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.

[Global Scout]

Good article, and it supports many of previous assessments.

[anonamatic]

Thanks, this is a topic I've wanted to know more about for quite some time.

[Bob's World]

Link didn't work for me, so not sure what is said on this point, but government officials in Afghanistan profit far more from the Poppy/Hash trade in Afghanistan than the Taliban do. It absolutely funds the insurgency, but that is chump change in a multi-billion dollar business.

This pot is so big, so lucrative, that it is woven into the entire community of Afghanistan from top to bottom, from government to insurgent. And under Taliban rule, there was far less of a problem than there is today.

As an example, Karzai's man, Juma Gul as the head of ANP in Uruzgan was a great eradicator of poppy. Destroyed much of the competitive tribe's crop, but did not touch his own tribe's fields at all. Lauded by the Dutch and the US as well, he was enriching himself, his tribe, and his patronage sponsors under the protection of the coalition; while he drove thousands deeper into their support of the Taliban.

This is far more complex and comprehensive than any of us can imagine.

[slapout9]

This is far more complex and comprehensive than any of us can imagine.

Yep, now multiple by 10 and you have Mexico.

[Bob's World]

This report show $10-30 Billion annually from the US to Mexico for illegal drugs
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...cial/math.html

I have seen numbers over $65 billion estimated for the Afghan drug market.

Plus, most of the friction in Mexico is because the current government is working to control the problem (as well as the violence associated with competition between cartels). The Afghan government is not making that kind of fight.

Mexico is closer, but Afghanistan is likely much larger. Particularly as now I believe that more South American illegal drug business flows across the Atlantic and up into Europe than flows up Latin America through Mexico and into the US.