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The myth of the narco-state
Abstract
Despite being used repeatedly in different contexts, the term “narco-state” has never been satisfactorily defined or explained. In fact, the existence of the narco-state is almost always taken for granted. This article will argue, on the basis of a review of existing definitions and of selected case studies, that there is no such thing as a narco-state and that using the term tends to oversimplify if not mask the complex socio-political and economic realities of drug-producing countries. The narco-state notion will be debated and opposed in terms of politics, territory, and economics.
... Ook luchthaven Schiphol kan worden gezien als logistieke hub: zowel voor de import van cocaïne, zij het op meer bescheiden schaal dan de eerdergenoemde zeehavens, als voor de export van synthetische drugs (Van Wijk e.a., 2020). Een recente studie maakt bovendien inzichtelijk dat de import-, doorvoer-en exportfunctie van bepaalde Nederlandse economische sectoren specifieke kansen kunnen bieden: zo lijkt de sierteeltsector dienst te doen als mainport in tweede linie en maakt deze eveneens (Paoli e.a., 2007;2009;Neese Bybee, 2011;Chouvy, 2016). Uit deze onderzoeken kan echter geen heldere omschrijving van de term worden afgeleid (Chouvy, 2016). ...
... Een recente studie maakt bovendien inzichtelijk dat de import-, doorvoer-en exportfunctie van bepaalde Nederlandse economische sectoren specifieke kansen kunnen bieden: zo lijkt de sierteeltsector dienst te doen als mainport in tweede linie en maakt deze eveneens (Paoli e.a., 2007;2009;Neese Bybee, 2011;Chouvy, 2016). Uit deze onderzoeken kan echter geen heldere omschrijving van de term worden afgeleid (Chouvy, 2016). De term lijkt vooral gebruikt te worden om te verwijzen naar de verwevenheid van de illegale drugsindustrie en aan drugshandel gerelateerde vormen van corruptie (Paoli e.a., 2007). ...
... аркотрафик нередко сочетается с перевозкой нелегальных мигрантов, контрабандой оружия и других товаров [37, pp. 13-65] 22 . сновные доходы теневые бизнесмены вкладывают в недвижимость, коммерческие и финансовые предприятия, владельцами которых, как правило, являются их родственни-ки [39, рр. ...
... The term 'narco-state' is of course a controversial one, bandied about rather unsystematically and quite often for political motives in relation to a variety of different contexts in Latin America and, indeed, globally. 97 As José Luis Solís González points out, the condition is generally associated with the presence of various forms of governmental 'deficiency', such as clientelism or corruption, 98 making the term in many ways akin to Naím's notion of the mafia state, but also homologous to the 'failed state' label that was extremely widespread within certain social science circles at the beginning of the twenty-first century (and has since been thoroughly critiqued). 99 Yet Nicaragua cannot be considered a failed state. ...
Nicaragua is often held up as an exception within the Central American panorama of criminal violence, widely presented as the safest country in the region due to its particular revolutionary legacies, the (supposed) absence of transnational gangs and drug-trafficking organisations, and the National Police's representation as an efficient and professional force. This commentary proposes an alternative reading of Nicaragua's contemporary political economy of violence in order to reveal the profoundly misleading nature of this prevalent view. In particular, it highlights how Nicaragua is governed through a particular political ‘settlement’ underpinned by drug trafficking, police and judicial corruption, as well as ‘mafia state’ governance. These factors have coalesced to establish a highly efficient and engrained ‘narco-state’ whose undoing is unlikely in the short term.
... A further conjecture relates to the long-term impacts of these dynamics of co-optation and replacement of the state by organised crime organisations for the building and meaning of the nation-state in Colombia and Mexico. Are we going to witness a revival of the concepts of 'narco-states' (Chouvy, 2016) or 'failed states' (Nay, 2013) to comprehend the long-term impact of illegal groups for the Colombian and Mexican states after COVID-19? It is important to remember that some organised crime groups, such as drug cartels or gangs, aim to govern. ...
