Saarinen 1

Lithuania as a Transit State

Daniel Saarinen

PSCI 625

12/10/08

DSAARINEN@CHARTER.NET

(760)-486-4332
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Abstract

This research document examines illicit transit activities in Lithuania.

The purpose is to determine whether or not there is evidence of a nexus

between various types of trafficking organizations and international

terrorism. Five pathologies are examined in the body of the document:

Narcotics, Weapons, Humans Trafficking, Corruption, Organized Crime and

Piracy.
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Executive Summary

This document is an examination of Lithuania as a transit state. The

goal is to determine whether or not there is evidence of a nexus between

criminal trafficking operations that move people and material through

Lithuania and international terrorist organizations. Primarily, transitory

trafficking behavior is examined. Illicit activities that originate inside the

state of Lithuania, or have their destination inside the state of Lithuania are

outside the scope of this task. Five pathologies are examined: Narcotics

Trafficking, Weapons Trafficking, Human Trafficking, Corruption, Organized

Crime and Piracy. Organized crime and piracy are considered to be one

category for the purposes of this research.

The methodology used is a survey of open source information about

activities in any of these five categories in Lithuania. The main body is

broken into five sections, one for each of the categories identified above. An

effort has been made to vet all the sources used for accuracy and legitimacy

where possible, though accurate and precise information is not available in

all five categories. Within the sections of the main body, any problems

encountered with the sources and methods available will be discussed where

needed.
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The result of this investigation is that the evidence does not point to

the existence of a nexus between elements of organized crime and

international terrorism. The possibility of cooperation in certain instances

does exist. This occurs only to the extent that terrorists are engaging in

profit seeking activities and not pursuing their political or religious goals.
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Introduction

This research document is going to examine illicit transit activities in

the state of Lithuania. Lithuania is geographically and geopolitically well

suited to act as a transit state. Its border with Belarus and the transit rights

that Russia enjoys with respect to its exclave of Kaliningrad are the primary

problems. As an EU member, Lithuania has an open door with Poland.

Anything that can gain entry into Lithuania can flow westward with ease.

While there is corruption and trafficking activity to a certain extent, the

evidence of extensive cooperation between elements of trafficking

organizations and international terrorists is lacking. There is currently no

nexus in Lithuania between trafficking organizations and international

terrorists, and the likely hood of one forming in the future is low.

The method used to gather the information for analysis is open source

survey. Over the course of ten weeks, five groups participating in this

element of the NSA Challenge gathered together and vetted as many

sources as possible regarding the five pathologies being examined. The

pathologies being examined are: Narcotics Trafficking, Weapons Trafficking,

Human Trafficking, Corruption, Organized Crime and Piracy. Organized

crime and piracy are being treated as a single category. Attention was paid

as to the validity and accuracy of the various sources, as well as whether

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they are primary sources or are in fact meta-sources. Some sources, and the

methods that they used, were less than ideal. This will be highlighted in

each section where it is appropriate. A lack of good information about a

particular pathology is an important warning sign in and of itself.

The five pathologies being examined will be found below with a section

dedicated to each one. Each section will have its own introduction and thesis

about the state of the pathology in Lithuania, and then an examination of the

sources of information available. Analysis of the data and criticisms of the

sources will be presented. A conclusion about the state of that particular

transit pathology in Lithuania will be given. Following the five sections about

the individual pathologies, there will be a section dedicated to the question

of the nexus. To determine whether or not there is a nexus between

trafficking organizations and terrorists, the conclusions of the five individual

sections will be juxtaposed. Analysis of this result will provide the answer to

the question of the nexus.

Narcotics Trafficking

In terms of transit activity, narcotics is the primarily pathology present

in Lithuania. Opiates are transported from Central Asia and pass through

Lithuania on the way to market in Western Europe. Cocaine brought into

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Europe via Cape Verde and other places transits Lithuania on its way to

Moscow and other points east. There is a significant synthetic drug industry

within Lithuania, but this is outside the scope of the transit topic. The

smuggling of narcotics is a transnational business. Though suppliers of raw

product are engaged in terrorist activities, they are only allowed to access

criminal smuggling and distribution networks so long as only profit seeking

activity is involved. The profit from the sale of narcotics does benefit

terrorist organizations in Central Asia and elsewhere, but this is only a

coincidence. The evidence does not suggest any sort of nexus between drug

traffickers and international terrorists.

Though Latvia has garnered a reputation for corruption and criminal

activity in the Baltic region, Lithuania is more heavily exposed to the heroin

trade. When heroin is smuggled into Latvia it must either leave by ferry for

Scandinavia, or pass through Lithuania on

the way into Poland and points west. The

route moving into Lithuania allows the

same access to the sea and cuts out

several steps in the smuggling process to

get into Poland. So even though Lithuania

is less corrupt and a harder target for

criminal operations, it is still more attractive because of its location than

Latvia.
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The Silk Road Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University spends a

considerable amount of effort researching all manner of activities and the

politics of the Silk Road nations. In a 2004 fact sheet they report that

Lithuania seized more heroin than any other country in the region except

Estonia.1 Narcotics trafficking is a continuing problem in Lithuania, but the

government is making efforts to control it and the corruption that it brings to

any state.

