Narcotics and Security through the Caucasus towards Europe:

Trafficking Patterns and impact on local State’s and EU security

A short outline of the proposal to study aspects of the narcotics industry in the Caucasus that are most salient to the interests of the EU.

1. Background
   
   The proposal offers the research and systematic mapping the trafficking of drugs through the South Caucasus region toward consumer markets in EU– analyzing the development of trafficking routes as well as societal, economic and political consequences in producer and transit states.
   
   With the present application, it is proposed to use the research and its emerging results of a more general nature as a base and gear a significant portion of upcoming research efforts toward a focus on issues of specific importance to the interests of the EU. More specifically, part of the research will be geared toward acquiring information on the details of narcotics trafficking in the region that are of crucial importance to understanding its nature, especially as far as the actors in the drug trade are concerned – more specifically, the interrelationships between criminal networks and governments’ security. The project will strive to address the following issues:
   
   ·       The development of trafficking routes and the specific actors involved in it;
   
   ·       The impact of the drug traders into the political and economic security of the South Caucasus states.
   
   The production and trafficking of illicit narcotics has become a key problem threatening societal, economic and political stability in the Caucasus as well as the broader south Eurasia region. The global production of opium is heavily concentrated to Central and Southeast Asia, more specifically Afghanistan and Burma. Total production in these two countries doubled in the 1990s compared to the 1980s, with Afghanistan alone now producing over 3,500 tons of opium yearly. Global opium production shows no signs of abating in spite of global counter-narcotics efforts and international presence in Afghanistan. Parallel to the rise of drug production and trafficking, the end of the cold war and internal problems contributed to the weakening of states in the region, and speeded up the process whereby insurgent and terrorist groups increasingly engaged in drug trafficking and other organized crime in order to finance their organizations. Similar processes have been relatively well documented in Colombia and the Andean region, and to some extent in Southeast Asia. In Afghanistan, Central Asia and the Caucasus, this is even less the case. Meanwhile, narcotics trafficking has grown to the level of a leading threat to the security of the local states. It is a serious distorting element in the regional economies, hindering economic development; a grave societal threat, given the presence of increasing numbers of heroin addicts, and an ensuing and rapidly growing HIV epidemic; a security threat of a military nature, given the evidence of linkages between the drug trade and insurgent/terrorist groups; a threat to the political systems of the regional states through corruption and criminal infiltration of states, which distorts governance and undermines statehood.
   
   Most challenging are the growing links between drug trafficking and terrorist and insurgent groups, and the ‘capture’ of state bodies by criminal networks through corruption and infiltration. Linkages between terrorist/insurgent groups and organized crime are numerous, and are becoming the rule rather than the exception in this region. In particular, the gradual drying up of state or state-linked finances for terrorist and insurgent groups (a growing phenomenon since the end of the Cold War and further since 9/11)  is increasingly pushing these groups toward organized crime and especially drug trafficking to finance their activities. Global groups such as Al Qaeda, as well as regional terrorist/insurgent groups have been implicated in narcotics and other organized crime, including in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Chechnya. Crime, and specifically the trafficking of narcotics, is increasingly a key component of terrorism and insurgency in the Caucasus.
   
   Meanwhile, a process of criminalization of the state has taken place in areas badly affected by organized crime and especially the drug trade. This process has been at its worst in states affected both by transition from socialist rule and protracted civil conflict, such as Georgia and Azerbaijan. Presently, it is an open question whether Azerbaijan could be termed as state that have been infiltrated to such an extent that it is the state that actively encourages the production and trafficking of narcotics. Former communist states in the CIS have on the whole been particularly badly affected by this phenomenon, in part because of the particular pathologies within the Soviet administrative system. Law enforcement agencies in particular have been affected by criminal infiltration, though in some states the links between state and crime are much broader.
   
   2. Objectives
   
   The proposed research is striving to fill the gap on these issues. It will address two separate tasks:
   
   Mapping the development of routes and actors in the Eurasian narcotics trade, especially the South Caucasus as well as the border regions of Central Asia. This task will strive to provide information and intelligence on the development of narcotics trafficking routes from Afghanistan and Iran toward Russia and Western Europe, as well as provide an understanding of the main actors involved in this business. A part of this project will assess the development of major trade routes. In so doing, it will address the differences in trafficking between Caucasian states. In addition, the study will aim to identify, to the extent possible, the likely and confirmed actors in the trafficking of narcotics. It will seek to ascertain the degree of involvement of criminal groups, state officials, and violent non-state actors in the drug business – and to what degree local as well as non-regional actors are involved, including European or multinational criminal groups, as well as ethnic-based criminal groups. Tendencies of change in these factors will be given special attention.
   
   Secondly and mainly, the research project will study the impact of the drug trafficking on the political and economic security of the South Caucasus states and the likelihood of the collapse of these states under the threat of drug traders. This segment of the project will focus on the involvement of insurgent groups (violent non-state actors) in the region in organized crime, especially narcotics trafficking and their influence on the state. The task will detail the involvement in narcotics trafficking by relevant insurgent groups and unrecognized states in the Caucasus.

“State Capture” by criminal organizations. State authorities in Caucasian states are widely known to be corrupt, and the involvement of high-level officials in smuggling operations or organized crime have been reported in a number of states, most blatantly in Georgia and Azerbaijan. This task will seek to ascertain, country by country, to what level and if possible what agencies and leading personalities in the state bodies have been infiltrated or corrupted by criminal networks. Based on this, the aim will be to ascertain whether any or several of the regional states have been infiltrated to such a degree that key policy decisions (whether in foreign, domestic or economic policy) are influenced or controlled by criminal interests. This will lead to an assessment of whether any regional states can be termed “narco-states”.

3. Milestones and Deliverables

Time Schedule. The project will run for 12 months, beginning from the first day of the month following approval. The first task of mapping routes and actors will begin immediately, while the two subsequent tasks will begin in the third month of the project, building on information collected during this time. This division in time has been deemed convenient as the tasks on the crime-terror nexus and on state infiltration both build on the work conducted studying routes and actors.

 4 Deliverables.

The routes and actors task will be delivered in the form of a draft report at the end of the first five months following the approval of the project. By the end of the project period, a more extensive full report will be produced.

The crime-security nexus: The results of this task will be delivered in the form of a single report ten months following approval of contract, along with a briefing and power point presentation by project researcher at a date to be determined.

The project researcher will be available to investigate specific questions within the framework of this project.