This Week, Pure and Uncut: October 31, 2014

Happy Halloween, readers. It’s been another busy week in the drugs and thugs world. Here’s a quick list of some of the more interesting news and analysis articles from this week. Like the rest of Drugs and Thugs Blog, the topics addressed will focus on terrorism, insurgencies, transnational criminal organizations, and narcotics trafficking. 

ISIS is a Part-Time Terrorist Group: From Slate’s Joshua Keating, a discussion on the distinction between terrorists and rebels, showing that ISIS slots somewhere in the gray region between those terms. The term “terrorist” might be misapplied only because it is politically expedient to do so. (Not to self-promote, but this is similar to my thoughts from two weeks ago). 

Governor Replaced in Missing Student Controversy: From OCCRP, a report on the effective resignation of the governor of Guerrero state in Mexico. This comes in the wake of the massacre of over forty demonstrators by drug cartel members, assisted by local police officers. 

Treasury Hopes ISIS Will Go Broke on its Own: From Money Jihad, commentary on Treasury official David Cohen on ISIS’s finances. Although US financial actions will prove difficult to make much of an impact, the Treasury is betting that the necessity of governance will bankrupt ISIS. 

Fighting Between Jihadists, Haftar’s Forces Escalates in Benghazi: From Caleb Weiss at The Long War Journal, an article on the current conflict between the Libyan state and the Benghazi Revolutionaries Shura Council. The Shura Council is heavily supported by Ansar al Sharia, an al-Qaeda affiliate group. Heavy fighting continues in Libya in the fallout of the 2011 revolution. 

Mexico’s Knights Templar Leader Vows Never to Surrender: At InSight Crime, David Gagne’s article notes that La Tuta, the current head of the Knights Templar (Caballeros Templarios) cartel has released audio in which he states his defiance of Mexican authorities. Although it would be more rational to retrench his position, La Tuta has decided to fight to the bitter end. 

Fighting ISIS: We Should Admit That What We’re Doing is a Containment Strategy: From Tom Ricks’s The Best Defense blog at Foreign Policy, a guest post by Col. Gary Anderson. Anderson highlights the inability of our current strategy to truly defeat ISIS, although it will likely be successful in limiting their expansion. 

Strategic Overstretch and the Jihadist Generation Gap: From Mark Stout at War on the Rocks, a comparison of ISIS and al-Qaeda Central through their publications. Stout personifies ISIS as the drunk scruffy teenage son and AQ Central as the cardigan-wearing repressed father, arguing that the difference between the two groups might be simply generational.

Knife Fights: John Nagl’s Reflections on the Practice of Modern War: Octavian Manea interviews John Nagl at Small Wars Journal on the lessons learned both on the battlefield and in the bureaucracy. Nagl’s responses are profound, calling upon influences as disparate as TE Lawrence, St. Augustine, and Mao Zedong. This is an excellent interview. 

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

Thanks for reading, and enjoy the weekend. 

This Week, Pure and Uncut: October 24, 2014

It’s been another busy week in the international security world, but the weekend is finally here. Here’s a quick list of some of the more interesting news and analysis articles from this week. Like the rest of Drugs and Thugs Blog, the topics will focus on terrorism, insurgencies, transnational criminal organizations, and narcotics trafficking. 

A (Fighting) Season to Remember in Afghanistan: First off, an article by Jason Lyall at The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage Blog on the end of a stunningly costly fighting season in Afghanistan. The losses incurred this year by the Afghan National Security Forces are higher than American fatalities from 2001 until now. Additionally, the Taliban is attacking with large numbers of insurgents in areas of the country that they would not typically operate in. Although Afghanistan has had limited coverage in the press, the war there continues on. 

How About Some Unconventional Warfare? Thoughts on Countering ISIS: At War on the Rocks, Clint Watts has a thought provoking article on potential strategies that could be exploited to limit ISIS’s strength. Most interestingly, he argues that we should infiltrate ISIS, as their counterintelligence and vetting process is virtually non-existent. 

Pentagon, State Blame Afghans for Resurgent Poppy Fields: Siobhan O’Grady at Foreign Policy has a report on the release of a report on Afghanistan poppy production. US counter narcotics efforts have been unable to end the growth of Afghan poppy, and poppy production actually reached a record high last year. The new President Ashraf Ghani may focus on the issue, but poppy production will likely continue to be problematic for Afghanistan going forward. 

