WHSBP - Untold Stories - US Private Military Contractors Recruit in Africa

Like it or not, our next president will have to deal with conflicts all over the world. The nature of warfare has been changing (a lot of ink has been spent on this already) but obviously, this administration did not read the memo.

In this context, it is important to remember how significant it is that Hillary Clinton has pledged to remove military contractors from Iraq, something that her Democratic rival disagrees with. It is easy to dismiss this as campaign talk and this may seem as a side issue to the grand scheme of things of the war in Iraq and beyond, but it is a significant first step, and a risky one too in terms of campaigning since defense and military contractors are big campaign contributors. In a speech marking the 5th anniversary of the War in Iraq, at George Washington University, she stated

“I will also work to remove armed private military contractors who are conducting combat-oriented and security functions in Iraq. For five years their behavior and lack of supervision and accountability have often eroded our credibility, endangered U.S. and Iraqi lives and undermined our mission. Now, Senator Obama and I have a substantive disagreement here. He won’t rule out continuing to use armed private military contractors in Iraq to do jobs that historically have been done by the U.S. military or government personnel. When I am president I will ask the Joint Chiefs for their help in reducing reliance on armed private military contractors. With the goal of ultimately implementing a ban on such contractors.”

I think this validates Jane Hamsher and Naomi Klein’s points that this primary allows people to pressure candidates to get what we want and hold their feet to the fire. And yes, Clinton may be more hawkish than Obama (and even that could be argued) but their respective (or former) foreign policy advisors (I’m thinking Richard Holbrooke for HRC and Samantha Power, for BO before she put her foot in her mouth) are not exactly peacenicks either. But at this juncture, this particular move on HRC’s part is significant and progressive. Heck, I would like it from anyone to align himself or herself with Bernie Sanders!

Why do I care so much about this particular issue? (And I have written about it already) Because I want a president who understands the nature of new wars, and privatization and denationaliziation of forces are a central aspects of the changing nature of warfare. Hillary may not have been dodging sniper bullets in Bosnia but the fact that she went there (and to other conflict places as well) tells me this is something that’s on her oh-so-analytical mind. And I am sure something like the issue below would attract her attention.

Via IRIN,

“Namibia’s independence war ended nearly 20 years ago, but the experience gained by many soldiers during the conflict has made the country a fertile hunting ground for private security companies seeking recruits for the world’s 21st century wars.”

Like many African countries that have experienced civil wars since their independence, Namibia found itself with an oversupply of men whose only marketable skills were tied to guerilla warfare. So, when an American private military company came to recruit, it was a golden opportunities for many of them, especially considering Namibia’s 35% unemployment rate.

Private military companies are facing recruitment issues in the United States so, they have now turned their attention to recruiting Third-Country Nationals (TCNs) to staff their missions in Afghanistan and Iraq (sometimes without telling their recruits that that’s where they will be going). Currently, there are about 155,000 private military contractors in Iraq, and about 30% of them are TCNs. We already know that their presence there is controversial, as illustrated by multiples incidents and practices (See Blackwater). But of course, TCNs have several attractive qualities:

“The growth of the private security industry is increasingly targetting developing countries where many TCNs have valuable conflict experience, said Doug Brooks, president of the International Peace Operations Association, a Washington DC-based trading group for private security companies.

“They have some knowledge about risk mitigation, and about what is risky in a war zone. Most people in the world don’t know what this is. People in Africa do. I mean a lot of people have been in these areas and they have this amazing amount of experience they bring to their jobs,” Brooks said.

Hiring personnel from Africa also has another attraction. “They tend to be much cheaper than Americans or Westerners – maybe by a factor of 5 or 6,” Brooks told IRIN. “Should the US government only hire Americans to do these jobs, the costs would be just insane.” What is inexpensive by Western standards can be a pay bonanza in Africa and other developing countries. In Namibia, word of mouth spread that the security jobs in Iraq and Afghanistan would pay about US$550 per month, or about 10 times the monthly wage of a local security guard.”

So, TCNs can be used to take more risks, they might have gained their experience with warlords of more or less dubious reputation, and they are cheap. I also love the name of that lobbying group of private military companies; the reference to peace is quite touching. But, if you listen to the industry, it is all good for such countries and can contribute to their development. It’s a win-win situation.

