoid of any rational meaning. Actually, the intricate character of the conflict is a problem also for cartels and state authorities themselves. Blurred allegiances and conflicting attributions of blame make communication very difficult. In this context, violence has become a tool to convey information and propaganda.

The Mexico drug war has been going on since 2006 and has caused among 30 and 60 per cent of the 120.000 homicides that occurred in the country between 2006 and 2013[3]. During the last ten years, eight cartels have been competing with each other for the control of the trade routes for cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamine. Simultaneously, they have confronted the Mexican state, by corrupting or intimidating police and judiciary officials, by scaring local mayors, and by influencing elections. To add confusion to this already complex situation, allegiances and power relations have been very fluid. Local gangs, in fact, often switch loyalty, while some cartels have been effectively defeated, only to have rivals and offshoots rising in their place. Moreover, several anti-crime forces have been operating, including the Mexican Army and Navy, with various degrees of effectiveness and collusion. Local citizens, finally, have conjured up their own vigilante forces, which have often demonstrated as much brutality as the drug trafficking organisations[4].

In this complicated context, it is often difficult to know who is ruling in a particular area. Thus, cartels and gangs have often decided to make their presence felt by way of cruelty and terror. This already happened during the outburst of drug-related violence in the 1990s, when beheadings became a frequent method to send messages to rival cartels. The new era of “high-intensity crime”, however, has renewed and expanded this function of violence.

Now, messages conveyed by violence reach multiple audiences. Politicians are the recipients, as well as police officers, journalists, the armed forces, and the public at large[5]. Violence has become a major communication tool, and its effect is different depending on the receiver. Cartels target members of particular categories to push them to cooperate or to make them neutral; violence, however, hits common citizens as well, sowing confusion among them and paralysing any attempt to revert the drug traffickers’ grip on society. Moreover, violence has become so widespread that it is actually possible to identify different types of violence, each of which conveys a particular message from drug trafficking organisations.

Mass killings are one of these types. If we look deeper into Mexico’s most dangerous states we can find other massacres like the one in Iguala. In most of them, survivor reports, CCTV videos, or victims’ reports pointed out at the Los Zetas cartel, formed by ex-members of Mexico’s Special Forces. In 2010, in San Fernando, Tamaulipas state, Los Zetas affiliates killed 72 immigrants from Central and South America, after their refusal to join the cartel or pay extra fees to enter the United States[6]. In 2011, in the same area, Zetas hijacked several passenger buses, raping the women and forcing the able-bodied men to fight among themselves, awarding the survivors with cartel membership[7]; in total, 193 people died. Only some months later, in Monterrey, Nuevo Léon state, a Los Zetas commando fired indiscriminately on customers in a casino, and then started a fire that destroyed the building, killing 52 people in total [8]. In the same area, the year later, 49 bodies were found dumped by a roadside on the Mexican Federal Highway 40[9]. The Los Zetas cartel seems to be responsible for all the mass killings above. The heightened rivalry between Zetas and the Sinaloa cartel over cocaine routes in North-Eastern Mexico is the most likely explanation of this series of indiscriminate violence. Massacres, however, are also a means to maintain the Zetas’ reputation as cold-blooded murderers with a taste for bloodshed[10]. It is a tool of psychological warfare. In an environment where violence is everywhere, the need to make its effect felt is even more pressing.