AQAP Claims Credit for Series of Attacks in Yemen: From The Long War Journal’s Oren Adaki, a post on the recent violence between AQAP and the Houthi insurgency group. There have been at least 16 claimed attacks by AQAP in the span of just 4 days this past week. Although underreported, the conflict in Yemen between the Houthis, the Yemeni government, and AQAP has been one of the more fascinating subplots this summer. 

More Small Wars: From the most recent edition of Foreign Affairs, Max Boot argues that although America wishes it could be done with the complicated insurgencies of the past decade, it is likely that we will continue to fight them. We should therefore be prepared for such operations, and Boot outlines some recommendations that are necessary to build our capabilities. If we do not plan for the small wars, we will continue to be surprised by them when we inevitably find ourselves fighting one. 

Criminals Turn to Metal Theft as Mexico Underworld Fragments: Next, David Gagne at InSight Crime with a report on subsections of Mexican drug cartels stealing electrical tower parts. Because of the continues splitting and fragmenting of the cartels, small cells of narco-traffickers are looking for new methods to make money. The cartels keep diversifying their income beyond drugs, which should be highly concerning for Mexican officials. 

The World’s Wealthiest Terrorists: Finally, Russell Berman at The Atlantic with a great piece on ISIS’s funding flows and how the US Treasury is combatting them. Although ISIS makes huge sums of money from oil, kidnapping, and flat-out theft, they also have to pay out equally huge sums to govern their wide swath of territory across Syria and Iraq. Because their funding does not come from backers abroad, it is difficult to target their finances, but they are much less secretive with their operations than al-Qaeda. 

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

Thanks for reading, and enjoy the weekend. 

The Rise and Fall of the Great Cartels, With Apologies to Paul Kennedy

Paul Kennedy’s excellent book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, charts out the interactions and dynamics of the leading states in the international system from 1500 until 1980, especially focusing on war and economics. With my apologies to him for paraphrasing his book title, I think that it is worthwhile to view the Mexican cartels in Kennedy’s lens as Great Powers. Both states and cartels control territory, battle for hegemony with their rivals, have massive financial stakes, and operate in a world where power is the most important currency. I hope to broaden out this into a larger set of more historical posts at some point, but for the moment, let’s examine the state of the Mexican narcotics cartels in 2014. This might be an unnecessary overview, but I believe that it’s important to know the background context, especially with such a fractured and complex system.

The most obvious place to start while looking at the current distribution of power is the leading power, the Sinaloa Cartel. The Sinaloa, led by the infamous Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman up until his capture earlier this year, have been the most powerful narcotics cartel for decades, mainly operating in the western portion of the country. If there was ever the chance for a hegemon to take control of the majority of the drug trafficking, it was the Sinaloa. Their bitter rivals, as well as one of the more recent upstart cartels, is Los Zetas. Los Zetas, first a Mexican Army special forces unit, became the enforcement wing of the Gulf Cartel in the late 1990s. They later split off in 2010 from the Gulf Cartel to form their own organization. Since then, they have become notorious for their brutal methods and the speed in which they became the second largest narcotics power in Mexico. The Zetas have mainly operated on the eastern part of the country. The rest of the cartels listed here have sided either with Sinaloa or Zetas, as they are easily the two superpowers. Despite this, the Mexican cartels do not exist in a truly bipolar world, as there are multiple mid-level powers that exert serious influence over the proceedings. Up until a last week, the Juarez Cartel would likely be listed as one of the leaders in this second tier, but like many of the other organizations this year, Juarez lost its leader to Mexican law enforcement. Allied against the Sinaloa and with the Zetas, the Juarez Cartel controls one of the most important border crossings, that of Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, Texas. The Gulf Cartel, which initially employed the Zetas unit, controls a limited portion of their former empire on the eastern part of the country, but they continue to work with Sinaloa against the Zetas. The Beltran-Leyva Organization, a former Sinaloa branch, is also dealing with the recent loss of a leader, although it has lent its support to the Zetas alliance bloc. One of the more interesting dynamics in recent years has been the evolution of the cartels based in southwest Mexico, especially in Michoacan. Initially controlled by the Michoacan Cartel, itself a breakaway from the Gulf and Zetas cartels, it was eventually usurped by the Caballeros Templarios group, which have themselves been followed by the Jalisco Cartel-New Generation. The final relevant group is the Tijuana Cartel, which really only controls the border city of Tijuana at this point, although they were once much more powerful. 

