Janes Intelligence Review 2008-09

jir.janes.com • VOLUME 20 • NUMBER 09 • SEPTEMBER 2008

Stopped in its tracksRussia crushes Georgia’s military

Journey’s endCan the FARC recover?

JIR 09 Cover.indd 1JIR 09 Cover.indd 1 14/8/08 15:31:0014/8/08 15:31:00

© 2008 Lockheed Martin Corporation

BETWEEN INTELLIGENCE AND ACTION,

THERE IS ONE IMPORTANT WORD: HOW.

Innovative technologies. Creative collaboration. Secure solutions that work across agencies and governments.It’s how we’re helping the good guys gather intelligence. Analyze it. Distribute it. And stay one step ahead.Delivering ground truth is all a question of how. And it is the how that makes all the difference.

Untitled-4 1Untitled-4 1 8/7/08 12:34:43 pm8/7/08 12:34:43 pm

3222 50

Volume 20 Number 09 • September 2008

Features

Focu

sR

egu

lars

8 Baiting the bearRussia destroyed much of Georgia’smilitary capability in a six-day war.Jane’s examines the long-termeffects on stability in the Caucasus

4 Country Risk Watch

54 China WatchCross-strait traffic Jane’s assesses the impactof Taipei’s friendly overtures to China

56 Resource WatchRumble in the jungle How Brasilia is dealingwith illegal incursions in the Amazon

58 InterviewDivided they stand The Palestinian president’schief of staff believes relations between Fatahand Hamas are at their lowest ebb

Terrorism & Insurgency16 Fight the future Is this the beginning of the end for the

FARC in Colombia?

22 Southern comfort Under a reorganised military onslaught,Thai insurgents have suffered but remain a potent force

International Security28 Club Med Jane’s examines the chances of the new Union

for the Mediterranean becoming a major force in the region

State Stability32 A bitter battle A heady mix of political duels, ethnic division

and a fuel price shock is causing ructions in Malaysia

36 Close shave Why Turkey’s powerful secular establishmentcannot be expected to remain quiet. Jane’s explores threepossible scenarios

Serious & Organised Crime

42 Black ice Since the US crackdown on illegal drugsmanufacturers across the border, Jane’s investigates itsdevelopment in Mexico

46 Trends in the north The rise of ethnic groups as actors inItaly’s drugs trafficking trade

Proliferation & Procurement50 Testing times As ratification of the Comprehensive Test

Ban Treaty still looks far off, Jane’s examines the validity ofremaining objections to the monitoring system

Contents

Join us online • jir.janes.com

On

lin

e

jir.janes.com

Blood brothersThe rise of Chechen organised crime

TO SUBSCRIBE CALL+44 (0) 1858 438 756 (Europe/ROW)

+1 800 824 0768 (Inside USA - Toll Free) +1 703 683 3700 (North America)

JIR 09 p03 Contents.indd 3JIR 09 p03 Contents.indd 3 14/8/08 4:45:07 pm14/8/08 4:45:07 pm

jir.janes.com l Jane’s Intelligence Review l September 2008

Join

us

on

the

Inte

rnetw

ww

.janes.c

om

SEPTEMBER 2008 VOLUME 20 NUMBER 9

EDITOR Christian Le MièreDEPUTY EDITOR Anna Gilmour

SECTION EDITORS

TERRORISM & INSURGENCY Jeremy BinnieSERIOUS & ORGANISED CRIME Anna GilmourPROLIFERATION & PROCUREMENT Avital Johanan

REGIONAL EDITORS

AFRICA Sabine MachenheimerAMERICAS Robert MunksASIA Urmila VenugopalanEURASIA Matthew ClementsEUROPE Carina O’ReillyMIDDLE EAST David Hartwell

PRODUCTION

CHIEF SUB-EDITOR Erena LairdACTING DEPUTY CHIEF SUB-EDITOR Rachel KurzfieldSUB-EDITORS Nisa Ali

Spiro JamesDavid Whisson

ART EDITOR David PlayfordPRODUCTION CONTROLLER Martyn Buchanan

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER Scott KeySECURITY PUBLISHER James Green

ADVERTISINGThe Editor and Publisher reserve the right to refuse advertising for what-ever reason. Jane’s Information Group gives no warranties, conditions,guarantees or representations, express or implied, as to the content ofany advertisements, including but not limited to compliance with de-scription and quality or fitness for purpose of the product or service.Jane’s Information Group will not be liable for any damages, includingwithout limitation, direct, indirect or consequential damages arising fromany use of products or services or any actions or omissions taken indirect reliance on information contained in advertisements.

EDITORIAL POLICYContributors’ opinions do not necessarily reflect those of the publisheror editor and while every precaution has been taken to ensure that theinformation contained in this journal is accurate and timely, no liabilityis accepted by them for errors or omissions, however caused. Articlesand information contained in this publication are the copyright of Jane’sInformation Group Ltd (unless otherwise stated) and cannot be repro-duced in any form without the written permission of the publisher. Thepublisher cannot accept responsibility for loss or damage to uncommis-sioned photographs, manuscripts or magnetic media. The editor wel-comes correspondence, contributions, photographs and illustrations,as well as letters.

VOLUNTARY SUBMISSIONSJane’s will assume that, by making submissions, contributors confirmthat all material kindly submitted may be edited or amended at Jane’sdiscretion and is provided free of copyright and/or that there is no re-striction on its use in Jane’s Intelligence Review or any other Jane’spublication, either in hard copy or electronic or other formats. Credits oracknowledgements may not be given in certain circumstances.

EDITORIAL OFFICE

JIR, Sentinel House, 163 Brighton Road,Coulsdon, Surrey CR5 2YHTel. (+44) 020 8700 3700 • Fax. (+44) 020 7287 7765e-mail: [email protected]

Jane’s products are also available on CD-ROM and other formsof electronic delivery. Please contact us for further information.

Periodicals postage paid at Rahway, NJ, and additional mailingoffices. US agent: Mercury International, 365 Blair Road, Avenel,NJ 07001. Postmaster: Address changes to Jane’s IntelligenceReview, 365 Blair Road, Avenel, NJ 07001.

Jane’s Intelligence Review is published monthly.

Printed in the UK by Thanet Press Ltd, Margate, Kent. ISSN1350-6226

©Jane’s Information Group Limited 2008

By Matthew ClementsFirst filed online: 24 July

The opening session of the State Great Khural(Mongolian parliament) was stalled on 23July after opposition MPs staged a walk-out.

The 25 newly elected MPs, from the Dem-ocratic Party (DP), left parliament in protestat the 29 June parliamentary elections, whichthey claim were rigged in favour of the rul-ing Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party(MPRP).

Following the election, violent riotingbroke out in the capital Ulaanbaatar, leav-ing five people dead and 300 injured. Thisled President Nambariin Enkhbayar to enactMongolia’s first ever state of emergency on 1July.

The results of the election gave the MPRP39 seats in the 76-seat parliament, with theDP receiving 25. Two other parties receivedone seat each, while the remaining 10 seatsare awaiting a re-count.

Despite generally positive assessments ofthe poll by international election observers,the DP refused to accept the results. However,

it now appears that the DP has abandoned itscalls for new elections and has instead laidout a series of demands that it says must bemet before its MPs will return to parliament.

These include an official investigation intothe post-election rioting, the release of 200people still in custody after the riots and thepublication of the final results, including there-counted seats.

The DP appears to have realised that nonew election will be held and is instead seek-ing to gain what political capital it can fromthe crisis.

Although any return to violent protestsremains unlikely over the short term, pro-longed political disagreement will disruptparliament and prevent the passing of im-portant new mining laws.

These laws would allow new foreign in-vestment into the country’s potentially hugemining industry, offering improved econom-ic prospects.

Delays to passing these new measures willhinder the country’s economic development,which in the longer term could lead to fur-ther unrest.

By Carina O’ReillyFirst filed online: 30 July

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Kara-dzic, indicted by the International CriminalTribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)on war crimes charges, was extradited to TheHague early on 30 July.

The move came hours after Serbian po-lice fired tear gas to break up demonstrationsagainst Karadzic’s detention.

Karadzic’s lawyer, Svetozar Vujacic, claimedthat he had posted an appeal against his cli-ent’s extradition just before the 25 July mid-night deadline from a remote post office inBosnia-Herzegovina.

However, the Serbian postal service saidthat it did not have the appeal and, under Ser-bian law, the court had the right to extraditeKaradzic without hearing his objection if thedeadline had passed.

Vujacic later admitted that the appeal hadnever been posted.

Meanwhile, more than 40 police were in-jured, and tear gas was fired in clashes withdemonstrators at the end of a huge rally incentral Belgrade.

More than 10,000 people attended the rally(fewer than anticipated) to show support for

Karadzic, many of them brought in on busesfrom rural parts of Serbia and from RepublikaSrpska in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Groups of protesters throwing stones andcarrying flares clashed with police and at-tacked commercial premises, smashing shopwindows, while one group carried a largebanner calling for Western-oriented PresidentBoris Tadic to be “eliminated”.

Despite the violence that accompanied thepro-Karadzic protests, there was no repeat ofthe scale of the disorder that characterised theFebruary protests against Kosovo’s independ-ence, indicating that Serbian police have thecapacity to deal with demonstrations on thisscale, given sufficient political will.

With Karadzic removed to The Hague, thefocus will now shift to the search for Karadz-ic’s army chief and former Bosnian Serb leaderRatko Mladic.

The capture of the highest profile of theICTY fugitives would be a blow to Serb na-tionalists and would underline the Serbiangovernment’s commitment to a pro-Europeancourse. However, despite the prospect of sta-bility for Serbia, this could destabilise Bosnia-Herzegovina, since within the Republika Srp-ska, many people view Karadzic as a foundingfather.

Serbia extradites Karadzic to Hague

Mongolian MPs stall parliament

JIR 09 p04-07 news.indd 4JIR 09 p04-07 news.indd 4 15/8/08 9:42:55 am15/8/08 9:42:55 am

COUNTRY RISK WATCH

By Christian Le MièreFirst filed online: 12 August

Three security staff were killed and one injuredduring a stabbing by unknown assailants on12 August in China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autono-mous Region (XUAR).

The stabbings occurred at a checkpoint ona road in Yamanya town, Shule county, 30 kmfrom the city of Kashi (Kashgar). One man re-portedly disembarked from a vehicle, stabbingthe four security officials, before the vehicledrove off. There were either four or five Ui-ghur men in the vehicle.

Although information on the attacks isscant and unverifiable, the reports followedother attacks in Xinjiang in August, that so farhave killed 31 people.

On 4 August, 16 police personnel werekilled by two Uighurs driving a truck into atraining patrol in Kashi, before disembarkingand attacking the police with homemade ex-plosives and bladed weapons.

On 10 August, two civilians were killedduring a six-hour-long series of attacks andcounter-insurgent operations in Kuqa.

The attacks reportedly involved 15 Uighurs,who planted 12 homemade explosives, mostlikely pipe bombs, near the police headquar-ters, a government building and Han Chinese-owned commercial enterprises.

Security forces then underwent an exten-sive search and destroy operation throughKuqa that ended in the town’s night bazaar.Eight of the attackers were shot and killed by

the security forces, while two apparently com-mitted suicide with explosives. Two were ar-rested and three remain at large.

The attacks indicate a significant increasein violent activity in Xinjiang, which hadpreviously seen levels of non-state violence

decrease since a major security operation waslaunched in 2001. Moreover, the 10 Augustattack indicates a level of co-ordination notseen in years, with the number of assailantssuggesting planning and training.

Despite this, the regional and national au-thorities have not ascribed the 10 August at-tack to any particular group, in contrast to the4 August attack which was blamed on the EastTurkistan Islamic Movement.

The recent attacks suggest some co-ordina-tion on a cellular level, but do not necessarilyindicate a centralised command and controlstructure at a group level.

Furthermore, the relatively low level of so-phistication of all of the attacks demonstratesa lack of funding, expertise and freedom tomanoeuvre.

As a result, further low-level attacks areprobable in the XUAR, with the variety in tac-tics used recently likely to continue. However,the location of the attacks, in the far west ofthe country, suggests that disruption of majorcities is highly unlikely and the current unrestis unlikely to cause significant regional or na-tional instability.

Hualin Market in Kuqa County, northwest China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region bombed on 10 August 2008

Low-level attacks continue in Xinjiang

PAP

hoto

/130

3823

5September 2008 l Jane’s Intelligence Review l jir.janes.com

‘The 10 August attackindicates a level ofco-ordination not seenin years, wiith thenumber of assailantssuggesting planningand coordination’



Military rule returns to Mauritania

By Robert MunksFirst filed online: 11 August

On 10 August, a recall referendum held acrossBolivia confirmed President Evo Morales inoffice, as well as most of the other politicalleaders whose positions were subject to thevote.

According to early returns, Morales – whohad called the referendum as a means of re-legitimising his presidency in the face of in-creasing social and political division in thecountry – easily surpassed the threshold re-quired to remain in office, along with Vice-President Álvaro García Linera and the fourprefects (governors) of the eastern provincesmost opposed to Morales’ policies.

Initial results suggested that rates of sup-port for both Morales and these four oppo-nents had improved since the 2005 elections,while two of the eight prefects subject to re-

call are almost certain to lose their positions.Morales’ own level of support, at around 68per cent, represents a convincing endorsementfrom the electorate.

Celebrating his victory in front of support-ers in La Paz, Morales called for his proposednew political constitution to be merged withregional autonomy statutes, in an effort to re-store consensus among the polarised popula-tion.

Nevertheless, early reaction from the mostvocal opposition prefects of Beni, Pando, Tari-ja and Santa Cruz underlined that they wouldcontinue to reject any attempt to impose theconstitution.

The referendum took place against a back-drop of rising polarisation and tension withinthe country, as the richer eastern lowlandsprovinces increase their opposition to Mo-rales’ plans for a controversial new constitu-tion that would implement land reform and

give the central government tighter controlover revenues from gas exploitation.

While Morales emerges strengthened fromthe referendum – having improved his shareof the vote in every province, including thoseruled by the opposition – the confirmation ofthe opposition prefects ensures that no com-promise is likely in the near term.

Calls for dialogue by Morales have beenundercut by his stated determination to pro-ceed with constitutional reform, while RubenCostas, the prefect of Santa Cruz, has alreadystated that he will proceed with pro-autono-my plans.

As such, the referendum appears only tohave accentuated existing socio-political divi-sions in Bolivia, with further political conflictnow likely over the issues of autonomy for thefour eastern provinces and control over rev-enue from natural resources. Bolivia looks setfor an uncertain short-term future.

President wins Bolivian recall referendum

By David HartwellFirst filed online: 7 August

Units of the Mauritanian army staged a blood-less coup on 6 August. The military interven-tion followed attempts by democraticallyelected President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahito dismiss the chief of the presidential guard,General Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz, along witha number of other senior military officers.

General Abdelaziz, a former supporter ofthe president, responded by arresting the pres-ident and the prime minister and seizing con-trol of strategic sites, including the presidentialpalace and state television and radio buildingsin the capital Nouackchott. An interim admin-istration calling itself the State Council, led byGen Abdelaziz, now runs the country.

Political crisis has gripped Mauritania sinceMay, when President Abdallahi dismissed thegovernment of Prime Minister Zeine OuldZeidane on the grounds that it had failed totackle poverty and fully exploit the country’soil revenues. Zeidane was replaced by YahiaOuld Ahmed El Ouakef, a close ally of thepresident, who formed a new government.

On 3 July, Zeidane’s government resigned,but was immediately reappointed after divi-sions in the president’s ruling Pacte Nationalpour la Démocratie et le Développement(PNDD) forced a censure motion in parlia-ment. A no-confidence vote followed at the endof July, after which 48 members of the PNDD

left the party. The army is widely thought tohave orchestrated this walkout, angry at whatit increasingly saw as Abdallahi’s growing au-tocracy. While in the short term the militarywill restore some element of stability to thecountry, by halting the political crisis that hasstymied legislative action, in the long term thisis less certain.

Gen Abdelaziz has pledged to hand over toa civilian government following democratic

elections, presumably in the same fashion asthe 2005-2007 military government did. How-ever, this should not be expected in the shortterm, with the military more likely instead towork to introduce curbs on any future civil-ian government before organising elections.Therefore, when democracy returns to Mauri-tania, any government will have to work withinthe confines laid down by the military or runthe risk of suffering another coup.

Mauritanian soldiers stand outside an army barracks in Nouakchott, Mauritania, 8 August 2008.

PAP

hoto

/130

3810


COUNTRY RISK WATCH

By Urmila VenugopalanFirst filed online: 12 August

On 12 August, a bomb blast struck a PakistaniAir Force bus on the outskirts of the provin-cial capital Peshawar, leaving 13 people dead.The bomb went off as the bus crossed a bridgenear Badaber air force base, in the suburbs ofPeshawar.

Police have claimed that an improvised ex-plosive device was planted under the bridgeand detonated remotely.

The blast comes after Maulana Fazlullah,who heads a breakaway faction of the militantTehrik Nifaz-e-Shariat Mohammadi (TNSM),warned the government in late July that hewould launch a fresh spate of suicide attackstargeting security officials in Swat Valley (nearPeshawar) and surrounding areas.

Fazlullah’s faction is part of the PakistaniTaliban umbrella group Tehrik-e-Taliban Pa-kistan (TTP), headed by militant tribal leader

Baitullah Mehsud. Fazlullah’s faction is oftenreferred to as the Swat chapter of the TTP andis sometimes known as the Tehrik-e-TalibanSwat. This warning to the North West Fron-tier Province (NWFP) government came onthe eve of a fresh military operation that waslaunched against his group on 29 July in SwatValley.

However, it could also be a retaliatory attackfor recent and ongoing military operations inBajaur agency (Federally Administered TribalAreas), which borders Afghanistan.

According to local newspaper Dawn, priorto a 10 August military offensive in Bajaur,Maulana Faqir Mohammad and MaulviOmar, reportedly the TTP deputy chief andTTP spokesman respectively, addressed apress conference in the agency claiming thata suicide squad comprising young boys andgirls was ready to carry out attacks if the gov-ernment did not cease their operations in Swatand reverse its decision to launch military op-erations in tribal areas.

Suicide bombings particularly targetingsecurity personnel in Peshawar are likely toincrease over the short term, especially sincethere is a large military establishment in theprovincial capital.

At the same time, given this military pres-ence in the city, there is unlikely to be any‘Taliban siege’ of Peshawar over the mediumterm, despite the risk of rising suicide attacksand some previously unseen instances of ‘Tali-banisation’ in certain parts of the city.

Bomb blasts target Pakistani air force bus

Country Risk Watch articles are adapted from stories originally published in Jane’s Country Risk Daily Report.See intelweb.janes.com for more.

‘Suicide bombings,particularly targetingsecurity personnel inPeshawar, are likelyto increase over theshort term’

?*6.+)'+#0@.*4(?+#2.1 $3303330,;$/

"0-$.,+# )./.&+$( *#.'-$%.&(

=62& :.61 *'+A0 "A8?+@# :.61 @?1##10

D3103* )*.9** 594.9%2: 03 A3;*110.*3'* #;<)0*:(C%;043%1 #*'<90;? #;<)0*:( A3;*93%;043%1 E*1%;043:(@42*1%3) #*'<90;? %3) 249*

;4 2**; ;/* *=41=03. /42*1%3) :*'<90;? '/%11*3.*: A

+%'* *=*9? )%?6 8942 5:?'/414.? 4+ )0:%:;*9 ;4 "9%&0'

1%3.<%.* '4<9:*:( 2? "B$ *)<'%;043 &<01): 43 2?

*>5*90*3'* 03 ;/* B%903* -495: ;4 /*15 2* &*;;*9

+<1,11 2? 20::043 4+ 594;*';03. 4<9 '422<30;? %3) ;/0:

'4<3;9?7: +9**)42 %3) 0)*%1:6

<: "<> #A6@?5'.+%'8#2 *# 5&# #A%#

-9?:+# 705$8%)&8&7)9 -$#$,7' 3*1$,)($)/

3,7#07/$+ "($,&87) 4&'&/7,2 6)&1$,.&/2


8

FOCUS

Baiting the bearIn the wake of Russia and Georgia’s six-day war over South Ossetia, Jane’sassesses how tension will continue to destabilise the South Caucasus.

Georgia plays Russian roulette

F ighting in Georgia between 7 and 12August was the most intense since a se-ries of conflicts between 1991 and 1993

witnessed the creation of the Russian-protectedseparatist territories of South Ossetia and Abk-hazia. In just five days, Russian forces were ableto expel Georgian forces from South Ossetia,retake the last Georgian-controlled territory inAbkhazia, push unresisted 50 km into westernGeorgia and destroy or badly damage most ofGeorgia’s main army, air and naval bases. Re-ports of casualties vary but appear to be over-whelmingly civilian, especially those caught upin the Georgian bombardment of Tskhinvalifrom 7 to 9 August.

Whatever the legal validity of his definition ofSouth Ossetia as a domestic Georgian concern,President Mikheil Saakashvili’s authorisationof an all-out offensive to retake the separatistregion ranks among the worst foreign policymiscalculations of modern times. Throughout2008, Moscow had made clear its willingnessto respond with overwhelming force in a peaceenforcement operation should Georgia attemptto retake territory under the protection of Rus-sian peacekeepers or use violence against itscivilian nationals, which includes most SouthOssetians and Abkhaz.

Defeated in a six-day war, Georgia is humili-ated, substantially disarmed and facing majorinfrastructural and economic losses. This sug-gests another Russo-Georgian conflict is un-likely in the near term, given Tbilisi’s need toreconstruct its forces.

However, Saakashvili has effectively mobi-lised the image of Russian aggression to con-solidate domestic support, as well as rhetoricaland humanitarian backing from Western andNATO countries. This raises the possibilitythat, although NATO membership appears in-conceivable while Russian peacekeepers remainin Georgia’s separatist territories, Tbilisi will beable to rearm, replacing its Soviet-era arma-ments with NATO-standard weapons, albeitover a period of years, if not decades. Giventhat in the long term Georgian nationalism andmilitarism will remain guiding forces withindomestic politics, this could encourage furthermilitary hostilities over the unresolved separa-tist territories.

Looking westWhile the August 2008 war in Georgia mayappear to have developed extremely rapidly, itwas the culmination of 17 years of simmeringhostilities between independent Georgia andsuccessive Russian governments that have sup-ported the two separatist regimes as a foil toTbilisi’s pro-Western inclinations.

Perhaps the most significant event in re-cent history to have affected Russo-Georgianrelations was President Mikheil Saakashvili’scoming to power in November 2003 throughthe ‘Rose Revolution’. Saakashvili’s populistnationalism and pro-Western policies havegreatly undermined bilateral relations and en-couraged the continued use of South Ossetiaand Abkhazia as pawns in Moscow’s campaignto keep Georgia and the South Caucasus withinits sphere of influence.

The import of Georgia’s pro-Western policywas demonstrated in Russia’s opposition to aGeorgian invitation to join NATO at its Bu-charest summit on 2-4 April. While Georgiawas not offered a Membership Action Plan, it

• The Russo-Georgian war in Augustlasted just six days but devastated Georgia’smilitary capabilities.

• Although Georgia is unable to launchanother such military operation in the shortterm, nationalism and militarism remaindefining factors of Georgian politics.

• As a result, the unresolved tensions overGeorgia’s separatist territories will continueto destabilise the South Caucasus in thelong term.

This article was first available online at jir.janes.com on 14 August 2008

KEY POINTSPOINTSKEY POINTSINTSKEY POINTSINTS


PAP

hoto

s/13

0381

9

JIR 09 p08-15 IS Georgia.indd 8JIR 09 p08-15 IS Georgia.indd 8 14/8/08 16:19:5114/8/08 16:19:51

FOCUS

Russian soldiers pass a destroyedtank in Tskhinvali, South Ossetia, on

12 August 2008.

September 2008 l Jane’s Intelligence Review l jir.janes.com 9


10 jir.janes.com l Jane’s Intelligence Review l September 2008

FOCUS

was assured of eventual membership alongsideUkraine in an undetermined future. Tbilisihas denied that it would allow foreign forcesto establish combat bases on its territory, butstill sees NATO integration as the best guar-antor of its future territorial integrity. Buoyedby European dependence on its energy ex-ports, Russia has made sustained opposition toNATO expansion into the Commonwealth of

Independent States (CIS) the bulwark of its en-gagement with the West.

In addition to pursuing closer ties with theWest, Georgia has also attempted to shift theterms of negotiations over the separatist terri-tories in its favour. On 4 March, Tbilisi unilat-erally withdrew from the quadripartite (Geor-gia, South Ossetia, North Ossetia and Russia)Joint Control Commission (JCC) structure

moderating the South Ossetian conflict. Tbilisihad been obstructing or boycotting the JCC’swork since 2006 in an attempt to force a changein negotiating structure.

It aimed to involve the ‘provisional’ adminis-tration of Dmitri Sanakoyev, a pro-Tbilisi Os-setia leader whom Georgia claims was electedby loyalist South Ossetians in November 2006,while eliminating separate Russian and NorthOssetian inputs and directly involving the EU.Tbilisi claimed with some justification thatthe Russian and North Ossetian vetoes pre-vented settlement of issues between Georgianand South Ossetian authorities. Moscow andTskhinvali pointed out that it was Tbilisi thatfrustrated the political process and under-mined security on the ground by refusing toguarantee non-resumption of hostilities. Geor-gian acceptance of non-use of force is a Russianprerequisite for a ceasefire and disengagement,although there is now no possibility of mean-ingful status negotiations, whoever mediates.

Russian interestsAs Georgia has attempted to prise itself awayfrom Russian influence and the quadripartitenegotiations, so Moscow has became moreovert in its incorporation of Abkhazia andSouth Ossetia into its political and economic

Bomb attacks in South Ossetia (SO) since 2006

Date Alleged target Casualties

9 July 2006 SO National Security Council Secretary 1 killed

14 July 2006 SO Special Forces Commander 2 killed, 4 injured

15 November 2006 SO Official Spokeswoman 1 injured

23 November 2006 Unknown, Tskhinvali 1 injured

16 December 2007 SO Police vehicle 1 killed, 2 injured

28 February 2008 SO Police Station 2 killed

23 March 2008 SO Special Security Service 2 injured

27 March 2008 SO Chief Prosecutor 1 killed

29 May 2008 SO Interior Ministry Special Purpose HQ 5 injured

3 July 2008 SO Village Police Chief 1 killed

25 July 2008 Unknown, Tskhinvali 1 killed

A Russian peacekeeper keeps watch at a checkpoint in Tskhinvali, South Ossetia, on 23 July 2004. Georgia’s NATO membership appears a distant hopewhile Russian peacekeepers remain in its separatist territories, although the August conflict incited rhetorical support from NATO states.

PAP

hoto

s/13

0381

3



FOCUS

space to act as a lever on Tbilisi. This is notentirely owing to Georgia’s actions. FollowingWestern recognition of Kosovan independencein February, Russia implicitly threatened torecognise Abkhazia and South Ossetia by ap-plication of a ‘universal precedent’ in response.However, with the Russian Federation vulner-able to separatist claims in the North Caucasusand no other major state likely to follow itslead, the Kremlin has good reason not to ex-tend unilateral recognition to separatist entitieswithin the CIS.