Violence as a communication tool, then, is the by-product of the rivalry among several cartels. This rivalry engenders a “competitive escalation of increasingly extreme and creatively violent acts”[11]. Most of this escalation, for now, resulted in the murder of single persons or of little groups. At its core, the murder in itself is always a message, as its perpetrators usually present it as a punishment, an act of justice. Since the beginning of the conflict, however, it has lost its symbolic strength, simply because there are too many of them[12]. Beheadings were an early method to convey a more forceful message and stun the audience, by showing that cartel members were capable of anything[13]. Even decapitations, however, have become increasingly commonplace, since a group of members of La Familia Michoacana threw five severed heads on a nightclub dance floor to publicise their “divine justice”[14]. With time, then, a whole set of forms of drug-related killing and treatment of corpses has formed, with its own lexicon. These words are quite common among different Mexican cartels and in the media coverage of the drug war. For example, enteipados are bodies wrapped in duct tape; descuartizados are bodies that have been quartered (as the victims of the 2012 Nuevo Leon massacre); encajuelados are bodies left in the trunk of a car; entambados are bodies crammed in barrels; encobijados are bodies wrapped in blankets. In addition, cutting off fingers means that the dead person was a snitch; cutting hands means that the dead was a thief; cutting the tongue means the dead was a police or rival cartel informer, while cutting the foot means the dead was a defector[15]. Finally, bodies are generally left on roadsides, usually half or wholly naked. This happens most often for women, as a means to deprive them of their honour, but also for men, in an attempt to demote their manhood[16]. In Mexico, drug-related murders are seldom a hidden act. On the contrary, narcos leave the bodies in public places, where everyone can see and read the messages on the corpse.

Actual violence, then, has evolved from simple murder, by differentiating into different types, according to quantity, treatment of the body, and ritualized display of it. Another dimension, however, is particularly important in the current inter-cartel war: the broadcasting of violence. Brutal acts committed by cartel members, in fact, are not only important as a local display of strength. With the diffusion of Internet, in fact, their reproduction has become as much a tool of psychological warfare as an integral part of the narcocultura. In the past, cartels had also profited from traditional channels, by devoting attention to timing to guarantee that specific time slots of local television news cover the murders.[17] The online presence of drug trafficking organisations, however, is increasingly important. The Internet has become a major battlefield in the information war, with its own offensives and counter-offensives[18], and cartels and vigilante groups have become its major actors, with the Mexican state present in a lesser degree[19].

Cartels, however, still do not have a vertically organised propaganda strategy, with a coherent graphic style, formalised structures and technical sophistication[20]. Most of the output consists in self-proclaimed cartel members and, in large part, in young men attracted by drug trafficking myths. Cartel online presence, then, is scattered, grassroots, and spontaneous. It is, thus, also more difficult to tackle. This is particularly true for social networks, with reports of cartel activity on Myspace, Youtube[21] and Facebook[22]. Cartel members have used all these online channels to convey threats of violence or pictures and videos of murders and massacres. Apart from mainstream social networks and media sites, moreover, cartel-specific news sites have sprung up, to avoid the self-imposed censorship of local newspapers and to capitalise on narcocultura’s increasing success. The foremost example is blogdelnarco.com, which, since its inception in 2010, has become one of Mexico’s most visited sites. Blog del Narco broadcasts gruesome pictures of murders and, most famously, videos of interrogations, usually featuring the torture and homicide of the hostage[23]. In this way, cartel members humiliate the victim, as well as the rival cartels; they spread fear among their affiliates and show how the government is weak, if the victim is a police officer.

Outside commentators often define violence in the Mexican cartel war as “meaningless”. This assertion, as we have seen, is hardly true. Violence, first, serves as a way of settling disputes and punishing. This is not its only function, though. From the cartel’s perspective, violence is most effective when rival cartels, government forces, and the local population get to know that cartel justice has stricken. The communication of violence, thus, is an essential part of the act of kidnapping, torturing, or killing. As drug trafficking organisations lack the communication strategy and hierarchy that terrorist groups retain, every affiliate or group of affiliates participates in the larger information war, by acting, by leaving messages, and by broadcasting them via television or the Internet. The combined effect of this phenomenon is to sow confusion among those who fight the cartels and to establish a climate of constant, ever-lasting fear among a paralysed population.

 

Joe Atkins is an MA student in Latin American Studies. His interest in the Mexican drug war stems from an older fascination for Mexican culture and literature. He is also studying welfare and politics in the Central American countries.