I realize that comparing any geopolitical conflict to 1914 Europe has been vastly overused, this being the centennial year of World War I. I really do hate to add to the use of such a cheap journalistic trope, but looking at the cartels through the lens of realism and multipolarity can be useful for analysis. Within the convoluted mix of alliances and defections in the cartel system, there is a clear division between the Sinaloa and Zetas blocs, but the smaller organizations each play a role in the balance of power. Just as would be expected in a realist system of states, the cartels each balanced with or bandwagoned against the two largest powers. Going forward, the cartel alliance dynamics will be crucial for the security of Mexico as a state. If history is any lesson, multipolarity is significantly more violent and volatile than any other system, which fits with the pattern of cartel wars in the past decade. Perhaps if Sinaloa and Zetas become the only independent actors, Mexico could see a decreased level of violence, effectively a Cold War for narcos. This is not to argue that this is necessarily likely, though. Defections and secessions appear to be more frequent in the world of cartels than in the world of international relations. As long as there is the chance for increased profit by going at it alone, it seems apparent that cartel factions will continue to seek independence from the blocs. 

This may seem like a fairly academic and historical musing, but there are real policy implications from viewing the cartels through the great powers lens. Based on international relations and realism theory, we can make some reasonable assumptions about how these cartels will act as the system shifts and power distribution changes. Mexican organized crime is not monolithic and the actors are not unalterable. As an example, look to the Mexican cartels’ predecessors, Colombia. The Cali, Medellin, and Norte de Valle Cartels no longer exist in any capacity. Cartels, just like states, rise and eventually fall. 

More on this down the road. Thanks for reading.  

This Week, Pure and Uncut: October 17, 2014

It’s been one hell of a week, but at least the weekend is here once more. Here’s a quick list of some of the more interesting news and analysis articles from this week. Like the rest of Drugs and Thugs Blog, the topics addressed will focus on terrorism, insurgencies, transnational criminal organizations, and narcotics trafficking. 

CIA Study of Covert Aid Fueled Skepticism About Helping Syrian Rebels: First off, from Mark Mazzetti at The New York Times, an article on an internal CIA report analyzing the usefulness of arming insurgencies. The bottom line was that it does not typically work, which influenced the Obama Administration’s early view on arming Syrian rebels. 

How the Jalisco Cartel Evolved With Mexico’s Drug War: Jesus Perez Caballero at InSight Crime with commentary on the dynamics of cartels around Guadalajara. The rise and fall of these cartels is fascinating, and the evolution will continue to be fluid. 

Taliban Routs Afghan Military Convoy in Ambush: From The Long War Journal’s Bill Roggio, a report on the destruction of a sizable Afghan military convoy by the Taliban. Surprisingly, this attack occurred in the north of Afghanistan, far from the Taliban’s traditional base of power. Although the international security community has been focused on ISIS over the previous months, there is another country funded by the US and fighting an insurgency just one state over. 

The Fall of Kobane: The Impact on Turkey, Kurds and the United States: Chase Winter at War on the Rocks with a post positing the effects that an ISIS takeover of Kobane would have for the conflict. With Turkey attacking Kurdish positions but hesitating to attack ISIS, this has to be the most compelling storyline in the anti-ISIS coalition. 

The Secret Casualties of Iraq’s Abandoned Chemical Weapons: C.J. Chivers at The New York Times broke huge news this week with his piece on the American soldiers injured by old chemical weapons that had been scattered around Iraq. Of additional concern, ISIS has apparently taken over one of the locations with these chemical shells. A chilling article. 

How Do Insurgencies End?: From Russell Croy at the Small Wars Journal, a post examining the operational paths that lead to the end of insurgencies. He uses the Chechen and Indonesian insurgencies as examples and reviews the literature to elucidate the limitations of our current understanding of insurgencies. 

