Trends Organ Crim (2010) 13:4659

DOI 10.1007/s12117-009-9085-x

Unintended consequences: changes in organised drug

supply in the UK
Vincenzo Ruggiero

Published online: 20 November 2009

# Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2009

Abstract Social and institutional alarm around crime and violence within SouthAsian communities in the UK has grown substantially over the last 10 years. Whether
based on imagined threats and moral panics or on realistic observation of facts, such
alarm focuses on drug use, related property crime, gang violence, and ultimately on
new forms of organised criminality emerging among Pakistanis, Indians or Sri
Lankans. This paper sets the scene by examining this imaginary or realistic alarm, to
then offer an overview of studies around South Asian drug use and crime.
Subsequently, it presents a number of organised crime models which have taken
shape within the communities under examination. Finally, it looks at more recent
developments, namely at the changes in organised drug supply determined by specific
law enforcement choices and by the general political climate in which such choices are
made. The case discussed in this paper shows how the features of illicit markets and
the characteristics of the criminal enterprises operating in them may be the unintended
consequences of specific social and institutional responses to social problems.

Introduction
Moral entrepreneurs and the gut press may be instrumental in the construction of social
problems, be they associated with youthful behaviour or to organised crime. Both may
be vehicles of exclusionary rhetoric followed by criminalisation (Woodiwiss and
Hobbs 2009). In what follows, a more nuanced process will become apparent
involving a number of diverse actors: local residents in specific environments,
journalists working for local or national newspapers, institutional agencies and,
finally, academics. Such actors, in an ideal chain, reflect the perception of criminal
activity carried out by members of South Asian communities in the UK.

V. Ruggiero (*)
Middlesex University, London, UK
e-mail: V.Ruggiero@mdx.ac.uk

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It is not easy to establish the extent to which perceptions tally with reality, also
because law enforcement activity plays a central role in forging views, alimenting
fears, selecting danger and, ultimately, in creating aspects of reality itself. This
process, however, may entail the participation of the very communities targeted by
law enforcement, whose self-perception may trigger, or result from, intervention by
institutional agencies and media depictions. This aspect is dealt with in the first
section of the following pages, where examples are provided of how the social alarm
pertaining to the spread of drug use and distribution within South-Asian
communities is raised by members of these communities. It is then academic
research which, at times, may explore the degree to which social alarm is founded,
attempting to define the contours of the problem in presumably realistic terms. Law
enforcement, in turn, may be led to prioritise the problem highlighted by
communities and academics alike, establishing specialised agencies which target
the alleged sources of that problem. Sections of this paper give an account of both
academic research and law enforcement activity, namely of those joint efforts which,
while attempting to capture, or respond to, a problem inevitably contribute to
shaping it. Hence the section devoted to the different forms of South-Asian criminal
organisations prevailing in the drug business, in which a typology is provided of
how dealing and trafficking networks or enterprises assume specific shapes due to
social and institutional pressures they experience. In the last section of this paper
such pressures are shown to cause surprising effects that are given the overall
definition of reverse ethnic succession. In brief, it is hypothesised that, the
differential targeting of South-Asian criminal groups and communities, combined
with official views associating such communities with radical Islam and the terrorist
threat, will remove South-Asian criminal entrepreneurs from the market, favouring
their replacement with indigenous white British drug entrepreneurs. Describing this
process by stages, it may be useful to start from the local level.

Ash and Mohammed

Articles and letters published in the local press in cities such as Birmingham and
Manchester set the tone for the following media campaigns launched at the national
level. In a letter published by the Birmingham Post (1 September 2003), Ash
complains that twenty odd years ago, Pakistani, Indian and Sikh communities were
considered the most law-abiding communities in the UK. Now look at them!
Mohammed replies that Pakistani and Bengali youths are the worst criminals from
Asian background, and that in his area most heroin dealers are Pakistani: real
shame to see where many Asian youngsters are heading (1 October 2003). The
same local paper reports that gangs of young Asian men are stepping up their interest
in the drug business, resulting in unprecedented increase in violence and organised
crime (Warburton 2003). The emerging groups are said to be mainly from Pakistani
and Afghan backgrounds, and to corner the Midlands market of heroin thanks to
contacts they establish with the Asian sub-continent. Drugs like heroin are flooding
the region from cheap sources in areas of Pakistan to be sold on the streets of
Birmingham and Wolverhampton for huge profits. Some initial distinctions are
proposed between black drug gangs who get involved in shoot-outs and the Asian

