When far Syria is more important than a neighbor. Drug parallels
In early December of this year, Foreign Policy magazine published a large analytical article on the criminal and economic activities of Mexican drug cartels both in Mexico and in the United States. The author of the article, Evelyn Morris, was perplexed that this topic practically does not receive any coverage in the American central media and American politics, that Americans and their government are more concerned about events in faraway Syria, Iran and Egypt than what is happening right next door. In the 2012 year, during the presidential election race, Mexico was not mentioned at all in the official speeches of politicians. And this silence looks more than strange. The author explains the silence by the fact that the activities of the cartels in Mexico are directly related to the problems of migrants and the control of trafficking weapons in the United States, that is, with themes that are inconvenient for politicians who are afraid of saying something not very tolerant and ruining their reputation and career.
The length of the US-Mexico border is 3 145 km. Every year, the border is legally crossed by up to 350 millions of people, which makes it the most passing border between states in the world. More than 90% of cocaine enters the US through this border, and Mexico is also the main supplier of marijuana and methamphetamine. However, Mexico is not the main manufacturer, but a transit hub. The criminal situation on the border with the United States is one thing, but it is no better, if not worse, the situation on the southern borders of Mexico, where drugs are imported from Colombia and other Latin American countries.
If you look at the world as a whole, then, as noted in the report presented by UN experts in 2013, the largest flows of legal migrants cross the border between Mexico and the United States. In 2013, 13 million people proceeded in this direction. The top ten main migration flows in the world are the Kazakhstan-Russia corridor (2,5 million migrants). There are only Bangladesh-India corridors (3,2 million migrants) and India-UAE (2,9 million migrants) and flows across the Russian-Ukrainian border. The largest number of migrants in the world live in the USA - 45,8 million, RF - 11 million, Germany - 9,8 million
That is, in the world statistics on migrants, Russia is already the second number after the United States.
Let us now look at our border with Kazakhstan, which is also not particularly heard in our media and in the speeches of Russian politicians. It is impossible not to see analogies with Mexico, though not on such a scale.
The length of the border of Russia with Kazakhstan - 7,5 thousand. Km. Almost 15 million people and more than 3 million cars cross the border every year. According to the data of the Federal Drug Control Service Viktor Ivanov in September of this year, 150 drug cartels organize drug trafficking to Russia, as well as almost 1,9, thousands of organized crime groups and criminal groups, 1,2, thousands of which are based on ethnicity, the total number of such groups 20 is thousands of active members. At least 100 thousands of drug couriers are involved in the transportation of prohibited substances to the territory of Russia. About 96% of drugs entering the country freely cross the Russian-Kazakh border. But Kazakhstan, like Mexico, is also not the main producer, but only a transit hub. Only in the north of Afghanistan about 2 are concentrated. Thousands of drug laboratories working on the Russian market, and Kazakhstan, like Mexico, are struggling with the problem of drug trafficking on their southern borders.
Since sensible and serious materials about drug cartels of Central Asia and their activities in Russia cannot be seen in the Russian wide press or in discussions at the government level, apparently for the same reasons that they are silent about this topic in the US, it makes sense to get acquainted with the analysis of activities cartels in Mexico to at least understand that what is happening quietly in our country under its own side.
Evelyn Morris writes that it is important to understand that drugs, although the most profitable part of the cartels business (total annual income is estimated at 40 billion dollars), but not the only one. Cartels are actively diversifying their business, trying to go beyond the drug niche and increase their competitive advantages. Cartels today sell software, pirated discs, and counterfeit goods. The second source of income for today is human trafficking, that is, the traffic of illegal migrants and prostitutes.
Cartels are aiming for a business model of logistic empires. Like Amazon, which once started out as a bookstore, and now sells everything. Or take the giant retailer Wal-Mart, which became the leader, using first its own fleet of trucks and providing cheap logistics, winning those from competitors. Similarly, cartels seek to adopt these examples, diversify their range and reduce the cost of logistics services for the delivery of any goods across borders. Drugs are no longer the only source of income. Weapons are also gaining weight. And American analysts in the fight against terrorism, in horror, predict that cartels may soon become couriers for international terrorist or radical extremist organizations and start supplying weapons, propaganda tools to the US for their benefit. The main thing for the cartel now is not the product and the customer / buyer, but the control of transport corridors.
