he end of the Cold War has brought with it sweeping changes in world politics and economics. Communist dictatorships have disappeared, the market economy has won global acceptance, large parts of the world have been opened up to the influx of capital, goods, ideas and people. This has meant previously unforeseen opportunities economic, cultural and political contacts between countries and continents at ever lower cost and at ever greater speed. The economic growth in Asia, particularly in the world's most populous countries, China and India, has been driven by trade with the consumer societies of the West. Liberal ideas have been disseminated across the world with a resulting increase in the number of democracies.
     But globalisation processes also have an increasingly evident downside. As a phenomenon, organised crime is nothing new: the Mafia in Italy and the crime syndicate in Chicago have been depicted in books, films, and myths. During the last 15 years transnational organised crime has developed dramatically both quantitatively and qualitatively and has become ever more global. Statistics on organised crime are notoriously unreliable, but its global turnover has been estimated at between $500 billion and $1,500 billion a year.¹ The trade in narcotics alone represents $200 billion to $400 billion and—according to most calculations—is the world's second largest "industry" (after the arms trade, which turns over approximately twice as much).² It is bigger than Sweden's gross national product of approximately $309 billion and bigger than the world automotive or oil industries.
     Organised crime can, as the American expert Phil Williams expresses it, be defined by paraphrasing Clausewitz's dictum that war is the continuation of politics by other means: it is a continuation of business by other means, specifically by the systematic use of violence and corruption in order to achieve financial gain.³ The implications of organised crime differ dramatically between countries and continents. In northern Europe it can still be written off as a minor cost, whose greatest effect is on the tax revenues of the state. The breadth of the problem can, however, be perceived within both the EU's new and its old borders. The influence of the Sicilian Mafia on Italian politics and economics until recently is an example, and the continued influence of special interests in Italian politics is well-known. Another example is Lithuania, where a constitutional crisis occurred during the autumn of 2003, when the country's highest official, President Rolandas Paksas, was shown to have close links to organised crime. In parts of Asia and Latin America organised crime has had major consequences both on the form of government and on individual and national security. In countries like Colombia, Tajikistan and Afghanistan it has become a major threat to the functioning of the state and of society.

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SEVERAL FACTORS conspired in this development. Firstly, the methods, aims and scope of criminal networks have become increasingly transnational, whilst crime fighting is still to a large extent carried on at a national level. One example: if a drugs courier is stopped by Swedish customs officials in the south Swedish province of Skåne on his way from Denmark, and states that Oslo is his final destination, it can take days before the Norwegian police are informed about the case. Clearly by then the courier's contact in Oslo will long since have vanished.⁴ Criminal networks have learnt to exploit the differences in legal systems, taxation, technological advances and law enforcement between different countries. They have also taken advantage of the explosive increase in global trade during the 1990s, which left customs authorities increasingly bewildered. United States Customs can, for example, only inspect about 3 per cent of the containers shipped into the country by sea.⁵ In practice international trade, shipments, and financial transactions have grown at such a pace that from a purely practical point of view they cannot be monitored.⁶ Criminal organisations regard national frontiers as an increasingly insignificant obstacle to their activity.
     A second factor is the structure of organisations. Most criminal organisations have ceased to employ the hierarchical organisation model that characterises the Sicilian Mafia. They have learnt from terror groups and have adopted a network concept. In this way it has become more difficult for the authorities to knock them out, as a network, particularly one with a cellular structure, tolerates the removal of one single unit to a much greater degree than does a hierarchical organisation, where the trail to the governing leadership is much clearer. The networks are no less organised than previously, but have adapted their organisational structure in order to be able to change their shape at will.
     Thirdly, criminal networks, like legal companies, have diversified their portfolios. A clear trend is that these same routes are used for different types of smuggled goods; the networks smuggle what pays best and is associated with the least risk. For example, during the autumn of 2001 the Iranian anti-narcotics police noticed a marked increase in border violations along Iran's frontiers with Pakistan and Afghanistan, a focus for drugs trafficking. The same networks that normally traffic drugs were involved, but in many cases it was not drugs but people that were being smuggled, more specifically terrorists on their way from Afghanistan to the Gulf states.⁷

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ORGANISED CRIME is traditionally studied from a criminological perspective and as a national phenomenon. In this sense, it has largely fallen outside studies of international security and democratic development, and has not been treated as an international political problem. But in large parts of the world the spread of organised crime has had major social, economic, political and military consequences, affecting the functioning of societies and states. It can therefore also be regarded as a security problem.
     In particular, organised crime threatens weakened states—that is, states lacking a strong judicial system, stable political mechanisms and a form of government holding broad legitimacy among the population. Perhaps the most serious and far-reaching consequences are to be found in the link between non-state violent actors (separatist, ideological insurgent movements and terrorist groups) and organised crime.
