Czeslaw Milosz |A Poem for the end of the century

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In december 1993 the Amsterdam Chief of Police Nordholt dissolved unilateraly a special branch police squat (IRT). In this squat several police departments cooperated. He discovered that the squat imported tons of softdrugs "in order to trace" the drug kingpigs. Nordholt did not agree to this investigation method.

The result was an enormous political row. The lower house in The Hague debated several times about its role. In the debate of april 7, 1994 it decided by motion of MP Dijkstal, at the moment Home office minister, to start a Parliamentary Enquete. MP Maarten van Traa was appointed president of the commission. Constitutionaly this is a powerful tool of parliament and is not used very often.

The subject of the enquete: the nature, the seriousness and size of organised crime and the methods used in investigations by police forces. In March 1996 the commission published its report named "Concerning Investigations". It lay in the nature of the report to not only discuse in public the methods used by investigation forces, but also the legitimacy of the whole complex of drugpolicy and crime.

Soon after the publication of the report french president Chirac critisized the Dutch drug policy. He demanded a tough on drugs, a tough on crime policy.

In fact he prevented a legalization debate in the Netherlands, not knowing that the debate is going world wide.
In reaction, and in the light of the comming Dutch presidency of the European Union and the ambition to sign a Treaty of Amsterdam, the Dutch government diverted the debate to the appointments of Chiefs of Police forces.

The legalization debate never took place in public, although large sections of the Dutch political spectrum believe that legalization is the only way.

Immigrant and foreign groups play a big role in the drugs trade which is directly linked to the drugs economy in the country of origin. This is especially true of groups in the Surinam, Moroccan and Turkish community. They are respectively specialised in cocaine, hash and heroine. Profits are mostly not laundered in the Netherlands, but are invested in the countries of origin and in the international market.

The commission has moreover established that immigrants and foreign groups are in some cases alarmingly closely linked with political and economic men of power in their countries of origin. The commission indicates in particular Surinam and to a lesser extent Moroccan relations. The commission is of the opinion that international relations must not be allowed to stand in the way of the fight against organised crime.

Although the drug policy as such was not included in the inquiry, the commission has paid some attention to the relationship between the drug policy and organised crime. It is a fact that the hash trade in the seventies and eighties has been left in relative peace, as a result the dealers had been given more room to manoever then. The wholesale for the supply of coffee shops landed in the hands of criminals partly as a result of this. In spite of intensifying the investigation of the hash trade since the end of the eighties, the Netherlands is still an important link in the international drugs economy. On the question whether from this point of view further regulation or even legalisation of the use and the trade in softdrugs and possibly XTC is desirable and/or necessary, the commission is divided.

As far as the effects of liberalisation of the policy for public health, international relations and the shift to other illegal markets and activities are concerned the prognoses and the opinions of the commission are diverse.

Half of the commission think that the liberalisation will have a great positive effect on the nature, seriousness and extent of organised crime. The other half of the commission is not convinced. That does not alter the fact that the whole commission is aware of the paradox in the fight against drugs: a ban creates, as long as there is demand, illegal trade and thus forms a breeding ground for organised crime.

The latest estimate of the proceeds come from the aforementioned Van Dijk, Steinmetz and others (1995) and concerns the Dutch market for soft drugs. They come to the conclusion that the inland turnover in soft drugs amounts to 0.8 billion guilders, that 1.8 billion is exported abroad, that transitional trade through the Netherlands (where not a single transaction takes place within the Netherlands) is worth 3.9 billion and for the international trade which is organised by the Dutch but doesn't even enter the country, they reach the fantastic amount of 12.5 billion per year. This is in any case worthwhile estimate, but even this report does not deliver the final picture. In particular the estimate of the enormous amount of international trade is based on little more than the impression of the "godfathers" who were interviewed that the yearly turnover of hash and marihuana amounts to 10-20% of the total transitional trade and the international trade. And by subtracting an estimate of the transitional trade, based on information on confiscated soft drugs by the CRI, from the total, leaves a remainder of 1450 tons turnover for international trade. This is about 12.5 billion guilders per year.

This concerns groups, whether we are talking about the established Italian Mafia or more recently formed Turkish criminal drugs groups, that are in general larger, even much much larger than Dutch groups and are involved in business, politics and bureaucracy in the countries where they are active. Even the largest Dutch drug trading group is incomparable to the size of the Colombian cartels, the Italian Mafia or the Moroccan hash groups and their influence on Dutch politics and the Dutch economy is comparatively little.