These recruitments have of course been controversial, especially for local human rights groups. As mentioned, recruits may not have access to the media and know what is going on in Afghanistan and Iraq and may not be told that these will be the terrains of their missions. Moreover,

“”We’ve seen a lot of third country nationals where their passports are taken, or where they were delivered to a place to work which was different to what they were promised,” said Erica Razook, legal fellow at Amnesty International USA’s Business and Human Rights Unit. Rights groups told IRIN that some TCNs effectively work in conditions of “indentured servitude,” in which they sign employment contracts that last for three to five years, “but spend their first year just paying off travel expenses,” Razook said.”

And then, there is the general issue of oversight and legal training. The recruits may have come from militia, paramilitary groups, insurgency groups. They probably do not have any sense of Geneva convention and other legal frameworks that apply to combat zone and the treatment of prisoners and civilians. We already know it is a major issue with military contractors, even when they come from Western countries and are supposed to know better. And the question is raised as to whether these recruiting practices violate the International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries

Of course, private military companies do NOT like to be likened or compared to mercenaries. They want a more professional standing and reputation. But in the case of Namibia, the government fought back:

“In terms of Article 4 (8) (b) of the Constitution, Namibians are not allowed to get involved in the military or security forces of other countries without the written permission of the Namibian government. The Defence Act of 2002 criminalises the involvement of Namibians in the military, reserve or any auxiliary force of any country without the written permission of the defence minister as an offence punishable with a fine, prison service or both.”

What is the Namibian government afraid of? That when these men are dismissed from their PMC contracts, they will come back home, maybe with more money, but not exactly different skills than what they had when they left. They might still present a security risk to their own countries.

Suggested readings:

• P.W. Singer, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry
• Deborah Avant, The Market for Force: The Consequences of Privatizing Security
• Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army
• Madelaine Drohan, Making a Killing: How and Why Corporations Use Armed Force to Do Business

Why Hillary Should be President (WHSBP) - About that Beijing Speech

I know a lot of Hillary supporters refer to her speech at the UN Women’s conference in Beijing in 1995. So, today, I decided to take a closer look at the whole speech, especially in the context of Senator Obama’s remark on abortion and the need to respect the anti-choice position (just like we should respect and understand anti-LGBT positions). Again, remember, this speech was delivered 13 years ago, on one of these trips that Hillary took where she just shook hands with officials and watched little girls dance (snark). The audio is embedded below, otherwise, I selected a few excerpts (the full text is here, with video as well).

As usual, with Senator Clinton, this is a substantial speech. It’s not just all touchy-feely. It’s about real social conditions and real policies. And in addition, Hillary did not spare anyone in that speech. She was not conceding to misogyny, and preaching the respect for the “other side”.

“There are some who question the reason for this conference. Let them listen to the voices of women in their homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces. There are some who wonder whether the lives of women and girls matter to economic and political progress around the globe. Let them look at the women gathered here and at Huairou — the homemakers and nurses, the teachers and lawyers, the policymakers and women who run their own businesses. It is conferences like this that compel governments and peoples everywhere to listen, look, and face the world’s most pressing problems. Wasn’t it after all — after the women’s conference in Nairobi ten years ago that the world focused for the first time on the crisis of domestic violence?”

In other words, no Kos theory of “let us elect Democrats and you ladies will benefit indirectly.” Women’s issues have to be addressed AS gender issues and not as just by-products of larger socio-economic and political mechanisms. Any discussion of social and economic policy has to take gender as a foundational factor.

“What we are learning around the world is that if women are healthy and educated, their families will flourish. If women are free from violence, their families will flourish. If women have a chance to work and earn as full and equal partners in society, their families will flourish. And when families flourish, communities and nations do as well. That is why every woman, every man, every child, every family, and every nation on this planet does have a stake in the discussion that takes place here.”

And here again is where even progressives often get it wrong. It is not a case of “if we put in place progressive policies, women will do better”, the correct causality is “women-targeted policies will improve EVERYBODY’s living conditions.” And, incidentally, there are ample statistics to support every point that HRC is making here regarding education, literacy, health, poverty and violence.

“The great challenge of this conference is to give voice to women everywhere whose experiences go unnoticed, whose words go unheard. Women comprise more than half the word’s population, 70% of the world’s poor, and two-thirds of those who are not taught to read and write. We are the primary caretakers for most of the world’s children and elderly. Yet much of the work we do is not valued — not by economists, not by historians, not by popular culture, not by government leaders.”

