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Dirty doings in the Balkans
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| 21 May 2003 |
Unconfirmed but intriguing reports have reached us that organised criminals in the service of international terrorism are taking over the illicit trade in nuclear materials along the traditional Balkan smuggling route.
The reports come from Russian, Serbian and US sources. These reports also speak of increased activity in the area by Islamic terrorists. Serbian and Russian sources say the terrorists have recently held a secret conference in Bosnia. They believe that a permanent terrorist cell is already functioning in Bosnia and that others are now being set up in Moldova.
In an analysis of 14 cases of theft involving significant quantities of plutonium or weapons-grade uranium in the former Soviet Union, Scott Parrish of the Monterey Institute of International Studies detects the involvement of organised criminals in the Middle East and Asia. He believes the traffickers follow the traditional southern smuggling routes through Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Balkans. His conclusions are supported by Vladimir Orlov, a senior figure at Moscow's Centre for Policy Studies, who at a specialist conference recently described an unsuccessful attempt by the Russian mafia to obtain weapons of mass destruction for foreign interests.
What is at stake here? There are an estimated 1,350 metric tons of plutonium and highly enriched uranium, enough for 40,000 nuclear weapons, stockpiled in Russia as well as in Kazakhstan, Belarus, Ukraine and Uzbekistan - in addition to potentially lethal material suitable for use in 'dirty bombs'.
Several criminal-controlled Russian companies operate transport companies, say Phil Williams and Paul Woessner of the Ridgway Centre for International Security Studies. They argue in a discussion paper (published by the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London) that the familiarity of criminal enterprises with export licensing and their ability to corrupt officials and hide illicit cargo in legal consignments could all assist nuclear smuggling.
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