Organized Crime and Insurgency

[Bill Moore]

Crime and Insurgency in the Tribal Areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan

Interesting paper on how organized crime has shaped the insurgency (and vice versa) in the AFG/PAK region, and one can clearly see the networks extend beyond the region defined.

Greed more than politics and hearts and minds drives much of the fighting.

Militant groups on either side of the frontier function like a broad network of criminal gangs, not just in terms of the activities in which they engage, but also in the way they are organized, how funds flow through their command chains and how they interact—and sometimes fight—with each other. There is no doubt that militant groups have capitalized on certain public grievances, yet their ties to criminal profiteering, along with the growing number of civilian casualties they cause on both sides of the frontier, have simultaneously contributed to a widening sense of anger and frustration among local communities. Through a series of focused and short anecdotal case studies, this paper aims to map out how key groups engage in criminal activity in strategic areas, track how involvement in illicit activity is deepening or changing and illustrate how insurgent and terror groups impose themselves on local communities as they spread to new territory.