The COVID‐19 crisis provides a window of opportunity for organised crime organisations in Colombia and Mexico to exert social control in local communities through actions of solidarity and care rather than traditional violent coercion. This new dynamic is increasing the legitimacy, power and social capital of gangs and drug cartels, helping them to co‐opt civil society and the state to support their criminal operations. The pandemic also shows how poverty and inequality remain fundamental in shaping the building of the nation‐state in both countries, where criminals act as a de facto state even without the virus and, in many areas, effectively replace the state. The coronavirus is making visible the ways in which organised crime groups cultivate civil society's support in delivering the provision of governance, order and public health in a time of lockdown and quarantine, making local ‘narco‐gang’ governance profitable economically and politically.
... Two overlapping reasons account for the growing interest of international institutions in observing this trade to Africa: firstly the concern with Guinea Bissau, called a 'Narco state' (Chabal, Green 2016), although scholars do not agree with the use of the notion as it does not take into account the role of this income and the involvement of state, hence pointing to very different situations in Afghanistan, Colombia, Guinea Bissau, Morocco (Chouvy 2016). The last phase of this interest is fueled by the narratives of global 'narco terrorism' in West Africa that the UNODC is pushing. ...
Using existing research and original data, I discuss the development of a transatlantic drug market between Brazil and West Africa and its implications on Brazil’s development and drug trafficking value chain. After establishing milestones of the history of this traffic I show how a global market of protection and transatlantic networks emerged from the alliances between Latin American criminal actors and high level elites in West Africa. The second part of the article focuses on the high concentration of capital created by exportations of cocaine. I show how these global markets affect the actions of drug traffickers, namely their strategies and use of violence by analyzing the development of maritime trade and the centrality of ports in this economy. The last part of the article analyzes the market for drug mules in Sao Paulo and how the strategy networks adapt to balance their risks of failure with low cost Nigerians migrant mules. Finally, the articles shows how this market attracted cultists groups from Nigeria and connects Brazil with other illegal markets.
... Focus is instead given to highlevel organised crime, as the formation of state-narco-type systems based around drug crops, such as coca, is unlikely due to the low barriers to entry at this level of the trade and its diffuse nature. 34 Modes of exchange, therefore, typically involve the extraction of drug rents from high-level actors for non-enforcement of the law and/or the official protection of state agents. Such networks formed one facet of the clientelistic mode of governance that enabled these military regimes to co-opt political support and consolidate power, while managing competition in the drug trade. ...
Conventional policy and academic discourses have generally held illicit drug economies in Latin America to be synergistic with violence and instability. The case of post-transition Bolivia (1982–1993) confounds such assumptions. Applying a political economy approach, this article moves beyond mainstream analyses to examine how the Bolivian drug trade became interwoven with informal forms of governance, order and political transition. I argue that state–narco networks – a hangover from Bolivia’s authoritarian era – played an important role in these complex processes. In tracing the evolution of these interactions, the article advances a more nuanced theorisation of the relationship between the state and the drug trade in an understudied case.
