In his new history, Amitav Ghosh shows how the world’s first international drug cartels were run by the Dutch and British governments through their monopoly East India companies.
Latin America’s spike in violence is the result of systemic problems that have long gone unaddressed.
Mariana Páez demobilisation zone was set up for former Farc members to live after the 2016 peace deal. They have been forced to flee after a wave of death threats and killings.
Associated Press/Alamy Stock Photo
They used to fight the state and now want to be part of society – but after demobilisation, thousands of former Farc guerrillas face violence and displacement
International and Australian laws need to be updated to cope with the newest drug-trafficking technique threatening maritime security: remote-controlled narco-drones.
Fires burn off forest cover and natural grasses to create cattle pasture in the Maya forest in Guatemala.
Jennifer Devine
More than 100 world leaders have pledged to end the destruction of forests by 2030 as a way to slow climate change. That will require changing how the world produces four widely used commodities.
Cash crop: Peruvian farmers looking over a field of coca seedlings.
Thomas Grisaffi
The conviction of Mexican drug kingpin Joaquín Guzmán Loera, who evaded justice in Mexico, is a win for US officials. But it’s a pyrrhic victory in the war on drugs.
An artist’s sketch of Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán at a 2018 pretrial hearing in a Brooklyn Federal courthouse.
Elizabeth Williams via AP, File
With its tales of bloody violence, corruption, international trade and entrepreneurial innovation, Guzmán’s trial offers a telenovela-style explainer on Mexican cartels and their American clients.
Ross William Ulbricht, the tech-savvy Texan who created the Silk Road, was sentenced to life in prison without parole on charges that equated him with a mafia boss.
The code of the suburbs dictates a different set of rules for dealing with conflict.
Todd Hido