Instead, Moscow’s apparent response toKosovo came on 16 April, when it unilaterallyauthorised ‘official relations’ between Russian,Abkhazian and South Ossetian ministries andstate agencies. This provides an official frame-work to bilateral relations short of diplomaticrecognition and facilitates Russian public andprivate investment in the conflict zones. Suchinvestment has increased steadily since 2002,when most of the conflict zones’ inhabitantswho had not already migrated to Russia weregranted Russian citizenship. In South Osse-tia, Russian parastatal Gazprom has extendedNorth Ossetia’s gas pipeline across the GreaterCaucasus mountains at vast expense to pro-vide energy supplies independent of Georgiancontrol. In Abkhazia, direct rail connections toSochi and Moscow were restored in 2002 and2004 respectively and subsequent investmenthas focused on reviving the local tourism in-dustry, including de-velopments associatedwith the 2014 WinterOlympics in Sochi. On6 March, Moscow uni-laterally abrogated CISeconomic sanctionson Abkhazia, imposedin 1996 in response toAbkhaz failure to safe-guard the return of ethnic Georgians displacedin the 1992-93 war. Tbilisi termed these devel-opments the de facto annexation of its terri-tory.

Georgian militarisationAmid worsening bilateral ties and Russia’s in-creasing involvement with the separatist ter-ritories, the Saakashvili administration haspursued rapid and significant qualitative im-provements in Georgia’s military capabilities,which have in turn fuelled the tension aroundthe separatist territories.

This is not new – the arrival of US instructorsunder the Georgia Train and Equip Programme(GTEP) in early 2002 was the initial trigger forRussian issuance of passports and investmentin the separatist territories – but the pace ofGeorgia’s military reform, professsionalisationand investment increased exponentially from

2004. This was achieved with major US, and toa lesser extent Turkish and European, assistancetowards interoperability with NATO.

The Georgian Armed Forces received majorstocks of Soviet-era main battle tanks (T-72 andmodernised T-55), armoured vehicles (BMP-2and BTR-80), long-range artillery systems (2S3,

RM-70, SpGH Dana and D-30), attack heli-copters (Mi-24 ‘Hind’) from allies in Ukraineand Central Europe as well as reconnaissancedrones (Elbit Hermes 450) from Israel. Airfieldsat Vaziani and Marneuli and a joint navy andcoast guard base at Poti were rebuilt and ma-jor ‘NATO-standard’ bases were constructed atSenaki and Gori, on the fringes of the Abkhazand Ossetian conflict zones respectively. A mili-tary reserve of 100,000 citizens was envisaged,based upon a policy of ‘total and unconditionaldefence’ adopted in September 2006.

The militarisation programme and con-comitant provocation over the separatist ter-ritories has partly been fuelled by Georgia’sinternal political instability. Most recently, Saa-kashvili’s declaration of a state of emergency inNovember 2007 in response to massive anti-government protests in Tbilisi proved unpopu-lar and encouraged his National Movement

government to fall back on populist national-ism in the presidential and parliamentary elec-tions in January and May respectively.

The ruling party vilified Russian interven-tionism and made unrealistic promises aboutthe imminent reincorporation of Abkhazia andSouth Ossetia. Such rhetoric was also charac-

teristic of electoral pe-riods in 2005 and 2006and its cumulative ef-fect was to further un-dermine relations withMoscow, Sukhumi andTskhinvali, and fosterunrealistic expecta-tions of return home,by force if necessary,

of some 200,000 conflict-displaced Georgiancivilians.

Russian military responsesGeorgian militarisation and nationalistic rhet-oric did not go unnoticed in Moscow. Russia’sresponse was vigorous and included reinforc-ing military (ostensibly peacekeeping) presencein the separatist territories by land and air andhardening rhetoric. It was unambiguous that itwould hold Tbilisi responsible for any escala-tion of hostilities in the conflict zones and useoverwhelming force for peace enforcementshould the ceasefire lines be breached.

Proof of Russia’s willingness to engagein military operations occurred on 20 Aprilwith the downing of a Georgian Hermes 450drone over Abkhazia by what UN investiga-tors believe was a Russian MiG-29 or Su-27.Following this incident, Moscow increased its

‘Defeated in a six-day war,Georgia is humiliated, disarmedand facing major infrastructural

and economic losses’

Georgia’s preparations for conflict were apparent earlier in 2008. This infantry fighting vehicle withturret affixed was being deployed north from Gori towards South Ossetia in early July.

Mel

issa

Kai

Gro

nlun

d/13

0381

6



FOCUS

peacekeeping presence in Abkhazia from 1,997to 2,542 troops. While this was easily within the2,000- to 3,000-strong force mandated by theCIS, Tbilisi protested that these paratrooperswere trained and equipped as combat forcesnot peacekeepers. Tbilisi claimed that Moscowhad also deployed long-range artillery and ad-vanced surface-to-air missile systems withinAbkhazia. Later in May, Moscow brought inseveral hundred unarmed military engineersto reconstruct the Abkhazian railway, possiblyto facilitate future movement of armour andheavy artillery. These were withdrawn at theend of July after rehabilitating the track be-tween Sukhumi and Ochamchire, on the edgeof the UN-monitored restricted weapons zone.In mid-July, 8,000 Russian troops of the NorthCaucasus Military District held the ‘Kavkaz2008’ training exercises for peace enforcementoperations close to the Georgian frontier.

In South Ossetia, where Moscow contrib-uted to the smaller Georgian-Ossetian-RussianJoint Peacekeeping Force, it sent four combataircraft to circle the conflict zone on 8 July asa deterrent to Georgian aggression. Unauthor-ised Russian overflights of northern Georgiahave been recurrent since at least the Second

Chechnya War began in 1999, but this wasthe first Russian admission of such, prompt-ing Georgia to recall its ambassador. Havingsuspended its own overflights of Abkhazia inMay after receiving a UN warning that theseconstituted ‘military action’, Georgia reportedlystepped up drone and Su-25 reconnaissanceflights above South Ossetia.

Fighting seasonWith political relations deteriorating and mili-tary deployments increasing, the stage appearedset for overt armed conflict. This seemed par-ticularly true given the rising military tensionsfollowing a series of unclaimed bombings car-ried out against targets within South Ossetiafrom December 2007. Russian peacekeepersclaimed there were at least 12 such detonationsin Tskhinvali and surrounding villages, mostlycar bombs, reportedly targeting the securityand judicial infrastructure. Tskhinvali blamedGeorgian saboteurs while Tbilisi claimed theyrepresented in-fighting between Ossetian crim-inal-political clans. Tbilisi was able to counter-indicate the mining of roads connecting Geor-gian-populated enclaves in South Ossetia sincemid-June and the alleged ambush of the convoy

of Dmitri Sanakoyev, the pro-Tbilisi Ossetianleader, on 3 July. The most serious mine blastoccurred on 1 August, injuring six Georgianpolicemen and possibly sparking the shelling ofTskhinvali the following night.

Such bombings were a prelude to the moreovert violence that occurred in the annual sum-mer fighting season. Given the greater ease withwhich troops and heavy equipment can movein good weather, summer traditionally bringssporadic clashes and artillery exchanges. In2008’s summer fighting season, such clasheswere recurrent and increased in frequency andintensity. They began in South Ossetia in mid-June with exchanges of rifle and mortar firebetween Tskhinvali, the separatist capital, andthe Georgian-controlled villages that all butencircle it. Further clashes in early July led upto the capture of four Georgian servicemen on7-8 July. After three weeks of subsequent calm,the most significant hostilities since the directclashes of July-August 2004 broke out, withGeorgian forces shelling Tskhinvali between 1and 3 August. Finally, a devastating Georgianartillery and armoured assault was launched on7-8 August.

However, the Georgian operation was soon

An armed man stands in front of a ruined building in Tskhinvali, South Ossetia, on 12 August 2008.

PAP

hoto

s/13

0381

1



FOCUS

reversed, with a series of Russian air strikes andthe arrival in the mid-afternoon of 8 Augustof a Russian armoured column to the northof Tskhinvali. As a result of Georgia’s failure toblockade the Roki tunnel and mountain roadlinking South Ossetia to Russia, the outcome ofthe conflict was never in doubt. Even with itsrapid military modernisation programme, withthe 2008 defence budget nearing USD1 billiondollars (compared to just USD18 million in2002) and military strength revised upwardfrom 26,000 (2009 target) to 37,000 (authorisedJuly 2008), Georgia was never in any positionto take on Russia (which has a defence budgetof USD36.73 billion for its 641,000 troops in2008) in either conflict zone, let alone simulta-neously. While Russian forces deployed withinGeorgia, including Abkhazia, were never supe-rior in number to Georgian forces, they ben-efitted from near air supremacy. Georgia hasno interceptor aircraft and greatly inadequateland-based air defence systems.

Russian forces soon ousted Georgia fromSouth Ossetia and its established presence inthe upper Kodori Gorge enclave of northeastAbkhazia, and pushed from Abkhazia intothe Samegrela region of western Georgia. Theconflict’s expansion beyond the boundaries ofthe separatist territories suggested one of thegoals of the Russian campaign was to reverseGeorgia’s military modernisation programme,damaging or destroying the main land, air andnaval bases. Not only can these no longer beused to threaten South Ossetia or Abkhazia, buttheir loss sets back Georgia’s NATO integrationprocess, particularly as the NATO-standardSenaki and Gori bases, where heavy weaponsand ammunition were stockpiled, were mostheavily targeted. With its primary targets de-stroyed, Russia called an end to its military op-erations on 12 August, a mere six days after theconflict began.

Future prospectsThe brief conflict in Georgia has left Tbilisiwith few options in the short term to reach itspolicy goals regarding its separatist regions.

The six-day war demonstrated that Tbilisi’sconfidence in launching its South Ossetian op-erations was incredibly misplaced. Similarly,for all the Saakashvili government’s activismand its reliable support in Washington and EUcapitals, Tbilisi also deluded itself that it everhad strong diplomatic options to bring to bearon Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Before andduring hostilities, Tbilisi did not lack rhetoricalsupport for its schemes to reduce Russian in-fluence in the deadlocked Abkhaz and Ossetianpeace processes, but there was never much anythird power could do to break Moscow’s stran-glehold on negotiations.

Convinced that Tbilisi provoked and initiated

In addition to bombings in South Ossetia,bombs also rocked Gagra and Sukhumi,two main resort towns in Abkhazia, on 29and 30 June in a campaign apparentlytargeting the region’s resurgent touristeconomy. Hundreds of thousands of Rus-sian tourists have returned to Abkhazia’sSoviet-era beach resorts since 2002, con-stituting the main pillar of the separatisteconomy. Gagra in particular is being re-developed to gain from the 2014 WinterOlympics in Sochi, 30 km across the Rus-sian frontier. These were reportedly home-made devices intended to disrupt ratherthan kill. Two devices were planted in eachtown in downtown markets or supermar-kets. In mid-June, several devices werealso found or detonated on the railway inSukhumi, possibly targeting Russian mili-tary engineers refurbishing the network.Another bombing on 6 July killed the localAbkhaz security chief at a café in Gali, thevolatile frontier district with Georgia.

Such attacks were recurrent in Abkhaz-ia until the new government of PresidentMikheil Saakashvili publicly demobilisedand ostensibly disarmed pro-Georgian mi-litia groups in 2004. Moscow and Sukhumihave always argued that these ‘partisan’networks were organised by the Georgiansecurity services and claim that they havebeen covertly remobilised to destabiliseAbkhazia. Similar claims were made inearly and late 2006 when a resurgenceof attacks on Abkhaz militia and Russianpeacekeepers in Gali district coincidedwith Georgian diplomatic efforts to dis-credit the CIS-mandated peacekeepingforce. Tbilisi has denied any involvementin such attacks within Abkhazia, blamingfeuds between the organised criminalclans entrenched there. Such feuds havebeen blamed more convincingly for threeunsolved assassination attempts againstAbkhaz Prime Minister Alexander Ankvabfrom 2005 to 2007.

Bombings in Abkhazia

A poster depicts Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as Adolf Hitler during an anti-Russiandemonstration in Tbilisi, Georgia, on 12 August 2008. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili haseffectively mobilised the image of Russian aggression to consolidate domestic support, as well asrhetorical backing from Western and NATO countries.

PAP

hoto

s/13

0381

4


a major conflict against Russian citizens in SouthOssetia, Moscow will not relinquish its politicalveto, whether or not its troops pull out of Geor-gian territory. Mention of international discus-sions on the status of South Ossetia and Abkhaziawas removed from French President and currentEU president Nicolas Sarkozy’s draft ceasefireagreement of 12 August at Georgian insistence.This may remove a potential challenge to Geor-gia’s notional territorial integrity, but it also di-minishes any pressure for changes to negotiationpractices on the separatist territories’ status.

Georgia’s lack of options is particularlyevident with respect to peacekeeping. Pointfive of Sarkozy’s ceasefire accord called for astrengthened interim Russian peacekeepingpresence ahead of “creation of internationalmechanisms”. Tbilisi argues that this foreseesthe eventual replacement or supplement ofRussian peacekeepers with multilateral, per-haps EU or UN, forces. However, there is cur-rently no incentive or pressure for Moscow toagree to this.

In both Abkhazia and South Ossetia, it insistsseparatist consent is required for withdrawal ofits forces and this is inconceivable under presentand envisageable future circumstances. Moscowwill not be swayed in its Abkhazia mandate bySaakashvili’s 12 August announcement that

By Emil Sanamyan

Several aspects of Georgia’s campaign inSouth Ossetia are initially puzzling. In partic-ular, Tbilisi seemed to suffer from misplacedconfidence in launching its campaign, inspite of the overwhelmingly superior Russianforces. Such a miscalculation could be ow-ing to hubris, poor intelligence or nationalistfervour. However, another possibility exists:that Georgia was encouraged into its cam-paign by military successes earlier in theyear. For example, on 3 and 4 July, Georgiawas successful in forcing Russian peace-keepers from the Sarabuki heights nearTskhinvali, while in early July and AugustGeorgia was able to shell Tskhinvali, killingat least eight people, with relative impunity.These successes and the lack of Russianresponses may have encouraged Tbilisi tobelieve that its operations in South Ossetiawould not incur the kind of rapid and devas-tating response Russia demonstrated.

Sources available to Jane’s in Abkhazia,who maintain links with the South Ossetianleadership, suggested the hostilities earlierin the summer made Georgia so confidentof its forthcoming operations that Ministerfor Reintegration Issues Temur Iakobashvili

presented South Ossetian President EdwardKokoety with an ultimatum on 2 August.

Russia’s relative inaction earlier in thesummer also leaves open the possibility that,despite Moscow’s repeated warnings that itwould respond to any hostilities, it deliberate-ly refrained from overt military action in Julyto lure Georgia into a conflict by allowing it tobelieve its operations would prove success-ful. Beyond the original policy decision, theconduct of the Georgian campaign is alsoconfusing. The artillery assault on Tskhinvalion 7 and 8 August proved devastating to theseparatist capital, but strategically, Tbilisi’sattentions would have been more fruitfullyspent elsewhere. In particular, a more usefulgoal for Georgian forces would have beento secure the 3.6 km-long Roki tunnel innorthern South Ossetia that forms the onlyland route into the territory from Russia. Hadthe Georgians accomplished such a task intime, they could have effectively blocked thetunnel and prevented any Russian deploy-ments to the area by land, restricting them toairborne deployments in the short term.

No reports of such an operation exist,but a Jane’s source close to the Russianmilitary claimed that on the night of 7-8 Au-gust, about 500 troops from the Mukhrovani-

based brigade attacked from the north ofthe Georgian-populated Didi Liakhvi gorge.The same source claimed that this had beenanticipated, with the majority of South Os-setian forces redeployed from the capital tothe Java/Roki area ahead of the operation.According to the source, the Georgians wererepelled at Gupta and near Java. This fight-ing formed the original focus of the Russiancampaign; although one Russian battalionwas able to reach Tskhinvali by 8 August, itwas not until the fighting in the north of theterritory had ended that sufficient Russian ar-mour could arrive and oust Georgian forcesfrom the separatist capital on 10 August.

While the veracity of this information is im-possible to verify, given the lack of independ-ent, corroborating evidence, a statement byGeorgian President Saakashvili on 13 Augustthat “we tried to stop them in the mountainsbefore Tskhinvali, but we were too late andthere were too many of them,” suggests thata decisive part of the campaign was indeedfought north of the separatist capital. Thiswould certainly explain one of the more per-plexing aspects of the Georgian campaign.

Emil Sanamyan is an editor for the ArmenianReporter newspaper.

Explaining Georgia’s campaign

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili speaks to the media after his joint news conference with of-ficials from several former Soviet republics in Tbilisi, Georgia, on 13 August 2008. His authorisationof an all-out offensive to retake the separatist region led to military defeat.

PAP

hoto

s/13

0381

5


FOCUS


Georgia will finally leave the CIS, although theJoint Peacekeeping Force structure in South Os-setia will have to be abandoned in light of theexclusion of Georgian forces.

The only positive aspect for Georgia of theconflict is that its alliance with NATO may havebeen strengthened. Perceiving Russia as a userof disproportionate force, if not as the aggres-sor, most NATO states believe that a responseto Moscow’s actions is called for and that Geor-gia’s NATO aspirations should not be damagedin consequence. Certainly Georgia’s militaryrestructuring has suffered a massive setbackthrough defeat by the Russians, but it may bethat NATO and the US in particular respond bymaking good Georgian losses of infrastructureand equipment, perhaps with the NATO-stand-ard equipment that Tbilisi has always wanted.

However, this does not necessarily mean thatNATO will be any more eager to go down theformal route of extending a Membership Ac-tion Plan to Georgia while Russian forces re-main on its territory. NATO would gain neithera stable new member nor a resolution to Geor-gia’s territorial crisis and would risk provokinga Russian response in the far more strategic ter-ritory of Ukraine or in its support for Iran.

A complementary response that could harmRussian interests would be for Western states toinvest heavily in Georgia and the Black Sea as an

alternative export route for Caspian and Cen-tral Asian gas and oil to Europe. Saakashvili andhis Ukrainian allies have long provoked Mos-cow by promoting such schemes to underminethe Russian energy veto on Europe. However,the vulnerability of Georgian territory as an ex-port route has already been demonstrated, evenif Russian actions did not target any of the threeexisting pipelines or oil refining and export fa-cilities in Georgia. Private investment in Geor-gia as an energy corridor will be deterred unlessbacked by substantial guarantees from Westernconsumer states. Moscow also has considerablepolitical and military leverage over the formerSoviet states of Central Asia that would have tosupply energy via Georgia.

Despite leading Georgia into a devastatingand humiliating conflict, therefore, Saakashviliappears to have weathered the latest violencewith foreign support intact. Moreover, hisdomestic position also appears secure in theshort term. Although Moscow would like tosee Saakashvili removed, the latter thrives onthe Russian threat and has initially been ableto rally virtually all national political forces tohis support. With the right to retake South Os-setia and Abkhazia by force and fear of Russianoccupation populist rallying points, domesticanger has been directed more at Western statesfor failing to provide military aid rather than at

those at home who initiated hostilities. This islikely to change once Russian forces withdrawand the reality of the Georgian defeat sinks in,but Saakashvili has proved adept in the past instoking an atmosphere of perpetual crisis inRussian relations to his advantage.

The Georgian military is unlikely to recoverin the remaining four years of Saakashvili’spresidency to a state in which it could againchallenge the Russian presence in the separa-tist territories. However, even in the long termthere appears little chance that most Georgianswould support an alternative government thatis less than militant in its demands towardsRussia and its separatist proxies. As a result,militarism and nationalism, directed againstRussia if no longer against internal minorities,are thus likely to continue as the leitmotifs ofGeorgian politics well into the 21st century. ■

1. Georgia’s long, hot summer

2. How will Georgia handle SouthOssetia?

3. Sentinel: South Ossetia/Georgia

RELATED ARTICLESWWW.JANES.COM

Search for these articles atwww.janes.com

FOCUS



TERRORISM & INSURGENCY

O n 2 July, Colombian army troops dis-guised as an international humani-tarian mission achieved a major op-

erational success when they duped a group ofinsurgents from the Revolutionary Armed Forc-es of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucion-arias de Colombia: FARC) into handing over 15of the FARC’s most prized hostages, includingthree United States contractors and French-Co-lombian politician Ingrid Betancourt.

The success of the hostage rescue – in whichnot a single shot was fired – allowed PresidentÁlvaro Uribe and Colombia’s military to claimpolitical credit for engineering an operationthat evokes other historic landmark hostagerescues, such as Israel’s Entebbe airport raid in1976 or the Peruvian raid on the Japanese em-bassy residence in Lima in 1996.

The operation demonstrates the Colom-bian security forces’ increasing capabilities after

receiving several billion dollars’ worth of mostlymilitary aid from the US since 2000, and follow-ing an intensified period of co-operation withUK and Israeli intelligence. The ingenuity of themilitary operation amounts to a public relationsdisaster for the FARC, but marks the climax ofa series of severe blows to the organisation thatsuggest Latin America’s longest-running insur-gency may soon become history.

Intelligent designWhile the physical rescue of the 15 hostageslasted only 22 minutes, it was the culmina-tion of a year of dedicated intelligence activity,and follows a separate aborted US effort fourmonths earlier.

The FARC kidnapped the three US contrac-tors, who were employees of US aerospace anddefence firm Northrop Grumman, in February2003 after the aircraft they were travelling in

Fight the futureAfter suffering a series of blows at the hands of the Colombian Army over the past threemonths, the FARC is reeling. Andy Webb-Vidal examines the recent events that have led tothe organisation’s current predicament and what its future holds.

The beginning of the end for the FARC?

• Colombia’s Marxist-Leninist insurgentgroup FARC is facing the most severe crisisin its 44-year history, following the loss ofseveral key commanders and its mostimportant hostages.

• While the group has ruled out enteringpeace negotiations with the government, it isunlikely to return to the position of territorialdominance it enjoyed prior to 2002.

• However, it remains strongly entrenchedin some areas and may seek to mountsome high-profile attacks to demonstrate itsremaining military strength.



PAP

hoto

s/13

0383

1

JIR 09 p16-21 TI FARC.indd 16JIR 09 p16-21 TI FARC.indd 16 14/8/08 12:45:5714/8/08 12:45:57



crashed while on a counter-narcotics mission.A year earlier, the FARC abducted Betancourtwhile she was campaigning for the presidency.The four entered the ranks of the hundreds ofindividuals – including dozens of police andarmy officers – being held hostage by the FARCfor both political ends and as a way of raisingfunds from ransoms. Several hundred are stillbeing held by the FARC, including some for-eigners.

The FARC has sought several times since 2002to swap some hostages for imprisoned FARCcombatants, as part of a so-called “humanitari-an exchange”. However, accords have never beenreached, since the Uribe govern-ment has refused to concede tothe FARC’s other key demand:that the government create ademilitarised zone, as had beenthe case during the failed peacetalks between 1998 and 2002.Meanwhile, commando-stylerescue operations were also es-chewed because of the high riskto the hostages, and since Colombian publicopinion was mostly opposed to such methods.

However, by late 2007, the military’s ongo-ing acquisition of more sophisticated intercep-tion equipment had allowed it to accumulatea volume of key intelligence by interceptingsignals, especially from radio equipment andsatellite telephones used by the FARC. The Co-lombian military is now equipped with a rangeof advanced technological tools, including un-manned aerial vehicles (UAVs). This, combinedwith more reliable intelligence from humansources, principally demobilised and capturedFARC insurgents, allowed military intelligenceto identify the area in which some of the hos-tages were being held, including the three UScontractors.

Colombian officials told Jane’s that, aftersome of this intelligence was shared with theUS, in February 2008 Washington increased thenumber of special forces in Colombia by severalhundred, and embedded them with Colombiantroops in preparation for a planned rescue op-eration that would have surrounded the loca-tion with a tightening “humanitarian cordon”,then sought to persuade the hostages’ custo-dians to release the US contractors. However,the Colombian officials told Jane’s the US-led

operation was aborted in March after the FARCdiscovered eavesdropping devices placed in thearea by US troops, prompting the organisationto swiftly move the hostages to a new location.

Checking the FARCAlthough this US-led effort failed, Colombianmilitary intelligence was formulating its ownoperation, called Operación Jaque, literally Op-eration Check, as in chess. The plan entailedisolating the FARC front in charge of the hos-tages’ security and sending them false messagespurporting to be from members of the FARC’sruling Secretariat. Colombian officials declinedto provide further details of the method, but itis believed to have involved a combination ofhuman couriers, and probably e-mail and voicesimulation via radio. The false messages, pur-porting to be from the FARC’s newly appointedsupreme commander Guillermo León SáenzVargas, alias Alfonso Cano, and Victor JulioSuárez Rojas, another Secretariat member bet-ter known as Mono Jojoy, convinced the custo-dians to bring together three separate groups of

hostages to a location in Guaviare department,southeast of Bogotá, from where they wouldbe collected by two helicopters, supposedly be-longing to a sympathetic humanitarian organi-sation that would take them to a secret locationand to Cano.

Officers selected for Operación Jaque under-went intense training at the Tolemaida base, Co-lombia’s biggest military compound, southwestof Bogotá, including acting lessons in how toappear to be European aid workers. Colombianofficials told Jane’s the US government was toldof the plan barely a week earlier, and althoughthe US gave the Colombian Ministry of Nation-al Defence (Ministerio de Defensa Nacional:MDN) its full support, no dedicated US train-ing was provided for Operación Jaque. How-ever, Jane’s understands that some monitoringequipment was supplied by the US to fit out thetwo Russian-built Mi-17 military helicoptersthat would be used, including audio equipment,but that in practice it failed to function.

The operation itself was carried out on 2July. Some of the unarmed and civilian-dressedtroops wore Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara T-shirts andtwo purported to be television reporters fromTelesur, the Venezuelan state-run televisionnetwork. However, it emerged later that at least

one of the operatives wore a Red Cross emblem,which the International Committee of the RedCross later criticised as an abusive use of thesymbol.

After arriving aboard one of the Mi-17 heli-copters – which had their olive green exteriorsrepainted white and orange – at a clearing nearTomachipán, in southern Guaviare, the sup-posed humanitarian workers handcuffed the 15hostages, which included 11 Colombian soldiersand police troops, to help convey the impres-sion that they were allies of the FARC. They alsopersuaded the two principal FARC custodiansto board the helicopter unarmed.

The operation lasted 22 minutes, more thanthe anticipated eight minutes, but it was a spec-tacular success. Once all were aboard the heli-copter, the troops swiftly overpowered the twoFARC custodians, Antonio Aguilar, alias Cesar,and Alexander Farfán, alias Gafas. The US hasformally asked for the two custodians’ extradi-tion from Colombia on terrorism and kidnap-ping charges.

Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia’s defenceminister, told Jane’s that oneof the aspects that made Oper-ación Jaque so attractive was theminimal potential risk to thehostages. He said:“What caughtmy attention was the fact thatthe plan was almost risk-free forthe hostages. One of the funda-mental elements was that it wasconsidered to be a very clean

operation; if the troops went in unarmed therewould not be any combat.”