This thesis argues that the pursuit of participation and inclusion of all the society and inform well the citizenry about the terms of the accord is vital to achieving peacemaking on the one hand; and, a rural restructure, changing political parties’ informal coercive institutions and shifting the social norm of war towards peacebuilding on the other, are crucial coordinates so as to a routing a genuine development for Colombia. A nation that during the 2010s faced the challenge to end its long-standing civil war between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia − People's Army (FARC-EP) rebels. I advance the argument in two parts: first, peacemaking is divided in two chapters. One examines participation and inclusion in the 2016 peace settlement based on democratic innovation and the ladder of citizen participation, arguing in a constructivist way, and applying hermeneutics that inclusion does not necessarily mean a civil society's control over the peacemaking process, being the participation of the political society and insurgency a precondition. The second chapter of this section focuses on the 2016 peace plebiscite, conceptually argues that personal, relational, cultural, and structural causes are intimately related to voters’ attitudes. And quantitatively discloses from municipal data that spaces with rural poverty, coca crops, victims, remote from the centre and an intense presence of the rebels had positive associations with the yes vote, a heterogeneous influence of the warring parties, and that the vote for no won at higher population and high abstention. The second part of this thesis addresses peacebuilding through three chapters. The first, argues that civil war has been encouraged by the grievance to reduce rural poverty, so, based upon Latin American Structuralism and original data empirically finds a paradox of land redistribution, intense positive effects of technical progress to defeat rural poverty, a dependency that undermines the better rural standard of living, ditches that become greater between centre-periphery, and the egregious effects of forced displacement for the countryside. The second chapter of this section examines the brutality, narcotics trafficking, and corruption enforced by active Colombian political parties (19 parties and one social movement) from 2011 to 2020. To do so, I addressed historical contingencies of the party politics and build a novel panel data set where the brutality composite indicator, the corruption indicator and coca crops are response variables for the explanatory matrix of political parties elected to executive branch positions. The findings unmask political parties who enforced or rejected these three coercive and violent informal institutions beside divergent causes. Lastly, in chapter five, the third part of section two, posits eight individual political preferences (kinship, funding, perpetuation, ideology, decision-making, religion, military, and media) that cement the norm of civil war. Hence, I carry out an experiment with all members of the 2018-
2022 Colombian Congress cohort (102 subjects in the Senate and 170 in the House of Representatives). The results indicate that the population is dominated by a selfish adapted community with heterogeneous preferences according to subjects’ chamber or the experimental groups (i.e., self-enforcers, dodgers, and scofflaws).
This book studies relevant actors and practices of conflict intervention by African regional organizations and their intimate connection to space-making, addressing a major gap regarding what actually happens within and around these organizations.
Based on extensive empirical research, it argues that those intervention practices are essentially spatializing practices, based on particular spatial imaginations, contributing to the continuous construction and formatting of regional spaces as well as to ordering relations between different regional spaces. Analyzing the field of developing practices of conflict intervention by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union (AU), the book contributes a new theory-oriented analytical approach, based on insights from Critical Geography, to study African regional organizations and the complex dynamics of African peace and security. As such, it helps to close an empirical gap with regard to the ‘internal’ modes of operation of African regional organizations as well as the lack of their theorization. It demonstrates that, contrary to most accounts, intervention practices of African ROs have been diverse and complexly inter-related, involving different actors within and around these organizations and are essentially tied to the space-making.
This book will be of key interest to students and scholars of African Politics, Governance, Peace and Security Studies, International or Regional Organizations and more broadly to Comparative Regionalism, International Relations and International Studies.
Free preview material, including the book's introduction, available at: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/spatializing-practices-regional-organizations-conflict-intervention-jens-herpolsheimer/10.4324/9781003106647
Given the evolution of illegal drug production in recent decades and even in recent years, the outcome of global prohibition appears clearly negative. The failure of counter-trafficking measures is just as obvious, as shown at the border level in this article through the brief survey of ground trafficking between Afghanistan and Iran, of air trafficking from the Andes, and of transatlantic maritime trafficking. Indeed, despite a wealth of financial, human, material and technological means, and despite occasional high interception rates, drug trafficking has never been truly and durably challenged. After describing and explaining why counter-trafficking actions and policies have proved ineffective at the border level, this article posits that an effective counter-trafficking policy should avoid purely repressive approaches for their effectiveness is as low as their cost is high. In the end, interdiction measures should not be limited to interception actions and border control efforts but focus on making spaces and societies less conducive to trafficking.
Despite cannabis being the most common illegal drug crop in the world and its worldwide presence, very little is known about its production, trade, and consumption at the global scale. This is due mostly to over a century of global prohibition and the dangers associated to researching illegal drug crop production. Worse, the limited data available about cannabis cultivation is most often inaccurate, unreliable, and highly controversial. While this has always been problematic, in terms of sheer knowledge and informed policy-making, it has now become even more acute of an issue as global trends towards decriminalisation and legalisation are already provoking negative unintended consequences in poor producing countries. This article is an effort to present the state of the current knowledge and the present and future stakes of the fast-changing cannabis industry and legislation.