The 2008 U.S. Department of State International Narcotics Control

Strategy Report (INCSR) finds that narcotics related corruption is not a major

problem in Lithuania, and that the government does not facilitate the

production or transit of narcotics.2 The report also states that Lithuanian

customs stops drugs entering the country from all sides. So even though

there are effective anti-corruption measures and no government complicity,

the problem persists. This is evidence to support the statement that

Lithuania is a victim of geography more than anything when it comes to drug

smuggling.

The UNODC World Drug Report was considered as a source for this

section. It was not chosen because it does not deal with specific country

profiles, but rather a worldwide view of the problem. Where it does get into

specifics it has some problems with credibility when it comes to the

exactness of its numbers. It seems that in the quest for data the UNODC was

willing to accept any and all reports about numbers and pass them on as
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though they were representative of the state of the problem. While there is

not intentional misrepresentation going on, it does mislead the unwary

reader. What the reader really gets is what was reported to the UNODC

researchers. So for example we learn that there were exactly 513

methamphetamine laboratories on the earth in 2006.3 This is not credible as

an exact figure. It is accurate in the sense that it was reported to them as

513, but it is only good for determining trends. The end user has no way of

knowing whether a change in the numbers is just the result of some

countries having a budget shortfall and not reporting, or it is an actual

change. This is why the WDP is not used here.

In conclusion, there is no evidence of a nexus forming between drug

traffickers and international terrorists in Lithuania at this time. Criminal

elements face resistance from the government and the population. Police

surveillance and penetration of smuggling networks damages the trust

needed for criminal groups and terrorists to even attempt to cooperate.

Whatever corrupt arrangements that may exist in any particular situation do

not extend to assisting terrorist activity in the E.U.

Weapons Trafficking
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The trafficking of military grade arms in significant quantities in

Eastern Europe has been a concern since the end of the cold war. There is a

perception that every former SSR possessed gargantuan stockpiles of

weapons of all types and equally large amounts of ammunition. This is not

the case with Lithuania. At the time of their break away from the USSR they

only had modest amounts of armaments locally available. Because there

was no large supply of weapons available, the pathology of arms smuggling

never established itself in Lithuania and this makes it difficult to smuggle

arms through there today.

While geography is the enemy of Lithuania in the drug trade, it is the

friend of Lithuania in the arms trade. There is no market for massive

stockpiles of Soviet arms in Scandinavia or elsewhere in Western Europe.

That means anything moving in the Baltic region is going to be headed out to

sea by some means or another. The most obvious choice for this is

Kaliningrad or Latvia, not Lithuania. Traffickers could exploit the transit

rights Russia enjoys with respect to Kaliningrad to move arms there to be

loaded on ships. This is supposition though, because there is no evidence

that this is actually occurring on a large scale. Even if it were occurring on a

large scale, Russian convoys are not subject to arrest or search so it’s a moot

point. Any terrorism connection there would have to be permitted by the

Russian state and is outside the scope of this research.

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On a larger scale, there is little reason for anyone except Belarusians

to be smuggling armaments out through the Baltic these days. Ukrainians

can easily use the Black Sea without crossing international borders, saving

bribe money and risk. Russians operate on Ukrainian territory and also

exploit Transdnistria for illegal activity as it has Black Sea access. To the

extent that criminal elements in the Balkans engage in arms trafficking, they

have access to the Mediterranean Sea and don’t go north. All of these

factors leave Lithuania in a dead zone for arms trafficking.

The Federation of American Scientists released a report on the

rankings of the global arms trade in 1999. It lists Lithuania as not exporting

anything, and having imports of some $80,000,000 worth of equipment.4

Another source to consider that has more

recent data is the Stockholm International

Peace Research Institute. From 1989 to

2007 there was only $3,000,000 worth of

arms exported from the country.5 These two

sources confirm that Lithuania is a net arms importer. This is pocket change

in the arms business. There was no massive arms trade going on in

Lithuania after the cold war, so whatever corruption was going on was not

centered on arms trafficking. This makes it easier to maintain control of a

situation, because while some corrupt official may be willing to look the other

way for narcotics that does not mean he will overlook fifty thousand 152mm

shells coming from Belarus or something like that.

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In terms of smuggling, most armaments are not profitable compared to

drugs and carry stiff sentences. Without going into detail, just consider the

amount of profit to be had from one 60lb artillery shell compared to the

profits from 60lb of pure Afghan heroin. If profit is the motive, it is obvious

that the heroin is a superior product to smuggle. There is no evidence of any

sort of nexus between arms traffickers and international terrorism at this

time in Lithuania.

