Home ›› 13 Nov 2021 ›› Editorial
Transnational organised crime (TOC) is becoming an increasingly global problem that will require international and interagency coordination, network analysis and information sharing. Drug trafficking accounts for 30 per cent of the proceeds of TOC. It also includes a wide-range of other criminal activities such as human trafficking, arms trafficking, migrant smuggling, counterfeit goods, environmental crime, cybercrime, illegal unreported and unregulated fishing and money laundering. TOC groups seldom constrain themselves to just one criminal activity, instead maximising profit while minimising risk.
TOC is one of the root causes of human suffering and socioeconomic instability. It undermines regional and global governance and threatens public safety and health. TOC is conducted by transnational crime and drug trafficking organisations that partake in a range of illegal enterprises.
These criminal networks do not respect borders or laws. They move their illicit goods along expansive and resilient supply chains. In short, it will take an agile global network to defeat an agile global network. Like modern warfare, TOC is transnational, multi-functional and multi-domain. The nature and character of means used to counter TOC must be too, with the acknowledgment that it is an enduring global problem. Efforts to counter TOC must continue to evolve in order to minimise its impact.
The fight against TOC requires not just any counter-network, but an agile global network of international, regional and interagency security law enforcement partners working in concert to disrupt and degrade transnational crime and drug trafficking organisations and stem their illicit operations and activities.
Establishing such an interconnected network necessitates sharing information for shared situational awareness, passing actionable intelligence for collective actions, coordination and helping to improve the capabilities and capacities of each law enforcement partner. Connecting distinct parts of the network to take quick and decisive actions is central to success in countering TOC.
These illegal activities are often opportunistic, with criminal groups taking advantage of gaps in national legal systems as well as inadequate capacities of, and coordination between, law enforcement agencies. For example, traffickers exploit inconsistencies in border management between two sides of a border, but they also identify where deficits in legal systems and regional cooperation prevent an effective response to transnational crime.
The regional illicit drug market is estimated to be worth over US$30 billion per year. UNODC research shows that Southeast Asia hosts the world’s largest methamphetamine market, as well as the second largest opium and heroin market. While the business models of the two drugs are quite different, production of both generally takes place where state institutions are weak and chances of interception are low. The drugs are then trafficked to meet demand in large population areas.
Transnational organised crime groups have grown the business by exploiting weaknesses in state capacities to regulate precursor chemicals, as well as gaps in law enforcement and regional cooperation. Illustrating the speed of the methamphetamine threat, within the last few years 6 of the 10 ASEAN countries reported production of the drug at an ‘industrial scale’, and 9 of 10 reported rising seizures and use. With organised crime groups in China also producing and trafficking significant quantities of methamphetamine into and through the region, Southeast Asia is now the world’s largest methamphetamine market.
But drug production and trafficking are not the only transnational organised crimes that challenge the region.
Countering TOC also requires a global and unified enterprise approach to cut across the many affected parties for effectiveness and efficiency. Greater efforts are also needed to bolster cooperation on mutual legal assistance in criminal matters protocols to further advance cross-border criminal investigations. This must include addressing capability and capacity gaps to identify enterprise solutions. Efforts to counter TOC should also streamline structures and processes to enable synchronised, distributed and integrated law enforcement operations and activities across the integrated globe and interconnected domains for the unity of effort.
Another key mechanism to improve efforts to counter TOC is conducting intelligent network analysis to better target transnational crime and drug trafficking groups. This involves determining TOC vulnerabilities through methods like extant cargo analysis capability that targets vulnerable transport nodes. Governments should select and prioritise organisations to target and execute counter TOC operations that undermine entire TOC networks and enablers.
