Abstract
How organized crime is a nuclear smuggler's new best friend.
The chief of the nuclear radiation agency in the former Soviet republic of Georgia reported in July 2005 that on several occasions his agency had confiscated small quantities of smuggled, Russian-origin highly enriched uranium on Georgian territory. In one incident, officials discovered that the material had entered the separatist region of South Ossetia, Georgia, from North Ossetia, Russia. In another, officials caught smugglers with nuclear materials attempting to exit Georgia via its border with Turkey and Armenia. More recently, officials confiscated additional material in early 2006.
These smuggling cases point to a growing concern. Organized crime hired the smugglers to carry the nuclear materials. Just as drug traffickers use low-level criminals (so-called mules) to move their drugs across borders, organized crime appears to be making use of established smuggling networks to carry a potentially deadlier contraband through Georgia to Turkey and onto Western Europe and neighboring Mideast states, where the materials are sought by terrorist groups.
Russian, European, and U.S. officials have failed to fully grasp the scope of this problem because not all known incidents of smuggling are reported to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Furthermore, the compartmentalization of intelligence and inadequate information-sharing between governments prohibit analysts from tracking the full route of smuggled nuclear materials and from understanding the actors involved in their procurement, shipment, and ultimate planned use. At present, many nuclear threat reduction programs emphasize technical solutions to safeguard Russian nuclear facilities. But such measures fail to take into account the more elusive “human element”–the criminals and terrorists who, because of endemic corruption in the former republics of the Soviet Union, may increasingly have access to nuclear materials.
Our recent research in Russia, Georgia, Turkey, and the United States revealed that a number of factors underlie criminals' widening access to nuclear materials. Many of Russia's nuclear facilities are located in the southern Ural Mountains and in Siberia, high-crime areas along Russia's southern border. Extreme poverty along the border creates willing couriers among individuals desperate to support their families. Poorly paid conscripts guard nuclear facilities. Local newspapers in Chelyabinsk Oblast have documented instances in which it is possible to gain entrance into closed cities, where some nuclear facilities are located, for as little as a $5 bribe.
Moreover, since the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, the heroin trade has grown considerably, prompting an extensive flow of drugs out of Afghan poppy fields, through Central Asia and Russia, and into Western Europe. This drug trade not only increases the crime rate in Russia but also dramatically expands the number of Russian drug users. Officials recently detected drug abuse in some nuclear workers in the closed Russian city of Ozersk; one reason this is problematic is that addiction is a vulnerability that could be exploited by drug dealers associated with organized crime.
The drug trade often connects and complements numerous other smuggling networks that involve metals, cars, weapons, and such prosaic items as flour and gas. Some organized crime groups are moving forcefully into the legitimate economy, and individuals associated with such groups are even winning elections as legislators in both Russia and Georgia. A 2004 study sponsored by the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center at American University estimated that organized crime in Georgia has a foothold in a number of legitimate business interests, taking in 30 percent of banking revenue, 40 percent of hotel and restaurant income, 15 percent of energy revenue, and 40 percent of construction revenue.
This problem is not unique to Georgia. Corruption in Russia's construction industry poses particular risks. Many construction firms are owned or infiltrated by organized crime. To keep labor costs down, many employ large numbers of undocumented illegal immigrants, especially from Central Asia, some of whom are targets of Islamist recruiters. These developments augur numerous potential ties between the criminal and noncriminal worlds, including the supposedly secure nuclear industry.
One Defense Department contractor from a large U.S. corporation reported to us that the head of a construction project he ran in the Russian Far East to safeguard a nuclear materials site was murdered for failing to comply with organized crime. When the next construction chief managed to survive, the contractor presumed that organized crime had infiltrated the operation.
Those belonging to this new generation of professional criminals differ from their Soviet-era counterparts in that they are not bound by a code that limits their mode of action. They will work with terrorists, despite security analysts' long-held belief that criminals will not jeopardize their profits by associating with high-risk individuals like terrorists. Neither are these new criminals nationalistic like the mafia. Post-Soviet crime groups lack any loyalty to the state and will interact with anyone in order to make money.
Ironically, the incarceration of criminals can add to the problem. Prisons are no longer the schools of crime but are emerging as the corporate headquarters for criminal operations. Terrorists and criminals imprisoned in former Soviet republics and in Western Europe employ corruption and subterfuge to obtain cell phones and even access to e-mail, which allow them to communicate with associates beyond prison walls. Inmates' links to members of parliament and law enforcement officials–not to mention a steady flow of money–allow them to run their operations smoothly from behind bars.
Inmate control of prisons is particularly acute in Georgia. Imprisoned “thieves-in-law” (the highest ranking Georgian organized criminals) rioted in December 2005 and January and March 2006 when President Mikheil Saakashvili's government tried to isolate them and confiscate their cell phones. Until then, Bacho Akhalaia, the recently installed prison director, explained to us that prisoners ran the prisons and could control operations that ran across Russia.
Criminals seeking to direct smuggling operations have a vast network at their disposal. Once they have been appropriated, nuclear materials can move along with drugs and other illicit goods–even smuggled humans–through official and nonofficial border points, where bribes paid to customs and border guards can ensure their smooth passage. The ease of moving contraband suggests that many cases of nuclear smuggling are not found or reported.
We have documented extensive corruption in the transportation sector. Goods in the former Soviet Union move by trains due to the lack of a well-developed road network and the enormous expanse of the country. In many cases, it is possible to move cargo by paying off train conductors. (Much of the illegally harvested caviar from the Caspian Sea is sent to Moscow this way.) Corruption is also rampant among the traffic police–citizens take such jobs expecting to earn large illicit sums–making it possible to move cargoes around the country with impunity. Likewise, in recent years, Russian authorities busted smuggling rings in regional airports, where smugglers were usually operating in cooperation with corrupt local customs services.
The presence of these smuggling networks associated with major transportation hubs and a lack of competent policing make it possible to move any kind of contraband. The confiscation of some of the nuclear material found by Georgian authorities before 2005 was due to intelligence work and not detection technology. In addition, radiation detection devices don't exist at many border crossings. Many of those deployed on critical smuggling routes are antiquated and ineffective–and, at times, they have been deliberately turned off as a result of payoffs to local border guards or customs officials.
Technology alone, in other words, will not suffice. Yet many protection strategies are based on technical solutions and the tenet that states are capable of controlling their citizens and their employees. To meet the threat of nuclear trafficking, governments need to shift some priority from the state control of nuclear materials to the growing importance of non-state actors in the proliferation of nuclear materials.
The international community must work much harder to sever links between terrorist groups and organized crime and to combat corruption. To do this they must engage in fundamental research within both the academic and intelligence communities. Officials should actively undertake surveillance and intelligence gathering within prisons to disrupt terrorist and criminal recruitment and communications. It is also essential to break down the compartmentalization of information within law enforcement and intelligence agencies and promote a regional approach among governments. Compartmentalization was essential to security during the Cold War but poses obstacles to nonproliferation. Policy makers must raise their awareness of these challenges before more nuclear materials accumulate in the hands of those who will use them for malicious purposes.
“And with the Canadian border being what it is, I feel that I can no longer guarantee your safety.”
Supplementary Material
Nuclear Security