Transnational Crime: Human, Drug, and Arms Trafficking

Posted on Apr 6, 2025 in Social and Cultural Anthropology

Transnational Criminal Organizations

Transnational criminal organizations: size of the problem, rise of, reach, international response.

  • Most operate in the shadows
    • Linked to:
      • States: weak, failed, or corrupt
      • Non-state actors: terrorist or rebel movements
  • Increase in power
    • Control territory, extract rents, provide public services, wage war
  • Penetrate all areas of life
  • Target society and economy
  • Wealthy
    • Drugs and arms most lucrative
    • Human trafficking also very lucrative

Trafficking: Human, Drugs, Arms

Illegal trade with security implications.

  • Globalization not the cause; it just provides the environment
    • Weak states, collapse of the Soviet Union, transition to market economies in Central/Eastern Europe, creation of large free trade areas (NAFTA, EU)
  • Extremely lucrative
    • Estimated annual revenues:
      • Narcotics: $500 billion to $1 trillion
      • Human trafficking: $7 billion
      • Illicit arms smuggling: $1 billion

Human Trafficking

  • Ex: Southeast Asian tsunami
    • Orphans sold into slavery
    • Government response:
      • Restricted travel by children
      • Guards at orphanages
      • Attempt to locate relatives of orphaned children
  • Globalization helps in explanation
    • International travel has become simple and inexpensive
    • Increasing wealth has expanded markets for domestic laborers
    • Boundaries of sovereignty protect traffickers
  • Realist, state-centered considerations instead of humanitarian rights are considered security issues
  • Human trafficking does not threaten the stability of states and their governments

Drug Trafficking

  • The main fronts
    • US = demand. Largest consumer of illegal drugs in the world
    • Colombia, Mexico, Afghanistan, others = supply
      • Colombia and Afghanistan are the largest sources of cocaine and heroin respectively


    • Why is it a security issue:
      • 1) Drug traffickers regularly and persistently employ violence to intimidate government officials, battle with rival traffickers over access to markets and supplies, and use force to facilitate business in many other ways.
      • 2) Profits from drug trafficking used to purchase arms; therefore, arms and drug trades linked, which means that TCO’s can often be better armed than law enforcement.
      • 3) Profits can go to support terrorism or rebel groups.
      • 4) Bad for health and can, in turn, lead to the spread of infectious diseases.
      • 5) Because the pharmaceutical world has become extremely profitable, counterfeit drugs have become a huge trading commodity. However, the effects of these drugs on people, who use them as a means to cure themselves without the expense of the real drug, have proven lethal because the ingredients have not been safe for human consumption.
    • NAFTA: ability to maximize territorial advantage
      • Mexico takes advantage of its border-crossing corridors by bribing Mexican officials.
      • Offers partnerships with Colombian rebels, Russians, Ukrainians, Chinese.
      • Charges smaller competitors tolls for use of their routes.
      • Expanded trade in humans.
  • Drugs and technology
    • Technology makes the drug trade faster, more efficient, and easier to hide
      • Express daily services
      • Track shipments online (see if authorities intercepted)
      • Use the Internet to coordinate
      • Encryption allows concealment of communications, transactions, identities
  • Arms Trafficking
    • Arms traffickers are middlemen, not the manufacturers
      • Therefore, all arms were initially transferred legally so as to support security policies of states.
      • Ex: Stinger Missiles missing
        • Shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles
        • 2300 delivered to Afghan rebels against the Soviet aircrafts, but after 600 went missing
        • US needed to buy back missiles wherever they could find them
          • Tried to buy back some from the Taliban, but they refused to sell them because of their stated need to use them in case of future conflict
        • Moreover, 6000 other weapons in Iraq’s arsenals were not accounted for