     During the Cold War many armed non-state groups (a term that includes both rebel movements and terrorist organisations) were financed by one or other of the superpowers or its allies, irrespective of whether they were ideologically motivated or ethnic separatist movements and irrespective of whether they used terrorist methods. With the end of the Cold War this source of income disappeared. These armed groups have since to an increasing extent switched to organised crime in order to finance their activities.
     There used to be fairly clear demarcation lines between organised crime and political activism, partly because of their differing aims. Political groups want to change the form of government and therefore challenge the state. Criminal groups on the other hand try to maximise their profits and therefore avoid challenging the state. But recently criminal interests have involved themselves in politics, as many states have been weakened since the Cold War; weak states create opportunities for financial profit. The result has been a vicious circle. Political instability and armed conflict attract organised crime, as instability also means a weaker implementation of legal norms. Organised crime in its turn creates the incentive for the warring parties to maintain a situation of conflict, as this makes possible the smuggling of goods, narcotics, weapons and human beings without the intervention of the authorities. The poverty that conflicts bring with them also favours crime: human trafficking becomes a growing trade when people attempt to escape poverty, and drug couriers become much easier to recruit.
     Georgia is a typical example. Despite the conflict between central government and the breakaway republic of South Ossetia most refugees had returned to their homes, and contacts at a social level had been restored. But the political conflict is no closer to a solution; in fact the situation has become worse during the summer of 2004. South Ossetia's frontier with Russia is not guarded, nor has there been any customs supervision on the ceasefire line between South Ossetia and Georgia, as the government of Georgia considers the area to be part of its territory. South Ossetia, with 80,000 inhabitants, has become a gigantic market place. Huge amounts of oil, alcohol, tobacco, consumer goods, narcotics and weapons are flowing from Russia into Georgia and the southern Caucasus—and corrupt officials on both sides have earned millions of dollars. After the revolution in Georgia in the winter of 2003-2004 the new government has attempted to stem corruption and organised crime in and around South Ossetia.
     But talk of a symbiosis between organised criminal networks and non-state violent actors of a separatist or ideological nature would be a simplification. Research shows that armed groups and criminal networks rarely create long-term alliances or collaborations. It is much more common for them to collaborate briefly in individual actions when one party needs the other's expertise. The reason for the lack of long term collaborations is that they are not needed. Armed groups have to a much greater extent themselves gotten involved as actors in transnational crime, instead of forming alliances with criminal organisations.⁸ At least a third of known terrorist groups have participated in organised crime.⁹
     The link between armed groups and organised crime has been most clear as regards drug trafficking. The FARC guerrillas in Colombia, the Wa State army in Burma, the PKK guerrillas in Turkey, ETA in Spain, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and the UCK in Kosovo are prominent examples of armed organisations which have, or have had, narcotics smuggling as a significant source of income.
     This is natural as the production and smuggling of narcotics tends to gravitate to areas in conflict because of the weakness or lack of state jurisdiction there. It is no coincidence that Afghanistan, Burma, Colombia and Peru—countries with a long history of civil war—are or have been major producers of cocaine and heroin. Armed organisations turn to the narcotics trade because of its high income and low expenses, at the same time as the conflict that they themselves are participating in reduces the risks of the activity. But systematic participation in this activity, which by its nature strives for financial gain, often changes the character and driving force of these organisations. One often sees a change in the motivational structures of the organisation, particularly in cases of protracted conflict and when leaders of an armed movement consider that they have slim hopes of achieving their stated objective. Financial profit, and therefore criminality, then becomes a more important goal in itself, sometimes more important than ideological motives. It should be noted that the above does not only apply to narcotics; for example, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka have to a high degree begun to involve themselves in people smuggling to Europe.¹⁰ The consequence is that the dividing lines between financial gain in a criminal form and the ideologically based armed struggle has increasingly been erased. Researchers talk about "convergence" between political movements and organised crime. In the case of many organisations it is clear that the ideological or nationalist struggle has increasingly been simply a cover, whilst the real driving force behind the organisation's activity is narcotics. The Wa army in northern Burma is the most obvious example.¹¹ Other organisations such as the PKK, UCK and IMU are considered to be driven by both ideological and criminal goals.