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gangs, which are more organised and play on moral codes within ethnic
communities to get results. Common forms of action are said to be kidnapping
members of a family of competitors or debtors who owe them money for drugs.
They play on the reluctance of the Asian community to seek help from the police.
Echoes of these news items are soon reported in the national press. The Daily
Mail, for example, writes that Asian drug gangs are the latest crime threat facing
Britain, and that while the drug trade has been dominated by Turkish criminals,
with Albanians, British and Jamaican Yardies accounting for much of the rest, now
Asians largely born and bred in the UK are muscling in and becoming major
players (23 January 2004). Meanwhile, The Times focuses on Operation Ashworth,
which is aimed at seizing the weapons of choice for the Asian gang members
fighting for control of the streets: machetes, kitchen knives and meat cleavers (2
March 2004).
Prior to media attention, this emerging area of problematic drug use and
distribution had already attracted the attention of academic researchers, and what
follows is an overview of their findings.

British South Asians and drugs

Specific research into South Asian communities and drugs has addressed the
controversial point whether such communities are less likely to engage in substance
misuse because of cultural and religious restraints (Ganchi et al. 1997). A study
found that among South Asian communities levels of alcohol misuse are high, but
those of opiates are remarkably low (Wanigaratne et al. 2001). Other findings seem
to indicate that young South Asian drug users have a greater degree of contact with
their families than do their white counterparts (White 2001), and that, at times,
denial strategies are put in place whereby either drug use is regarded as negligible or
users themselves regard it as harmless (Arora and Khatun 1998). On the one hand,
there appears to be a worrying lack of help for addicts because of a still widely held
popular misconception that Asian youths do not use drugs (Patel 2000), on the other
hand, users hesitate to approach drug services because they see them as white
oriented (Awiah et al. 1992; Khan et al. 2000).
A study centred on South Asian communities in the northwest of England
provided an example of how heroin distribution networks might develop. The study
focused on a key individual who sponsored dealing enterprises and attempted to
discourage independent competitors from emerging. Friendships and kinship were
found to facilitate drug entrepreneurship, while subsequent conflict and break-down
of trust were pinpointed as key factors for law enforcement success in dismantling
such entrepreneurial initiative (Akhtar and South 2000). A more recent research
study conducted by the Asian Drug Advisory Group (2005) based in Coventry found
that street level distribution is carried out by dealers who use drugs only occasionally
and that distribution is carried out by both males and females. The street market, it
was also found, services users from all ethnic groups, although some dealers would
only sell to those with whom they are comfortable. At street level it emerged that no
one had any way of knowing the purity of the drug they were buying to sell on
(Asian Drug Advisory Group 2005: 61).

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Intelligence sources agree that 80 to 90 per cent of heroin entering the UK is

