A Globalization "fairy tale" --A Ku Klux Kike like you should love it....
THAILAND
Out of Africa
Bangkok is becoming an Asian crossroads for African criminal gangs specialising in drugs and illicit diamonds
By Shawn W. Crispin/BANGKOK
Issue cover-dated May 24, 2001
ABDUL, A 30-SOMETHING LIBERIAN, does business out of a dingy hotel room in a Bangkok alley. "Are these what you are looking for?" he asks, opening a small felt-lined box of 20 twinkling diamonds. "If you like these, I can get more." Abdul likes to be paid in U.S. dollars, not Thai baht, and only cuts deals by the light of day. "We can do good business together," he smiles. His two stern-faced nameless companions, both in baseball caps and gold chains, lean silently against the room's dirt-smudged walls.
Across much of the world, trade in the sort of diamonds that Abdul hustles has been banned. These are "blood" or "conflict" diamonds, dug out of mines in West Africa, often Sierra Leone, and used to finance bloody rebel conflicts. Outlawed they may be, but here in the back streets of Bangkok's gritty NaNa and Pratunam districts you can get such gems. And if you want heroin or other narcotics, you can get those too.
For Bangkok's small but rapidly growing African community--which since the mid-1990s has risen from the hundreds to beyond the 10,000-mark--these streets are home. Here, the sound of Thai pop gives way to the driving rhythms of Africa, and couscous, not rice, fills diners' plates. Many of the new immigrants from Africa are involved in legitimate textile and leather goods trading. Many others are not.
African criminal gangs--often fronted by legitimate businesses--are increasingly using the Thai capital as a centre for heroin trading, human smuggling and the peddling of blood diamonds. Easy immigration and customs procedures, aimed at promoting tourism, provide an open door for underworld business. Once in, the welcome mat for African criminal gangs is cushioned by lax local law enforcement and a racially tolerant population that makes integration easy. Such open ways are making Bangkok an increasingly inviting Asian crossroads for Africa's dirty business.
FOR MANY NEW ARRIVALS, the Orchid Beer Bar in Bangkok's NaNa district is their first stop. Here, Africans get together and party over bottles of beer and stand-up games of tic-tac-toe. Nightly, the bar bounces to the music of Nigerian dissident Fela Kuti; condom ads hang over the heads of chunky prostitutes; raucous cheers greet television pictures of Muhammad Ali's daughter Laila as she lands an uppercut flush on an opponent's chin. Moments later, a group of five African men are met with a similar cheer--Abdul excitedly embraces them, one by one, bellowing: "Welcome Brothers! Welcome to Thailand!" Hours later, Abdul picks up the 2,000 baht ($44) bill, explaining: "These are my partners."
Perhaps, but only for the next deal. Unlike the strict hierarchies and codes of loyalty that characterize the Italian Mafia or the Chinese triads, African crime syndicates operate more loosely and horizontally. According to Western anti-narcotics officials, African gangs in Bangkok are unique in how they come together, share responsibilities and then separate after doing a deal. This mixing and matching makes it hard for law-enforcement officers to keep track of syndicates. In Bangkok, the Orchid Beer Bar, among others, is where matches are made, opportunities sought, spoils celebrated.
With plenty of business to go around, co-operation offers many advantages, not least because it keeps gang violence and cover-blowing conflicts to a minimum. In the heroin trade, Western anti-narcotics officials believe a loosely connected group of 20 African men is calling the shots. When aw-enforcement officials do get a lead, it seldom amounts to much. Thai military intelligence, for instance, claims to have an eye on one suspected ringleader, a restaurateur known in certain circles as "Napoleon." That's a thin lead, though: "The trouble with names is that they mean so little," says a Western anti-narcotics official.[snip]
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