Re-route of all evil: transnational crime and Ukraine’s war

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm Ora Ogumbi.

And I'm Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Last month marked nine years since over 200 girls were kidnapped by jihadists for from a school in northern Nigeria. Most of them have still not been found, and alongside thousands of other missing Nigerians, hope is dwindling that they ever will be.

And Campbelltown, on a western Scottish peninsula, used to be known as the whisky capital of the world. Now, after a century of mostly decline, global exports and prices are on the rise. And Campbeltown is slowly regaining its title. But first, In the past three days, Russian airstrikes have pummeled Ukrainian cities, including the capital Kyiv. Meanwhile, an explosion in Bryansk, a region just over the Russian border, derailed a freight train. And in Russian occupied Crimea, a drone strike set an oil depot ablaze. American officials released figures yesterday suggesting there had been more Russian casualties since December than in the first eight months of the war, many of them in the brutal battle for the psychologically but not strategically important town of Bakhmut. International attention has shed light mostly on battlefield moves and on the ways in which lives and businesses have had to change in response to the war. But in the shadows, more shifts are happening. Organized crime has had to reorganize too. Russia's intelligence agency announced a massive drug seizure in Moscow last month. Nearly 700 kilos of cocaine from Latin America bound for wider Europe. That kind of seizure signals a huge change in global trafficking patterns since the invasion, in part because Ukrainian ports are out of action.

The Black Sea ports and Odessa particularly, have been routes for smuggling since the late 18th century, when Odessa was incorporated into what was then the Russian empire.

John Hooper writes about organized crime for the Economist.

More recently, the ports have been a vital access to the sea for what one NGO has called Europe's strongest transnational criminal ecosystem, consisting of mobs both in Ukraine and Russia. And the war between those two countries has really hit that ecosystem with the force of an earthquake.

Well, let's wind back to what that ecosystem looked like before the war.

Well, a fair amount of cocaine, for example, was coming in through the Black Sea ports. Arms were going out to Africa, to Asia, to other parts of Europe. But even more important, Ukraine included a kind of criminal superhighway connecting it to Russia. And in both directions, you had counterfeit goods, human beings who were being trafficked, narcotics, and much else passing, enriching the mobs on both sides.

And how has the war changed the shape of all that?

Well, in a number of ways. Most obviously, curfews and martial law have clamped down on criminal activity of all kinds. Conscription has absorbed many of the mobsters. The ports have been closed, in effect, by the Russian naval blockade. And perhaps most importantly, the war has dissociated the Ukrainian and Russian gangsters, particularly among Ukrainian criminals, there's this feeling that they can no longer have those links, because, as one expert put it, to me, it's one thing to be considered a criminal, it's another thing to be considered a traitor. And therefore, criminals on both sides are having to find other ways to work.

Around, which is to say that the superhighway is being rerouted somewhere, somehow.

The heroin is, to a large extent, being rooted onto the traditional route, which goes through Iran, through Turkey and the Balkans, to points west. There are signs that more cocaine is actually being rooted now through Russia. In other cases, goods have had to go through, for example, Belarus. I think it's fair to say that mobs on both sides, they are still trying to sort out exactly how to cope, because ultimately, organized crime is a business, and business has to adapt to political and diplomatic circumstances.

Well, what about when those circumstances change again, though, when the war ends? Does it get back to business as usual, do you think?

I think this is one of the questions that it's just too early to answer. One of the things that has surprised international law enforcement agencies is that the two big fears that they had when the war broke out have not been really realized. They foresaw an upsurge in human trafficking that could result from the outflow of millions of women and children from Ukraine. And they also foresaw an upsurge in arms smuggling that wars bring in vast number of armaments and therefore weapons smuggling increases. And neither has taken place on a systematic basis. One of the big changes that has taken place is in Ukraine because of the vast amounts of military and humanitarian aid entering the country. The government has been certainly encouraged by its allies to clamp down on the corruption that enables the criminality to take place. I think that that is one of the more positive possible outcomes of the war.

But Ukraine was kind of cleaning up its act even before the war. Right. This just sort of happens to help those efforts, do you think?

Yes. President Zelenskyy was elected on an anti corruption ticket. His success in delivering on his manifesto was limited before the war, but the extension of the conflict has encouraged him and his government to clamp down. There was a Dr. Draft law at the end of last year to restrict corruption and in January he fired a number of officials. But when the war ends, hundreds of billions of dollars are going to be needed for the reconstruction of Ukraine. And mobsters can insert themselves into a reconstruction process to siphon off funds through manipulating tenders, for example, or social dislocation increases the possibility for organized crime. But having said that, the impetus to crack down on the corruption that so often lies behind organized crime could mean that Ukraine comes out of this war as a better, more honest country.

John, thanks very much for your time.

My pleasure, Jason.

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I recently visited a church in Yola, a large city in northeast Nigeria.

Kinley Salmon is the Africa correspondent for the Economist.

