Transnational Crime 427destroying poppy fields in Af ghan i stan or coca fields in Bolivia would be tantamount
to destroying the economies of each of these states. Af ghan i stan, for example, produces
an estimated 70 percent of the world’s heroin, most of which is consumed in the Rus sian
Federation. The economic value to Tajikistan of heroin smuggling from Af ghan i stan
to the Rus sian Federation is equivalent to 30 to 50 percent of its GDP. A similar fate has
befallen the West African state of Guinea- Bissau, whose offshore islands and miles
of coastland have been too costly for the relatively poor country to police adequately.
Narcotraffickers have established a collection- and- distribution base in Guinea- Bissau
that may be responsible for the transit of 2,200 pounds of cocaine per night, with the
complicity of some in the national military.
Moreover, once a narcotics transport infrastructure is established, it can be used to
transport other illicit goods, ranging from copied software, movies, music, and designer
clothing to the much more horrific trafficking in humans.
A final challenge is that because drug profits are often recycled into the purchase
of arms, intelligence, and bribes for use by terrorist organ izations, the harm of nar-
cotrafficking is not restricted to destabilized countries, violent and property crime, bro-
ken families, and shattered lives. It also takes the form of or ga nized terrorist attacks
against ordinary people all around the world. (See Chapter 8.)
This situation has led to an increasing use of the term narcoterrorism, which high-
lights the links between terrorism as a po liti cal strategy and narcotrafficking as an
effective method of funding terrorists. The term also serves to increase the availabil-
ity of resources to counter narcotrafficking, because in much of the advanced-
industrial world, framing an issue as an ele ment of “national security” makes it more
impor tant, and thus more effective in competing for resources against “less- than-
vital” threats.
One impor tant shared feature of human and narcotrafficking is that the damage
each does is relatively slow and may not always result in death. States usually pay the
most attention to vio lence that results in death. This may explain why TCOs are again
gaining the attention of policy makers and publics: since 2010, a rapid escalation in
drug cartel vio lence in Mexican towns and cities bordering the United States has
pushed the salience of narcotrafficking to the forefront of public- policy debates. The
dramatic escapades of the Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and his
Sinaloa cartel provide an accessible face to what other wise might seem dry policy
debates.
cyber crime or netcrime
Cyber crime is increasingly familiar to people in the developed world. The Internet had
its origins in a U.S. Department of Defense proj ect aimed at making the U.S. nuclear
command and control structure less vulnerable to a first strike. The concern was that