Brazil: violence in (merged thread)

[TheCurmudgeon]

Interesting idea. Watching events unravel and testing ideas against reality BEFORE it happens rather than in hindsight.

little information:

Key Facts

Here is a brief look at some of the facts and figures about the cities' slums:


1,000 – approximate number of favelas in Rio de Janeiro


18 – number of favelas that have seen Police Pacification Units (UPPs) installed to drive out crime since the first was established three years ago


40 – number of UPPs police aim to establish by 2014


20 – percentage of the six million people in the city's metropolitan region who live in favelas

3 – times more people killed on average per year by police in Rio than in the entire United States

37 – murders per 100,000 people in Rio per year compared to 1.9 per 100,000 in London

69,300 – number of inhabitants of Rocinha, South America's biggest favela, according to 2010 census

150,000 – estimated approximate true number of inhabitants of Rocinha

Facts and Figures.

60% of Rio de Janeiro’s new favelas are in the West Zone.

Favelas in the North Zone occupy a greater portion of the city; more than one million people live in communities in this zone.

Large favelas in Rio are prone to real estate speculation. The implementation of services inflated property prices.

Apartments are now common in favelas. Many investors take advantage of irregularities to be able to build apartments and then sell or rent out the units.

Rental price depends on the favela and the property. Monthly rental prices range from R$150 to R$ 500. In Rocinha, people line up to rent a house. Shacks in Pavão-Pavãozinho are sold for R$30.000 to R$40.000.

There is an enormous difference in household income between those who live on the asphalt and those who live in the favela. The average asphalt income is R$1,500, compared to R$352 in the favela. One can see all this inequality in Barra da Tijuca and nearby areas. In Barra, a head of a family earns an average salary of R$ 5,175 while the average income of a family in the Angu Duro community is R$ 382.

Brazilian favelas are considered a consequence of unequal income distribution and the lack of housing across the country. However, according to research by Professor Alba Zaluar, partly funded by the city of Rio de Janeiro, only 15% of favela residents would like to leave their hills. The survey revealed that 97% of these Rio favela homes have a TV, 94% have refrigerators, 59% a DVD player, 55% a mobile telephone, 48% have a washing machine, and 12% own a computer.

Favelas represent 3.5% of the city’s land area.

Between 1999 and 2008, the area of favelas grew by 7%, which corresponds to the entire Ipanema neighborhood.

From 2004 to 2010, 218 new favelas emerged in Rio.

Rio das Pedras favela already has 3,000 apartment buildings.

Favelas have a strong illegal market. Estimates show that irregular businesses generate R$ 3 billion per year.

[TheCurmudgeon]

An interesting paper, but still in Draft - Please don't quote without permission of the author

Criminal Governance and Insurgency: The Brazilian Experience

Abstract
The issue of non-state armed groups' governance has recently gained increased attention from various social science disciplines. In my paper I try to look at the territorial governance and authority of armed gangs in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro through the David Kilcullen's notion of insurgency as competition for the support of population through establishing the resilient system of control and subsequently gaining legitimacy from it. Although organized crime groups in favelas are not ideologically motivated to oppose the state as other insurgents are, their engagement in illegal activities and control of population based on „their“ territory make them armed opponents of state and de facto insurgents. In this paper I argue that their authority among favela citizens could be understood by the lack of Brazilian state institutions' capacity to ensure security and social order, which is crucial part of state „output legitimacy“ (and therefore de facto failure. The criminal groups are, on the other hand, viewed by many favela inhabitants as more capable to fulfil at least the most basic community needs. Therefore they are able to „outgovern“ the state and present an effective and in some sense legitimate alternative to its institutions.

[flagg]

Here's a YouTube link to a decent documentary about a favela in Rio, Brazil:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP9eYxELA8Y

I particularly like the part from approx 15:00 to approx 21:00 minutes.

It follows the local slumlord(urban warlord meaning of the word) "Spiderman" in his unenviable tasks that seem to include:

Mayor
Police Chief
Judge/Arbitrator
Bank Manager
Public Works CFO
Drug Dealer

He's wearing a lot of hats filling the vacuum left by a failure of legitimate local governance.

To me, after having seen this and then reading Kilcullen's "Out of the Mountains" it really struck home the points of "conflict entrepreneur" and illicit networks where drug revenue is A, or possibly THE revenue stream(of the moment), NOT the purpose of the network.

It also helped better define for me forum member Bob's World's description of self-governed/ungoverned spaces that I've seen in his previous posting.

I've been following the UPP(Brazil's Police Pacifying Unit) project with great interest, and look forward to more in-depth analysis targeting those with a professional interest in the growing megaslum future.

