Who Pushes 'Illegals' To US And Funds Militias? Answer Will Amaze You.

Amazon and Central America rainforests’ wealth of valuable timber and exotic wildlife supply, through violent means, goods for both local markets and wealthy foreign collectors, sold to unwitting consumers, who thus help to fuel violence that is driving the US refugee crisis.

According to a recent report on environmental crime by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (pdf), the illegal timber trade is worth an estimated annual profits of $100 billion, or 10 to 30 percent of the total global timber trade. 

An estimated 50 to 90 percent of wood in some individual tropical countries is from illegal sources or logged illegally.

The illegal global wildlife trade is worth an estimated $19 billion annually, sold on the black market.

Eco-trafficking profits have emerged as one of the most lucrative forms of organized crime in Latin America and around the world.

Jorge Rios, head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s (UNODC) new Global Programme for Combating Wildlife and Forest Crime (GP) told In Sight Crime, as reported by James Bargent, that eco-trafficking “falls into the same category as drug trafficking, arms trafficking and human trafficking because it is clear from the patterns of transit and seizures and the amount of resources that are involved, that it is transnational organized crime.”

UNODC says many of those behind eco-trafficking maintain a broad portfolio of criminal activities. Those criminals are funding militias and terrorists groups and threatening the security and sustainable development of many nations, according to a new joint United Nations-INTERPOL report released at the first UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) in Nairobi in June, where action to tackle environmental crime was high on the agenda for hundreds of environment ministers, law enforcement officers, the judiciary and senior UN officials.

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“Beyond immediate environmental impacts, the illegal trade in natural resources is depriving developing economies of billions of dollars in lost revenues just to fill the pockets of criminals,” said UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner.

“Sustainable development, livelihoods, good governance and the rule of law are all being threatened, as significant sums of money are flowing to militias and terrorist groups,” he added.

“These are organized criminal networks that also deal with drugs and other illicit commodities,” said Rios, adding that they are “as good as anyone else — they diversify.”

The Global Initiative report breaks down the eco-trafficking chain into three linked groups; 

1) Source: the bottom of the chain, those felling the trees and hunting the animals.

2) Transit: the smugglers that move the product, either illicitly or by turning it into a legal product through fraud or by manufacturing, and

3) Destination: the vendors, collectors, consumers at home who are buying the products and businesses selling or using the final product and the criminal “controllers” overseeing the whole chain.

Bernardo Ortiz, head of South America’s office of wildlife trade monitoring group called Traffic says it’s at the second stage, transit, that eco-trafficking commonly intersects with established organized crime groups.

“You have the people who have invested money in buying and putting all these things together and then you start seeing how the experts on illegality start facilitating the flow of these commodities through controls,” he told In Sight Crime. “These are the same guys who know how to bring any illegal stuff through these corridors.”

In Colombia, the overlap between eco-trafficking and trafficking drugs, arms, cash and people is substantial, according to Ortiz. But even in countries with less developed trafficking networks, the two will likely interact.

“Once you get into dirty business, you are always going to end up bumping into those that control whatever illegal activities,” he said.

In Colombia and Peru, eco-trafficking is linked to illegal armed groups.

In Colombia, guerrilla and narco-paramilitary groups charge “taxes” on any illicit shipments passing through remote territories they control, while in Peru, the Shining Path guerrillas also profit from the illegal logging trade, according to the authorities.

In other areas, organized crime groups dedicated to eco-trafficking — in particular the timber trade — appear to have evolved. In Nicaragua, communities and the authorities have complained of a growing “wood mafia” and the presence of Honduran armed groups seeking to profit from timber illegally logged in remote border regions.

At least 448 environmental and land activists were murdered between 2002 and 2013, most of the killings linked to logging, according to a recent investigation by Global Witness.

Only 1 percent of those murders resulted in a conviction, according to Global Witness.

As human rights defenders at the highest levels have exposed this week, innocent people that Americans, including their media leaders such as Glenn Beck, have branded as “illegals” are in fact legal refugees. Refugees, under international law, are entitled to protection and due process – even by Americans, too often supporting exceptionalism and racism.

If the Obama administration and radical right, screaming about “illegals,” really want to curb the present refugee crisis, they need to address the roots causing people to flee their homes, one of such roots being eco-trafficking violence they themselves might be supporting and vice versa.

Sources: Interpol, In Sight Crime, United Nations, YouTube