32

Agents of Insecurity in the Andes: Transregional Crime and

Strategic Relations
Arlene B. Tickner and Ann C. Mason

32.1

Introduction1

Current processes of globalization are transforming

the worlds social and political geography. Many new
socio-spatial arrangements are discontinuous with
state jurisdictions and increasingly incompatible with
the territorial principle of sovereignty (Inayatullah/
Blaney 2004; Mason 2005). This spatial reconfiguration is vividly illustrated by the deterritorialization of
security in the post-Cold War era. Security domains
are not only located above, below, and alongside the
territorial state, but they also are intertwined with and
superimposed upon other such spaces, presenting a
global security matrix at odds with state-centric epistemologies (Walker 1993; Agnew 1994; Brenner 1999).
This multiplicity of security sites that characterizes
contemporary global order encompasses a wide range
of values, actors, and dynamics that transcend the
conventional national security model.
Andean security dynamics typify this global security paradigm. Security interdependence, regional
overlay, transnational flows, and the prevalence of
non-state actors are the defining characteristics of the
security landscape in the Andes, making it problematic to analyse security exclusively at the national level.
Although it is commonly argued that the Colombian
conflict is the vortex of regional insecurity, we find
this interpretation to be partial at best (Rabasa/Chalk
2001; Millett 2002). Not only does it obviate the extent to which transnational security geographies have
superseded state-based approaches, but it also fails to
recognize how the Colombian conflict is both fuelled
by and feeds back into transregional activities.
Of particular relevance in the Pan-Andean security
context are processes involving transregional dynamics and region-wide networks of actors. The most
1

This paper is part of an ongoing research project on

Andean transregional security, financed by the Ford
Foundation.

acute threats to Andean security are transborder in nature, as epitomized by the movement of drugs and
arms that crisscross the region irrespective of political
boundaries, and in many cases spill out of the region
altogether. Strategic relationships involving both transnational criminal organizations and armed groups operate beyond the control of national governments and
manage these illicit trafficking activities.
This chapter looks at the role played by these nonstate agents in constructing the threat dimension of
an Andean-wide security configuration. We use as a
point of departure our transregional framework,
which is based on a regional security geography (Tickner/Mason 2003; Mason/Tickner 2006). After specifying this theoretical approach to security we lay out
the contours of the model (32.2). The chapter proceeds with a discussion of Andean security (32.3),
with particular emphasis on the core security problem
of the region, namely illicit flows and networks (32.4).
We identify those non-state actors that perpetuate this
transregional dynamic, as well as the strategic relations that exist among them (32.5). The text concludes
with an analysis of the contributions of the Andean
case to current debates on security thinking (32.6)

32.2

Transregional Security Approach

Security has been virtually reconceptualized since the

end of the Cold War (Matthews 1989; Buzan 1991;
Lipschutz 1995; Buzan/Wver/de Wilde 1998). This
concept has been broadened to include multiple referents, and non-military processes and threats, both of
which illustrate how new security principles transcend
conventional categories. Most central to new security
thinking, however, has been the transformation in
securitys spatial and territorial context. The most elementary manifestation of this has been the blurring of
the internal/external dichotomy that defined previous
security studies. Domestic and international domains

