The Challenge Of Drug Trafficking To Democratic Governance And Human Security In

International criminal networks mainly from Latin America and Africa -- some with links to terrorism -- are turning West Africa into a key global hub for the distribution, wholesaling, and production of illicit drugs. These groups represent an existential threat to democratic governance of already fragile states in the sub-region because they are using narco-corruption to stage coups d'état, hijack elections, and co-opt or buy political power. Besides a spike in drug-related crime, narcotics trafficking is also fraying West Africa's traditional social fabric and creating a public health crisis, with hundreds of thousands of new drug addicts. While the inflow of drug money may seem economically beneficial to West Africa in the short-term, investors will be less inclined to do business in the long-term if the sub-region is unstable. On net, drug trafficking and other illicit trade represent the most serious challenge to human security in the region since resource conflicts rocked several West African countries in the early 1990s. International aid to West Africa's "war on drugs" is only in an initial stage; progress will be have to be measured in decades or even generations, not years and also unfold in parallel with creating alternative sustainable livelihoods and addressing the longer-term challenges of human insecurity, poverty, and underdevelopment.

West Africa is under attack from international criminal networks that are using the subregion as a key global hub for the distribution, wholesale, and increased production of illicit drugs. Most drug trade in West Africa involves cocaine sold in Europe, although heroin is also trafficked to the United States, and the subregion is becoming an export base for amphetamines and their precursors, mainly for East Asian markets and, increasingly, the United States. The most important of these criminal networks are drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) from Latin America-primarily from Colombia, Venezuela, and Mexico-partnering with West African criminals. These criminals, particularly Nigerians and Ghanaians, have been involved in the global drug trade for several decades, first with cannabis and later with heroin. The problem has worsened to the point that these networks represent an existential threat to the viability of already fragile states in West Africa as independent, rule of law based entities. As part of this new Latin America- West Africa criminal nexus, Guinea-Bissau is generally recognized as a narco-state where state-capture by traffickers has already occurred. There is also increasingly strong evidence linking terrorist organizations or state sponsors of terrorism to the West Africa drug trade, including Colombia's Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Hezbollah (allied with elements in the Lebanese diaspora), Venezuela, and Iran. These criminal and terrorist groups are also a threat to U.S. national security, because the illicit profits earned by Latin American drug cartels operating in West Africa strengthen the same crimi nal elements that traffic drugs to North America, and the same North African and Middle Eastern terrorist groups and nations that target the United States. The link to AQIM takes on particular significance in light of this terrorist organization's recent takeover of a vast sector of ungoverned space in northern Mali, along with Touareg allies. West Africa's geographical location between Latin America and Europe made it an ideal transit zone for exploitation by powerful drug cartels and terrorist organizations-much as the Caribbean and Central America had long suffered for being placed between South America's cocaine producers and North America's cocaine users. West Africa's primary operational allure to traffickers is not actually geography, however, but rather its low standards of governance, low levels of law enforcement capacity, and high rates of corruption. Latin American traffickers recently relocated a share of their wholesale distribution from the Western Hemisphere to West Africa, with the subregion moving from being merely a short-term transit point to becoming a storage and staging area for wholesale repackaging, re-routing and sometimes (re-)sale of drugs.

Taking an ethnographic approach to understanding urban violence, Enrique Desmond Arias examines the ongoing problems of crime and police corruption that have led to widespread misery and human rights violations in many of Latin America's new democracies. Employing participant observation and interview research in three favelas (shantytowns) in Rio de Janeiro over a nine-year period, Arias closely considers the social interactions and criminal networks that are at the heart of the challenges to democratic governance in urban Brazil. Much of the violence is the result of highly organized, politically connected drug dealers feeding off of the global cocaine market. Rising crime prompts repressive police tactics, and corruption runs deep in state structures. The rich move to walled communities, and the poor are caught between the criminals and often corrupt officials. Arias argues that public policy change is not enough to stop the vicious cycle of crime and corruption. The challenge, he suggests, is to build new social networks committed to controlling violence locally. Arias also offers comparative insights that apply this analysis to other cities in Brazil and throughout Latin America.

Deliberately challenging the traditional, state-centric analysis of security, this book focuses on subnational and transnational forces—religious and ethnic conflict, climate change, pandemic diseases, poverty, terrorism, criminal networks, and cyber attacks—that threaten human beings and their communities across state borders. Examining threats related to human security in the modern era of globalization, Reveron and Mahoney-Norris argue that human security is national security today, even for great powers. This fully updated second edition of Human and National Security: Understanding Transnational Challenges builds on the foundation of the first (published as Human Security in a Borderless World) while also incorporating new discussions of the rise of identity politics in an increasingly connected world, an expanded account of the actors, institutions, and approaches to security today, and the ways diverse global actors protect and promote human security. An essential text for security studies and international relations students, Human and National Security not only presents human security challenges and their policy implications, it also highlights how governments, societies, and international forces can, and do, take advantage of possibilities in the contemporary era to develop a more stable and secure world for all.

This book represents a different approach in the study of the Sahel region in North Africa. Due to the hybrid security threats sweeping across the area, the whole region becomes a new security complex different from Middle East and more related to Western and Central Africa developments, including the impact of drug-trafficking coming from Latin America. This book discusses how the Transnational Organized Crime-Terrorism Nexus has created a very different dynamics from Middle East’s, hitting hard to people, societies and states there. The contributors argue that the countries in the area and the European Union should recognize this new complex and respond properly and differently to this situation.

Despite the scope of the threat they pose to Mexico’s security, violent drug-trafficking organizations are not well understood, and optimal strategies to combat them have not been identified. While there is no perfectly analogous case to Mexico’s current security situation, historical case studies may offer lessons for policymakers as they cope with challenges related to violence and corruption in that country.

Each chapter examines how drug trafficking affects a certain security issue, such as rogue nations, weak and failing states, protracted intrastate conflicts, terrorism, transnational crime, public health, and cyber security. This book provides an understanding of how an array of threats to international security are exacerbated by drug trafficking.