JOURNAL: Brazil's PCC vs. Sao Paulo's Police

Over the last two days one of Brazil's biggest gangs, the First Capital Command (or First Command of the Capital -- PCC), took the fight to Sao Paulo's government. The heavily armed gang staged 70 attacks on police that killed 70 people (including at least 35 policemen) and 24 prison uprisings with hundreds being held hostage. So far, the government has only been able to contain six of the prison uprisings, but that more are occurring as fast as they put them down (UPDATE: this number has climbed to 40). The latest attacks have moved into include attacks on buses (UPDATE: over 60 have been held up and torched) and banks.

For its second exercise of military power, this is pretty impressive. The scale, intensity, duration, and the coordination demonstrated by these attacks shows that this gang has made the transition from evading the police to treating the police (the nation-state) as a competitive threat. It also has set what could be construed as a plausible promise that could be used to recruit allies: that Sao Paulo's government can be attacked successfully.

The open question is whether the other gangs that inhabit Sao Paulo's massive favela (10 million people live there without basic services) will join as participants in open source warfare. There are indications that they are both plentiful and powerful -- there are at least a dozen gangs in Sao Paulo that qualify as virtual states with economies fueled by transnational crime (Sao Paulo is the international hub for transshipments of cocaine to Europe and Africa).

IF this does move to open source warfare (it may be that the PCC is large enough, and decentralized enough to create its own ecosystem for OSW), we can expect to see an increasing emphasis on attacks to coerce the city's business class. The intent of this coercion will be to force the business class to relinquish the limited power they exercise over the favela. I suspect that this coercion will offer only limited success until emergent innovation leads the gangs to exercise control over the basic services that enable the city's functioning core (the attacks on the bus system was a good start in this direction). At that point, the effort will be successful.

UPDATE: The violence continued into Monday. 21 new killings have increased the total 38 police and guards killed (and 38 suspected gang members). 184 attacks in total, mostly aimed at police. Attacks on buses (mentioned earlier) have caused the bus drivers to stay away from work. 2.9 m people that use buses are stranded (classic systems attack) and the city is stalled. The Brazilian stock market and the Real are down 2% due to the violence (this may become the real leverage over time).

Comments

[TM Lutas]

The PCC had its plans detected, their operation blown (it was supposed to take place on Mother's day and take visiting family members hostage). They have narco-dollars but one major disadvantage. Most of their leadership is known and in prison already. They're shooting their full load right now because a brand spanking new maximum security prison has been built and the leadership was suddenly transferred to it right before their planned strike.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0516/p06s01-woam.html
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/73edbb4c-e3ae-11da-a015-0000779e2340.html

Of all the fanciful and far-fetched scenarios, the idea of a prison gang destabilizing a state in a persistent way is the worst. At most, they can provoke the government into violating the law and simply shooting the leadership. That's no fun but certainly survivable, not so much for the dead prison gang leadership.

[John Robb]

TM, I am pretty sure that this organization has had most of their leadership in prison since inception. It is decentralized by design.

Not sure what to make of your last statement. Looks like hyperbolic optimism unsupported by the events of the last three days. ;->

[daCascadian]

John Robb >"...Not sure what to make of your last statement..."

Musta hit an exposed nerve or three

"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact....Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth." - newshog@gmail.com

[Morton Stewart]

Six months from now, we'll see who was right.

The operation was blown, but it was still executed successfully. The top level of leadership is in prison but the structure of the gangs are intact inside and outside of prisons.

Not only is the gang intimidating the business class of the city, it is directly attacking the police.

This is definitely not to be dismissed as a standard prison gang outbreak.

[Veteran]

Is that a picture of Rio?