450
are enmeshed: security risks can be wholly contained
at the local level, internal dynamics may become
regional, transnational or even global threats and global processes may in turn exacerbate insecurity conditions for certain regions, states or subnational groups.
The provision of security has also been globalized.
Along with the effacement of the internal/external
divide has also come new thinking on the role of the
international community in protecting civilian populations and establishing order within state jurisdictions
(Walter/Snyder 1999). Security conditions within sovereign states are increasingly considered part of transnational processes and a legitimate concern of a
broader global polity.
The deterritorialization of security links up a multiciplicity of state and non-state actors at all levels of
socio-political activity to form a complex web of interacting dynamics. Indeed, in the Andean context, the
defining feature of the security problematic is the existence of region-wide processes that span nation-state
boundaries. At the same time, these processes interact
with a host of political and socio-economic problems
within the regions individual countries. A transregional security approach incorporates both of these
dimensions: problems shared by the areas states and
societies, and security issues that permeate the regional constellation, and transcend individual state
units (Tickner/Mason 2003).
As in most geographic regions, Bolivia, Colombia,
Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela are bound together in
part by the similarity of the political, socio-economic,
and security difficulties they share. Democratic fragility, institutional weakness, poor articulation between
state and society, socio-economic exclusion, and multiple forms of violence are common to all states of the
region, even though they may manifest themselves
uniquely in each national context (Gutierrez 2003;
Drake/Hershberg 2006; Mason/Tickner 2006).
What most stands out about the current security
climate, however, is its intermestic and transborder
nature. What we denote as transregionalism involves
security logics that diffuse the entire region and the
primary agents of which are non-state actors that either operate at the regional level, or whose activities
are somehow articulated with regional processes. In
the Andean context, the most salient transregional security issue is the illicit trade of drugs and arms, and
the networks they produce.
Both the national and regional components of
transregionalism are highly interdependent: shared
problems are both mutually reinforcing and nurture
transregional processes. Regional level dynamics

Arlene B. Tickner and Ann C. Mason

themselves overlap and exacerbate each other, at the
same time that they feed back into domestic developments. For example, the tendency toward institutional
weakening and democratic deconsolidation in the Andes has provided fertile ground for burgeoning levels of
criminality and the formation of illicit transnational
networks. These activities both depend on and deepen
corruption at all levels of government, leading to further deterioration of public institutions and practices.
In addition to links between the regional and national
levels, horizontal interactions, both political and criminal, also take place among a wide variety of non-state
actors throughout the region.
The centrality of domestic level problems in transregional security dynamics warrants a brief overview
of the most critical issues faced by the five Andean nations. First, each has a persistently mediocre economic record. Not only do they share minimal, and in
some cases regressive, growth, but they are marked by
persistent poverty, cycles of stagnation, and entrenched inequality. Crushing poverty is a way of life
in the Andes, with roughly half the population in Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela living
below the poverty line. The regional average of those
living in conditions of indigence is approximately 25
per cent (CEPAL 2005). The Andean subsystem also
registers the highest levels of inequality in Latin America (Munck 2003; Portes/Hoffman 2003), as indicated by their respective Gini indexes: Bolivia 44.7;
Colombia 57.6; Ecuador 43.7; Peru 49.8; and Venezuela 49.1 (United Nations 2005). Both poverty and
inequality are highly correlated with rising social discontent and increasing levels of violence and criminality.
Weak administrative and political institutions also
aggravate insecurity at the regional level. On the one
hand, democracy in the Andes has undergone a
marked process of deterioration (Mainwaring/Scully
1995; Gutirrez 2003). Congressional and party
weakening, and excessive strengthening of the executive branch, have seriously undermined democracys
foundations and efficacy. Elected governments have
been less than successful at guaranteeing the rule of
law, and at protecting basic civil rights and freedoms.
Democracys credibility has been further eroded by
deeply entrenched official corruption, which is itself
highly correlated with weak government institutions.
Indeed, the Andean countries rank among the most
corrupt in Latin America and the world, according to
the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index (2005, figure 32.1).2

Agents of Insecurity in the Andes: Transregional Crime and Strategic Relations

451

Figure 32.1: Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index 2005. May 2005. Source: <http://ww1.
transparency.org/cpi/2005/cpi2005_infocus.html#worldmap>. Prof. Dr J. Graf Lambsdorff of the University of Passau produced the CPI table. See: <www.transparency.org/surveys/#cpi> or: < www.icgg.org>.

In addition, Andean countries all receive low marks

for their empirical attributes of statehood: the exercise of exclusive authority over territory and populations, the provision of essential public goods, and sufficient coercive power to maintain order and extract
resources. Vast areas of national territory are devoid
of state presence and administrative infrastructure,
giving rise to illegality as well as privatized systems of
conflict resolution, security, and justice. Armed insurgencies, violent social movements, criminal organizations, and common delinquency are part of the landscape in all Andean countries, and to a large degree
beyond effective government control.

