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251. Gangs, Drugs, Terrorism— and Information-sharing

Author:
Greg Gardner and Robert Killebrew
Publication Date:
08-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
The conflict in Mexico between the government and criminal drug cartels has been in the news lately, particularly because of the horrific levels of violence and its proximity to our border. The U.S. Government is increasingly concerned, and President Barack Obama has turned to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for options to provide timely support to Mexico. But the “cartel war” in Mexico, which is increasingly spilling into the United States, is just the latest, most visible indicator of steadily deteriorating civil order south of the border.
Topic:
Crime, Terrorism, War on Drugs, Counterinsurgency, and Narcotics Trafficking
Political Geography:
United States, Latin America, and Mexico

252. Drug Use in Nigeria

Author:
Roger Bate, Richard Tren, Thompson Ayodele, Kimberly Hess, and Olusegun Sotola
Publication Date:
08-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
For decades, Nigeria has been plagued by counterfeit and poor-quality medicines, yet little information exists on the extent to which healthcare personnel are aw are of counterfeit and substandard medicines, and how this influences their behavior.
Topic:
Crime, War on Drugs, and Narcotics Trafficking
Political Geography:
Africa and Nigeria

253. Piracy off the Coasts of Somalia

Author:
Bjoern Moeller
Publication Date:
01-2009
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The piracy problem off the coasts of Somalia veritably exploded in 2008, due to a mixture of push and pull factors. The general misery in the country pushed Somalis into piracy, and the high earnings from successful pirate attacks pulled businessmen into the pirate business. The international community has sent several patrols to the area, but the decisive factor is what happens on the ground in Somalia.
Topic:
Crime, International Law, and International Affairs
Political Geography:
Africa and Somalia

254. Pirates off the port side! Old problem - new topicality

Author:
Bjørn Møller
Publication Date:
02-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Piracy is an old problem which is now again attracting attention, mainly because of the surge of pirate attacks off the coasts of Somalia. Closer analysis shows the problem to be of quite modest proportions. The international naval protection of merchant shipping holds out some prospects of containing the problem, but it is most likely to solve itself. If international shipping opts for the route south of Africa, piracy will die out for a lack of targets. Maritime terrorism is, likewise, a problem of very limited proportions. It is often conflated with piracy, but there are significant differences between the two phenomena, the latter being undertaken for selfish reasons, the former for the sake of some higher cause. Whereas it is conceivable that maritime terrorists will gradually transform themselves into pirates, a transformation in the opposite direction is well Nigh inconceivable. Besides the analysis of these two phenomena, the overlap between them and certain naval strategies are also briefly touched upon.
Topic:
Security, Crime, International Law, and International Security
Political Geography:
Africa and Somalia

255. Confronting reality: responding to war criminals living in Australia

Author:
Fergus Hanson
Publication Date:
02-2009
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Lowy Institute for International Policy
Abstract:
It was as recently as 1994 that 800,000 Rwandans were systematically slaughtered and the world was reminded that genocide is still possible. July the following year it happened again, when more than 7,000 men were murdered in the Srebrenica massacre. Today, the killing continues in places like Darfur where the death toll now stands in the hundreds of thousands and the Democratic Republic of Congo where the toll stands in the millions. The crimes committed in these and the many other conflicts of recent decades – the mass killing of civilian populations, the rape of countless women and widespread use of torture – have shaken the conscience of the world.
Topic:
Crime, Government, International Cooperation, and International Affairs
Political Geography:
Australia/Pacific

256. Counting the Costs of Somali Piracy

Author:
Raymond Gilpin
Publication Date:
07-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United States Institute of Peace
Abstract:
Roughly the same size of France and six times the size of the U.S. state of Virginia, Somalia has a 3,025 km coastline (longer than the U.S. portion of the Gulf of Mexico, which is some 2,700 km ) on the northeastern corner of Africa. Its recent history has been marred by violence and instability. Since the fall of the Siad Barre regime in 1991, there have been more than a dozen attempts to forge political consensus and establish a functioning central government. 1 Although the Transnational Federal Government was established in 2003, with its capital in the southern city of Mogadishu, it remains fairly ineffective. De facto, Somalia is governed by a system of clans operating in three relatively autonomous regions – Somaliland in the northwest, Puntland in the northeast and Central Somalia in the central and southern regions.
Topic:
Crime, International Law, and Maritime Commerce
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, France, Mexico, Somalia, Virginia, Puntland, and Mogadishu