And there in the garden on the side of the building is a commemorative bench and a plaque remembering people who have gone missing and providing some solace to the families that have lost them. That's where I met Joshua Audu.

I am one of the family of the missing person. The person that got missing in my family is their junior brother to my wife.

But it was Boko Haram, an Islamist terror organization that kidnapped Joshua's brother in law. Joshua only heard they were coming after they had already arrived.

So it was night already. The Boko Haram has come in and has captured the town and the elder sister to my wife who saw him last saw him, he was trying to brush his teeth. He woke up from sleep. That was what he said. And that was the end. We never saw him again.

That was back on September 5, 2014. There was never a body found and his family hasn't heard anything about him since then. It's a horrific thing for families to go through. It's hard enough losing someone, but even worse to not even know their fate. And Joshua is far from the only one grappling with missing family members.

So, Kinley, who else did you meet?

Well, I heard from another woman at that same church called Lydia Adamu. Her village in northeast Nigeria was also attacked by Boko Haram back in 2015, and her parents and their six children fled. Really with nothing. At first, it seemed they'd been relatively lucky. They reached the safety of Iola, a few hundred kilometers to the south. And when word came back that their village was quiet, her parents decided to venture back to try to salvage a few belongings. What happened next is pretty murky. All Lydia knows is that armed men came again shooting. She said they seized my parents on motorbikes and disappeared. She's never seen her parents again and has no idea if they did or aligned. The youngest of her siblings, only five at a time, kept on asking Lydia, where are my parents?

And how do families and communities move on from these abductions?

Well, sadly, it really is incredibly difficult. It's not just the emotional injury and loss that those left behind need to deal with, but they're also sort of an array of really difficult practical problems. When Lydia Adamo's parents disappeared, she was suddenly left to look after her five distraught siblings. It was the same for Joshua's family, and his brother in law was one of the family's breadwinners and making it more challenging is that in Nigeria, there's no legal definition of a missing person. After seven years, the family can at least apply to the high court for them to declare the missing person as presumed dead. But until then, the missing person's bank account or pension or any kind of inheritance can't be touched. The land they might own can't be divided up or sold. And spouses also normally can't get a divorce or remarry as well. And so, taken together, all of this makes it very difficult to survive financially and sustain oneself, but also just difficult to move on, really, in any way.

And how widespread is this problem?

Well, look, Nigeria is obviously a very large country, but the Red cross does have 24,000 cases of missing people registered. And they also said that's probably a tiny fraction of the true number in Nigeria. And this problem has been going on for a long time. This month marks nine years since 276 schoolgirls from Chibok were kidnapped by tourists, also in northern Nigeria. And there's also growing numbers elsewhere in Nigeria because of the rise in kidnappings, some separatist movements in the southeast of Nigeria, and clashes between farmers and herders across Africa. This problem is also present. Red Cross has registered some 71,000 people as missing across the continent. And again, the true number is likely to be much bigger. Most sobering of all, perhaps 40% of those missing are children.

And why are these abductions so prevalent?

These kinds of abductions are really one more terrible impact of armed conflict in the northeast of Nigeria. It's a pretty direct product of this long ongoing jihadist insurgency, initially by Boko Haram and more recently including by an offshoot, the Islamic State West Africa Province. And these groups abduct people partly to terrorize communities, sometimes to take wives or to force them into fighting with them. So it stems really out of that ongoing conflict.

Above all, are there ever happy endings to these stories?

We should say that there absolutely are. Unfortunately, there are relatively few. But the Red Cross works also to track down and reunite families, to try and link people who might be looking for their families with cases they may have registered elsewhere. But in total, there were only 15 reunifications last year. When they happen, of course, they're incredibly moving. There was a case in February of this year where a 15 year old boy who'd been missing for more than a decade was reunited with his family. He'd fled across the border into Cameroon, actually aged about five, after a jihadist attack on his uncle's village where he'd been attending a Religious school. His uncle was killed and the boy fled. He was reunited with his parents, though only five months after he contacted the Red Cross. That's really unusually fast. And it's partly because he could remember enough to draw a detailed map showing the location of his family's house. The trouble is, of course, few young children can do that. When I spoke with some of the people who work on this in Yola for the Red Cross, they said they're also working to try to get children to make sure they know at least the full names of their parents and not just call them mama, so that if they are separated for some reason, it's easier to relocate the families.

So what's being done to combat this huge problem? Are resources being devoted to the problem, whether that's from organizations or from the government.

At least the Red Cross is working on this among their other activities. I think it's probably fair to say that not enough is being done to try to help those families who are missing loved ones and to try to reunite people. There is some movement by the federal government in Nigeria, down in Abuja, firstly to try to understand better the problem and then to sort of help work on it in similar ways to the Red Cross has been doing. And when you talk to people who've got missing loved ones like Joshua, they underline that really it was just the Red Cross that came and offered them assistance. Of course, the sad truth is the Red Cross can't do it all. It's one organization with a limited budget. Families, of course, though, do find support in one another and they also find solace, often in religion. As I was leaving the church, there was a group singing. It's that kind of group activity of coming together that is helping people get through these kind of challenges.