Again, I am always amazed at HRC’s capacity to pack enormous amounts of accurate information in a few sentences but these few sentences just want to make you go “yeah, she gets it!”. The invisibility of women, the lack of recognition for the second (and third) shift, the systematic devaluation of women’s work (paid or unpaid), the lack of economic attention to the informal economy (where most workers are women) as legitimate economic activity (something against which Yunus also fumed). The bottom line is, the world economy rests on the backs of women, and especially women of the Global South, women of color, indigenous women, who fuel the economic growth of the fast-growing economies of the South without social, economic or political recognition. But certainly not for lack of activism in all these domains. Cases in point…

“At this very moment, as we sit here, women around the world are giving birth, raising children, cooking meals, washing clothes, cleaning houses, planting crops, working on assembly lines, running companies, and running countries. Women also are dying from diseases that should have been prevented or treated. They are watching their children succumb to malnutrition caused by poverty and economic deprivation. They are being denied the right to go to school by their own fathers and brothers. They are being forced into prostitution, and they are being barred from the bank lending offices and banned from the ballot box.”

What she is discussing here is a theme that runs through her campaign (and that she emphasizes in her current campaign): she wants to make the unprivileged visible to all (especially the select attendees of a UN conference); and not just visible in an abstract, overgeneralized fashion, but in a very specific way that reflects the plurality of conditions of the world’s women, which is why she later states “We need to understand there is no one formula for how women should lead our lives.” There is no relativism here but a recognition that feminists’ struggle are different. The social structure of privileges make is so that white middle class highly educated feminists from the Western countries are more likely to have a bullhorn to make themselves heard than women from the Global South. So, we should be careful with policy prescriptions that do not take different feminist agendas into account.

“Our goals for this conference, to strengthen families and societies by empowering women to take greater control over their own destinies, cannot be fully achieved unless all governments — here and around the world — accept their responsibility to protect and promote internationally recognized human rights. The international community has long acknowledged and recently reaffirmed at Vienna that both women and men are entitled to a range of protections and personal freedoms, from the right of personal security to the right to determine freely the number and spacing of the children they bear. No one — No one should be forced to remain silent for fear of religious or political persecution, arrest, abuse, or torture.”

Emphasis mine (with big applauses on the audio). And this one is non-negotiable. There is no alternative viewpoint that deserves respect, Senator Obama. There is one acceptable viewpoint, the one delineated above, the one that treats women as full social participants, the one that sees women as moral agents, as autonomous beings capable of making their own decisions. There is no other acceptable position. And if some people don’t like it, like Elton John said, the hell with them. And then, comes these statements, each of which got major applause, the emphases are HRC’s in her speech:

“It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls.

It is a violation of human rights when women and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution for human greed — and the kinds of reasons that are used to justify this practice should no longer be tolerated.

It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire, and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small.

It is a violation of human rights when individual women are raped in their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war.

It is a violation of human rights when a leading cause of death worldwide among women ages 14 to 44 is the violence they are subjected to in their own homes by their own relatives.

It is a violation of human rights when young girls are brutalized by the painful and degrading practice of genital mutilation.

It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that includes being forced to have abortions or being sterilized against their will.”

And note the swipe at China. Can anyone deny that this woman will face down dictators and other rogues and prevail?

“Let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights once and for all.”

YES! No compromise! No wishy-washy fauxgressive Kumbaya! Progressivism IS feminism, without qualifications.

Cross-posted at the Global Sociology Blog

Note: my own writing on gender and globalization, see here.

Why Hillary Should be President (WHSBP) - Untold Stories

On September, 23, 2003, Senator Hillary Clinton was interviewed for the great PBS program Wide Angle on the topic of human trafficking (2003, folks, that was 5 years ago, ok… and yes, that was the year of the beginning of the war in Iraq but that was not the only thing going on in the world. I, for one, am glad somebody was paying attention to these other crucial issues even though I disagree with her - heck, ANYONE’s vote for the war). Let me excerpt a few chosen quote (full transcript at the link above, so YES, I’m picking and choosing).

“Hillary Clinton: Well. Jamie, the fact that this is a modern-day form of slavery was shocking to me. When I realized, because of my travels and exposure as First Lady, how prevalent it was, I determined that we should do something about it. I went to Beijing to the UN Conference on Women in September of 1995, and spoke out against a long series of abuses that were human rights violations of women’s rights and among those, of course, was trafficking. And then, in the time after the conference, when it did become an item that was of higher interest on the national and international agenda, we followed up. In 1996, I went with my husband to Thailand for a state visit. I went to the north where I met with NGOs [nongovernmental organizations], trying to help young girls who had been sold by their families into prostitution, trafficked into the brothels, mostly in Bangkok.

