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Ed Webb

What Lockdown? World's Cocaine Traffickers Sniff at Movement Restrictions - OCCRP - 0 views

www.occrp.org/...sniff-at-movement-restrictions

IR narcotics drugs trafficking pandemics crime networks

shared by Ed Webb on 28 May 20 - No Cached
  • the predicament facing cocaine smugglers, as the global pandemic has increased scrutiny on them and disrupted their smuggling and distribution networks. But it also highlights their flexible approach to their trade, which has kept business booming even as many of the world’s legal sectors have ground to a halt.
  • OCCRP reporters have found that the world’s cocaine industry — which produces close to 2,000 metric tons a year and makes tens of billions of dollars — has adapted better than many other legitimate businesses. The industry has benefited from huge stores of drugs warehoused before the pandemic and its wide variety of smuggling methods. Street prices around Europe have risen by up to 30 percent, but it is not clear how much of this is due to distribution problems, and how much to drug gangs taking advantage of homebound customers.
  • cocaine continues to flow from South America to Europe and North America. Closed trafficking routes have been replaced with new ones, and street deals have been substituted with door-to-door deliveries.
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  • As many countries begin partially reopening their economies, traffickers may now be in a position to become more powerful than ever. With economies in distress and many businesses facing ruin, cash-rich narcos may be able to cheaply buy their way into an even bigger share of the legitimate economy.
  • “There has always been a stock, it’s a very organized chain. It’s the way to control everything, especially the price. The stocks are on beaches such as Tarena [near the border with Panama], banana plantations, in the jungle. The stashes are everywhere,”
  • Traditionally, smugglers have used small, very fast speedboats, as well as fishing vessels and submarines, to ply their northern route. Lockdowns have made these methods harder to use, mainly for logistical reasons. So instead, smugglers are turning back to older, slower routes that are often broken up in parts.
  • Unlike exports to the United States, cocaine bound for Europe is typically moved in legal air and sea cargoes, especially fast-moving fresh goods such as flowers and fruit. The latter, as food, has continued to move unimpeded during the pandemic, helping feed Europe’s 9.1 billion euro-a-year cocaine habit. Colombia’s banana industry, for example, has been exempt from local lockdown measures, allowing cocaine to keep moving through the crop’s supply chain. “[Anyone] in the authorities or security that meddles with this route goes down,” said Rául, the Gulf Clan member, adding that people who are paid off to facilitate the smuggling of cocaine have an incentive to keep the drugs flowing. “Everybody eats,” he said.
  • Mexican cartels have used the crisis as a public relations opportunity. People associated with the cartels, including the daughter of imprisoned Sinaloa cartel chief Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, have publicly distributed food and other essential items to the poor. Meanwhile, the country’s drug violence continues unabated, claiming an average of 80 lives per day.
  • Italy has fallen silent as a point of arrival, despite being home to mafia groups that dominate Europe’s cocaine trade. Seizures dropped by 80 percent over the months of March and April compared to the same period last year
  • Ramón Santolaria, the head of anti-narcotics at Spain’s national police in Catalonia, said cocaine traffickers may have mistakenly assumed that the pandemic would have reduced monitoring at ports. The cartels “have to continue exporting,” Santolaria said. “They are like a company. They can’t store everything in their countries, since it would be very risky.”
  • In March and April, Spain seized over 14 tons of cocaine in inbound shipments — a figure six times higher than the same period the previous year, said Manuel Montesinos, the deputy director of Customs surveillance at the Spanish Taxation Agency. “We are very struck by the frenetic pace,” Montesinos said. “Almost every day we receive alerts of detections of suspicious operations.”
  • “Italy did not receive much via ports or airports and that is because during lockdown we have been controlling them a lot,” said Marco Sorrentino, the head of anti-mafia department of Italy’s financial police, the Guardia di Finanza. Italian crime groups have shifted their operations to Spain, where they have large “colonies” according to Sorrentino. “Italian mafias and their partners thus sent cocaine mainly to Algeciras or Barcelona, and then from there they moved it on wheels to the rest of Europe and to Italy,” he said. “As cover-up they used trucks filled with fresh fruits or also soy flour,” which resembles cocaine.
  • At the street level, lockdowns have played havoc with cocaine sales — but have also failed to stop the trade. But in some cases at least, dealers’ adaptations may have actually put them in a more profitable position than before, as cocaine users are desperate and confined at home. “Even though they don’t lack product, they have raised prices a bit and are cutting it more,”
  • The solution? Delivering it to customers in the guise of food orders, or couriered by essential workers carrying documents that give them permission to move around freely. Dealers have also staked out positions in socially distanced queues outside supermarkets — one of the only permitted places to gather in public under Italy’s strict lockdown rules, which began easing up in early May.
  • The main dark web marketplaces have seen an increase in sales of roughly 30 percent since lockdown measures started coming into effect worldwide
  • “Private citizens who are in need and won’t have access to a bank loan will be victims of loan sharks,” he said. “But what worries us the most is that licit companies might be in need, and be approached by mafia organizations that will propose to become minority shareholders.” “And once this happens, they actually take over the whole company,”
Ed Webb