[Cliff Nickerson]

A report from Brazil:
There are copy-cat attacks occuring on a small scale across the country. I live in a small city in another state, and police facilities have been attacked (with no injuries so far, thank God). Business has ben disrupted: educational services and some other services have been disrupted by the consumer: people aren't sending their kids to school and university students are using it as an excuse to not go to classes.
This could have a disasterous effect on the government, if not the democracy here in Brazil. People in general are expecting the rather ineffective government to crack down, which it has neither the power nor the legal authority to do (prison takeovers that have gone badly have been turned against the state in the past).
I doubt that anyone in the PCC is reading this site, or is even aware of the real consequences of their acts. It's just a powerful criminals union blowing off steam, as it does periodically. It never gets what it wants, and things always get worse for the inmates afterward.
It might have the effects of a global guerilla attack, but these are most likely unintended. They just want their leaders to get their cellphones back. Let's hope that the government is smart enough to deny them.

[AoT]

Prisons are fortresses, generally built to keep the bad guys in, but definitely able to keep others out. To assume tha having control of a prison is some sort of weakness is naive and absurd.

[Cliff Nickerson]

AoT, you said: "To assume that having control of a prison is some sort of weakness is naive and absurd."

What do you mean? We should expect the government to have control of the prisons. here in Brazil, that's often not the case, as at present. Could you clarify your point?

[John Robb]

Cliff, thanks so much for the update. Hope everything settles down. Unfortunately, the long term outlook isn't as good. As the big gangs continue to gain strength and the state continues to weaken, it is only a matter of time before they figure out that they can win in an engagement with the state. The scale of this latest series of attacks indicates that they aren't far from this point.

[TM Lutas]

John Robb - What I'm getting at is that there will come a period of time (assuming you're right about the escalating nature of the threat which is not a given) where the state will realize the threat, have the high leadership of the other side in its hands, and either let the moment pass or simply kill them, decapitating the movement. What they do in that period is by no means certain.

Moving that leadership out of contact in a maximum security facility is a soft variant of the solution. The resulting riot may just be a "use it or lose it" attack that is going to mark the high-water point of this threat.

[SP]

Operation Blown? Was it like Plame and the French car burners?

[Marcello]

"What I'm getting at is that there will come a period of time (assuming you're right about the escalating nature of the threat which is not a given) where the state will realize the threat, have the high leadership of the other side in its hands, and either let the moment pass or simply kill them, decapitating the movement."

Your reasoning is based on the assumption that the OPFOR is heavily reliant on a centralized leadership which cannot be replaced easily.
Given the nature of criminal networks such assumption is rather questionable.

[TM Lutas]

Marcello - If they were not heavily reliant on an identified and already incarcerated leadership, they would have held off and run their operation on the original schedule. It would have been much worse with tens of thousands of hostages on Mothers day.

They depend on that leadership and want them back in contact, desperately. Otherwise, why ruin the operation and go for 2nd best?

[Marcello]

That is why I said heavily reliant, rather than just reliant.Obviously that sort of thing will cause some disruption in their plans.
On the other hand you seem to assume that just taking out the leaders will eliminate them as major threat.
Well sorry, organized crime does not work that way.Provenzano is behind the bars and cut off but rest assured that the Mafia is alive and well.
Fun question: if Robb had told you that a bunch of guys with home made command detonated landmines would have managed to keep the bulk of the american ground forces busy as hell would you have taken it into consideration or would you have written off as "fanciful and far-fetched "?

[daCascadian]

Marcello >"...On the other hand you seem to assume that just taking out the leaders will eliminate them as major threat..."

Certainly hasn`t worked very well in Iraq or other related areas

NOTE THIS :

"...Where did the non-indigenous Muslim fighters come from during the Afghan jihad? Their travel to the battlefield was certainly facilitated by the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations—and some members of those groups, like Sheikh Abdullah Azzam and the Saudi Wael Julaidan, joined the fight—as well as by some wealthy Muslim individuals and Arab governments. It is well-known, for example, that the bin Laden family business helped aspiring mujahideen travel to Afghanistan, and that Riyadh ordered Saudia, its international airline, to offer reduced-fair "jihad" tickets to young men on their way to Afghanistan.