under the control of Turkish networks, who replaced previously dominant Asian
groups. While the latter groups had connections with Burma, Laos and Thailand, the
former established direct connections with Afghanistan and Iran. The development
of South Asian supply networks in the UK, on the other hand, may be due to the
increasing role played by South Asian drug producers and wholesalers themselves
(Carey 2000). Business relations established with Turkish networks in Pakistan may
turn into business partnerships established in the UK between Pakistani and Turkish
groups. Therefore, while not long ago South Asian networks were mainly found at
lower levels of the domestic heroin market, and after being temporarily displaced at
importation levels by Turkish groups, they may now take advantage from more
differentiated patterns of importation and distribution (Sircar 2002).
The recent Indian resurgence in international drug trafficking has been examined, along
with the effects in South Asia of the Afghan crisis (Haq 2000). It is not clear how the
activities of organised crime in India affect drug trafficking and distribution networks in
the UK, although it is suggested that being a transit country, India may be the place
where partnerships between local and foreign networks are forged (DEA 2002).
Research based on interviews with drug workers describes Asian dealing
networks as now active and integrated into most UK cities. Kinship and ethnicity,
in these networks, are said to remain important, as they are deemed the traditional
sources of trust in illegal business enterprises. However, though criminal networks
continue to be based on kinship and linkages with producing countries, inter-ethnic
partnerships are developing due to mere market dynamics (Heal 2002). These
partnerships are detectable in changing trafficking routes and in the growing multiethnic nature of large drug supply. Partnerships are viable alternatives to traditional
organisations, in that they permit access to a variety of producers and, at the same
time, to multi-commodity illicit markets.
Finally, the suggestion has been made that when ethnic minorities are involved in
drug economies, and in criminal economies in general, while their visibility makes
them more exposed to arrest, they tend to occupy the lower levels and the least
remunerative segments of such economies (Ruggiero 2000; Murji 2003). Moreover,
the dynamics of economic globalisation are said to have reinforced patterns of
selective marginalisation and exacerbated the ethnic division of labour within illicit
drug economies (Friman 2004a, b).

An Asian crime wave?

Between 2003 and 2005, Scotland Yard mounts a drive against the growing power
of Asian gangs linked to muggings, drug dealing and protection rackets in London
(Tendler 2004). Tarique Ghaffur, the assistant commissioner in charge of specialist
crime operations, warns that detectives would concentrate on Asian gangs, and that
the police are building up intelligence on heroin operations in South Asian
communities. This is the prelude to the institution of a special unit focused on
South Asian crime led by Mr Ghaffur himself, a development that follows the
previous establishment of special units to fight Triads in the Chinese population and
Yardie gangsters in the black community (Tendler 2004).

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What exactly lies behind the creation by the Metropolitan Police of a South Asian
Crime Unit? The unit is presented as a response to an apparent rise in crimes ranging
from kidnapping and gun-use, to drug-running and passport scams with transnational
links in human trafficking. Modelled on Operation Trident, a specialist unit focusing
on gun crime in black communities, the South Asian Crime Unit, it is optimistically
announced, will achieve a similar level of success. The Head of the new unit warns
that the rise in crime, in and between South Asian communities, will result in a
network of ghettoes, if left unchecked. In turn, these ghettoes will become breeding
ground for yet further increases in organised crime. And to back this up, Mr Ghaffur
releases documents which show a 300% increase in the number of murders
involving South Asians in the last decade and a 41% rise in drug crimes in the last
5 years. Yet, antiracist organisation CARF asks what this unit will actually be doing.
For, whilst the above statistics may be deplorable, so is the fact that stops under antiterrorism legislation rose by roughly 1,450% between 1999 and 2003, a huge
number of which were carried out on South Asians. Particular South Asian groups
are four times more likely to be victims of racist attack than whites, and two and a
half times more likely to be stopped and searched than whites. CARF reports some
horror stories, like that involving a British Pakistani man, who had his London home
raided by police who beat him, forced him into a prostrate position, and asked him
where is your God now? Furthermore, the organisation draws attention on the
rapidly changing context of South Asian communities in Britain, within which the
South Asian Specialist Unit has emerged. There has been a growing moral panic
over lawless Asian youths. Elders and traditional community restraining practices
have been blamed for not doing enough to curb their behaviour. There has been a
perceived breakdown in what are commonly perceived as Asian traitsstrong
family-ties that bind, a readiness to work hard at all hours, and a strong sense of duty
and obedience before the law. In particular, a number of events in 2001 ensured that
the already shifting stereotypical assumptions of Asian traits have undeniably
altered. The summer was beset by riots in northern towns and cities which tore
asunder these comfortable beliefs. Here was a generation of Asian youths not
prepared to stand by and watch racists march through their neighbourhoods, not
prepared to be told they did not belong here. And if this did not put a different
picture of being Asian on the map, the events of 11 September that year certainly
did. England was suddenly confronted with Asian anger at home and Muslim
terrorism abroad. And, predictably enough, adding the two together, mistrust of
Muslims or those perceived to be Muslim flourished under the guise of antiterrorism and the rhetoric of law and order.
With South Asians cast as Britains new suspect community, we might expect
that a policing unit focusing on this particular group would be at pains to
ensure that the full protection and support of the law was available to it; that
the unit would do its utmost to render itself democratically accountable to the
very group it was trying to protect; and, at the very least, challenge the
damning stereotypes that frame South Asians as the enemy within in their own
country. But, instead, we see a highly politicised imposition of punitive
policing practices that focus on the number-one agenda of the day: illegal
immigration (Burnett 2004: 2).