32.3

Andean Security Scenario

Today, the Andean region is commonly viewed as the

epicentre of hemispheric instability, attributable to
two primary factors. First, it is reduced to the abovementioned domestic political, institutional, and socio2

On a scale from zero (highly corrupt) to ten (highly

clean), in 2005 Peru was classified with a 3.5 corruption
index, placing it 65th out of 159 on the country rank.
Colombia at 4.0 was ranked 55th, Venezuela at 2.3 was
ranked 130th; and both Ecuador and Bolivia were classified 2.5, coming both in 117th.

economic factors (Council on Foreign Relations

2004; Shifter 2004). Secondly, regional turmoil is associated with the Colombian armed conflict and its
spill over effects. Admittedly, with the exception of
Colombias high profile war, there are few acute security problems in or between the other countries of the
region. Peru and Ecuadors territorial dispute continues to simmer, following the 1995 armed confrontation. Colombia and Venezuela also have longstanding
border disagreements that predate the current Colombian internal conflict. Likewise, the externalities
produced by Colombias internal conflict have led to
increasing tensions with neighbours.
Contrary to this reading, however, we argue that
there are important region-wide security dynamics
that have been crowded out by excessive concentration upon the Colombian conflict and by failure to
take into account its regional dimension. Many of the
most visible risks to Andean security neither originate
within, nor are confined to, a single national territory.
Indeed, the second dimension of our transregional
model consists of security processes that, while highly
associated with internal instability, are more transnational than domestic in nature. Drugs and arms, and
the violence and criminality they spawn, crisscross the
region irrespective of national boundaries. At the
same time, the illegal groups that control these activities form transnational alliances both within the re-

452

Arlene B. Tickner and Ann C. Mason

gion and in conjunction with hemispheric and global

organizations. To the extent that Colombian armed
groups participate in illicit arms and drug trafficking
activities, operate in neighbouring territories and
form political relationships with non-Colombian actors, this conflict also takes on an explicitly regional
component. Although Colombias internal conflict
clearly generates security externalities, as will be discussed subsequently, the war itself is enmeshed with
complex regional and global processes. For example,
global drug markets provide a major source of funding for the conflicts primary players, and in turn finance the acquisition of illegal arms. These transactions occur within complex transnational criminal
associations inside and at the edges of the Andean region, which are also involved in global financial, criminal, and even terrorist networks. Indeed, seen from
this perspective, Colombia's war is more international
than normally assumed, actively involving dense transborder networks composed of an array of global actors (Mason 2003).

32.4

Transnational Criminal Flows and

Networks

Transformations in the global political economy have

significantly altered the spaces in which illegal activities take place. Namely, the high mobility and volume
of goods, people and money, the speed of communication and travel, and the porousness of national borders have facilitated the expansion and consolidation
of illicit networks around the world (Van Schendel/
Abraham 2006; Williams 1998: 250). Transnational
criminal organizations related to the drug trade alone
have amassed tremendous amounts of power due to
the lucrative nature of the business. According to the
2005 World Drug Report of the United Nations
Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODOC 2005), the
global narcotics market generates earnings of approximately US$ 320 billion per year, and the size of this
trade is larger than the GDP of 88 per cent of the
worlds nations. Drug income is used to influence the
political and economic system in those countries in
which transnational organizations operate, primarily
to keep in check initiatives that seek to restrict illegal
activities. Transnational crime particularly targets
third world states as venues for their operations due
to the fact that weaker countries are not only more
vulnerable to corrupting influences but also are less
able to combat organized criminal activities effectively
(Lee 1999; Serrano 2000).