Although Santos insisted that no foreignmilitary forces played a direct role in OperaciónJaque’s execution, other Colombian officialshave acknowledged to Jane’s that four formerIsraeli military officers have been advising theMDN on intelligence matters for approximatelytwo years. The Israeli advice has been furnishedunder a contract, reportedly worth USD10million, with an Israel-based company calledGlobal CST, which is run by Major-GeneralIsrael Ziv, a former Israeli army chief of opera-tions, and Brigadier-General Yossi Kuperwasser,former head of analysis of Israeli military intel-ligence.

Colombia and Israel have recently increaseddefence and intelligence co-operation in otherareas. In early 2008, Colombia agreed to acquire24 Kfir fighter jets from Israel fitted with elec-tronic monitoring equipment. Furthermore,Jane’s understands that a secret conference ex-amining terrorist financing organised by theAdministrative Security Department (Departa-mento Administrativo de Seguridad: DAS) tookplace in Bogotá in mid-June 2008 and was at-tended by officials from the MDN and Mossad,the Israeli intelligence agency.

A soldier guards weapons turned in by FARCrebels who surrendered to the Colombian Armyat a military base in Medellin, Colombia, 6 June2008. The rebels turned in their weapons in thenorthwestern state of Antioquia, where seniorrebel commander Karina surrendered in mid-May, saying she had been out of touch with theFARC’s Secretariat for more than two years.

‘The FARC has becomea seriously diminished

force hamstrung byorganisational disarray’

PAP

hoto

s/13

0383

1




Since early in the Uribe government, the UK’sSecret Intelligence Service (SIS), or MI6, hasalso stepped up its level of co-operation withthe Colombian authorities, especially, but notexclusively, on counter-narcotics operations.Colombian officials generally see UK intelli-gence as more streamlined and effective thanUS intelligence agencies, despite operating ona much smaller budget, and Jane’s understandsthat UK-Colombian intelligence co-operationruns to the highest level. Santos, for example,is understood to maintain a close relationship

with Sir John Scarlett, the chief of the SIS. Co-lombian officials have also sought to learn fromthe UK’s experience in Northern Ireland.

Body blowProbably the most important strategic insightto come to light as a result of the success ofOperación Jaque is that it is now clear internalcommunications within the FARC structurehave deteriorated markedly as a consequence ofthe progressive implementation of the Colom-bian government’s counter-insurgency strategy

over the past five years. In addition, snatchingthe 15 hostages from the FARC is likely to be asevere blow to morale within the organisation,especially to senior commanders. The rescuealso deprives the FARC of its most valuable bar-gaining chips in a potential peace negotiationand will decrease its international clout, nowthat France is no longer campaigning for Betan-court’s release.

Politically, the move also allowed Uribe,whose tough and uncompromising stanceagainst the FARC had been criticised by severalEuropean, US and Latin American non-gov-ernmental and official organisations, effectivelyto usurp the regional political agenda, at leasttemporarily, from Venezuela’s President HugoChávez, whose government had, over the pastfive years, often been a strident critic of Uribe’spolicy and methods. Since August 2007, Chávezhad been heavily involved in negotiating therelease of some of the FARC hostages, and byearly 2008 managed to secure the release of sixindividuals, but the success of Operación Jaquehas eliminated that strategy’s viability.

Yet the blow dealt to the FARC by OperaciónJaque is just one of several major coups thathave happened in a three-month period andcombine to underscore the impression that theFARC may be close to collapse.

On 1 March, in an operation led by the po-lice intelligence unit (Dirección de Inteligenciade la Policía Nacional: DIPOL), Colombian se-curity forces killed the FARC’s de facto second-in-command, Luis Edgar Devia Silva, knownby his nom de guerre Raúl Reyes, and 24 otherindividuals, in a cross-border raid on a junglecamp inside Ecuador. The Reyes operation wasalso the culmination of months of intelligencework (mostly human), much of it carried outin Ecuador. Jane’s learned that DIPOL arrangedfor an informant to plant a global positioningsystem (GPS) beacon at the camp that allowedColombian and US intelligence to pinpointits co-ordinates. Subsequently, Colombian airforce Super Tucano light attack aircraft fromTres Esquinas, a base in southern Colombia,bombed the camp. Reyes survived the bombingbut was killed by a FARC landmine that blewoff his right foot as he tried to flee the remainsof the camp.

Like Operación Jaque, the slaying of Reyeshad a symbolic significance too: it was the firsttime government forces had killed a member ofthe FARC’s seven-man leading Secretariat sincethe organisation was founded in 1964, signal-ling that the Uribe government had gained thecapability to strike at its central structure.

However, the raid on Reyes’ camp had evengreater strategic value for another reason: theelite squad that led the operation seized sev-eral computer hard drives and memory sticksthat contained a cache of valuable information

The FARC’s supreme governing body is the Secretariat, comprised of seven members.

In the FARC’s military chain of command, below the Secretariat is the central high com-mand, and the FARC is divided into seven blocs, distributed by geographical area, eachcomprised of five or more fronts.

Division of labour

Alias Real name Role

Alfonso CanoGuillermo León SáenzVargas

Commander-in-chief, probablecommander of central bloc

Mono JojoyVictor Julio SuárezRojas

Commander of military wing andcommander of eastern bloc

Timoleón JiménezRodrigo Londoño-Echeverry

Considered intelligence chief andhead of FARC’s drugs activities

Iván Márquez Luciano Marín Arango Commander of northwestern bloc

Joaquín GómezMilton de Jesús ToncelRedondo

Commander of southern bloc,replaced Raúl Reyes

Mauricio Jaramillo Jaime Alberto ParraNew member, replaced Iván Ríos,medical expert

Pablo Catatumbo Jorge Torres VictoriaNew member, commander ofwestern bloc

Bloc Commander(s) Area of Influence

Eastern Mono Jojoy, Granobles(Noé Suárez Rojas)

Arauca, Guaviare, Meta,Vichada

Western Pablo Catatumbo Cauca, Valle del Cauca,Narino

Southern Joaquín Gómez, FabiánRamírez (José BenitoCabrera Cuevas)

Caquetá, Huila, Putumayo

Central Alfonso Cano, Jerónimo(Raúl Duarte)

Huila, Quindío, Risaralda,Tolima

Middle Magdalena Pastor Alape (Felix Anto-nio Muñoz Lascarro)

Antioquia, Bolívar, Boyacá,Cesar, Norde del Santander,Santander

Caribbean Bertulfo (Emilio CabreraDíaz)

Cesar, Magdalena, Sucre

Northwestern (also IvánRíos bloc)

Iván Márquez Antioquia, Chocó, Córdoba




– no less than 609 gigabytes of data. Since Reyesacted as an information hub for FARC commu-nications, the computer data included infor-mation, such as e-mails and other documents,detailing many of the FARC’s alleged links withsupportive groups outside Colombia, includingmilitary officers in Venezuela, and officials inEcuador and in other Latin America countries.

Santos told Jane’s intelligence gathered fromthe computers has been used to guide severaloperations against the FARC since then – in-cluding Operación Jaque itself. He said: “TheReyes computers have been the most usefulblow against the FARC. It gave us so muchinformation; we discovered ways in whichthe FARC communicate that we didn’t knowabout.” Besides using high-frequency radio, sat-ellite telephony and e-mail, the FARC has, forexample, used human couriers carrying 1.44megabyte diskettes.

Some of the Reyes computer documents thathave been declassified underscore the view thatthe FARC is experiencing serious difficultiesand internal problems that suggest the organi-sation will struggle to recover from its presentstate. These problems include concerns amongSecretariat members and mid-level command-ers over increasingly stealthy military pursuits,communication difficulties, warnings to use ra-dio equipment for only short messages becauseof the risk of interception, difficulties in execut-ing operations across the country, increasedlevels of desertions and demoralisation fromcombat casualties.

Personnel lossesSince the killing of Reyes, the FARC has alsobeen shaken by the loss of two other membersof its Secretariat.

In March, Secretariat member Manuel JesúsMuñoz, better known as Iván Ríos, was killedby one of his bodyguards. However, the personwhose death is symbolically far more importantis the FARC’s founder, Pedro Antonio Marín,far better known by his nom de guerre ManuelMarulanda Vélez and nickname Tirofijo (Sure-shot). Marulanda, rumoured to be seriously illfor several years, died aged approximately 78 ofa heart attack on 26 March 2008, around thesame time that the Colombian air force con-ducted three bombing raids targeted at his pre-sumed whereabouts.

Marulanda’s passing has major implicationsfor the organisation’s stability, and its capacityto survive. Despite his age, as the FARC’s su-preme leader he acted as an effective force forcohesion within the Secretariat. Santos toldJane’s that Operación Jaque was carefully timedto exploit the FARC’s likely internal confusionsurrounding Marulanda’s succession.

There have been other important losses forthe FARC. In May 2008, Nelly Avila Moreno,

better known by her nom de guerre Karina,leader of the FARC’s 47th Front and a seniorfemale commander in the FARC, turned herselfin to the authorities. Shortly afterwards, Karinadescribed how her front had been besieged andhow she had not been in direct contact with theFARC’s Secretariat for more than two years – afurther sign of the organisation’s communica-tions problems.

In September 2007, the Colombian militarykilled Tomás Medina Caracas, known as Ne-gro Acacio, in a bombing raid near Colombia’sborder with Venezuela. Negro Acacio was com-mander of the FARC’s 16th Front, consideredto be one of the FARC’s main units involved indrugs-for-arms swaps, so his death constituteda blow to the FARC’s finances, at least in theshort to medium term. A month later, in Oc-tober 2007, the Colombian army killed Gustavo

Rueda Díaz, known as Martín Caballero, whowas commander of the FARC’s Caribbean bloc.

Deteriorating capabilityIntelligence gathered from these and other re-cent operations suggest the FARC has revertedto using human couriers instead of satellite andtelephones. The use of couriers, which is alsoprone to detection, is very slow and thereforeof no use for co-ordinating subversive attacks,so hampering the FARC’s organisational capa-bility.

Colombian officials told Jane’s there are alsosigns that some of the FARC’s mid-level com-manders fear being killed or turned in by sub-ordinates seeking rewards. In May 2008 it wasreported that Mono Jojoy had ordered threemembers of his security detail to be executedafter discovering they were plotting to kill him.

Dav

idP

layf

ord/

1303

855

A map showing active FARC blocs in Colombia




Officials say the FARC has also been forced torecruit minors and enrol members of its urbanmilitia network into active combat units.

The FARC has also experienced prob-lems obtaining armaments, especially certainmilitary-grade weapons that would enable itto undertake large-scale and spectacular ter-rorist attacks. In March 2008, in Thailand, theUS Drugs Enforcement Administration (DEA)arrested alleged Russian arms trafficker ViktorBout for allegedly planning to sell 100 surface-to-air missiles to the FARC. The US is seekinghis extradition from Thailand on charges ofconspiring to support a foreign terrorist organ-isation. Moreover, in June 2008, the US extra-dited another alleged arms trafficker, the SyrianMonzer al-Kassar, from Spain, from where hewas also allegedly preparing to sell the FARCsurface-to-air missiles and thousands of assault

rifles. Al-Kassar also faces terrorism charges inthe US. Both Bout and Al-Kassar have deniedthe charges against them.

Since Uribe inaugurated his government’s‘Democratic Security’ counter-insurgencystrategy in 2004, the FARC has been hit hardby an increasingly fast rate of desertions – nowrunning at approximately 300 per month – andcaptures of its members. According to an in-ternal document from the MDN, obtained byJane’s, in the period from 2006 to the end ofMay 2008, 5,326 rebels from the FARC demo-bilised.

Perhaps more crucially, the category of lower-and mid-level commanders accounted for 12per cent of the total in 2006, while in 2007 theyaccounted for 27 per cent and during the firstfive months of 2008 they accounted for 35 percent. In the past six years, the total strength of

the FARC has more than halved from approxi-mately 18,000 fighters to around 7,000 combat-ants, according to government estimates. Goneare the days – barely five years ago – when theFARC could easily mount operations from itsrural heartland and take control of towns forseveral days before the authorities could react.

Security has improved vastly since 2002,whenUribe’s investiture as president was marred by aFARC mortar attack on the presidential palacein the heart of Bogotá. In the five years sincethen, the combined strength of the military andpolice force has increased from 307,703 in 2002to 404,898 at the end of 2007, while the nationaldefence budget has increased from 3.3 per centof GDP to a forecast 3.9 per cent in 2008.

The results are evident: the number of kid-nappings has fallen by 83 per cent, from 2,882in 2002 to 486 in 2007, while the number ofsubversive acts, defined as attacks on the policeand some civil targets, has fallen by 79 per centfrom 357 in 2002 to 75 in 2007.

Unsurprisingly, Uribe’s popularity hassoared. According to a Gallup Colombia polltaken during the first week of July, in the daysafter Operación Jaque, 88 per cent of Colom-bians said they believed security in the countryhad improved, up from 77 per cent before theoperation.

The end of the beginningDespite evidence suggesting the FARC has be-come a seriously diminished force hamstrungby organisational disarray, there is so far no signthat the FARC is prepared or willing to enterpeace negotiations.

On 30 July, Venezuelan television channelTelesur carried an interview with FARC Secre-tariat member Luciano Marín Arango, whosenom de guerre is Iván Márquez, in which hesaid peace would be impossible under Uribe,and the replacement of Marulanda by Canoimplied no change to the FARC’s insurgencyplans.

Román Ortiz, security and defence studiesco-ordinator at the Fundación Ideas Para la Paz,a security think-tank in Bogotá, is cautiously op-timistic but warns against triumphalism. Ortiztold Jane’s: “Clearly there has been a structuralweakening of the FARC, but it is not certain thatthe organisation is going to fully collapse or thatit is going to be completely dismantling. We arelikely to see a smaller and weaker FARC, but it isan organisation that has an enormous capacityfor long-term survival.”

The internal MDN document seen by Jane’sindicates that the military is under no illusion:“It is important to recognise that the FARC hasnot been completely defeated and it still poses aserious and clear threat to Colombia’s nationalsecurity”.

The document goes on to suggest it is plausible

Colombian officials believe that the deathsof Manuel Marulanda Vélez and Raúl Reyes– in the space of less than a month – haveunleashed a political schism within theFARC’s leadership.

After Marulanda’s death, Alfonso Canowas named the new commander-in-chiefof the FARC; existing Southern Bloc com-mander Joaquín Gómez, whose real nameis Milton de Jesús Toncel Redondo, be-came Reyes’s replacement, and Mono Jo-joy remained as commander of the FARC’smilitary wing. However, Cano and MonoJojoy have political differences, and wereboth seen as competitors vying to inheritMarulanda’s crown.

General Freddy Padilla de León, Co-lombia’s combined forces chief of staff,told Jane’s that while Cano has an urbanbackground and was well versed in Marxisttheory before entering the FARC, climbingto become its ideological leader in the early1990s, he does not have the full support ofother, more rural factions within the FARC,especially those led by Mono Jojoy, who isconsidered to lead the more radical wing ofthe FARC.

General Padilla said: “Mono Jojoy wasformed in the countryside whereas Canocame from a life in the city and arrived asa politician. But Cano is ambitious and hewanted command positions, rather than be-ing an adviser. When you want to govern aviolent mafia like the FARC, to gain respectyou have to demonstrate that you are themost ruthless of all.”

There may also be questions over thelegitimacy of Cano as the FARC’s supremecommander since, according to Colombianmilitary intelligence, he was named to the

position even though no meeting of theFARC’s chiefs of staff took place.

More seriously, Colombian intelligencealso asserts that Mono Jojoy and JoaquínGómez – who now control the eastern andsouthern blocs of the FARC, respectively,and jointly account for about 70 per cent ofthe FARC’s income and some 60 per centof its military capability – believe Cano doesnot have the military experience to lead theFARC.

However, some experts are unconvincedthat these internal differences will neces-sarily lead to a major split within the Sec-retariat. Román Ortiz, security and defencestudies coordinator at the Fundación IdeasPara la Paz, a security think-tank in Bogota,said: “There are different tendencies in theSecretariat, but that does not mean they aregoing to split.”

Cano and Mono Jojoy are still being pur-sued by the army, and since May 2008 theColombian military has been close to cap-turing them. Under current circumstances,both are likely to be struggling to regaincontrol of increasingly isolated FARC blocs,and it seems plausible that either, or both,of them could be captured in the comingweeks.

Colombian officials also suspect that,besides Cano and Mono Jojoy, there arealso likely to be tensions between otherSecretariat members. The most importantof these are Joaquín Gómez; Rodrigo Lon-doño-Echeverry, also known as TimoleónJiménez, who historically has been a keyactor in the FARC’s connection to drugstrafficking; and Iván Márquez, who is be-lieved to be the FARC’s main link to theVenezuelan government.

Leadership disputes




that one faction of the FARC might choose tonot recognise Cano as the FARC’s leader and in-stead opt for negotiation, while another factionmight opt to continue with armed insurgency.It is also likely that, as a result of the communi-cational isolation of the FARC’s different frontsand blocs, the organisation will fragment into anumber of factions that eventually morph intocriminal groups occupying the same geographi-cal space.

Such a fragmentation would be similar tothe partial collapse and atomisation seen overthe past three years in the United Self-defenceForces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas deColombia: AUC), the country’s former um-brella paramilitary organisation. Today, theAUC has officially demobilised to a large extent,but parts of it have also dissolved into a seriesof low-profile criminal organisations involvedin drugs trafficking. Demonstrating that theFARC might follow this path, over the pastyear in several regions of Colombia, the policehave already recorded incidents in which cur-rent FARC units are actively engaged in drugsproduction and trafficking with former AUCunits – a triumph of criminal pragmatism overideological priorities.

Not fade awayThe FARC is far from defeated – 7,000 combat-ants, if the figure is correct, still amounts to apotent force, and the group still has access toimportant financing from the cocaine trade.

Despite successes in combating the FARC, theUribe government has made no progress in re-ducing the volume of cocaine smuggled out ofColombia. According to the United Nations, thearea under cultivation for coca crops at the endof 2007 stood at 99,000 hectares, up 27 per centfrom a year earlier and unchanged from 2002.Involvement in drugs cultivation and traffick-ing is by far the FARC’s most important source

of revenue. Terrorist attacks in Bogotá and inother major cities are still feasible, and likely tooccur in the coming months as the FARC seeksto demonstrate its remaining strength. Indeed,the FARC carried out a minor bomb attack inBogotá on 9 August, wounding eight people, al-though a car bomb attack planned for 7 Augustin Bogotá was thwarted by police, who arrestedfive alleged FARC members. Uribe, who hassurvived several assassination attempts, couldface further attacks.

At a wider level, while the Uribe governmenthas made advances on the security front, giventhat the perceived security threat has receded,investment in defence is likely to have peaked,and could well fall in the future. US funding

under the former Plan Colombia programmeis also likely to decline, especially if the Demo-cratic Party wins the US presidential election inNovember. According to Joaquín Villalobos, aformer Salvadoran guerrilla commander, now aconflict analyst, who spoke to Jane’s, the FARChas lost its command and control capacity andColombia is already technically in a ‘post-war’phase, as there are now more demobilised com-batants than active fighters.

However, Villalobos suggests there is unlikelyto be a formal end to the conflict through ne-gotiations because of the FARC’s lack of uni-fied leadership. Rather, he says, Colombia ismore likely to see a gradual “fading away” of theconflict.

Since early 2008, the FARC has sufferedthe most severe setbacks in its 44-year his-tory, and will struggle to recover.

However, historically the FARC has dem-onstrated its ability to survive. It still hasaccess to Colombia’s thriving illegal drugsbusiness and is likely to attempt to executefurther high-profile terrorist attacks in theshort term as a way of reasserting its pres-ence and portraying the perception that itis still powerful, if unpopular.

That said, internal political and person-ality differences among members of theruling Secretariat, combined with demor-alisation among its foot soldiers and mid-ranking commanders, appear likely to lead

the FARC eventually to splinter into autono-mous factions.

Some of these FARC-spawned group-ings may seek a peace formula with thegovernment; other post-FARC groupingswill choose to merge with recently formedcriminal organisations involved in the drugsbusiness, and still other factions are likelyto continue insurgent and terrorist tacticsas a way of life.

The FARC’s extinction is still a distantprospect, but it is now an endangered spe-cies of insurgency, very unlikely to be ableto recoup the military strength it once hadin the pre-Uribe period as a coherent insur-gent army. ■

CONCCONCLUSIONCONCLUSIONCONCLUSIONCONCLUSION

1. The FARC’s cruellest month

2. FARC’s future – The road ahead forColombia’s rebels

3. Sentinel: Non-State Armed Groups/Colombia

AuthorAndy Webb-Vidal is a security consultantbased in Bogotá.



A soldier counts packs of marijuana at a military base in Calí, Colombia, 11 July 2008. The army said thefour tonnes of marijuana seized belonged to FARC rebels in the southern state of Cauca. The FARC’s mili-tary capability has been damaged in recent months but its capacity for producing drugs has suffered little.

PAP

hoto

s/13

0383

3




Southern comfortThailand’s military has been reorganised into a focused force notching up considerablegains against the Muslim-Malay insurgency in the south. Yet, as Anthony Davis notes, theseparatists maintain an underlying capacity to strike back, despite their vulnerabilities.

Thai insurgency falters

A fter four years of strategic mismanage-ment and repeated tactical humiliations,Thailand’s security forces appear finally

to have checked the rise of the Malay-Muslimseparatist insurgency in the kingdom’s southernborder provinces.

Overshadowed by political tensions in Bang-kok, the gains in the south have received littleattention in either the national or internationalmedia. Sporadic reports of bomb attacks andkillings across the three majority-Muslim prov-inces of Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat and parts ofneighbouring Songkhla have conveyed the im-pression that the insurgency continues apace.

However, incident statistics compiled by Jane’sfrom both official and independent sourcesclearly indicate the extent to which the securityforces have succeeded in reducing the violence.

Since late 2007 – and in particular since Feb-ruary 2008 – all key categories of insurgent ac-tivity have recorded sharp declines after risingsteadily from early 2004 to a point in mid-2007when guerrilla attacks and communal killingsthreatened to push the region into a wider con-flict.

Given this progress, Royal Thai Army (RTA)commander-in-chief General Anupong Pao-chinda has urged the military to build on recentsuccesses and completely quell the violence by

the end of 2009.Yet, while there is no denying thereal successes achieved in recent months, this isan ambitious goal. Indeed, the conflict may entera more unpredictable and dangerous period asthe insurgents seek to reassert themselves.

Attacks downAmong the statistics compiled by Jane’s, moststriking have been the declines in the bombingsand targeted assassinations that have claimed theoverwhelming majority of the more than 3,300people killed and 5,000 people wounded sinceJanuary 2004, when unrest escalated into full-blown insurgency. In the first six months of 2008,bombings and attempted bombings using im-provised explosive devices (IEDs) dropped to amonthly average of 24.3 incidents from the 2007average of 39.6. The numbers of IED attacks arenow broadly equivalent to 2005 figures.

Targeted assassinations – usually carried outby separatist gunmen on motorcycles – are alsosharply down. During 2007 there was an alarm-ing surge in attacks on civil servants, teachers, lo-cal officials, Buddhist civilians and, increasingly,local Muslim community leaders perceived tobe supporting the Thai state. During 2007, as-sassination incidents, many of them involvingseveral casualties, averaged over 90 per month.The January to June monthly average was over100. The first six months of 2008 saw that figurereduced to a monthly average of 47.2 incidents– again, broadly similar to the rate in 2005.

Arson and direct fire attacks on security forcesunits (excluding incidents that involved IEDs orthe targeted assassination of specific individuals)are also monitored by Jane’s. These too have re-corded marked drops.

Separatist arsonists usually target stateschools, which they consider a key element in ef-forts to assimilate Malay-speaking Muslims intothe Thai-Buddhist mainstream, as well as gov-ernment offices, public telephone booths andprivate houses. There were 32.6 arson attacks onaverage per month during 2007, with the Janu-ary to June average at 46 incidents. State schoolswere targeted 178 times in 2007. The monthly

average dropped to seven in the first half of 2008and only five schools were attacked betweenJanuary and June.

Meanwhile, there was an average of 16.6 at-tacks on security forces units per month during2007. In the first six months of 2008, attacksdropped to a monthly average of 11.7.

Behind the successThe decline in insurgent activity can be attrib-uted to the introduction of a raft of interlockingcounter-insurgency tactics and measures adopt-ed by the security forces since the military coupof September 2006. Between 2001 and 2006,then-prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra pre-sided over a largely dysfunctional succession ofdefence and interior ministers, army command-ers, police chiefs and ‘security czars’ tasked withstemming unrest that soon escalated into openrevolt. Chronic failure to produce an integratedpolitical and military strategy was paralleled bymilitary paralysis and repeated tactical reverseson the ground.

The coup allowed the Royal Thai Army (RTA)under then commander-in-chief General SonthiBoonyaratglin to take full control over opera-tions and budget allocations, while minimisingwhat Gen Sonthi described as “political interfer-ence” from Bangkok. In late 2006, the militaryrevived the Internal Security Operations Com-mand (ISOC) as the key co-ordinating body fordomestic threats of all kinds. As a consequence,the Forward Command of ISOC’s southern Re-gion Four became the apex body in respondingto the insurgency.

Two other bodies abolished by the oustedThaksin government were also revived. Themore important of these is the joint Civil-Po-lice-Military Command, involving units of theRTA, the Marine Corps, the Royal Thai Police,paramilitary Rangers and other elements, whichis designed to ensure co-ordination of counter-insurgency operations. The Southern BorderProvinces Administration Centre has also beenre-instituted to improve community relations.

Despite these changes, it was not until mid-

• Attacks by Malay-Muslim separatists insouthern Thailand have declined markedlyover the last 18 months.

• This trend can be attributed to the re-organisation of the security forces and theiradoption of new tactics and procedures.

• The decrease in frequency in attacks maylead to attempts for fewer, but larger, attacksin the future.

This article was first available online at jir.janes.com on 30 July 2008


Sur

apan

Boo

ntha

nom

/130

3795

JIR 09 p22-27 TI Thai.indd 22JIR 09 p22-27 TI Thai.indd 22 14/8/08 14:35:4814/8/08 14:35:48



Sur

apan

Boo

ntha

nom

/130

3795

A vehicle-borne improvised explosive device killed two and injured 13 when detonated outside the CSPattani hotel on 15 March. Only one of the two devices in the car exploded owing to an error in wiring.




June 2007 that the militarylaunched what amountedto a strategic counter-of-fensive termed OperationSouthern Defender (Yut-takarn Pitak Daen Tai).Coming in the wake of a se-ries of insurgent ambushesin Narathiwat and Yala thatwiped out whole patrols,Southern Defender openedas a series of major sweepsthrough insurgent-dominated ‘red’ areas in Ba-nang Satar district,Yala, and Sungai Padi districtin Narathiwat. It then widened to include other‘red’ areas through July and August. Under theEmergency Powers Act of 2005, these opera-tions involved largely indiscriminate round-upsand detention of hundreds of men and youthssuspected of insurgent activity.

The retirement of Gen Sonthi as RTA com-mander in October 2007 and the promotion ofGeneral Anupong Pao-chinda to the country’smost powerful military post brought to thesouthern conflict a critical ingredient lackinguntil then: sustained, top-level focus. Notwith-standing the December 2007 national elec-tions, the change of government and politicalmanoeuvring in Bangkok, Gen Anupong has

maintained a direct interest in the south andvisited the region no fewer than five times sinceassuming RTA command.

