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… read about the unending cycles of militarized policing.

On May 6, Rio de Janeiro suffered [[link removed]] its deadliest-ever police raid when 28 people died in an operation by civil police in the favela of Jacarezinho. According to human rights activists, police executed some suspects for drug trafficking. The raid, and the thousands like it that have been conducted by various sections of the Brazilian security apparatus over the years, have totally failed to achieve their stated goal, to end organized crime in Rio. Indeed, back in 1987, when a mass police raid in Jacarezinho made headlines as one of the early examples of modern Brazilian violent policing strategy, one of the groups they were targeting was the Comando Vermelho organization. Today, 34 years later, Comando Vermelho controls Jacarezinho.

Risk distribution in coalitions

A new study [[link removed]] from the Costs of War project shows that British and Canadian forces shouldered a disproportionate share of the losses in the NATO mission in Afghanistan. US troops did the lion’s share of fighting and dying among coalition forces in Afghanistan, but the US also deployed far more people to the conflict. As a proportion of peak deployment levels, British and Canadian losses were far higher.

The 455 UK troops killed in Afghanistan represent 4.7% of the highest number of Britons deployed to the country. For Canadians, the 158 dead represent 5.4% of peak deployment. The US lost 2,316 troops between 2001 and 2017 — 2.3% of its peak deployment.

Much of the disparity derives from the large proportion of non-combat troops in the US presence, as US forces provided logistical support to both their own troops and the troops of many partner nations.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] Trafficking in bad taste

In 2013, Spain launched an investigation into possible counterfeiting of saffron, a major spice in Spanish cuisine. Authorities were tipped off when, in that year, Spanish farmers reported producing 3,748 pounds of Spanish saffron and exporters reported selling over 22,046 pounds of Spanish saffron abroad. Two weeks ago, Spanish police arrested [[link removed]] 17 people for their involvement in a lucrative plot to make the spice (over)flow.

The group allegedly imported large amounts of cheaper saffron from Iran that does not qualify for European Union certification as Spanish saffron, then combined it with stems, flowers and dyes to fool consumers.

Business was booming. In addition to the arrests, police also seized 35 properties and over $12 million worth of saffron. Police did not make public how recently the alleged criminals had touched the saffron and if, when arrested, they were actually red-handed.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] DEEP DIVE Rebels with a business cause: Part II

Last week in Deep Dive, we looked at new research about how insurgents take over state regulatory regimes in their attempts to interact with the international economy. This week, we’ll look at how rebels gain access to raw resources to sell on the open market, and how those business considerations create their own security logics.

In Democratic Republic of Congo, artisanal mining is a huge industry, employing as many as 350,000 people and generating significant profits. The “artisanal” nature of the mining is not that it serves upscale hipster consumers but that the miners are independent workers, not associated with a major mining company. Artisanal miners’ independence gives them freedom, but it also makes them vulnerable, including to armed groups. When rebels seek access to funds generated by valuable minerals like gold and tungsten, their easiest point of access is to force artisanal miners to turn over a portion of the miners’ sales.

A widespread view among some conflict scholars is that rebels who generate income by exploiting artisanal miners are more prone to committing violence against civilians than those who raise funds by, say, taxing agricultural output. A hugely influential literature on the topic rests on research showing that civil wars where rebel resource extraction plays a part tend to be more violent and drawn out than other civil wars. The theory is that access to so-called “lootable resources” — valuable raw materials that are easy to get out of the ground quickly without major industrial equipment — makes rebels less accountable to the civilians they live among. Taxing agriculture requires keeping expert farmers alive and happy for whole growing seasons. Miners, the thinking goes, are comparatively fungible, and rebels feel free to do violence against them and their communities.

This view, however, does not accord with the actual experience of artisanal miners in DR Congo, according to an article [[link removed]] in a recent issue of the Journal of Conflict Resolution by political scientist Mario Krauser. To Krauser, the prevailing logic about mining and rebel violence against civilians seemed to collapse once you started looking at the mines and miners. If the rebels’ goal is to extract the greatest profit from the mines in their territory, presumably constantly attacking the miners is a poor strategy to achieve that aim.

Instead, by looking at the actual mechanisms through which rebels interact with miners, Krauser came up with a more nuanced hypothesis about the relationship between mining and rebel violence against civilians. Miners working in rebel-held areas are not typically forced to dig at gunpoint. Instead, rebels tend to extract their cut of the mine’s earnings by demanding protection payments. It’s an efficient system — it leaves the miners, who have the necessary physical and regulatory knowledge, to get minerals out of the ground and to market, while letting the rebels pursue their own specialty of being menacing.

