The Venezuelan Narco-State

Countless states have deep ties to organized crime and narcotics trafficking. To be sure, there are corrupt actors in regimes around the world. Some Mexican states are effectively run by the cartels. Afghanistan’s economy is almost entirely predicated on heroin. Guinea-Bissau was a notorious narco-state, acting as a transshipment point for cocaine headed to Europe. This week’s news in Venezuela, though, demonstrates the depth in which a regime can become embedded in narcotics trafficking. More than any other country in the western hemisphere, Venezuela is the epitome of a narco-state. 

More coca is farmed in Peru. Colombia is known to ship more of it. Mexico transports it across the border. But no country has more of an apparent government involvement in drug trafficking than Venezuela, especially after this past week. As detailed in InsightCrime on Friday, Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios, a former intelligence chief in Venezuela, was arrested in Aruba on the behest of the US government. He had been heading to Aruba to take up a diplomatic post, one that would have given him immunity from international prosecution. Carvajal Barrios had been designated on the OFAC narcotics trafficking sanctions list in 2008 due to his role with the FARC in neighboring Colombia. According to the New York Times, there are court documents that have been unsealed this week stating that Carvajal Barrios was also associated with Wilber Varela, a leader of the Norte de Valle cartel in Colombia. Additionally, he was considered a member of the Cartel del los Soles (Cartel of the Suns), which is a loose organization of narcotics traffickers in the Venezuelan political and military ranks. Because he had not been officially accredited for his diplomatic post, it was thought that he could be arrested. When Venezuela pushed heavily on the Netherlands, who run the foreign policy of their former colony Aruba, the Dutch gave Carvajal Barrios up to Venezuela. There are rumors that Venezuela was threatening to cut oil drilling support. Additionally, Venezuela had brought ships up to the Aruban coast and had cancelled flights to Aruba’s airport, in order to put pressure on the island’s tourist economy. Regardless, Carvajal Barrios has successfully avoided American prison, and the Venezuelan government has avoided the potential that Carvajal Barrios could have told what he knows about the Chavez regime’s activities to the US. 

What is more concerning in this story is that a government went to such great lengths to keep a general with narcotics trafficking ties out of prison. The theoretical conceptualization for a narco-state is one in which organized crime uses its power and wealth to buy members of the government and therefore greater control and influence. In the Venezuelan case, it appears that the government went out of its way to become narcotics traffickers. Although they were initially simply allowing the smuggling to happen, individuals in the Cartel del los Soles eventually shipped the drugs themselves, fighting amongst each other for more kilos. This kind of corruption facilitated support and aid for the FARC, as well. Such a deeply entrenched culture of narcotics trafficking in high-levels of any state is threatening to all other countries, as it takes advantage of the covert operations of organized crime and the overt advantages of Westphalian statehood (in this case, the ability to appoint diplomats with immunity from international prosecution). 

Venezuela proclaimed Carvajal Barrios’s return to Caracas as a victory for the country. It remains to be seen how doubling down on this narco-state reputation will play out for Venezuela. 

Photo from InsightCrime (http://www.insightcrime.org/news-briefs/capture-ex-intelligence-chief-highlights-venezuela-military-org-crime-ties)

This Week, Rehashed

Every Friday, I’ll compile this Rehash post with a list of some of the more interesting articles from the previous week. Like the rest of Drugs and Thugs Blog, the topics addressed will focus on narcotics trafficking, international criminal organizations, insurgencies, and terrorism. There was certainly no lack of news this week, so there’s plenty to catch up on. 

1. The US released an indictment of the Peru-based Shining Path organization this week. InSightCrime’s article explores the history of Shining Path and investigates how deeply the insurgent organization is involved in the narcotics trade. 

2. The conflicts in Iraq, Gaza, and Ukraine that have dominated the news this week demonstrate the change in insurgency tactics and capabilities. David Barno’s article on War on the Rocks explaining how these shadow wars have altered in recent years is simultaneously fascinating and concerning.

3. The Economist’s Eastern Approaches blog had an article late last week on the MH17 flight downing. Written from the crash zone in Ukraine, it is simply haunting. 

4. Slate’s Joshua Keating notes that the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza will eventually end. And when they do, Iraq and Syria will remain mired in violence.

5. From OCCRP, news that Serbian drug trafficker Dragoslav Kosmajac has been arrested in Montenegro. It is alleged that he had contacts in high levels of the Serbian police. 

For comments, thoughts, criticism, or anything else, please email me at conormlarkin@gmail.com or follow me on Twitter @ConorMLarkin (Drugs And Thugs Blog)

Enjoy the weekend, and thanks for reading. 

