These two types of violence—organized
crime and state repression—are more intertwined than is commonly
assumed. Politicians, police, judges, and customs officials often
cooperate with cartel bosses and gangs in the pursuit of profit and
power. Both are skilled at hiding their violent acts such that they
often are not recorded in worldwide datasets on lethal and nonlethal
violence. Yet it is possible that such violence may be contributing to a
jump in overall violent deaths worldwide. Such violence is difficult to
disrupt.
These challenges are not confined to poor,
“failed,” or “fragile” states. Compare the roughly thirty fragile
states listed by the World Bank to the fifty most violent countries in
the world, and just four appear in both compilations. It is
middle-income countries that are fast becoming the world’s most violent
places. Relatively wealthy South Africa has a violent death rate nearly double that of war-torn South Sudan.
In 2018, more civilians were killed by state and paramilitary forces in
the Philippines than in Iraq, Somalia, or the Democratic Republic of
the Congo—as many as in Afghanistan. Of the fifty most
violent cities in the world in 2017 (based on murder rates per 100,000),
fifteen are in Mexico, fourteen are in Brazil, and four are in the
United States. Inequality, not poverty, is strongly correlated with murder—and inequality often rises as poverty falls.
The international community has few tools
to address the twin challenges of state and criminal violence.
Traditional peace treaties and the deployment of blue-helmeted
peacekeepers are not fit for purpose. Development organizations have a
role to play in reducing criminal violence—but it must be an explicit
focus, since measures to alleviate poverty don’t affect violence per se.
In fact, efforts to reinforce state capacity can make violence even
worse by propping up governments complicit in the problem. When
politicians are unable or unwilling to stem violence, international
leverage is often limited, since governments can sanction international
organizations and agencies or evict their staff. A new toolkit of
solutions is needed to return violence to its previous trajectory of
decline.
War and Terrorism—Changing Threats
War has always constituted an existential
threat to humanity. The civilization-ending potential of armed conflict
reached its apogee in the twentieth century. Then, in the late 1940s,
something remarkable started happening. The incidence and severity of
cross-border and civil wars began to fall. Half a century
later, after the Cold War had ended, the number of wars went into free
fall, with many petering out as the United States and Russia withdrew
support for competing sides. By 2018, direct deaths from civil and
interstate wars had dropped to fewer than 53,000 a year. (Indirect deaths caused by conflict, such as increased disease and malnutrition, remain higher.
The risk of warfare is reemerging as U.S.
hegemony weakens and geopolitical rivalries return, fueling regional
proxy conflicts such as those in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. While the
deadliness of today’s wars remains historically low, there are
nevertheless twice as many civil conflicts today as there were in 2001.
It is a small uptick after a long decline, but it is a disturbing trend.
Armed conflicts today are harder to
extinguish because of three parallel trends. First, while old-style
interstate wars are now vanishingly rare, the term “civil war” can be a
misnomer. Of the fifty-two current intra-state conflicts counted by the
Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO), external states were sending
troops to at least one side in eighteen of them. These
conflicts fueled by outside states are generally more violent, longer
lasting, and much harder to resolve than traditional civil wars. (For more, see the essay by Mary Kaldor in this collection.)
Second, the number of nonstate armed
groups participating in the bloodshed is multiplying. According to the
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), roughly half of today’s
wars involve between three and nine opposing groups. In a
handful, including the ongoing conflicts in Libya and Syria, literally
hundreds of armed groups are fighting one another. Wars are harder to
end when so many groups can spoil the peace. Third, today’s warriors are
as likely to be affiliated with drug cartels, mafia groups, and
criminal gangs as with armies or organized rebel factions. In a
globalized world with highly connected supply chains, they often act as
all of the above. The Taliban is a rebel group fighting for political
control of Afghanistan. It is also a drug cartel fighting criminalized
portions of the Afghan government for control over domestic and regional
smuggling routes. Politicians, businessmen, and fighters
who profit from ongoing war make negotiated peace more complex, and in
some cases impossible.
These trends are compounded by a
long-ignored reality. Many citizens suffering under predatory
governments have no automatic loyalty to the state. Rebel groups,
terrorist insurgents, cartels, and gangs successfully lobby for
legitimacy and public support—not just with threats, but with slick
digital videos and social media persuasion campaigns.