As revealed by the examples of Morocco, northeast India, Afghanistan, Burma/Myanmar, and the United States of America, degrees of politico-territorial control or law-enforcement deficit by the state can explain, to some extent, the existence of large expanses of illegal drug cultivation. Causes of politico-territorial control deficit are many and non-exclusive. They include armed conflicts, corruption, loosely integrated territories, and lack of financial, human and material means of asserting state control. Large-scale illegal drug crop cultivation can take place according to three main scenarios: that of a full-fledged but inefficient war on drugs; that of toleration, for various motives, of illegal drug plant cultivation by the state (which can amount to negotiated but effective control); and that of the militarily-challenged state that cannot exert full control over its territory. The fact that total politico-territorial control by the state, no matter how powerful and resourceful, is deemed impossible, shows that the war on drugs is doomed to fail despite how many battles were won. Eventually, the very limits of the state’s politico-territorial control, when applied to counter-narcotics and law enforcement, implicitly question the illegality of a practice that is considered legitimate by many.
The Introduction provides the outline and scope of the book. Conventional analysis of international relations tends to rely on linear, causal and absolute frameworks to explain past and present violent conflicts such as the Lebanese Civil War or contemporary Afghanistan. Recent developments in network theory can be applied to these scenarios and offer a new approach and insights that embrace the complexity of the situations. Not only do they present more compelling explanations for conflicts to turn violent and the role violence plays in social networks, but they also offer a new perspective on peacebuilding.
This article proposes a political economy of extraction framework that accounts for political order and state collapse as alternative outcomes in the face of lootable wealth. Different types of institutions of extraction can be built around lootable resources - with divergent effects on political stability. If rulers are able to forge institutions of extraction that give them control over the revenues generated by lootable resources, then these resources can contribute to the maintenance of political order by providing the income with which to govern. In contrast, the breakdown or absence of such institutions increases the risk of civil war by making it easier for rebels to get income. The framework is used to explain two puzzling cases that experienced sharply contrasting political trajectories in the face of lootable resources: Sierra Leone and Burma. A focus on institutions of extraction provides a stronger understanding of the wide range of political possibilities - from chaos, through dictatorship, to democracy - in resource-rich countries.
This article proposes a political economy of extraction framework that explains political order and state collapse as alternative outcomes in the face of lootable wealth. Different types of institutions of extraction can be built on lootable resources—with divergent effects on political stability. If rulers are able to forge institutions of extraction that give them control of revenues generated by lootable resources, then these resources can contribute to political order by providing the income with which to govern. Conversely, the breakdown or absence of such institutions increases the risk of civil war by making it easier for rebels to organize. The framework is used to explain two puzzling cases that experienced sharply contrasting political trajectories in the face of lootable resources: Sierra Leone and Burma. A focus on institutions of extraction provides a stronger understanding of the wide range of political outcomes—from chaos, to dictatorship, to democracy—in resource-rich countries.
Recent studies assert that natural resource abundance (particularly minerals) has adverse consequences for economic growth. This paper subjects this "resource curse" hypothesis to critical scrutiny. Our central point is that it is inappropriate to equate development of mineral resources with terms such as "windfalls" and "booms." Contrary to the view of mineral production as mere depletion of a fixed natural "endowment," we show that so-called "nonrenewable" resources have been progressively extended through exploration, technological progress, and advances in appropriate (often country-specific) knowledge. Indeed, minerals constitute a high-tech knowledge industry in many countries. Investment in such knowledge should be seen as a legitimate component of a forward-looking economic development program.