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For a social reaction to the alarm around South Asian crime, we have to return to
some news items reported in the local as well as the national press. The Manchester
Evening News (6 January 2003) reports that a group of Islamic fundamentalists
went to the scene of a terror raid where an officer was killed, and warned that the
tragedy might not be the last. Interviews with local residents reveal an angry mood
among Muslims, who say that Britain could not expect to wage war on Iraq and not
face some retaliation. Another interviewee argues: I would not say it is justified, I
dont condone the killing of a police officer, but I dont think it should come as
unexpected either. Yet another Asian youth explains that the British and American
governments cannot expect to kill all those people in Afghanistan and threaten Iraq
with war and there not be some retaliation. Theirs is not a war on terrorism, its a war
on Islam. We believe that is the case, and if it continues then I think there will
continue to be retaliation of some kind. Are we going to send greeting cards to
Britain? Finally, in another comment: We are going to stand together as Muslims
and defend our right and honour against the bullies of Britain and America.
In this climate, and with the institution of the new police unit geared towards
South Asian crime, the necessity to study drug distribution networks becomes
urgent, and attention is given to the role played in such networks by South Asian
criminal enterprises.

South Asian firms and networks

A comprehensive study conducted between 2004 and 2005 suggests that
involvement in the drug economy does not necessarily imply embracing a specific
drug subculture. Importing or distributing illicit substances are almost unanimously
determined by the profit prospect, and are perceived as one-off remunerative
enterprises or as a regular occupational choice. Whether this is a specific feature of
British South Asian dealing networks is impossible to tell from this study (Ruggiero
and Khan 2006). However, the authors claim that this is a relatively new
phenomenon, as in previous research widespread use of techniques of neutralisation is found whereby dealers justify their activity by affirming that they are users as
well, and by arguing that they provide a service to needy people similar to them
(Ruggiero and South 1995).
The situation faced by this research is one in which the different actors involved
do not share motivations, values or life styles, thereby inhabiting an economy based
on fragmented roles and cultures rather than a homogenous social setting. Each
actor, in other words, can participate in that economy while ignoring the rationale
guiding other peoples participation. Often interviewees say that they only know and
work with one or two other people in the distribution network, while one of the
dealers at liberty comments that Drug is a dont ask, dont tell, business, and youll
never know the entire chain.
Given the high prevalence the study finds of suppliers who do not use drugs, the
researchers formulate the following hypothesis. The growing number of dealers is
not accompanied by a growing number of users, hence, presumably, the paucity of
earnings available to those who can be termed minimum wage street sellers
(Bourgois 1995). In other words, the drug retailing sector, in British South Asian

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communities, may be overcrowded, competitive and, therefore, potentially violent as

dealers compete for scarcer and scarcer resources (i.e. consumers).
A related observation is made: official unemployment data do not provide an
accurate or detailed enough picture of the labour market. Many young people, in
particular those from visible minorities, are understood to make do in the informal
economy. It is in this economy that their first encounter with illicit drugs may take
place. This mainly applies to the vulnerable sectors of the drug economy, namely
individuals who are more exposed to detection and arrest, such as those the authors
interview in custody.
In brief, findings suggest that drug dealing networks develop, first, as a result of
mere occupational choices, and second, through involvement in the hidden economy
in which many British South Asians try to make a living. In this economy,
marginalised youths may start using drugs on an occasional basis, but as barriers
between recreational and problematic use are being eroded (MacDonald and Marsh
2002), poverty drugs become increasingly available. The growing demand for such
drugs functions as an incentive for the formation of dealing networks.
The development of British South Asian drug networks in the UK is understood
through what are known as ethnic succession arguments. These have posited that
crime can serve as a path of socio-economic mobility for minorities, who eventually
gain access to the formal economy. However, mobility can be constrained within
criminal economies, and law enforcement efforts towards certain minority crime
groups may have the unintended effect of creating opportunities for the upward
mobility of other minority groups (OKane 2003; Friman 2004a). Attention towards
West Indian criminal groups may have created vacancies which are being
increasingly filled by British South Asian groups. By the same token, the
disproportionate concentration of law enforcement efforts on British Pakistanis
may also create such vacancies for other groups.
On the basis of their findings, Ruggiero and Khan (2006; 2007) identify a number
of different South Asian drug dealing networks and suggest the following typology:
&