So far, what little has made it into the mainstream has been less than promising:

Rio Police Officer Is Indicted for Torture While Lecturing on ‘Smart Policing’ in New York

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/201...ype=blogs&_r=0

Brazil's favelas are in big trouble, despite the World Cup marketing push

http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...lings-security

As an interested amateur, I'm left thinking that some source material worth researching for future solutions, might include a look into certain directions from the past.

I think if I had the opportunity to visit and understand the Brazilian favela ecosystems or Karachi slum ecosystems I'd want to do some homework in areas such as:

Shanghai Municipal Police(pre WWII) for low-tech historical efforts and innovation to quell organised crime in urban ghettos that has a foreign/colonial component

Northern Ireland 1970's-to present for more modern efforts to counter a capable insurgency with an urban component that covered the gamut of old school manual coal face work up through and including more modern interagency efforts leveraging technology

Political Machines(Tammany Hall as one example) in US urban ghettos from late 1700s to early 1900s for examples of networks leveraging their power to transition from illegal to quasi legal to legitimacy and recognition as one of the political centres of gravity/influence/control.

-----

I sometimes wonder if the life cycles of insects may be an analog to illicit megaslum networks?

embryo
larvae
pupa
imago/maturity/legitimacy

Comparing the favela video above with the Vice series on Karachi found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgIl1vmIchA

It would superficially appear that Karachi's slums/ghettos are well into the transition to political machines

-----

Are developing world megaslums simply echoing our own western history of slum/ghetto development with two adjustments for sheer scale and the catalysing effects of technology?

IF that is the case, and while I am a big fan of David Kilcullen's book and derived great value from it(particularly his conflict entrepreneur and "city as biological system" perspective), I don't see enough emphasis on what I see as the life cycle of illicit networks on the journey from criminality to legitimacy.

Using Kilcullen's own biological system viewpoint, I wonder if the illicit networks can be viewed as a parasitic/symbiotic biological system within a system?

-----

I look forward to seeing how this thread develops in the exciting times ahead!

[Bill Moore]

I have generally been a fan of Kilcullen's books and articles, although I found this particular book not as well thought out as his previous books. Perhaps because he is still exploring this concept. To be fair Ralph Peters, and many others, did meet him to the punch on this issue, and I recall a number of discussions and papers in the 1990s discussing potential military scenarios in large urban areas and how complex they would be.

http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art...-and-dangerous

Peters' wrote in 1996:

Cities always have been centers of gravity, but they are now more magnetic than ever before. Once the gatherers of wealth, then the processors of wealth, cities and their satellite communities have become the ultimate creators of wealth. They concentrate people and power, communications and control, knowledge and capability, rendering all else peripheral. They are also the post-modern equivalent of jungles and mountains--citadels of the dispossessed and irreconcilable. A military unprepared for urban operations across a broad spectrum is unprepared for tomorrow.

Peters made a lot of interesting points regarding the future of urban warfare in a talk I attended in 2001 (before 9/11), but most of the points focused on the physical aspects of fighting in a city and the difficulty of templating irregulars. Kilcullen adds the socio-political aspects and I found his thoughts on the city as an ecosystem (system of systems) and how competitive control works very helpful in observing and explaining what many of us have experienced and simply labeled it as chaos, yet there was an underlying order that wasn't necessarily visible to us at the time.

On the other hand his book in my opinion is still is missing the so what factor for security planners. He is also focused currently on data analysis to analyze cities which may prove to be valuable, but similar studies in the past have generally led us astray. Ralph Peters on the other hand glances over the socio-political and focuses on the so what at the tactical and doctrine level. Curious about readers' thoughts on his projections made in 1996 as a Major now that we have extensive experience fighting in cities (though done would qualify as a megacity the principles still apply). regardless there is considerable room for further study in this area to inform military doctrine and future capabilities required.

How, or even if, Brazil can secure the games will be interesting to see unfold. We could be overstating the threat by assuming the masses will think and act collectively and actually have an interest in attacking the games. I'm sure some do, but what percentage? Is it enough to be threatening? How good is Brazil's intelligence in identifying the leaders who could provoke a serious security threat? What is their ability to pre-empt it? Will they leverage engineers to create obstacles and channelize potential protesters / trouble makers into zones they can control? What will the impact be if the disenfranchised citizens effectively disrupt (or worse) the games?

[TheCurmudgeon]

I sometimes wonder if the life cycles of insects may be an analog to illicit megaslum networks?

embryo
larvae
pupa
imago/maturity/legitimacy

Comparing the favela video above with the Vice series on Karachi found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgIl1vmIchA

It would superficially appear that Karachi's slums/ghettos are well into the transition to political machines

-----

Are developing world megaslums simply echoing our own western history of slum/ghetto development with two adjustments for sheer scale and the catalysing effects of technology?

