ABSTRACT
In the decade that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was widely expected that the terrorist threat would diminish, together with the polarization of political ideologies that had inspired and at times directly funded various forms of terrorism. States that had supported terrorism for ideological motives during the cold war were less interested in the destabilization and political subversion of their rivals. The focus for law enforcement and intelligence services and sometimes even the armed forces in many countries was redirected to the operations of transnational organized crime and its primary source of profit, the illicit drugs trade. This new ‘evil empire’ was seen as an international security threat with the potential to destabilize governments and distort the mechanisms of the global economy. Profits were indeed considerable, especially in relation to the economies of the developing countries where much plant-based drug cultivation traditionally takes place, although they largely bypassed peasant farmers in favour of exporters and distributors to and in the industrialized consumer countries.