Within a month of taking over, the new armychief restructured the operational command ina manner that sought to involve the whole mili-tary, not just the 4th (Southern Region) Army,in the counter-insurgency effort. The revampinvolved the RTA’s other regional commands– the 1st Army (Central Region), the 2nd Army(Northeast) and the 3rd Army (North) – takingresponsibility for security in Narathiwat, Pattaniand Yala respectively.

Their deputy commanders moved south totake command of Provincial Task Forces in theirareas of operation. The 4th Army command as-sumed operational responsibility for the four

majority-Muslim districts ofSongkhla province affectedby the insurgency.

The security forces in thesouth have been simultane-ously strengthened. Regularmilitary units in theatre nownumber over 20,000, in-cluding 21 RTA and MarineCorps battalions, in additionto Special Warfare and intel-ligence units.

Paramilitary forces comprise a further 46,000troops. These include provincial and SpecialOperations police units, Border Patrol Police(BPP) companies and, importantly, Rangerregiments trained for small-unit counter-guer-rilla operations. Once at full strength, the sevenoperational Ranger regiments (up from threein early 2006) will comprise 12 companies, eachwith a complement of around 90 men (andwomen in some units).

Regular and paramilitary forces are supportedby a further 37,000 civil defence personnel ofwidely varying effectiveness. These include full-time defence volunteers armed and trained bythe Ministry of Interior, who operate in supportof civil administration and lightly armed part-time village defence volunteers.

‘A wave of attacks across allthree provinces between 4 and

6 May served as anotherreminder of the insurgency’s

disruptive potential’

(Left to right) Daris Mahmad, 25, and Waeyumeng Mahmad, 22 killed a Thai Buddhist teacher on 24 January in Khok Po district, Pattani, but were captured byArmy and police units after being tracked with dogs. Assassinations in the southern border provinces have more than halved in the first six months of 2008.

Sur

apan

Boo

ntha

nom

/130

3801




Counter-insurgency tacticsAgainst the backdrop of this build-up to morethan 100,000 personnel, a range of counter-in-surgency tactics have helped degrade insurgentinfrastructure and reduce armed attacks. Mostvisible has been a continuation of the operationstargeted on insurgent-dominated areas that be-gan with Southern Defender in June 2007.

Unlike the early months of Southern Defend-er, when operational intelligence was conspicu-ously lacking, 2008 has seen a clear increase inraids targeting specific locations, such as housesor orchards. At the same time, major cordon-and-search operations have continued to involvejoint task forces of hundreds of military andpolice descending simultaneously on multiplelocations across several districts. These largeroperations have focused consistently on Nar-athiwat and in particular ‘red’ sub-districts inSungai Padi, Rueso and Ra-ngae districts.

Sweeps and raids in 2008 have almost invari-ably involved detention of suspected insurgents,although in far smaller numbers than in 2007,and occasionally arrests of men for whom war-rants have already been issued. Bomb-makingequipment and occasionally weapons have alsobeen seized. In some cases cordon-and-searchoperations have also triggered clashes with cor-nered militants that have exacted a steady andnot insignificant toll on insurgent lives. BetweenJanuary and June 2008, 25 militants were killedby security force personnel in clashes initiated bysecurity force operations.

Theseoperationshavebeenreinforcedbywhatdiplomats and international human rights mon-itors describe as a carefully calibrated campaignof extra-judicial killings ordered by authoritiesat district and provincial level. Typically, theseassassinations, which may number two or threeeach month, have targeted key separatist politi-cal leaders at the village and sub-district level,men who are often also religious teachers andleaders. In recent cases, according to one expe-rienced monitor, victims have been summonedby the authorities for warnings one or two weeksbefore their killings. He noted: “The pattern isvery similar to killings during the [2003] Waron Drugs, [a national crackdown that left some2,500 dead].”

Extra-judicial killings are usually promptlyavenged by local insurgents. On 11 May 2008,for example, 47-year-old imam Aziz Torlehwas shot dead with his 18-year-old son by gun-men driving a sedan car in Bukit sub-district ofCho Airong district, Narathiwat. The followingevening, a Ranger and a Muslim defence volun-teer were gunned down by six insurgents as theyemerged from a house in the same area. Localsources told Jane’s that the second attack was nocoincidence.

The cumulative result of hundreds of arrests,interrogations and selective killings has been

While intimidation of Muslim communitieshelps to command the silence that facilitatesthe insurgency, the separatist movement isalso deeply rooted in decades of mistrustand suspicion that divide the Malay-Muslimpopulation from the Thai state. Exacerbatedby security force excesses, this rift fuels ac-quiescence to and active support for the in-surgency.

Since the disastrous over-reactions of2004, when scores of Muslims died in inci-dents at Krue Se Mosque and Tak Bai dis-trict, the military has tried to avoid furthersuch incidents – despite well-orchestratedinsurgent provocations – while stressing apolicy of reconciliation. However, it has beenfar more difficult to rectify a deeply rootedculture of official impunity and a flawed jus-tice system. Neither problem is unique to thesouth, but both continue to rankle with Mus-lims, feeding a perception of second-classcitizenship that is dangerous in the contextof a politically sophisticated insurgency.

Nearly four years after the death in custo-dy of 78 detainees, who were suffocated andcrushed as they were trucked from a protestat Tak Bai district, financial handouts havebeen paid to affected families. However, nosecurity force officer has faced a court.

Similarly unforgotten is the disappearance

of Somchai Neelapaichit, chairman of theMuslim Lawyers Association of Thailand. En-gaged in defending suspected separatists,Somchai was abducted by police officers inBangkok in March 2004 and is presumed tohave been murdered.

One officer was sentenced to three yearsimprisonment for assault, while four otherswere acquitted. Not one was charged withmurder on the legal technicality that nocorpse was found. For Muslim southerners,the case echoed the 1954 disappearanceand presumed murder of Haji Sulong To-hmina, a leader of iconic stature whose callsfor autonomy for the Malay region angeredThai officialdom.

A more recent scandal involved the deathin custody of Yapa Kaseng. Believing the56-year old imam was involved in planningattacks, the security forces detained Yapaon 19 March 2008. His badly beaten corpsewas returned to his family two days later. Fol-lowing Gen Anupong’s declaration that anysoldiers found guilty of misconduct in the in-cident would be disciplined, a military com-mission of inquiry was established. Threemonths later, the military personnel allegedlyinvolved have been transferred out of thearea and the commission has failed to reachany verdict.

Muslim mistrust

This vehicle-borne improvised explosive device involving explosives packed into fire extinguishers explodedprematurely in Yala on 15 March. The number of improvised explosive device attacks across the southernborder regions has fallen in the first six months of 2008.

Sur

apan

Boo

ntha

nom

/130

3792


Attacks on special forcesArsonImprovised explosive devicesAssassinations

Jan07

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

Mar 07

May 07

Apr 07

Jun07

Jul 07Aug

07Sep

07Oct 07Nov 07Dec 07Jan

08Feb

08M

ar 08Apr 08M

ay 08Jun

08

Feb07



two-fold. On the one hand, the security forces,who for the first years of the insurgency wereoperating mainly reactively, have built up a farmore accurate intelligence picture of an insur-gency spearheaded by the National Revolution-ary Front-Coordinate (Barisan Revolusi Nasion-al-Koordinasi: BRN-C) and its armed RundaKumpulan Kecil (RKK, literally small patrolgroup in Bahasa Indonesia) teams. Facilitatedby improved inter-service co-ordination, betterintelligence has created a virtuous circle of fur-ther operations, arrests and clashes, according tosouthern intelligence sources.

Second, village-level insurgent infrastructure,both political and military, has been disruptedand degraded. According to military sourcesspeaking to Jane’s, this has encouraged some vil-lagers, often angered by insurgent killings, to pro-vide tip-offs that have resulted in further clashesand arrests of RKK cadres. The result has been topush RKK members out of their home villages,making those who remain operational more vul-nerable to counter-guerrilla Ranger units.

As RKK units have been pressured out ofvillages, the military has sought where possi-ble to move in with initiatives designed to gaingreater influence and favour. This push hasbeen spearheaded by platoon-sized Peace Teams(Chut Santisuk) whose primary task is to showa friendly face and implement small-scale localdevelopment projects. The long-term effective-ness of this element of the counter-insurgency

strategy remains to be seen. The more assertivedeployment of troops in a basic ‘security grid’has also played an important role in stemminginsurgent attacks. Largely the result of Gen An-upong’s orders to curb daily assassinations, theimposition of this grid has involved more footand vehicle patrols, as well as checkpoints alongsensitive roads.

It is now difficult to move around violence-prone areas without encountering a securityforce presence. The deterrent effect on southernThailand’s risk averse insurgents appears to havebeen considerable: even in black-spot districtssuch as Ra-ngae and Rueso in Narathiwat andMuang (capital) district in Yala, killings havedropped sharply.

Insurgent shortcomingsThese improvements in security force tactics andoperations has also been mirrored by the mili-tants’ inability to develop their insurgency.

The BRN-C was relatively successful in im-plementing the initial phase of its Maoist-style‘people’s war’ strategy. Many villages have beeninfiltrated and locals mobilised on a platform ofPattani-Malay nationalism mixed with a heavydose of Islam. Political indoctrination has beenreinforced by assassinations of the government’s‘eyes and ears’ (teachers, local officials and pro-government Muslim community leaders).This phase in the strategy was already provingeffective in many areas by 2002-2003 as the

groundwork for revolt was laid. However, theBRN-C has failed to follow the Maoist prescrip-tion of developing roving guerrilla units capableof deterring government forces from insurgent-dominated ‘liberated zones’. Instead, its armedactivities have remained stuck at the low level ofassassinations and bombings. As a result, boththe insurgency’s local political leadership and itssmall RKK teams (typically five to eight men)have become increasingly vulnerable to govern-ment intelligence penetration of the villages andthe raids and extra-judicial killings that havefollowed.

Inadequate training has undoubtedly beenone factor behind the insurgents’ failure todevelop a more effective paramilitary wing.Rudimentary RKK combat courses provided inmakeshift camps have failed to translate into aguerrilla capability. Professionally executed am-bushes combining IEDs with small-arms firethat have succeeded in wiping out security forcepatrols and seizing their weapons have been fewand far between. More typical are harassment at-tacks involving small bands of gunmen firing ongovernment units and then rapidly retreating. InMay 2008, for example, there were 18 direct fireattacks on patrols and positions, resulting in onesecurity force fatality and eight injured. Despiteenjoying the element of surprise, 13 of these at-tacks failed to inflict any casualties.

The lack of external sources of arms has exac-erbated the inadequate training. The insurgencysurvives largely on the significant arms seizuresmade between 2002 and early 2004, when thegovernment was in denial of the separatistthreat, and the capture of individual weaponssince then. Bomb-making components such asammonium nitrate, emulsion plastic explosiveand mobile telephones have been smuggled inacross the porous border with Malaysia. How-ever, the insurgency has evidently not succeededin sourcing weapons or ammunition either fromabroad or from Thailand’s arms black market,which has shrunk markedly in recent years.

Resilient insurgencyFor all the setbacks, senior security officials whorecently spoke to Jane’s are in little doubt that theinsurgent underground remains entrenched andis not about to collapse. Indeed, while the rate ofattacks has been checked, the separatists clearlyretain a capacity to launch hard-hitting opera-tions, prompting speculation that the insurgentsmay seek to make up for what they have lost inquantity of attacks with operational quality.

A case in point was a double-pronged attackon 15 March 2008, which involved vehicle-borneIEDs (VBIEDs) aimed at targets in both Pattaniand Yala cities. The Yala attack failed when alarge VBIED made from explosives packed intofire extinguisher tanks in a sedan car explodedprematurely (apparently the result of a technical

A graph detailing the type of attacks in southern Thailand from January 2007 to June 2008.

Jane

s/13

0382

9



INTERNATIONAL SECURITY

W hen French President NicolasSarkozy presided over a summit of43 heads of state or government to

launch the new Union for the Mediterranean(UMed) in July, it was generally hailed as adiplomatic success. Leaders of the 27 EuropeanUnion (EU) states were present in Paris for theevent, as well as leaders of 16 non-EU states ofthe Maghreb, Middle East and West Balkans.

One of the summit’s achievements was tobring together such a varied and disparate as-sembly of leaders, including some antagonis-tic neighbours. Only Libya’s mercurial leaderColonel Muammar Ghadaffi refused to attend,as he branded UMed colonialist and objectedto the inclusion of Israel.

Nevertheless, Syrian President Bashar al-As-sad emerged from his isolation on the easternshores of the Mediterranean to be presentin the same room as Israeli Prime MinisterEhud Olmert. Another notable attendee in theGrand Palais was Palestinian Authority Presi-dent Mahmoud Abbas, who has been engagedin talks with Olmert. Despite earlier misgiv-ings, Algeria’s President Abdelaziz Bouteflikawas also persuaded to attend.

Beyond the high-profile gathering ofMediterranean and European leaders in one

Club MedSyrian leader Bashar al-Assad came out of international isolation to join diplomatic talks withother regional leaders at the launch of the Union for the Mediterranean in July. John Clarkeexplains why the union is unlikely to become a major regional and international force.

Mediterranean states form new union

• France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy hasmanaged to bring together a disparategroup of countries, including antagonisticneighbours such as Syria and Israel, to formthe Union for the Mediterranean (UMed).

• UMed is to launch a number of practicalprogrammes to boost co-operation andprosperity in the region.

• However, regional antagonism andmilitary competition, combined withincreasing Russian influence in the region,may undermine UMed’s success.

This article was first available online on jir.janes.com on 13 August 2008


Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, right,walks with his arm around Israel’s Prime Minister

Ehud Olmert before the inaugural meeting ofUMed. The Paris summit produced media-friendly

signs of progress in Israel-Palestinian relations,but in reality the problems remain intractable.

PAP

hoto

s/13

0380

3

JIR 09 p28-31 IS Med.indd 28JIR 09 p28-31 IS Med.indd 28 14/8/08 11:52:2214/8/08 11:52:22



location, the difficulties in meeting the gran-diose aims of UMed (namely bringing peaceand stability to a region facing a range of chal-lenging issues) remain apparent. These includethe Israel-Palestinian issue; the mutual hos-tility and suspicion between Israel and Syria;the perceived threat from Islamist extremism;illegal immigration into the EU; the Iraniannuclear issue and various other regional diffi-culties, such the differences between Moroccoand Algeria over the separatist region of West-ern Sahara.

Beyond various uncontroversial goals deter-mined at the conference, no tangible commit-ments towards regionalism and peacemakingwere made. Although the first conference waslargely perceived as a success simply by dintof the attendees, these low expectations dem-onstrate the complex range of challenges thatface any attempts to create genuine regionalco-operation in an unstable area with oftenmutually suspicious, if not hostile, politicalactors. UMed will continue to function, andmay bring the Mediterranean countries, par-ticularly in North Africa, closer into Europe’ssphere of influence, but significant progress onsecurity issues should not be expected in theshort to medium term.

Evolutionary processUMed is not starting from scratch in its bid toforge regional peace and unity.It is essentially a descend-ant of the Barcelona Process,launched by Euro-Mediterra-nean foreign ministers in No-vember 1995. The stated aim ofUMed, which is complement-ing the work carried out underthe Barcelona Process, is to “re-vitalise efforts to transform the Mediterraneaninto an area of peace, democracy, co-operationand prosperity”.

With Sarkozy and Egypt’s President HosniMubarak as co-presidents, at its first summit inParis UMed agreed on a number of uncontro-versial practical programmes. These includeproposals for upgraded port facilities and newsea routes; the development of coastal motor-ways; proposals to improve maritime security;a plan to tackle pollution in the Mediterra-nean; civil protection against man-made andnatural disasters; a plan to use North Africa’splentiful sunshine to generate solar power tomeet the EU’s energy needs; and initiatives inthe areas of higher education and business de-velopment.

These projects could be universally ben-eficial, by encouraging economic growth inUMed’s less developed countries, such as thoseof the Maghreb. Not only would this proveadvantageous for non-EU states, but for the

countries of the EU, this could also improvethe region’s security. As EU External RelationsCommissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner com-mented: “The more we can develop the regionin the south, the less illegal migration therewill be. The more prosperity we can give, theless terrorism [and] the less criminality will bethere.”

Moreover, progress is attainable in these ini-tial practical projects selected by UMed. Thisis primarily because none presents any threatto the power and influence of individual rulersand governments in the region.

However, it will be more difficult to tackleother areas of security concern, such as the Is-rael-Palestinian talks and the indirect negotia-tions between Israel and Syria.

The Paris summit produced media-friendlysigns of progress in Israel-Palestinian relations,but in reality the problems remain intractable.For example, an affable President Sarkozy pre-sided over a warm handshake between Israel’sEhud Olmert and his Palestinian counterpartMahmoud Abbas, while Olmert even went sofar as to tell reporters: “We have never beencloser to reaching a possible peace agreementthan we are today.”

Yet, several rounds of talks between the lead-ers have been held since the Annapolis confer-ence last year without a major breakthrough.

Nevertheless, there will be hopes that the sum-mit has helped to give a fresh impetus to thesearch for a final settlement.

Similarly, Sarkozy also hosted talks betweenSyria’s Bashar al-Assad and the recently electedpresident of Lebanon, Michel Suleiman. Thetwo Middle East neighbours appeared publiclyto go some way towards settling their differ-

ences by agreeing to open em-bassies in each other’s coun-tries. However, this had actuallybeen agreed in advance of thesummit, and although addingto the positive atmosphere, itwas little more than a publicrelations exercise.

Demonstrating the short-comings of the UMed summit was the factthat Assad did not hold talks with Israeli PrimeMinister Olmert. In their agreed statementUMed leaders welcomed the announcementthat Syria and Israel had initiated indirectpeace talks through Turkey, but encouragingnegotiations between two countries still tech-nically at war is clearly beyond the current or-ganisation.

Military competitionSuch regional competition also belies UMed’sother goals. UMed announced ambitions toachieve a region free of weapons of mass de-struction. Given regional dynamics, this aspectof the summit declaration appears likely to re-main aspirational rather than practical.

There is no prospect in the foreseeable fu-ture of the Syrians giving up their Scud bal-listic missiles, and the Israeli strike on whatit claims was a nascent Syrian nuclear reactorin September 2007 may suggest the country

President Sarkozy, who currently holdsthe rotating position of president of theEuropean Council, took a gamble in invit-ing Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad to theParis gathering. Sarkozy’s predecessor,Jacques Chirac, had taken a strong anti-Syria line in the wake of the 2005 assas-sination of his friend, former Lebaneseprime minister Rafik al-Hariri.

In addition, the US has considered Syr-ia a state sponsor of terrorism since 1979and has imposed a variety of sanctions onSyrian officials and businessmen. As re-cently as February 2007, the US Treasuryblacklisted a cousin of President Assad,the prominent businessman Rami Ma-khluf, accusing him of corruption.

No doubt Sarkozy took the pragmaticview that it was important to bring Assad

on board, regardless of controversiesabout the nature of his regime, as he isa key actor in the Middle East. Assad hasclose ties to Tehran, to radical Palestiniangroups such as Hamas and the powerfulHizbullah movement in Lebanon. Sarkozymay also have taken into account thefact that Assad is generally seen as morepragmatic and moderate than his fatherHafez.

Meanwhile, there are limits to the wel-come the EU is willing to give Assad.France’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ber-nard Kouchner, told a European Parlia-ment committee in July that, in his opin-ion, it was too early for the EU to sign astalled partnership pact with Damascus,which would have to wait to see how dia-logue develops between Israel and Syria.

The Syria gamble

‘Encouraging negotiationsbetween two countries stilltechnically at war is clearlybeyond the current UMed’




harbours other proliferation aims. At the sametime, there is no prospect of the Israelis aban-doning nuclear weapons, especially at a timewhen suspicions persist about Iran’s nuclearintentions and when Tehran has been con-ducting long-range missile tests.

For similar reasons, UMed is attempting toconsider practical steps to prevent the exces-sive accumulation of conventional arms andrestrain its countries from developing mili-tary capacity beyond their legitimate defencerequirements. However, these are unlikely toprogress.

Ironically, France is one of the major bar-riers here, as it has sought lucrative defenceagreements with North African states, evenfuelling military competition between the twohistorical rivals of Algeria and Morocco.

France concluded a defence agreement on21 June to supply Algeria with two FREMMfrigates from shipbuilder DCNS, to be basedat the Mers El Kébir naval base. On 6 June,French firm Thales signed three contracts withAlgiers worth EUR100 million (USD155 mil-lion) to provide security for oil pipelines inwestern Algeria.

France has also reached recent defenceagreement with Algeria’s neighbour and rival,Morocco. In April, Prime Minister FrancoisFillon confirmed that DCNS had finalised aUSD750 million contract for a FREMM multi-mission frigate for the Royal Moroccan Navy.

In addition to three SIGMA-class light frig-ates due for delivery from the Netherlandsfrom 2010, the FREMM frigates will enhanceMorocco’s anti-submarine warfare and patrol

and surveillance capability. This will be rein-forced by a second Moroccan naval base onthe Mediterranean at Ksar es-Seghir, whichis set to be operational in 2010. In December2007, France signed a memorandum of under-standing with Libya, opening negotiations ona potential USD5.7 billion armaments pack-age, including the first-ever export of DassaultAviation’s Rafale multi-role fighter.

Such military procurement, particularly inthe naval field, belies the goodwill of the UMedconference and underlines the continued mili-tary competition in the region. Oil-rich Alge-ria, the world’s third-largest importer of Rus-sian defence equipment, has been particularlyambitious in terms of arms purchases.

Having quelled a determined Islamist up-rising that began in the 1990s, Algeria is now

French President Nicolas Sarkozy waits for leaders during arrivals for a Mediterranean Summit at the Grand Palais in Paris on 13 July 2008. While dealswere struck on environmental issues, significant progress on security should not be expected in the short to medium term.

PAP

hoto

s/13

0380

2




moving away from a primary emphasis oninternal security to boosting the armed forces’conventional capabilities so they can defendthe country’s borders. In May, Algeria tookdelivery of two Russian Su-30MKA Flankermulti-role fighters, the seventh and eighthaircraft of an ordered total of 28, bolsteringAlgeria’s reputation of having the strongest airforce in the Maghreb. The delivery appeared toclear the way for the comple-tion of a stalled deal with Rus-sia involving an arms packageworth some USD7.5 billion,which also included 34 MiG-29multi-role fighters, air defencesystems and 180 T-90S mainbattle tanks. Libya has alsoconcluded major arms con-tracts with Russia, and in Aprilsigned a deal cancelling USD4.5 billion worthof Soviet-era debt in return for contracts fordefence exports that may exceed USD2.5 bil-lion. Specific contracts could include 12 Su-35Flanker aircraft, 48 T-90S main battle tanks, airdefence systems and a Kilo-class submarine.

Russian influenceThis Russian effort to sell defence equipmentto the region raises another important issuefor the future of UMed. Beyond selling armsto clients in the Mediterranean, Russia has alsobeen renewing naval contacts with Arab coun-tries in the region. In January, contacts wereresumed between the Russian and Libyan na-vies after a hiatus of five years, with a visit toTripoli port by the Ivan Bubnov tanker, whichwas taking part in a two-month patrol in theMediterranean and northeast Atlantic startingon 5 December. During the 12,000-nauticalmile voyage there were also courtesy visits toAlgiers port and the Tunisian port of Bizerte,as well as ports in Portugal, France and Italy.

Moscow also announced in June that theLadny escort ship of the Black Sea fleet wouldtake part in the NATO-led Operation ActiveEndeavour, which deployed in the Mediter-ranean in August. This is the third time thata Russian vessel has joined NATO ships in themission to monitor vessels suspected of terror-ism and smuggling weapons of mass destruc-tion and drugs. Clearly, Moscow is increasinglyviewing the Mediterranean as an area in whichit has strategic interests.

Syria remains Moscow’s key partner inthe region. During the decades in power ofBashar’s father Hafez al-Assad, Russia deliveredapproximately USD25 billion worth of mili-tary equipment to Syria. The country’s largearmed forces are still primarily equipped withSoviet armaments. Russian sources confirmedin 2006 that Syria had taken delivery of thefirst batches of the vehicle-mounted variant of

Russian Kolomna KBM Strelets (Archer) mul-tiple launch units for use with the 9M39 Igla(SA-18 ‘Grouse’) fire-and-forget surface-to-airmissile systems. Damascus is reported to havetaken delivery in the late 1990s of approxi-mately 1,000 Russian AT-14 Kornet anti-tankguided missiles.

Although Syria has not had the finances formajor arms purchases, the regime of former

president Vladimir Putin wrote off aboutUSD10 billion of Syrian debt between 2005and 2007, mainly for defence equipment.

Russian naval ambition may have been an-other factor that prompted the debt write-off.Syria provides Russia with its only naval depotin the Mediterranean. During the Cold War,the Syrian port of Tartus was a vital supply

hub and repair depot for Russia’s Mediterrane-an fleet. The Tartus depot became dilapidatedand seldom used after the 1991 collapse of theSoviet Union.

However, buoyed up by oil revenues and anew military assertiveness under Putin, Russiarenovated the Tartus base in 2006 and dredgedthe harbour, heralding a grand return of theRussian Navy to the Mediterranean. In Au-

gust 2007, Russia’s AdmiralVladimir Masorin was quotedby the RIA news agency as say-ing that Russia should have apermanent naval presence inthe Mediterranean, and thatthe Mediterranean was “veryimportant strategically” forthe Black Sea fleet. RIA alsoreported that a Russian repair

ship that maintains vessels from the Black Seafleet is also stationed at Tartus. In July, Russianwarships in the Mediterranean refuelled andreceived drinking water in Tartus.

Reports from Moscow indicate that Russiahas also been renovating a pier at Syria’s La-takia port, suggesting that Russian ships mayalso regularly use facilities at Latakia.

Russia’s increasing influence is relevant toUMed, as the new Euro-Mediterannean or-ganisation is in some ways an opportunityfor President Nicolas Sarkozy to reinforceFrench influence in countries that were tra-ditionally part of the French sphere, suchas Syria, Lebanon, Algeria and Morocco.

Paris is therefore competing with bothRussian and US influence in North Africaand the Levant, an area previously colo-nised by France but where Washingtonhas been developing close security con-tacts and Moscow is creating defence re-lationships with regimes that share a deepconcern about the threat from Islamistmilitants.

In this way, UMed may prove somewhatsuccessful in maintaining French influ-ence in the Mediterranean, and probablyincreasing it as the countries move clos-er to the EU. Three EU candidate states(Croatia, Macedonia and Turkey) are allpart of the UMed process, and EU influ-ence is increasing in the Maghreb (Mo-rocco has even applied for membership,although this was rejected in 1987).

However, grander visions of peace andsecurity are likely to be frustrated in theshort to medium term. Continued historicalrivalry between Maghrebian states and out-

right hostility between the countries of theLevant mean that the superficial progressseen in Paris between Olmert and Abbasand in the attendance of Bashar are un-likely to lead to anything more concrete.