 

Notes:

[1] Paulina Villegas, Experts Reject Official Account of How 43 Mexican Students Were Killed, New York Times, Sep. 6, 2015. Available on http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/07/world/experts-reject-official-account-of-how-43-mexican-students-vanished.html, accessed on February 4, 2016.

[2] Ed Vulliamy, One year ago, 43 Mexican students were killed. Still, there are no answers for their family, The Guardian, Sep. 20, 2015. Available on http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/20/mexico-43-killed-students-, accessed on February 4, 2016.

[3] Brianna Lee, Mexico’s Drug War, Council for Foreign Relations, March 5, 2014. Available on http://www.cfr.org/mexico/mexicos-drug-war/p13689, accessed on February 4, 2016.

[4] George W. Grayson, Threat Posed by Mounting Vigilantism in Mexico, Carlisle Barracks, PA, U.S. Army War College – Strategic Studies Institute, Sep. 2011.

[5] Howard Campbell, Narco-Propaganda in the Mexican “Drug War”. An Anthropological Perspective, Latin American Perspectives, Issue 195, Vol. 41 No. 2, March 2014, p. 64.

[6] Randal C. Archibold, Victims of Massacre in Mexico Said to Be Migrants, New York Times, Aug. 25, 2010. Available on http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/world/americas/26mexico.html, accessed on February 4, 2016.

[7] Adam C. Estes, Mexico’s Tales of Bus Passengers Forced to Fight to Death, The Wire, Jun. 14, 2011. Available on http://www.thewire.com/global/2011/06/gladiator-death-fights-mexico-drug-war/38812/#disqus_thread, accessed on February 4, 2016.

[8] Simon Rogers, Mexico’s drug war visualized, The Guardian, Jan 31, 2012. Available on http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/graphic/2012/jan/31/mexico-drug-war-visualised, accessed on February 5, 2016.

[9] BBC News, Mexico violence: Monterrey police find 49 bodies, 13 May 2012. Available on http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-18052540, accessed on February 5, 2016.

[10] Ioan Grillo, Special Report – Mexico’s Zetas rewrite drug war in blood, May 23, 2012. Available on http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-mexico-drugs-zetas-idUKBRE84M0MF20120523, accessed on February 5, 2016.

[11] Campbell, p. 64.

[12] A facilitating condition of the increase in cartel-related deaths has been the diminishing costs of killers-to-hire. Estimates of a killer’s pay for a single murder in 2001 were in the range of $12.000; in 2011, cartels paid from $500 to $650 per month for indeterminate killings and other acts of violence. Paul Rextor Kan, Cartels at War, Washington, D.C., Potomac Books, 2012, p. 26.

[13] Kan, p. 29.

[14] BBC News, Human heads dumped in Mexico bar, 7 September 2006. Available on http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/5322160.stm, accessed on February 5, 2016.

[15] America Y. Guevara, Propaganda in Mexico’s Drug War, Journal of Strategic Security, 6, no. 3, 2013, p. 138.

[16] Campbell, pp. 65-66.

[17] Campbell, p. 65.

[18] Robert J. Bunker, The Growing Mexican Cartel and Vigilante War in Cyberspace, Small Wars Journal, Nov. 2011, pp. 1-4.

[19] Guevara, p. 150.

[20] Sarah Womer, Robert J. Bunker, Sureños gangs and Mexican cartel use of social networking sites, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 21:1, 2010, pp. 91-92.

[21] Womer, Bunker, pp. 86-89.

[22] Juan-Camilo Castilo, The Mexican Cartels’ employment of Inform and Influence Activities (IIA) as tools of Asymmetrical Warfare, University of Kwazulu-Natal, 2014, p. 4.

[23] Campbell, pp. 68-70.

Organised crime and terrorism Part III: Letters from Dubai: D-Company’ and the ‘93 Mumbai terror attacks

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This is the third piece in Strife’s four-part series exploring the relationship between organised crime and terrorism in a 21st century security environment. The first and second parts can be found here and here, respectively.

