Armed Forces versus Bandits - Bandit Armies

In April 1997, Albania was plunged into anarchy. Bashkim Fino, the country's new Prime Minister,⁸ branded organized crime, the mafias, as the main culprit. Hence, various military forces (French, Italian, etc.) found themselves assigned to perform humanitarian duties to somehow quell the disorder - all the while confronting an invisible «enemy», hidden amidst the general populace. Yet these soldiers do not know how their minds work, nor can they understand what goal they are pursuing, other than lining their pockets, of course.

In April 1997 in Mexico, where crime has skyrocketed since the December 1994 financial crash, the chairman of the Confederation of Industrial Associations stated that «organized crime has outpaced any ability the official or private police forces might have to react». He demanded that henceforth the armed forces be engaged to fight the formidable Mexican cartels, which is exactly what was done a month later.⁹

Is crime fighting, either domestically, or occasionally overseas, the exclusive domain of the army»? Not any more. Navies will play an increasingly important policing role in the future. From 1995 to 1996, acts of piracy reported to the International Maritime Bureau rose from 187 to 224 (most such acts go unreported). The danger zone is located between Indonesia and South China. With the help of corruption, sometimes sizeable cargoships (150m and longer) have been boarded on the high seas, emptied of their wares, and resold, or scuttled.

The Flip Side : Il»hen Bandits Infiltrate the Armed Forces¹¹

On 10 May 1997, The Frontier Post, an English-language daily from Peshawar, Pakistan, interviewed Air Marshal Ashgar Khan. A respected figure¹², 12 he stated that deceased dictator General Zia-ul-Ilaq used to transport shipments of heroin in his private aircraft. «It was Zia who started the contraband operation», Khan stressed. A month earlier, the pilot of a Pakistani military transport aircraft was arrested in New York when he sold two kilos of pure heroin, for the wholesale price of $160,000, to an FBI undercover agent. At the same time, Pakistani police arrested a known drug trafficker near Rawalpindi airport. A former officer and ex-member of Pakistani secret. services, Munawar Shah, was transporting two kilos of pure heroin, and samples of uranium (military grade, according to the local press). The drugs and uranium were on their way to another drug trafficker, Raja Altai, based in London.

8 29,000 km2 and a population of three million, 10 per cent of whom are heavily armed.

9 Mexico militariza lucha contra la droga en la fontera norte» (Mexico Militarizes Counternarcotics Campaign along the Northern Border), La Opinion, 16 May 1997.

10 In early June 1999, the British Royal Navy frigate HMS Marlborough seized from two ships in the Caribbean 8 tonnes of cocaine, with a street value exceeding UK£1 billion.

11 The fact that all recent important incidents of this sort took place in Pakistan is purely coincidental. A month earlier, or later, similar cases could have happened in 30 other countries anywhere in the world.

12 Ashgar Khan was the first Commander-in-Chief of the Pakistani Air Force, the President of Pakistan Air Lines (PIA). Zia-ul-Itaq died on 17 August 1988, when his private aircraft blew up, a crime that has not yet been solved.