programme non-state actors & non-military security...

Conflict Research Group 1

Conflict Research Group | Universiteit Gent 1

Non-State Actors & Non-Military Securityguest lecture

Non-state actors of a violent kind

An Vranckx

United Nations University - CRIS

& University of Ghent:

3° World Studies & Conflict Research Group


Programme

• Typology of Non State Actors (NSA)

⇒ Focus on illegal NSA of particularly violent extraction

⇒ Illegal armed NSA that survived after the Cold War

& the international community’s response

• Delineate the habitat of these NSA, beyond military security crises

• Case descriptions

• What to do about these?

⇒ Ideas for discussion later on


Analytic proposal: typology of NSA• Delineate ‘the State’ vs organized groups of private individuals that

compose that State, and which indulge in activities that are– not initiated by the State– not (entirely) financed by the State– not (entirely) regulated by the State

• These NSA come in different types, which we can categorize withrespect to– what motivates their activities?

• for profit / non-profit– whether means employed are in line with the law?

• legal / illegal


⇒ Criteria construct an analytical gridNON-PROFIT

LEGAL ILLEGAL

FOR PROFIT

M E A N S / L A W ?

MOTIVES


⇒ Means/motives grid

NON PROFIT NON PROFITLEGAL ILLEGAL

LEGAL ILLEGALFOR PROFIT FOR PROFIT


Classifying in terms of means:where to draw that line?

NON PROFIT NON PROFITLEGAL ILLEGAL

LEGAL ILLEGALFOR PROFIT FOR PROFIT

Position vis-à-vis which legal system?



Use the grid or map to

• Make our own expectations about specific NSA types explicit

– +/- profit motive

– legality of the means employed in thus-motivated activities

• Compare a type’s expected position on the grip with empiricalfindings on Real World concrete representatives of that NSA type

• Realize that a particular Real World representative of an NSA typemay extend over more than one quadrant corner on the grid

• Plot the ‘movement’ on the grid that a particular Real Worldrepresentative of an NSA type is seen to make over time


Illegality & violence

• Examples of un-violent Real World NSA defined (locally) as illegal

– Falung Gong meditation groups are illegal by Chinese Law

– Discrete white collar fraud execs don’t do ‘wet jobs’

<=> Today’s contribution does focus on violent types of illegal NSA


Today’s focus

ILLEGAL

FOR PROFIT

PMCs

LEGAL

FOR PROFIT

NON PROFIT

ILLEGAL

NON PROFIT

LEGAL


Positioning violent NSA on the grid

• Placing these NSA on the illegal side was the easy part:

– Being armed & violent, these are by definition illegal. Theyviolate at the least the State monopoly on legal use of force.

• Can these illegal armed & violent NSA be ‘non-profit’?

• Other than regular State armies that thrive on tax money, NSAthat undermine that State have no access to the resources of thatState

⇒ What options do they have?


Violent illegal non-profit NSA

• Tax people who live on territory they control and companies thatoperate there (extort)

• -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

• Raise voluntary contributions by private sponsors(‘un-extorted’ people and companies)

• Live off another State– Common in Cold War, ideological sponsorship in ‘third world’

• E.g. CIA-funding for UNITA to wage war in Angola against‘communist-supported’ MPLA-government

• Colombian guerrillas paid from Havana, Bejing & Moscow– Post Cold War era?


Post-Cold war funding for illegal NSA• Private sponsors (+/- extorted) are still an option

– now include religious charities of a particular type, some ofwhich have been linked to terrorist acts

• Ideological State sponsorships became more difficult to secure

– Soviet Empire imploded and left Revolutionary Acronym Groupswithout funding and an ideology proven ‘wrong’

– US lost interest to covertly fund those who fought governmentsthat were no longer supported by Soviet block, anyway

• At the end of the Cold War, violent NSA that were cut loose fromtheir former ideological funding, chose from 2 options:



1: Demobilize• Option that many Revolutionary Acronym groups were forced to take,

after (relatively) modest funding from Communist States dried

// Era of the Peace & Cease Fire Accords in Latin America

– E.g. Colombian Accords

• 1984: Government pacts a cease fire & peace deal with 5different guerrilla groups (some at it from early ‘60s)

• 1989: Demobilisation of M-19 guerrilla (that began in 1974)

– Early 1990s, signing of various Peace Agreements in CentralAmerica, where different groups groups demobilized andtransformed into political parties (e.g. FMNL in El Salvador)