&

Family networks. This type of dealing network appears not to be particularly

relevant in British South Asian drug markets. Rather, families appear to
constitute a crucial cultural obstacle to the development of the drug business.
Only inadvertently can families contribute, for example, when sending relatives
who use drugs to their country of origin, where at times users may get in touch
with large distributors and international traffickers.
Mono-ethnic networks. Opinions differ substantially on the prevalence of this
type of dealing network. At the local level some users and small dealers claim
that business could only be conducted with their own people. Others stress that
their peer-group is multi-ethnic, and that competition is merely commercial. It is
therefore suggested that mono-ethnic networks are very ephemeral, because
unable to service a market which is increasingly open and multi-ethnic, and in
which demand for illicit goods and services tends to be extremely diversified.
These networks are incapable of establishing partnerships with other ethnic
groups who might offer the skills, know-how and contacts necessary to respond
to such diverse demand. Their incapacity turns into violent competition when
successful British South Asian networks, at the local level, push out of the

Trends Organ Crim (2010) 13:4659

&

&

53

market other ethnic groups who previously played a role in it. Mono-ethnic
networks, in other words, are prone to inter-ethnic conflict. However, many
informants note that intra-ethnic conflicts, namely conflicts within British South
Asian dealing groups themselves, are frequent and perhaps even more serious.
Issue-specific networks. This type of network seems among the most successful,
due to the diversity of the actors involved. Well organised, issue-specific
networks are formed by an executive layer, middle management, and a number
of employees. However, they are not characterised by long-term membership,
and individual involvement may be limited to one-off projects. Core members of
the network may remain in operation, while clusters of collaborators change and
move on. They do not specialise in one illicit market only, and become multidrug distributors according to availability and demand. Clean entrepreneurs are
involved in these networks, for example, in the capacity of investors, money
launderers, or when they make their business premises available for drug storing
purposes. Careers are erratic and members are in constant movement: from the
official to the criminal economy and vice-versa.
Value-adding networks. With the previous type, these appear to be the most
successful criminal enterprises. They manage to establish alliances with other
ethnic groups because they are sufficiently powerful to negotiate the terms of
partnerships, or to impose a clear division of labour. They are on an equal footing
with Turkish groups of importers and large distributors and with them they carry
out joint operations at upper and middle market level. They recruit other ethnic
minorities in local level operations and have excellent relationships with official
entrepreneurs. Unlike the previous type of network, their activity is not issuespecific, because the interactions they have with a variety of partners ensures
continuity and durability to their business. They do business with any reliable
actor (legitimate or otherwise) that can generate added value to the network.
Their core members are more numerous than the ones in issue-specific networks,
and this may explain why, as some informants remark, they are so highly
respected in the community in which they operate. They are role models, they
create jobs: this is why they can afford to go around with loads of money without
fear of being robbed.

Each of the four types of network described above possesses the ability to
establish its own distribution and trafficking business. Some may buy large
consignments from importers based in the UK, others may buy quantities in Turkey,
yet others may outflank Turkish large distributors by establishing direct contacts
with wholesalers in Pakistan or India.
Returning to the typology drawn above, it is suggested that family and mono-ethnic
networks are more likely to import directly from producing countries, but are unable to
distribute to wider markets than their own local outlets. The range of their partnerships
is limited and their capacity to form commercial alliances, at home as well as abroad,
is hampered by a form of business provincialism. This provincialism is also the result
of the parochialism of some white users, who would not buy drugs from them, thus
creating obstacles to their commercial expansion. Issue-specific and value-adding
networks, instead, thanks to their ability to find a diverse range of partners and access
a variety of markets, are likely to use all available importing modalities.