Protection payments, however, are only worth paying when you’re being protected. Krauser hypothesized that rebels would likely act to protect the areas close to mines under their control, limiting both their own violence and violence by other groups in places core to the profit-making enterprise. On the other hand, however, protection payments are also only worth paying when you’re being protected from something. In order to demonstrate their true menace and underscore the necessity of protection payments, Krauser hypothesized that rebels would actually become more violent in areas on the outskirts of their core mining areas.

Looking at a set of over 3,000 artisanal mines in eastern DR Congo, as well as a geolocated database of rebel violence, Krauser found stark evidence for his theory. Once a rebel group begins receiving protection payments from a given mine, the likelihood of violence within 25 miles of the mine decreases by 35%. In a band of space between 40 and approximately 35 miles away from the mine, however, violence increases an astonishing 76%. Outside of the 35-mile band, rebel taxation of the mine has no effect. To use Krauser’s metaphor, rebel groups turn profitable mines into the eye of the violent storm, but they also create the storm.

Krauser refrains from making sweeping statements about the relevance of his research outside of DR Congo. His work, however, offers a compelling case for how conflict scholars can square the apparent disconnect between large-scale data suggesting that natural resource extraction drives violence against civilians in civil wars and the bevy of work proving that it isn’t so simple.

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FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] SHOW US THE RECEIPTS

Ashley Westerman covered [[link removed]] the election of Penpa Tsering as president-elect of the Central Tibetan Administration. Tsering will lead the Tibetan government-in-exile, which operates from Dharamsala, India, and serves both the Tibetan diaspora and Tibetans who remain in Tibet. The election took place among diaspora communities around the world, and the CTA says that turnout was over 77% among roughly 130,000 eligible voters. With Chinese repression in Tibet on the rise, Tsering has a difficult path ahead of him as president.

Lauren Billet tracked [[link removed]] the political progress the Palestinian cause has made in the US in recent years. Until recently, even the term “Palestine” was such a political third rail in the US that it was rarely uttered in mainstream policy discussions. Today, however, as Israeli strikes are killing Palestinian civilians and provoking international outrage, Palestine has become a much more acceptable concept in US discourse. As Billet pointed out, that shift is a result of years of Palestinian activism, in which Palestinians have made common cause with other groups facing state oppression.

Shirin Jaafari examined [[link removed]] the state of Syria’s health care system after 10 years of civil war. Over a third of the country’s hospitals have ceased operation since the war began, and 70% of Syrian health professionals have fled the country. As a result, many people with chronic diseases have been forced to flee as well in order to seek treatment elsewhere. Jaafari spoke to one family with a son whose cerebral palsy was the result of lack of oxygen at the Syrian hospital where he was born. They have escaped the country to Turkey, where the boy can have leg braces made and receive other treatment not available to him in Syria.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] WELL PLAYED

Here [[link removed]] are ISIS fighters in the Sahel offering a modified interpretation of the phrase “blaze it.”

124 retired general officers signed a letter [[link removed]] saying the 2020 US presidential election was stolen. Most of the signatories are obscurities, long out of uniform. One, however, stands out: a famous naval hero [[link removed]], whose name is known to every 13-year-old in the land.

In other US civil-military relations news, the guy at Space Force in charge of noticing if Russia starts firing off its ICBMs has been relieved [[link removed]] of his command after going on a podcast to promote his book about how critical race theory is the new way Marxists contaminate our precious bodily fluids. In rankings released May 17, the book was the number one bestselling book on Amazon, edging out Dr. Seuss’s “Oh, The Places You’ll Go!” It is unclear how many copies Admiral Meehoff purchased.

Every diagram here [[link removed]] is amazing, but crediting totally useless goose-fighting mnemonic to the University of Waterloo feels particularly apt.

For all their advances in acronyms and impenetrable jargon, military intelligence services have still [[link removed]]not yet figured out how to use “/sarcasm.”

On one hand, boo [[link removed]]. On the other hand, it’s a good idea given that the experts at the Bad Nuclear Weapon Delivery System Naming Institute apparently went on break after coming up with “Orca.”

An important addition [[link removed]] to the discourse on proportionality in cyber conflict.

Just when this meme [[link removed]] was played out, it finds new life.

A great example [[link removed]] of why most Uncrewed Aerial Vehicle specialists gave up and accepted “drone” as the term of art.

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Critical State is written by Sam Ratner and is a collaboration between The World and Inkstick Media.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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