Jamie Rubin: So they were sex slaves, these girls.

Hillary Clinton: They were. They were 10, 11, 12 years old. I remember going to a hospice and meeting a 12-year-old girl who had become very sick because of AIDS, had been thrown out of the brothel, had found her way back to her family, who didn’t want her, and ended up in this hospice for dying teenagers and adolescents. And both I and my staff, led by Melanne Verveer, who was responsible for the work on issues like this, began talking about it with everyone we could find in the White House and the State Department. In 1997, we began something called Vital Voices, and we brought together women from the former Soviet Union in Vienna. And what I found was that it was a huge problem, not just in a country in Asia, like Thailand, but also in Ukraine, Belarus, the former Soviet Union. And then the administration, under my husband’s leadership and under Secretary Albright’s leadership, really made this a high priority, which led to our involvement in international conferences with the Secretary of State, the President, and other high officials, raising this with governments around the world.”

But but but… as First Lady, all she did was organize tea parties!! You know what? That’s what I call leadership, damn it (Disclaimer: I know such an interview will be full of self-serving statements but the very fact that she knows what she is talking about is evident… below, you’ll find my own writing on the subject… she hits all the crucial points in this!).

Note to trolls: yes, 1996 was also the year she traveled to Bosnia… no it’s not inconsistent… a year has 365 days, so you can actually go to different places in one year (I know, ain’t that incredible??).

And here is one for the skeptic feminists:

“When Madeline Albright became Secretary of State — after the announcement and when she was confirmed — I went over to the State Department. And we had a joint meeting where we talked about women’s rights as being really important to American foreign policy — and not as some kind of marginal luxury that maybe when we didn’t have something better to think about we could worry about. Because where women have rights, as we have found in Afghanistan, and in many other parts of the world, the countries are more likely to be stable, they are more likely to be pro-democracy.”

YES, I want a President who understands the gendered nature of social issues such as trafficking. Human trafficking sounds gender neutral but the reality is that criminal networks are masculine organization. The victims of human trafficking are largely women. It is absurd to design policies that are gender neutral when the targeted population “just happens” to belong to one gender: women. So what did Hillary do exactly? In the interview, she emphasizes that during WJC’s administration she did NOT work on the law enforcement side of things. Instead, she started the Vital Voices initiative after Beijing (you can read about their accomplishments - and recognition of HRC’s leadership) at their website, but the general goal is to raise awareness.

And here again, Hillary shows, to someone like me who constantly writes and works on globalization, that she’s got the more detailed, nuanced and consistent view of the phenomenon:

“It’s the dark underbelly of globalization. Now that we can move goods and people with such ease all over the world, it is very hard to know what it is that we are transporting, where it’s supposed to end up. This is true for human beings, it’s true for drugs, it’s true for weapons, it’s true for terrorism, it is something we have to come to grips with. I think we should be looking at trafficking, not only as an evil, in and of itself, that the world has to combat, but as part of some of the problems that we face because of globalization. Who would have thought, before September 11th, that hijackers could use credit cards, modern commercial airplanes, and box cutters to wreak such havoc? I really think it’s time for the world community to come together internationally and start setting out rules for the 21st century.”

Here again, this is a horribly long post, so, most of it is below the fold but I am trying to convey here that here is someone who, again, displays leadership where, in my view, it matters: on problems that have global ramifications. She does so with passion and intelligence (huh? Who knew you could have both?), approaches the issue of trafficking with compassion without losing sight of the national / global policy implications.

To paraphrase the song, the world needs Hillary.

A major source of tensions specifically related to globalization is the emergence and alliance of organized criminal networks. My focus here is on the characteristics that make such organizations a source of global instability. Organized criminal organizations have the following traits:

• They are profit-oriented: their goal is to make money by supplying illegal goods (such as drugs, weapons, human organs, prostitutes or sex slaves) through criminal means (such extortion, protection, corruption, murder or money-laundering).

• Most have high longevity: some criminal organizations have existed for decades if not for centuries.

• They are organized so as to facilitate criminal activities, such as non-hierarchical and flexible networks.

• They all use violence at every level of their trade: against competitors, customers, suppliers, officials and even their own member as a form of social control.