The Colombian cartels produce, prepare, transport and sell cocaine, marihuana as well as selling heroine en gross. They form very large organisations if one counts the tens of thousands of people involved in the various activities in the source countries. Nevertheless one should not imagine that they are large close-knit organisations or centrally organised mega-companies. The bosses organise the buying up of raw materials, refinement, transport by smuggling by sea and they make sure that various jobs are carried out (internal discipline, protection from the government, money laundering and suchlike) from an office without which none of their extensive activities could take place undisturbed, but all these processes are run with such autonomy that successful judicial, even military action against one of these activities is unable to really effect the functioning of the cartels. For the same reason they spread the risk by setting up branches in South American neighbouring countries. Thus cocaine is transported via Brazil and Venezuela and (as will become apparent later) via Surinam, the Dutch Antilles and Aruba. The Netherlands are important for the cartels because they can ship large amounts of drugs in one go in containers into Europe and the ports at the Rotterdam and Amsterdam ports are suitable for this.

IV.2.4. How drugs money is spent

The Moroccan government does its very best to attract foreign currency generated by Moroccan citizens abroad. It creates favourable conditions for investment in building and tourism. The government hopes that money from abroad will partly finance large infrastructure projects, such as the building of a dam. Drugs dealers have been known to invest in the building of mosques of a fundamental character which in turn has its own political dimension. Turkish right wing political movements are partly run on drugs money. To the left the PKK is partly run on money gained through extortion from the drugs trade. Besides this there are rich drug dealers in Turkey who invest in sport clubs (football). The political movement which supports the former army general Bouterse, is going to take part in the next general election, Bouterse himself acts like a true South American drugs baron by giving food to the poor.

IV.2.5. Local variations to the picture

Is the wholesale market in the Netherlands strongly centralised or not? The market in illegal goods always tends, according to American economic theory on organised crime (Schelling 1967), towards concentration and the formation of monopolies. Besides the authorities are unable to play a regulatory role in an illegal market and the entrepreneurs makes use of other means than market forces. If this was true for the drugs trade in the Netherlands, one would expect to see a few large groups instead of many small ones and it goes without saying that one would expect the capital to dominate. However, it appears that the contrary is true, however. The market is very open, wholesalers and drug trading groups are really spread over the whole country, and the distribution network is so fine that the consumer can easily get hold of all sorts of drugs in even the smallest villages. He doesn't need to go to the big city for them. Above all the price of good quality drugs is low in comparison to the price in neighbouring countries. And this rather indicates the relative normalisation of the business than the artificial formation of a monopoly. The only activity that threatens to disturb the market are rip offs. This occurs fairly regularly in Amsterdam as well as the towns in the east of the Netherlands.

The prostitution scene is in itself not so much of a problem - the ownership of prostitution businesses is remarkably fragmented - but catering businesses in the red light district of Amsterdam according to the police are mainly in the hands of 16 well defined criminal groups. The theory that social problems in the neighbourhood and the problem of public order are phenomena which are not independent of organised crime, is supported by the fact that it is not possible to see the problems on the street independent from the ownership in the neighbourhood, and this theory is also backed up by the basis of the analysis which the police has made in this area; they are dependent on one another. Here, by the way it is noticeable that not only the sale of drugs causes a large problem due to organised crime but so does the situation where the property market has been disrupted by investment of uncontrolled large profits which have been made in the drugs market.

VII The role of the Colombian cartels in the Netherlands

VII.1. Introduction: The end of the Cali-Cartel?

The police strategy of yearlong investigations worked. The largest cartels have been "decapitated" and their greatest organisational talents have been removed.
Don Pablo (Escobar)'s grave is visited daily by dozens of people and in that regard this role model still lives on for the poor, but on the other hand this symbolises that his concrete organisation has gone forever. But has an end come to world wide trade in cocaine and heroine, which increasingly comes from Colombia? It's more likely that there has been a relocation effect. The old Colombian organisations of Bogotá, Medillîn, Cali and Pereira will regroup and new talent will rise to the top.

It would be naive to think that the decapitation strategy would really effect the extent of the international drugs trade.The arrest of the top men sends a moral message in as much as it puts everything to do with hard drugs in a bad light. The evil deeds and the through and through bad characters of drugs barons are exaggerated in the media and in the fiction surrounding them (compare it to the new film trend where a lone American hero fights against the all powerful cartels) and the audience is told that the investigators are capable of arresting villains even at the highest level. But this action only changes the topography of the landscape, the economic geography remains the same. The United States forms a market of many millions of customers. Canada and Australia have joined the States and the market in Europe is potentially even bigger than the first three put together. In Colombia and other South American countries too it is estimated by the American Ministry of Justice that after all things have been taken into account between 800 000 and one and a half million people are dependent on the production of drugs for their livelihood and that this economy has created a new prosperous class of people. The source countries form whole or half narco-states where (individual people in) politics and authority have a vested interest in the continuance of this economy. At this moment Colombia is undoubtably the most important cocaine-exporting country and the traders are dispersed over all countries where demand with purchasing power for this product exists.

VII.3. The Colombian cocaine trade in the United States

Seldom has an export product from the Third World conquered a market so quickly and so convincingly as cocaine did in America in the seventies and the eighties and never has a relatively small group of entrepreneurs become so quickly and so outrageously rich as the drug barons of Colombia.