Human Trafficking

The trafficking of human beings as a commodity has been a hot button

issue these last few years. There is great concern about the exploitation of

women and children in the former Soviet republics. Since Lithuania is ideally

situated to be a gateway to the E.U. for Belarus and Russia, it has been

assumed that a great deal of human trafficking activity must take place

there as well. The evidence does not exist to state that human trafficking is

taking place on any great scale in Lithuania. Furthermore, there is no

evidence to suggest that there is any nexus between human traffickers and

international terrorists in Lithuania at this time.

As an EU and NATO member state, Lithuania is expected to live up to

certain norms and expectations in order to be a member in good standing.

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The presence of human traffickers operating in any significant way would

damage the relations between Lithuania and its western allies. There is the

possibility that certain individuals in positions of authority might look the

other way for this type of activity, but there is a higher geopolitical

consequence at stake. Lithuania wants to stay out of the Russian orbit, and

as a small state it must cultivate its alliances with the west to do so. Petty

corrupt profit seeking activity like accepting bribes to look the other way for

human trafficking would damage their global position.

To support this claim I point to the U.S. Department of State Trafficking

in Persons Report from 2008. This report indicates that Lithuania is fully

compliant with internationally accepted norms and

enforces anti-trafficking measures adequately.6

Lithuania welcomes NGOs into the country to help pick

up some of the slack and is very open about the

subject of human trafficking. The government

allocates money to international NGOs to try and find trafficking victims and

help them. NGO members are not subject to harassment by police or by

criminal elements. This indicates that there is genuine effort to stop human

trafficking.

Criminal elements know what the authorities are watching for, and

what is tacitly accepted. Human trafficking is not the way to go in Lithuania.

It is a crass and public crime, and is easy to discover where it is actually

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taking place. Good sources of information are hard to come by anywhere in

the world on this subject. The TIP report is no exception. After 2004 the

report, the State Department only cuts and pastes global numbers and does

not present any new global data.7 Individual country profiles are still

valuable to read however. Lithuania has maintained the highest rating as a

country since 2002. This at least indicates that the analysts and politicians

like what they are doing.

Most information seems to indicate that human trafficking in Lithuania

involves Lithuanian nationals being exploited abroad and not third country

nationals being transported through their territory. Based on the data

available, and also on the lack of reliable information about state of human

trafficking, there is no nexus between human trafficking organizations and

international terrorist groups currently in Lithuania.

Corruption

Analyzing the state of corruption in a country can give many insights

as to the status of all other possible pathologies. Corruption is what destroys

the rule of law and civil society. The degree of corruption in a government

and society is a telling indicator as to whether or not a nexus between

trafficking organizations and international terrorist organizations can exist in

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any given state. The level of corruption present in Lithuania is unacceptably

high by American standards, but is comparatively low by the standards of

the rest of the world. The level and type of corruption present in Lithuania is

not conducive to the presence of a nexus between trafficking organizations

and international terrorists.

Corruption is by its very nature very difficult to measure. The most

reliable way to measure

corruption is to gauge the

perception of people that interact

with an institution or live in a

society. Transparency

International is a group that

undertakes this investigative activity. They rate countries based on surveys

of the populace and of businessmen who have interactions in a given state.

They rate on a scale of 0-10 with ten being good. Lithuania rates a 4.6 on

the Corruption Perception Index, which is below average in nominal terms.

But this is also an index, and Lithuania ranks in 58th place out of 180

countries surveyed, which is in the top 1/3.8

This indicates that while certain things are allowed to go on, other

things are not. There is corruption in public works projects, and the presence

of organized crime networks and drug smugglers. But corruption is not

epidemic in Lithuania. Human trafficking is suppressed, and government

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corruption does not often target the citizen in the street. The United Nations

Office on Drugs and Crime also considers Lithuania to be in general

compliance with globally recognized anti-corruption measures.9 Corruption is

needed in order to do things against the public interest. Different

international bodies consider corruption to be under control in Lithuania, so

the evidence points to there being no nexus between trafficking

organizations and international terrorists based on government corruption.

Organized Crime and Piracy

The reason that organized crime and piracy are being treated as a

single category is that they are not large enough to be treated separately.

Piracy has been found to not be an issue at all in regard to Lithuania, but it is

included here for the sake of the NSA Challenge. Organized crime is present

in Lithuania, but it is in the realm of the reasonable in terms of its effect on

society. However, there is no evidence to suggest that there is a nexus

between elements of organized crime and

international terrorism.

Organized crime in Lithuania is divided

between ethnic Russians and ethnic Lithuanians.