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

Thanks for reading, and enjoy the weekend. 

ISIS is an Insurgency: A Request for the Correct Use of Terms

It has been just over a month since President Obama, in a primetime speech on the eve of September 11th, declared that the United States would work to “degrade and destroy” the extremist group known as ISIS or ISIL. Since then, the US military has conducted, in concert with our allies, well over 300 airstrikes on ISIS infrastructure, vehicles, and militants. Despite the serious amount of ordnance being dropped on ISIS, there has been a limited effect on the battlefield lines. ISIS continues to threaten the security of Baghdad, while their operations in Syria have only expanded, most notably in the Kobane front. Additionally, they continue to make gains in Anbar province. After the excellent piece in the New York Times earlier this week on the leftover chemical weapons from the Saddam Hussein regime, there are now concerns that ISIS has seized old Iraqi chemical shells containing sarin and mustard gas. As before, there continues to be worries that foreign fighters will return to their Western countries of origin and commit attacks. With so many fears, legitimate or otherwise, flying around from newspapers, pundits, bloggers, and the like, the following may seem like a relatively semantic argument, but we need to collectively rationalize that ISIS is not a terrorist group. They are an insurgency, and any campaign that treats them like a terrorist group will likely be an ineffective one. Just because the phrase “counterinsurgency” is a dirty word in DC does not mean that we must avoid the reality that ISIS controls wide swaths of territory, governs that territory in brutal fashion, and engages its enemies in relatively organized campaigns. If it looks like an insurgency, acts like an insurgency, and fights like an insurgency, then it’s probably an insurgency. 

As I wrote in a post a month ago following Obama’s speech on the new policy, “airstrikes alone might not be enough to destroy ISIS. If Obama wants to degrade ISIS’s standing, airstrikes and local help might be plenty, but it is hard to believe that it would be enough force to fully destroy ISIS”. Although American involvement has likely limited ISIS’s strength, it has had a limited effect on the lines of control in Iraq and Syria. Air power can do massive damage to an enemy, but US history is full of examples in which air strikes were unable to defeat an adversary, most notably in the case of Operation Rolling Thunder in Vietnam. We know that bombs alone won’t do the job. 

This is not to argue that we need to immediately add the proverbial “boots on the ground” and begin moving US troops to the front lines. But there needs to be a realization that this is an insurgency. Just because counterinsurgency doctrine has lost its salience in DC doesn't mean that we need to avoid the word “insurgency” in discussion of ISIS. Is the concern that by calling them as such, we would legitimize their aims and means? We explicitly fought against insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq in previous years, so this can’t be the case. Is this a legal maneuver, as Obama was able to begin the strikes under the 2001 AUMF that only allowed action against al-Qaeda and its affiliates? Maybe it is time that we get a different authorizing law, one that accurately reflects 2014 and not 2001. 

As long as we continue to view the problem in terms that don’t fit it, it is unlikely that we will see success. Calling ISIS an insurgency doesn’t mean that the US needs to immediately embark on a long counterinsurgency campaign, but it does at least accurately reflect the reality on the ground. 

Thoughts?

This Week, Pure and Uncut: October 10, 2014

Another eventful week of foreign policy news, another weekend here again. Here’s a quick list of some of the more interesting news and analysis articles from this week. Like the rest of Drugs and Thugs Blog, the topics addressed will focus on narcotics trafficking, transnational criminal organizations, insurgencies, and terrorism. 

Even if We Defeat the Islamic State, We’ll Still Lose the Bigger War: From The Washington Post, a piece by Andrew Bacevich on America’s continual failures in the Middle East. Since 1980, we have intervened in 14 Middle Eastern nations, and yet we find ourselves stuck in the region once more. Bacevich ends the article stating that “No matter how long it lasts, America’s war for the Greater Middle East will end in failure. And when it does, Americans will discover that it was also superfluous.” 

Is the Islamic State a Terrorist Group or an Insurgency?: Jerry Meyerle at Defense One describes the distinction between terrorist groups and insurgent groups, noting that as ISIS is an insurgency, our counterterror strategy will not succeed. If we only want to contain ISIS, airstrikes might be enough. But if we truly mean to destroy the insurgency, we need to be willing to make a larger effort. 