Hence the level of violence. Only 60 000 killed in the Mexican drug war alone. Almost like a year and a half in the slaughter in Syria. Cartels fight amongst themselves and with government forces not for drugs or buyers or suppliers. They fight primarily for logistics points, for hubs. Namely - for the ports, for settlements, located at the very border and near major roads on the American side. The second cause of violence is advertising. The more horrendous act of absolutely irrational absurd violence produced by a cartel (for example, rolled heads on dance floors in night clubs, hanging bodies on trees, etc.), the clearer the signal is that the cartel is cruel and ready for anything. It is not directly related to attracting new customers or moving goods. Banal intimidation of competitors, population and security forces. The third cause of violence is media intimidation. Mexico is the fourth most dangerous country in the world today for journalists (after Syria, Somalia and Pakistan). Here the goal is clear - to make the population and the media keep quiet and not spread information about the activities of the cartel.
Violence is not closed inside Mexico. Chicago is experiencing a murder boom. Chicago is an excellent transportation hub and hub for distributing any product throughout the United States, Chicago has a large Mexican community, and the cartels are ready to fight for control over such a tasty morsel. Similar problems originate in other US cities.
Authorities and media in the United States are in no hurry to investigate the connection between the outbreak of crime and the activities of cartels in American cities. They do not want to present themselves incapable of resolving problems forcefully and are not prepared, from the motives of tolerance, to raise the topic of crime among migrants, and also to aggravate relations with their neighbor Mexico.
This approach more than suits the cartels. They are actively rooted in the United States. Structures on money laundering of cartels within the United States are being created, bribery and bribery of officials and financiers flourish, and corruption is being fueled. Cartels also master the entire chain of drug trafficking, opening their laboratories and pushing American manufacturers out of business, and also starting to eliminate American wholesalers and retailers, replacing them with their own people.
Cartels are being offered to fight with different methods. High hopes are pinned on the legalization of marijuana and the easing of laws on other drugs. This is unlikely to help. It is unlikely that heroin will be available for sale, that is, the loss of the marijuana market will not affect the finances of the cartel. Even the legalization of other drugs is not an option, as with great demand, tight control over the supply will still generate income. You also need to take into account the difference in legislation in different states. Trading the same cigarettes on the black market is still a profitable business in the United States due to tax differentials in individual states. The drug situation will be the same.
Many believe that the elimination or capture of cartel leaders can make a difference. This is also not the case. The elimination of the ringleaders leads to an outbreak of violence, the redistribution of the market, the entry into the arena of a new ringleader, the introduction of the slain to the “face of the saints”, to turning more young people into business. Capture also proved ineffective. The ringleaders proved their ability to manage cartels, even while in prisons, and also managed to build in places of imprisonment a system of recruiting new members to their organizations.
Border security, mass arrests, confiscation of consignments of goods, stripping did not have a big impact on the business of cartels.
One method is offered - to beat on wallets, on finance. Freeze accounts, enter blacklists, do not give the opportunity to launder and spend capital. Use the experience of financial struggle with al-Qaeda and the experience of international financial sanctions against Iran, Libya, the top officials of Syria and other countries.
But in the money laundering of drug cartels in the United States and other Western countries, such respected and world-famous banks and financial organizations as Wachovia bank (Wells Fargo), HSBC, Bank of America and Western Union were involved. All of them limited themselves to their activities and communications with the cartels only with meager fines and the dismissal of pawn employees. The reputation of the banks was not damaged, the leadership did not land, there was no significant financial damage.
As a result, a legitimate question arises whether financial organizations are not interested (apart from the populist tolerance of officials, unwillingness to raise the topic of crime among migrants, lack of will to resolve issues by force, fear of aggravation of interstate relations) to the growing problem of drug trafficking and the development of criminal logistics empires in the US, in Russia?
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