Sarkozy appears to be bringing muchenergy, imagination and determination tothe launch of UMed and to the drive to rec-oncile conflicting interests in the region.While UMed may prove more than just an-other multinational bloc, it may not be theregional and international force that theFrench president so evidently desires. ■

CONCLCONCLUSIONCONCLUSIONCONCLUSION

1. Russian roulette – Moscow seeksinfluence through arms exports

2. On your marks for Maghreb armsrace?

3. Sentinel: France/External Affairs

AuthorJohn Clarke is an independent analyst ofMediterranean security issues.



‘Grander visions of peaceand security are likely tobe frustrated in the short

to medium term’



STATE STABILITY

D espite being ruled by a single coalitionsince independence in 1957, politics inMalaysia rarely lacks intrigue.

The current political situation is a case inpoint. Combining both public dissatisfactionwith politicking among potential prime min-isters, crossing racial, religious and regionaldivides, and even drawing in lurid allegationsof sodomy against the country’s leading politi-cal activist and involvement in the murder of aprostitute against the deputy prime minister, thepolitical sphere in Malaysia sits uncomfortablywith the country’s conservative, Islamic image.

In a historical context, today’s political turbu-lence can be viewed as indicative of Malaysia’stransition from a country controlled by a politi-cal establishment largely unchallenged since in-dependence to a more representative democracy.Nonetheless, the short- and medium-term prog-nosis for Malaysia suggests a protracted strugglefor the levers of power, social unrest and possiblecommunal violence.

Electoral troubleThe current unrest has its roots in decades ofethnic politics and tension, but the most recentindicator of discontent was the 8 March gen-eral election. Contested within an electorate

where dissatisfaction with the status quo hadbeen growing for some years, the election dealta significant blow to the ruling United MalaysNational Organisation (UMNO) led by PrimeMinister Adbullah Badawi.

UMNO was formed in 1946 to protect Malayrights within the British Malaya Union, and itis this mandate, combined with a Malay demo-graphic majority of approximately 65 per cent ofthe population, that has ensured UMNO has ef-fectively been the ruling party in Malaysia sincethe Federation of Malaya gained independencefrom the UK in 1957. (The Federation of Ma-laya only included peninsular Malaysia, but thiswas expanded to include Sabah and Sarawak in1963, although Singapore seceded in 1965). Asthe largest party within the Alliance, a coalitionformed in 1951 to contest the first Federal Leg-islative Council elections in 1955, and its succes-sor, the National Front (Barisan Nasional: BN),formed in 1973, UMNO has dominated Malay-sian politics for more than five decades.

The BN remains in power; it retained 140 seatsin the 222-seat lower house (Dewan Rakyat) inthe March elections, but the ruling coalition lostits two-thirds majority for the first time since1969, and lost control of four states: Kedah, Per-ak, Selangor and Penang. UMNO lost 30 seats tobe left with 79, a decrease of 28 per cent.

The 2008 results stand in stark contrast to the2004 general elections when the BN secured 199seats in the 219-member parliament. Crucially,in the 2008 elections, the ethnic Malay majoritywas divided as the aspirations of the growing ur-ban middle class jarred against the paternalisticand often oligarchic behaviour of mainstreamMalay politicians.

This loss of Malay support reflected a widerdissatisfaction with the model underpinningUMNO’s success and the current political sys-tem, namely the promotion of Malay politicaland economic hegemony. The Malay politicalhegemonic policy was the cornerstone of UM-NO’s manifesto from the party’s inception, andwas reinforced and widened to include econom-ic preference for the Malays following seriousinter-communal violence in May 1969 betweenethnic Chinese and Malays that left 196 people

dead, according to official figures.UMNO justified this platform as being the

only means to ensure stability within a countrywhere ethnic differences were exacerbated by of-ten parallel divisions of wealth, a position thatgained credence after the 1969 riots. The NewEconomic Policy (NEP) that resulted from theunrest was intended to redistribute wealth andcapital from the more entrepreneurial Chinesecommunity to the then largely rural majorityMalay population (termed bumiputera, liter-ally ‘sons of the soil,’ a declaration of Malayhegemony based on their perceived indigenousstatus). The preferential economic policy oper-ated through large state-backed corporationsintended to create and hold the new wealth forthe collective benefit of the Malays. The NEPwas a success in terms of these goals: equity heldby Malays increased from 2.4 per cent in 1970,the year before the NEP’s implementation, to19.3 per cent in 1990, the year it was replaced bythe similar National Development Policy. How-ever, although the NEP succeeded in rebalanc-ing the statistical relationship between Chineseand Malay wealth, while also rapidly creatingan extremely rich Malay/Muslim business elite,it failed to reach its target of 30 per cent equityheld by the bumiputera, and the figure fell to18.7 per cent in 2004.

The March elections are widely seen in Malay-sia as a rejection of this process by many Malaysas well as Chinese and Indian voters, whose elec-toral preferences are crucial to the survival of anUMNO-led coalition. The 14-party BN coalitionwon the poll but, for the first time, lost the abilityto alter the constitution at will. The BN now hasonly a 30-seat majority in the federal parliament,making it vulnerable to even a relatively smallnumber of defections to the opposition.

UMNO factionalisationUMNO’s response to this loss of support andauthority has unsurprisingly been alarmist. Nogovernment in Malaysia has ever been replacedby an opposition movement, and the prospect ofthis occurring is now a genuine concern to BN’sparliamentarians. UMNO’s reaction has been toeither attack the opposition or engage in self-

A bitter battlePolitical allegations, ethnic agitation and soaring fuel prices are stirring tensions in Malaysia.Gavin Greenwood assesses how these factors will affect the country’s stability.

Hysteria and revenge in Malaysian politics

• The charges of sodomy laid againstopposition activist Anwar Ibrahim on 6August and accusations levelled against thedeputy prime minister demonstrate currentpolitical tension in Malaysia.

• This comes against a backdrop ofrising inter-communal tension and growingprotests over rising fuel prices.

• Malaysia now faces a protracted periodof instability and tension as the country’spolitical elites manoeuvre in the post-March2008 electoral environment.



PAP

hoto

s/13

0380

5

JIR 09 p32-35 SS Malaysia.indd 32JIR 09 p32-35 SS Malaysia.indd 32 14/8/08 14:24:0314/8/08 14:24:03


STATE STABILITY

destructive recrimination, a processthat shows no sign of ending morethan five months after the election.

UMNO is a party of factions, withloyalties extended first to regionalleaders and then to the national lead-ership. A successful UMNO leader iswidely defined by his ability to har-monise the party’s various strandsby ensuring the benefits of powerare evenly distributed and re-elec-tion assured. Under former primeminister Mahathir Mohamad unitywas achieved through the vision of a modern,industrialised Malaysia and the huge infrastruc-ture projects that underpinned this aspiration.His successor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, soughtto realign national priorities away from suchgrandiose projects by emphasising the valuesof education and deepening the country’s ag-ricultural base. Although such an emphasis iscrucial to promoting long-term stability, it failedto impress those government members who hadrelied on more material projects to advance theirand their constituents’ interests. As a result, Ab-dullah’s position within UMNO was being chal-lenged even before the March election result.

Since March, the mood in UMNO has

oscillated between hysteria and a desire to pun-ish those who many party members saw as re-sponsible for the election loss. This placed PrimeMinister Abdullah under intense pressure. On 9July, Abdullah appeared to buckle by announc-ing that he would step aside for his deputy anddefence minister Najib Razak in mid-2010.

Whatever Abdullah’s motives, the effects of hisdecision has been to shift attention from himselfto Najib and a likely reprieve for Abdullah frombeing ousted at the UMNO annual General As-sembly towards the end of 2008. The assemblyhas traditionally been more important in defin-ing the country’s mood than a general electionas the outcome of the polls were previously a

certainty, while the cur-rents and tensions amongthe Malay elite are oftenobscure.

Allegations andaccusationsWhile Najib would appearto be a well qualified can-didate for the next primeminister – he is the eldestson of Malaysia’s secondprime minister and neph-

ew of the third – his status as heir apparent hasbeen shaken by extraordinary allegations.

The allegations surround the death of Mon-golian translator Altantuya Shaariibuu on 19October 2006. Altantuya was shot twice andher body destroyed with C4 explosives. In astatutory declaration issued on 18 June duringhis trial for sedition, Raja Petra Kamarudin,founder and editor of the website MalaysiaToday, claimed that Najib’s wife Rosmah Man-sour was present at the disposal of Altantuya’sbody. A second statutory declaration issued byprivate investigator Perumal Balasubramaniamon 3 July 2008 claimed that Najib had had asexual relationship with Altantuya and intro-

Riot police spray ethnic Indians with water during a street protest against the government’s affirmative action policy in Kuala Lumpur on 25 November 2007.

‘The mood in UMNO hasoscillated between hysteriaand a desire to punish thosewho many party memberssaw as responsible for the

election loss’

PAP

hoto

s/13

0380

5



STATE STABILITY

duced her to his aide, political analyst AbdulRazak Baginda. Razak Baginda is currently ontrial for abetting the murder of Altantuya, whichhe denies. This second declaration was retractedthe following day. On 5 July, Balasubramaniam’snephew filed a missing person’s report for hisuncle, who had apparently disappeared with hisfamily.

Najib and his wife have denied any involve-ment in Altantuya’s death or having any rela-tions with her, and no charges have been broughtagainst either. Nonetheless, the allegations, com-bined with the ongoing trials of Razak Bagindaand two of Najib’s former bodyguards, chief in-spector Azilah Hadri and constable Sirul Azharof the police Special Action Unit, for the murder,have damaged his political credibility. Perhapsthe greatest representation of this loss of influ-ence came from former prime minister MahathirMohamad, who wrote on his website in July thatNajib would not succeed Abdullah. In responseto this dire situation and the allegations, Najibhas not only denied any involvement but alsoclaimed that the alleged links to the murder caseare a “desperate attempt” by leading oppositionactivist Anwar Ibrahim to divert attention fromlurid accusations made against him.

These allegations, although very different,reflect the personal animosity that exists in Ma-laysian politics. On 28 June, in between the twostatutory declarations, a 23-year-old aide to An-war, Saiful Bukhari Azlan, claimed to have beensodomised by the opposition activist. Sodomyremains a criminal offence in Malaysia, one ofapproximately 75 countries to criminalise theact.

The allegations, which Anwar denies, havehistorical relevance in Malaysia, since the sameallegations were made in 1998 when Anwar, thendeputy prime minister, was launching a popu-lar movement against then prime minister Ma-hathir (known as the reformasi movement). An-war was convicted on charges of corruption inApril 1999 and sentenced to six years’ imprison-ment, and on charges of sodomy in August 2000and sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment. InSeptember 2004, an appeal court overturned thesodomy conviction, but the corruption convic-tion barred him from formal political activityuntil 14 April 2008, one month after the latestelections.

Apparently fearing for his personal safety, An-war took refuge in the Turkish embassy for 24hours on 30 June. He was subsequently arrestedon 16 July, but was released without charge thefollowing day. Charges were formally laid anddenied on 6 August, with Anwar released on bail.A preliminary hearing has been set for 10 Sep-tember.

Personal power struggleThe near-simultaneous allegations against

Anwar and Najib give the impression that thetwo are involved in an acrimonious power strug-gle in order to prepare themselves for Abdullah’ssuccession.

In response to the sodomy allegations, Anwarpledged on 1 July to “seize power” by the 16 Sep-tember anniversary of the formation of Malaysiain 1963, with the support of BN defectors. On31 July, Anwar’s wife, Wan Azizah Wan Ismail,resigned her parliamentary seat of PermatangPauh to allow Anwar to contest the seat and po-tentially re-enter parliament for the first time ina decade.

This situation is of concern to UMNO politi-cians, not only because this would entail the lossof position and prestige, but also the fear of ret-ribution he may administer to those he blamesfor his original fall from power and subsequent

imprisonment. Anwar’s importance to the op-position is significant. He remains a symbolicfigure of resistance to the government, and givenhis previous multi-ethnic reformasi movement,perhaps the only individual seen as capable ofuniting disparate opposition parties under onebanner (currently the Pakatan Rakyat bloc).

Without Anwar, it is extremely unlikely thatthe constituent parties of Pakatan Rakyat, left-leaning, ethnic Chinese-based Democratic Ac-tion Party, the urban Malay-based Parti Keadi-lan Rakyat (People’s Justice Party) headed by hiswife Wan Azizah Wan Ismail and the traditionalMuslim-based Islamist Parti Islam se-Malaysia(PAS) that draws much of its support from ru-ral Malays, would survive long as an oppositionfront.

Fears among UMNO politicians that the

Political analyst Abdul Razak Baginda denies charges of abetting the murder of Mongolian translatorAltantuya Shaariibuu. Allegations and counter-allegations are currently destabilising Malaysian politics.

PAP

hoto

s/13

0380

6



STATE STABILITY

cross-ethnic support for Anwar could unseat theparty for the first time since independence areheightened by a rising sense of ethnic grievanceand economic issues that cut across all commu-nal lines. The government’s decision to reducefuel subsidies in June led to price rises of morethan 40 per cent in some cases. Soaring oil priceswere matched by sharp rises in food and staples,with inflation projected to reach a 10-year highthis year. The frequency of protests against risingfuel prices, which appear incomprehensible tomany Malaysians given the country’s position asa net oil exporter, has also increased.

Security situationThe security situation in Malaysia is thereforedeteriorating. The combination of high politicalstakes, personal animosity, revenge and publicanger has already led to a marked increase in ten-sion. This has the potential for the political crisisto spill over not only into civil unrest but alsointo inter-communal confrontation. Emphasison ethnicity and religion has served to keep Ma-laysia’s various communities from finding com-mon cause along class lines. Although tensionshave eased since the late 1960s as more Malaysentered the urban workforce and more peopleenjoyed greater prosperity, racial sensitivities re-

main a powerful and dangerous issue.This was demonstrated in the first half of July

when two MPs from a small party in the EastMalaysian state of Sabah reiterated their sup-port for a Pakatan Rakyat no-confidence mo-tion against Prime Minister Abdullah. Both MPsare non-Malays and the implication that theycould be involved in unseating a Malay premierbrought immediate threats, some bordering onracist incitement.

Similarly, demonstrations in November 2007by ethnic Indians against the government’s af-firmative action policy drew approximately10,000 protestors. The police, fearing unrest,used tear gas and water cannons to disperse thecrowd.

Beyond communal violence, the more likelyoutcome remains large-scale protests and possi-ble civil unrest united behind a resurgent refor-masi movement. In such a situation, it is unclearwhether the security forces would respond asrobustly as they did to the ethnic Indian dem-onstrations in November. The police, who havebeen inculcated in the need to maintain orderat almost any cost, show signs of struggling toenforce the same degree of control over the nowlargely Malay fuel price protestors as they havein the past with other ethnic groups. Police and

military personnel are overwhelmingly recruit-ed from the Malay community, and there aredoubts about their willingness to use extremeforce against their ethnic kin and co-religionists.

OutlookGiven the complexities of ethnic, racial and per-sonal politics in Malaysia, the current inimitablepolitical situation poses a range of threats to thestability of the country.

A weak prime minister, a duelling deputyprime minister and opposition leader, economicunease and a history of communal conflict are apotent mélange of instability. The political crisisis set to create greater tension that will heightenthe risk of a confrontation between the principalactors of UMNO, Abdullah, Najib and Anwar.

Moreover, it is now hard to see how a compro-mise could evolve that will end internal UMNOfeuding, provide Abdullah with a stable platformfor the remaining years of his premiership, re-store Najib’s reputation to enable him to serve asa prime minister-in-waiting or deflect Anwar’sdetermination to try and topple the BN govern-ment and take power.

Malaysia is not yet near a crisis; the govern-ment remains in control and UMNO may yetbe able to retain power by absorbing oppositionforces or eliminating the threat from Anwar, as ithas done before. Further, colonial-era legislation,such as the Internal Security Act that allows forrolling, two-year detentions without recourse toa trial, will enable suppression of some opposi-tion voices in the country.

Nevertheless, the 26 August by-election thatcould see Anwar re-elected and his forthcomingtrial that could see him subsequently re-incar-cerated, will prove emotive events that could in-cite discontent and protest. As a result, the bitterand multi-faceted political struggles that haveengulfed Malaysia, combined with latent ethnicresentment and a worsening economic environ-ment, mean the risk of civil unrest and politicalturbulence is higher now than at any stage since1969. ■

1. Malaysia releases opposition leader

2. Malaysia’s general elections: shock tothe system

3. Sentinel: Malaysia/Political Leadership

AuthorGavin Greenwood is a consultant withAllan & Associates, a Hong Kong-basedinternational security risk managementconsultancy.



PAP

hoto

s/13

0380

4

Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim is taken to Kuala Lumpur Police Headquarters on 16 July 2008.UMNO politicians fear Anwar’s cross-ethnic support could unseat them for the first time since 1957.



STATE STABILITY

Close shaveDespite a decision by Turkey’s Constitutional Court to allow the ruling Justice and DevelopmentParty to remain active, tensions with Turkey’s secular establishment can be expected toresurface during the months ahead. Gareth Jenkins assesses three possible scenarios.

Turkey’s AKP faces policy dilemma

I n early 2007, Turkey’s Constitutional Courtand the country’s still powerful militarycombined to prevent the ruling Justice and

Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Par-tisi: AKP) from appointing Minister of ForeignAffairs Abdullah Gül to the presidency to suc-ceed Ahmet Necdet Sezer. The fear was that ifit controlled both parliament and the presi-dency, the AKP would finally begin to imple-ment what hard-line secularists believed wasits long-term radical Islamist agenda. On 27April 2007, the military issued a statement im-plicitly threatening to stage a coup if the AKPappointed Gül to the presidency.

The AKP responded by calling an early gen-eral election for 22 July 2007, more than threemonths ahead of schedule. The AKP won 341of the 550 seats in parliament and 46.6 percent of the popular vote, up from 34.3 per centwhen it first took office in November 2002. InAugust 2007, Gül was duly appointed presi-dent, despite the earlier military objections.

During its first term in office, the AKP madeonly a handful of tentative attempts to amendthe prevailing interpretation of secularism inTurkey. On each occasion, it backed down fol-lowing protests from hard-line secularists, suchas the military. Most importantly, the AKP didnot feel strong enough to attempt to deliver onone of its key pledges to its supporters duringthe 2002 election campaign, namely to lift theban that prevents headscarfed women from at-tending university.

However, buoyed by its victory in the 22 July2007 general election, the AKP began to lookfor ways to provide a constitutional guaranteethat headscarfed women would be able to at-tend university. Under Turkish law, constitu-tional amendments require the support of 367members of parliament. Without sufficientsupport in parliament to change the existingconstitution, through mid- to late-2007, theAKP focused almost exclusively on trying todraft a completely new one.

• The Turkish Constitutional Court’sdecision in late July not to close the rulingJustice and Development Party (Adalet veKalkınma Partisi: AKP) has pulled Turkeyback from the brink of its most seriouspolitical crisis in a generation.

• It is unclear whether the AKP will heedthe court’s warning and seek conciliationrather than confrontation with Turkey’s stillpowerful secular establishment.

• The least stable outcome would beif the AKP again challenges the secularestablishment, as this could draw thesecularist Turkish military into the politicalarena.



JIR 09 p36-41 SS Turkey.indd 36JIR 09 p36-41 SS Turkey.indd 36 14/8/08 15:22:3914/8/08 15:22:39


STATE STABILITY

Turkish Kurds chant Workers’ Party of Kurdis-tan (Partyia Karkaren Kurdistan: PKK) slogans

in Istanbul, Turkey, on 23 March 2008. Thepredominantly Kurdish southeast of Turkey

has long been the poorest and most underde-veloped region of the country; a fact that has

aided PKK recruitment.

In January 2008, the opposition NationalistAction Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi: MHP),which held 70 seats in parliament, unexpect-edly offered to support the AKP in amendingthe existing constitution to lift the headscarfban. The constitution was duly amended on9 February. On 14 March, Abdurrahman Yal-cinkaya, the chief public prosecutor, applied tothe Constitutional Court for the AKP’s closureon the grounds that it had attempted to erodethe principle of secularism enshrined in theconstitution as one of the defining character-istics of the Turkish state. With opinion pollssuggesting that support for the AKP was stillrunning at more than 40 per cent, the party’sclosure appeared to be a recipe for chaos.

On 5 June 2008, the Constitutional Courtannulled the constitutional amendments of9 February, claiming they were a violation ofsecularism. On 30 June 2008, 10 of the court’s11 members found the AKP guilty of trying toerode secularism. However, only six – one shortof the two thirds required by law – voted forthe AKP to be closed. As a result, the AKP wasallowed to remain open but fined the equiva-lent of USD20 million. In announcing theverdict, Constitutional Court President HasimKilic said that it constituted a severe warning

to the AKP government as to its future con-duct. While this ruling has averted immediateconfrontation, the likelihood of further politi-cal turmoil remains dependent on the AKP’spolicy response to its survival.

Risk in September 2008To assess the likely effects of the AKP govern-ment’s actions over the months ahead, it is firstnecessary to gauge the country’s current stabil-ity. This can be analysed through five main riskfactor groupings.

Political situationDuring the 1990s, Turkey was ruled by a suc-cession of weak and often fractious coalitions.The election in November 2002 of the coun-try’s first single-party government in morethan a decade resulted in an unprecedentedperiod of political stability, which was furtherstrengthened by the process of qualifying for,and then beginning, full membership negotia-tions with the EU.

However, the AKP’s re-election in July 2007

reduced rather than increased domestic politi-cal stability by emboldening the AKP to try topass measures that it had felt too weak to passduring its first term. The opposition partiesperformed badly during both the AKP’s firstterm and the 2007 election campaign, rein-forcing the impression among secularists thatthe political opposition could neither launcha credible electoral challenge to the AKP norcurb any attempts it might make to erode thetraditional interpretation of secularism in Tur-key. As a result, the focus of opposition to theAKP shifted away from political parties to sec-ularist elements in the Turkish establishment.

The Turkish military has traditionally re-garded itself as the primary guardian of secu-larism and so the 22 July 2007 election resultswere a humiliating rebuff. In the year follow-ing the AKP’s election victory, the militarysought to preserve its battered public pres-tige by adopting a relatively low profile. Themain opposition to AKP’s attempts to liftthe headscarf ban in universities came fromsecularist university rectors and secularist el-ements in the judiciary. Since taking office inNovember 2002, the AKP has followed theprecedent set by previous administrations andappointed party supporters to positions in the

apparatus of state. The result has been a grad-ual shift in power within the bureaucracy, withmany bodies now becoming divided alongideological lines.

Perhaps more worrying have been indica-tions that the Turkish judicial system is be-coming divided on ideological lines, withsecularists still dominating its higher echelonsbut AKP supporters becoming increasingly in-fluential at lower levels, including in the policeservice. In June 2007, police officers uncov-ered what appears to have been a plot by anultranationalist and hard-line secularist gang,known as Ergenekon, to try to destabilise theAKP through a campaign of violence. There islittle doubt that the gang was real and that itsmembers included retired members of the se-curity forces. However, a pro-AKP public pros-ecutor subsequently extended the investigationin what appears to have been an attempt to im-plicate both the AKP’s most outspoken civilianopponents and the military as an institution.

There are now concerns that, in the contin-ued absence of an effective and credible op-

position, future tensions and confrontationsbetween secularists and the AKP are likely notonly to draw in non-political actors but deepenthe already growing divisions within the appa-ratus of state.

Security situationThe main threat to domestic security in Tur-key is the Workers’ Party of Kurdistan (PartyiaKarkaren Kurdistan: PKK). Since it returned toviolence in June 2004 after a five-year ceasefire,the PKK has been based in the mountains ofnorthern Iraq and fighting on two fronts: arural insurgency in southeast Turkey and anurban bombing campaign in the west of thecountry. Until November 2007, the UnitedStates repeatedly refused to allow Turkey tostrike at the PKK’s camps in northern Iraq forfear of further destabilising the country.

In late 2007, the PKK launched a series ofmass attacks on Turkish military units insoutheast Turkey, killing nearly 40 soldiers inless than a month. On 5 November 2007, theUS agreed to allow Turkey to stage cross-bor-der military operations. Since December, theTurkish military has launched a series of airraids against PKK positions in northern Iraqand, in February 2008, even staged a nine-day

‘The likelihood of political turmoilremains dependent on the AKP’s

policy response to its survival’

PAP

hoto

s/13

0384

2



STATE STABILITY

cross-border ground operation. The Turkishcross-border operations are unlikely to eradi-cate the PKK but they have forced the organi-sation on to the defensive both militarily andpsychologically, while reducing its ability tostage attacks in southeast Turkey.

On 4 August 2008, President Gül appointedLand Forces Commander General Ilker Bas-bug as chief of the TurkishGeneral Staff (TGS) from 30August, when his predeces-sor, General Yasar Buyukanitis due to retire. Both men arecommitted secularists. How-ever, Buyukanit was widelycriticised in the military forhis often impulsive behaviourduring his command, particu-larly his tendency to fire off emotional publicwarnings to the AKP. In contrast, Basbug is re-garded as being cerebral, calm and calculating.Although a full-blooded coup remains only ahypothetical possibility, Basbug is unlikely tostand idly by if he believes the AKP is attempt-ing to erode secularism. Yet, unlike Buyukanit,he can be expected to attempt to exert pressurethrough a finely calibrated strategy rather thanemotional outbursts.

Social situationTurkey does not enjoy ethnic or religious ho-mogeneity. Approximately 17 per cent of thepopulation is Kurdish. Although 80 per centof the population is Sunni Muslim, around20 per cent belong to the heterodox, proto-Shia minority known as Alevis. There are also

small communities of non-Muslims. The up-surge in military casualties in mid- to late 2007stoked Turkish nationalist sentiments, leadingto an unprecedented – if relatively short-lived– spate of attacks by Turkish nationalist youthson Kurds living in western Turkey. There aresocial dimensions to both the tensions be-tween Turks and Kurds and between secular-

ists and the AKP. The predominantly Kurdishsoutheast of Turkey has long been the poorestand most underdeveloped region of the coun-try; a fact that has undoubtedly facilitated re-cruitment to the PKK.

Most of the leading members of the AKPhave their origins among the poorer sectionsof society, whether in the shantytowns of themajor cities or in rural Anatolia. Levels of pi-ety in Turkey have always been highest amongthe urban and rural poor, who therefore alsoform the core of the AKP’s grassroots electoralsupport. As a result, tensions over the interpre-tation of secularism have been exacerbated bythe AKP’s resentment of the urban elite whohave dominated Turkish politics and businessfor decades, and who in turn often regard theAKP and its supporters with social disdain.

The impressive macroeconomic figures re-corded by the AKP since it first took office in2002 have not resulted in a commensurate risein living standards for the majority of the pop-ulation. However, few believe that any of theopposition parties could have performed anybetter. As a result, the AKP’s supporters havenot yet been placed in the position of havingto choose between a party that is committedto fulfilling their political expectations and onethat is opposed to any change in the prevailinginterpretation of secularism but which has theability to raise their living standards.

Economic situationIn 2007, Turkey’s gross domestic product grewby 4.5 per cent, down from 6.0 per cent in 2006.A further slowdown in growth is expected in2008 against a background of high unemploy-ment and rising inflation. In the 12 months tothe end of July 2008, producer prices rose byan average of 18.4 per cent, up from 2.1 percent in the same period. However, in a sign offalling domestic demand, consumer prices roseby 12.1 per cent in the 12 months to the endof July 2008, compared with 6.9 per cent oneyear earlier.