Contrary to the common perception of an India-Pakistan nuclear contest, China was the most important influence on India exercising its nuclear option. Initially, India's nuclear capability was aimed solely at deterring aggression by China, not Pakistan. It is the adversarial nature of the Sino-Indian relationship that has driven India's and, in turn, Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme. India's defense policy has always been based on the principle of 'keeping one step ahead of Pakistan and at par with China' (Malik 1995). Seeing China as the reference point of India's economic, security and diplomatic policies, India's strategic analysts have long emphasised the need to keep up militarily with China. In this article, I argue that if China had not provided nuclear and missile technology to Pakistan and if the non-proliferation regime had not tried to foreclose India's nuclear option, India would have maintained its 'bombs-in-the-basement' posture. The next section examines China's overall Asia policy. The third section discusses New Delhi's perspective on the 1998 nuclear tests, and the following section analyses Beijing's reaction to the tests. In the concluding section, I argue that Sino-Indian relations today constitute a new cold war, and that this cold war will be the dominant feature of Asian geopolitics in the early twenty-first century.
This article examines how the drugs economy emerged, evolved and adapted to transformations in Afghanistan's political economy. With a primary focus on the conflictual war to peace transition following the signing of the Bonn Agreement, the relationship between drugs and political (dis)order is explored. Central to the analysis is an examination of the power relationships and institutions of extraction that developed around the drug economy. Expanding upon a model developed by Snyder (2004), it is argued that joint extraction regimes involving rulers and private actors have tended to bring political order whereas private extraction regimes have led to decentralized violence and political breakdown. This model helps explain why in some parts of Afghanistan drugs and corruption have contributed to a level of political order, whereas in other areas they have fuelled disorder. Thus, there is no universal, one-directional relationship between drugs, corruption and conflict. Peacebuilding involves complex bargaining processes between rulers and peripheral elites over power and resources and when successful leads to stable interdependencies. Counter-narcotics policies have the opposite effect and are thus fuelling conflict.
This synopsis by Bernault outlines some of the arguments of Yates' book, which is more often cited than actually read.
At least 50 documented incidents in more than 20 countries around the world, many involving arrest or detention of North Korean diplomats, link North Korea to drug trafficking. Such events, in the context of credible, but unproven, allegations of large-scale state sponsorship of drug production and trafficking, raise important issues for the United States and its allies in combating international drug trafficking. The challenge to policy makers is how to pursue an effective counter drug policy and comply with U.S. law which may require cutting off aid to North Korea while pursuing other high-priority U.S. foreign policy objectives, including limiting possession and production of weapons of mass destruction; limiting ballistic missile production and export; curbing terrorism, counterfeiting, and international crime; and addressing humanitarian needs. Reports that the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea (DPRK) may be limiting some of its food crop production in favor of drug crop production are particularly disturbing given the country's chronic food shortages. Another issue of rising concern is the degree to which profits from any North Korean drug trafficking, counterfeiting, and other crime-for-profit enterprises may be used to underwrite the costs of maintaining or expanding North Korean nuclear and missile programs. As the DPRK's drug trade becomes increasingly entrenched, and arguably decentralized, analysts question whether the Pyongyang regime would have the ability to effectively restrain such activity, should it so desire. Since 2003, overall seizures of North Korean-linked methamphetamine and heroin are generally down. Some suggest that this decline in seizures being identified as DPRK in origin is because North Korean source methamphetamine is now regularly being mistakenly identified as "Chinese source" given growing links of Chinese criminal elements to North Korea's drug production/trafficking activities.
Illegality does not necessarily breed violence. The relationship between illicit markets and violence depends on institutions
of protection. When state-sponsored protection rackets form, illicit markets can be peaceful. Conversely, the breakdown of
state-sponsored protection rackets, which may result from well-meaning policy reforms intended to improve law enforcement,
can lead to violence. The cases of drug trafficking in contemporary Mexico and Burma show how a focus on the emergence and
breakdown of state-sponsored protection rackets helps explain variation in levels of violence both within and across illicit
markets.