The Boko Haram Insurgency, By the Numbers: From The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage Blog, a post by Nathaniel Allen, Peter Lewis, and Hilary Matfess on the casualties inflicted over the years by Boko Haram. Not only is Boko Haram the largest cause of violence in Nigeria, it is also “one of the most significant conflicts in the world. Nigerian casualties are now running more than double those in Afghanistan, and substantially higher than in Iraq just a few years ago.“ 

EU: Balkans Still Plagued by Crime, Corruption, and Censorship: From OCCRP, a not too surprising announcement that the EU considers the non-EU Balkan states as too disorderly to join the Union. Organized crime remains as one of the largest obstacles to membership for Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Turkey, although there are other factors for each individual state.

AQAP Suicide Attacks Kill Scores in Sana’a and Hadramout: From Oren Adaki at the Long War Journal, news that the al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen killed over 60 in a suicide bombing. One of the biggest news stories to slide under the radar this summer, there continues to be conflict between the Shia Houthis, the Yemeni government, and the Sunni al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, especially now that the Houthis and the Yemeni government have been in negotiations. 

Mexico’s Deadly Narco-Politics: On The New York Times, an article from Ioan Grillo on the horrifying killing of students in Iguala, Mexico, by cartel members and facilitated by the local police. The level of violence, and the cooperation between the cartels and government, is a “terrifying concept”, as Grillo puts it.  

Clandestine Arms Factories Discovered in Mexico: From David Gagne at InSightCrime, reports of the discovery of two Mexican drug cartel weapons factories in Jalisco. These are the first of their kind found in Mexico, which might indicate that cartels have been having more trouble sourcing guns from the United States. 

15,000-Plus for Fighting: The Return of the Foreign Fighters: Finally, from Michael Noonan at War on the Rocks, an article on the history of jihadist foreign fighters, the likelihood of them returning to their home states to commit attacks, and what can be done to confront that possibility. The issue of foreign fighters will continue to be a concern for national security for the foreseeable future; more must be done to prevent such a threat from returning to the US or Europe. 

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

Enjoy the weekend, and thanks for reading.

The Etymology of "Thug"

This being the Drugs and Thugs Blog, it seems that a etymological dive into the history of the word “Thug” is necessary, if only as a way to define what we’re talking about here. 

First off, this is going to explicitly avoid any discussion of race, especially in light of the debate that came out after the NFL’s conference championship game this January and Richard Sherman’s comments. The word thug is not used here in that context, and I would never intend this blog to be viewed in that light. In all honesty, I forgot that the “thug” controversy happened earlier in the year when setting up this blog. With that out of the way, let’s look at the historical background of the term. 

The dictionary lists “thug” as being: 1. a cruel or vicious ruffian, robber, or murderer. 
2. one of a former group of professional robbers and murderers in India who strangled their victims. 

When naming this blog on organized crime, narcotics, insurgency, and terrorism, my usage of the term “thug” was to connote the violent aspects of those topics and broaden the blog into non-narcotics issues. But there’s an entire history behind the term that I had no awareness of. The Thugs, or Thugee, were a group of thieves and assassins in India from roughly 1400 until the mid-1800s. Much remains unknown about the Thuggee, but the etymology is fascinating. The word is derived from the Sanskrit word for “thief” or “to conceal”, which fits nicely with the intention of this blog. All of the groups that I try to examine are effectively secret organizations, stealing for their survival and concealing their operations. The Thuggee were targeted by the British colonials in the mid-1800s for extinction because of their actions. In attempting to stamp out the Thugee, the British passed multiple laws, known as the Thugee Suppression Acts of 1836-1848. The British viewed the Thugs as a hereditary tribe and there is scholarly work arguing that the Thugs were persecuted because of their role in the 1857 Sepoy Rebellion. Stretching the metaphor a bit, it does sound like the British conducted an anachronistic counterinsurgency campaign against the Thuggee. 

The term "Thug" has a complex history and etymology, without a doubt. For the purposes of this blog, the term will continue to represent those individuals involved in narcotics trafficking, organized crime, insurgency, and terrorism. 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Group_of_Thugs.gif

This Week, Pure and Uncut: October 3, 2014

After another eventful week of foreign policy news, the weekend is finally upon us. Here’s a quick list of some of the more interesting news and commentary articles from this week. Like the rest of Drugs and Thugs Blog, the topics addressed will focus on narcotics trafficking, international criminal organizations, insurgencies, and terrorism. 