• They engage in corruption of government and corporate officials as well as law enforcement agents In the context of globalization, not only have traditional criminal networks, such as the Italian Mafia or the Japanese Yakuza adapted to the new political and economic conditions, but new criminal organizations have emerged precisely as a product of globalization capitalizing on the profitability and high demands for new illegal commodities on a global scale.

Global Criminal Networks

In her research on global sex trafficking, Kathryn Farr (2005) offers the following typology of organized crime groups.

Established Mafias
Russian Mafia

According to Farr, the Russian mafia had long been a part of the Soviet state, capitalizing on a corrupt political structure and a scarcity of goods that generated a black market. When the communist state finally collapsed, the Russian mafia found itself in a position to benefit tremendously from the chaotic transition to capitalism. It was able to take control of large segments of the Russian economy: it accounts for approximately 40% of the Russian economy and controls around 50,000 businesses and numerous financial institutions and banks involved in joint ventures with foreign investors. One of its major activities is extortion whereby 70 to 80% of Russian businesses pay protection money.

Most of the 12,000 identified criminal groups are involved in sex trafficking, money laundering, weapon and drug smuggling. As any profitable enterprise would do, the Russian mafia developed ties with other criminal groups (Italian mafia, Japanese Yakuza, Chinese triads) but also with revolutionary groups (such as the Colombian FARC, a group defined as terrorist by the Colombian government and which is heavily involved in the production of cocaine).

Whereas other established organized crime groups have suffered losses at the hands of law enforcement (US and Italian mafias, the Medellin drug cartel in Colombia), the Russian mafia has benefited from the weakness and corruption of the Russian state and is able to operate in almost complete impunity and extend its reach on a global scale.

Japanese Yakusa

The Japanese Yakuza have existed since the 17th century and count approximately 5,000 groups across Japan. They operate mostly in Japan with ramifications throughout Asia, Australia and Europe. They are involved in drugs and weapons smuggling as well as money-laundering and extortion but they are major providers of sex slaves and prostitutes throughout Asia as well as prime organizers of sex tours.

Chinese Triads

The Chinese Triads also came into existence in the 17th century as secret societies. They operate as loosely organized structures in conjunction with Chinese gangs (also known as “Tongs”). The Triads are also heavily involved in the sex trafficking and prostitution on a global scale as well as illegal immigrant smuggling. They own massage parlors, escort services and night clubs in most Western countries. These groups are also involved in bride abductions: the kidnapping of young women and girls to be married to men living in areas where brides are not available due to a shortage of girls.

Italian-America Mafia

The Italian-American mafia, also known as La Cosa Nostra (“our thing” in Italian, LCN) has been in existence since the early 1900s, created by Italian immigrants, mostly from Sicily. This organization, initially composed of five major families, was the first one to be labeled “mafia” and became part of the popular imagination through Mario Puzo’s book, The Godfather, and the series of films based on it. The complex structure of LCN has been uncovered by US-Italian joint investigations that led to hundreds of arrests in the 1980s and 1990s. These investigations also revealed the deep mafia infiltration of the Italian dominant political party, up to seven-time Prime Minister Andreotti. Today, the FBI estimates that LCN has approximately 25,000 members worldwide. Although less powerful than in the glory days post-World War II, Cosa Nostra is still involved in murder, extortion, drug trafficking, corruption, gambling, infiltration of legitimate businesses, labor racketeering, loan sharking, prostitution, pornography, and tax fraud schemes.

Colombian Cartels

For many years, the Medellin and Cali cartels from Colombia were incredibly powerful organizations on the global criminal stage. The Medellin cartel was headed by the infamous Pablo Escobar who became one of the richest men in the world and who once described cocaine as “the Third World’s atomic bomb” (Robinson, 2000). The Medellin cartel was instrumental in developing smuggling routes for their cocaine to Europe and the United States. When the United States government demanded that Escobar be extradited for drug smuggling, he offered to pay the Colombian national debt (and was not extradited). The Medellin cartel is also infamous for the level of violence it exacted: the cartel is responsible for the assassination of four Colombian presidential candidates, a Supreme Court judge and more than twenty lower-court judges. At its height, the Medellin cartel controlled 80% of the world’s cocaine traffic. The cartel’s demise would come in 1993 after an all-out war with US Delta forces and Colombian Special force and the shooting death of Escobar.