Throughout the 1990s, many armed groups have relied on revenues from natural resources such as oil, timber, or gems to substitute for dwindling Cold War sponsorship. Resources not only financed, but in some cases motivated conflicts, and shaped strategies of power based on the commercialisation of armed conflict and the territorialisation of sovereignty around valuable resource areas and trading networks. As such, armed conflict in the post-Cold War period is increasingly characterised by a specific political ecology closely linked to the geography and political economy of natural resources. This paper examines theories of relationships between resources and armed conflicts and the historical processes in which they are embedded. It stresses the vulnerability resulting from resource dependence, rather than conventional notions of scarcity or abundance, the risks of violence linked to the conflictuality of natural resource political economies, and the opportunities for armed insurgents resulting from the lootability of resources. Violence is expressed in the subjugation of the rights of people to determine the use of their environment and the brutal patterns of resource extraction and predation. Beyond demonstrating the economic agendas of belligerents, an analysis of the linkages between natural resources and armed conflicts suggests that the criminal character of their inclusion in international primary commodity markets responds to an exclusionary form of globalisation; with major implications for the promotion of peace.
The rent-seeking theory was one of the first economic instruments developed to model corruption in the public sector. Comparing corruption with lobbying, it proposes that the former is the lesser of two evils, since lobbying entails the wastage of resources in the competition for preferential treatment. This study shows that the traditional rent-seeking theory misunderstands three factors: first, the impact of a corrupt monopoly on the rent's size; second, corruption as a motivation for supplying preferential treatment and third; that corruption involves a narrower range of interests than those of competitive lobbying. Taking these factors into consideration, the opposite argument is valid: corruption has worse welfare implications than alternative rent-seeking activities. Copyright 2002 by Kluwer Academic Publishers
Dr Julia Buxton is Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for International Cooperation and Security in the Department of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford, UK. Her research field covers Latin American politics; conflict prone countries and regional capacities in democracy promotion and conflict resolution. Her publications include The Failure of Political Reform in Venezuela (Ashgate, 2001) and the edited collections, with N. Phillips, Country Case Studies in Latin American Political Economy (Manchester University Press, 1999) and Developments in Latin American Political Economy (Manchester University Press, 1999).
Nigeria has been a disastrous development experience. On just about every conceivable metric, Nigeria’s performance since independence has been dismal. In PPP terms, Nigeria’s per capita GDP was 1084 in 2000. The latter figure places Nigeria amongst the 15 poorest nations in the world for which such data are available.
Heroin is universally considered the world's most harmful illegal drug. This is due not only to the damaging effects of the drug itself, but also to the spread of AIDS tied to its use. Burgeoning illegal mass consumption in the 1960s and 1970s has given rise to a global market for heroin and other opiates of nearly 16 million users. The production and trafficking of opiates have caused crime, disease, and social distress throughout the world, leading many nations to invest billions of dollars trying to suppress the industry. The failure of their efforts has become a central policy concern. Can the world heroin supply actually be cut, and with what consequences? The result of a five-year-long research project involving extensive fieldwork in six Asian countries, Colombia, and Turkey, this book presents a systematic analysis of the contemporary world heroin market, delving into its development and structure, its participants, and its socio-economic impact. It provides a sound and comprehensive empirical base for concluding that there is little opportunity to shrink the global supply of heroin in the long term, and explains why production is concentrated in a handful of countries-and is likely to remain that way. On the basis of these findings, the chapters identify a key set of policy opportunities, largely local, and make suggestions for leveraging them. This book also offers new insights into market conditions in India, Tajikistan, and other countries that have been greatly harmed by the production and trafficking of illegal opiates.