By: Andrea Varsori

The aftermath of the bomb near the headquarters of the Shiv Sena. Source: India Times

Rags-to-riches criminal overlords do not normally lack ambition; yet, most of them do not aim to claim the title of ‘Protectors of the Faith’. Their daily worries are mostly concerned with assuring that their network of businesses runs smoothly, that officials are sufficiently bribed or intimidated, and that all their underlings actually remain loyal. However, even the most business-minded criminal bosses can develop a sense of allegiance to their own community, be it ethnic or religious. In times of sectarian violence, these overlords may decide to act to defend their people. This decision may be completely at odds with the logic of the criminal enterprise: it entails a potential backlash from the authorities and the larger public. During sectarian conflicts, however, their reputation is at stake: inaction may spark doubts about a boss’ ability to project his own power, thus encouraging rivals to try to take over his networks. The boss’ community may also feel betrayed, and may begin to sabotage the boss’ illicit trade and favour someone else. There is no simple way to solve this problem.

Dawood Ibrahim probably never had this kind of thoughts before December 1992. At that time, Ibrahim was one of the most powerful citizens of Mumbai, although he was no longer a resident. He was born in the southern part of the city in 1955, the eldest son in a low-income family of ten. After dropping out of school, he gradually resorted to extortions and robbing, eventually ending up smuggling goods in local markets. The major boost to his career arrived while in jail: there, in fact, he managed to earn the trust of Haji Mastan and Yusuf Patel, two of the most important smugglers of the city.[1] Having understood Dawood’s ambition, they entrusted him with their business before retiring. By the time Dawood was free again, he had thus gained access to Mastan’s and Patel’s resources. Starting from there, he used both ruthless violence and cunning to profit from the weaknesses of the most important gang in Mumbai, led by Pathans from Afghanistan. By 1982, he had managed to kill the new leader of this gang; however, the Mumbai police was often able to prove his complicity in most of his gang’s crimes, and he was visiting prison quite often. On 4 May 1984, he jumped bail and fled to Dubai.[2]

In Dubai, then a major haven for smugglers, he managed to build a massive network of illegal and legal businesses. This network included both Muslims and Hindus, as it had often been the case in earlier criminal gangs of Mumbai. What became known as ‘D-Company’ — from the first letter of Dawood — smuggled in gold, silver, electronic goods, and textiles; it extorted protection from businessmen and occasionally solved disputes between them.[3] In Dubai, Ibrahim built for himself a luxurious mansion, where he organised lavish parties, inviting Mumbai’s most famous celebrities, cricketers, and politicians. His story was that of a boy from Dongri who had successfully taken control of entire criminal enterprises and who had silenced rival Hindu dons: in Mumbai, Muslims in the slums started to see him as an empowering model, as a vindicator of the Islamic minority. He could not return to his own city, however, as he knew that the police was waiting for him. This constraint became a problem for him and his associates when the Mumbai riots began in December 1992.

It all started in Ayodhya, 1,460km northeast of Mumbai. In this region, Hindu mythology claimed that Ram, one of the avatars of Vishnu, was born; a temple stood on the exact place of Ram’s birth. In 1523, Mahmud of Ghazni, commander of an army of Muslim invaders from Central Asia, conquered the area and destroyed the temple of Ram. In its place, he built the Babri Masjid, or Babur’s Mosque, in honour of the first Moghul Emperor. The memory of these events contributed to embittered relations between Hindus and Muslims in the area. In the 1980s, the Hindu Sangh Parivar (HSP), an umbrella organisation including several Hindu nationalist groups, aimed to revive the dispute. The members of its various branches claimed that the mosque had to be closed and destroyed, in order to build a new, bigger temple to Ram. The victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), itself a part of HSP, at the local state elections in 1991 decided the fate of the mosque. One year later, the government transferred the property of the land on which the Masjid stood to a Hindu organisation charged with constructing a new temple; volunteers destroyed all buildings surrounding the mosque.[4] On 6 December 1992, a crowd of 150,000 Hindu nationalist militants summoned by the main leaders managed to overcome a weak police presence and razed to the ground the Babri Masjid.[5]