For much of the twentieth century,
terrorism was viewed as a lower-order concern by most governments. The
September 11 al-Qaeda-led attacks on the United States catapulted terror
to the top of the global agenda. Incidents of terrorism spiked for more
than a decade. But since 2014, the number of attacks has fallen by as
much as 44 percent. North Americans and Europeans still
feel that they are on the frontlines of terror, yet according to the
Global Terrorism Index, white nationalist groups pose a greater threat
to U.S. citizens than political Islamist groups. As
gruesome attacks in Brussels, Manchester, and Paris, suggest, Western
Europe does face a greater terrorist threat. Yet in 2017, just 2 percent
of all terrorist-related attacks occurred in Europe. Across the
continent, the probability of dying at the hands of a terrorist was
0.027 per 100,000—slightly less likely than being hit by lightning.
The geographic locus of extremist violence
has altered. Just seven countries account for 90 percent of all
terrorist attacks and related deaths: Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria,
Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. Perpetrators are also
concentrated in a few conflict zones. More than 10,000 of the roughly
19,000 terrorist killings in 2017 were perpetrated by just four groups:
the self-proclaimed Islamic State, the Taliban, al-Shabaab, and Boko
Haram. Over the past decade, they have been responsible for
close to half of all terrorist-related deaths. Terrorism today serves
largely as a battle tactic within irregular war in the developing world.
The inherent vulnerability of soft targets
will always allow individuals with the will and means to sow terror.
But the focus of Western security policy should correspond more closely
with the actual—rather than the perceived—threat. In particular,
attention should focus on the potential of attacks with biological and chemical weapons, a threat that has become plausible again after their repeated use in the Syrian war.
Within the countries hardest hit, the only
meaningful method of terror prevention in the long run is to address
the factors that give rise to it in the first place. Terror is a tactic
of war, but it is a product of inequitable governance and political and
social exclusion. Feelings of inequality, marginalization, and indignity
feed anger and resentment. Moreover, it is often state violence that
sets this tinder alight. According to a UN study interviewing violent
extremists across North Africa, violent state repression transformed
grievances into terrorist violence in 71 percent of the cases.
Rising State Violence
Ever since modern nation-states burst onto
the scene in the seventeenth century, they have violently controlled
their populations. The practice of giving states a pass on coercion
within their borders was codified in the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648,
which ended the apocalyptic bloodshed of the Thirty Years’ War in
Europe. In the long run, the cure turned out to be more deadly than the
disease, however. R. J. Rummel estimated that in the twentieth century,
262 million people were killed by their own governments—six times more
than in all international and civil wars occurring in that period.
In China, the Soviet Union, and other Communist, totalitarian states
such as Cambodia, between 85 and 110 million people were killed by their
own governments.
After the fall of Communism, humanitarians
argued that state repression could no longer be tolerated under the
rubric of national sovereignty and noninterference. Most states
perpetrating violence against their citizens were no longer near-peer
rivals, but weaker governments more susceptible to Western
strong-arming. Rwanda’s genocide of 1994, in which possibly 800,000
people were killed in a hundred days, was so horrific that a new norm,
the “responsibility to protect,” sanctioning international interference
in situations of mass violence, won widespread support.
Yet, despite the new global norm of
protection, state violence has continued. North Korea is holding between
70,000 and 130,000 people in concentration camps deemed by a Holocaust
survivor to be as bad as those of Nazi Germany. In Brazil,
police committed more than 6,100 killings in 2018 (more than one of
every nine violent deaths in the country)—and one of the legislators who
condoned this violence is now president. Amnesty
International found that between 2009 and 2015, Nigeria’s military
starved or tortured to death at least 7,000 Nigerians, killed 1,200 more
in extrajudicial executions, and imprisoned 20,000.
Today, state killings are potentially
among the largest sources of violence against civilians—although with
data so easily hidden and manipulated, it is hard to be sure. Indeed,
few countries collect or centralize statistics on victims of state
violence, much less make them available to the public. At the same time,
new, digitally enabled forms of state control are emerging, most
notably China’s practices of preemptive imprisonment and super-charged
surveillance, employed most thoroughly against its Muslim Uyghur
minority.
While China’s surveillance state hints at
the future, Venezuela embodies state violence today. Venezuela has one
of the highest murder rates in the world, a grim record that at first
glance appears to be the result of murderous criminals taking advantage
of a nearly failed state. In fact, Venezuelan drug trafficking is well organized and managed by the government itself.
The most virulent form of violence today is the result of such
partnerships between states, their security forces, and paramilitaries
and organized criminals.