Not surprisingly, criminal flows and networks pervade the Andean region. A major portion of the global cultivation, processing, and trafficking of cocaine
(and to a lesser extent, heroin) is concentrated in the
Andes. A traditional crop cultivated and ingested in
Bolivia and Peru, by the 1980s coca took on a global
dimension as cocaine consumption skyrocketed in the
United States and Europe (Tokatlian 1995; Clawson/
Lee 1996). An informal division of labour emerged in
the Andean region in which Peru and Bolivia provided
the raw material which was then processed and exported by Colombian drug cartels. All countries came
to be involved in the diverse array of activities that
make up the cocaine chain of production, including
coca leaf cultivation, coca paste transportation, chemical processing, transshipment, distribution, and
money laundering.
This production structure changed dramatically in
the 1990s as coca cultivation shifted to Colombia, in
large measure due to successful eradication campaigns
and aerial interdiction operations in Peru and Bolivia.
Developments in Colombia also played a role in the
regional reshuffling of the drug business. The demise
of the Cali and Medelln cartels in the middle of the
decade opened up a power vacuum which was rapidly
filled not only by micro cartels, but more relevant for
our discussion, by Colombian armed actors. The fragmentation of centralized management had regional
implications as well, as different criminal actors
throughout the Andes and the rest of the hemisphere
assumed control over key aspects of the trade (Lee
2004). With Colombia producing over 80 per cent of
the cocaine sold on the global market, and Brazil, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela operating as transit routes for the illegal passage of chemical precursors, cocaine and heroin, and currency, the entire region has emerged as a key site of this transnational
network.
Parallel to drug trafficking, the illegal arms trade
constitutes another dimension of transregional illicit
flows in the Andes. Although it has been fuelled primarily by insurgent-related activities in Colombia, it
also furnishes weapons to common criminal organizations throughout the region, creating complex associations that incorporate a wide variety of agents in
highly interdependent, multi-dimensional relations.
The principal transit routes for arms entering the region are Central America, particularly Panama, Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil, and Suriname (Cragin/Hoffman 2003). Many of these weapons, stockpiles from
the Cold War, originate in Central America, the ex-Soviet republics, and Eastern Europe. Commercial arms

Agents of Insecurity in the Andes: Transregional Crime and Strategic Relations

from the United States and Europe also end up on the
black market and are channelled into the region. The
arms trafficked throughout the Andes include pistols,
semi-automatic weapons, sub-machine guns, assault rifles, rockets, mortars, grenades, and ground-to-air
missiles.3
The arms trade is highly articulated with drug trafficking. In large measure, this is due to the fact that
both arms and drug dealers make use of the same
transit routes (Cragin/ Hoffman 2003). Increasingly,
however, these commodities also form part of an integrated black market, as criminal groups traffic in
both arms and drugs. The enmeshment of drugs and
arms networks has been deepened as arms-for-drugs
swaps become more commonplace. These complex
barter arrangements are made up of countless regional and extra regional participants.
Although Colombia epitomizes this dynamic, Brazil also offers a striking example of how drug and
arms flows and networks interact. In addition to being a major cocaine distribution and transshipment
area for drugs sent to Europe, the virtual absence of
the state in the Amazon has converted this part of
Brazil into a haven for criminal activities. The countrys role in the drug traffic chain has also allowed for
the emergence of drug gangs that control the favelas
of cities such as Rio de Janeiro and So Paulo (Leeds
1996; Bagley 2003). The transposing of drug- and
arms-related transactions has allowed favela-based
groups to increase both the scope of their operations
and their relative power (Leeds 1996; Martins 2005).
In addition to aggravating existing levels of violence in
the favelas, drug-related corruption in Brazil has skyrocketed, while parallel power and security patterns
have emerged in areas controlled by criminal organizations.

32.5

Non-state Agents of Insecurity in

the Andes

Although illicit flows and networks of drugs and arms

draw in a wide array of state and non-state actors
throughout the Andean region, the Colombian conflict and its participants are the centre of gravity for
these dynamics. As the principal actors in Colombias
internal war, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) have also emerged as key agents of
3

Confidential authors interview for Andean transregional security project, Bogot, August 2005.