Many of these non-Afghan Muslim mujahideen came out of the prisons of Arab states. The West often forgets that Arab prisons are built not only to house criminals, but to confine ideological opponents of the regime. Thus, the prisons are generally full-to-overflowing with Islamic militants..." http://www.jamestown.org/news_details.php?news_id=180

"...The growth of state power is neither a caprice of history nor the fruit of "paganism." It is the consequence of the community's effort to protect itself against irresponsible economic power." - Reinhold Niebuhr

[Marcello]

Note that things do not have necessarily to go that way.It may well be that the current clashes will not evolve into something worse.
But given the trends we have observed here on 4th generation forces I think it would be wise to brace for the worst and be skeptic about "let's shoot bad guy X and they will be done for" solutions.

[TM Lutas]

Marcello - It's taken decades to break the back of the mafia in the US and there's ongoing work keeping it down even today. The high water mark of mafia influence and danger was a long time ago, though.

Disruptions are vitally important because you get a new crop of leadership in and they're going to make beginner's mistakes. That gets them caught faster than their predecessors and you get an even greener crop of leadership to replace them. Eventually the whole organization breaks apart because trust in the leadership dissipates as they become younger and less effective.

The leadership will be replaced. We both agree. You see that as an irrelevant action, while I see it as the key to breaking the organization. Your burden is explaining why the US mafia killing model can't work in Brazil.

[Marcello]

Short answer:the state is in decline.
You can see it everywhere.

Longer version.

"Your burden is explaining why the US mafia killing model can't work in Brazil."

I might start remarking that Brazil is in a different and worse position than the USA
(although the american leadership appears to be working overtime to close the gap) but this would be cheap.

"Eventually the whole organization breaks apart because trust in the leadership dissipates as they become younger and less effective. "

Or maybe the organization, under pressure, simply adopts some of the methods and organizational practices (horizontal instead of vertical) that we have discussed here ad nauseam.Methods and organizational practices which,in case you missed, have enabled the iraqi armed opposition to survive and thrive in face of the most lethal and well funded army in the world for three years so far.
Will the brazialian gangs make the transition? That is not certain.
But it is at least in the cards and hardly a scenario you can afford to laugh at.

You seem to be fixated on hyerarchical structures.Unfortunately trend-wise it would appear that the world is heading in a different direction.

[John Robb]

Decapitation isn't working like it used to. Decentralization of leadership within network structures is the reason. We are seeing these networks emerge everywhere. Brazil's PCC appears to have this structure.

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2004/03/destabilizing_t.html

[Rodolfo S Filho]

>

Crime, in São Paulo, is supposed to make money. Actions like the ones in the weekend, cost money and are not sustainable for long periods without external monetary support.

Cocaine-running in a city like Sao Paulo is a distributed work that doesn't need - or has much to profit from - constant uprisings.

Also, the picture in the page is Rio de Janeiro, not São Paulo.

[phil jones]

See this?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4987104.stm

Now the police are getting their revenge.

It's worth noting that the police allegedly shoot around 7000 people a year in Brazil.

And there is fairly well established feuding between the police and gangs. I suspect from some hints I've read around the news, that the PCC arose as a response to the massacre by police of 111 prisoners in the Carandiru prison in the early 90s.

You should probably see these gangs as tribal identities, not rational profit seeking organizations who are simply pursuing war for economic reasons. And because so many of the police are also corrupt and involved in criminal activities, it might be better to see them (or factions of them) as a gang too.

[Veteran]

PCC has its' own intelligence-gathering activities and has computer-savvy members. I can guarantee the PCC is reading GG as part of its feedback and knowledge-enrichment system.

[John Robb]

A couple of things. It is possible to increase profitability while fighting a war since it opens up access to sources of income not normally available. I know it is Rio. I wanted a picture that showed a favela (I'll look around for another one of Sao Paulo's).

Phil has it exactly right. This is a manufactured tribe and not a company.

[John Robb]

Violence ebbs:

"Sao Paulo's two leading newspapers reported Tuesday that authorities cut a deal with the gang to stop the attacks. The police strongly denied the report."

This works until there are too many groups to negotiate with.

[enigma_foundry]

I would strongly suggest the Movie "The City of God" for further background on the environment in which this is taking place.