IF that is the case, and while I am a big fan of David Kilcullen's book and derived great value from it(particularly his conflict entrepreneur and "city as biological system" perspective), I don't see enough emphasis on what I see as the life cycle of illicit networks on the journey from criminality to legitimacy.

Using Kilcullen's own biological system viewpoint, I wonder if the illicit networks can be viewed as a parasitic/symbiotic biological system within a system?

I had been hesitating on picking up Kilcullen's book but now you have sparked my interest.

However, I would seriously caution you or anyone else with using biological metaphors for sociological systems. It is true that, like a life form, a social system is a complex adaptive system. However, Life forms evolve to improve the survivability of the species where social systems evolve to improve the desires of the members of the system.

The most common error, and the one that most people still believe is true, is the comparison of “social evolution” to biological evolution. This creates the impression that the more complex, Western societies are more “evolved” and therefore “better” than any other system. It would also imply that the “social system” is the unit that is evolving, that humans are sub-units inside a system in which they have no control. They are simply cells in the social system. The social systems are what are reproducing and it is the social system that is surviving, not the people in it.

That is not true, social systems have adapted to meet the needs of the people in it, the people in it have not evolved to serve the social system.

The rub of this kind of thinking is that it makes Westerners believe that their system is more evolved and therefore “better” than everyone else’s system. That, since we are at the panicle of social evolution it is our responsibility to bring the rest of the world up to our level. It is one of the fundimental components of Modernization theroy. Ideas like this can cause poorly conceived foreign policy.

[flagg]

On the topic of Kilcullen/"Out of the Mountains" would Brazil's hosting of both the FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympics represent a great opportunity to see how the "conflict entrepreneur" and un/self-governed spaces issues are dealt with?

To me, Brazil's favelas seem like the best laboratories to see how megaslum governance and management solutions play out(or don't).

Such as the Brazil's Pacifying Police Unit(UPP).

If there's one place I'd like to be on the ground to learn and understand in the next two years would be Brazil's favelas.

[davidbfpo]

Just how Rio copes with the threat of violence is a recurrent theme here, let alone how the 2016 Olympics affects this. Today IISS had an event today 'Urban Warfare in the ‘Marvelous City’: Securing Rio from the Gangs', with two speakers and the podcast is one hour long:http://www.iiss.org/en/events/events...rio-gangs-58a9

The event's chair Nigel Inkster referred to David Kilcullen's book, hence the title.

One speaker didn't make it and her book is due out soon. From an IISS email:

Juliana Barbassa is an award-winning journalist and author. Her book, Dancing with the Devil in the City of God: Rio de Janeiro on the Brink, is based on her years in Brazil as a correspondent for the Associated Press and will be published in July 2015. She was born in Brazil, but has lived in Iraq, Malta, Libya, Spain, France and the United States. She is currently based in Switzerland.

There is thread on Brazil and violence into which this maybe merged:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=2602

[davidbfpo]

Two articles appeared today via Twitter on BOPE, the military police unit, one is a commentary following a death. Its starts with:

The investigation of an elite police unit in Brazil for allegedly trying to cover up the disappearance of a Rio de Janeiro man may represent an opportunity to restore the public’s trust in the rule of law, and perhaps repair the reputation of a controversial program to pacify favelas.

Link:http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/a...te-police-unit

The second is an interview of a convicted BOPE member:

A former military police officer in Brazil talks about the culture of violence that permeates the force, and how this can dehumanize those who initially joined in order to serve and protect the public.

Link:http://www.insightcrime.org/news-ana...eates-monsters

[davidbfpo]

A commentary that explains why soldiers are so often on the streets and the refrain "Oh no, not again":

The army has, in effect, become a “parapolice” force – a substitute for the country’s badly stretched police. Contrary to what some doom-mongering commentators say, this doesn’t signal an impending military coup, but it does show just how badly the authorities have failed to maintain public security.

Link:https://theconversation.com/brazil-is-relying-on-soldiers-instead-of-regular-police-heres-why-73034?

[AdamG]

Brazilian police near the border with Paraguay have exchanged gunfire with members of a gang who carried out what Paraguayan officials are calling the robbery of the century.
Three gang members were killed and two injured in the clash, police say.
Earlier on Monday about 50 men moved into the Paraguayan city of Ciudad del Este, blew up the front of a private security firm, and fired on police.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-39700931

[davidbfpo]

A new report on crime statistics in Brazil's state of Rio de Janeiro shows deteriorating violence indicators over a period of several years, raising continued questions about the extent to which the city's public security policies have been effective.

Link:http://www.insightcrime.org.linkis.com/iVCl4

A new phrase to me:

homicides resulting from police intervention

[SWJ Blog]

Rio de Janeiro: A War By Any Other Name