453

transregional insecurity. Proponents of the spill-over

thesis rightly stress that illegal armed activities have
led to a marked deterioration in public order in border zones with neighbouring countries (Millett 2002).
However, it is Colombian armed groups involvement
in illicit transactions and relationships that is the driving force behind the transregional facet of Andean insecurity.
Established in the 1960s as a self-defence organization in response to a period of countrywide violence, the FARC is the most important insurgent
movement in Colombia today. Following a strategy of
military growth and territorial expansion that began
in the 1980s, at present, the group has as many as
18,000 members and operates in 4060 per cent of
Colombian national territory. The growth of private
right-wing self-defence groups coincided with the expansion of the drug trade in Colombia during the
1980s. These private armies, originally financed by
the Medellin and Cali cartels to defend their landholdings from the guerrillas, evolved into independent organizations with offensive strategies and autonomous political aspirations. In 1997, the AUC was created as an umbrella organization to join disparate paramilitary groups operating throughout Colombia. The
group is present in at least 35 per cent of the country
and has approximately 13,500 members4.
In conjunction with a multiplicity of smaller, independent criminal organizations, both the FARC and
the AUC are central actors in the regions drug and
arms trade. The AUCs criminal origins are such that
they have always been involved in drug-related activities. However, upon stepping into the void left by the
dismantling of the Medellin and Cali cartels, paramilitaries won control over trafficking operations that offered a crucial source of income for their rapidly expanding movement (Romero 2004). In 1982, the
FARC leaderships approval of illegal taxation of the
cocaine industry as a legitimate means of financing its
revolutionary agenda also contributed to the transformation of the political economy of the Colombian
conflict (Richani 2002). During the 1990s, the country experienced an explosion in domestic coca production. Between the mid-1980s and the early 2000s,
coca cultivation mushroomed nearly tenfold, and
drug-related activities became a key source of income

In July 2003, the government and the paramilitaries

signed a settlement whereby the AUC agreed to demobilize its forces gradually and lay down its weapons by
the end of 2005. As of December of that year, over 20
AUC groups had demobilized.

454

Arlene B. Tickner and Ann C. Mason

for both the AUC and the FARC. Initially involved in

production, processing, transportation, and taxation,
the FARC had diversified into trafficking by the early
2000s. The AUC, for its part, is estimated to directly
manage 40 per cent of the trafficking business
(Romero 2004). Territorial wars between the AUC
and the FARC to control regions dominated by coca
cultivation and transit routes are a key feature of the
Colombian conflict, although there are increasing incidents of pragmatic, strategic cooperation between
them in narcotics operations.5
Dependence upon the drug business as a source
of income for financing their operations and arms acquisitions has inserted both the AUC and the FARC
into a web of criminal networks throughout the Andes and beyond. Although most of the cocaine consumed in the United States and Europe originates in
Colombia, it is nearly always channelled through multiple nodes located within the network. Latin American organizations that traffic in drugs and/or arms
are located in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Venezuela, Chile, and Mexico.
Brazilian drug lord Luiz Fernando Da Costa (alias
Fernandinho) ran a vast crime ring that engaged in
systematic cocaine-arms transactions with the 16th
Front of the FARC in southern Colombia. Following
Fernandinhos 2001 capture, new criminal elements
replaced him. Since the late 1980s, Mexican drug cartels have maintained alliances with different Colombian actors in order to channel drugs into the United
States. In addition to this intermediary role, increasingly drug traffickers from Mexico operate in Peruvian territory and control the Pacific Ocean transit
routes (Sobern 2005: 236237). In Central America,
another key transshipment point for drugs leaving the
Andean region, drug trafficking organizations that operate in Guatemala and the Mara Salvatrucha gang,
based mainly in El Salvador, also maintain direct relations with Colombian actors.
Guerrilla and paramilitary operations in ungoverned frontier regions and their unhampered
movement across all of Colombias international borders facilitate such interactions (International Crisis
Group 2003a). In the Venezuelan and Ecuadorian border zones, for example, Colombian armed actors
maintain routine relationships with local criminal organizations. Likewise, Colombian insurgents move
freely in the Darien region of Panama. This situation
provides a permissive environment for illegal drugs

