Dark worlds

The author relates the rise of international crime to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the liberalisation of international markets.

MISHA GLENNY is one of the best informed writers on the tragedies of Titos Yugoslavia. He now directs the searchlight on the dark world of international organised crime. This is not a work of reportage alone though the author had travelled widely for 20 years around the world in an attempt to trace the history of the astonishing growth in organised crime and the shadowy economy.

He relates the rise of international crime to the situation after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the liberalisation of international financial and commodity markets. Gone were the controls on foreign investment and currency exchange. Globalisation ushered in an enormous rise in shadow economy. The major episodes were well known.

The author connects the dots to attempt a coherent explanation of the networks and their motives. The gangs began to wield political clout. Politicians used them and were also used by them. Intelligence agencies and even armed forces began to draw on their services.

The author remarks, That vast unregulated economic area is a swamp that contains protein-rich nutrients for a host of security problems. International terrorism certainly feeds in these same grounds, but in terms of the death and misery caused, terrorism is a primitive and relatively insignificant species.

Crime and the pursuit of money or political power have proved incomparably more damaging over the last two decades. The concentration of huge resources on fighting terrorism to the neglect of other security problems is the consequence of chronic mismanagement, especially under the administration of President George W. Bush. It is striking how all opinion polls in Iraq since the invasion have placed corruption and crime in equal first place with terrorism as the major concern for citizens. The impact of the former not just in Iraq alone but across the Middle East [West Asia] will last long after the latter has diminished.

India and Pakistan are not overlooked. There are extensive sections on the United States, Russia China, South Africa, Israel, Colombia and a few others.

As Bombays economy began collapsing in the 1980s, dozens of mini-mafia operations started up across the city. They were small gang-based operations engaged in extortion, gambling, and territorial disputes between and within districts. The traditionally passive city experienced a grim upsurge in violence and murder as the gangs fought for supremacy among themselves and applied ever more ruthless sanctions against those from the business community who refused to pay up for the rackets.

From his distant outpost in Dubai, Dawood set about uniting the various gangs under his leadership. This was a formidable professional achievement. Chief among his lieutenants responsible for recruiting the emerging groups into the D-Company was a young Hindu mobster called Chhota Rajan (Little Rajan) from Chembur in Eastern Bombay.

The cases he cites in the countries he visited, based on interviews with officials, criminals and others, shock one. Few realise that Datta Samants famous strike in the early 1980s and Indira Gandhis diktat to the mill owners against surrender led not only to the collapse of the textile industry but, in its train, to the growth of organised crime. Nearly 1.5 million workers were rendered jobless, causing untold hardships to families. Gangs began exploiting unemployment.

What future has organised crime? It depends on that fickle character the politician, in or out of power. Governments around the world may be able to stem the growth of the global shadow economy and the powerful dose of instability that it injects into our lives. But if we fail to construct an adequate regulatory mechanism that is, some form of global governance then organised crime and corruption will combine with protectionism and chauvinism to engender a very unstable and very dangerous world.

Efficient and independent law-enforcement agencies are necessary, lest appeals for greater engagement of the police alone betray an abdication of political responsibility. Since the millennium, however, a hostile United States, an incompetent European Union, a cynical Russia, and an indifferent Japan have combined with the unstoppable ambition of China and India to usher in a vigorous springtime for both global corporations and transnational organised crime.

The book deserves to be read by every politician and policeman who seeks to eradicate the scourge.