Since public disclosure by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) of its uranium enrichment program in 2002 and the subsequent restarting of its plutonium reactor, policymakers and academics have expressed concern that the DPRK will one day export nuclear material or components. An examination of North Korea's involvement in nonnuclear criminal activities shows that the DPRK has established sophisticated transnational smuggling networks, some of which involve terrorist groups and others that have been able to distribute counterfeit currency and goods on U.S. territory. These networks provide North Korea with a significant amount of much-needed hard currency, but the DPRK regime's control over them has decreased over time. These developments suggest that North Korea has both the means and motivation for exporting nuclear material, and that concerns over nuclear export from the DPRK, authorized or not, are well founded. When placed in the context of the global nuclear black market, the North Korea case suggests that criminal networks are likely to play an increased role in future proliferation. In addition, it raises the concern that proliferation conducted through illicit networks will not always be well controlled by the supplier state. It is therefore imperative to track and curtail illicit networks not only because of the costs they impose, but also because of the deterrent value of countersmuggling efforts. New strategies that integrate law enforcement, counterproliferation, and nonproliferation tools are likely to have the greatest success in addressing the risks posed by illicit proliferation networks.
This book explores the factors behind the underperformance of resource-abundant developing countries compared to resource-deficient countries. Drawing on research from various subfields within economics literature, it argues that since the 1960s, the natural resource endowment of a developing country has strongly affected its capital utilisation efficiency and the nature of its long-term development trajectory. The book is divided into four parts. Part I presents an introduction to the volume. Part II examines the relationship between natural resource endowment and the four main types of capital: produced, natural, human, and social. Part III integrates findings from Part II, and tests the degree to which the relationship between natural resources and development is deterministic. Part IV applies the analytical framework developed in the previous parts to case studies of developmental trajectories since the 1960s. Part V discusses policy implications for the reform of resource-abundant economies that have experienced a growth collapse.
On April 16 2003, after aerial surveillance was conducted on a suspicious Tuvaki registered, North Korean owned freighter, the Pong Su, close to the shore, Australian police followed two Chinese suspects on the shore as they left the beach and headed for a near-by hotel. The following morning the two suspects were apprehended at their hotel and 50 kilograms of pure heroin were seized. A little later Australian police made the gruesome discovery of a North Korean body buried close to a dingy on the beach where the two Chinese suspects had been seen the day before. The victim was believed to have drowned after the dingy had capsized while bringing the drugs ashore. On April 17 the freighter headed east through Bass Straight then turned north and headed up the Australian coast. Following the arrests civil police intercepted the ship but they were unable to board due to heavy seas. The Navy had to be summoned. After some hasty repair work, the HMAS Stuart set out to capture the Pong Su. In the Tasman Sea on April 19 after the Stuart clearly identified the Pong Su on their radar, they shadowed out of sight, disappearing beyond the horizon as the Pong Su headed north. Finally, in the early morning hours of April 20, the Stuart radioed the unsuspecting Pong Su ordering them to prepare to be boarded. Special Air Service troops descended upon the ship from a helicopter, and also boarded the ship using RHIBs, capturing all 30 crew members and continuing then to the galley. Thus ended a 72-hour ordeal, proving to the world what had long been suspected, that North Korea is involved in producing and trafficking effort.
J. S. Mill's
Analysis is usually said to represent the peak of associationism. The chapter reproduced here is that entitled "The Association of Ideas." It is taken from the 1869 edition, published by Longmans, Green, Reoder and Dyer, London, pp. 70-116. Thought succeeds thought; idea follows idea, incessantly. If our senses are awake, we are continually receiving sensations, of the eye, the ear, the touch, and so forth; but not sensations alone. After sensations, ideas are perpetually excited of sensations formerly received; after those ideas, other ideas: and during the whole of our lives, a series of those two states of consciousness, called sensations, and ideas, is constantly going on. There is a synchronous, and a successive, order of our sensations. I have Synchronically, or at the same instant, the sight of a great variety of objects; touch of all the objects with which my body is in contact. I have Successively the sight of the flash from the mortar fired at a distance, the hearing of the report, the sight of the bomb, and of its motion in the air, the sight of its fall, the sight and hearing of its explosion, and lastly, the sight of all the effects of that explosion. Among the objects which I have thus observed synchronically, or successively; that is, from which I have had synchronical or successive sensations; there are some which I have so observed frequently; others which I have so observed not frequently: in other words, of my sensations some have been frequently synchronical, others not frequently; some frequently successive, others not frequently. Our ideas spring up, or exist, in the order in which the sensations existed, of which they are the copies. This is the general law of the "Association of Ideas"; by which term, let it be remembered, nothing is here meant to be expressed, but the order of occurrence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
All societies must deal with the possibility of violence, and they do so in different ways. This book integrates the problem of violence into a larger social science and historical framework, showing how economic and political behavior are closely linked. Most societies, which we call natural states, limit violence by political manipulation of the economy to create privileged interests. These privileges limit the use of violence by powerful individuals, but doing so hinders both economic and political development. In contrast, modern societies create open access to economic and political organizations, fostering political and economic competition. The book provides a framework for understanding the two types of social orders, why open access societies are both politically and economically more developed, and how some 25 countries have made the transition between the two types.