The Sinister Expansion of Organized Crime
Organized criminal violence has grown in
virtually every part of the world in recent years, whether it be drug
cartel violence in Mexico, reprisal killings among pastoralists and
herders in Nigeria, gangland murders in El Salvador, or brutality by election-campaign thugs in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The acts of bloodshed these violent actors commit are often flagrant
and intentionally gory so as to send a message to their rivals. Many
places are so deadly that they face war in all but name.
True, organized crime tends to step into
the breach where a government is unable or unwilling to provide basic
security and justice. Yet this kind of organized crime flourishes more
often when a state is not weak, but collusive. Such “privilege violence”
occurs when politicians and security forces allow mafias, cartels, and
gangs impunity, in exchange for campaign contributions, bribes, and help
getting out the vote or repressing opposing electorates.
The exchange allows these political elites
to enjoy the fruits of corruption, privilege, and perks, while ceding
portions of their territory to control by violent criminals.
In some Mexican towns, parallel governments composed of criminalized
political and administrative structures wield real control from behind
the scenes. In Brazil, large portions of some of the country’s biggest
cities are under the control of competing drug trafficking factions and
militias. In some places, criminals and politicians merge and become one
and the same. From Latin America to India, violent criminals have
gained electoral office, while others seek to influence elections
through buying and selling votes.
To allow their violent compatriots
impunity, politicians politicize and deliberately weaken their security
services. Criminalized police battle with gangs and cartels not over law
and order, but over control of turf and illegal proceeds. Ordinary
citizens are forced to pick sides. Stuck between massive criminal
violence and a predatory, criminalized state that tends to prey on the
marginalized, populations become polarized, and fragile regimes get even
more brittle. These so-called crime wars thus corrode democracy.
Poorer communities are left to protect
themselves. There is a tight correlation between people’s perception of
insecurity and exposure to victimization and their likely support for
extralegal measures to restore law and order. Where private security is
too expensive and unavailable, people tend to turn to vigilantes, gangs,
and mafias that offer security against the predatory state and other
violent groups—for a price. The cocktail of factors driving
terrorism—marginalization, exclusion, and repression—can similarly
compel young men to join criminal gangs. Finally, as impunity grows,
ordinary people turn to violence. A significant portion of murder
emerges from bar fights and disputes between neighbors rather than
professional criminals.
The ensuing mayhem allows politicians to
posture as being tough on crime with repressive or militarized policing.
Many citizens, exhausted by crime and violence, are easily seduced by
simple promises of law and order. These so-called mano dura tactics tend to win elections.
They are also, often unintentionally, emboldened by foreign security
assistance and equipment. But these policies supercharge criminal
groups. Zero-tolerance laws condemn many young men to life in jail,
where they learn from each other. Criminals respond to brutal policing with even more violence.
The result is a self-reinforcing cycle of
violence among criminal groups, the state, and regular people. Since
2015, Brazil has witnessed more violent deaths than in Syria. Over the last fifteen years, Mexico has experienced more violent deaths than Iraq or Afghanistan.
Public authorities there estimate that 40 percent of the country is
subject to chronic insecurity with disappearances and population
displacement at all-time highs.
Fighting State Violence and Crime
The confluence of state repression and
organized crime constitutes a wicked problem. Venezuela (and its
patrons) is not going to authorize United Nations peacekeepers to patrol
the streets of Caracas. China and Russia are not about to allow
international observers to monitor their repression. Questions of
noninterference and state sovereignty loom large. A new toolkit can help
to fight state violence and crime. These tools could also help in
addressing contemporary forms of splintered, semi-criminalized warfare,
and the terrorism emanating from poor governance and state repression.
As a beginning, the United Nations, World
Bank, and other multilateral institutions must become less risk-averse
and savvier in engaging with states that purposefully brutalize their
citizens, govern inequitably, or partner with criminals.
The experience of states, or substate
governments that are willing to improve, indicates a great deal about
policing reforms and other security improvements that can reduce
violence. Disrupting today’s violence, however, also
requires reducing political, social, and economic inequality and
building inclusive decisionmaking mechanisms across divided societies.
Reversing high levels of gender inequality and gender-based violence
can decrease vulnerability to civil war and interstate war.
Countries that offer more opportunities for political and economic
participation and encourage social mobility also tend to experience less
violence.
When the problem is a governing system
that relies on violence to sustain inequity, straightforward solutions
to increase inclusiveness will meet resistance, however. Technical
solutions premised on strengthening a weak but well-intentioned
government won’t work. Some bolder and smarter initiatives to address
these issues of will are already under way. For example, the World Bank
has a program to make security sector budgeting more transparent.
