BEIJING - On August 28 last year, not long before the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, Asia Times Online singled out Afghanistan as the greatest source of instability in the world. Sure enough, a few days later Osama bin Laden launched the boldest ever attack on the US from his Afghan strongholds, and the US responded after a few weeks with a blitzkrieg that annihilated bin Laden's forces and regained control over Afghanistan. While the stability of Central Asia is still open to dispute, US attention is being focused to the west, on Iraq, where 10 years after the Gulf War President Saddam Hussein remains defiant.
His threat is real, especially if seen in connection with the ongoing conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. But this very conflict could be reason for caution in any move against Iraq. Military success against Saddam is not the main issue, but rather what would happen after that victory. Would the Kurds in the north be reconciled with a new government in Baghdad? Would Iran be tempted to take advantage of the situation, or would Syria? Would the wahhabis in Saudi Arabia, while relieved by the fall of their old enemy Saddam, not panic at the newy accrued US power in the region? And what would the Palestinians do?
All these questions require both long- and short-term answers, but the most dangerous are the long-term ones, where the odds are fuzzier.
So while the Middle East conflict rages on, the United States seems to be forgetting one of the important lessons of September 11. That attack came from a terrorist group that was based in an area without responsible political control, and was financed by criminal activities, especially drug trafficking.
Taliban-ruled Afghanistan was, as we christened it at the time, a geopolitical black hole, unresponsive to international political pressure and with little or no domestic control over what happened within its own territory. The leaders in Kabul could not be pressured because they held little or no control. Saddam, on the contrary, is in full control of his territory - he may be defiant, but he is ultimately a much easier problem to tackle. In Iraq there is a telephone number to call; in Afghanistan there was none, and that made things immensely more difficult.
Despite the US advance in Central Asia, black holes have not disappeared. On the contrary: During the past nine months a decrease in exports of heroin from Afghanistan, previously the largest opium-poppy grower of the world, has resulted in a rebound of heroin production in the almost forgotten Golden Triangle. There, if heroin and amphetamines are pooled together, some 60 percent of the world's narcotics are produced. This generates a huge amount of money to be laundered and invested in activities that, whether clean or dirty, spoil the normal market order of all neighboring countries, including China, where registered drug addicts amount to some 900,000. The Golden Triangle is a huge black hole that could potentially destabilize the whole of China, as Chinese organized crime seem to control most of the smuggling routes and is keen to affirm its presence against the new pressure coming from the authorities.
A bleak picture of the situation was presented last week in Rome by China's Research Center for Strategy and Management at a closed-door seminar attended by Europeans and Americans and organized together with Heartland and the National Security Information Center. There is a way out, Strategy and Management said, as some of the armed forces of the dozens of minorities in northern Myanmar would be willing to give up planting opium in return for an opportunity for normal economic development. Beijing is also extremely keen on exploring peaceful ways to eradicate drug production from the area as it sees drug money as the main source of easy cash for the triads that operate with growing boldness in China.
The danger of this Myanmese black hole must not be underrated. Thousands of people in the region are armed, and although they have shown no sign of threatening the US, and they have reached a truce with Yangon, the risk of a spillover of violence is constant. Chinese organized crime is hugely dangerous too. Several cities in China are considered unsafe for trips by top officials who allegedly have received death threats by organized criminals. These organizations have been hit by a wave of arrests in the past couple of years - the case of Xiamen and Lai Changxing was just the most notorious one - but dozens of other localities have witnessed bitter battles between Beijing and local criminals, some of them protected by corrupt officials.
Organized crime deals with many things, prostitution, loan sharking, protection money, gambling and drugs. Of these activities the most dangerous and destabilizing appears to be drug trafficking, as China was already once weakened and knocked out by a century of opium trade. Therefore the eradication of opium in northern Myanmar seems to be the main effort in this ongoing fight against Chinese triads, which then bring their drugs and crime out of Asia to Europe and the US. It is true that as long as their business is thriving they have no interest in declaring a war, but their corruptive influence is thus even deeper. This is what is most feared in Beijing - the corruption of officials and people not by gray businesses, but by altogether bad businesses. In many ways the polluting influence of northern Myanmar with its drug money is second to none, and certainly not to Iraq, which can't mount an attack on the US on the scale that would be possible with the financial means of the Chinese mafia.
Afghanistan was dangerous because it was a black hole, and so is northern Myanmar. Arguably, despite the pain caused by the raging conflict in the Middle East, on its list of priorities the US should recognize that black holes are more dangerous than Iraq. (2002-05-16 Asia Times)