The Cali cartel, led by the Orejuela brothers, was always more sophisticated and discrete than the Medellin cartel but no less violent. It benefited from the end of the rival cartel to reorganize cocaine trafficking in more flexible mini-cartels that generated billions of dollars in profits. However, stricter law enforcement and the emergence of new cartels have reduced its hold on the cocaine market.

Newer Organized Crime Groups

The political, social and economic changes brought about by globalization have affected the shape of organized crime so that not only have established networks shifted their activities and modes of organizations but also global instability has made possible the emergence of new criminal networks on the global stages. These networks focused their efforts on illegal activities that would be low-risk and very lucrative: mainly, sex trafficking and prostitution.

In the 1990s, the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the liberalization of former communist countries in Eastern Europe produced weak states where organized criminal organizations could flourish. For instance, Albanian criminal groups, once scattered and disorganized, became a hub for all types of trafficking from the East to Western Europe, especially prostitution and sex trafficking but also illegal immigrants. These groups took advantage of their geographical position, right across the Adriatic Sea from Italy, the main destination for their trafficked “goods.” Albanian groups are known for their violence and ruthlessness. Their main mode of “recruitment” into prostitution and sex trafficking is through abduction so much so that, in parts of Albania, parents keep their girls from school as schools are a prime place of abduction.

Similarly, the breakup of Yugoslavia into different republics, such as Croatia or Bosnia-Herzegovina, has given rise to ethnically-specific organized crime groups. These groups target particularly the massive refugee camps where there is a large pool of potential victims available. Also, since revolutionary groups were very active in former Yugoslavia, the black market for illegal weapons was very profitable for criminal groups. The deals are that revolutionary groups abduct women in refugee camps, turn them over to organized crime groups that process them into prostitution whereas organized crime groups repay revolutionaries with weapons and whatever else they might need to wage war.

At one point or another, we have all received spam emails offering us vast sums of money if we let small amounts be deposited on our bank accounts for a while. These emails generally come from supposed Nigerian officials. They actually the latest transnational financial scams for Nigerian organized crime groups, a low-cost, virtually risk-free activity. Nigerian and other West African groups have long been involved in drug trafficking as well as sex trafficking mostly for the French and Belgian prostitution markets.

As the Medellin and Cali cartels lost their hold on the traffic of cocaine, they were replaced by smaller, more decentralized groups from Mexico and Latin America, all initially involved in drug trafficking and money laundering, as well as prostitution rings in Florida, as in the case of the large Cadena Mexican gang.

In other words, every region of the world has seen the rise of new organized crime networks establishing their platform of activities in their area of origin but quickly linking with each other and with older criminal organizations in areas of operation where risks were lower and profits higher, such as sex trafficking. All these groups benefited from the increased importance of global flows.

Global Criminal Activities

Manuel Castells (1998) states that drug trafficking still remains the preferred money-maker for organized crime syndicates. However, most organizations have diversified their activities as they connected with each other on the global marketplace.

Weapons Trafficking

There is, of course, a legal weapon trade, where companies from the United States and Western Europe are the main suppliers. The illegal trade in weapons derives from the fact that some countries and organizations are barred from acquiring them. Some countries, such as Iran, Iraq, Libya, or Serbia, are under arms embargo whereby the international community makes it illegal for companies and other countries to sell weapons as part of sanctions for alleged violation of international law or non-compliance with United Nations Resolutions. In other cases, groups involved in civil wars (such as rebel groups in Sierra Leone, or revolutionary groups in Colombia) as well as terrorist groups cannot openly buy weapons on the legal market and have to resort to illegal means and acquire weapons from the black market.

Black market in weapons is amply supplied largely thanks to the use military buildup of the Cold War between the United States and the USSR. When the USSR collapsed, weapon stocks were not properly handled and monitored and ended up creating a huge black market, so much that the Soviet AK-47 assault rifle is the weapon of choice in African civil war because it is light and has almost no recoil (and therefore can be used by children), never jams and is very cheap. Anti-personnel mines are still being produced by 13 countries (including the United States) and used in various conflicts around the globe. Unexploded landmines remain in the ground long after a conflict is over and continue to main civilians (approximately 15 to 20,000 casualties each year). The Russian mafia as well as criminal organizations from the former republics of the Soviet Union was instrumental in gaining control of USSR stocks and turning them into a lucrative trade by selling to embargoed nations as well as rebel and terrorist groups.