Photo from http://www.globizer.net/service/dat/maps/default/3/0.jpg

Ukraine and Insurgency

In what has been a year marked by global conflict and upheaval, this week was arguably the most devastating, surprising, and appalling yet. In a span of seven days, the news cycle moved rapidly from the horrifying Malaysian Airlines flight downing, to the continued violence between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, to the battle between ISIS and Bashar al-Assad’s forces in Syria. When ISIS action in Iraq falls to 4th in international news, it’s one hell of a week. 

Seven days ago today, MH17 was shot down, likely by pro-Russian insurgents in Eastern Ukraine, armed with a Russian-provided missile launcher. All 298 individuals on the plane were killed. I don’t intend to wade too deeply into the great power politics or diplomatic debates that have engulfed this past week on Russia’s complicity, as more than enough ink, digital and literal, has been spilt on the subject. The attack of the Malaysian plane full of civilians was horrific, without question. In the past 24 hours though, two more Ukrainian fighter jets were shot down by the pro-Russian separatists. Ukraine’s offensive against the Donetsk-based insurgents explains much of this anti-air barrage over the past week, but this news is shocking. The insurgents have created a virtual no-fly zone over Donetsk. This simple fact alone makes the Ukrainian conflict increasingly more concerning, when looked through an international security lens, than anything else in the news this week. A state-supported insurgency is going toe to toe with a state military, with dramatic implications for Eastern Europe. We have not seen this level of violence on the European continent since the Yugoslav breakup in the 1990s, and additionally, it doesn’t appear likely to end soon. Ukrainian forces are advancing, but Donetsk is a large, industrial city. Such a style of fighting lends itself more obviously to the urban insurgents than to the Ukrainian military. As long as the Donetsk insurgents retain Russian support, this will continue to be a struggle for the nascent Ukrainian government. A capable insurgency, one with the ability to pick planes out of the sky, threatens the security of all nations. 

Moving forward, it is unclear what the US and the EU should do, if anything, to deter Russia from supporting the Donetsk insurgents. The US had just released new sanctions on Russia immediately prior to the Malaysian flight downing. The EU had already been moving towards implementing new sanctions of their own. Additional industrial sectoral sanctions could inflict more economic pain on Russia, but it’s unclear if this will induce Putin to end his support for the insurgents. His popularity is now exceedingly high, no doubt due to the Crimean annexation and the nationalistic Russian rhetoric of 2014. Even if it does limit Russian involvement in Ukraine, it remains to be seen how strongly Putin can direct the insurgents. War is an uncontrollable thing; once set in motion, it is impossible for an instigator to guarantee how it will play out. Over eight months on from the beginning of the Maidan protests, it remains unclear what will happen in Ukraine. 

In a week fraught with violence, terrorism, and insurgency, the news coming out of Ukraine remains more frightening and shocking than anything else. What happens next is anybody’s guess. 

Kelmendi and Border Arbitrage

I had anticipated to follow the Kelmendi case with some regularity, but I didn’t expect to write about it so soon after my last post on the topic. It seems, according to OCCRP, that the case is not progressing well, despite Kelmendi’s indictment in a Kosovo court on July 4th. The problem, like previously discussed, stems from Kelmendi’s arrest in Kosovo on an Interpol warrant issued by Bosnia and Herzegovina. Because Bosnia and Herzegovina has not recognized Kosovo, they do not have formal relations and therefore can not extradite criminals. Bosnian authorities, who have a long-running investigation against Kelmendi, are unable to file charges against him because of the diplomatic impasse between Bosnia and Kosovo. This makes the prosecution of Kelmendi that much more difficult.  

It is understood that organized criminals, and especially traffickers, operate and thrive because of international borders. Borders give them the ability to arbitrage the market differences between states. What is illegal and in demand in one country can be surreptitiously brought in from another for profit. Few products demonstrate this reality as well as narcotics, of course. Marijuana, heroin, and crystal meth produced in Mexico can be shipped north across the border for an immense increase in value. While this might be the best example of how borders facilitate trafficking, the Balkans region is unique in how borders play a role in organized crime. The relatively new borders, along with the violence and chaos that those borders were born from, created a small geographical region with a large amount of international boundaries ready for arbitrage. The proliferation of borders must be a relevant factor when analyzing Balkan organized crime. 