Operation Archimedes: From OCCRP, a report that over 1,000 organized crime associates were arrested earlier this week in Europe and Colombia. Touted as the largest ever international action against organized crime, this operation also seized large quantities of narcotics, stolen cars, and cash.  

Beltran Leyva Captured: From Daniel Hernandez at Vice News, analysis on the recent capture of Beltran Leyva Cartel leader Hector Beltran Leyva. This is the highest profile cartel capture by Mexican authorities since Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was captured earlier this spring. The largest concern is the potential for increased violence as the group further fractures and as the Beltran Leyva territory is taken over by other cartels. 

Show Me the Money: From The Washington Institute’s Matthew Levitt, a striking realization that US financial abilities are unable to truly harm ISIS’s financing. Because they do not rely on foreign donations, they are much less susceptible to Treasury sanction designations or other financial tools. To eliminate ISIS’s funding, the criminal networks inside Iraq need to be targeted. 

Boko Haram Leader Alive: From Foreign Policy’s Passport blog, news that Boko Haram's leader Abubakar Shekau, initially thought to have been killed two weeks ago, is still alive. In the released video, he announces his formation of an Islamic caliphate in Nigeria, then literally gives the middle finger to those who claimed he had been killed. 

The Syrian Proxy War: From The Washington Post’s David Ignatius, a report from an Istanbul command center for the proxy war being waged in Syria by various foreign powers, especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. Ignatius notes that as long as these nations are operating through different proxy militias, it will be near impossible to coordinate the fall of Assad. 

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

Enjoy the weekend, and thanks for reading.

FARC and Urabenos: Colombian Organized Crime Evolves

It’s been an eventful month of news about the Colombian FARC and Urabenos groups. In September, the two groups appear to have collaborated on an attack directed at a Colombian police department, resulting in seven dead Colombian officers. For multiple reasons, this confluence of the two illicit groups is surprising. First, it is strange to see the FARC ally themselves in non-business terms with a different group. Traditionally, the FARC sells to any group that is willing to buy their narcotics. They don’t coordinate their activities with other groups, especially those that are explicitly anti-governmental. At first glance, this is an odd combination of a leftist insurgency funded by cocaine and a more traditional organized crime group working together. The timing of this attack is intriguing as well. The FARC are currently in peace talks with the Colombian government which at least thus far seem to be progressing to a final deal. Colombian President Santos has threatened that spoiler violence could end the talks previously, which makes the joint September attack on the police department so surprising. Although the FARC is a relatively hierarchical organization, there are fronts that operate quasi-independently. A major concern for the Colombian government is that although a peace agreement with the majority of the FARC is reached, splinter groups will break off and coalesce with the Urabenos, or other drug trafficking organizations in the country. The FARC’s dual nature of simultaneously being a leftist insurgency and cocaine trafficker makes these peace negotiations more fraught than with a prototypical insurgency. The FARC does not have one single reason to exist anymore. The FARC could potentially go the way of the Irish Republican Army, in which the majority of the group commits for peace, but small splinter groups remain, financed by criminal activities. 

In more recent news, the Urabenos and FARC have made waves just this week. The Urabenos group announced a threat against any reporter that covers their activities. Individual reporters operating in Colombia received letters laying out an ultimatum: stop reporting on the Urabenos BACRIM group or die. As InSight Crime notes, Colombia is the 10th most dangerous country to be a journalist. 

Also from InSight Crime, news of the FARC’s non-cocaine financing. Although they continue to negotiate for peace, it appears that certain fronts of the group are creating contingency plans for the future. These operations include extortion from the gold, emerald, and oil industries in Colombia. This article adds weight to the above fear that the FARC, although negotiating for peace, could splinter into smaller organized criminal groups. 

Colombian organized crime groups continue to operate and evolve. The news of this past month explicitly indicates the multiplicity of fronts that the country must work against, as well as the complexity of the situation. The peace negotiations with the FARC are a start, but they are certainly not the end of illicit activities in the country.