     Organised crime is, therefore, to an increasing degree a threat to the security of states. This even applies if one regards security in the traditional sense as a military threat to a state. The actors' driving force is an increasingly complex mix of ideological and ethno-nationalist zeal and commercial, criminal, interests. From Colombia to Kosovo and Abkhazia to Afghanistan the link between civil war and transnational organised crime is becoming ever clearer. But, apart from national security, organised crime also affects the form of government of states. The American expert Louise Shelley calls transnational crime "the new authoritarianism" in order to illustrate the way in which it undermines the structure of the state and the development of democracy.¹²

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THE GREATEST GAINS for organised crime have been in the former communist states and in developing countries, particularly those located along important smuggling routes. The routes for narcotics and human trafficking go from poorer to richer countries, therefore from the South/East towards the North/West; as regards arms and nuclear materials they tend to go in the opposite direction. One can talk about two hubs in global organised crime. In the western hemisphere Central America and the Andean region have developed as a centre; in Eurasia the former Soviet Union and south-west Asia (Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran) have become a major and increasingly criminalised area. In the former communist states criminal forces have been the first to exploit the political instability and financial collapse that followed the end of communism.
     The most extreme variant of criminalisation is when the state itself initiates and supervises organised crime. This is, however, relatively rare. North Korea is the clearest example of a state that has for a long time financed parts of its public treasury through smuggling. The country's embassies in Europe became infamous in the 1970s when they attempted to sell duty-free imported spirits to restaurants. In recent years, keeping pace with its increased isolation and economic problems, North Korea has encouraged and supervised opium cultivation and laboratories manufacturing met-amphetamines and heroin for the Asian and Australian markets.¹³
     North Korea, possibly together with Burma and the smaller breakaway republics in the Caucasus, is fortunately an exception. The most widespread variants of criminalisation of the state and the economy occur instead when criminal interests, through corruption and violence, grow so influential that they control decision-making in important state and financial institutions. The World Bank distinguishes the concept of "state capture" from the vaguer concept of corruption.¹⁴ There is a qualitative difference between a border guard passively receiving bribes and someone trying to control or influence administrative decisions, legislation, the courts or state policy. In other words, to "capture" the state with the aim of distorting its functions in order to serve special interests instead of serving the population as a whole. State capture is carried on by private companies and powerful interest groups in many developing countries and former communist states, often behind the scenes, but Italy's Berlusconi also shows many aspects of the phenomenon.
     The definition of state capture does not, however, distinguish between the types of interests illegally attempting to influence state institutions. When organised crime infiltrates the state with the aim of influencing its decisions and its exercise of authority, this implies—apart from state capture—a criminalisation of state power. Organised crime has to an ever increasing degree attempted to influence and infiltrate state powers, partly because the sums of money at its disposal provide the financial capacity to "buy" office holders, partly because more than other actors, it has an interest in influencing the state, whose task after all is to work against criminal activity. The combination of the financial capacity of criminal networks, their increased interest in the state, and the state's financial weakness in developing countries and transitional countries have combined to create increasingly criminalised state apparatuses.
     In practice this means that in particular customs authorities, interior ministries, police forces, border guards, the military and other authorities have been infiltrated by criminal networks as they present a threat to traffickers. In countries hard hit by conflict, such as Afghanistan, Georgia and Tajikistan, the process has gone furthest. In Afghanistan opium is by far way the country's largest source of income. The financial base of regional potentates is and has been the opium economy, and the national government is no exception. Tajikistan is with Pakistan and Iran, one of the foremost export routes for Afghan opiates. Even if large quantities are smuggled through these states, Tajikistan is poorer and considerably smaller (5 million inhabitants as opposed to Pakistan's 150 million and Iran's 70 million), and suffered a long civil war from 1992 to 1997. The consequences of smuggling are therefore considerably greater in Tajikistan. Narcotics smuggling there too forms the largest industry in the country and according to some calculations its value corresponds to between 30 per cent and 75 per cent of the country's GNP. In Georgia the new government is now attempting to clean up the system, and there a major reason for the popular uprising in 2003 was precisely the corruption and criminalisation of the leadership.
     When the process goes far enough, and criminal interests infiltrate the higher echelons of state power, the legitimacy of the state, its institutions and even its physical base are undermined—the three factors which, according to security specialist Barry Buzan, constitute the pillars of a state.¹⁵
     The institutions of the state are not used for their proper function but are used in the interests of criminal groups. The financial capacity of the state is impaired further in that criminal interests divert resources from the public treasury. Organised crime also undermines the "idea" and legitimacy of the state, a significant problem in new states where the state and the nation often do not coincide. When the state ceases to provide basic services such as, for example, law and order and electricity to the citizens, it loses its legitimacy. When this problem is brought to the fore, the logical consequence is a move towards diminished openness and greater repression, quite simply because transparency, a free media, an active civil society and an active political opposition threaten to reveal the state's criminalisation and the positions of corrupt office holders. In the case of Georgia the cause of the governmental crisis in the autumn of 2001 was that the National Security Ministry tried to suppress an outspoken TV channel which had reported on corruption at high levels, and this had given rise to significant popular demonstrations.

