Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
This book really leads you into the world of international crime, gang operations, sex slavery and money laundering, etc. And it reveals how the global marketplace has really empowered criminals on a huge and terrifying scale.
Your next book, McMafia by Misha Glenny, highlights the connection between crime and terrorism.
Yes, with my next two choices I am trying to bring together some of the issues that have been rattling around in my head. This book really leads you into the world of international crime, gang operations, sex slavery and money laundering, etc.
And it reveals how the global marketplace has really empowered criminals on a huge and terrifying scale. For instance, members of the Mumbai underworld assisted the Pakistani ISI to smuggle in the RDX explosives that were used in the Mumbai bombings in March 1993.
One area I find him very interesting on is what has become of the cold war spy agencies. He looks at how the Bulgarian DS created an arm called the Covert Transit Directorate whose primary role was to smuggle weapons to African rebel groups, but soon the channels were used for people-trafficking and for drugs. In the 1980s 80 per cent of the heroin destined for the European market would cross into Bulgaria from Turkey at the Kapetan Andreevo crossing point and into the hands of the Covert Transit Directorate. The DS established an economic monopoly after the fall of communism – DS members founded 90 per cent of the joint stock companies created after the opening of private enterprise in Bulgaria in 1986. All this is a chilling example of opportunism and how well qualified these groups are to carry it through.
In my book it is the Covert Transit Directorate that the fugitive Jonah turns to in Iraq in 2005, when his cover is blown and he needs to smuggle himself back into the UK to try and stop a spectacular terrorist attack.
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Simon Conway was born in California in 1967, educated in Britain and studied English literature at the University of Edinburgh. He served in the British army with the Black Watch and the Queen’s Own Highlanders. After leaving the military he worked for the HALO trust, clearing land mines and unexploded ordnance in Cambodia, Kosovo, Abkhazia, Eritrea and Sri Lanka. As Director of Landmine Action he ran projects in Western Sahara, Liberia and Guinea Bissau as well as successfully campaigning for an international treaty to ban cluster bombs. He has been following the Taliban since the mid-90s and exploring the extent to which the Taliban and al Qaeda are creations of the Pakistani Intelligence Services backed by Saudi money. In his latest book, A Loyal Spy, there are uncanny parallels between the plot and real life.