Moreover, an overvalued currency has led toan unsustainable widening in both the foreigntrade and current account deficits. During thefirst half of 2008, there was a significant declinein both direct foreign capital inflow and port-folio investments. An adjustment in the ex-change rate appears inevitable, with a resultant

negative impact on growth andinflation and a positive effect interms of the foreign trade andcurrent account deficits.

Even during the economicboom of 2002-2006, job crea-tion failed to match the pace ofeconomic growth. At the endof May 2008, the official unem-ployment rate stood at 9.6 per

cent, down from 9.8 per cent one year earlier.However, the official unemployment figuresare misleading since they only cover thoseactively seeking employment, not those whowould work if it was available. Most analystsbelieve that the real unemployment rate is atleast 18 per cent. Even the official figures putyouth unemployment at 20.3 per cent in urbanareas. However, business organisations esti-mate that youth unemployment in the shanty-towns that surround the major cities in Turkeyis more than 30 per cent, rising to 60 per centin the impoverished and predominantly Kurd-ish southeast of the country.

External situationThe November 2007 decision by the US to al-low Turkey to launch cross-border military

A demonstrator holds a picture of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan wearing a US flag asa headscarf in Istanbul, Turkey, on 2 March 2008, during anti-US-AKP protests.

‘Basbug is unlikely to standidly by if he believes the

AKP is attempting to erodesecularism’

PAP

hoto

s/13

0384

0



STATE STABILITY

operations against the PKK’s main camps innorthern Iraq removed one of the main prob-lems that had overshadowed relations betweenAnkara and Washington since the US-led in-vasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. How-ever, by early August 2008, relations were stillnot as close as they had been in the 1990s.There were concerns that relations could onceagain become strained if the US attempted toincrease the pressure on Iran over its nuclearprogramme. Turkey has already made it clearthat it will not support military action or ex-tensive economic sanctions against Iran. Theimprovement in Turco-US relations also re-mains vulnerable to the presentation to theUS Congress in late 2008 of another motioncalling for the US to characterise the treat-ment of the Ottoman Armenians in 1915-16as a genocide; an accusation Turkey has longstrenuously denied.

Turkey’s EU accession process has effectivelybeen stalled since negotiations were officiallyinaugurated in October 2005. In December2006, the EU suspended negotiations on eightof the 35 chapters of the accession negotiationsin response to Turkey’s continuing refusal tohonour a 2005 pledge to open its ports andairports to ships and planes from the Repub-lic of Cyprus. The EU has also been frustratedby the slow pace of domestic political reformin Turkey. While the AKP was facing the pos-sibility of closure, the EU was reluctant topress it to implement reforms. Now that the

Constitutional Court has ruled to allow theAKP to remain open, it is likely to come un-der renewed pressure from the EU. However,most Turks no longer believe that the EU willever accept Turkey as a member, regardless ofwhether or not the country meets all the re-quirements for accession, and even the mostenthusiastic supporters of Turkish accession inthe EU do not expect Turkey to become a fullmember for at least a decade.

Although Turkey remains frustrated by thefailure of the Iraqi Kurds to move against thePKK camps in northern Iraq, in the short terma more serious potential source of tension islikely to be Iraqi Kurds’ desire to hold a ref-erendum on the future status of the oil-richprovince of Kirkuk.

If a referendum is held, few doubt thatthe majority of the population will vote toplace Kirkuk under the administration ofthe Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG),which administers northern Iraq. Turkey fearsthat revenue from Kirkuk could eventuallyprovide the economic foundations for an inde-pendent Kurdish state; something that it fearscould further fuel the separatist ambitions ofits already restive Kurdish community.

Ankara has repeatedly called for the refer-endum, which has been postponed after beingoriginally scheduled to be held by the end of2007, to be cancelled and warned that it willnever accept the transfer of Kirkuk to theKRG’s authority.

The methodology developed by Jane’s forassessing the risks associated with futurescenarios measures the stability of a country atany particular time and the predicted stability ifcertain factors change. To gauge a state’s stabil-ity, 24 factors that affect security are rated, fromthe political to the military, the environmental tothe social. Each factor is divided into sub-factorsthat together allow for a precise evaluation of thefactor’s level. These factors are classified withinfive distinct ‘factor groupings’, namely political,social, economic, military and security, andexternal. These groupings are given a numericalscore. This score is used to represent the risk tothe country within one of seven bands. Thesebands are shown below:

Country risk modelling

Level ofRisk

Description of Risk

Critical Threat to government,population or politicalsystem is severe andimmediate.

Very high Threat to government,population or politicalsystem is serious in theshort term and beyond.

High Substantial threat togovernment, popula-tion or political systemexists.

Significant Threat to government,population or politicalsystem exists, but isunlikely to cause im-mediate instability.

Moderate Government, popula-tion or political systemmaintains a fragileorder.

Low Government, popula-tion or political systemare secure and enjoy alegacy of stability.

Minimal Government, popula-tion or political systemfaces no threats, andany form of instability ishighly improbable.

Risk factors September 2008

Political risk Moderate

Social risk Moderate

Economic risk Moderate

Security risk Moderate

External risk Low

Total country risk Moderate

Police officers stand in front of the Constitutional Court in Ankara, Turkey, on 28 July 2008, as thecourt convened to decide whether the country’s ruling Islamic-rooted party must be banned onclaims that it is steering the secular country towards Islamic rule.

PAP

hoto

s/13

0384

1



Three future scenariosThe Constitutional Court verdict of 30 June 2008 has lifted the threat of closure that had been hanging over the AKP since the case was firstfiled on 14 March 2008. However, it has not resolved the tensions between the moderate Islamist ambitions of the AKP and Turkey’s hard-linesecularist establishment. The three scenarios that have been analysed examine the AKP’s possible actions in the wake of the court’s decisionand whether there is a possibility of another potentially destabilising confrontation over the role of Islam in Turkish public life.

U nder this scenario, the AKP would ini-tially issue conciliatory statements andavoid raising tensions, before pursu-

ing more confrontational policy from October2008.

The verdict of the Constitutional Court madeit clear that, if the AKP again tried to change theprevailing interpretation of secularism in Turkey,it would be closed down under Article 69 of thecurrent constitution, which empowers the courtto dissolve any political party that is judged tohave become a source of activities which vio-late the defining characteristics of the TurkishRepublic, such as secularism. The Constitu-

tional Court has the right to annul amendmentsto an existing constitution. In theory at least, itcould not block an entirely new constitution thathad been approved by public referendum.

In this situation, the AKP would draft anentirely new constitution that would providesafeguards against the party’s possible clo-sure and could even include provisions whichguaranteed that headscarfed women wouldbe able to attend university. Opinion polls sug-gest that the majority of the Turkish populationare opposed to the headscarf ban and couldtherefore be expected to approve a constitu-tion which lifted it.

The promulgation of a new constitution, par-ticularly one which sought to lift the headscarf

ban, would shift the focus of institutional oppo-sition to the AKP away from the ConstitutionalCourt to the Turkish military.

Despite Gen Basbug’s reputation for beinga pragmatist, he is also an ideological hard-liner and his pragmatism would be likely tostop short of any concessions on the prevail-ing interpretation of secularism. If it soughtto introduce a new constitution that lifted theheadscarf ban, Basbug would probably initiallyattempt to pressure the AKP through a series ofpublic and private warnings, starting long be-fore the draft was ever put to a referendum. Ifthe AKP failed to heed these warnings, Basbugcould, as a last resort, be expected to intervenemore directly in the political process.

Probability Low/Moderate

Scenario two: The AKP opts for confrontation

S ince it was first formed in August 2001,the AKP has consistently denied that ithas a religious agenda. It has claimed

that, although most of its leadership, includ-ing Prime Minister Erdogan, started their ca-reers in Islamist parties, they have since movedtowards the political centre and that the AKPis a conservative or even centre-right politicalparty, the Muslim equivalent of the ChristianDemocrats in Europe. However, since firsttaking office in November 2002, there haveundoubtedly been times when the AKP’s poli-cies and the statements of its leading membersappear to have been inspired by the desire forTurkey to become, if not necessarily a fullyfledged Islamic state, at least a more explicitlySunni Muslim society.

Under this scenario, chastened by the clo-sure case and the Constitutional Court’s guiltyverdict, the AKP would permanently abandonany religiously motivated policies, implementthe reforms demanded by the EU accessionprocess and transform Turkey into a liberal,secular democracy that is committed to free-dom of expression and in which the state isequidistant from all faiths.

The Turkish interpretation of secularismhas long been more about controlling religionrather than separating religion and the state.For example, the inculcation of Sunni Islamis compulsory in all Turkish schools. Childrenfrom other religious communities, most no-tably the large Alevi minority, are neither al-lowed to opt out of the compulsory lessons inSunni Islam nor receive instruction in schoolin their own faiths. The Turkish state financesmosque building and Sunni Muslim clergy,being classed as civil servants, are paid by thestate. The state does not provide funding toany other religious community. Nor are theyable to establish institutions to train their ownclergy, even if they finance them themselves. Itis also extremely difficult for members of otherreligious communities to receive official per-mission to open their own places of worship.

Under this scenario, instead of triggeringanother confrontation with the secular estab-lishment over the university headscarf ban,the AKP would gradually ease Turkey’s oftenstill draconian restrictions on the expressionof views that differ from those expounded bythe state. It would also remove the discrimi-nation faced by members of other religiouscommunities and ensure that the state became

equidistant from all faiths. In such a context, itwould be easier for the AKP to ease the head-scarf ban as part of a broader package of lib-eralising measures that also benefit those ofother faiths.

This would reassure those who suspect it ofseeking to establish an explicitly Sunni Islamicstate, and also make it much more difficult forelements such as the military or judiciary tointerfere in the political arena. If these liber-alising reforms were accompanied by the ful-fillment of the AKP’s pledge to open Turkey’sports and airports to ships and aircraft fromthe Republic of Cyprus, the result would be anacceleration of Turkey’s EU accession processand weaken those elements in the EU who areopposed to Turkish membership.

Probability Low

Risk factors Scenario one

Political risk Moderate


Economic risk Low

External risk Low


Total country risk Low

Scenario one: The AKP moves to the centre

STATE STABILITY



STATE STABILITY

During its first term from 2002 to 2007,the AKP avoided any major confron-tation with Turkey’s secular establish-

ment, while passing a series of EU-inspireddemocratising reforms and following theprecedent set by previous administrations byattempting to fill the bureaucracy with partysupporters.

Under this scenario, the AKP would pursuea similar strategy in the wake of the Constitu-tional Court’s decision to allow the party toremain open.

For example, the AKP would introduce apackage of relatively minor EU reforms, whichwould serve as a demonstration of its continu-ing commitment to the EU process while stop-ping short of alienating Turkish nationalistsentiments.

The AKP could also attempt to bolster itsdomestic popularity in the run-up to the 2009local elections by passing economic measuresto soften the impact of the economic slow-down on the general public; such as increasingpublic spending.

However, such populist measures wouldprobably have a negative long- and medium-term effect on the Turkish economy, not leastby increasing the budget deficit.

Under this scenario, the AKP would contin-ue to try to strengthen its control over the ap-paratus of state by appointing sympathisers tokey positions. If used effectively, this methodcould make major changes, such as abolishingthe headscarf ban, unnecessary. For example,responsibility for the enforcement of the head-scarf ban rests with university rectors, who areappointed by the president.

Instead of formally lifting it, the AKP couldsimply ensure that, when the incumbents’terms in office expired, they were replaced byuniversity rectors who would simply not en-force the headscarf ban.

Under Turkish law, the president is also re-sponsible for appointing the 11 members ofthe Constitutional Court. Barring death orinfirmity, none of the current members of thecourt is due to retire for at least two years, andit will be five years before sufficient new mem-bers have been appointed to ensure a pro-AKPmajority.

Consequently, the main challenge for theAKP under this scenario would be ensuringthat it restricted itself to relatively small, in-cremental changes rather than becoming over-confident and giving the military a pretext tointerfere in the political process or the public

prosecutor an excuse to apply to the Constitu-tional Court for the party’s closure.

Scenario three: The AKP returns to incremental changeProbability Moderate

Risk factors Scenario three

Political risk Low/Moderate

Security risk Low

Economic risk Moderate

External risk Low

Social risk Low/Moderate

Total country risk Low/Moderate

The AKP has long regarded the TGS as themain obstacle to its desire to change the pre-vailing interpretation of secularism in Turkey.There is already evidence to suggest that AKPsupporters in the judicial system have tried touse the investigation into the Ergenekon gangto try to discredit the TGS; not only throughincluding hearsay and rumour together withhard evidence in the court indictment but alsothrough numerous leaks to the media duringthe investigation of evidence apparently impli-cating the military.

Significantly, all such leaks appeared in me-dia outlets with very close connections to theAKP.

In the run-up to introducing a new constitu-tion, the AKP could be expected to pre-empt areaction from the TGS by increasing its effortsto discredit the military as an institution by try-ing to implicate it in the Ergenekon investiga-tion. However, far from cowing him into inactiv-ity, such efforts would be likely to encourageBasbug to step up his attempts to underminethe AKP’s credibility and make him even more

determined to prevent it from changing the pre-vailing interpretation of secularism.

Risk factors Scenario two

Political risk High


Economic risk High

External risk High


Total country risk Moderate/High

In the immediate aftermath of the announce-ment of the Constitutional Court’s verdict on30 July 2008, Prime Minister Erdogan sentparliament into summer recess. It is cur-rently not due to reconvene until 1 October2008. As a result, there appears little possi-bility of another major confrontation betweenthe AKP and the secular establishment untilOctober at the earliest. However, the court’sverdict has not resolved the long-runningdebate over the role of Islam in public life inTurkey.

One of the main reasons for the AKP’selectoral success has been the weaknessof the opposition parties and the absence ofany credible alternative to the current govern-ment. Although it remains deeply distrustfulof the AKP, the Turkish military has no desireto seize power itself, not least because itspolitical leverage has always depended pri-marily on its public prestige, which has beenseverely damaged each time the TGS hasstaged a full-blooded coup and sought torun the country.

If it were to intervene in the political proc-ess to oust the AKP, the ideal option for the

TGS would be to replace it with another civil-ian administration that was committed to themilitary’s interpretation of secularism. Theabsence of a credible alternative to the AKPcurrently serves as a major constraint on theTGS, and makes a military intervention anoption of only last resort. Nevertheless, if theTGS believed that there was no alternativeand that secularism was in imminent dangerof being irrevocably damaged, it remains anoption it would be prepared to take. ■

CONCLCONCLUSIONCONCLUSIONCONCLUSIONCONCLUSION

1. Turkey’s rulers learn to fear Fridays

2. Unsafe haven – Turkey damagesKurdish rebels in Iraq

3. Sentinel: Security/Turkey

AuthorGareth Jenkins is a journalist, authorand analyst based in Istanbul.





M ethamphetamines have not garneredthe same media attention in the Unit-ed States as more traditional drugs

such as cocaine, marijuana and heroin.This is perhaps unsurprising given the evi-

dent violence and instability related to cocaine

trafficking, and also the fact that relatively smallamounts of the drug have been seized in com-parison to other narcotics. For example, accord-ing to US Drug Enforcement Administration(DEA) drug seizures statistics, 96,713 kg of co-caine were seized in 2007, compared with only1,086 kg of methamphetamine.

Drugs other than methamphetamines haveseen rapid increases in the level of seizures overthe past decade. Cocaine seizures increasedfrom 28,670 kg in 1997, representing an increaseof more than 300 per cent over 10 years, whilemethamphetamines seizures remained almostconstant, with 1,147 kg seized in 1997.

Nonetheless, methamphetamine production,distribution and consumption bring various se-curity threats because of their highly addictivenature and their intense, prolonged psychoac-tive effects. Its addictive levels are higher com-pared with other drugs, and authorities in theUS consider it the most destructive drug widelyavailable today.

This threat is likely to continue in the US;a relatively successful campaign to limit pro-duction within the US itself has simply shiftedproduction to the less regulated environmentof Mexico. Indications that production has

involved Asian suppliers of precursor chemicalsalso demonstrate that this industry has becomemore global, more professional and thereforemore durable.

Changing patternsTraditionally, methamphetamines have beenrelatively easy to make, with domestic chemicalsand medicines such as pseudoephedrine, redphosphorus, hydrochloric acid, fertilisers andiodine available at shops and pharmacies andon the internet. Synthetic drug recipes are alsoeasily available over the internet.

This ease of purchase, and a lack of relianceon natural products that may require large-scaleagriculture, makes the production of metham-phetamines simpler to manage on a smallerscale. New drug producers and traffickers do notneed to control an entire organisation to grow,process, and control a cultivation area. Thissaves on production costs by avoiding a varietyof expenditures, including bribes for protection,agricultural equipment, dedicated personneland guards to protect illegal drug crops.

A small criminal organisation is thereforeable to operate a small, secret laboratory (orseveral of them) in a particular region, without

Black iceWhen the United States cracked down on methamphetamine production and use,producers and traffickers were forced to relocate south of the border. Oscar Becerraassesses the industry’s development in Mexico and its likely future trajectory.

Methamphetamines on the rise in Mexico

• A crackdown on methamphetamineproduction in the United States hasencouraged a shift into Mexico.

• The relatively small amount of personneland equipment required to manufacturethese drugs means it is more difficultfor security forces to locate productioncentres.

• The current concentration of theMexican security forces on disruptingcocaine trafficking networks is reducingthe resources available to counter themethamphetamine trade.

This article was first available online at jir.janes.com on 14 August


PAP

hoto

s/13

0383

5

Chinese-born Mexican businessman Zhenli Ye Gon is interviewedin his lawyer’s office in Queens, New York, on 17 May 2007. Ye

Gon had been wanted by Interpol on charges of drugs traffickingand money laundering and was eventually arrested in Maryland,

US, after the largest seizure of cash in the history of drug enforce-ment – USD207 million, mostly in USD100 bills – was found

stuffed into walls, closets and suitcases in his Mexico City home.

SERIOUS & ORGANISED CRIME

JIR 09 p42-45 SOC Black ice.indd42 42JIR 09 p42-45 SOC Black ice.indd42 42 14/8/08 12:49:1614/8/08 12:49:16



attracting too much security force attention.These factors combined in the late 1990s

to enable a rapid expansion in methampheta-mine production and consumption in the US,as clandestine laboratories appeared in everystate. The US Department of State’s Interna-tional Narcotics Control Strategy Report of2008 reports that methamphetamine seizuresin Mexico increased from just 39 kg in 1997 to899 kg in 2007. According to the DEA’s NationalClandestine Laboratory Register, clandestinelaboratories reached a peak in 2003 and 2004with 17,356 and 17,170 registered respectively.

This dramatic upsurge encouraged politicalintervention. The state of Kansas created theMeth Watch Program in 2001, a public-privatepartnership designed to restrain the sale andtheft of domestic products and impose bettercontrols to cold medication containing pseu-doephedrine, used to produce methampheta-mines. The Kansas programme went nationalin 2004.

In December 2005, the US Congress approvedthe Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act2005. The main objective of this legislationwas to control the access to drugs containingephedrine, pseudoephedrine and phenylpropa-nolamine.

A year later, the US government passed theComprehensive Methamphetamine ControlAct 2006, imposing strict controls on all non-prescription products containing pseudoephe-drine, ephedrine, and phenylpropanolamine.The new law also implemented daily sales limitsand monthly purchase limits of these medicalproducts.

The results and effects of the new law andpublic and private programmes were immedi-ate. According to the United Nations Office onDrugs and Crime, the number of clandestinelaboratories dropped dramatically, with 6,832laboratories registered in 2006.

Transnational consequencesWhile these governmental measures dramati-cally affected supply in the US, demand formethamphetamines continued to grow. The re-sult was a ‘balloon effect’ – when production issqueezed out of one area so it expands in anoth-er – and so producers moved to less regulatedareas, most notably Mexico.

Accordingly, Mexico became the region’s pri-mary methamphetamine supplier after the im-position of the Comprehensive Methampheta-mine Control Act 2006. One result of this wasthe rise in the quantity of methamphetaminesbeing seized on the US-Mexico border, increas-ing from 1,314 kg in 2001 to 2,881 kg in 2006.

It is impossible to verify the correlation be-tween the approval of the anti-methampheta-mine law in the US and the rise of methamphet-amine production in Mexico. Other domestic

factors, such as the rise of the drugs cartels inMexico, could also explain the shift. Nonethe-less, it is likely there is some connection; it seemsmore than coincidental that in just five yearsmethamphetamine production in Mexico hasalmost doubled. According to the DEA, approx-imately 80 per cent of all methamphetaminesconsumed in the US are now made in Mexico.

This trend of increasing methamphetamineproduction in Mexico has, almost inevitably,brought with it greater organised crime in-volvement in the industry. The participation ofMexican drugs trafficking organisations in themethamphetamine trade is relatively recent.The first indications that organised crime wasentering the market appeared in the early 1990s,when an obscure and almost unknown criminalorganisation was unveiled by authorities almostby accident.

Georgina Sánchez, a Mexican academic ex-pert on organised crime in the region, toldJane’s that although the increasing consumptionof methamphetamines compared with cocainestarted around 15 years ago, it was not until fiveyears ago that it incited violent dispute amongMexican drug trafficking organisations, sug-gesting that it was occupying a more significantpresence in the market.

This delay may be because of the profitabilityof cocaine compared with methamphetamines.It may also be the case that some Mexican drugtraffickers are resisting entering the metham-phetamine market because clients die at a fasterrate compared with users of other drugs. Thiscould therefore increase costs in finding new

clientele, limit client loyalty and pose longer-term problems for any organisation traffickingmethamphetamines.

Nonetheless, given the evident demand in theUS, organised criminal organisations have nowentered the market, and appear to be expandingtheir influence.Georgina Sánchez told Jane’s thatdrug trafficking organisations are transformingthemselves in response to the demand. Since theeffects of methamphetamines are stronger andlast longer than cocaine, the demand for thissynthetic drug is increasing faster, helped by asignificantly lower price compared with cocaineand other hard drugs.

Raúl Benítez Manaut, a Mexican academic ex-pert in national security, told Jane’s the criminalorganisations involved in methamphetamine

Methamphetamine is a psychostimulant,addictive drug. The primary effects arefeelings of euphoria, increased energy andattentiveness, and reduced hunger and fa-tigue.

It is known by a variety of differentnames, including crank, tweak, meth,glass, or in its crystalised form, crystal.

The drug is sold in powder form whichcan then be injected, snorted, swallowedor smoked (crystal meth when smoked isreferred to as ice). Ice is a large, usuallyclear crystal of high purity that is smokedin a glass pipe like crack cocaine.

Methamphetamines

PAP

hoto

s/13

0383

5

Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office on 16 March 2007 released a photograph of the cash seizedfrom Zhenli Ye Gon’s house in a wealthy neighbourhood of Mexico City. Federal officials believed themoney was tied to the methamphetamine trade. Seven people were also detained.

PAP

hoto

s/13

0383

9




trafficking use different routes from those in-volved with cocaine. They import the chemicalprecursors from China, whether legally or il-legally, and the drug is manufactured in Mex-ico to be sent and distributed in the US later.Benítez said this is a relatively new phenomenonas methamphetamine seizure statistics becamenoteworthy in Mexico onlyin 2003 and 2004.

In addition to the shift inproduction to Mexico andthe increasing involvementof organised criminal or-ganisations, the industry is,in line with most criminalmarkets, becoming moreglobal. Growing links toChinese criminal organisations is one particularstrand of this process.

For example, in March 2007, following a jointinvestigation with the DEA, Mexican authoritiesseized the largest cash haul in criminal historyin a wealthy neighbourhood of Mexico City.They found approximately USD207 million incash, believed to be the proceeds of metham-phetamine sales. Authorities arrested five Mexi-can and four Chinese nationals in the house andtheir trials are currently underway on charges ofdrug trafficking and money laundering. Theyhave denied these charges.

The seizure was made at the house of a

Chinese-born man with Mexican nationalitynamed Zhenli Ye Gon, wanted by Interpol inseveral countries on charges of drug traffickingand money laundering. Although he was not di-rectly connected with any drugs cartel and didnot fit the traditional drugs trafficker profile, hewas accused by the Mexican authorities of ille-

gally importing 19 tonnes of pseudoephedrineinto Mexico.

The chemical precursor was seized at thePacific coast sea port of Lázaro Cárdenas inMichoacán state in December 2006. Zhenli YeGon fled to the US after the seizure of cash at hishouse, where he remained free until detained inMaryland in July 2007. He is currently pendingtrial on drugs trafficking and money launderingcharges, which he denies.

The Colima cartelThe international nature of the metham-phetamine industry is not entirely new, as

demonstrated by the case of the Colima cartel.On 1 June 1998, José de Jesús Amezcua Con-

treras was arrested in Mexico City on drug traf-ficking charges. Although he identified himselfas a priest of the Santeria cult, Mexican and USinvestigations claimed he led the Colima cartel,located in the small state of Colima in the centre

Pacific coast of Mexico. Ac-cording to authorities, theorganisation was formed byJosé de Jesús and his broth-ers, Luis and Adan AmezcuaContreras, dubbed by the lo-cal press ‘the Kings of Meth-amphetamines’.

According to US authori-ties, in 1995 419 metham-

phetamine laboratories, allegedly connected tothe Colima cartel, were dismantled across theUS.

The cartel was allegedly linked to the Arel-lano Felix organisation, also known as the Ti-juana cartel. According to the US investigation,the Arellano brothers introduced the Amezcuabrothers to their partners and supported themwith the production and distribution of meth-amphetamines.

The Amezcua brothers denied any connec-tion with the Tijuana cartel but without anagreement it would seem difficult for a relativelysmall, largely unarmed criminal organisation to

Medicines containing pseudoephedrine are shown behind the counter in a Michigan pharmacy on 13December 2005, two days before a new state law prohibited consumers under the age of 17 frombuying products with ephedrine or pseudoephedrine. In 2005 and 2006 the United States institutednew laws to control public access to methamphetamine precursors.

An Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigationemployee shows 6.4 g of crystal methampheta-mine seized in a drug bust, in Oklahoma City,4 August 2005. Oklahoma’s meth lab seizuresfell after it became the first US state to banover-the-counter sales of cold medicine used bymeth cooks in makeshift labs.

PAP

hoto

s/13

0383

6

PAP

hoto

s/13

0383

8

‘The operational cost ofproducing methamphetamines

is just USD0.20 to produceUSD20 worth of the drug’




H istorically, the Italian illegal drug mar-ket has been divided on a regional basisbetween the country’s four main mafia

groupings: the Cosa Nostra, the Camorra, SacraCorona Unita and the ’Ndrangheta, which hasbeen dominant in northern Italy. This region– one of the wealthiest in Italy – has providedmuch of the basis for the ’Ndrangheta’s strength,with revenues from drug trafficking forming alarge proportion of its wealth profile.

In particular, the Lombardy region representsone of Italy’s major drug markets, and is one ofthe main crossroads for transnational and na-tional criminal activities. This market potentialis currently exploited mainly by ’Ndranghetafamilies and Colombian cartels, largely in termsof cocaine, but ethnic and inter-ethnic organisedcrime and local organisations are emerging andexpanding their influence in some drug-relatedsectors previously dominated by Italian criminalgroups.