What is intriguing in the Kelmendi case is that an international narcotics trafficker is benefiting from international borders once more, but now in the court system. Because of the complicated borders and international relations that separate the Balkan nations, the prosecution of one of the most notorious criminals in the region has become significantly more difficult. Kelmendi is benefiting from a unique version of jurisdictional arbitrage, but instead of the jurisdictions simply having different legal standards, they in fact don’t even recognize each other as legitimate states. It’s an idealistic hope to believe that these impasses can be solved, but the Western Balkan nations will continue to run into similar controversies, especially as many of them continue to strive for EU membership. Kelmendi’s trial will continue on, but it remains indicative of the international strife between the Balkans nations, as well as the distance they must travel in order to limit the impact of organized crime in the region. 

Naser Kelmendi Indicted

On July 4th, over a year following his arrest, drug kingpin Naser Kelmendi was indicted by Kosovo’s Special Prosecution Office, charging him with offenses including organized crime, murder, and possession of narcotics. Kelmendi had been arrested in May 2013 by Kosovo police due to a Bosnian warrant. The previous year, he had been listed on the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctions list as a narcotics kingpin. As a Kosovo-born, ethnic Albanian with citizenship from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kelmendi was able to move his shipments of heroin and other narcotics throughout the Balkans. He also laundered his money through various businesses and investments in multiple countries, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and Kosovo. 

The Organized Crime and Corruption and Reporting Project, OCCRP (https://reportingproject.net/occrp/) has written extensively about Kelmendi and his connections. The most controversial of these include associations between Kelmendi and Fahrudin Radoncic, the recent Minister of Security for Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Ramush Haradinaj, a former Prime Minister of Kosovo. He also has alleged connections with the Montenegrin drug kingpin Darko Saric, currently on trial in Serbia. These alleged connections demonstrate how deeply embedded organized crime is in some Balkans nations and indicate the scope of the larger problem. 

Despite Kelmendi’s arrest on a Bosnian warrant, Kosovo was not able to extradite Kelmendi to Bosnia, as the two states do not have a formal recognition or an extradition treaty. This stems from events in 2008, when Kosovo declared independence from Serbia. As Bosnia has a sizable Serbian minority, they have chosen to not recognize Kosovo’s status as a sovereign state. In previous instances, this complex international relations reality has forced Kosovo to release some criminals from its custody, most notably Kelmendi’s son, Elvis Kelmendi. 

The indictment of Kelmendi is certainly a good sign for rule of law in Kosovo and the Balkans more widely, but this remains a crime-plagued and complex region. Nothing like the wanton violence of the 1990s breakup of Yugoslavia remains, but the redrawn borders and lack of trust between Balkans nations likely facilitates the organized crime operations by Kelmendi and those like him. Lack of cooperation between Bosnia and Kosovo severely conflicted the arrest and indictment of Kelmendi, so it is reasonable to assume that the prosecution will be similarly difficult. As long as the Balkan nations are unable to cooperate fully, organized crime will continue to operate with complete disregard for international borders. All of these countries should be held accountable for their organized crime and narcotics trafficking issues, especially in light of their desire for European Union accession. Kelmendi’s indictment is encouraging, but each country in the Balkans can not do it alone; true collaboration and cooperation will be politically difficult, but it is most certainly necessary. 

#1

It feels only appropriate to begin a new blog dedicated to the discussion of organized crime and narcotics trafficking with a quote from The Godfather: 

“It's true, I have a lot of friends in politics, but they wouldn't be friendly very long if they knew my business was drugs instead of gambling, which they regard as a harmless vice. But drugs is a dirty business. It doesn't make any difference to me what a man does for a living, understand. But your business is, uh, a little dangerous.”

Such an quote from Don Corleone understates the reality of this realm of international security. For those of us that read and research organized crime, narcotics trafficking, terrorism, and insurgency, it may be convenient to create a sanitized version of such a reality in order to study it, but this field is a dangerous and dirty business. Despite this, it remains a fascinating prism to look at foreign policy, economics, and international security through. It is my hope that this Drugs and Thugs Blog provides an interesting commentary on issues related to crime, narcotics, terrorism, and insurgency from around the world, viewed through a larger international viewpoint. The titular drugs and thugs issues are not isolated; they affect all people, governments, and institutions that they come in contact with. They should not be viewed as individual circumstances divorced from the international context in which they exist and operate. In this light, it has become imperative that such conflicts are looked at in the appropriate context. It is my hope that this blog contextualizes the issues involved, while also looking at them in an approachable format. Additionally, I’ll admit that I am no expert. I readily welcome any other opinions. I hope to make this a conversation, and I believe that we can all learn from each other.

Please provide any feedback to ConorMLarkin@gmail.com, @ConorMLarkin (Drug And Thugs Blog) on Twitter, or in the comments section below. I look forward to hearing your comments and thoughts.