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THE SECURITY OF SOCIETY, that is the functionality and development of society, can also be influenced in other ways by organised crime. This occurs, for example, when drug-abuse affects such a large part of the population that the health of the nation and its economic production are severely affected. Historical examples are China around the turn of the century and Iran in the middle of the 20th century, when opium addiction affected more than 10 per cent of the population. Today Iran is also at risk, just as is Russia, as drug addicts are estimated to form more than 2 per cent of the population in both countries. The situation is made worse by the fact that drug abuse to a greater extent involves hard drugs, particularly heroin. The fact that the proportion of injecting users is constantly increasing causes yet another problem, as it leads to the spread of diseases such as HIV/Aids and hepatitis C. Russia and the former Soviet states today form the part of the world where HIV is spreading most quickly. Demographers have estimated that by 2010 between 5 million and 9 million people will be affected by HIV in Russia alone.¹⁶ Today 50 per cent to 80 per cent of HIV cases are related to injecting drug use. Significant HIV problems are to be found in China, and similarly in the Yunnan and Xinjiang provinces, which border on Burma and Central Asia. But even without epidemics organised crime affects people's welfare. In areas controlled by guerrilla groups with the help of drugs money there is no protection by the forces of law. Arms smuggling leads to clear risks for people's well-being. Drug misuse is also linked to violent crime and robbery—in the USA 70 per cent of such crimes are estimated to be drug-related.

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TRANSNATIONAL CRIME has grown into a problem of this magnitude largely because criminals have learnt to think transnationally, whilst states, law enforcement agencies and academics are still thinking within the framework of the nation state. In this way the phenomenon cuts straight across established boundaries between disciplines such as political science, economics, conflict research and sociology. It can only be studied with difficulty using the traditional research methods that these disciplines are based on, which frequently results in the fact that it is not studied at all. A further reason is that to a very high degree it affects transitional and developing countries. The industrialised world has been affected primarily at a financial level.
     The indirect consequences of transnational crime for stable or post-industrial societies are, however, significant. The social consequences of drugs in producer, transit and consumer countries are obvious, but this is not mirrored in aid policy and foreign policy. Since the regime change in Afghanistan the country's production of opium has been steadily increasing and, despite an international presence in the country, opium production is not expected to decrease. In the year 2004 Afghanistan will produce an estimated 4,500 tonnes of opium. At the same time the narcotics question now is anything but a priority question for aid-giving countries, among which Sweden is one of the larger donors. Afghanistan's weak and fragmented government will not be able to relax the opium economy's grip on the country without substantial aid from outside. Aid should therefore to the greatest possible extent be devoted to undermining the opium economy and reinforcing the legal economy, and be formulated in a way that provides an incentive to those in power in the regions to abandon the narcotics trade.
     Not everything is the consequence of narcotics. The quantity of arms in circulation is increasing constantly. Human trafficking leads to the exploitation of people and to more asylum applications, which require migration authorities to spend large sums of money handling these applications. In addition there are the relatively invisible financial consequences that organised crime brings with it. Criminal networks launder and invest their money mainly in stable, Western economies. This means not merely bank accounts on the Cayman Islands or small-scale money-laundering through restaurants, but also a criminalisation of legal capital in Europe and North America as wealthy criminal interests invest in the financial sector and in European companies, a problem particularly in Great Britain, but which also exists in Sweden.
     And what can be done to counteract this problem and its ever-greater consequences? A first necessary step is to think transnationally and to include transnational crime in foreign policy and aid policy. Organised crime today is not a priority in these, either in Sweden or in any other European country. Transnational crime is, however, a considerable problem for the EU, particularly now that the union has a frontier with the former Soviet republics, where criminalisation of the state has gone a long way. Human trafficking is an ever increasing problem for Western Europe, but legislation in many European countries, Sweden included, has for a long time treated the victims of people smuggling as illegal immigrants. The victims have been sent home instead of any attempt being made through them to get at the criminal networks responsible for the trade. In Europe the lack of any harmonised legislation to fight organised crime, in combination with the lack of internal borders, is a big problem.
     A UN Convention against transnational organised crime has been in force since the autumn of 2003. The convention is an important tool in fighting the phenomenon. However, substantial work remains before ways of thinking and working methods on the part of the authorities catch up with the innovations and changes that the criminal networks carried out a long time ago. The fact that the criminals are several steps ahead is almost a cliché and nothing new. But the size of the lead, especially in less fortunate parts of the world, has proved to be disastrous.

SVANTE CORNELL
Associate Professor of East European Studies and Research Director of the Silk Road Studies Program at Uppsala University; Deputy Director, Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, Johns Hopkins University-SAIS.