In this context, the Lombardy province ofBrescia provides lucrative opportunities for crim-inal organisations in terms of market and moneylaundering. The emerging model of drug traffick-ing and distribution in this area is therefore onethat is likely to expand throughout Italy,as smalleractors start to make inroads into the market.

Rising demandIn terms of consumption, Brescia province is Ita-ly’s second biggest regional market after Milan.One of the major factors behind the expansion ofthis market has been rising income levels; in 2007Brescia had an average income of EUR31,250(USD48,775) per capita,compared to EUR25,031(USD39,068) for Italy as a whole. In addition, themarket benefits from high levels of immigrationto the region, a well-developed night life and aproductive construction sector that constitutes agood market, especially for cocaine.

Withregardto immigration,from2001to2006the foreign population in the province rose bymore than 130 per cent: from 60,000 to 140,000residents. This has both increased the potentialmarket for drugs and facilitated the growth ofsmall, ethnically based criminal groups.

A wide variety of ethnic groups is now presentin the province; in 2006 the legal foreign popula-tion comprised Moroccans (19,260), Albanians(18,400), Pakistanis (10,780), Indians (10,610),Romanians (7,440), Senegalese (7,440), Chinese(5,820), Tunisians (3,700) and Nigerians (2,300).

Trends in the northSuccessful police operations against the ’Ndrangheta mafia grouping left a gap in thedrugs trafficking trade, specifically in the northern province of Brescia. Dr Michele Brunelliexamines the rise of ethnic organisations in one of Italy’s major drugs markets.

New actors in Italy’s drugs market

• The drug market in northern Italyhas traditionally been dominated by the’Ndrangheta mafia group.

• However, smaller ethnic groups arebeginning to exploit the opportunitiesoffered by rising income levels and pan-European trafficking links.

• Although these groups do not yetchallenge the strength of the establishedItalian mafias, they will play an increasingrole in the drug market in future.

This article was first available online at www.janes.com on 14 August 2008


Pasquale Condello, centre, a capo of the powerful ’Ndrangheta organised crime syndicate is takeninto custody by Carabinieri on 18 February 2008. He has not yet been brought to trial, but has al-ready been sentenced in absentia on charges including murder and extortion, which he has denied.The ’Ndrangheta remains a dominant force in Italy’s drug trafficking trade, but it is not above workingwith the ethnically based organisations that are establishing themselves in the industry.

PAP

hoto

s/13

0375

1

JIR 09 p46-49 SOC Italy.indd 46JIR 09 p46-49 SOC Italy.indd 46 14/8/08 14:12:3014/8/08 14:12:30



The illegal population was estimated at approxi-mately 16,000 people, 20 per cent coming fromNorth Africa, 20 per cent from Asia and 16 percent from Sub-Saharan Africa (mainly fromNigeria, Ghana and Senegal), according to theFondazione ISMU (Iniziative e Studi sulla Mul-tietnicita: Immigration Globalisation Multicul-turality).

While this foreign community represents a rel-atively small proportion of Brescia’s populationas a whole – approximately 8.5 per cent in 2007– foreign nationals account for a disproportion-ately high rate of crime, particularly in relationto drugs. For example, in Brescia in 2007, of 643people arrested on drug trafficking charges, 50.2per cent were foreigners, mainly Albanians andMoroccans. The first quarter of 2008 indicatedan increase in the arrest of foreigners for drug-related offences; of 180 people arrested, 113 werenon-EU citizens.

This is a greater proportion than in otherparts of Italy. In Lombardy in 2007, 53 per centof people questioned by the policeregarding drug trafficking wereof foreign origin, compared withapproximately 30 per cent in thesouthern regions of Campania,Sicily, Calabria and Apulia, whichare more heavily dominated bythe established Italian criminalgroups. Much of the crime involv-ing foreign nationals is facilitatedby strong links to illegal groupsin their countries of origin. Forexample, an officer from the Guar-dia di Finanza (the Italian ArmedForces’ law enforcement corps that falls under theauthority of the economy and finance ministry)told Jane’s that Albanians, Nigerians and particu-larly Moroccans are closely linked to their localcriminal organisations, which exploit their linksin Europe to operate in the north Italian market.

Ethnic criminal groupsBrescia hosts a large proportion of North Africancriminal groups that come mainly from Moroc-co and Tunisia and control a substantial part ofthe drug market. These North African criminalorganisations differ from the Italian groups interms of both organisation and size.

Italian police note that the structure of theNorth African groups is horizontal, with oneleader directing operations, whether purchase ordistribution of drugs. In this it differs from themafia, in which a hierarchical structure presidesover a wider network that is established to in-volve people with particular skills and to expandthe organisation.

In part, the structure of the North Africangroups has to do with the smaller size of NorthAfrican organisations; police estimate the coregroups comprise around five or six people. They

have strong ties to drug producing or drug tran-sit countries, particularly Morocco, Spain and theNetherlands in terms of cannabis.

These groups had previously been employedby larger criminal organisations, but Guardia diFinanza officers told Jane’s they are increasinglyacting on their own behalf. This is in part a re-sponse to a power vacuum in Brescia; followinga police operation against the Pesce-Bellocco’Ndrangheta cosca in 2006, the ’Ndrangheta isnot as strong there as it is in other parts of north-ern Italy, although it continues to be the domi-nant force in the market. Smaller groups havebeen able to fill this gap, utilising a network ofsmall cells to establish a network that can oper-ate at the national and at the international level,not only in the drug sector, but also in humantrafficking, illegal immigration and money-laun-dering.

Co-operation between different Maghrebicriminal groups is increasing, assuming thecharacteristics of a transnational criminal or-

ganisation. Police investigations carried out since2005 indicate greater co-operation in particularbetween Maghrebi groups and Albanians, Roma-nians and Italians in drug trafficking.

Shifting controlAccording to Guardia di Finanza investigations,in the mid-1990s drug trafficking in Brescia wasdominated by three distinct organisations – Tu-nisians, Algerians and Moroccans – which divid-ed the territory into three zones.

The most powerful was the Tunisian organisa-tion, in which two women from Brescia played anactive role, managing the takings. This group wasdismantled by police in 1996 and it took until theearly 2000s for Mahgrebi groups to reorganisethemselves. However, by this time a loose or-ganisation of Tunisian, Moroccans and Algeriansemerged. This group had a hierarchical structure,allegedly headed by a Tunisian, Chokri Chahab,who was arrested in February 2002 and chargedwith drug trafficking. His case has not yet cometo trial.

This group was originally involved in hashishdistribution, exploiting the Italian legal defini-tion of the difference between quantities carried

for personal use and amounts intended for distri-bution. At present, the law mandates the“reason-able quantity” for personal use as: 0.5 g of can-nabis; 0.75 g of cocaine; 0.25 g of heroin; 0.75 gof MDMA (ecstasy) and 0.5 g of amphetamines.In order to utilise this loophole, dealers acted ingroups to avoid carrying too much, which alsomade it more difficult for police to ascertain anindividual’s group affiliation. Group membersalso used pre-paid telephone cards and mobiletelephones to maintain contact with other mem-bers and with customers. Despite a wave of ar-rests in 2002, the group has evolved into a looseorganisation of cells and is now beginning towork with Italians, having previously been exclu-sively Mahgrebi.

Nigerian groupsNigerian clans make up another important eth-nic crime group active in Brescia. Their growthreflects the growing importance of Central Af-rican countries as bases, storage areas or transit

points on international drugroutes, particularly of cocainebeing trafficked from SouthAmerica to Europe.

In 2007, Nigerians were thefourth largest ethnic groupin Italy in terms of police ar-rests for drug trafficking, afterMoroccans, Albanians andTunisians. According to theMinistry of the Interior’s 2007Direzione Centrale per i Servi-zi Antidroga (Central Direc-torate for Anti-Drug Services:

DCSA) annual report, Moroccans represented30.6 per cent of the total of foreigners investigat-ed for drug-related crimes at the national level,Albanians 13.2 per cent, Tunisians 12.9 per cent,Nigerians 5.3 per cent and Algerians 4.2 per cent.

Brescia is one of the main bases for Nigerianorganised crime. In October 2007, police con-cluded an investigation initiated in 2004, dis-mantling a Nigerian cell known as Eiye (‘eye’).This was a mafia-style association involved inextortion, pimping, credit card cloning and drugtrafficking. Eiye was originally a secret society,originating in Nigerian universities, which thenspread abroad as a primarily criminal group.

Before 2007, Nigerian criminals had had a lowprofile in Italy, with only two previous cases hav-ing been investigated by police – one in the CastelVolturno municipality of Caserta province andone in Turin. In the latter, a gang war between theEiye and fellow Nigerian gang Black Axe allowedthe police to trace the Italian branches of the Ni-gerian associations and arrest several key mem-bers. Among those arrested was Noah Idemudia,who has been charged with drug trafficking andis still awaiting trial. He not issued a statement,but Italian authorities believe he was one of the

‘Immigration into Bresciahas both increased the

potential market for drugsand facilitated the growthof small, ethnically based

criminal groups’




leaders of the Turin association and responsiblefor extending Eiye’s influence in Brescia. Policesay the Brescia Eiye branch, under Idemudia’salleged leadership, became largely independentof its Turin base and began to establish interna-tional links, particularly with parent organisa-tions in Nigeria.

The Brescia Eiye organisation had a rigid andvertical structure and its members belongedto the Bini (or Edo) and Igbo ethnic groups.They referred to each other as brothers and thehighest rank in the organisation was the ‘flightcommander’; the lower ones were ‘Dk’, ‘Ng’, or‘Ibaka’.

According to police, Eiye was able to controlvarious criminal groups located not only inBrescia, but in several other Italian towns, suchas Naples, Turin and Verona. The depth of or-ganisation of this group was demonstrated whenthe general prosecutor decided to charge the

organisation and its members under the PenalCode article 416 bis, as ‘mafia conspiracy’. Thiswas the first time that a non-Italian group hadbeen charged under this legislation.

Growing co-operationWhile groups such as Eiye and the Mahgrebiorganisations had generally tended to recruitmembers from their specific ethnic groups, theincreased willingness of the Mahgrebi groupsto work with Italians has been met with a moregeneral willingness of criminal groups to co-operate. For example, in a police investigationcarried out between April 2007 and April 2008, amulti-ethnic group was discovered in Brescia.

According to police, this was comprised ofLithuanians, Egyptians, Italians and Romani-ans, with the greatest number being Moroccans.The group was led by a Moroccan, known as ‘theDutch’, because of his contacts in the Netherlands.

This organisation imported approximately 50 kgof cocaine into Brescia per month and had es-tablished a training location for its members inRotterdam, the transit point for cocaine comingfrom Colombia. Here, members of the organisa-tion held six-month courses, training recruits tobecome drug couriers, as well as teaching themhow to cut drugs, package cocaine bricks and hidethem during transportation.

According to police, the organisation dem-onstrated well-defined hierarchical levels. Theleading group came exclusively from the Moroc-can town of Fes, and was founded on the basis ofpre-existing links between families and friends.

The manager of the group, the Dutch, livedin Rotterdam, where he had direct contacts withColombian cartels. Local knowledge remainedimportant; before he would accept a new recruithe would investigate their backgrounds and linksto existing members, before admitting them fora trial period in the Netherlands.

Police found the typical trafficking route wasto take cocaine either directly to Italy (by roadtransport) or via Madrid (by air) and then toItaly. Once in Italy the courier delivered his ship-ment to the group’s representatives, who thendistributed it to low-level dealers. The paymentwas returned to Rotterdam for re-investment ormoney laundering.

Operation ‘Red Tulip’, which began in August2004 and resulted in the arrest of 33 people oncharges of drug trafficking, was sparked by thearrest of a Moroccan, who was a low-level em-ployee of the organisation. The investigationused a mixture of surveillance techniques, witha particular reliance on traditional methodssuch as physical tracking of suspects. This wasbecause telephone tapping was proving insuffi-ciently effective, with some groups choosing touse local dialects or cryptic language in order toavoid potential police translators.

As well as organised groups like the Moroc-can-led one, there are also clusters of smallerethnic groups. These are neither structured nororganised, so they are not criminal organisationsin a traditional sense, but they represent an alter-native for the market.

These groups are largely comprised of asecond generation of young Latin Americans,mainly Peruvian or Ecuadorian. They were ableto utilise links to their countries of origin to es-tablish small-scale cocaine trafficking routes. Yetrather than evolving into larger organisations,these small groups are organised on the streetgang model and are beginning to dominate thelow-level criminal market.

Such groups usually act independently andpolice believe they have very limited contact withwell-established groups, such as Moroccans orAlbanians, and no contacts at all with the domi-nant ’Ndrangheta families. This appears to bethe case because they import and sell relatively

Dav

idP

layf

ord/

1303

821

A map highlighting the Lombardy province of Italy, one of the country’s major drug markets whereethnically based criminal groups have begun to expand their illegal operations.




small quantities of drugs, while the ’Ndranghetais concerned only with larger shipments.

The small gangs usually supply their own eth-nic groups, although police note some increaseddistribution of cocaine to Italian consumers.This reflects the ongoing assimilation of LatinAmericans into the Italian community, with in-creased integration likely to encourage furthermingling of the criminal networks.

Albanian linksOf the other ethnic groups, Albanians representa major criminal influence. According to police,Albanian groups tend to act as co-ordinators,overseeing a network of smaller groups, includ-ing Romanian, Polish and Bulgarian organisa-tions. Carabinieri investigations in July 2008indicate that Italians were acting as couriers fora Moroccan criminal group, providing logisticalsupport in exchange for cocaine that was thenconsumed or resold.

Once the shipment has been delivered, Alba-nian gangs organise the distribution. Accordingto Major Fabrizio Pisanelli of the Guardia di Fi-nanza’s Organised Crime Investigation Group(Gruppo di Investigazione Criminalità Organ-izzata: GICO) of Milan, quantities over 50 kgare directly managed by ’Ndrangheta members,while Albanian clans handle quantities of 10 kgto15 kg.

Links between the ’Ndrangheta and Albaniangroups are largely related to human trafficking,prostitution, arms trafficking and heroin; the’Ndrangheta essentially licenses out some activi-ties to Albanian groups. For example, Albaniangroups are permitted to manage prostitution(with girls mainly coming from Albania,Ukraineand Romania) in some parts of southern Italy,controlled by the ’Ndrangheta.

In terms of drugs, the ’Ndrangheta is linkedto Albanian groups mainly through heroin, sincethe drug routes in the Balkan area are control-led and managed by Albanian groups, while the’Ndrangheta deals directly with Colombian car-tels for cocaine. In 2005, a Carabinieri operationin Sibari, Calabria, found that Albanians oper-ating in that area had to pay a tax on criminalactivity to ’Ndrangheta in arms and drugs.

In terms of structure, Albanian organisationsconsist of small cells, which are loosely linkedto each other through clan or familial connec-tions. Each cell comprises four or five people,usually coming from the same village. Accordingto the Guardia di Finanza, the Albanian cell sellsthe drugs – approximately 5 kg to 10 kg, mainlyheroin and cocaine – to different small groups ofMoroccans who sell it on the streets.

The cell is responsible for cutting the drug:heroin is cut with paracetamol and caffeine,while cocaine is usually cut with mannitol. Ac-cording to the European Monitoring Centre forDrugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), the

typical purity of cocaine at user level in 2005varied from 20 per cent to 78 per cent, with mostcountries reporting purities in the 30-60 percent range. The average purity of brown heroinat street level varies between 15 per cent and 50per cent.

In Brescia, heroin sold by Albanians to Mo-roccans has an average purity of 50 per cent.Thisis cut several times by Moroccan groups beforearriving on the street with a purity of 12-15 percent, according to the Guardia di Finanza.

The drug trade also creates a parallel trafficin chemicals or natural substances used to cutthe drugs. Paracetamol can be imported directlyfrom Albania; heroin is sometimes cut there andthen transported to Italy. Alternatively, Albaniangroups in Germany transport the cutting agentsthrough the Netherlands, then through Spain tobe processed before arriving in Italy. Germanysupplies more than 50 per cent of the cuttingagents of the narcotics in Italy, according to theGuardia di Finanza.

Future trendsSo far, few co-ordinated efforts by local and fed-eral police have focused on the growing threatfrom these emerging criminal organisations.Some anti-crime measures have been utilised:under the anti-mafia laws, goods belonging toa person sentenced for drug trafficking can beseized by the judicial authority if the person can-not demonstrate that their origin is not illicit orif their value is disproportionate to the individu-al’s income.

However, most efforts are focused on reduc-ing consumption. For example, in September2008 a compulsory drugs test for those who ap-ply for a driving licence will be piloted in fourItalian towns and from 2009 it will be expanded

nationwide. If the test results are positive, the li-cence will not be issued and if the applicant is aminor, the family will be informed.

Drug seizures in 2007 fell compared withfigures for 2006, but trafficking will continue toincrease, facilitated by rising income levels andgrowing co-operation between different ethnicand Italian groups. This will increase relatedcriminal activity such as money laundering andstreet crime by local and ethnic street gangs com-peting for territorial control of the drug market.

In terms of market domination in Lombardy,the ’Ndrangheta will remain the undisputedleader in terms of cocaine trafficking because ofits well-established links to Colombian cartels.As yet the emerging ethnic groupings – particu-larly of Moroccans and Albanians – cannot chal-lenge the ’Ndrangheta’s dominance. However,with the market continuing to expand, there ispotential for all groups to increase their opera-tions, potentially allowing the smaller groups togrow and coalesce into larger organisations. ■

1. The Italian job – The diversification ofItalian crime

2. Clan connections – The rise and rise ofthe Italian ’Ndrangheta

3. Sentinel: Security/Italy

AuthorDr Michele Brunelli is an expert intransnational crime and money launderingat the University of Bergamo.



Heroin and cocaine trafficking in Brescia aredistributed in different parts of the province,encouraging the growth of different groupsto meet this demand.

According to 2006/07 seizures data, her-oin trafficking is exclusively concentratedon the municipal territory of Brescia, withthe provincial capital constituting the maincentre for heroin consumers. Milan rep-resents the other main heroin distributioncentre for the region. While police forcesseized 23 kg of heroin in Brescia in 2006and in 2007 only six kg, in Milan (town andprovince), seizures were 167 kg of heroinin 2006 and 664 kg in 2007. Yet heroin sei-zures in Brescia rose sharply in the first halfof 2008, with the police reporting that theyhad seized more than 31 kg.

The cocaine market is more diffuse, al-though three major distribution centres

have been identified The first is in the townof Brescia, with 6.5 kg seized in 2006 andnearly 40 kg in 2007. Lago di Garda is thesecond area, serving the nightlife summermarket of the discos, where police seized13 kg in 2006 and six kg in 2007. The othermain market is located in Franciacorta, thearea lying between Brescia and Milan. Inthe 20 small municipalities comprising thispart of the province, more than 68 kg of co-caine was seized in 2006 and 25 kg in 2007.The 2007 decline in seizures related moreto the launch of several as yet uncompletedinvestigations rather than a fall in drugs en-tering the region.

Increased consumption was demon-strated by the 2008 seizures from Januaryto June: 147 kg of cocaine from a total of1.326 kg of narcotics (cocaine, hashish andheroin).

Local market



T he Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty(CTBT) is designed to prohibit nuclearexplosions. It was opened for signature in

1996 and by mid-2008 had been signed by 178countries and ratified by 144 of those. To comeinto force, the CTBT has to be ratified by 44specified countries with significant nuclear ac-tivities. Of those, nine have not done so: China,Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, North Ko-rea, Pakistan and the United States.

The accession of nuclear weapon states, andespecially the US, to the CTBT is crucial for theinternational non-proliferation regime, foundedon the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT).The ban on nuclear explosions has been a keyissue at a number of quinquennial NPT ReviewConferences and featured prominently in nego-tiations for the indefinite extension of the NPTin 1995.

Then-US president Bill Clinton signed theCTBT in 1996 but the Senate rejected ratification

in 1999 and the Bush administration has con-tinually opposed the treaty.

CTBT opponents in the US cite two mainareas where progress should be demonstratedbefore treaty ratification: the reliability of averification system, and retaining the optionto maintain an effective deterrent in the futurewithout nuclear weapon tests.

In response to the former concern, CTBT sup-porters note that the Preparatory Commissionfor the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban TreatyOrganisation (CTBTO PrepCom) in Vienna,tasked with providing monitoring capabilitiesfor treaty verification, is building a monitoringsystem that has already demonstrated signifi-cant detection capabilities and, once completed,should be able to verify the treaty effectivelyand address the treaty opponents’ concerns. Bycontrast, those opposing the treaty insist thatit remains possible to conceal a small nuclearexplosion.

Testing timesRatification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty has been delayed for more than a decadeowing to US concerns over reliability of verification. Vitaly Fedchenko examines technicaladvances in monitoring and the validity of remaining US objections.

Doubts hang over nuclear test ban treaty

• The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty(CTBT) is awaiting ratification from ninekey countries and failure to do so risksundermining the non-proliferation regime.

• Significant advances have been made inthe monitoring and verification capabilitiesof the CTBT’s preparatory commission butsome objections remain.

• The question of ratification ultimatelyhinges on whether arms control anddisarmament agreements are consideredmore effective than military superiority in thepursuit of national security.



PROLIFERATION & PROCUREMENT

JIR 09 p50-52 PP Nukes.indd 50JIR 09 p50-52 PP Nukes.indd 50 14/8/08 11:25:4414/8/08 11:25:44



In reality, the monitoring system is alreadycapable of detecting most nuclear explosionsworldwide, and these capabilities are only set toimprove. Nonetheless, even with this monitor-ing system effectively detecting any explosion,the more significant barrier to the treaty may bethe political unwillingness of nuclear states out-side the nuclear non-proliferation regime to signor ratify the accord.

Banned activitiesThe CTBT places an indefinite ban on all nu-clear explosions of any yield (the amount ofenergy discharged in the explosion) in all placesfor all time. However, the treaty does not definethe term ‘nuclear explosion’. One interpretationof the treaty, which has never been formalisedbut seems to be widely accepted by the signa-tory states, suggests that it only bans explosionsin which conditions for criticality (a steady orexponentially growing fission chain reaction)

would be created. This leaves open the possibil-ity of conducting hydrodynamic and subcriticalexperiments but clearly prohibits hydronucleartesting. Hydrodynamic experiments involvedetonating chemical high explosives that sur-round a pit made of some non-fissile material,such as depleted uranium. Other parts of the ex-perimental explosive device usually resemble theactual weapon as closely as possible.

Subcritical experiments are similar to hydro-dynamic but use weapons-grade material, suchas plutonium, in configuration and quantitiesinsufficient to form a critical mass – so nuclearfission is not sustained. During both types of

test, information on the material’s behaviour isrecorded to validate computer calculations usedto improve the procedure’s safety, reliability andother parameters without actual testing.

Hydronuclear experiments, prohibited bythe treaty, involve a supercritical mass in theexplosion. A supercritical mass is one where somuch heat is produced, the mass expands and isno longer critical. The chain reaction begins inmuch the same way as in the actual weapon butthe fission yield is very small because the masshas expanded. This results in a yield of less than4 lb (1.78 kg) of TNT equivalent, according tothe US definition.

Verifying the CTBTTo differentiate between these experimentsand verify activities banned by the CTBT, theCTBTO PrepCom is responsible for settingup a global verification regime by the time thetreaty comes into force. This regime employsthe International Monitoring System (IMS) towatch for indicators of a nuclear explosion; theInternational Data Centre (IDC) in Vienna tocollect and analyse information from the IMS,and generate reports to member states; and theGlobal Communications Infrastructure (GCI)to receive and distribute data and reports. TheCTBTO PrepCom is only authorised to conductmonitoring (in particular provide technicaldata) while verification, drawing conclusions onnon-compliance, is left to individual countries.The treaty allows them to conduct on-site in-spections in case of suspicion.

The IMS is a worldwide network of monitor-ing stations and laboratories. Once completed,it will comprise a system of 321 seismological,

hydroacoustic, infrasound and radionuclidemonitoring stations. This combination of tech-nologies was chosen in order to pinpoint the siteof a nuclear explosion regardless of its location,which may be underground, underwater or inthe atmosphere. As of May 2008, the IMS con-sisted of 217 certified stations and 10 certifiedradionuclide laboratories. The total amount ofdata transmitted by all reporting stations to theIDC is about nine gigabytes per day.

Monitoring capabilityThe IMS has no formalised performance re-quirements or minimum detection thresholds.

In the early 1990s, treaty negotiators used anunofficial goal of 95 per cent probability of iden-tification of a non-evasive 1kt yield test in allenvironments except outer space. There is nowgeneral agreement that the IMS, although only67 per cent complete, is able to perform an orderof magnitude better than that even without aug-mentation from very capable national technicalmeans. Recent studies indicate that the IMS willreliably detect and identify an underground nu-clear explosion with a threshold of 0.1kt or less,10 times better than the initial goal.

CTBT opponents point out that detectionevasion techniques exist. For example, the tech-nique known as ‘decoupling’, setting off an ex-plosion in a large cavity, would prevent some ofthe blast energy from being transmitted as seis-mic waves. Although very difficult to performreliably and useless for hiding large explosions,decoupling could in theory conceal a small (lessthan 1 or 2kt) test that is still militarily useful.

Since 1999, when the US refused to ratify theCTBT, a number of studies have been conductedto assess the CTBT monitoring capabilities. TheUS National Academy of Sciences concluded in2002 that the complete IMS will reliably identifyunderground explosions down to a yield of 0.1ktin hard rock “if conducted anywhere in Europe,Asia, North Africa and North America”, anddown to a yield of 0.01kt or less “at certain lo-cations of interest”. Atmospheric explosions canbe identified with high confidence above 0.5kton continents in the northern hemisphere andabove 1kt worldwide, while underwater explo-sions can be identified down to one tonne orlower anywhere in the world. More recent stud-ies point out new techniques becoming available

The first US hydrogen bomb test shown fromEniwetok Atoll, Marshall Islands, in the PacificOcean, on 1 November 1952. The accessionof nuclear weapon countries, and especiallythe US, to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test

Ban Treaty is crucial for the international non-proliferation regime, founded on the Nuclear

Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

‘In October 2006, North Koreaconducted a nuclear weapon test.

The explosion was confidentlydetected, located and identified’

PAP

hoto

s/13

0379

7




The seismic network will consist of 50primary stations, reporting to the Interna-tional Data Centre (IDC) in real time and120 auxiliary stations, sending data uponrequest. It uses two types of sensors de-signed to measure the magnitude of theseismic event as well as the direction anddistance to it. More than 20,000 earth-quakes with a magnitude above 3.5 areregistered every year. Analysis of seismicdata allows the International MonitoringSystem (IMS) and the IDC to distinguishbetween earthquakes and explosions.

Low-frequency sound waves may travelthousands of miles at certain depths in theocean within the so-called ‘deep soundchannel’. The hydroacoustic network con-sists of only 11 stations owing to this effi-cient sound propagation. Six of these usesensitive underwater microphones sub-merged to a depth of about 1 km. The re-maining five are seismic sensors locatedon islands that pick up the seismic wavescreated when sound waves travelling indeep water hit the shore. The infrasoundnetwork uses 60 atmospheric stations

designed to detect the low-frequencysound generated by an atmospheric ex-plosion up to 1,000 km away.

