Back to the Future

Curzon recently posted on the fifteen year anniversary of Kaplan’s The Coming Anarchy . An excerpt from the book reads

West Africa is becoming the symbol of worldwide demographic, environmental, and societal stress, in which criminal anarchy emerges as the real “strategic” danger. Disease, overpopulation, unprovoked crime, scarcity of resources, refugee migrations, the increasing erosion of nation-states and international borders, and the empowerment of private armies, security firms, and international drug cartels are now most tellingly demonstrated through a West African prism.

And in today’s news from Brazil, police in Sao Paulo have invaded and ‘occupied’ the city’s biggest slum.

Hundreds of riot police occupied one of Sao Paulo’s biggest slums Tuesday following a night of clashes in which three police officers were shot. Bands of young men burned cars and tires in the streets of the Paraisopolis slum and looted cars and businesses, Sao Paulo’s public safety department said in a statement.

[...] Authorities were investigating whether the violence was ordered by the First Capital Command, a notorious gang that controls most of the drug trade in Sao Paulo’s numerous slums. Police invaded the slum carrying automatic weapons and shotguns and used armored cars to plow through the debris and assert control over the slum. It was the biggest operation of its kind in South America’s largest city since 2006.

Nine people were arrested, and the public safety department said 230 officers were patrolling the slum along with two helicopters and teams of firefighters prepared to put out more blazes if needed.

While Brazil’s problems are nothing new, increasing urbanization and mega-cities worldwide are making such occurrences more frequent rather than less. The uprooted rural poor lacking the social and familial support for their home will be especially vulnerable as the government is unable to provide services, organized crime gains increasing control and power vis-a-vis the state and rural-urban immigration outpaces infrastructure development and economic growth in the cities. Another sign of the hollow state that John Robb often discusses.