Narco-guerrilleros: ¿qué lecciones se pueden extraer de Colombia para Afganistán?

Ante el problema de la inseguridad en aumento en Afganistán y la sensación abrumadora de que no se está ganando la batalla contra los rebeldes en este país, analistas y responsables políticos buscan analogías para comprender la dinámica del conflicto e idear respuestas al mismo. Una de las analogías que están siendo examinadas por los analistas es la campaña contra el narcotráfico y la insurgencia en Colombia. De hecho, existen similitudes asombrosas en la forma en que las FARC y los talibán se relacionan con la economía de la droga en sus respectivos países. Sin embargo, estas semejanzas no estriban en lo que podría considerarse como la característica esencial de las FARC, a saber, la pérdida de su sustrato ideológico y su transformación en una organización puramente lucrativa. Por el contrario, desde el punto de vista de la contrainsurgencia y del nexo entre droga y conflicto, el debate sobre ideología frente a ánimo de lucro es mucho menos importante de lo que suele creerse. Independientemente de su ideología y de la profundidad de sus creencias, tanto las FARC como los talibán no solo están obteniendo sustanciosos recursos financieros del narcotráfico, sino también un considerable capital político. Y este capital político está siendo acentuado en gran medida por las políticas gubernamentales de erradicación de los cultivos de droga, políticas que acaban siendo contraproducentes para los objetivos de la contrainsurgencia

Law Enforcement Actions in Urban Spaces Governed by Violent Non-State Entities: Lessons from Latin America

In response to a crime epidemic afflicting Latin America since the early 1990s, several countries in the region have resorted to using heavy-force police or military units to physically retake territories de facto controlled by non-State criminal or insurgent groups. After a period of territory control, the heavy forces hand law enforcement functions in the retaken territories to regular police officers, with the hope that the territories and their populations will remain under the control of the state. To a varying degree, intensity, and consistency, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Jamaica have adopted such policies since the mid-1990s. During such operations, governments need to pursue two interrelated objectives: to better establish the state’s physical presence and to realign the allegiance of the population in those areas toward the state and away from the non-State criminal entities. From the perspective of law enforcement, such operations entail several critical decisions and junctions, such as: Whether or not to announce the force insertion in advance. The decision trades off the element of surprise and the ability to capture key leaders of the criminal organizations against the ability to minimize civilian casualties and force levels. The latter, however, may allow criminals to go to ground and escape capture. Governments thus must decide whether they merely seek to displace criminal groups to other areas or maximize their decapitation capacity. Intelligence flows rarely come from the population. Often, rival criminal groups are the best source of intelligence. However, cooperation between the State and such groups that goes beyond using vetted intelligence provided by the groups, such as a State tolerance for militias, compromises the rule-of-law integrity of the State and ultimately can eviscerate even public safety gains. Sustaining security after initial clearing operations is at times even more challenging than conducting the initial operations. Although unlike the heavy forces, traditional police forces, especially if designed as community police, have the capacity to develop trust of the community and ultimately focus on crime prevention, developing such trust often takes a long time. To develop the community’s trust, regular police forces need to conduct frequent on-foot patrols with intensive nonthreatening interactions with the population and minimize the use of force. Moreover, sufficiently robust patrol units need to be placed in designated beats for substantial amount of time, often at least over a year. Establishing oversight mechanisms, including joint police-citizens’ boards, further facilities building trust in the police among the community. After disruption of the established criminal order, street crime often significantly rises and both the heavy-force and community-police units often struggle to contain it. The increase in street crime alienates the population of the retaken territory from the State. Thus developing a capacity to address street crime is critical. Moreover, the community police units tend to be vulnerable (especially initially) to efforts by displaced criminals to reoccupy the cleared territories. Losing a cleared territory back to criminal groups is extremely costly in terms of losing any established trust and being able to recover it. Rather than operating on a priori determined handover schedule, a careful assessment of the relative strength of regular police and criminal groups post-clearing operations is likely to be a better guide for timing the handover from heavy forces to regular police units. Cleared territories often experience not only a peace dividend, but also a peace deficit – in the rise new serious crime (in addition to street crime). Newly – valuable land and other previously-inaccessible resources can lead to land speculation and forced displacement; various other forms of new crime can also significantly rise. Community police forces often struggle to cope with such crime, especially as it is frequently linked to legal business. Such new crime often receives little to no attention in the design of the operations to retake territories from criminal groups. But without developing an effective response to such new crime, the public safety gains of the clearing operations can be altogether lost