"Sao Paulo's two leading newspapers reported Tuesday that authorities cut a deal with the gang to stop the attacks. The police strongly denied the report."

This works until there are too many groups to negotiate with.

Well, not necessarily. This rapproachment was a long time coming, and I would particularly refer you to the interview that is on "The City of God" DVD with the chief of police of Rio de Janario. The groups that can be negotiated with have less restrictions on the kinds of things they can do to project their authority, and it's easy to see how a network of loyalties can ceate a parallel structure that can co-exist with the city authorities.

It's necessary for both players to see the synergies...

[TM Lutas]

Marcello - You could start with the idea that Brazil is in worse shape than the US but you won't because it's just not important. Brazil's worse shape just means the same tactics will take longer to work, not that the tactics won't work at all.

Counterinsurgency is a relatively long-term game. It is reasonable to expect a decade to pass between the start of an insurgency and when it's finally ground into dust. Find a list of successfull counterinsurgency campaigns and see how long they lasted. Given that historical evidence, the anti-Iraq forces' survival for three whole years looks a lot less impressive. Large swathes of that force have either worked out modus vivendi agreements for mutual pursuit of Al Queda or have flipped entirely over the the elected government. From a strategic point of view, I like what I see coming out of Iraq these days.

Under pressure, the PCC is quite likely to react like any criminal gang. Like the US mafia before them, they would adopt new tactics. The dynamics are the same, though as will the end result. Gangs simply can't retain cohesiveness under long-term pressure from the government.

Leadership is needed to accomplish anything otherwise movements all just sputter to a halt over time in bloody, negative feedback cycles imposed by the State. As the quality of insurgency/criminal gang leadership declines, the chance of organizational breakdown increases until you get lucky and the whole thing dies.

John Robb - You're right that decapitation isn't what used to be. The more relevant question is whether it still works at all. If decentralization inside a network merely lengthens the cycle but does not end it, repeated decapitation remains the way to go absent a superior alternative.

[Marcello]

"Find a list of successfull counterinsurgency campaigns and see how long they lasted."

I have a better idea:you give me that list.
When the "all's well in Iraq" crowd has to drag out some pertinent (emphasis on pertinent) counterinsurgency success the half century old Malay campaign is all that they can come up with.
And I am left to wonder why.

"Leadership is needed to accomplish anything"

I suggest to re-read the archives.Things are evolving towards interesting directions.

"From a strategic point of view, I like what I see coming out of Iraq these days."

I did not know you enjoyed carnage so bad...

[Marcello]

"You could start with the idea that Brazil is in worse shape than the US but you won't because it's just not important."

Local conditions cannot make a critical difference on the final outcome now?
That's a new interesting twist.

[AoT]

"What do you mean? We should expect the government to have control of the prisons. here in Brazil, that's often not the case, as at present. Could you clarify your point?"

Well, tactically being in control of the prison is a secure position. they may be made to keep people in, but they can keep people out nearly as well as they can keep people in.

Imagine if the gang members managed to get real weaponry into the prison, I mean *real* weapons, supplied by narco-guerillas or their like. It could be a helicopter drop in the prison yard or a tunnel into the prison. If the prisoners had a fair number of small arms and a RPG or two they would be damn secure. That and having hostages would make it an untenable position for the government.

[AoT]

P.S. I am of the firm opinion that if you really want to destabilize any city or state the best way to do it is to provide large amounts of RPGs to the most marginalized communities in that community.

[DimebagDave]

Most of the Brazilian girls I've known would look really great with RPGs.

[TM Lutas]

Marcello - Kevin Drum of all people had a pretty interesting discussion on the subject in 2004 here (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_10/004954.php) where my position is pretty well supported. Oman, Malaysia, Kenya, N. Ireland were some of the high points. The discussion is unnecessarily restrictive, though to successful counterinsurgencies where the government was either a foreign power outright or substantially a foreign propped up one. It was uncontroversial that lots of local governments had put down counterinsurgencies. El Salvador comes to mind, the Zapateros in Mexico are nonevents these days, we don't hear much about the militia movement in the US either.