Yesterday's Terrorists and Insurgents in Afghanistan, Syria, and Somalia Are Today's Pu... - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...providers-coronavirus-pandemic

analysis pandemics insurgency terrorism governance crime networks

shared by Ed Webb on 05 Jul 20 - Cached
  • The coronavirus pandemic has opened up similar opportunities for a range of terrorists, insurgents, and criminal organizations. Across the world, they are already seeking to acquire political legitimacy through the provision of public health services, especially in countries and regions where the government has been either unwilling or unable to help.
  • it is not just terrorist and insurgent groups taking advantage of the crisis to demonstrate an effort toward effective governance. In the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, drug trafficking organizations and criminal gangs have worked assiduously to enforce a curfew in the notoriously ungoverned slums where they operate.
  • In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the term “ungoverned spaces” entered the popular lexicon when discussing areas that terrorist groups sought out in which to train, plan, and conduct operations. Areas that few in the West had ever heard about—South America’s Tri-Border Area, the Sahel in North Africa, and Southeast Asian archipelagos—were all tagged with this label. But the term itself is an unfortunate misnomer. No area is truly ungoverned. Rather, nonstate actors and substate groups provide alternative forms of governance to people in these places. And, more often than not, they do so through provision of services that reinforce their social status and lend them a sense of political legitimacy that governments in faraway capital cities lack altogether.
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  • By exploiting governance gaps, terrorists and insurgents gain valuable propaganda victories
  • by launching public health campaigns and dispensing information and advice on how to avoid being infected, terrorist and insurgent groups can position themselves as a trusted voice on these issues.
  • Good governance and competent public administration are the best medicine for pandemics and insurgencies alike.
Ed Webb

Somalia is Set to Be Ravaged by the Coronavirus, and Terrorists Will Profit - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...rus-pandemic-somalia-al-shabab

pandemics Africa Somalia Ethiopia Kenya Djibouti hornofafrica health publichealth terrorism failedstates