Corruption is now receiving greater international scrutiny from public
and private investors alike. More work is needed to rebalance lending
strategies, including by spending less on technical programs that gloss
over the underlying problem and more on efforts that tackle the elites
profiting from the status quo.
International and intergovernmental
organizations are limited in their ability to affect domestic politics,
both by internal legal constraints and because they rely on the
permission of governments to operate. These interventions from outside
are also not a long-term solution: a social contract needs to exist
between a state and its people, not a government and external powers.
The role of international actors must always be focused on empowering
active citizens (and citizenship), while incentivizing states to listen
to their own people. Changing the relationship between a state and its
citizens is what ultimately reduces state violence and organized crime.
Repressive states and organized crime thrive when societies are divided
and fragmented.
Success comes primarily from helping the
middle class build social momentum for political and economic change.
Donors can fund local organizations that can spread trusted information
while avoiding partisan pitfalls; can bring citizens together across
polarized, divided countries; and can support a free media and
investigative journalists who inform people about what their government
is up to. Information alone, however, can merely anger and depress
populations that lack a means to force change. Knowledge must be paired
with mechanisms to enforce accountability.
To reduce chronic levels of violence,
outside actors—including public and private donors—must fight to defend
civil society, free speech, and rights to assembly and opposition
voices. In many countries, opposition efforts rely on local businesses
willing to fund advocacy that would build a more just state.
Outside funders that can’t appropriately or legally fund advocacy can
target aid toward building a middle class and a private sector that can
be independent of the government, not reliant on government largesse.
To ease the path of active citizens,
international actors must also avoid doing harm. Donor funding can prop
up predatory governments so that they do not need to heed the wishes of
their populations. Where corrupt politicians are fueling the violence
they claim to be fighting, foreign governments should withhold security
aid rather than waste taxpayer dollars. Central America’s gangs
metastasized when the United States deported gang members from Los
Angeles with no support for integrating them into countries they had
left as toddlers. The United States continues to repeat that mistake
today.
The private and social sectors play an
important, if often underappreciated, role. International financial hubs
such as Dubai, London, New York, Shanghai, and Singapore should tighten
the regulations of financial systems and property markets that allow
criminals and politicians to launder ill-gotten gains. Academic institutions could follow the lead of Magnitsky Act and Global
Magnitsky Act sanctions and deny admission to the children of leaders
guilty of gross human rights violations and corruption.
Finally, more research is needed into
diplomacy and mediation among criminal groups and between governments
and criminals. El Salvador’s famous gang truce of 2012 ended in failure.
But, in Los Angeles, violence has not rebounded after a thirty-year
truce modeled on the Middle East peace process helped end violent
reprisals in the 1990s. These negotiations are often secret
and are rarely even apparent to anyone other than the politicians and
criminals themselves. Very little is known about the circumstances that
allow some to succeed, while others cause only more bloodshed. Gaining a
better understanding could help address not only criminal violence but
also criminal actors within modern warfare.
The problem of violent predatory
governments won’t be permanently solved by agreements such as these. In
fact, they can make a governing order even less legitimate. But they can
buy time, creating the breathing room necessary to rebuild the social
contract between a state and its citizens. While working to improve
internal governance, other measures are needed to tackle urgent problems
that cross borders. Refugee law needs updating to help those trying to
save themselves. Millions are trying to escape the criminal violence of
Central and Latin America, just as refugees have fled the wartime
violence of Syria. The difference is that those seeking succor from
crime are often stuck in legal limbo after being refused asylum in third
countries. In otherwise peaceful countries across Europe
and in the United States, populism is rising on the backs of migrants
fleeing bloodshed, often not caused by war.
Finally, data collection may not be sexy,
but the fight against all forms of violence also requires better
statistics and analysis. There is surprisingly little information about
violence in sub-Saharan Africa, where around half the states don’t
report homicide numbers, in authoritarian countries where the numbers
are probably manipulated, and in places less covered by the
English-speaking press (which is generally used to determine conflict
counts). Supporting better data, which would be comparable
across war and homicide as well as across countries, is essential to
learn where the problems lie, and whether interventions are having an
impact.
Decades ago, in the wake of the Second
World War, a vast intellectual, multinational, and bilateral effort
succeeded in corralling interstate war and reducing civil war.
Collective violence fell globally. Now it is rising again, in new forms
that are harder to eradicate. According to the World Health
Organization, one in six people worldwide is affected by violence today.
It is time for the international community to direct its manifold
resources, monetary and intellectual, to upending the problem of our
time: organized crime and criminally violent states.
Source: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
