Narco-state

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Narco-state (also narco-capitalism or narco-economy^[a]) is a political and economic term applied to countries where all legitimate institutions become penetrated by the power and wealth of the illegal drug trade.^[2] The term was first used to describe Bolivia following the 1980 coup of Luis García Meza which was seen to be primarily financed with the help of narcotics traffickers.^[3] Other well-known examples are Honduras, Guinea-Bissau, Mexico, Myanmar and Syria, where drug cartels produce, ship and sell drugs such as captagon, cocaine, heroin and marijuana.

The term is often seen^{[by whom?]} as ambiguous because of the differentiation between narco-states. The overall description would consist of illegal organisations that either produce, ship or sell drugs and hold a grip on the legitimate institutions through force, bribery or blackmail.^[4] This situation can arise in different forms. For instance, Colombia, where drug lord Pablo Escobar ran the Medellín Cartel (named after his birthplace) during most of the 1970s and 1980s, producing and trafficking cocaine to the United States of America. Escobar managed to take over control of most of the police forces in Medellín and surrounding areas through bribery and coercion, allowing him to expand his drug trafficking business.^[5]

Currently scholars argue that the term "narco-state" is oversimplified because of the underlying networks running the drug trafficking organisations.^[6] For example, the Guadalajara Cartel in Mexico, led by Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, who managed to combine several small drug trafficking families into one overarching cartel^[7] controlling the marijuana production in the rural areas of Mexico^[8] while trafficking Colombian cocaine to the US at the same time.^[9]

Over time the cocaine market expanded to Europe, leading to new routes being discovered from Colombia through Brazil or Venezuela and Western Africa. These new routes proved to be more profitable and successful than shipping from North-America and turned African states such as Nigeria, Ghana, and (later on) Guinea-Bissau into actual narco-states.^[4] While cocaine was transported through Western Africa, the Taliban produced opium in the rural areas of Afghanistan using the revenues to fund their guerrilla war. Despite American and NATO efforts to impose laws on the Afghan opium production, the early 2000s incumbent Afghan governments shielded the opium trade from foreign policies as much as possible.^[10] As of 2021, Syria's Assad regime is regarded as the world's largest narco-state; with an estimated global Captagon export worth 30-57 billion dollars annually. Revenue from the illicit drug exports accounts for around 90% of the revenue of the Assad regime.^{[11][12][13][14]}

Ongoing discussions divide scholars into separate groups either claiming or disclaiming the resemblance between narco-states and failed states. Depending on which properties are assigned to the definition of a failed state, the definition is in accordance with the narco-state. While most narco-states show signs of high rates of corruption, violence and murder, properties that are also assigned to failed states, it is not always clear if violence can be traced back to drug trafficking.^[15]

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