For the record, I don't enjoy carnage and I think that tactically, the insurgency will continue to provide horrific blows that are mostly categorized as war crimes under the laws of war. From a strategic point of view, I view that bloodying of the Iraqi civilian population to be counterproductive to their cause.

The consistent trend has been for the insurgency to slide down from harder to softer targets. They're going to end up hated and killing mostly civilians who will become more and more active in ferreting them out to the competent local and foreign forces. Those that can see the writing on the wall have or are in the process of flipping sides which is why you hear a lot more about red on red violence these days than in 2003. But we're talking about Brazil so I'll concentrate on Brazil.

You dispute that leadership is necessary. I disagree. The centralization necessary for leadership to be effective may be dropping to near zero but that doesn't mean that any collection of leaderless yahoos can mount more than one or two operations before being crushed. Leadership is necessary and leadership can be identified and decapitated.

The question is how decentralized can government action get? Can they provide the requisite decapitations at the right scale? This is an open question but I think that the Brazilians have a fighting chance of pulling it off even if the PCC even goes this route (which is not 100% certain at this point).

You made a kind of feint, not really laying out a case but implying that you could lay out a case that the lower level of state organization/competence in Brazil means that the old methods that worked for the US will not work there. I see no evidence that the change in degree of competence/organization crosses any sort of state boundaries and said so. I await you actually laying out your case that it does. Do you really have something here that you're willing to state explicitly?

AoT - I think that RPG drops to prisons are a one trick pony. Yes, it would be a problem, once. But the solution is pretty easy to work out. You mount snipers on helicopters and hover them in sniper range but just outside of RPG range (there's a considerable difference). It is quite unlikely that the prisoners will understand the effective ranges of what they've been given and fire off RPGs ineffectively. Doing that gets you a bullet in the head, either from the sniper or afterwards as a nonuniformed combatant after a quick review of the video camera evidence mounted on the same helicopters.

Heavy weapons change the rules of the game and prisoners are simply not competent in their use. We're talking drug dealers, not special forces in these prisons.

The violence that the state can apply is very much higher than a band of prisoners can apply. As with most of these situations, it's a question of will.

[AoT]

"You mount snipers on helicopters and hover them in sniper range but just outside of RPG range (there's a considerable difference)."

The range on a RPG is just under a kilometer, 962m i believe; I highly doubt a sniper in a hovering helicopter can hit a person at that range.

As for prisoners not being trained in their use, difinitely true, but this could change rather quickly. Just get some people who are trained in heavy weapons arrested and viola!

I should note, however, that I don't find this a likely scenario, just one possibility.

[Marcello]

"where my position is pretty well supported. Oman, Malaysia, Kenya, N. Ireland were some of the high points."

I can't access that link.
But I can't exactly say that I am suprised by what they have cobbled together.If you are really serious about scraping the bottom of the barrel I might even suggest a visit at http://www.britains-smallwars.com/
Liquidating an insurgency run by people who believed that they could protect themselves from bullets with magic is not exactly a "high point" in my book, nor is particular pertinent with modern counterinsurgency.Situations like Kenya or Oman are more related to the old colonial rebellions that the european powers routinely crushed back in the colonial era (of which I can provide several examples) than anything of modern like Lebanon or Iraq.In this sense they are the last gasps of the british empire and of a then dying world order.Refusing to recognize that such order is now dead and buried is part of the reason we are here.

"The discussion is unnecessarily restrictive, though to successful counterinsurgencies where the government was either a foreign power outright or substantially a foreign propped up one."

Insofar Iraq is concerned, the situation meets precisely those criteria.

"From a strategic point of view, I view that bloodying of the Iraqi civilian population to be counterproductive to their cause."

You are conveniently forgetting that coalition is bloodying the civilian population too.The locals won't.
We may then have a very nice discussion on the necessities of war and ROEs from our computers but the bottom line is that people who got their families killed at checkpoints or under artillery barrages by a bunch of foreign infidels will not be so amenable.