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It is now time to examine how institutional responses as seen in the most recent
period are likely to affect drug distribution in the UK.

Unintended consequences
The UN has long been concerned about the unintended consequences of control
systems and strategies. The first of such consequences is the creation of a criminal
black market. Drug prohibition, of course, contributes to the development of
criminal economies, in that there is no shortage of criminals interested in competing
in a market in which hundred-fold increases in price from production to retail are not
uncommon (United Nations 2009: 216). The second is what is described as policy
displacement, in the sense that law enforcement responses may take resources away
from the treatment of drug use as a public health issue. The third unintended
consequence may be geographical displacement. This is also called the balloon
effect, because squeezing (by tighter controls) in one place produces a swelling
(namely, an increase) in another place:
Success in controlling the supply of illicit opium in China in the middle of the
20th century, for example, displaced the problem to the Golden Triangle. Later
successes in Thailand displaced the problem in Myanmar. A similar process
unfolded in South West Asia from the 1970s onward. Supply control successes
in Turkey, Iran and Pakistan eventually displaced the problem to Afghanistan
(United Nations 2009: 216).
The United Nations identify the fourth unintended consequence as substance
displacement. This means that, if the use of one drug is controlled, suppliers and
users may move on to another drug with less stringent controls. The fifth is the way
authorities perceive and deal with the users of illicit drugs.
A system appears to have been created in which those who fall in the web of
addiction find themselves excluded and marginalised from the social
mainstream, tainted with a moral stigma, and often unable to find treatment
even when motivated to seek it (United Nations 2009: 216).
What is missing from this thoughtful list is the unintended consequence of
targeting one specific ethnic group. We have seen how joint ventures and alliances,
issue-specific and added-value networks, provide more organisational stability and
multifaceted competence to drug distributing enterprises. The effects of the way in
which institutional agencies respond to such networks remain to be examined. What
novel changes in the structure of drug distribution in the UK are likely to be
produced? First, let us focus on the international level.
The debate on transnational law enforcement is crucial in this respect, although
one ought to consider that transnational policing strategies are still geared to national
customs and domestic institutional cultures. Take the following example: one
hundred police officers in London have been disciplined for circulating an e-mail
showing black men being decapitated on railings after jumping from a fly-over while
being pursued by police (The Independent, 29 November 2006). The message is
clear: dont run from the police; but how does this culture translate into transnational

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policing strategies? In the UK there is overwhelming evidence of discrimination

throughout the criminal justice system and that minorities cannot be guaranteed fair
and equitable treatment, regardless of the nature of their encounters with it. This
amounts to a collective failure to deliver an appropriate and professional service to
minorities (Britton 2004: 89). Attention has focused on police disproportionate use
of stop and search powers against black people (Home Office 2003). Other studies
have revealed the ways in which policing is unequally experienced by ethnic groups
(Newburn et al. 2004), and the disproportionate extent to which young black men
feature in the crime figures (FitzGerald 2004: 22). As for British South Asian
communities, while they invoke more effective policing to reduce crime and prevent
the racist aggressions to which they are subjected, the police may increasingly
perceive such communities as sources of criminal activity, disorder, and above all as
enclaves of dangerous Islamisation (Webster 2004). International law enforcement
replicates this perception, also because we are witnessing the development of an
international component in policing and a policing component in international
relations. This process involves the efforts by Western powers to export their
domestic definitions not only of democracy but also of crime and criminals, along
with their criminal justice norms, law enforcement priorities and policing practices
(Andreas and Nadelmann 2006: 10). Police practices inspired by stereotypes and
other forms of institutional racism are reproduced at transnational level, where
certain visible minorities and some specific trafficking routes are unequally targeted.
The partial coincidence of drug producing countries with politically inimical
countries provides ammunitions to biased international policing: Islamophobia
expands from the street of London onto the global arena. Meanwhile, the belief that
drug trafficking and terrorism are interconnected encourages a coordination of antidrug and anti-terror policing which is presumed to deal effectively with both
(Bjrnehed 2004). However, one should note a paradoxical outcome of this policing
strategy. The enterprises and drug supply networks described earlier may be immune
to transnational policing inspired by stereotypes, as the multi-ethnic partnerships and
alliances in which they engage can provide protection from biased law enforcement.
Such enterprises, moreover, are diligent enough to avoid the obviously heavily
policed trafficking routes and cut all direct links with producing countries, resorting
as they do mainly to staging posts located in Europe or in other non-suspect
countries. In this way, Islamophobic international policing may end up capturing
individuals from a specific, undesirable, ethnic or religious group, whether
dangerous, culpable or totally innocent, while British South Asian drug enterprises
will be left undisturbed to prosper.
After 2005, however, with the invasion of Iraq, other developments are coming to
the limelight. The outcomes of the Terrorist Act 2000 are now assessable as is the
deterioration of the relationships between the police force and South Asian
communities in the UK. Stop and searches and intelligence activities have
multiplied, while academic work has granted corroborating evidence of the
appropriateness of police practices. Scholars addressing the issue of organised crime
and terrorism jointly, or coalescing the analysis of drug trafficking with that of
political international conflict, have also multiplied. Even in the prestigious Oxford
Handbook of Criminology organised crime and terrorism are dealt with jointly. The
focus on weak states, moreover, is conveying the notion that people with a