This was an insult for many Indian Muslims. The destruction of the mosque in Ayodhya was followed by six days of intense riots. In Mumbai, Muslim mobs started targeting temples; the police, in a desperate attempt to control the violence, fired on looters, while Hindus retaliated on mosques.[6] This cycle of riots in Mumbai left 227 dead: around two-thirds of the victims were Muslims, while only 15% of the whole city population at that time was Islamic.[7] In January 1993, a new sequence of riots occurred: this time, the troubles lasted for ten days, and caused 557 dead and more than 2.000 injured[8]. As in the December riots, the Islamic population had been disproportionally hit by the violence.

As the riots went on, Dawood Ibrahim kept receiving discomforting news. Furious rioters were explicitly targeting Muslim men and women; after days of communal violence, angry mobs began to protest against him, shouting “Dawood to death.”[9] They felt betrayed: he seemed distant, powerless, and unable to protect them. This belief could become rapidly damaging to Dawood’s reputation and business. As the riots abated, sectarian tension did not decrease: by the end of January 1993, Dawood had finally decided to exact revenge for the riots.

He ultimately did not need to do much. He helped to hold meetings in Dubai with powerful Mumbai Muslim criminals, along with representatives of the “concerned Muslims” from the Arab world. He permitted weapons and explosives to be smuggled in India through the routes he controlled. Last, but not least, he provided the connection with the Pakistani secret services, the Inter Service Intelligence (ISI).

The plan to hit Mumbai proceeded. On the afternoon of Friday, 12 March 1993, a group of affiliates of Dawood’s smuggling networks struck the city with the widest and most complex set of bombing ever seen in a single city and on a single day. Ten explosions rocked the city between 1.28pm and 3.35pm. The bombs targeted different core points, from the Mumbai Stock Exchange, to the Katha Bazaar, the city’s largest wholesale market for grain and spice, and then to the Plaza Cinema, one of the symbols of the city’s burgeoning movie industry. At the end of the day, 257 persons were dead and 713 more were injured.[10]

Naturally, one of the targets was also the headquarters of the Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena party, a part of the HSP. The Shiv Sena had a prominent role in advocating the destruction of the Babri Masjid and in fostering anti-Muslim propaganda. A bomb exploded near an oil pump, on the side of the main building: four people died, no members of the Shiv Sena were among them. Nonetheless, the location of the bomb made very clear what was the target and the sectarian allegiance of those who had placed it. Communal riots could have been the first logical consequence.

Fortunately, police forces managed to avert this potential outcome. Moreover, the brutality and breadth of the attacks had shocked most Mumbai citizens into terror, rather than rage. As soon as the smoke from the explosions had settled, however, the police started connecting the dots. It was apparent from the beginning that this act of terrorism required a complex organization and uncommon skills. On 15 March, the Times of India claimed that “hi-tech terrorism” had arrived in India.[11] At that time, this type of terrorism had several harbingers; apart from the LTTE (the Tamil Tigers), most of them were Islamic fundamentalist organizations.

Right from the beginning, however, Dawood’s fame turned against him: his name was the first to appear in the theories that tried to explain the attacks.[12] The lack of training and discipline on the part of the terrorists also helped the police tremendously. During the bombings, in fact, some of them were reaching by van the buildings that hosted the city and the Maharashtra state administration, with the intent of murdering every BJP member they could find. As they passed near one of the target locations, however, a bomb exploded, and they abruptly decided to abort the mission.[13] Therefore, they left their van behind, filled with weapons and explosives. When the police found the vehicle, it became a decisive lead for the investigators, as the van’s owner was a relative of Tiger Memon.

