              The 'Criminalization' of the Russian Armed Forces

      The breakup of the Warsaw Pact, the dissolution of the USSR,
 and the fragmentation of the Soviet Armed Forces, fundamentally
 transformed the petty criminal activities that characterized
 Soviet military garrison life for years.  Over the course of the
 last five years, the frequent small-scale pilfering of unit
 equipment and supplies by military personnel, has become a
 sophisticated, multi-dimensional collection of criminal
 enterprises.  Today, an explosion in the variety, intensity, and
 scope, of "military crime" has earned some successor state
 military establishments the designation of "mafias in uniform" by
 specialists in and out of the former USSR.  Burgeoning criminal
 activities by the Russian Armed Forces, in particular, seem well
 on their way to becoming institutionalized.
      Steadily climbing rates of weapons and munitions thefts,
 resource diversions, and narcotics use and trafficking by
 military personnel were already alarming Soviet authorities in
 the late 1980s.  In 1989, official Soviet statistics indicated
 that military crime had grown by some 14.5% over the previous
 year.  Weapon's thefts alone had increased by 50% that same year.
 Soviet military and security service spokesmen linked rapidly
 increasing military drug consumption and trafficking to drug-use
 habits acquired during the nine-year war in Afghanistan.  Drugs
 from Southwest Asia continued to pour into military districts
 along the USSR southern border after the Soviet withdrawal.  By
 1990, Soviet military counterintelligence (KGB) special
 detachments increasingly focused their efforts on drug sales and
 weapons thefts.
      Over the next several years--accelerating with the breakup
 of the USSR--often sophisticated forms of crime spread to
 military institutions, units, and regions that had in the past
 seemed largely unaffected.  For the 'new' Russian Armed Forces,
 these included Ministry of Defense and other senior staffs;
 transportation, construction, and logistic organizations;
 combined arms units and commands; technically-oriented and
 highly-trained aviation and air defense formations; military
 research organizations; and military-educational components.
 Military criminals ranged from general and field grade officers
 to the newest conscripts.
      As 1994 progresses, poorly paid, badly housed, and
 demoralized Russian military forces at home and abroad are deeply
 involved in criminal activities.  Russian troop withdrawals and
 internal force redeployments are providing military personnel
 numerous opportunities for illegal equipment diversions and
 fraud.  In particular, the widespread "commercialization" of key
 military components like the Central Military Transportation
 Directorate, Military Transport Aviation, Military Trade
 Directorate, and Military Construction Directorate--in an effort
 to generate operational revenues or meet other military support
 requirements--is bringing Russian military personnel into a host
 of criminal ventures with civilian organized crime groups.  A new
 caste of military criminals--"their intrinsic keen wit, hardened
 under conditions of market relations approximating those on the
 battlefield" as a Russian commentator put it--prepared them for
 tireless "entrepreneurial" activities.
      A few examples illustrate the range of Russian military
 crime.  German law enforcement officials have pointed to the
 widespread use of Russian Military Transport Aviation (VTA)
 aircraft for transporting opium and hashish from the former USSR
 to eastern Germany, where residual Russian forces are stationed.
 There, the narcotics are sold on rich German drug markets in
 association with various exported "mafias" from the former USSR.
 Similarly, Russian reporting charges that the "main route of
 transit of Afghan opium is no longer the Khorog-Osh road .leading
 from southeast Tajikistan on the Afghan border to the Uzbek-
 Kyrgyz border|, but the military transport aviation of Russian
 troops based in Tajikistan" and engaged in continuing
 peacekeeping efforts there.
      The Estonian Prime Minister termed Russian military forces
 remaining there to be a "bedrock of crime, first and foremost
 organized crime."  In Russia, military construction battalions
 have become major centers of drug sale and distribution.
 Together with a host of smuggling crimes, the massive diversion
 of equipment and materials, involvements in illegal joint
 ventures, and criminal currency transfers abroad, Russian
 reporting has detailed a role for former officers and soldiers in
 the now-widespread phenomenon of "contract killing" in Moscow and
 other major Russian cities.  The selling of weapons and munitions
 even by senior officers remains endemic.  In September 1993, four
 officers from major to colonel were arrested in Moscow for
 selling weapons. This rather unremarkable incident illustrated
 how smoothly profit has replaced ideology, since three of these
 officers were from the Humanitarian Academy of the Armed Forces--
 formerly the Lenin Military-Political Academy. The incident of
 senior officers of a unit engaged in developing "new military
 technologies" who melted down and sold the silver, gold, and
 other precious materials from their electronic equipment is
 another case in point.
      Amidst a society and state institutions that are
 increasingly undermined by crime, the Russian military
 establishment itself is faced with a combination of powerful
 criminal incentives, opportunities, and resources that are
 facilitating the development of institutionalized military-
 criminal organizations.  This raises profound questions about the
 stability, motivations, and reliability of the Russian Armed
 Forces beyond the more traditional considerations.  It must
 necessarily shape deliberations by U.S. planners and decision-
 makers examining interaction with Russian forces in peacekeeping
 or humanitarian aid missions; the desirability of providing
 security assistance of various types; and the implications for
 regional and international law enforcement programs.

 Graham H. Turbiville, Jr.