and arms transactions as well as a variety of other

criminal activities, including kidnapping, extortion,
and smuggling.
Corrupt government officials also commonly permit and/or participate in these illegal transactions. Although official figures are not available, arms, munitions, and explosives belonging to the armed forces of
Ecuador and Venezuela have been confiscated periodically from illegal Colombian armed actors. In mid2002, it was also revealed that a year earlier the AUC
had received a shipment of 3,000 AK-47 rifles and 2.5
million rounds of ammunition left over from Nicaraguan government stocks. With the assistance of a private Guatemalan arms dealer, the Nicaraguan National Police sold the rifles to an Israeli arms dealer
who purportedly represented the Panamanian National Police. Once the arms ended up in the hands of
the AUC, it was determined that the Nicaraguan Police had been suspiciously lax in complying with established international norms regulating arms transactions (Schroeder 2004).
Criminal organizations that operate on all five
continents are also directly or indirectly involved in
illegal trafficking networks based out of the Andes.
The mafias in Russia and the former Soviet Republics,
Eastern Europe, China, Korea, Japan, Israel, Nigeria,
and Italy, among others, are known to maintain a
presence in the region, and have direct and indirect
relationships with Andean illegal groups.6 Arms left
over from the Cold War era are routinely trafficked
on world markets, with the ex-Soviet Republics being
one of the primary sources of illegal arms that end up
in the hands of Colombian non-state actors. Likewise,
many of these same criminal organizations trade in
cocaine that originates in Colombia and is trafficked
by regional criminal gangs out of the region.
The now infamous Peruvian-Jordanian arms scandal of 2000 vividly illustrates both the global scope of
these networks, as well as the linkages that illicit flows
build between distinct legal and illegal actors
(Schroeder 2004; Bagley 2004). This case involved
corrupt officials from the Jordanian government, European arms traffickers, the Russian mafia and corrupt military officials, the FARC, Brazilian drug lord
Luiz Fernando Da Costa (alias Fernandinho), and
Perus National Intelligence Director Vladimiro Montesinos. In mid-2000 it was discovered that since 1999
approximately 10,000 AK-47 rifles had been delivered
to the FARC in Colombia in four separate shipments.

Confidential authors interview for Andean transregional security project, Bogot, December 2005.

Confidential authors interview for Andean transregional security project, Bogot, in October 2005.

Agents of Insecurity in the Andes: Transregional Crime and Strategic Relations

These weapons were collected in Russia and the
Ukraine and shipped by air from several geographic
sites. In Jordan, utilized for refuelling on both routes,
corrupt governmental officials were bribed with cocaine. The weapons entered the Western Hemisphere
via Trinidad and Tobago and Suriname, and were
thrown by air into southern Colombian territory. Following the delivery of the weapons, the planes landed
in the vicinity of Iquitos, Peru, to refuel and load up
with cocaine provided by the FARC in exchange for
the arms (Cragin/Hoffman 2003; Bagley 2003;
Schroeder 2004). While Fernandinho played a key
role as intermediary in these transactions (Bagley
2003: 124126), Montesinos provided legal cover by
purchasing the arms in the name of the Peruvian military, and then permitting them to be rerouted to the
FARC.
Instrumental criminal relations are perhaps the
most obvious type of association maintained among
the Andean regions illicit non-state actors that bypass
state controls and generate insecurity. However, the
agenda of the FARC in particular is such that this
group also cultivates relationships with regional and
global counterparts that are more political than criminal in nature. Such efforts have been geared towards
gaining international recognition as well as assuring
logistical support.
The FARC has also sought to acquire and disseminate technical expertise and know-how through these
ties. For example, Vietnamese military experts and exFMLN guerrillas have provided training in Colombia
in Special Forces techniques as recently as the late
1990s. The arrest of three representatives of the IRA
in Colombia in August 2001, two of them experts in
urban warfare training and explosives, revealed that
between 1998 and that year this group too had trained
FARC members. Subsequent military actions made
explicit use of this newly gained knowledge. Palestinians have also visited FARC bases for the purpose of
providing technical expertise in bomb design. To a lesser extent, the FARC are also believed to engage in
knowledge-sharing with other likeminded organizations in the region. The Colombian guerrilla movement is reported to provide tactical assistance to the
Peruvian Sendero Luminoso organization.7 The highprofile 2004 kidnapping of the daughter of ex-Paraguayan president Ral Cubas was also widely believed
to have been carried out with FARC training.