Russians are dominant in Vilnius, while

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Lithuanians are predominant throughout the rest of the country. Criminal

elements gravitate to the sectors that are the most profitable, and least

risky. Internal crime is outside the scope of this research, so only transit

activity is being considered. The primary transit activity that organized

crime is involved with is drug trafficking. Human trafficking is tightly

controlled and discouraged by the government and its allied governments.

Arms trafficking is not a big business in the region, and is also watched by

the government. Narcotics is where it’s at in Lithuania; Western Europe is

permissive about drug use and does not complain too loudly about it.

Lithuania has limited resources, and chooses to focus them on anti-

corruption measure and anti-human trafficking measures. Drugs are

neglected in a benign way because it is an issue of secondary importance.

90% of organized crime members in Vilnius are ethnic Russians.10 This

makes sense in the context of the transit agreement to Kaliningrad.

Russians are the ones with the connections in the east, and especially the

drug connections on the Silk Road. For ethnic Lithuanians to be able to

acquire any contraband, they have to work with the Russians to get it. For

the Russians to be able to move anything through Lithuania, they have to

give the Lithuanians a cut. Since there is a functioning government and civil

society these differences are not being handled with street battles and

assassinations like elsewhere in Eastern Europe. They have to live with each

other because of the characteristics of Lithuania.

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Piracy is non-existent as an issue in Lithuania. There have been no

reports of piracy in the Baltic Sea for years, and the official Lithuanian

flagged fleet is rather small. As of 2008 there are only 149 ships that fly the

Lithuanian flag, and only 63 of them are over 100 tons in size.11 None of

these have been the victim of a pirate attack anywhere in the world in recent

memory. There are no pirates present for there to be the possibility of a

nexus.

Organized crime elements are divided on ethnic lines, and face

opposition and infiltration from the lawful authorities of Lithuania. This

undercuts trust between groups and will cause them to stick to the safest

and most profitable activities. Becoming involved with any type of politically

or religiously questionable character from Central Asia or the Middle East will

bring unwanted attention on groups that already have to be careful to keep

operating. There is not enough evidence to say that there is any sort of

nexus between organized crime and international terrorists in Lithuania at

this time.

Conclusions

Evidence for any type of nexus between

trafficking organizations or other elements of

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organized crime and international terrorist organizations is weak at best.

There are more factors hindering any cooperation between criminal elements

and terrorists than helping them. As a European Union member state,

Lithuania has extra help where it needs it to shore up any shaky institutions

or methodologies it has. Its leaders have a vested interest in working with

the west in order to remain outside the orbit of Russia and they are taking all

the steps necessary to do so. In order for this situation to exist the efficacy

of NATO and the E.U. would have to be brought into serious question. It

would take earth shaking geopolitical events to cause the leadership of

Lithuania to move away from their mutually agreeable relationship with the

west. The type of situation where a nexus could form between organized

crime and terrorism does not exist in Lithuania today.

1
Edfast, Maja. “Country Factsheets, Eurasian Narcotics: Lithuania 2004”. Compiled by the Silk
Road Studies Program in 2004. Accessed at www.silkroadstudies.org/new/docs/0709MOB-
konf.pdf. Valid as of 12/10/08.
2
International Narcotics Control Strategy Report 2008. Accessed at
http://www.state.gov/p/inl/rls/nrcrpt/2008/index.htm. Page 462.
3
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. “World Drug Report 2008”. Accessed at
http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/WDR-2008.html. Valid as of 12/10/08. Page
138, fig. 130.
4
Federation of American Scientists. “Country Rank in 1999, Arms Trade”. Accessed at
www.fas.org/man/docs/wmeat9900/rankings.pdf. Valid as of 12/10/08.
5
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. SIPRI Arms Transfers Database. Accessed at
http://armstrade.sipri.org/arms_trade/values.php. Valid as of 12/10/08
6
U.S. Department of State. “Trafficking in Persons Report 2008”. Accessed at
http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2008/. Valid as of 12/10/08.
7
U.S. Department of State. Trafficking in Persons Report website. Accessed at
http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/index.htm.
8
Transparency International. 2008 Corruption Perception Index. Accessed at
http://www.transparency.org/news_room/in_focus/2008/cpi2008/cpi_2008_table. Valid as of
12/10/08.
9
UNODC. “Effective Anti-Corruption System in Lithuania”. Accessed at
www.unodc.org/documents/corruption/Best%20Practices/Lithuania.pdf. Valid as of 12/10/08.
10
Edfast, Maja. “Country Factsheets, Eurasian Narcotics: Lithuania 2004”. Compiled by the Silk
Road Studies Program in 2004. Accessed at www.silkroadstudies.org/new/docs/0709MOB-
konf.pdf. Valid as of 12/10/08.
11
Lithuanian Maritime Safety Administration. Registration of Ships. Accessed at
http://www.msa.lt/index.php/en/39670%5C. Valid as of 12/10/08.