As the Mumbai police officers soon discovered, Memon was the centrepiece of the bombing plot. The son of a part-time worker, second among six, he grew up in a decaying, crowded building in Pydhonie - a mostly Muslim zone of South Mumbai. After a failed attempt as a bank cashier, he started his criminal career as a chauffeur for local smugglers. He was quickly noticed for his recklessness and his knowledge of the city; this earned him an invitation to Dubai, where he became a gold carrier. In a few years, he took charge of all smuggling operations from Mumbai; a sumptuous wedding in 1985 and the opening of an office in the city’s financial quarters definitively confirmed his rise.[14]

Tiger Memon had been the true organiser and motivator behind the attacks. He supported from the beginning Dawood’s decision to retaliate for the anti-Muslim riots. He was in charge of smuggling the weapons and he knew exactly how they could best reach Mumbai: by arriving on the coast, 250km south of the city.[15] He profited from the same techniques, connections, and intelligence that he used when transporting gold and electronic goods. He also selected the people that could deliver the bombs: they were all members of his network. After choosing his affiliates, he organised their military training in Pakistan; he visited the training camp for some days, according to one of the participants.[16] Most importantly, after giving his men a final rousing speech, the evening before the attacks, he left on a 4am flight to Dubai to join his large family.[17]

Later judiciary proceedings confirmed Tiger Memon’s role. The final judgement on the bombings arrived on 21 March 2013, with a sentence by the Supreme Court of India, which upheld prison sentences for most of the accused. Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Memon, however, have not yet faced trial: they have gone into hiding, possibly in Pakistan; Dawood’s new house has been traced to Karachi as late as 2006.[18] Still, their departure from Dubai and the greater attention on the part of the authorities have taken their toll on Ibrahim’s and Memon’s criminal network. The decision to help to stage the attacks has divided the ‘D-Company’ along religious lines: in 1996, Chhota Rajan, one of Dawood’s main subordinates, formed his own gang in retaliation for the 1993 bombings. Rajan was Hindu, as most of his own affiliates: the schism caused a flare-up of gang-related homicides in Mumbai, with more than a hundred people dead.[19]

Dawood’s decision to act, then, caused permanent damages to his criminal syndicate. Sectarian division has certainly harmed ‘D-Company’s’ activity after infighting broke out in the late 1990s. The public nature of the 1993 terrorist attack, moreover, provided too much unwanted attention for a criminal organisation. Dawood’s choice can be explained by paying attention to the dual nature of his role as a ‘Don’: he had been both the man in charge for a criminal firm’s success and the potential avenger of the Muslim minorities of Mumbai. He decided to act to fulfil the latter role, instead of the former. The fact that he is not serving a prison sentence in India shows that he had some guarantees on his own personal safety. In this perspective, a crisis of his own criminal network may have seemed as a reasonable price to pay.

 

 

Andrea is an MPhil candidate at the Department of War Studies. His research project focuses on security issues in mega-cities: in particular, he is interested in the role of the urban environment in shaping organized criminal and political violence. He tweets at @Andrea_Varsori

 

Notes:

[1] Zaidi, S. H., Black Friday. The True Story of the Bombay Bomb Blasts, New Delhi, Penguin Books, 2002, pp. 21-23.

[2] Zaidi, p. 25.

[3] Zaidi, p. 26-27.

[4]McLeod, J., The History of India, Santa Barbara, CA, Greenwood Publishing, 2015, p. 194.

[5] Stein, B., D. Arnold, A History of India, Chichester, John Wiley & Sons, 2010, pp. 411-412.

[6] Padgaonkar, D. (ed.), When Bombay Burned, New Delhi, UBS Publishers, 1993, pp. IX-XI.

[7] Padgaonkar, p. XVI.

[8] Padgaonkar, pp. 42-100.

[9] Zaidi, p. 21.

[10] Zaidi, pp. 1-17.

[11] High-tech Terrorism, The Times of India, March 15, 1993.

[12] Hypotheses about his involvement started to appear on that same Friday and right afterwards. Zaidi, p. 104; Padgaonkar, p. 169.

[13] Zaidi, p. 94.

[14] Zaidi, pp. 31-36.

[15] Zaidi, pp. 40-52.

[16] Zaidi, pp. 61-62.