"The consistent trend has been for the insurgency to slide down from harder to softer targets."

First of all guerrillas are supposed to go primarily after soft targets and even many of their own people ("collaborators" etc).Those are the rules of the game.
Then regarding the consistency of such trend I will note that April resulted in over 80 americans dead ,a marked increase over previous months (and it looks like May might be quite bloody) which leaves me to wonder where exactly this "trend" comes from.

"Those that can see the writing on the wall have or are in the process of flipping sides which is why you hear a lot more about red on red violence these days than in 2003."

The only writing on the wall I can read is "Civil War" and the "red on red violence" sounds supiciously like the beginning of it.

"The centralization necessary for leadership to be effective may be dropping to near zero but that doesn't mean that any collection of leaderless yahoos can mount more than one or two operations before being crushed."

You're right, I was indeed referring to centralized leadership.

"I see no evidence that the change in degree of competence/organization crosses any sort of state boundaries and said so. I await you actually laying out your case that it does. Do you really have something here that you're willing to state explicitly?"

OK,let's get this straight, you are asking ME to demonstrate that the law enforcement capabilities of a THIRD WORLD COUNTRY are NOT on par with those of one of the wealthiest and strongest states in the world.
I am shaking my head now.
If you can prove that the brazilian police is as good as the FBI I will be happy, but
you will have to make a pretty strong case.
For the chronicle, the italian Mafia is still alive and well after having faced the modern italian state for over half a century.

[Marcello]

It also seems evident to me that going after the many leaders of small independent cells which are collaborating on an horizontal basis with each other is a far more demanding task than taking out the top leadership of a hyerarchical organization.
In the first case you have to literally annihilate the whole organization (if you can get the leader of the cell you should be able destroy the cell as well) and do it faster than it can rebuild itself.In the latter case you can just strike (not easy but it can and it has been done) at the top and let the rest collapse.

[Marcello]

The brazilian police is (in)famous due to the fact that many of its members partecipate in death squads,corruption,heavy handed tactics which alienate the population of the favelas and others typical behaviors of third world police forces.
The organizational practices we have analyzed here pose a far greater challange than the old hyerarchical infrastructure.
The result is pitting a police force far less effective than the FBI and the others american law enforcement agencies against a far more dangerous threat.
In Italy as I noted previously the Mafia has succesfully survived and thrived in face of the italian state police forces, which I would bet are substantially more competent than anything Brazil can field, for decades.
In the last twenty years substantial blows have been exchanged on both sides, with importan bosses captured and judges blown up.
The Mafia has succesfully adapted with both tactical and organizational changes which have enabled it to continue to run its businnesses as usual.As far as I can gauge the state is not closer to any sort of victory than it was ten years ago.

[edr]

Lets get one thing straight the Italian mafia and the Brazilian gangs are two very different things. In Italy you're talking about a longstanding situation with longstanding criminal organisations strongly infuenced by culture and tradition that is far more closed and selective, and that is simply not comparable to the brazilian gangs.
Thats not to say they dont have the same external 'power' but as a comparison its just not effective to do so and draw conclusions from.

The fact that Italy is also a more developed country(first world) also means that the enforcement authorities must abide by the legal system far more strictly. Much of the mafia leadership and organisation hides itself under legitimate operations and is therfore harder for the government authorities to topple not to mention the actual influence the mafia have within the goverenment itself.

[Marcello]

"The fact that Italy is also a more developed country(first world) also means that the enforcement authorities must abide by the legal system far more strictly."

That is a disadvantage but only upt to a point.A police force that operates like a military unit in enemy territory, employing extrajudicial killings and causing plenty of collateral damage,will be perceived as a threat by the civilian population that it is supposed to protect and therefore it will not be able to fulfill its mission.

[k]

I heard that 2 days ago the Brazilian Ministry of Justice ordered the telephone company(ies) in Sao Paulo to shut down the cell phone signals at the prisons, and gave them 48 hours to do so. I wondered if this would provoke a new wave of violence. Has anyone heard anything regarding the cell phones?