Peace accord demobilization trajectory

Illegal

For Profit

Legal

For profit

Non-profit

Illegal

Non-profit

Legal


2: Violent NSA go ‘commercial’• Starved violent NSA raise funding for their armed struggle through

commercial activities.– Un-transparent activities are the more appealing in this respect⇒ The violent NSA recycles some of is own troops to undertake

these activitiesOR⇒ The violent NSA commits some of its troops to ‘rent out’ specific

services to to more established commercial syndicates⇒ Especially those that trade in goods not tolerated by the

State that would try to prevent such illicit trades• Find an example in the Angolan War (1975 - +/- 2003)


Example from Angola• Angolan War since 1975 at independence

– MPLA (USSR & Cuba) <=> UNITA (CIA)• Soviet support helped MPLA usurp Angolan State

⇒ After Soviet support stopped, MPLA substituted that ‘ideological’income by royalties from oil proceeds paid to Angolan State

<=> UNITA couldn’t replace former covert US funding by oil proceeds• Apart from oil, Angola is rich in diamonds, that are not worth much IN

Angola and are commercialized elsewhere after taxing (by State)⇒ UNITA loots diamonds off territory under its control, smuggles

these out & sells these on the international diamond market⇒ Proceeds of these diamond sales fund UNITA’s continued war⇒ ‘Blood Diamonds’ are a ‘lootable resource’ (petrol is not)


UNITA moves on the grid

Illegal

For Profit

Legal

For profit

Non-profit

Illegal

Non-profit

Legal

Cold War eracovert CIA $gave UNITAthe option not tobe in it forthe money

Post Cold War proceeds from diamondtrading on the international market


International community responds• UNSC embargo on Angola, since 1998

– No arms in

– No diamonds from Angola can be sold on international market

• Enforce that ‘diamond embargo’?

• How entice diamond trading industry to comply with the embargo?

• Civil society advocacy campaigns at particular time & place...⇒ Tri-partite deal known as the ‘Kimberley Process’ to certify and

thereby secure trade in ‘non-conflict’ diamonds (85% of market)• Was starving UNITA enough to end the war in Angola?



Similar stories to tell of other places?• In late 80s until early in this millennium, illegal violent NSA in Angola,

Sierra Leone, Liberia & East Congo had incomes from trading inpilfered diamonds on the not-so-closed international market

• Many ‘claim’ having made a contributed to ending such wars– Sniper who caught Jonas Savimbi in 2002 probably best claim– Advocacy campaigners (& ‘global’ investigative journalists) claim

they ‘forced’ the diamond industry to respect UNSC embargo &inspired the Kimberley Process to certify diamonds & ‘monitor’that Process now

• Romanticized version of ‘their’ story made it to Hollywood= ‘Blood Diamond’, 2006 by Edward Zwick, on Sierra Leone war


Go commercial without diamonds?

• Diamonds are not the only ‘lootable’ resource that is traded rathereasily on shady international market

– Rubies, gold, certain minerals (‘coltan’), tropical timber...

• Diamonds & other ‘lootables’ are only illegal to trade in if these havenot been taxed in the State where these were found & proceeds ofthe sale may financially fuel an armed conflict

<=> Some other resources are ALWAYS illegal to trade in

⇒ Violent NSA more like to trade on illegal markets, for instance...


KLA & the Kosovo War, 1998-1999• Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) = non-State participant in the war that

tore the former Republic of Yugoslavia apart at end of last millennium

• KLA was created in 1996 with some covert German support, itdemobilized after the Kosovo War, when some of its former membersformed a political party, that occasionally participates in government

• KLA funded its activities in the war from trading on the ‘Balkan Route’heroine that was produced further east, in Asia and the Middle East

=> KLA = one among more that trade heroine on the ‘last stretch’ tothe lucrative West European market

– KLA invested trade proceeds in a struggle to ‘liberate Kosovo’


Kosovo Liberation Armypost-conflict trajectory

Illegal

For Profit

Legal

For profit

Non-profit

Illegal

Non-profit

Legal


Could the war have been prevented?• Could KLA-funding have been cut in those violent years, so as to

avoid almost 1000 people a year were killed & Kosovar Albaniansfled into exile?

• No parallel with the blood diamond act is conceivable:• The international community did not put a ‘ban’ on KLA heroine, as

production, trade and consumption of that substance has alreadybeen declared illegal since at last 1961 UN Drug Convention

• That treaty does not stop heroine from being traded illegally bydealers with little cause to fear for their ‘reputation’(<-> diamond traders = easier ‘target’ for civil society advocacy)

• Would drug consumers insist on a certificate that declares thatproduct at the least ‘blood free’?


