It may be shocking to imagine that Yemen, our peaceful and loving home, may also home to organized criminal organizations one sees in the movies and reads stories about such as the Italian or Russian Mafia, Al-Qaeda, and the Somali Pirates; groups that operate outside the bounds of the legal acceptable activity.

In this context, a crime is a violation of laws and principles, an economic, political or any other purpose. In this article I classify organized crime in Yemen into five categories depending on the nature of its activity. The first is the organized crime in government, also known as corruption and criminal government enterprising. Organized crime in government is evident through the continuous dysfunctionality of its operations in spite of all reform programs and transparency initiatives, even in cases where such crimes are exposed; a criminal government always ensures that its members are above-the-law.

The second category is human trafficking, and in Yemen it includes two parts, the first is trafficking of Somali refugees through the pirates of the Gulf of Aden to ‘their agents’ on Yemeni shores who receive and disseminate the immigrants locally or forward them to regional and international markets, while the other part is concerned with the kidnapping or purchase of local kids and sell them as beggars, slaves and sex objects.

 The third is the notorious civil organized crime; tiny factions which either focus on one sort of criminal operation or have a wide span of activities such as burglary of houses, shops and vehicles, prostitution, drugs, manufacturing of fraudulent currency, hustling, violent assaults and murder. Reports on this sort of organized crime have recently increased alarmingly in Yemen, in correlation with the increase of poverty, deterioration of quality of life, and stagnation of the economy.

 Although the third category is motivated by economic gain, the fourth – terrorism – has a political mandate; Al-Qaeda and Taliban come to mind in this category, larger factions with a political and ideological mandate which fuels its motivation for growth, evident from the Taliban’s recent take-over of southern Afghanistan.

 The last category may be the most vicious; it is large-scale organized crime enterprises, such as arm traffickers, money launderers, and countries which invade others for economic gain such as oil or in service of a political agenda such as racial genocide and influence. These sorts of crimes devastate millions.

 The secretive nature of organized crime means that it can exist within a society without being tangible. There are news stories about each and every one of those categories in Yemen, and relating those stories to each other might indicate that our peaceful and loving home is also home to some of the most violent, cruel and greedy criminal organizations.

 Let that notion provoke your mind.

Comments (3)

2  crime Written by Guest, on 11-11-2006 11:02 In addition to the above,crimes have no regular shape to take place. It can occur wherever it finds a way.    Adnan

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