Many of the big Colombian drug dealers began in the United States or at least spent some time there as an immigrant. They have transported so much cocaine to that country that the wholesale price slumped from 50-60 thousand dollars a kilo to 16-20 dollars in the eighties and the saturation of the market is apparent by the fact that the price has remained more or less constant from that moment on. For the American government this was the reason for declaring "war on drugs". President Bush made it his goal to reduce the import by 10% within two years and after ten years allow no more than the half of what at that time arrived in America to enter the country. In a well informed article in the Economist that is translated in the Dutch weekly Intermediair of 7 april 1995, it is stated that the American government has spent 50 million dollars up until now on this. This effort has not delivered many results and in many scientific publications (McCoy and Block 1992) and articles in the press this war has quickly been declared hopeless and lost. The American authorities have greatly increased the stakes in this struggle, but in the arms race which has developed, where smugglers even use undetectable submarines and jet planes, the Americans have in no way won. Important successes have been booked by the DEA (cf McKlintick, 1993) in the operations Swordfish and Green Ice where no less than 200 people across the whole world were arrested and 40 million dollars in cash confiscated (Bovenkerk (b), 1995) but these operations have had no influence on the volume of cocaine present in the United States nor on price of cocaine.

VIII.1. The seriousness of the situation

The situation in the Netherlands...

Furthermore, it has been established that at the moment there is no question of criminal groups, on a national level or a local level, having brought particular sectors of the economy under their control, whether through the ownership of enterprises that are crucial for the running of certain sectors, or whether through the power in the unions concerned (labour racketeering).

There are, however, two sectors - namely the catering business (annex property) and road transport - where developments indicate that criminal groups are becoming involved on some scale; in particular the proportion of ownership in the red light district in Amsterdam is a cause for anxiety from this point of view.

... in comparison with other countries

In Belgium there has been little research carried out concerning organised crime. More recently only the activities of the Parliamentary Inquiry into trade in people lead to a few studies into the nature and the extent of trade in women and the police corruption that went with it (Fijnaut 1993). In France too organised crime has up until now not been the subject of any extensive scientific research. A few years ago there was a Parliamentary Inquiry that did carry out some research into the activities of the Italian mafia in France and surrounding countries, but this inquiry was not followed up in the form of deep and extensive research (Assemblée Nationale, 1993). In the United Kingdom things aren't much better than in Belgium and France up until now. There are a few slim reports by the National Criminal Intelligence Service on the situation in the country (National Criminal Intelligence Service, 1993) and the Home Affairs Committee has in a recent report on organised crime made a few general comments on the nature and the extent of organised crime in the country, but that is it: completely insufficient for any useful comparison (Anderson, 1993; Levi, 1993; Hobbs, 1994).

If one just takes the report by the Ministero Dell'Interno on the situation in 1993 (published in English in 1994) into perspective, then the enormous differences to the situation in the Netherlands immediately spring out. There the top of organised crime comprises of about 500 groups (families), spread across the cosa nostra, the camorra, the 'ndragheta and the sacra cororna unita, which have in the last years - in spite of conflict among themselves - started to work more closely together and even from an organisational point of view have grown towards one another. All these groups have since the old days been very involved with all forms of traditional organised crime. In past decennia these families have built up - some more than others -strong positions of power in several legal sectors of the economy: agricultural industry, tourism, transport, the building trade, etc. These groups had the money to do this (mostly from the drugs trade), and what couldn't be bought willingly was taken by force under (the threat of) violence. And these economic takeovers were accompanied in many instances by a takeover of political power, even in Rome.

However, the Dutch situation differs either completely or for the most part to the situation in Italy on all essential points. There is no octopus-like organised crime in the Netherlands, the legal and economic sectors here in the Netherlands have not been taken over by criminal groups, the use of violence is vastly less and there is no question of the take-over of government. In short: the situation in the Netherlands is much less serious than in Italy.

VIII.3. Expectations for the near future

The globalisation of organised crime is becoming more and more of a fact.
Organised crime in the Netherlands will become more and more a part of a sort of world wide criminal system. The Netherlands will even in the near future remain the action grounds for the most diverse (immigrant, native and foreign) criminal groups. And not a lot can be done about it unless the Dutch government and the governments of many other countries are prepared and capable of taking unanimous preventive and repressive action against the activity of these groups. Which is not probable. But even then! The organisation of important criminal groups and the cooperation between them is so flexible that under pressure of governmental action illegal activity can easily be relocated, workers can swiftly be replaced, routes for illegal goods and criminal money can be changed in an instant. Such relocation of the problem is more or less the only effect that a government of a country can achieve on its own, apart from the concrete results of any criminal investigation: arrests and confiscation. This applies to the Netherlands too.

The quotes printed in this article originate from the report Inzake Opsporing from the van Traa Parliamentary Inquiry Commission, the text has been taken from the publication Buro Jansen & Janssen by means of Copy and Paste. The report was also published by SDU. The author of the article A Plea for Drug Legalization Daan Diederiks takes full responsibility for the layout and choice of the quotations.Translated by Nicola Chadwick.

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