Human Security and Crime in Latin America: The political Capital and Political Impact of Criminal Groups and Belligerents Involved in Illicit Economies

Organized crime and illegal economies generate multiple threats to states and societies. But although the negative effects of high levels of pervasive street and organized crime on human security are clear, the relationships between human security, crime, illicit economies, and law enforcement are highly complex. By sponsoring illicit economies in areas of state weakness where legal economic opportunities and public goods are seriously lacking, both belligerent and criminal groups frequently enhance some elements of human security of the marginalized populations who depend on illicit economies for basic livelihoods. Even criminal groups without a political ideology often have an important political impact on the lives of communities and on their allegiance to the State. Criminal groups also have political agendas. Both belligerent and criminal groups can develop political capital through their sponsorship of illicit economies. The extent of their political capital is dependent on several factors. Efforts to defeat belligerent groups by decreasing their financial flows through suppression of an illicit economy are rarely effective. Such measures, in turn, increase the political capital of anti-State groups. The effectiveness of anti-money laundering measures (AML) also remains low and is often highly contingent on specific vulnerabilities of the target. The design of AML measures has other effects, such as on the size of a country’s informal economy. Multifaceted anti-crime strategies that combine law enforcement approaches with targeted socio-economic policies and efforts to improve public goods provision, including access to justice, are likely to be more effective in suppressing crime than tough nailed-fist approaches. For anti-crime policies to be effective, they often require a substantial, but politically-difficult concentration of resources in target areas. In the absence of effective law enforcement capacity, legalization and decriminalization policies of illicit economies are unlikely on their own to substantially reduce levels of criminality or to eliminate organized crime. Effective police reform, for several decades largely elusive in Latin America, is one of the most urgently needed policy reforms in the region. Such efforts need to be coupled with fundamental judicial and correctional systems reforms. Yet, regional approaches cannot obliterate the so-called balloon effect. If demand persists, even under intense law enforcement pressures, illicit economies will relocate to areas of weakest law enforcement, but they will not be eliminated

Impact of illicit economics on military conflict

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, February 2007.Page 642 blank.Includes bibliographical references (v. 2, p. 575-641).The study explores the nexus between illicit economies and military conflicts. It investigates when and how access by belligerents to the production and trafficking of illicit substances affects the strength of belligerents and governments. Although narcotics trafficking is often treated as sui generis, the study situates the drug trade within the larger class of markets for illicit products and services. The study presents a general theory of the relationship between illicit markets and military conflict - the political capital of illicit economies -- and contrasts it with conventional wisdom on connections between drug trafficking and military conflict. The political capital of illicit economies argues that belligerents derive much more than simply large financial profits from their sponsorship of illicit economies. They also obtain freedom of action and, crucially, legitimacy and support from the local population, called political capital. If belligerents choose to become negatively involved in the illicit economy (attempt to destroy it), they not only fail to increase their military capabilities, but also suffer costs in terms of political capital. The extent and scope of belligerents' gains/ losses from their involvement in the illicit economy depend on four factors:(cont.) the state of the overall economy; the character of the illicit economy; the presence of traffickers; and the government response to the illicit economy. These factors reflect both structural conditions outside of the immediate control of the belligerents and the government and strategic policy choices available to either the belligerents or the government. Contrary to the conventional wisdom about narcotics and military conflict, eradication of narcotics cultivation has dubious effects on the capabilities of the belligerents and is extremely unlikely to severely weaken them. However, it alienates the local population from the government and results in the population's unwillingness to provide intelligence on the belligerents - a crucial requirement for success against the belligerents. Thus, eradication of illicit crops increases the political capital of the belligerents without significantly weakening their military capabilities. The primary cases explored in the study are Peru, Colombia, and Afghanistan. Additional evidence is drawn from the cases of Burma, Northern Ireland, Turkey, and India.by Vanda Felbab-Brown.Ph.D

¿Quién paga por la paz en Colombia?

