The lost boys of Kano
Posted: 24/04/2013 Filed under: African Security, Virginia Comolli | Tags: achaba, almajiris, ban, Boko Haram, bomb attacks, insurgency, Islamist, Kano, northern Nigeria, okada, religious schools Leave a comment »
By Virginia Comolli, Research Associate for Transnational Threats
What strikes me the most on my arrival in the city of Kano, in northern Nigeria, is the number of boys roaming the streets. Here in the heartland of the Islamist insurgency that has afflicted Nigeria for the past few years, children as young as four or five spend their days weaving among the chaotic traffic and begging for food. Sent to religious boarding schools by families too poor to properly support them, they are known as almajiris.
This word is borrowed from Arabic for someone who leaves home in search of Islamic instruction, but northern Nigeria’s almajiris live a precarious existence. Some must make ideal recruits for Muslim Boko Haram militants plotting bomb attacks against their Christian compatriots.
A new path for drug law enforcement
Posted: 08/04/2013 Filed under: Drugs, Transnational threats and political risk, Virginia Comolli | Tags: decriminalisation, drug trade, drug trafficking, drugs, law enforcement, police Leave a comment »
Navy and Coast Guard personnel come alongside USS Nicholas to transfer contraband. Photo Credit: Flickr/US Navy.
By Virginia Comolli, Research Associate for Transnational Threats
New approaches to combat the illegal drugs trade that focus on reducing the harm caused by drug markets are being debated, and have in some places been implemented, but changing the existing prohibition and enforcement ‘culture’ is proving difficult.
‘Zero tolerance’ approaches to combating the trade and use of illegal drugs, such as mandatory minimum sentences and automatic penalties, have often failed to reduce the violence associated with illicit trade. They have in some cases also led to human-rights abuses by police forces, putting them at odds with their intended role of protecting the communities they serve.
The merits of different approaches to drug law enforcement were discussed at a day-long seminar hosted by the IISS on 21 March. Part of a larger project by the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC), with the International Security Research Department at Chatham House and the IISS, the seminar was aimed at law enforcement professionals and discussed global and local drug policing efforts to evaluate how police forces can help reduce the consequential harms of the drug trade.
The battle south of Algiers
Posted: 18/01/2013 Filed under: African Security, Terrorism, Transnational threats and political risk, Virginia Comolli | Tags: Algeria, Algerian foreign policy, Ansar Dine, azawad, ECOWAS, France, mali, MNLA, MUJAO, Northern Mali, overflight rights 2 Comments »
By Virginia Comolli, Research Associate for Transnational Threats
Until it permitted the French air force to fly through its airspace into Mali this weekend, Algeria had been protesting for months that it would not welcome any outside military intervention to quell the rebellion in its southern neighbour. The hostage crisis unfolding in the Algerian desert, following an attack by militants on the In Amenas gas plant, one of the country’s largest, has starkly demonstrated the risks of reprisal.
So one of the most interesting questions is what accounted for Algeria’s change of heart. This is difficult to answer because decision-making in Algiers is famously opaque, and the country often takes an ambiguous stance on regional security issues.
Venezuela after Chavez?
Posted: 03/10/2012 Filed under: Latin American security, Transnational threats and political risk, Virginia Comolli | Tags: Caracas, Henrique Capriles, Henry Rangel Silva, Hugo Chavez, oil, PDVSA, Venezuela, Venezuela elections Leave a comment »
Photo Credit: Flickr Creative Commons/mwasuk
By Virginia Comolli, Research Associate, Transnational Threats
Venezuela’s presidential election is rapidly approaching on 7 October, and observers cannot help but speculate whether the era of Hugo Chavez is coming to an end.
Chavez’s main challenger, Henrique Capriles, a lawyer and former governor of Miranda state, presents a rather different political model, one that is moderate and less confrontational (although perhaps less charismatic) and he appeals to a large portion of the population.
As governor of Miranda state, Capriles tried to replicate Brazilian President Luis Inacio ‘Lula’ da Silva’s approach of implementing pro-business policies while emphasising development and funding social programmes. He has also promised, if elected, to continue and to improve Chavez’s social programmes aimed at helping the poor.
But if elected he will face a number of challenges: forecasts of sluggish economic growth and high inflation resulting from deep structural damage done over the past few years; highly politicised armed forces, whose role as protectors of the country is linked to defending Chavez’s ‘revolution’ and the Bolivarian project; and relations with a far-from-independent Central Bank and entities such as the state oil corporation PDVSA. The latter’s management is closely linked with Chavez’s government, and Chavez is thought to be funnelling oil revenues into his government projects without approval from Congress. Read the rest of this entry »
Boko Haram is no African al-Qaeda
Posted: 17/08/2012 Filed under: African Security, Terrorism, Transnational threats and political risk, Virginia Comolli | Tags: Boko Haram, UN attack, West Africa 1 Comment »
By Virginia Comolli, Research Associate, Transnational Threats
Earlier this year, Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan described Boko Haram, the Islamist group responsible for a series of terrorist attacks in his country, as having global ambitions. A senior Nigerian military commander has put it more starkly: ‘Boko Haram is al-Qaeda’. Many US and UK politicians have called for the group to be proscribed as a terrorist group; the US Department of State recently designated leader Abubakr Shekau – and two others with ties to the group – as terrorists.
In truth, however, it is difficult to quantify the risk that Boko Haram presents outside Nigeria or to say for certain that it is on the verge of becoming an international – rather than a local – threat.
