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Incursion of organised crime

M. Emdadul Haq
CRIMINALS are on the rise all over the world, and their illegal activities go beyond local or national boundaries. This article explores the economic penetrations of criminal enterprises to run their tightly ordered activities.
Commonly, illicit activities of a conspiratorial group of criminals are known as Organised Crime (OC). Criminal actions are clandestinely synchronised through a nexus or syndicate for making money. Structured in a pyramidal hierarchy, criminals employ violence and bribery in carrying out operations. Threats of grievous consequences are made to the targets for internal and external control in their dealings.
Among the numerous types of political crimes, secret killing, violent politics, campus violence and militant actions are salient in Bangladesh. Organised trafficking in arms, drugs, humans, cattle, and other commodities takes place with India and Myanmar. Organised financial crimes include public sector corruption, domestic and transnational bribery, money laundering and so on. Organised social crimes include extortion, fraud, robbery, abduction, theft, etc.
Like in many other countries, national and transnational crimes are a serious menace in Bangladesh. Organised criminals use cell phones, internet and credible frontorganisations in the movement of large scale money and weaponry. They take part in underground operations with white collar criminals, and employ sophisticated methods for money laundering.
Michael Newton (2011), in his book Chronology of Organized Crime: Worldwide, gives narratives of crimes that took place in human history from 6,000 BC to the present. Thousands of criminal cases ranging from imperial misdeeds to ordinary ones have been described in this work.
I showed in my work, Drugs in South Asia: From
the opium trade to the present day (2000), how the greed for drug money tempted the British to invade the Kingdom of Bengal in 1757 and seize leadership in the Indo-China opium trade. The book also tells how India, after losing its traditional supremacy in opium supplies to Australia, advanced Phensidyl trafficking in Bangladesh since the 1980s. Surpassing Pakistan's Golden Crescent and Myanmar's Golden Triangle, the Indian traffickers now command the Golden Ways region in the global narcotics map.
CIA taught Afghan Pathans how to convert opium into heroin in their anti-Soviet drive in Afghanistan, which caused proliferation of heroin trade in southwest Asia during the 1980s. Since then, drug money continued to be the backbone of Afgahn politics that brought poor villagers closer to the Mujahideen than to the Taleban.
The creation of political vacuum due to war and annexations had special relevance for the surfacing of Mafia activities in Italy at the turn of the 19th century. A century later, political instability in the former USSR left many government workers and KGB members underpaid or jobless, and they ultimately joined criminal syndicates. Criminals now control more than 40,000 financial institutions, including many government organisations, in Russia. Emerging political volatility, possible power vacuum, absence or weakness of state authority will increase OC in Bangladesh.
Highlighting the cross-regional accounts, BeUn Boville (2004), in his book The Cocaine War in Context: Drugs and Politics, points a finger at the criminal nexus within bureaucratic and financial institutions, including police and military organisations. This work pinpoints dominant drug cartels in Columbia, including their father figures Pablo Escobar, Medellin, Cali, and other 'baby cartels.' Unless we wish to be branded as the 'Columbia of the East,' after Pakistan, we need to take action against such cartels.
Dennis M.P. McCarthy, in his work An Economic History of Organized crime: A national and transna-
tional approach (2011), discusses mafia activities in different parts of the world. He says that the US mafia is led by five crime families from New York City and 26 Mafia 'families' across the US and Canada. Besides taking part in international illicit drug trafficking, the US mafia shelters overseas partners and their businesses.
McCarthy writes that cocaine goes from South America, through Africa, and into Europe primarily through Spain, which is a major distribution centre for the narcotic. The 'unwashed' euros travel in the opposite direction, from Europe, down to Africa, across the Atlantic to South America, eventually to end up in the US. While some narco-euros are laundered in Europe, most enter the US, where they penetrate the economic and financial life in numerous ways. In the process of money laundering, the international drug cartels receive huge sums of money from cocaine sales in the US.
In Asia, the Chinese Triads and the Japanese Yakuza belong to the world's top ten Mafia groups. These umbrella organisations involve individuals, societies or syndicates in their groupings. Both have achieved enduring global presence. They share a common culture that promotes exceptionally strong bonding to stay intact as they operate in difficult environments.
Nevertheless, OC in Africa has not received as much publicity as have the mafias in other regions. Gaining from the political gridlock in Bangladesh, Nigerian criminals are using the country as a crossroads for international drug trafficking. Some big catches have already revealed the threat, and more attention should be paid by law enforcement agencies to their movements and activities in Dhaka. Teenager Oishee's drug addiction and the murder of her parents should be a wake up call to the parents, law enforcers and public leadership of the country.
The writer Is a Professor at North South University.
E-mail: mehaq57@gmail.com