Este artículo examina los costos políticos que habrán de asumir las FARC, las fuerzas armadas, los políticos derechistas, la élite y los intereses creados, las personas desplazadas, los cultivadores de coca y la clase media. El análisis también aborda el papel y el impacto de otros actores, como las Bacrim y los grupos guerrilleros que aún siguen operando, incluido el ELN

Grand theft water and the calculus of compliance

Water crises are amongst the biggest challenges facing humanity. Uncertain future supply, and growing demand, may lead to higher incidences of theft particularly by agricultural users who account for approximately 70% of global water use. However, research into water theft is underexplored in all disciplines. This paper provides a new conceptual framework designed to improve understanding of both individual and institutional barriers to water theft. The framework explores how effective detection, prosecution, conviction and penalties could be assessed. Three case studies are used to test the validity of our framework. Our findings suggest that while individuals and companies may be responsible for the act of theft, the phenomenon reflects a systematic failure of arrangements (political, legal, institutional, etc.). Additionally, when regulators fail to understand the value of water, inadequate penalties increase the risk of theft. Consistent with a view modelling approaches may offer adequate methods for analysis and insight, we invite others to test our framework and engage in a wider conversation about water theft.A. Loch, C. D. Pérez-Blanco, E. Carmody, V. Felbab-Brown, D. Adamson, and C. Seid

Relinquishing and Governing the Volatile: The Many Afghanistans and Critical Research Agendas of NATO's Governance

This article invites academics and policy analysts to examine the mechanisms and legacy of NATO's security and development governance of Afghan social spaces by using critical theory concepts. It argues that such scholarly endeavors are growing in importance as the United States and NATO gradually pull their troops out of Afghanistan. Thus, the article suggests a broad twofold research agenda. First, it points out that researching social spaces such as towns, villages, marketplaces, and neighborhoods beyond the realm of intergovernmental politics can lead to thick descriptions of how such places have been governed from within by agents external to them. Second, the study argues for a multifaceted examination of instruments, strategies, and institutions of security governance, its conduct and social effects by deploying critical and Foucauldian concepts such as the rationality and apparatuses of power relations. Thereby, it proposes an inquiry into Provincial Reconstruction Teams and Afghan National Security Forces as spatially and temporally specific apparatuses of surveillance and security

Maintaining order in the drug game: Applying harm reduction principles to drug detective work

Drug war rhetoric is losing favour in the political arena due to its increasingly obvious failures and there is a growing consensus amongst governing elites that something ought to change. Against this backdrop, the concept of ‘harm reduction’ has moved to the foreground of the research agenda and some policing agencies appear to be reconfiguring their enforcement interventions to focus on managing drug markets in a way that minimises the various associated harms. This article draws on the findings of an ethnographic study of specialist detective units in two English police services to examine how recent developments in drug policy discourse have been received and implemented at an operational level. Although there have been some positive advancements, it argues that changes to the prohibition regime are largely superficial and strong cultural resistance remains. The discussion considers how harm reduction principles might be better applied to the policing of drug markets

Unsettling the peace? The role of illicit economies in peace processes

The long-term legacies of civil war economies—often characterized by widespread illicit economic activities and the proliferation of criminal and quasi-criminal networks—pose significant challenges to achieving sustainable postwar settlements. This essay surveys predominant strategies to address war economies in peace processes for countries emerging from war. I identify three prevailing approaches—criminalization, co-option, and neglect—and discuss trade-offs associated with each. While there is no clear consensus on which approach is most likely to succeed and most countries will require a balanced combination of all three, it is increasingly clear that peace agreements that fail to sufficiently incorporate the perspectives of communities dependent on illicit economies and to account for how illicit economies shape national and subnational political settlements are more likely to produce unstable postwar regimes in the medium to long-run. I conclude with some reflections on future research agendas and potential policy implications that merit further exploration

Organised crime and international aid subversion: evidence from Colombia and Afghanistan

Scholarly attempts to explain aid subversion in post-conflict contexts frame the challenge in terms of corrupt practices and transactions disconnected from local power struggles. Also, they assume a distinction between organised crime and the state. This comparative analysis of aid subversion in Colombia and Afghanistan reveals the limits of such an approach. Focusing on relations that anchor organised crime within local political, social and economic processes, we demonstrate that organised crime is dynamic, driven by multiple motives, and endogenous to local power politics. Better understanding of governance arrangements around the organised crime-conflict nexus which enable aid subversion is therefore required