‘New Wars’

• Situations such as the ones in which the KLA participated weredescribed by British ‘war observer’ & scholar Mary Kaldor, in 1999, inher Old Wars, New Wars - Organized Violence in the Global Era

• According to Kaldor, these ‘new wars’ are a combination of– ‘old war’-like warfare– massive violations of human rights– organized crime= Post-Westfalian state context, where armed conflicts are waged

for more than political motives, by more than (agents of) theState, that have no (more) ‘ideological’ state funding and raisetheir own funding through economic activities that may be illegal



How to recognize such organized violenceand / or violent illegal NSA?

• Availability of ‘lootables’ not guaranteed to cause a ‘new war’

– Canada, Australia produce diamonds too, so does Russia...

– Violent NSA may just as well participate in a ‘trade section’ ofgoods that are sourced much further away (cf. KLA)

• ‘Massive violations of human rights’ are probably (hopefully) NOTcaused by regular armed forces, that may not even be ‘involved’

⇒ No guarantee to find ‘battle deaths’, that one must count 1000 ofto get a situation in the SIPRI inventory of ‘armed conflicts’

– E.g. KLA involved in a war with ‘only’ 960 casualties / year, butthese add up to an ‘intentional killing’ of 67 / 100.000 Kosovars


# people killed intentionally per 100000 in 2002= intensity as Kosovo War in 1998-1999


Over-all Colombian guerrilla trajectories

Illegal

For Profit

Legal

For profit

Non-profit

Illegal

Non-profit

Legal

5

1

2

4

1: 1950s, farmers‘selfdefend’

2: 1960- early 1980s Ideological support, to fight for ‘refunding’ the State // Communist lines

4: From mid 1980s:‘falcons’ in remainingguerrilla groups raiseown funding, such asby cocaine trafficking Cartels subcontracting

3

3: mid-late 1980s:smaller groupsdemobilize & so do‘ ‘the doves’of larger groups

5: Some factions of remainingguerrilla = illegal crime syndicates


Responses?• Colombian government offered guerrillas

generous amnesties from 1982 onwards,& chance to participate in ‘normal’ politics– e.g. Constitutional Assembly

• International community ‘facilitated’ talks– Offer ‘venues’ rather than step in

• How respond to guerrilla members who didn’t seize the opportunities& raised alternative / additional funding after mid ‘80s?(& why wouldn’t ‘these falcons’ demobilize?)

– Colombian State– International community– Others?


Failure of responses• Colombian State had tried to fight guerrillas throughout the 70s, but

was too ‘weak’ especially in rural areas where guerrillas had theirbases and lived off small-scale extortion of rural population

• Inadequate State response vexed rural mid- & upper class (cattleowners & narcos laundering criminal proceeds by purchasing land)⇒ Created private militias to fight against guerrillas⇒ Militias are joined by those who left army in frustration over

generous government amnesty to guerrillas⇒ Jointly develop into United Self Defenders (AUC) to exterminate

demobilised guerrillas & others in political parties these had joined– Fight undemobilised guerrillas or those that re-mobilised from fear

• Falcon guerrillas fight for their ‘communist ideals’ AND for self-defense, as State, was again proven incapable of protecting citizens


A word on the AUC

• These Colombian self-defenders represent one example of a violentnon-profit NSA that in past times had many representativeselsewhere in the past (including inter-war Germany), that goes bymany names, but in Latin American context it is best known as a‘death squad’

– Specifics of this type of violent NSA are described in a book byBruce Campbell & Arthur Brenner, Death Squads in GlobalPerspective: Murder with Deniability

• @ UGLA: excerpt from introductory chapter



Colombia 1984 - 2002

Illegal

For Profit

Legal

For profit

Non-profit

Illegal

Non-profit

Legal

Falcons renting outtheir services to othersin he drug economy

AUC


Responses• Colombian State continues to entice guerrillas to accept a ‘negotiated

solution’, especially in 1998-2002 strongly encouraged by internationalcommunity, lead in situ by Norway’s Jan Egeland

• Guerrillas talk in demilitarized zone (& Havana) but not about peace• AUC ignored by negotiators: considered un-political allies of drug

traffickers, while their ranks swell & their attacks increase on guerrillasand whomever they assume to be in cahoots with those guerrillas