Although the bulk of weapon trafficking is in light and small arms (such as AK-47s), most Western governments are concerned about the trafficking of nuclear material that could be used to manufacture nuclear weapons. Here again, such fear has been triggered by the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the lack of surveillance of nuclear installations as well as the financial desperation of Russian scientists working there.

Human Trafficking

Human trafficking is now the third most lucrative venture for organized crime (after drugs and weapons, human trafficking generates approximately $12 billion a year) and covers different types of enterprises such as illegal immigrant smuggling as well as sex trafficking. As we have seen, globally, large numbers of people live in desperate poverty under oppressive political systems. Such conditions constitute the major factors that push people to emigrate. At the same time, most destination countries (United States and Western Europe) have tightened their immigration requirements, making it more difficult for immigrants to enter and remain in a country legally or obtain political refugee status.

Faced with such conditions, a large number of people have to resort to illegal immigration and place their fate in the hands of criminal smuggling networks for vast sums of money. The United States and Europe receive approximately 700,000 illegal immigrants every year. These immigrants constitute a very profitable business for dozens of criminal groups who often demand that they repay their smuggling fee by working for them in the destination country. In this sense, illegal immigrants smuggling constitutes a new form of slavery. Furthermore, it is a very low-risk activity: if smuggled immigrants are caught by the authorities, they are deported and the smuggling network is often left intact or smugglers receive a slap on the wrist.

Human trafficking also covers the trafficking of women and children to feed prostitution rings and the sex industry. According to Victor Malarek (2003), there have been four waves of trafficked women:

1. the first wave took place in the 1970s and was composed mostly of Asian women, from Thailand and the Philippines;

2. the second wave took place in the early 1980s and was composed mainly of African women from Ghana and Nigeria;

3. the third wave happened in the mid to late-1980s and was composed mainly of women from Latin America, such as Brazil, Colombia and the Dominican Republic;

4. the fourth and current wave is composed of women from Central and Eastern Europe. Under full conditions of globalization, this fourth wage occurs at a speed and in proportion never seen before: every year, approximately 175,000 women from the former Soviet republics are trafficked into the sex trade. Ten years ago, the fourth wage had barely started. Today, these women constitute 25% of the global sex trade. Of course, this entire industry is under the control of various organized crime syndicates collaborating with each other, making the sex trade a truly global venture whereby women from peripheral areas are trafficked through transnational criminal networks and end up as prostitutes in core countries.

This map (from The Future Group) illustrates the global flows of trafficked humans to the United States.
Trafficking in Body Parts

As medical technology progresses, transplant surgeries have become more reliable. As a result, the demand for organs has grown. However, there is a shortage of available organs for transplant. As always in such situations of high demand and low supply, in correlation with restrictive laws (it is illegal in most countries to sell one’s organs), criminal organizations step in and provide the scarce goods for very high fees: brokers charge between $100,000 to $200,000 to organize a transplant (Nullis-Kapp, 2004).

Most “donors” (not everybody voluntarily relinquishes organs, coercion may be involved) live in deep poverty in semi-peripheral or peripheral areas, mainly in Latin American countries (such as Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Honduras and Mexico). The buyers live in wealthy Western countries (mostly, Switzerland, Germany, or Italy) or wealthy individuals in semi-peripheral countries (South Africa). Criminal organizations establish the connections between seller and buyer by finding the organs: they may pay a few thousand dollars in the best of cases, or demand organs as repayment of debt; alternatively, organs may be stolen from cadavers in morgues. As for sex trafficking, there has been an increase in organs originating in the former USSR as the Russian Mafia looks to diversify its activities.

Money Laundering

Money laundering is the set of financial transactions dedicated to hide the source and destination of proceeds from illegal activities and to reinvest them into legitimate business. Since the goal of criminal organizations is to generate profits from their illegal ventures, money laundering is at the heart of global crime. Money laundering is the connection between the criminal, underground economy and global capitalism. As Manuel Castells (1998) describes, there are three stages involved in money laundering:

1. The placement of the illegal proceeds into the financial system through banks or other financial institutions. Often, criminal organizations use banks located in countries that exercise banking secrecy (they do not disclose financial information to investigators), such as Aruba, the Cayman Islands or Luxemburg.

2. The second stage is called “layering,” that is, to detach the funds from their illegal source. This can be done by swapping currency (illegal proceeds in US dollars are converted into Euros) or by investing the money into stocks. Thanks to the liberalization of global financial markets, it is easy to transfer vast sums of money all over the world, several times over within seconds.