[TM Lutas]

AoT - common RPG (RPG-7) maximum range is more like 300 meters for a moving target like a helicopter:
http://www.defense-update.com/products/r/rpg.htm

Since you don't find the heavy weapons dump in a prison scenario very likely, I'll stop with the factual correction.

Marcello - I don't know why you put people who will blow themselves up so they can quickly get their 72 virgins in a different category from "bulletproof by magic" warriors. Could you explain that?

A pity you couldn't get to the link. It was a collection of left wingers all agreed that it was trivial to find successful counterinsurgency cases where the local government won. Why you're stuck up on the idea that counterinsurgency is impossible is beyond me.

You continue to minimize the progress that the Iraqi army is making. We're passing over battlefield control in over half the country to that Army and serving as bullet and bean carriers for them in even more of it because they can fight but they can't handle military logistics. That is really significant and puts Iraq in a very different category than colonial style counterinsurgency. Even if you don't recognize it, the Iraqi people obviously do.

Now the trends of casualties are available and they showed a declining pattern over the past six months reversed in April. You can find a reasonable graph showing that six month trend here:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

You misinterpret red on red violence as a precursor to civil war. Civil wars are generally insurgencies fighting the government, red on red is insurgency elements fighting each other instead of the government. After being betrayed by some of their fellow 'brothers', some elements flip sides to the government while others continue to pound away at a two-front war. For the government, this is an improvement.

Regarding the competency of the Brazilian police you did not understand me at all. The police department of NYC and Chicago are of manifestly different competency rates (NYC is better). That doesn't mean that Chicago can't handle a gang while NYC can. The differences are in degree, how many bystanders might take a bullet while things get sorted out, etc. The ultimate outcome is not likely to be much different. This is the essence of a difference of degree. What you are asserting is that the difference between Brazil and the US (which I grant exists) is so large that you end up with a difference in kind in that techniques that work in the US just won't work in Brazil. That latter assertion is what requires evidence.

[John Robb]

Iraq is in total disintigration right now. Supposed rear areas are now hot with Shiite/tribal militias targeting Brits and each other. The insurgents have gained allies across the board as nearly every Sunni area has formed a militia to defend themselves. The Iraqi army, to the extent you can call it that, is still almost completely reliant on Kurdish troops (unwelcome by all). US troops, even though they have almost completely withdrawn to heavily defended bases, still suffered substantial casualties in April (due to a change in insurgent tactics).

[Marcello]

"Marcello - I don't know why you put people who will blow themselves up so they can quickly get their 72 virgins in a different category from "bulletproof by magic" warriors. Could you explain that?"

Yes, the colleagues of the "people who will blow themselves up so they can quickly get their 72 virgins" can make excellent command detonated landmines and have generally show a good technical proficiency.The Mau Mau did not.

"That is really significant and puts Iraq in a very different category than colonial style counterinsurgency."

The british used locally raised military units when they could, even for counterinsurgency work (against the Mau Mau they even used units formed by ex Mau Mau).

"Now the trends of casualties are available and they showed a declining pattern over the past six months reversed in April."

So I take you agree that it is not "consistent" anymore?
May has all the looks of going to be quite bloody too.

"What you are asserting is that the difference between Brazil and the US (which I grant exists) is so large that you end up with a difference in kind in that techniques that work in the US just won't work in Brazil."

I see I will have to make very simple.
The USMC is better than the National Guard.
What works for both must then work for "insert random third world hellhole" army.
Can you see the problem with that?

"That latter assertion is what requires evidence."

The Mafia that has been crushed in the USA is still alive and well in Italy.And by the looks of it is going to be for a long time.
Ergo your assertion "it works in the USA, so it will work elsewhere" is already disproven.

[g510]

Re. the Brazilian govt ordering the cellphone companies to shut down signal into the prisons within 48 hours.

My God, what stupidity!

Let the prisoners have their cellphones! A better source of intel could hardly be found, and setting up collection in that environment would be easy.