257. Iraq's Interior Ministry: The Key To Police Reform

Author:
Robert Perito and Madeline Kristoff
Publication Date:
08-2009
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
United States Institute of Peace
Abstract:
Iraq's Ministry of the Interior (MOI) is responsible for the supervision, training and administrative support for Iraq's non-military security forces. These include: the Iraqi Police Service, the Iraq National Police, the Iraqi Border Enforcement Service and the Facilities Protection Service. In total, MOI is responsible for nearly 600,000 men under arms or a force that is three times the size of the new Iraqi Army, Navy and Air Force combined.
Topic:
Security, Corruption, Crime, Ethnic Conflict, and War
Political Geography:
Iraq and Arabia

258. Building the Rule of Law in Haiti: New Laws for a New Era

Author:
Hans Joerg Albrecht, Louis Aucoin, and Vivienne O'Connor
Publication Date:
08-2009
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
United States Institute of Peace
Abstract:
USIP has been working with lawmakers and other reform constituencies in Haiti as they strive to reform Haiti's criminal laws that date back to the early 19th century. In March 2009, USIP commissioned two reports that were written by Louis Aucoin, a professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and Hans Joerg Albrecht, the director of the Max Planck Institute of Foreign and International Criminal Law. At the request of Haitian lawmakers, USIP has also provided copies of the Model Codes for Post-Conflict Criminal Justice, a law reform tool developed by USIP's Rule of Law Program to assist in the drafting of new laws. From June 9 to June 11, 2009, USIP co-hosted a “Technical Workshop on the Modernization of the Criminal Code and Criminal Procedure Code” in Port-au-Prince, Haiti with the Haitian government and a number of international donors. The workshop brought together representatives from the Presidential Commission on Law Reform, the legal community and civil society, along with international organizations and donors, to discuss the problems with Haiti's criminal laws and how to improve them.
Topic:
Civil Society, Crime, Poverty, and Law
Political Geography:
Caribbean and Haiti

259. The Culture of Fear and Control in Costa Rica (II): The Talk of Crime and Social Changes

Author:
Sebastian Huhn
Publication Date:
09-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Abstract:
The Costa Rican talk of crime is fundamentally based on the assumption that a formerly explicitly nonviolent nation has been transformed into a battleground for social violence—that is, on the belief that an alarming “crime wave” is occurring today while there was no crime at all in the past. On the basis of this assumption, the fear of crime and the call for zero tolerance and drastic law enforcement actions have been increasing. In this paper I discuss the Costa Rican talk of crime from a historical perspective to demonstrate that crime has always been a topic that has generated pervasive feelings of insecurity and social pessimism. I argue that social changes in Costa Rican society and the paradigmatic shift in economic and social‐welfare politics since the 1980s have been essential in the transformation of the talk of crime. As part of this transformation, the politicization of crime since the 1990s has been one of the most powerful changes in the dominant discourse.
Topic:
Crime, Economics, Politics, and Sociology
Political Geography:
Latin America

260. Understanding the Armed Groups of the Niger Delta

Author:
Judith Burdin Asuni
Publication Date:
09-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
When a group of Western oil workers was kidnapped in the Niger Delta in January 2006, the immediate hike in prices at gas stations around the world served as a timely reminder of the importance of this unstable region to international oil supplies. A previously unknown group announced it was holding the workers. It called itself the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) and quickly sparked panic within the oil industry with a second set of kidnappings and a series of attacks on oil facilities. Anxiety reached new heights when, in an email sent to journalists, MEND claimed responsibility for an attack on an offshore facility, Bonga, in mid-2008. The installation, located a full seventy-five miles from the mainland, had previously been considered too ambitious a target for the militants. By the summer of 2008, oil was trading at $147 a barrel and oil production in the Delta was down by a quarter. Who was this mysterious group, whose members—armed with little more than a few AK-47s and speedboats—were able to massively disrupt oil supplies and wreak havoc on world commodity prices? Where did it come from, and what does it want? Is it a coherent group with clearly defined aims and political ambitions? Or is it merely a disparate ragtag of disillusioned youths, with powerful backers, intent on little more than petty criminality?
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Arms Control and Proliferation, Corruption, Crime, and Oil
Political Geography:
Africa