• 2002 failure of negotiation deal admitted• (New) Colombian State keeps door to guerrilla open & initiates

demobilisation talks with AUC leadership, without international support• 2003 deal reached & AUC begin to mobilise their 31000 troops


Homicides in Colombia (on 45 million inhabitants

Source: Medicina Legal, Colombia Conflict Research Group | Universiteit Gent 34

# homicides / 100.000 inhabitants in 2006


# homicides / 100000 inhabitants (2008)(compared to 2002 homicide ranking, 2006)


Colombia in latest 5 years

Illegal

For Profit

Legal

For profit

Non-profit

Illegal

Non-profit

Legal

Factions of remaining guerrilla & newly formed violent enforcers of illicitdrug economy



# homicides / 100.000 inhabitants in 2006


Share my observations?

• 11 out of the 13 countries that currently suffer the world’s highesthomicide index are located in Latin America

– and in most of these countries things are getting worse

• The situation in several of these countries is more lethal nowthan what Angola, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Somalia suffered atthe turn of the millennium, or than Kosovo in the late 90s

• Why is Mexico not on this radar?


On Mexico• Currently ‘only’ 25th on country-average homicide ranking

• Is a very big country, over 100 million inhabitants

• Some parts are quite OK, including capital DF, +/- 25 million &violence (eg. rape) under better control now than before

<=> Several cities along northern border, with US, have become themost violent cities in the world

– Ciudad Juarez (bordering US El Paso) = world’s most homicidal

~ zero tolerance policy vis-à-vis drug cartels since late 2006


Closer look at the place & its history

• Violent & established type of NSA recognized in Mexican drug cartels

– controlled routes for trafficking illicit South American narcotics tothe lucrative US market from 1970s onwards

– enforced trafficking turf against Mexican state

• no need for alliances with revolutionary acronym groups orother ‘politically motivated’ NSAs

– engaged in intra-cartel turf wars over routes control

-> occasional executions, +/- 100/year in the early 2000s

• +/- stable turf arrangement until 2007 ->

Conflict Research Group | Universiteit Gent 41 Conflict Research Group | Universiteit Gent 42

Violence escalates from 2007 onwards

• Calderon Administration ‘crack down’ zero tolerance policy– Record seizures & cartel kingpins arrested & extradited to US

<-> Violence escalates

– Second-in-command impose violently to become new leaders

– Trafficking turfs redefined through inter-cartel violence

-> ‘violent take-overs’, new alliances & competitors

– Cartels target police, magistrates etc.

– Indiscriminate violence used as a new ‘tool’ of fear

• e.g. fragmentation grenade thrown into crowd in Morelia, 2008

• If ‘temporal violence’ was anticipated, it’s not being contained



Recent victories in containing cartels

13.09.2010: arrest of Comeniños, El Grande o King Kong


Drug lords don’t kill single handedly

• Some cartels have own enforcement squad ‘in house’• East coast cartel(s) around the Gulf subcontract

-> specialized illicit enforcement services entity: los Zetas– Recruit from police & army (pay better) -> easy access to arms– Apart from its illicitness, comparable to ‘legal’ PMCs– As of 2008 los Zetas became ‘disloyal’ to premier client (Gulf)

-> Now take contracts from whichever cartel pays (best)– Compensate slow market in diversifying activities

• Extorsion, kidnapping, arms & humans smuggling (into US)– Calderon’s crack down gets at them too (in Mexico)

-> Expand safe houses network & recruit in Central America


X

Why stronger Mexican enforcement failed tobreak the cocaine market and rather shifted

routes and problems elsewhere

-> EU+/- viaAfriva

X


X

The country’s currently suffering the world’shighest homicide rates

-> EU+/- viaAfriva

X


Violence in Central America:Mara Salvatrucha & other street gangs


Peculiar history of the mara• Born from war-wary Salvadoran diaspora in Los Angeles in ‘80s

– ‘small criminals’ in US jails uniting against Mexican ‘real thugs’• Deported ‘back home’ from late ‘90s• Local security apparatus +/- uninformed, unprepared and incapable

to stop deported gang members from transplanting the organisationS-> Generic term for street gangs in El Salvador, Guatemala & Honduras• Proliferation up to 5000 gangs that compete for turf on which to

conduct illicit activities (extortion + drugs, arms & humans trafficking)– 35000 members in El Salvador– 80000 members in Honduras– 100000 members in Guatemala