shared by Ed Webb on 13 May 20 - No Cached
  • Somalia has been spinning on a crisis carousel: war, famine, terrorism, climate stress. Now, the coronavirus pandemic is set to steer the country towards another hemorrhaging of human life. Even with a youth population above 70 percent, the virus will likely compound Somalia’s chronic medley of miseries. With each passing day, an uneasy question looms large: If the pandemic has left such death and upheaval in its wake in the world’s most powerful countries, what impact will it have on one of the world’s most fragile?
  • a psychological readiness for catastrophe. Extreme violence has long been a fact of daily life in Mogadishu, under siege by one of the deadliest terrorist groups in Africa, al-Shabab, which, by conservative estimates, has killed more than 3,000 people in the past five years and wounded tens of thousands in the past decade. Somalis, often touted for their resilience amid unrelenting adversity, are no strangers to mass loss of life.
  • As of Monday, 1,054 infections—out of a miniscule testing pool—and 51 deaths have been confirmed. The true spread is doubtless far worse.
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  • Despite testing far less than its neighbors, Somalia has the highest death toll in East Africa. On April 17 and 18, 72 people were tested, out of which 55 were confirmed positive, a staggering 76 percent infection rate. Since this revelation, the Somali government has stopped sharing the numbers of people tested with the public.
  • Anecdotal accounts of COVID-19 symptoms and a spike in burials abound. “There is extraordinary community transmission. Infections and deaths are out of control,” explained a Mogadishu doctor on the condition of anonymity. “And why visit a hospital if they can’t treat you?” Somalia’s health infrastructure is mere scaffolding: scarce public hospitals struggling with a lack of equipment, unaccredited doctors in private facilities offering unaffordable services, and medication that is as low-grade as it is scarce.
  • Somalia’s best-equipped medical institution, Erdogan Hospital in Mogadishu, was shut down in April after 3 of its doctors were infected. Martini Hospital—kitted with 76 beds—is the only medical facility in the whole country designated to treat the infected
  • Answers to this acute health crisis lie in part with the government’s 2020 budget, which allocated $9.4 million for health spending, a mere 2 percent of the national budget. A whopping $146.8 million was reserved for security institutions—a telling indication of a cash-strapped state facing widespread security threats.
  • The group heralded the disease as divine punishment for the treatment of Muslims globally. Weaponizing the disease, al-Shabab ushered in Ramadan with an attempted vehicle-borne explosive attack at a military base on the first full day of the holy month.
  • Like the virus, al-Shabab transcends national borders and presents risks not only to Somalia but to its pandemic-weakened neighbors, particularly Kenya, which has weathered violent attacks from the group for years. Born out of a power vacuum itself, al-Shabab will capitalize on lapses in states’ security apparatus as governments redirect resources from preempting terror attacks to enforcing curfews
  • risks reversing critical security gains
  • Kenya’s northeastern towns lying on its border with Somalia have been particularly vulnerable to devastating al-Shabab attacks. In response to the illegal smuggling of people and goods from both Somalia and Ethiopia, Kenyan security authorities have recently ramped up aerial surveillance along its borders, in part, to curtail cross-border infection. Ethiopia’s health minister announced last week that 13 of its new cases were imported via illegal migration from Djibouti and Somalia
  • More than 80 percent of global trade passes through the Gulf of Aden
  • the resurgence of piracy can be expected
  • For more than a year now, the central government has been embroiled in a rancorous fight with two of its federal states. This being an election year, the fledgling Somali state finds itself at a critical juncture. It remains to be seen whether federal elections will be postponed, following in the footsteps of neighboring Ethiopia.
  • The disappearance of remittances—a lifeline for millions on the continent and estimated at $1.4 to $2 billion annually in Somalia alone—makes the situation all the more desperate. These critical cash flows have dried up as a global recession sets in and incomes of workers in the diaspora shrink.
  • harrowing statistics from across Europe show that Somali communities have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19. In Sweden, Somalis are dying from the virus at “an astonishing high rate” according to the BMJ despite accounting for only 0.69 percent of the population. The World Bank is calling on governments to designate remittance companies as an essential service, a crucial step to easing restrictions on these financial flows.
  • The populations most at risk in Somalia are those living in the densely populated camps scattered across the country. More than 2.5 million internally displaced people live in these cramped conditions, already weakened by malnutrition and compromised immune systems, and with limited access to clean water, soap, or bathrooms.
  • According to the World Food Programme, the number of food-insecure people in East Africa is projected to reach up to 43 million in the next few months—more than double what it is now—sparking fears of conflict over scarce resources.
  • The specter of drought and famine, alongside the unforgiving plague of locusts that has ravaged crops in recent months
  • deadly flash floods
  • will force more people to move, compounding the internal displacement crisis and heightening intercommunal tensions  even as it spreads the disease further
  • Border closures across the region have throttled migration flows, making it ever harder for people to escape conflict or starvation. This will simply force migration into the shadows, opening up avenues for human trafficking and exploitation. Irregular movement of refugees has already been observed across the Horn of Africa’s highly porous borders.
  • During  Friday prayers at Mogadishu’s Marwazi mosque on April 10, armed forces tried to forcibly disperse a congregation of worshippers without notice. A massive demonstration broke out, and shoulder-to-shoulder prayers continue across the country today
  • Riots swept the streets of Mogadishu again on April 24 in response to the fatal shooting of two innocent civilians by police as they tried to enforce a curfew. Ramadan, replete with nightly rounds of public taraweeh prayers, is likely to catalyze disease spread in the absence of clear communication with communities and Islamic leaders.
  • The virus demands self-sufficiency. Countries are forced to make do with their own systems, however broken.
  • government’s restrictions on press freedom and access to information about the novel coronavirus to the detriment of its own people
  • As has often been the case in the disaster-prone country, it will be up to grassroots community groups, the private sector, and members of the diaspora to mobilize en masse to contain the crisis.
  • Two officials at the Ministry of Health have already been arrested on corruption allegations related to COVID-19 response donations, denting public confidence.
  • With domestic flights suspended, it is all the more critical to invest in hospital and testing capacity across the country. This cannot be achieved without genuine collaboration between the federal government and its constituent member states.
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