SSI, 13 Jul 09: Criminals, Militias, and Insurgents: Organized Crime in Iraq
.....Organized crime in Iraq, as elsewhere, can be understood in two distinct forms: (1) as entities or criminal enterprises which treat crime in Clausewitzian terms as a continuation of business by other means; and (2) as a set of illicit activities appropriated and utilized by various entities for specific purposes. Terrorist organizations, insurgents, ethnic factions, sectarian groups, and militias all use organized crime activities as a funding mechanism. Not surprisingly, therefore, organized crime in Iraq challenges existing concepts and categorizations, casts doubt on strategies that focused narrowly on the military dimension of a complex problem, and demands new measures of effectiveness. If the conflict in Iraq is a hybrid or mosaic form of warfare, organized crime in Iraq has an analogous form, adding another dimension to the anticoalition violence.....