[17] Zaidi, p. 82.

[18] Khan, A., Tiger Memon wanted to bomb plane at Sahar Airport to avenge Mumbai riots, says 1993 bomb blasts accused, India Today, August 1, 2015. Available on http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/tiger-memon-wanted-to-bomb-plane-at-sahar-airport-to-avenge-mumbai-riots/1/455519.html .

[19] Swami, P., Mumbai’s Mafia Wars, Frontline, Vol. 16, March-April 1999. Available on http://www.frontline.in/static/html/fl1607/16070420.htm .

Organised crime and terrorism Part I: Godfathers and bombs - organised crime and terrorist tactics

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This introductory piece is the first in a four-part series exploring the relationship between organised crime and terrorism in a 21st century security environment.

By: Andrea Varsori

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Source: Interpol

The general understanding of how criminal organisations work implies that the leaders of those groups are mostly discreet, business-minded folks[1]. After all, criminal organisations have one, big task that influences their entire agenda: they want to make money. They are criminal because they use illicit means, like coercion or bribes, or because they deal in illegal goods, or both. According to this view, most of the time profit is their major objective. Rivalries and fights may start when there are misgivings on who gains the most from a deal, or when rivals start to use coercive means to gain control of greater shares of the market. Still, according to this view, the most reasonable Dons know that indiscriminate violence is a tool to be used only in very peculiar occasions. Normally, it is at best useless, or at worst outright dangerous.

Nonetheless, violence is fundamental for mafias and gangs in most cases. Criminal organisations use it to extort money from legitimate firms; to safeguard the secrecy of important information; to punish those who do not fall in line. They can also sell violence, to create ‘protection rings’[2] or to assert monopolies. Most importantly, they can play a leading role in limiting potential violence: that is, they structure a widespread, individual, anomic violence into something more organised, more ready to exploit economies of scale, and definitely more dangerous. At their best, mafias can mimic the state or rule where the latter does not arrive, establishing their own practices and rituals. Thus, an efficient criminal group learns to administer violence to impose a set of rules: it sets itself as judge, jury, and executioner; it masters violence, so that only the threat of action is enough to quell any opposition.

To the wise godfather, then, terrorism is arguably the nemesis. In its most brutal, spectacular form, which nowadays has taken the form of the threat of Daesh, it is a double-edged knife for a criminal organisation. This knife, however, has the sharper edge facing its own user. A criminal group stands to lose from the use of terrorist tactics: terrorism forces the state to focus all attention on the authors, as it constitutes the ultimate danger to a state’s authority and legitimacy. Also, indiscriminate violence often generates a huge backlash from the civil society: thus, criminal organisations, which thrive and prosper in an underworld of secrecy and corruption, may be crushed by the reaction to a terrorist event.

This does not mean that terror and crime can never be partners. More often than not, terrorist organisations adopt ways and techniques from the criminal world. The most obvious application is for financing[3]: terrorist groups have long been dealing in extortion and blackmail (as for the IRA in Northern Ireland[4]), or in illicit trade (as for the FARC in Colombia[5], or the Taliban in Afghanistan[6]), in order to get the money to further their political activities. Seeing it happen the other way around, however, is quite rarer.

This series will focus on this latter type of the crime/terror nexus. Why should a criminal organisation use dangerous terrorist tactics? Which kind of objective is it pursuing? Is this an entirely new phenomenon? We will deal with these questions all along the three parts of our Series. First, Martin Stein will explore the bombings of 1992-93 in Italy and their role in the struggle between the Sicilian Mafia and the Italian State; then, the Bombay bombings of March 1993 will be covered, and how one of the most famous Indian dons, Dawood Ibrahim, was part of the plot to hit India; finally, Joe Atkins will review the cases of mass killings and ‘disappearances’ in Mexico, exploring how terror is widely used as a tool to assert control on a frightened population. The varied scope of these articles will highlight different aspects of the link between criminal organisations and the use of terror. In Italy, bombings were part of a precise strategy to intimidate the Italian state; in India, the attacks were motivated by religious reasons and by Ibrahim’s intent to appear still as the protector of Bombay Muslims; in Mexico, terror seems to constitute a ‘normal’ part of ‘cartel justice’, thus delivering worrying parallels between ‘narco-warriors’ and fundamentalists.