Rethinking the drugs war in Afghanistan
Posted: 11/06/2012 Filed under: South Asia, Transnational threats and political risk, US, Virginia Comolli | Tags: Afghanistan, drugs, drugs policy, eradication, poppy, war on drugs Leave a comment »
By Virginia Comolli, Research Associate
For those studying Afghanistan, the drugs trade is such a pervasive feature of the nation’s economy, politics, security and society that separating it from counter-insurgency (COIN) and diplomatic efforts is simply unthinkable. Yet the subject of counter-narcotics (CN) was notably absent from the agenda of last month’s NATO Summit in Chicago.
The IISS has acknowledged the difficulties of conducting counter-insurgency and counter-narcotics operations simultaneously; in most situations, the latter usually take a back seat. Nonetheless, the security implications of the illicit market make it a good time to assess current strategies and the ‘Afghanisation’ of policy, as well as to discuss ongoing international cooperation and the future prospects for Afghan counter-narcotics policy. And these were exactly the sort of discussions that the IISS Transnational Threats and Political Risk research programme and Dr David Bewley-Taylor of Swansea University facilitated when they recently hosted an off-the-record ‘Colloquium on counter-narcotics policy in Afghanistan: transition and beyond’. (Dr Bewley-Taylor’s involvement was part of a project funded by the Open Society Foundations’ Global Drug Policy Program and the colloquium was supported by the International Drug Policy Consortium.)
Drugs: A war lost in Afghanistan
Posted: 30/05/2012 Filed under: Nigel Inkster, Transnational threats and political risk, Virginia Comolli | Tags: Afghanistan, drugs, war on drugs Leave a comment »
Nigel Inkster, the IISS’s Director of Transnational Threats and Political Risk, has a piece in Foreign Policy examining the failure of the drugs war in Afghanistan. The article – which draws on Drugs, Insecurity and Failed States: the Problems of Prohibition, a recent Adelphi book Inkster co-authored with Virginia Comolli – looks at the failure of eradication programmes, the limited quantities of trafficked drugs seized, and the largely fruitless efforts to persuade Afghan farmers to grow less profitable or less hardy crops.
Afghanistan is the source of around 60% of the planet’s illicit opium and 80% of illegal heroin, he writes. ‘The United Nations recently reported there had been a 61% rebound in opium production in 2011, and prices were soaring. This is a worrying trend, which seems set to continue after NATO troops leave.’
But with so many vested interests in the trade inside Afghanistan, and global demand for this highly profitable, highly transportable commodity remaining strong, can there ever be a solution? Maybe, suggests Inkster, ‘but not while current conditions of high insecurity and pervasive corruption persist’…
‘Abandon the knee-jerk response on drugs’
Posted: 21/05/2012 Filed under: Adelphi books, Nigel Inkster, Transnational threats and political risk, US, Virginia Comolli | Tags: drugs, drugs prohibition, failed states, illegal drugs trade, war on drugs Leave a comment »
Violence related to the illegal drugs trade should prompt a rethink of global drugs policy, IISS Director for Transnational Threats and Political Risk Nigel Inkster and IISS Research Analyst Virginia Comolli said at the US launch of their Adelphi book, Drugs, Insecurity and Failed States: The Problems of Prohibition, at IISS-US last week.
As Inkster and Comolli explained, the prohibition of drugs was originally intended to reduce social ills associated with drug use. However, because drugs fell into the class of goods that were easy to conceal during transport, the global ‘prohibition regime’ had not succeeded in its purpose. Rather, it has only served to create a lucrative and illegal drugs smuggling industry.
Somali pirates now worry Mozambique
Posted: 09/05/2012 Filed under: African Security, Oppenheimer Lecture, Terrorism, Transnational threats and political risk, Virginia Comolli | Tags: Armando Guebuza, Mozambique, Oppenheimer Lecture, piracy, Somalia Leave a comment »By Virginia Comolli, Research Analyst
Petroleum reserves and the discovery of large offshore gas fields have put Mozambique in the news in recent years. But the country is still battling the legacy of prolonged conflict during its 1964-74 war of independence and 1977-1992 civil war. More than half the population lives below the poverty line and the country relies heavily on foreign aid.
Mozambique’s President Armando Guebuza (pictured) also expressed concern yesterday, in the latest IISS Oppenheimer Lecture, that piracy off the coast of Somalia could threaten offshore energy exploration – and his country’s future economic development with it.
‘Time for an open, informed drugs debate’
Posted: 19/04/2012 Filed under: Drugs, Nigel Inkster, Transnational threats and political risk, Virginia Comolli | Tags: drugs, failed states, war on drugs Leave a comment »
Latin American leaders have said recently that the West’s ‘war on drugs’ has failed, and a new book from the IISS agrees. At this week’s launch of Drugs, insecurity and failed states: The problems of prohibition, IISS expert and former MI6 deputy director Nigel Inkster said a new approach was needed in which drugs were treated as an issue to be managed rather than as a problem to be solved. Co-author Virginia Comolli pointed out that since the ‘war on drugs’ began in 1961 with the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs to deter trafficking and possession, none of the international treaty’s objectives had been achieved.
Worse, both authors said, banning drugs had fuelled violence and instability in the developing world, through the creation of a global black market dominated by powerful criminal groups. In some countries there had been ‘state capture’, or subversion of institutions, by criminal networks. Other nations, where drugs now overshadowed legitimate businesses, were surviving on ‘junkie economies’.
