The New 'Great Game': state & non-state competition

[Jedburgh]

A piece of the "big picture" that requires consideration when looking at Afghanistan...

CACI, Oct 06: State Weakness, Organized Crime and Corruption in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan

The Joint Center’s research on narcotics, organized crime and security in Eurasia has been developing since 2003. Within the framework of this larger project, one of the major findings has been the linkage of state weakness and the development of organized crime. This linkage, involving a variety of relations between the narcotics industry and state officials and bodies, threatens all states of the region, though its effect is disproportionate on small and weak states near Afghanistan, the world’s main producer of heroin. As such, this report by the Joint Center’s Research Fellow Dr. Erica Marat aspires to shed light on the two states perhaps most affected by this problem: Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. As Dr. Marat shows, the interaction between organized crime and the state takes different shapers depending on the political and economic realities of a country at a given time. This study will contribute significantly to a better understanding of the narcotics problem in Central Asia. Moreover, the study also makes a significant contribution to the theoretical literature on the linkage of organized crime and politics...

[kaur]

"Criminal state of play - An examination of state-crime relations in post-Soviet Union Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan."

http://www.silkroadstudies.org/new/d...07/0702JIR.htm

[Jedburgh]

CACI, 20 Feb 08: The Changing Dynamics of State-Crime Relations in Kyrgyzstan

.....Today, about a dozen high-ranking government officials are in control of Kyrgyzstan’s major economic sectors. They are not countered by either the parliament or civil society. They are also no longer afraid of intimidation from the criminal underworld, and are able to significantly influence security and law enforcement structures. Future economic policies concerning the remaining state enterprises are likely to be informally redistributed among this limited group of people. This marks the emergence of a new type of state-crime relationship in Kyrgyzstan, where public figures are responsible for organizing major crimes in the country. Such a state of play has regional implications as well. If Kyrgyzstan’s energy sector further deteriorates, neighboring states will suffer from shortages of water and electricity. Kyrgyzstan is also likely to increasingly serve as a transit zone for drug trafficking, with illegal deals possibly brokered at the top levels of government, bypassing law enforcement agencies. As such, Kyrgyzstan is on track to a situation reminiscent of that in Tajikistan where the bulk of Afghan heroin appears to be smuggled by state actors and institutions.