 

Andrea is an MPhil candidate at the Department of War Studies. His research project focuses on security issues in mega-cities: in particular, he is interested in the role of the urban environment in shaping organized criminal and political violence. He tweets at @Andrea_Varsori

 

 

 

Notes:

 

[1] The outmost example of this perspective is the economic analysis of organized crime, whereas the criminal organisation is analysed as a particular type of firm. See Fiorentini, G., S. Peltzman (eds.), The economics of organized crime, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 87-108. A view of criminal organisations as risk-averse groups that prefer to hide or corrupt rather than fight is also used in political science. See B. Lessing, Logics of Violence in Criminal War, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 59(8), 2015, p. 1497.

[2] D. Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia: the business of private protection, Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press, 1993.

[3] For the broader issue of the financing of terrorist organization, see the Winter 2015 Strife Series: https://strifeblog.org/2015/01/07/financing-terror-a-strife-4-part-series/ .

[4] J. Burns, Dealing in the business of fear, Financial Times, 7 January 1992.

[5] P. Chalk, The Latin American Drug Trade, Santa Monica, CA., Rand Corp., 2011, pp. 15-18.

[6] A. Giustozzi (ed.), Decoding the New Taliban. Insights from the Afghan Field, London, Hurst Publishers, 2009, pp. 7-22, 150.

CSD2014 Conference ‘Organised Crime in Conflict Zones’

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CSD2014 Conference ‘Organised Crime in Conflict Zones’

The CSD2014 Conference ‘Organised Crime in Conflict Zones’ will take place on the 6th of March, 2014. Organised by postgraduate students from the Conflict, Security and Development (CSD) programme at King’s College London (KCL) and supported by the War Studies Department, the conference will be held at the Great Hall of the Strand Campus.

The one-day event will focus on transnational organised crime, a multi-billion pound global business and an area of growing international concern. The programme will address the conflict-crime nexus and focus on three key areas of organised crime. These are drug trafficking, terrorist criminality and human trafficking. The conference objective is to address gaps in policy and scholarship, and to encourage research into this subject of growing relevance.

The event will benefit from contributions of leading policymakers, practitioners and academics in the field. Confirmed speakers include:

  • Nigel Inkster, Director of Transnational Threats and Political Risk at the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) and Chairman of the World Economic Forum’s Committee on Terrorism.
  • Lynellyn D. Long, Chair of Trustees at ‘Her Equality, Rights and Autonomy’ (HERA) - Women Entrepreneurs Against Trafficking and former Chief of Mission of the International Organisation for Migration in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
  • Charlie Edwards, Senior Research Fellow and Director of National Security and Resilience Studies at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).
  • Parosha Chandran, award-winning human rights barrister at 1 Pump Court Chambers in London and co-founder of the Trafficking Law and Policy Forum.
  • Lt. Gen. Jonathon Riley, former honorary Colonel of the Royal Welch Fusiliers and visiting professor at the War Studies Department of KCL. Lt. Gen. Riley commanded British peacekeeping forces in Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Iraq & Afghanistan and was Deputy Commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan (2007-2009).

The total of 14 speakers will address the root causes of organised crime, connections to conflict, strategic responses and forward-looking policy implications.

For more information on the conference and our speakers, please visit our website at: http://csd2014.wordpress.com/speakers-profiles/
Preferential rates are available for students, to purchase tickets please go to: http://estore.kcl.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=2&deptid=17&catid=16&prodid=318
For any queries please contact us at: [email protected]

We hope that you are able to join us at the Great Hall and be part of this exciting new venture.

Yours faithfully,

CSD2014 Organising Committee
CSD2014 Blog, Facebook, Twitter