Crime Archive

A multinational flotilla of warships has been assembled off the coast of Somalia to do what warships have done for as long as navies have existed: fight pirates. However, the combined efforts of France, Britain, Russia, China, India, the United States, and others have not sufficed to prevent the pirates from targeting ships across the breadth of the Indian Ocean. In much the same way that poorly equipped insurgents are resisting U.S. military efforts in Afghanistan, impoverished Somalis continue to frustrate the great naval powers. Indeed, counterpiracy and counterinsurgency share a common frailty: Both lack good metrics for evaluating success, […]

At 11:30 on the evening of Jan. 31, 2010, Jesús Enríquez and a group of close friends, all stand-out student-athletes at both the high-school and college level, were celebrating Jesús’ 17th birthday when four trucks packed with two-dozen heavily armed gunmen roared onto their block in Ciudad Juarez, closing off the street and blocking escape. The assassins descended from their vehicles and opened fire on the house, slaughtering 15 people and leaving another 14 injured in a matter of seconds. The majority of those killed were under the age of 20. The presence at the time of more than 10,000 […]

MEXICO CITY — Top diplomats from 14 Latin American countries and the United States will gather in Mexico City today for a conference on transnational crime and migration issues. The conference’s host will be the Mexican secretary of internal affairs, José Blake Mora, whose Interior Ministry coordinates the Mexican National Institute of Migration (INM). The problem of organized crime and migration has become increasingly urgent this year after a series of incidents in which undocumented migrants fell victim to violence in Mexico. The incidents have become a source of international embarrassment for Mexico. While loudly protesting Arizona’s immigration law SB […]

SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina — Bosnia’s elections on Sunday offered little reason to expect any normalization for the divided country in the near future. The country’s ethnic Serb entity re-elected leaders who have called for independence and denied genocide, while many Croats backed parties supporting further division along national lines. Despite a rise in support for moderate parties, these recalcitrant nationalists may impede the reforms envisaged by the international community to reverse several years of backsliding. The electoral arrangements themselves offer insight into Bosnia’s complex political arrangements, established by the 1995 Dayton Accords that ended the country’s civil war. The […]

BOGOTÁ — Colombia hailed the death last month of a top rebel commander as the most significant blow against the guerilla insurgency in its 46-year history. Jorge Briceno Suarez, known as Mono Jojoy, was the No. 2 leader of Colombia’s largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). “The symbol of terrorism in Colombia has fallen,” said Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, who ordered the air strike on the jungle guerrilla camp. Mono Jojoy was a veteran leader who was considered invincible. He masterminded a series of fatal attacks on southern towns and military bases during the 1990s […]

Some of the most distressing aspects of human behavior have endured stubbornly throughout history. To name just one example, human beings continue to inflict unspeakable horrors on other human beings in the course of combat. It is, indeed, a well-established fact that war is hell. But there is one feature of warfare, well-documented and generally accepted as unavoidable since biblical times, that is now coming under increasing scrutiny and facing a well-organized pushback: the use of rape as a weapon of war. As David Axe just reported for WPR from Congo, a growing number of organizations are now focusing their […]

Editor’s note: This article is the second in a two-part series. Part one focused on assistance to rape victims and educational efforts for everyday Congolese. Part two looks at efforts to reform the groups responsible for rape in Congo. KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo — A team of U.S. Army medical personnel arrived in this crowded capital city the first week of September. For two weeks, the Americans trained alongside 300 members of the Congolese army. The goal of the exercise? “To increase interoperability with Congolese forces . . . and give them the opportunity to learn from us,” Lt. […]

Editor’s note: This article is the first in a two-part series. Part I focuses on assistance to rape victims and educational efforts for everyday Congolese. Part II, which will appear tomorrow, looks at efforts to reform the groups responsible for rape in Congo. DUNGU, Democratic Republic of Congo — Two years ago in this remote territory, a young woman named Dina and three others — another woman and two men — fled a camp belonging to the Lord’s Resistance Army rebel group. The LRA had kidnapped the four months earlier: the men as laborers or fighters, the women as sex […]