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background in such states pose serious threats to hosting Western countries, because
the increase in the volume and profitability of drugs trafficking is seen as somewhat
an aggressive response by weak states to those who want them to embrace
democracy. The dramatic growth in narcotics addiction and trade impacts societal
security negatively through increased epidemics of Hepatitis C, sexually transmitted
diseases such as HIV/AIDS, petty crime and decreased economic growth
(Swanstrom 2007: 4). Like plague-spreaders, South Asians are of course also
imputed of running the narcotics industry in order to provide financial support for
international terrorism (Swanstrom 2007: 5). This reminds us of a grotesque public
warning released in London not long ago, when the authorities advised people to
avoid buying counterfeit clothes in Oxford Street, because most likely the money
given to traders would fill the coffers of terrorist organisations. Only paedophiles, for
the time being, are excluded from this gigantic Muslim conspiracy.
The association between drugs and terrorism is, of course, well highlighted in
many documents and official publications, and it is legitimate to wonder whether
such publications are inspired by academics or whether it is academics who take
inspiration from them (Leggett 2008; Kan 2009; Yadav 2009). As far as the UK is
concerned, for example, it is suggested that some branches of the religiously
affiliated Irish insurgency groups have completely abandoned their political goals in
favour of money laundering activities. The terrorist heritage of Northern Ireland is
said to have yielded a worrisome criminal element: 30 years of armed conflict have
left a web of networks in which organised crime can thrive and a fear and secrecy
that makes fighting such crime very difficult. Armed groups allegedly take
advantage of arms supplies that have been accumulated during the past years to
engage in criminal business, including narcotics dealing. No evidence is provided to
substantiate such claims, while England is depicted as a safe haven for terrorist
groups due to its open immigration policy and tolerant attitude toward a variety of
dissenters. In these types of publication, however, the point is also made that the
UKs Terrorism Act of 2000 has substantially changed this by expanding the power
of the police and the Home Secretary to cut down fund-raising, recruitment, and
training conducted by suspected terrorist cells under the guise of political or
religious activity. A new law, in its turn, has made possible the confiscation of bank
assets of those suspected of conspiracy to commit a terrorist act (The Library
Congress 2003: 1325).
Inevitably, such developments translate into sharply higher costs for South Asians
who choose to engage in criminal business. Statistics reflect this, showing that while
in past years drug trafficking and distribution saw Pakistanis participation amount to
around 30% of the total business, now their score does not go over 10% (SOCA
2009). One may assume that, while in the past their visibility forced them to merge
with other groups from different ethnic backgrounds, they are now more likely to be
the object of acquisition on the part of less stigmatised ethnic groups. We have seen
above how South Asian drug enterprises may be disadvantaged by provincialism,
including the provincialism of customers; what we are witnessing now is their
outright expulsion from the market due to their particular dangerousness in the eyes
of institutional agencies and potential partners. Such vulnerability to law
enforcement also depreciates them in transactions with mediators and even
producers, who rightly fear that those obsessively targeted by the police may lead