In cases where some kind of spoken code is being used, you can assume that the outside party is also part of the gang, and that becomes one more number to plug into the database and one more person to track down. If the outside parties are using "disposable" cellphones, prohibit them via the carrier regulations.

Automated traffic analysis could show you not only the membership but also the org chart. Then you know who the next level of potential leaders are, and can traget them specifically.

--

Re. "tribal identities." Exactly. This is also the case with urban criminal gangs in the US, or at least in California.

[Marcello]

"Why you're stuck up on the idea that counterinsurgency is impossible is beyond me."

Why you are attributing this opinion to me is beyond me too.After all if you remember I am the one who, in one of our past discussions,described the algerian mess of the 90's, which resulted in a local government victory.
States can still manage to run succesful counterinsurgency campaign, at least within their territory.
With the innovations we are analyzing here that too might become increasingly difficult.
Instead,unless I missed something as far as foreign entanglements go, the last time when a western power succeeeded was at the same time the last of the british imperial police actions ,which is precisely what all these "success stories" share in common.
It was fought by a couple of SAS detachments and an handful of Strikemasters in an arabian hellhole so backward that talebans' Afghanistan comes out good in comparison, over thirty years ago.
If that does not make you nervous, it should.

[John Robb]

This sounds familiar (from the Economist):

Tulio Kahn, of São Paulo's public-security secretariat, says the Comando's fluid structure is more like al-Qaeda's than that of a tightly-run mafia.

[phil jones]

Were the Mafia in the US beaten by the US gov?

Or were they involved in turf wars with other gangs at the same time that the influx of italian immigrants dried up?

[TM Lutas]

Marcello - The foreign entanglements bit is something of a red herring, a limit of my search research that came up with a neat discussion that had that artificial constraint in it. Nobody's talking about the US propping up Brazil. It'll be a domestic effort entirely unless things go very, very wrong. At the same time, I'm glad I misremembered your past positions.

You're right that you can't guarantee success between organizations and countries but best practices are a pretty good place to start. Since the best practice strategy has such long cycle times, it's not quite fair to judge it so early in the game.

It's not that I'm saying that it's a guarantee that it will work but rather that it has a good chance of working and to argue against it you should provide some sort of evidence that the differences are likely to change the outcome rather than just lengthen the time to success. Is that such an outlandish position?

phil jones - From what I can tell, it's pretty obvious that all organized crime is down in the US, not just the italian mafia. Sure, other crime syndicates are changing the distribution of the criminal pie but the pie itself seems to be shrinking and that's a function of government enforcement.

[Cliff Nickerson]

A comment on the value of the real:
A weak real is good for the economy here, remember. We have an export economy, primarily agricultural products and raw materials. Weaker currency means lower prices.

[Cliff Nickerson]

Regarding the phones:
The Brazilian government doesn't have the technical ability or the legal ability to use the phone intel against the criminals. This isn't the US in a number of ways. A simple note: Most Brazilian cell phones are "pre-paid"; they aren't linked to specific people or accounts. Those that are registered often have innacurate or out-of-date subscriber data. If the government can't use the cell phone data for it's benefit, why permit the criminals to use it?

[Marcello]

"It's not that I'm saying that it's a guarantee that it will work but rather that it has a good chance of working and to argue against it you should provide some sort of evidence that the differences are likely to change the outcome rather than just lengthen the time to success."

I have already exposed my reasons.The italian Mafia is still alive an well, as it was a decade ago despite what the state has thrown at them.When you do not make any meaningful progress in ten years, then in my book it is not a matter of "lenghtnening", it's just that you are not winning.Plain and simple.

"Is that such an outlandish position?"

For a start you are the one arguing that the Mafia killing model can be exported, so I do not see why exactly I should be stuck with proving that it can't be done instead of you proving that such model can be adapted to very different conditions.
Secondarily, exactly what sort of evidence are you speaking about?
It is not like you can measure something of immaterial like this with a yardstick to everyone's satisfaction.All I can do is noting that such measures have not worked in an other first world country against the same organization, so that they are going to work in a third world shithole against an other sort of organization is at the very least in doubt.