The radionuclide network will consist of80 air samplers filtering the air for radioac-tive particles produced in atmospheric, orvented from underground or underwater,tests. Forty additional noble gas collec-tion systems will be installed to search forxenon isotopes. Sixteen dedicated labora-tories will assist radionuclide stations withsample analysis. Analysis of activity ratiosof various collected isotopes can be usedto distinguish between isotopes comingfrom an explosion or produced in a nu-clear reactor.

As of December 2007, 66 per cent ofseismic, 100 per cent of hydroacoustic,62 per cent of infrasound and 87 per centof radionuclide networks were completed.The United States does not object to theIMS itself, but sceptics in the US say somescenarios of evasion may still be possibledespite this complex network, calling intoquestion the specific capabilities of theverification and monitoring system.

Monitoring networks

1. Future of test ban treaty in doubt

2. Nukes in the balance – the effects ofproliferation on regional security

3. Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty(1996)

AuthorVitaly Fedchenko is researcher at theStockholm International Peace ResearchInstitute.



that would lower the detection threshold evenmore. In October 2006, North Korea conduct-ed a nuclear weapon test with an approximateyield of 0.5 kt. The explosion was confidentlydetected, located and identified by seismic andradionuclide components of the IMS. This couldbe seen as confirmation that even an incompleteIMS has exceeded its early informal perform-ance requirements.

In May, the CTBTO PrepCom launched theInternational Scientific Studies project, an effortto evaluate the detection, location and charac-terisation capabilities of the IMS and on-siteinspections capacities. The project will be imple-mented by a number of national institutions. Itsfindings are due to be published in August 2009in order to feed more authoritative informationinto the ratification debates in the key countries.

How much is enough?Despite the positive signs of the IMS’ capabili-ties, the question of how much monitoring issufficient to ensure absolute accordance with theCTBT cannot be answered with certainty in theabsence of a clear violation. The treaty’s support-ers in the US and elsewhere note that the moni-toring capacities of the IMS and of the nationaltechnical means will improve significantly withtime. Treaty opponents argue that concealingsmall nuclear explosions may still be possible.

Regardless of the technological advances inCTBT monitoring, there will always be some

risk of contravention. As such, the risk of smallexplosion concealment must be balanced againstthe cost of foregoing the perceived benefits ofhaving a treaty. In the case of the CTBT, the costmay be to put the NPT-based non-proliferationregime at risk.

This argument reflects a more fundamentaldisagreement over whether longer-term nation-al security and international stability are betterserved by having arms control and disarmamentagreements or by individual states’ reliance ondeveloping military power. Statements madeby both US presidential candidates John Mc-Cain and Barack Obama in support of CTBTratification may be seen as an indication thatarms control and disarmament agreements havesome chance of prevailing in the future US armscontrol and disarmament debate, which wouldmake CTBT ratification more likely.

Such support from the presidential candidatesdoes not indicate that the treaty will enter intoforce soon. The ratification would need to passthough the Senate, where opposition to the trea-ty remains significant. The experience of 1999,when the Senate rejected CTBT ratification de-spite Clinton’s support, could be repeated.

Moreover, the CTBT needs to be ratified bya further eight key countries beyond the USbefore it can be implemented, including fournuclear states that remain outside the nuclearnon-proliferation regime: India, Pakistan, Israeland North Korea.

The history of non-participation in the non-proliferation regime by these countries,bolsteredby the fact that they perceive nuclear weapons asvital strategic weapons, mitigates against themratifying the treaty. Despite the IMS being ableto effectively monitor testing with only a minorlevel of doubt, and US presidential candidatesseemingly more in favour of ratification, it ap-pears unlikely that the CTBT will formally comeinto force in coming years. While concerns re-main regarding aspiring nuclear weapon coun-tries, the absence of a test ban will continue toundermine confidence in the NPT as the mostappropriate and effective means of addressingthe threat of nuclear proliferation. ■

President Clinton signed the ComprehensiveNuclear Test Ban Treaty at the UN in New Yorkon 24 September 1996. However, the Senaterejected ratification in 1999.

PAP

hoto

s/13

0379

8



CHINA WATCH

T here are great expectations surroundingthe current rapprochement process be-tween China and Taiwan. Since the May

inauguration of President Ma Ying-jeou of theKuomintang (KMT) party, cross-strait animosityhas decreased and a series of measures designedto increase co-operation have been initiated. Thiscomes after an eight-year administration of ChenShui-bian’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)that favoured greater autonomy for Taiwan.

Perhaps most significantly, direct weekendcharter flights between China and Taiwan beganon 4 July, the first regular direct flights since theretreat of the KMT from mainland China in 1949.It is because of these flights that expectations haveincreased. China’s Cross-Strait Tourism Associa-tion claims that some 50 million Chinese nation-als have expressed an interest in visiting Taiwan,while Taiwan’s Tourism Bureau says it expects thenumber of Chinese tourists visiting the island an-nually to surpass one million by late 2009, bring-ing TWD200 billion in revenue per year.

Such expectations may be too great. So far, evi-dence of a new era in cross-strait exchanges hasbeen underwhelming. Since the introduction ofcross-strait flights, an average of 183 Chinese na-tionals have visited Taiwan per day, a number farshort of the 3,000 mandated by the KMT govern-

ment.While the current era of détente is thereforesignificant and reflects a new focus on economiccollaboration, the practicalities of cross-strait is-sues mitigate against a revolution in relations. ForTaiwan, therefore, the primary concern will not bea political resolution of the fundamental disagree-ment over sovereignty, which remains distant, butthe potential loss of political and economic sover-eignty from increasing collaboration with China.

Economic exchangePresident Ma’s prioritisation of economicco-operation ahead of political compromise wasoutlined as he came to power. On 11 June, rep-resentatives of the semi-official Strait’s ExchangeFoundation (SEF) in Taiwan and China’s Associa-tion for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (AR-ATS) signed deals on the cross-strait flights andincreased the number of Chinese tourists allowedto visit the island daily from 1,000 to 3,000.

For the Ma administration, collaboration willnot end here. The next round of cross-strait talkswill take place in mid-September, when deals are

likely to be signed on direct cross-strait cargoflights and the establishment of direct maritimelinks. Ma is also considering allowing Taiwan-based hi-tech companies to invest in 12-inchwafer manufacturing plants in China and permit-ting Chinese nationals to invest in the island’s realestate market in late September.

According to the deputy chairman of the is-land’s top financial regulatory body, opening thefinancial and economic exchanges to Chinesenationals will see some USD1.13 billion enter theTaiwan market annually.

Sovereign protectionSuch measures,according to the new government,are aimed at transforming Taiwan into a regionalfinancial service centre, thereby capitalising onChina’s rapid growth. For the United States, a keyprotagonist in Sino-Taiwanese relations given itssupport for the de facto independent island since1949, the improvement in relations is welcome.Washington has called the moves “stabilisingfactors for the region”. However, within Taiwan,

Cross-strait trafficThe new government in Taipei has encouraged a thawing of relations between Taiwan and China.Gavin Phipps assesses the impact of new measures to increase cross-strait co-operation.

Stronger Sino-Taiwanese ties begin to form

• China appears determined to takeadvantage of Taiwan’s conciliatory moodsince incoming President Ma Ying-jeoutook office in May.

• Measures have been introduced toimprove cross-strait economic collaborationahead of political compromise.

• However, this has led to fears in Taiwanof increasing economic dependence onChina, sparking criticism that the island’ssovereignty could be at risk.

This article was first available online atjir.janes.com on 11 August 2008


The first wave of Chinese tourists arrives in Taipei. These regular direct flights are the first since theretreat of the Kuomintang (KMT) from China in 1949 and reflect a new focus on economic collaboration.

PAP

hoto

s/13

0385

6

JIR 09 p54-55 CW Taiwan.indd 54JIR 09 p54-55 CW Taiwan.indd 54 14/8/08 11:30:2614/8/08 11:30:26


CHINA WATCH

where the electorate is highly politicised when itcomes to Sino-Taiwanese issues, dissenting voicesare common.Taiwan-based regional political ana-lyst Jerome Keating tells Jane’s that he believes“thenumber and economic benefits of Chinese tour-ists are being overstated”. According to Keating:“China’s screening of its nationals who wish tovisit Taiwan via direct flights currently means thatonly 1,000 could arrive on a daily basis. Govern-ment claims that Chinese tourism could net theisland billions of dollars per year are unrealistic.”

More significantly, the expansion of cross-strait economic exchanges, combined with thereconciliatory rhetoric, have led to charges thatTaiwan’s sovereignty could be at risk. In a raredisplay of public admonition on 26 July, popularformer president Lee Deng-hui claimed that Maand his party were “putting the [KMT’s] aspira-tions before those of the people of Taiwan”.

These criticisms centre on two threats to Tai-wan’s de facto independence. The first is the is-land’s increasingdependenceonChina’seconomy,which the new cross-strait measures will only in-crease. China already comprises more than 20 percent of Taiwan’s trade and this figure is increas-ing rapidly. In May, exports to China surpassed30 per cent of total exports for the first time, afteran annual increase of 21.3 per cent. This in turnsuggests that Taiwan could become an adjunct toChina through economic reliance, subject to thewhims of China’s economic, trade and probablyforeign policy.

On 22 July, Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Coun-cil released a statement in which it admitted thatsome of its members have questioned whetherthe economic measures being put in place couldin fact marginalise the island’s economy.

George Tsai, a political science professor atTaiwan’s Chinese Cultural University, told Jane’sthat claims of a looming de facto absorption ofTaiwan by China are unwarranted. According toTsai: “China’s [government] realises that unifica-tion is unrealistic and is now resolved to creatingan atmosphere of peaceful [cross-strait] develop-ment.” Nonetheless, as greater numbers of Chi-nese tourists and goods enter Taiwan, and moreTaiwanese businesses become reliant on China’scheap labour, the inevitability of an increasinglyeconomically dominant China will only increaseconcerns over Taiwan’s sovereignty.

In addition, the political compromise neces-sary to implement the current rapprochement isalso being questioned. In order to negotiate withChina, the Ma administration may need to adhereto the so-called 1992 Consensus – a verbal agree-ment reached by Taipei and Beijing during talksin Hong Kong. The consensus says that both sidesof the Taiwan Strait recognise only “one China”,but that both Taipei and Beijing can differ on thedefinition of that “one China”.

The DPP was averse to the consensus duringits eight years in power from 2000, and continues

to oppose the agreement in opposition. Accord-ing to the current chairwoman of the DPP, TsaiYing-wen, the party “will find every possible wayto protect [Taiwan’s] sovereignty”.

The Ma administration’s response to such criti-cism is that by allowing more Chinese nationalsinto Taiwan to view the island’s parliamentaryactivity and media, it will in the long run lead tocalls for democracy and free elections in China.Certainly, if millions of tourists were able to visitTaiwan, it is conceivable that some of those re-turning might favour political reform, but suchcalls may only be marginal, and could be mutedby the Chinese Communist Party.

Brothers in arms?Amid this lively debate on the benefits or other-wise of establishing greater economic ties, the Maadministration’s commitment to military deter-rence has also been questioned by opponents.

An announcement by the Ministry of NationalDefence (MND) on 30 June that the number ofpersonnel in the island’s armed forces is to be cutby approximately 25,000 personnel over the nextsix years resulted in several high-ranking officersprivately voicing concerns that the government’splans will make the armed forces top-heavy andineffective. According to the MND, the cutbacksare aimed at streamlining the military. Taiwan’sarmy, navy and air force will be scaled back to275,000 personnel, comprising, 55,000 officers,110,000 non-commissioned officers and 110,000troops. Conscription for all adult males (the re-serve force currently stands at 1.6 million) was cutfrom 16 to 14 months in 2007, and the govern-ment hopes to phase to it out within three years.

Yet the reduction in military personnel doesnot reflect a decrease in expenditure. The govern-ment has stated its desire to raise Taiwanese de-fence spending from its current level of approxi-mately 2.5 per cent of gross domestic product tothree per cent. Much of this extra expenditurewould theoretically be spent on advanced weap-ons systems. However, the government is cur-rently struggling to purchase significant systemsfrom Washington. This situation, despite the 1979Taiwan Relations Act that obliges the US to sellarms to Taiwan for defensive purposes, has led toconcern that a freeze on sales to Taiwan may be inplace, as the US prepares for presidential electionsin November. On 12 July, President Ma said thatdespite warming cross-strait relations, the islandneeds to continue securing defensive weaponssystems from the US. Jason Yuan, Taiwan’s newlyappointed ambassador to the US, said on 26 Julythere is “no arms freeze” and the request, in 2007,for six PAC-3 anti-ballistic missile batteries, 30AH-64D Apache Longbow attack helicopters, 60UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters and sea-launchedHarpoon missiles is “almost a done deal”.

However, unofficial reports from Washingtonin July claimed that the ruling KMT had in fact

called for the freeze ahead of cross-strait talks inorder not to offend Beijing. On 16 July, US PacificFleet Commander Admiral, Timothy Keating,claimed the freeze is US “administrative policy.”This seemed to be confirmed on 28 July, whenTaiwan’s Legislative Speaker, Wang Jin-pyng, ad-mitted that he had failed to secure a commitmentto lift the freeze on the 2007 package.

Confidence buildingThe existence or otherwise of an arms freeze isdifficult to confirm. Former US deputy defencesecretary, Paul Wolfowitz, told members of theAmerican Chamber of Commerce in Taipei on 23July that he believes the US will release notifica-tions for pending arms sales totalling USD16 bil-lion before Congress adjourns on 26 September.More than half of an arms package agreed withthe US in 2001 has already been released, butCongressional notification for six Patriot PAC-3 anti-ballistic missile batteries and a feasibilitydesign study for eight diesel-electric submarinesremain outstanding.

Nonetheless, the debate and confusion reflectsthe difficult position in which the Ma administra-tion finds itself. On the one hand, a freeze wouldfurther improve Sino-Taiwanese relations, but onthe other, a failure to procure sufficient weaponssystems would only hasten China’s military domi-nation of the Taiwan Strait, which could gravelyundermine Taiwan’s de facto independence.

This quandary may explain why the KMT iseager to pursue military confidence-buildingmeasures (CBM) with Beijing. First called for bycurrent Vice-President Vincent Siew during histenure as premier in 1998, the idea was resurrect-ed by Ma during his election campaign, when heproposed establishing a cross-strait CBM withinfour to six years. However, any such measures,which would likely begin with dialogue betweenretired military officers from Taiwan and China,remain years away and may be unfeasible in Ma’sfirst term given the delicacy that surrounds Sino-Taiwanese negotiations. Without such measures,concern will remain in Taiwan that opening up toChina will lead to short-term economic gain butlong-term political loss. ■

1. Strait talking

2. Ma’s victory eases tension acrossTaiwan Strait

3. Sentinel: Security/Taiwan

AuthorGavinPhippsisacorrespondentspecialisingin south Asia.



JIR 09 p54-55 CW Taiwan.indd 55JIR 09 p54-55 CW Taiwan.indd 55 14/8/08 11:30:5114/8/08 11:30:51


RESOURCE WATCH

T he vastness of the Amazon rainforest isalmost impossible to grasp. Compris-ing 40 per cent of Brazil’s territory, the

Brazilian Amazon covers approximately fourmillion km² and is the largest rainforest basinin the world.

Even so, reports that the rate of deforestation inthe area has increased since 2007 have the Brazil-ian government worried. In June 2008, Ministerof the Environment Carlos Minc announced thegovernment will crack down on the clearing ofthe rainforest for illegal logging and agriculturalcultivation. Given the ongoing tensions betweenindigenous communities and farmers over con-trol of the land, the government’s renewed inter-est in the Amazon has sparked protests and armedclashes between the two groups. With the 2000Brazilian census counting 316, 835 indigenouspeople in the Amazon, the potential for unrest issignificant.

Economic impetusSuch heightened government concerns reflectthe release of figures in June that show deforesta-tion is increasing again, after slowing since 2005when the government first began implementingmeasures to halt illegal clearing. Satellite im-agery released by the state space research agency

(Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais: INPE)in June showed that 1,123 km² was cleared inApril, up from 145 km² in March, an increase of674 per cent. This continues a previous trend fordeforestation growth. Between August 2006 andJuly 2007, 4,964 km² was cleared, but in the ninemonths between August 2007 and April 2008,5,850 km² was cleared, marking an increase of17.8 per cent.

The renewed drive for illegal deforestation hasbeen fuelled by rising global food prices, in par-ticular soya, which is primarily grown in the Am-azonian region. Soya prices have risen by nearly150 per cent since the beginning of 2006, partlyowing to growing demand from Asia and to cropshortages in other parts of the world.With poten-tial profits surging, it comes as little surprise thatfarmers have been keen to expand areas of pro-ductive farmland; Minc noted in June that almost70 per cent of cleared land is used by farmers.

Such a spike in deforestation has re-ignited anongoing conflict between farmers and indigenoustribes, as well as with environmentalists seeking topreserve the rainforest. At the root of the conflictare the issues of land ownership and the rule oflaw in the remote region. Although farmers arelegally required to state the extent of their terri-tory and farm only this area, the practice of unof-ficially extending farmland into the rainforest iswidespread, exacerbated by the prices that can begarnered by illegal logging of forest areas.

In contrast, indigenous tribes oppose agricul-tural expansion on the grounds it prevents themfrom maintaining their traditional way of life.Thegovernment has been sympathetic to this view. In2005, the left-wing government of President LuizInácio Lula da Silva proposed a 17,000 km² indig-enous reservation in an effort to settle the landdispute between farmers and tribes.

However, the formal creation of the reserva-tion, called Raposa Serra do Sol, in April hasonly increased tensions. Under the terms of itscreation, legal farmers would be relocated andillegal producers evicted. Attempts to evict farm-ers have resulted in armed clashes; initial evictionefforts in April were met with road blockades and

protests, with attacks made on a police station inthe town of Pacaraima. Moreover, after being shotat by gunmen on 10 May, the indigenous tribein Raposa Serra accused farmers of having hiredthe gunmen to drive them out of the reservation.Since then, sporadic attacks have continued, withfarmers coming into repeated conflict with policeforces. In May, during a protest by indigenousgroups against a proposed hydroelectric dam onthe Xingu River, a government official was slashedwith a machete, while in June, gunmen openedfire on inhabitants of an indigenous reservation.

The government has responded by send-ing more troops to the sparsely policed area. InMay, the government deployed 300 police troopsand 100 officers from the National Public Secu-rity Force (Força Nacional de Segurança Pública:FNSP) to the Amazonian state of Roraima. Thesetroops were tasked with continuing the evictionprocess, as well as initiating a disarmament drivedirected at agricultural groups. However, evic-tions have now been halted pending an appeal bythe farmers to the Constitutional Court, with thegovernment instead seeking to curb deforestationvia other methods.These include the extension on17 June of a law banning the sale of soya grown ondeforested land, which the government may alsoextend to sales of tinder and beef.

Military deploymentWith the land dispute continuing to threatenfurther outbreaks of violence, the government isplanning to increase its military presence in theAmazon region. In late July, President Lula signeda decree authorising the deployment of troopsto indigenous reservations, particularly in bor-der areas. At present, there are 25,000 troops de-ployed in the Amazon – a relatively small numbergiven the size of the territory for which they areresponsible – and only 240 are officially desig-nated to guard the region’s 2,000 km border. Assuch, current troop deployments are insufficientto assure security in the region, let alone imple-ment an eviction initiative that may be met withsustained and violent opposition. While resolvingthe dispute between indigenous and agricultural

Rumble in the jungleThe Brazilian government has become concerned about the increased levels of illegal loggingand agricultural cultivation in the Amazon, leading to issues of land ownership and the rule oflaw in the region. Anna Gilmour assesses how Brasilia is dealing with the problems.

Amazon deforestation sparks conflict in Brazil

• Brazil’s Amazonian region is experiencingheightened outbreaks of social conflict, asfarmers clash with indigenous groups.

• This conflict has been exacerbated byrising food prices, which have increased thedetermination of farmers to clear forest forfarming.

•The Brazilian government’s intention toreduce deforestation rates reflects a desireto exercise more control over the region.

This article was first available online atjir.janes.com on 14 August 2008


JIR 09 p56-57 resourcewatch.indd56 56JIR 09 p56-57 resourcewatch.indd56 56 14/8/08 15:20:2314/8/08 15:20:23


RESOURCE WATCH

groups is a priority for the government, there areother factors influencing its decision to expandstate control in the Amazon region. First, it isan issue of recovering national pride after inter-national criticism of Brazil’s failure to halt illegalland clearing.

With concerns mounting over climate change,scientists have warned that Amazon deforestationat current rates could contribute significantly torising global temperatures, making halting de-forestation an international concern. In Decem-ber 2007, the UN proposed making payments tocountries such as Brazil for reducing emissionsfrom deforestation and degradation. However,Brasilia views such international involvement inthe deforestation as a potential infringement of itssovereignty and is therefore keen to demonstrateit is capable of tackling the problem on its own.

Second, increasing the military presence in theAmazon will help to counter other potential secu-rity risks, currently facilitated by low levels of bor-der security. For example, the Brazilian Amazonborders similarly lawless areas in Bolivia, Peru,Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana and Suri-name. It is relatively easy for trafficking groups– primarily transporting cocaine from the An-dean region – to operate between countries andto arrange for the shipment of illegal goods outthrough the Brazilian Amazon to exit ports on theBrazilian coast. Moreover, there have been reportsin the Brazilian press that some indigenous peo-ple have been hired by these networks.

Accordingly, the Brazilian government hopesto refocus its efforts on securing borders andreintegrating indigenous communities into theBrazilian state. While no definite details of futuredeployments have yet been released, Ministerof Defence Nelson Jobim stated in May that thepresence of all three armed services would be in-creased, particularly along the centre-west border,which borders the Andean countries. This indi-cates that aerial surveillance of the area by the airforce will be increased, as well as naval efforts tosecure riverine routes. Both strategies are likely toinvolve more use of Brazil’s surveillance system,SIVAM (Sistema de Vigilancia da Amazonia),which was launched in 2002 with the dual pur-pose of monitoring deforestation levels and as-sisting intelligence-led military operations.

Limited effortHowever, despite the prospect of greater mili-tary engagement with the hitherto largely law-less Amazon region, these efforts will have littleimpact on levels of security risk. While increasedtroop levels can act as a deterrent to illegal landclearers and traffickers, their practical effect willbe limited owing to geographical difficulties. Forexample,while Brazil operates 27 military bases inthe Amazon region, the lack of roads means thatthese bases cannot carry out joint operations.

Moreover, with global food prices continuingto rise, the incentive for farmers to continue clear-ing land remains stronger than the threat of the

military to remove them. Much of this conflictwill be fought through the court system, but thegovernment now appears to view resistance toeviction as a direct challenge to the authority ofthe state, ensuring that continued efforts will bemade to demarcate the boundaries between ag-ricultural and indigenous land and to implementlegal restrictions on land clearance.

Some progress may be made via legal means,with the judicial system having already ruled thatthe evictions are legal. Yet the Amazon’s long his-tory of marginalisation within Brazil means thatthe legal system has been only sporadically en-forced, encouraging both indigenous and agricul-tural protestors to continue to resort to violenceas a means of highlighting their concerns for theforeseeable future. ■

1. Rebellion stirs in Brazilian Amazon

2. Feeding frenzy – Shortages dish uptrouble around the world

3. Sentinel: Natural resources/Brazil

Author detailsAnna Gilmour is deputy editor of Jane’sIntelligence Review.



Amazonian Indians and activists in Altamira in Brazil protest at plans to build a hydroelectric dam on the nearby Xingu River in May 2008. Indigenous tribesoppose agricultural expansion on the grounds it prevents them from maintaining their traditional way of life, bringing them into conflict with farmers.

PAP

hoto

s/13

0380

8

JIR 09 p56-57 resourcewatch.indd57 57JIR 09 p56-57 resourcewatch.indd57 57 14/8/08 15:20:3714/8/08 15:20:37

What drives China’s defence industry?The drivers and implications of China’s emerging defence-industrial capabilityTuesday 23 September 2008 — Holiday Inn London Regent’s Park

For full programme and speaker details go to: www.conference.janes.com

Listen to and learn from Jane’s experts for just £99 + vatregistration fee includes continental breakfast, mid-morning coffee, networking lunch, opportunityto speak with the experts and briefing materials

register: www.conference.janes.com | e-mail: [email protected] | call: +44 20 8700 3841

• How changes to China’s defence-industrial base are impacting its ability toproduce military equipment

• What the future is for China’s military exports; and where its key markets arelikely to emerge

• The key growth drivers and pressures in the defence budget

• Short and longer term forecasts for overall spending and procurement spending

• And, what will the implications be for the international defence community

A half-day Jane’s Industry Briefing focusing on the industrial implicationsfor China’s growing spending.

Register to attend and gain insight from Jane’s experts on:

Key areas for discussionChina’s defence industrial capability

PLA Navy Programmes

Indigenous Chinese Military Aircraft Programmes

Taiwan – implications for procurement

China’s power projection

2549_0808PBEV

2549_0808PBEV_2.indd 12549_0808PBEV_2.indd 1 14/8/08 12:30:39 pm14/8/08 12:30:39 pm

The worldwide threat of terrorism is ever present and conflicts continue to be fought across the globe. Terrorist groups arebecoming more coherent and sophisticated and the threats are frequently asymmetric, meaning that the intelligence communityis often unable to predict where, or even when, the next threat may come.

Time critical information sharing, joint collaboration and interoperability, and the ability to identify future risks and predict potentialthreats remain vital. However, maximizing the use of communication channels and establishing links and networks are only some ofthe challenges facing those tackling ever-increasing security threats.

The unmatched power of i2's product suite has been proven to significantly increasethe productivity of operational teams, saving both time and resources. Designedpurely for data analysis, i2 Analysis Suite 7 software allows military and nationalsecurity organizations to store, process and then extract relevant information tomeet operational needs, providing an easy-to-use data fusion solution that canfacilitate quicker response times to decision makers.

i2, the i2 logo and Analyst's Notebook are registered trademarks of i2 Limited. ChoicePoint (NYSE: CPS) is the leading provider of identification and credential verification services for making smarter decisions in a world challenged byincreased risks. Serving the needs of business, government, non-profit organisations, ChoicePoint works to create a safer and more secure society through the responsible use of information while ensuring the protection of personalprivacy. For more information, visit the company’s Web site at www.choicepoint.com. ©2008 ChoicePoint Asset Company. All rights reserved. Copyright © i2Limited 2008. All rights reserved.

i2 Analysis Suite 7 Works together to work it outTransforming information into intelligence

i2 Limited, Marketing Department, The Visual Space, Capital Park, Fulbourn, Cambridge, CB21 5XH.Tel: +44 (0) 1223 728600 Fax: +44 (0) 1223 728601 Web: www.i2analysis-suite7.co.uk

To find out more about our products, visitwww.i2.co.uk, or call us on +44 (0) 1223 728600for a copy of our preview CD.

Untitled-1 1Untitled-1 1 8/2/08 9:38:39 am8/2/08 9:38:39 am

Janes Intelligence Review 2008-09

Documents

Transcript of Janes Intelligence Review 2008-09