Trends Organ Crim (2010) 13:4659

57

the latter to them. All of this suggests that perhaps we are experiencing an
unprecedented version of what above has been described as ethnic succession. I
would term this reverse succession, whose contours I would like to discuss in the
concluding part of this paper.
The British agency dealing with serious organised crime (SOCA) looks at
criminal networks, how they are structured, and how they develop. It also describes
a number of cross-cutting criminal activities that are undertaken to enable other
crimes, and deals in detail with the more significant areas of drugs trafficking,
organised immigration crime, and fraud. One goal of SOCA, among others, is to
increase the awareness of risk, so that the criminals believe it is more likely that
they will be caught, and be dealt with severely; SOCA therefore puts pressure on
criminals so that they stop or operate less freely. The linking of terrorism with
Muslims, and of Muslims with drugs, has indeed contributed to the achievement of
this goal. First, it has stopped or hampered the crimes that are ancillary to other
criminal activities or businesses. The asphyxiating control imposed on South Asian
communities, for example, has targeted lawful entrepreneurs, thus reducing the
possibility for South Asian drugs entrepreneurs to establish connections with the
official economy. If one considers that many serious organised criminals make use
of financial and legal professionals to handle their financial affairs, such affairs are
heavily compromised for South Asian groups (SOCA 2009: 5). The view that
criminals manage risk of apprehension by working in the main with people they
know well leads law enforcement to target South Asian communities in general,
rather than South Asian criminals. It is assumed, for example, that shared
experience, gained through family connections, school, prison, or previous criminal
collaboration, is important to establish trust. Common nationality or ethnicity is also
important, particularly where there is a relatively small community (SOCA 2009:
11). Targeting such nationalities and ethnicities may, however, have yet another
unintended effect. With the slump experienced by South Asian criminal
entrepreneurs, other actors may enter the scene, for example, the white British
criminals identified as major UK suppliers of heroin based in Merseyside. These are
said to supply drugs to all parts of the UK, including much of Scotland. They appear
increasingly willing to bypass the London-based Turkish traffickers who have been
their traditional suppliers, and to source directly from Europe, mostly the Netherlands, but also Belgium and France (SOCA 2009: 27). The increase in the amount
of heroin seized in consignments originating directly from Afghanistan and Pakistan
is bound to mobilise such white British suppliers. Let us see a possible scenario of
this development.
South Asian drug networks are experiencing a novel arrangement of the
dimension of risk associated with their activity (for an analysis of criminal risk,
see Matrix Knowledge Group 2007). Their market risk, namely the factors affecting
demand and supply, may slowly change, although the production of drugs across the
world is increasing while demand remains substantially stable. In such situation,
their difficult position in the market may encourage other groups to intervene and
replace them, or existing groups to appropriate higher shares of the available profits.
Their business risk, namely factors affecting the ability to run a profitable business
and manage costs, is severely affected due to their increasing vulnerability to law
enforcement. Their credit risks may also be compromised, as their ability to receive

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Trends Organ Crim (2010) 13:4659

payments from debtors may also decline due to their vulnerability. Their operational
risks, affecting the logistics of undertaking transactions, will also increase due to
higher risk of being arrested. Finally, risks linked with their reputation will
inevitably follow suit: who would trust entrepreneurs who are so blatantly exposed
to prosecution and who are slowly losing the protection of legitimate actors
belonging to their very ethnic group and community? As noted above, ethnic
succession implies that marginalised groups, initially involved in criminal activity,
are slowly included in host societies and given the opportunity to pursue legitimate
careers, while new comers replace them in illicit markets. Instead, reverse
succession implies that emerging white British criminal entrepreneurs replace their
South Asian counterparts, finally realising a national dream that in the UK is
expressed with the slogan British jobs for British workers. Only, in this case, the
slogan would go: British crimes for British criminals!

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