Kinney, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Thank you. Always.

Scotch whiskey is hugely important. It's almost part of what being Scottish is. And by that I mean it's the community, the community around making whiskies.

Alistair Day is the co founder and master distiller at R and B Distillers.

The Scotch whisky regions, they're all very different. So you've got Lowland Highland, Speyside, Islay and Campbelltown Campbeltown. Probably the most unloved of regions recently. But when I say that it's actually one of the most famous, if ever.

A place looked ripe for whiskey fuel regeneration, it was Campbeltown.

Meehan Ridge is a Britain correspondent for the economy.

The town, which is located on the southeastern shore of the Kintyre peninsula on Scotland's west coast was once called the whisky capital of the world and sometimes whisky city. Now, thanks to a boom in demand for single malts, its distilleries are revisiting those titles in their marketing.

You said it was the whisky capital of the world. What happened?

So the Campbeltown whisky region is one of five in Scotland, along with Highland, Islay, Lowland and Speyside, as per the Scotch Whisky Regulations, which is UK legislation. And it was very highly regarded as a source of whisky in the 19th century. There's lots of that history still evident. It's got these very grand sandstone and granite villas, very spectacular municipal buildings, which all attest to this past when more than 30 distilleries thickened the air with peat smoke and coal smoke. And there have been periods since when the whisky business in Campbelton and in Scotland more generally have done quite well and then seen some decline. But generally, it's fair to say that there's been more than a century of decline, brought about first of all by the war, the great depress, prohibition in America and then the railways that brought competition and whisky from places further north, like Speyside. So by the turn of the 20th century, Campbeltown had only two distilleries left.

And could Campbeltown turn around its fortunes?

Well, Scottish whisky is experiencing quite a big boom. That's mostly because of new markets, especially in Asia, but also consumers enthusiasm for mixing cocktails during the pandemic in slightly older markets like America. And those two things mean that demand is continuing to grow. The Scotch Whisky association says that global exports of Scottish Whisky rose by 37% between 2021 and 2022, and it's now worth something like 6.2 billion pounds a year. Single malt whisky, which is more expensive, is seeing particularly strong sales, and part of that is from investors who are very interested in whiskey with history. A single malt, by the way, is basically a whisky produced by a single distillery. Prices for Springbank, which is produced by the oldest family run distillery in Scotland, fetch some of the Highest prices in 2018, Christie's the auctioneer sold a bottle of Springbank 1919. That's a very small batch made the year after the First World War began, which was bottled in 1970 and it sold one bottle for $283,000.

That is a ridiculous amount of money to spend on a bottle. But me. And tell me why someone might. Anyway, what makes Spring bank so special?

Lots of people who live in Campbeltown would say it's the taste Campbeltown whisky is said to have this very distinctive flavour. Sometimes it's described as oily, particularly smoky, peaty, but I think really its distinctive selling power is its history. The distillery is still overseen by the great, great grandson of the man who founded the distillery in 1828. And Springbank makes a lot of of using traditional production methods and where possible, the original, often Victorian equipment from the malt mill that grinds the barley to these vast gleaming copper kettle stills that are used to distill the alcohol towards the end of the process. It also makes a point of doing things in the traditional, unhurried, rather sort of modest way. So it refuses to sell its whisky itself online because it believes the distillery shop is important for attracting tourists to the town, which has quite high unemployment these days. And indeed prices for the distillery single malts have gone up as demand has and it hasn't bothered with much advertising. It hasn't had to.

Ok, so how are other whisky makers taking advantage of this resurgence in demand?

Unsurprisingly, other people want to open up distilleries in Campbeltown. There's plans for a new distillery inside the town overlooking the loch Campbeltown Lock. But growth is more likely, I think, to come from outside. The owners of the Isle of Raasay Distillery who I spoke to during my reporting, have bought a farm in Macrohanish, a nearby area which their planning to turn into an eco friendly distillery.

We've learned a lot from our Isle of Rassie distillery and what we've done there and how we've approached things. We bought dury farm in December 2021. We were going to be a farm based distillery as sustainable as we possibly can. So the barley that we've grown so far on Dewry Farm been completely grown regeneratively. I guess the desire is to be able to stand in this stilhole of Macro Hanish distillery and look out at the Barnley and doing everything as sustainably as we can.

And Meehan, I just have to ask, how much Scotch did you get through while reporting this story?

Well, actually I didn't drink a drop because I don't happen to like single malt. I really like blended whiskey, although I'm sure that all those single malts are very delicious. Mixing cocktails like an old Fashioned made with Spring Bank I'm sure is delicious.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks so much Ori.

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