According to the United Nations, Morocco is most likely the world’s first producer and exporter of hashish. Tens of thousands hectares of cannabis grow in the northern Rif region of the country and make possible a large hashish production largely exported to the European market. The Rif economy and its socio-economic and political stability seem to depend on this crop – a fact that poses a major problem for both the Moroccan state and the European Union, since hashish production and consumption are illegal in Morocco and in most of the EU countries, including France. This paper aims at explaining the economic, political, cultural and historical context of cannabis cultivation in the Rif Mountains of northern Morocco. It stresses how this economic activity, which has grown considerably over the last twenty years, has permitted the maintenance of a type of socio-economic and political status quo. Although illegal, the tolerance of the cannabis crop is an alternative to an underdevelopment against which the authorities have taken no or very little action. There is little doubt that cannabis has stabilised the economy of a region all but excluded from national development. However, the Rif remains faced with a fragile ecology, loss of traditional farming know-how and international pressure demanding elimination of drug plants in developing countries. Indeed, following the publication of the first United Nations survey on cannabis in Morocco (2003), the Moroccan state can no longer ignore the region’s economic and social problems. Therefore, this paper warns of the ‘time bomb’ that lack of management of the situation has created.
Cet article analyse les relations qui se sont tissées entre la puissance publique et le trafic de drogues. Dans ce dessein, la première partie examine les concepts de narco-État et de pénétration des États, en insistant notamment sur les faiblesses des approches qui prêtent aux différents acteurs en jeu des intentions spécifiques qu'il s'agisse de projet hégémonique ou de subversion sociale. La deuxième partie explore ainsi les pesanteurs historiques qui conditionnent les comportements des protagonistes de la lutte contre la drogue et, en particulier, celles qui découlent des décisions prises par des instances de pouvoir légitimes, nationales ou multilatérales. La conclusion présente un ensemble de questions concernant l'avenir des politiques antidrogue.
No This scholarly examination of the worldwide web of narcotics today provides students, social workers, health providers, law enforcement officers and policy makers with an up-to-date, overall exploration of the world of drugs. Vast resources are pumped into the 'war on drugs'. But in practice, prohibition has failed. Narcotics use continues to rise, while technology and globalisation have made a whole new range of drugs available to a vast consumer market. Where wealth and demand exist, supply continues to follow. Prohibition has failed to stem consumption and production, criminalised social groups, impeded research into alternative medicine and disease, promoted violence and gang warfare, and impacted negatively on the environment. The alternative is a humane policy framework that recognizes the incentives to produce, traffic and consume narcotics.
Summary Since Sachs and Warner's [Sachs, J. D., & Warner, A. M. (1995a). Natural resource abundance and economic growth. NBER working paper, no. 5398] contribution, there has been a lively debate on the so-called natural resource curse. This paper re-examines the effects of natural resource abundance on economic growth using new measures of resource endowment and considering the role of institutional quality. We find a positive direct empirical relationship between natural resource abundance and economic growth. In both OLS and 2SLS regressions, the positive resource effects are particularly strong for subsoil wealth. Our results also show no evidence of negative indirect effects of natural resources through the institutional channel.
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