3. The third stage is call “integration,” that is, the introduction of the laundered money back into the legitimate economy through various investments. The majority of criminal organizations described above engages directly in money laundering or hire the services of other criminal syndicates to do it.

The changes outlined above regarding war global criminal networks are a reflection of changes brought about by globalization, organizationally, economically, and politically. The reconfiguration from top-down, rigid organizations into flexible networks by legitimate and criminal organizations alike is an adaptation to the growing influence of global flows.

Why Hillary Should be President (WHSBP) - Untold Stories

This is the first in a (hopefully) collaborative series: WHSBP (title and series idea courtesy of Lambert) to counterbalance the Other Series (WWTSBQ). This series outlines issues on which Hillary Clinton was ahead of the curve, starting with microcredit. I have posted consistently on microcredit (here, here and here) but it is one obvious issue where HRC got it before everyone else.

This is actually one of the things that surprised me when I read Muhammad Yunus’s book, Banker to the Poor.

“It was not until the mid-1980s that people in the United States began showing real interest in applying Grameen principles to their own poverty problems. I supposed it all began in 1985, when Bill Clinton, then governor of Arkansas, was looking for ways to create new economic opportunities for the low-income people in his state. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s college roommate, Jan Percy, had just returned from working in Bangladesh with an American organization and was at the South Shore Bank in Chicago. She introduced the Clintons to Ron Grzywinski and Mary Houghton, Chicago-area bankers who had done much to convince the Ford Foundation to support Grameen.” (176)

So, the four of them Bill and Hillary Clinton, Ron Grzywinski and Mary Houghton started meeting, according to Yunus, to design the plans for a bank that would provide microloans to the poor in Arkansas. The Clintons also invited Yunus and as he writes

“As I spoke, both the governor and his wife were drawn into my story. After half an hour, Mrs Clinton declared, “We want it. Can we have it in Arkansas?” (…) Hillary Rodham Clinton’s support for the Grameen idea has never diminished. She visited us in Bangladesh in April 1995 and she has visited microcredit programs on three different continents. She also co-chaired the Microcredit Summit in 1997.” (176)

Yunus then goes on to describe the details of putting together what is now the Southern Good Faith Fund, developed in partnership with South Shore Bank (check out their website if you are interested in socially responsible investments).

However, this is the Clintons we are talking about, so, there was no chance they would be taken seriously by the cool kids. As Yunus describes,

“During a 1992 interview with the editors of Rolling Stone magazine, [Bill] Clinton spoke particularly fondly of Grameen. In a separate article, two of the editors ridiculed him for being too ready to promote micro-credit in the United States. I was disappointed, but an American Friend explained that Rolling Stone’s reaction was hardly surprising. He argued that Grameen was a ’Third World technology transfer’ and that the American elite might not be ready for it. Given the reluctance of Americans to adopt successful policies from countries as close to them as Canada, Germany or England, it would prove very difficult for Clinton to convince his fellow Americans to follow a Bengali model.”

And that is one lesson we have all already learned: the cool kids in the media and the Village elders hated the Clintons already for coming from Arkansas and mess up “their” place and pollute it with foreign ideas like universal health care and economic opportunities for the poor (and please, spare me the failure of health care reform and and “ending welfare as we know it”; in the first case the Clintons had to deal with the same disgusting media campaign HRC has to face now and in the second case, Clinton had to deal with the Gingrich Congress - a Congress that actually flexed its idiotic muscle against the President, what a concept).

Now one with a brain would suggest that micro-credit is THE ultimate solution to solving global poverty, but it is one tool that can be used to do so alongside other policies. Yunus himself never stated that his idea is the panacea. He is much too smart for that. However, this is what I care about when I think of experience in a presidential candidate. I want someone who is intellectual smart and curious (even if the cool kids, the Village elders and now the Big Boyz Bloggerz think it’s soooo 90s). I want someone with a clear pulse on our global world and has the wherewithal to get in touch with the right people to get things done in a decisive fashion.

Let’s not be distracted by stupid snipers stories. This is not what matters (“but SHE LIED!!!!” Fuck that. I demand neither perfection not sainthood from ANY candidate). Let’s look at what really matters: she caught on the idea when it was new, in the mid-1980s and no one was really paying attention. She committed to it and still promotes it. Muhammad Yunus constantly mentions her.

That’s why, I think, Hillary should be President. Let’s tell the untold stories.

Cross-posted at The Global Sociology Blog