Confidential authors interview for Andean transregional security project, Bogot, December 2005.

455

In addition to links with non-state agents, the

FARC maintains informal relationships with regional
state actors, particularly in Venezuela and Ecuador. Although neither government provides direct material
support, members of the military forces and government officials in each have extra-officially provided
sanctuary and freedom of movement within these
countries (International Crisis Group 2003). In what
turned into a bilateral diplomatic row, in early 2005 a
high-level FARC leader was discovered to have been
living openly in Venezuela with governmental complacence in spite of an international arrest warrant. The
Ecuadorian government, for its part, maintains an unofficial laissez-faire policy toward the FARC and its
longstanding presence in Ecuadorian national territory.

32.6

Conclusions

In the Andes, the existence of transregional processes

linking up distinct actors, problems, and spaces in relational and interdependent ways suggests to us the
possibility of a new security cartography. Not only is
the Andean security problematic far more than the
sum of five domestic situations, but it is also a highly
fluid and changing scenario that is not synchronized
with a static, territorial map of the region.
The principal transregional security dynamics in
the Andes contradict a standard geographical representation in two aspects. First, the primary risks
posed to regional security transcend national spaces.
As discussed previously, while all the countries share a
series of domestic problems, the primordial motor of
Andean security is processes that cannot be reduced
to the state level. Arms and drug trafficking, by their
very nature, are transnational in scope. Although illicit
flows may not adhere to the entire region uniformly,
the ways in which they traverse and transcend national territories underscore the extent to which alternative security sites have replaced the traditional state
paradigm.
Second, these dynamics involve a diverse array of
sub-state, transnational, and global actors. While the
FARC, the AUC, and other criminal organizations in
the region are the principal agents of insecurity in the
Andes, extra regional non-state actors are also increasingly a part of the Andean security matrix. Brazilian drug lords and the Russian mafia, for example,
can be considered important players in the Andean
security game in that their activities link up with regional processes and actors. Indeed, illicit drug and

456
arms flows not only involve non-Andean actors, but
also spill out of the region altogether, highlighting the
disconnect between the Andean region in its conventional usage and our call for a transregional approach
to the areas security problems.
Both features of our transregional security framework non-state actors and transnational processes
not only establish new parameters for thinking about
security in this specific region, but may also provide
insights into the use of alternative security cartographies. Remapping geographic spaces according to
specific security interactions, threats, and processes is
an interesting heuristic devise for theorists and policymakers alike. Such exercises would provide important
empirical foundations for illustrating contemporary
conceptualizations of global security.
Perhaps more importantly, the policy implications
of transregional thinking are potentially significant.
Visual imaging of transnational security processes
should impress upon policy-makers the importance of
multilateral solutions to problems that necessarily extend beyond the state. Notwithstanding the abundance of evidence that the most critical security problems in the Andes are region-wide, regional security
cooperation has been in short supply. To date, the regions nations have adhered to a narrow, uncoordinated public policy agenda in their efforts to combat
drug and arms trafficking, and transnational crime.
Not surprisingly, these strategies have been less than
successful in making headway against such problems.
This disjuncture reflects the contradiction between a
global political order based upon the territorial state
and security dynamics that are largely deterritorialized
in nature. While certain world regions have evolved
toward a more multilateral scheme in which global
governance mechanisms are prevalent, the Andean region continues to adhere to a traditional state-based
structure which is particularly ill-suited to address the
transnational security threats that pose the greatest
risks to regional stability.

Arlene B. Tickner and Ann C. Mason