Maras as a violent NSA

• Violence as a tool to ‘liberate’ space for profitable illicit activity

– against state law enforcement

– against competing gangs

• No doubt about mara members’ involvement in both dying and killing

• Central American ‘Hard Hand’ policies from late 1990s

– Mara tattoos & dress code enough to get 12 year in Salvador jail

<-> Maras respond with indiscriminate violence

-> Reinforces view that maras are sole cause for violence epidemic

– as no other in view


Upon closer inspection

• Mareros increasingly difficult to identify (un-tattood) -> dispersed

• Private militia proliferate in ‘responce’ to state enforcement incapacity

-> Kill those believed to be (potentially) involved in mara activity

– Clandestine ~ death squads of old times

-> Difficult to lay hands on, but very probably highly lethal NSA


Add death squads to Salvadoran dynamics

• Sure these are NSA?• Death squads = clandestine state-initiated anti insurgency force and

tool for ‘social cleansing’ that ‘grew out of (state)control’-> All about the type in Campbell & Brenner excerpt

• Historical presence in Central America as a clandestine anti-insurgency & social cleansing tool

• Now resurface/recreated in response to maras• One of these old-time Savadorean death squads, Sombra Negra

(‘black shade’) considered major competitor for Mara Salvatrucha(MS 13) and Mara 18, on illicit activities circuit– Example of recycling from ‘idialistic’ non-profit -> for profit


Violent illegal NSA in Central America

MARAS

Illegal

For Profit

Legal

For profit

Non-profit

Illegal

ANTI-MARADEATH SQUADS

Non-profit

Legal


October 2009, police heli shot over Rio


‘Who could do such a thing’?

• Poor quarters of Brazilian cities, known as ‘favelas’, are not placeswhere police patrols and enforces the law

• ‘No State control’ doesn’t exclude the favelas are under some kindof law and order regime

– Areas within favelas are tagged, in reference to the respectivegang under whose control that area is recognized to be

– These gangs engage in turf battles over the areas they control,killing members of other gangs and collateral damage

• What are these gangs, anyway?



Rio: ‘prison gangs’

• Peculiar history of the Comando Vermelho (CV) prison gang– °1979 Cândido Mendes Prison in Rio de Janeiro– Former ‘armed opposition’ to military dictatorship held as political

prisoners Falanga Vermelha + ordinary convicts-> common gang that goes entirely for profit

• Throughout 1990s dominate Rio crime scene in & out of prisons• Several CV leaders died, mostly by competing gangs that emerged

from CV’s 1980s internal power struggle (cf ‘Cidade de Deus’)– Terceiro Comando Puro (TCP) & Amigos dos Amigos (ADA)

• Still control parts of Rio, streets & favelas tagged with CV


Comando Vermelho dynamics

Illegal

For Profit

Legal

For profit

Non-profit

Illegal

Non-profit

Legal


More Brazilian examples, looked at closer• São Paolo 2000 crack-down on gangs -> violence dropped (slightly)• São Paolo has 22% of Brazilian population & 44% of its convicts-> Alarmingly overcrowded prisons & regular violent outbreaks• São Paulo-based Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) fortified• PCC-leader Marcola coordinates 26 simultaneous attacks on police

stations (etc.) from his prison cell, using his mobile phone, cocaine & ?– PCC members released from prison can’t leave gang

• Return to illicit/poor life in favelas (under PCC-control)– where they’ll help enforce PCC-control

• Likely to get caught again sooner or later-> return to prison (& PCC-terror) control regime


What to do about these?

• State enforcement corps overwhelmed, overmanned, overarmed, andnot likely to enter gang-controlled favelas

• Brazil has a solid history with death squads

– 1960s-1980s ‘Coronels Regimes’ clandestine state-initiatedforces for social control and anti-insurgency action

– Use tactics that state enforcers are not allowed to use

• Resurface in battles with prison gangs, mostly in favelas

– Engage in turf battles under promise to ‘bring order’

-> private justice very likely to get out of hand (& go profit?)


Can the international community helpbring such violence under control?

• Declaring certain narcotics illegal & fight a ‘War’ to enforce that hasnot calmed down violent NSA that thrive on drug profits

– These NSA fight (back) to keep on making such profits againstState orders that try prevent that (means became motive)

• War on Drugs = US-encouraged, often ‘US-demanded’ & in someplaces also in part US- funded

• As long as market for these illegal narcotics continues to be lucrative,it is very likely to continue being supplied

• Could global civil society to the right thing, advocating better citizens’behaviour through ‘no blood on my nose’ campaigns?

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