Failed State
The drug trade in a four-block neighborhood in the northwest of the capital was contested by two gangs, Karum Krew, known as KK, and Shaami Posse Two or SP2. There was little to distinguish the two gangs. Both were made up of adolescents from families the gangs had replaced in their allegiances. Each was led by a man in his twenties with the torso and arms of a weightlifter. KK and SP2 both sourced their merchandise from the same foreign cartel. The boys were semi-disciplined, quick to anger, barely educated, fearless, and street-smart. All were armed with knives or box cutters. Only the muscle-bound leaders and their bodyguards had firearms. Nobody was frightened by the police; rather, it was the police who were afraid of them. The few businesses that had not left or closed down paid protection money to one gang or the other. The largest, an auto and motorbike repair shop, paid both.
After half a dozen youths were killed in eight days, the leaders engaged in a brief effort to negotiate a division of the territory. But diplomacy was not the forte of either, so things went on as before, as tensely but with a bit more restraint. Thanks to the plutocrats in their Mercedes and Range Rovers, from which they never got out, business was brisk and profitable enough. Still, the territory was a mere four blocks and, in the opinion of the SP2’s chief, not big enough for both. A merger was out of the question. The two gangs loathed each other, like a brace of jealous fraternal twins.
The chief of PS2, who went by the name of Shredder, was a small-time operator with big-time dreams. What he dreamed of was monopoly and expansion and he knew that the former was a prerequisite of achieving the latter. Once KK had been eliminated, with a base firmly in his hands, he could diversify into prostitution, gambling, kidnapping, loan sharking. He could spread his wings, move into wealthier parts of the city, extort bigger businesses, maybe even arrange phony government contracts. With his narrow, famished eyes, Shredder had been watching gangster films since he was a child, mostly American ones. The American dream meant being a successful crook. When he was starting out, the man who recruited him had a favorite saying: “If you rob a liquor store, you’re just a thief; if you steal Asia, you’re a god.” But to steal well, to flourish, he would need backing. As he saw things, the most efficient way to make himself a bigger tuna was to collaborate with a tuna that was already big.
When Shredder received his monthly delivery in April, he took the courier aside and demanded a face-to-face with a representative of the supplier — “not,” he added disdainfully, “some squirt like you but somebody with juice. Understand?” When the frightened courier asked why, Shredder smiled contemptuously. “Mutual benefit. Duh,” he said, delivering the last syllable like a hammer blow.
A week later, Shredder got a text instructing him to be at the equestrian statue in Central Plaza at precisely four in the afternoon on Monday — and to wear a suit. He borrowed a suit from his skinny cousin. At the appointed time, he was approached in the plaza by a fortyish man in a blue suit that fit. In an accent that was only slightly foreign, he told Shredder to talk fast and not loud.
Shredder offered the Cartel a partnership. With a relatively small investment of cash and muscle, Shredder said the competition could be eliminated and, in due course, he could take over the whole city and organize things properly. He said he had it all worked out. The rise of PS2 would begin with removing the punks of Karum Krew. He asked for help with this first step. Why? Because the boss of KK, called the Hulk, always kept his two toughest men with him, one with a pistol, the other with an Uzi. He thought it imprudent to risk the lives of his boys or, of course, his own. He didn’t want any evidence linking PS2 to the operation. “More than plausible deniability,” he said, “to keep the cops off our backs.”
Shredder was nothing if not thorough. He had two boys watch the Hulk for a month. He knew where he and his top boys hung out and when. They were at the Tugram Bar and Grill every Tuesday and Thursday from noon to three.
The bigwigs of the cartel debated the costs and benefits of using this ambitious Shredder to turn what had been a nose under the tent into a firm foothold, a real beachhead. Some thought it made sense to work with a rising PS2 rather than supplying both them and KK. Small potatoes, they argued. They stood to move more product with an ambitious client who aimed to expand than to go on feeding two small-time gangs who sooner or later would tear each other apart over four miserable city blocks. Those opposed pointed out that if this Shredder was too weak to eliminate the local competition on his own, he certainly couldn’t be counted on to expand either his territory or activities. One lieutenant who once had taken an introductory course in economics retorted that they should consider the potential opportunity costs of rejecting the request. Up till now their operations in the capital had been limited. They were mere providers, running a kind of extractive economy. There were riches in that flabby, corrupt capital. Wouldn’t it be better to be silent partners? Shredder, he added, had displayed some intelligence in not wanting to attract too much attention to himself, pathetic though the authorities were.
In the end, the big boss decided to oblige Shredder but to minimize the risk of being identified with any violence themselves. “That’s bad business,” he said. “We can get somebody from the outside. And cheap.” Here he turned on the economics expert. “Supply in that segment of the labor force wildly exceeds the demand, no? So, a bus ticket. A hotel room. A few hundred dollars.”
The cut-rate contractor the cartel hired was, in some respects, competent. He knew how to smuggle in the components and assemble a bomb. He even understood how to detonate the thing remotely with a cell phone. But he made a vital mistake, if indeed the error was his. Instead of placing the device in the Tugram Bar and Grill in the rundown northwest of the city, he planted it in Restaurant Nubran in the affluent southwest. It’s possible he’d been given the wrong address by his employer. Maybe it hadn’t been written down quite legibly. Perhaps he was instructed to memorize the name and did it badly. Impossible to say, as he was murdered three days after using his return bus ticket.
At one o’clock on a Tuesday in May, an explosion tore apart the Nubran, an elegant restaurant popular with ladies from the upper-crust. The blast severely injured seventeen people and blew eight to bits. Among the latter were three toddlers and the pregnant wife of the deputy transport minister.
Disposable adolescents stabbing and shooting one another was deplorable but tolerable. A bomb killing affluent diners and their children two blocks from the National Assembly was not.
From that afternoon events moved at a breathtaking pace. It was as if chaos were a dozing dragon wakened by the blast. The government declared the bombing a terrorist outrage, declared a state of emergency, and deployed troops around the city. The first checkpoints appeared before the sun was down.
On the large military base three miles outside the city, a young colonel convened a secret meeting of junior officers. They had met before, initially airing personal grievances, criticizing senior staff, the ministry, the food. Subsequent sessions were more political. Now the criticism was aimed at the civilians who ran things, the courts, the legislature, the president — all on the take. There were patriotic speeches and pledges of solidarity. The young colonel had laid out his plan for when the time was right. Now, he declared, the time was right. The meeting ended with everyone standing at attention and singing the national anthem.
The coup began at dawn three days after the bombing. Tanks and personnel carriers moved into the capital. The soldiers manning checkpoints mostly joined; the ones who refused were overwhelmed. A few were shot, the others taken into custody. The president fled in a helicopter to an army base in the north. From there he issued a call to the people to defend the constitution and an appeal to all loyal troops to resist the treasonous coup. There were demonstrations in the capital to which the coup leaders responded first with water cannon, then tear gas, and finally live ammunition. Nearly a hundred protestors were killed. In the North, the President rallied his forces, put himself at their head, and began a march on the capital. In the capital, the junta led by the patriotic colonel declared the constitution defunct and the president an enemy of the people.
The bloody civil war was on. Supplies of food, water, and medical equipment began to run out. Looting and banditry spread like cancer. The wealthy raised private militias. Refugees flooded the frontiers of neighboring countries who kept both sides well supplied with weapons but little humanitarian aid. Urgent meetings were convened by the Regional Union and the United Nations Security Council. Resolutions were proposed. The ones that weren’t vetoed were ignored.
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