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Agreement within the European Union and NAFTA in North America permits individuals to travel within a significant part of Western Europe without border checks. This means that criminals can enter Europe at one point and freely move within a significant part of the continent without any passport controls. This has been exploited by Chinese smugglers, who have moved hundreds of thousands of Chinese into France from other entry points in Europe, and by Ukrainian criminals who took advantage of easy access to visas from the German embassy in Kyiv to move large numbers of criminals and traffic women to different parts of Europe.

Border regions in conflict or weakened states experience an absence of effective border controls. In many Asian multiborder areas there is an absence of governmental control, where the crime groups and the smugglers have become the dominant powers. Illustrative of this is the Golden Triangle region in which drugs, women, and children trafficked from Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and southern China flow into northern Thailand. In the triborder area of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, crossborder smuggling thrives. But the links between terrorism and crime also flourish in such lawless areas. For example, Hezbollah planned and financially supported its bombing of the Jewish communities in Argentina in the mid-1990s from this region.

The borders of the former Soviet Union are penetrated not only by drug traffickers from Afghanistan. With the collapse of effective controls across the eleven time zones that represent the former USSR, the borders have been rendered indefensible. Across them flow an incredible range of commodities including arms, military technology, nuclear materials, and precious metals; increasingly, there is also an illicit flow of people across these borders.

The porous border areas of Europe, particularly the large seacoasts along the Mediterranean, are the locus of significant smuggling. In Morocco, for example, networks smuggling men to Europe have been adapted for human trafficking, bringing African women into the European sex markets. Large-scale smuggling of illegal migrants is underway from Africa into Spain, and the Italian coast receives A i i i t ll i i t f N th Af i

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