The Elephant in the Room: How Can Peace Operations Deal with Organized Crime?
Although the threats that organized crime pose to UN peace operations are increasing, most missions lack either the mandate or resources to deal with them effectively. By using case studies from Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, and Kosovo, this paper not only illustrates the nature of the problem, it provides recommendations on how peace agents can deal with it more effectively.
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Author: Walter Kemp, Mark Shaw, Arthur Boutellis Editor: Adam Lupel
Phi Beta Iota: The report provided a much-needed articulation of the challenge, but left unaddressed is the larger challenge of the larger elephant: the financial interests that profit from mayhem. Somali pirates did not just decide one day to hold ships for ransom — they were given very specific financial incentives and very specific information on precisely which ships transiting at which point were desired for a mix of insurance fraud and other reasons. Until counterintelligence is good enough to jail the City of London denizens as needed, nothing the UN or others try to do at the tactical level will be successful.
