Crime-Terror Alliances and the State

Ethnonationalist and Islamist Challenges to Regional Security

Lyubov Mincheva, Ted Robert Gurr

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415506489
• eBook ISBN: 9781135132101
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Histoire de l'armée et de la marine

This book examines the trans-border connections between militant and criminal networks and the relationship between these and the states in which they operate.

"Unholy alliances" is a term used to describe hybrid trans-border militant and criminal networks that pose serious threats to security in Europe and elsewhere. Identity networks provide the basis for militant organizations using violent strategies – insurgency and terrorism – for political objectives. To gain funds and weapons militant networks may establish criminal enterprises, or align with existing trans-border criminal and financial networks.

This book extends the concept of unholy alliances to include the trans-state criminal syndicates that arise in failed and dysfunctional states, exemplified by Serbia and Bulgaria during their post-Communist transitions. To deal with this complex and unconventional subject, the authors develop a theoretical framework that looks at four kinds of factors conditioning the interaction between the political and the criminal: trans-state identity networks, armed conflict, the balance of market opportunities and constraints, and the role of unstable and corrupt states. The volume also examines actors at two levels of analysis: the structure and activities of militant (and/or criminal) networks, and the policies of state actors that shape and reshape the interaction of opportunities and constraints.

This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism, insurgency, transnational crime, war and conflict studies, and IR in general.

1 Unholy alliances

A theoretical framework for analyzing trans-border crime—terror networks

“Unholy alliances” is our term for hybrid trans-border militant and criminal networks that pose serious threats to security in Europe and elsewhere. Identity networks provide the basis for militant organizations using violent strategies – insurgency and terrorism – for political objectives. To gain funds and weapons militant networks may establish criminal enterprises, or align with existing trans-border criminal and financial networks. The nationalist movements of Kosovar Albanians and Turkish Kurds have been the basis for profitable and durable militant and criminal networks that operate from Asia Minor to the Balkans and Western Europe. The joint political and criminal activities of Jihadist Muslims in Bosnia and Algeria are recent instances of unholy alliances based on a political-religious ideology. Weak and corrupt states, ungoverned areas, and regional conflicts provide opportunities and lootable resources for trans-border criminal networks with material objectives as well as for political militants. We extend the concept of unholy alliances to include the trans-state criminal syndicates that arise in failed and dysfunctional states, exemplified by Serbia and Bulgaria during their post-Communist transitions.

When do militant and criminal networks form and align, and under what conditions? This chapter develops theoretical arguments about the complex conditions that provide the incentives and opportunities in which unholy alliances are established and persist. The accompanying figure shows the major concepts and principal linkages that are explored below.

A major challenge in building an explanatory model is its complex dependent variable that demands explanation for the interaction of two conceptually distinct motives for joint action. In the first section below, “Power, Profits, and Violence,” we sketch a typology of interactions, thereby operationalizing our dependent variable. Then we develop an explanatory model. Five major factors are proposed to condition militant-criminal interactions. A strongly disposing condition is the existence of trans-state nationalist, ethnic, and religious movements. These provide settings conducive to joint political and criminal action based on shared values and mutual trust. A second condition is the occurrence of armed conflict, which often provides incentives and opportunities for interdependence. Trans-state identity movements and violent regional conflicts are the subject of the second major section of this chapter, “Identity Conflicts across Borders.” The third set of conditions comprises the criminal markets, networks, opportunities, and constraints that facilitate joint action by criminals and militants. These conditions are the subject of “Criminal Markets and Networks,” a section that incorporates perspectives from criminology, conflict analysis, and international economics. Fourth is the role of weak states in conflict zones, ungoverned areas (“black holes”), as well as states in transition whose corrupted agencies create and profit from illicit market opportunities and cooperate with hybrid trans-border networks. This factor is the subject of the fourth section of this chapter, “Weak States, Failed States, Corrupted and Criminalized States.” We also mention narco-states as examples of states corrupted by their involvement in trans-border drug networks, though most such states are outside the scope of an analysis that focuses on identity-based movements. Lastly, we discuss briefly the effects and limitations of the “Policies of Supra-national Institutions” in Europe that are designed to rebuild dysfunctional states and contain trans-border crime and terrorism.

Figure 1.1 Unholy alliances explained

Power, profits, and violence: the complex dependent variable

We define and describe the complex dependent variable, the interaction between two distinct motives, by focusing on actors. The actors whose behavior and driving motivations are to be explained are criminalized rebels who cooperate in or conduct illegal enterprises in pursuit of radical political goals. Rebels’ main objective is to attain power but economic gain is also on their agenda. Power and profit are frequently mutable, with power taking the lead. In some situations, as we show in some of our case studies, economic gain displaces political objectives.

Our assumption that the violent pursuit of power (by insurgency or terrorism) and illicit material gain (criminal enterprise) are different purposes may seem obvious. It is not just a definitional point but a difference that helps explain actors’ choices of strategies and their organizational structures. However, international conventions conflate crime and terrorism: from a legal perspective, terrorism is criminal behavior. Both militant and criminal enterprises engage in illegal violence whether in pursuit of power or profit.¹ The United Nations Secretariat has characterized terrorism as the most visible and openly aggressive form of transnational organized crime.² Martin and Romano, following other writers, have introduced the general concept of multinational systemic crime to denote the “collective behavior” of groups engaged in terrorism, espionage, and trafficking in drug and arms.³ A fashionable economic theory of rebellion deals with political motivations by ignoring them. Collier and Hoeffler posit that rebellion is “an industry that generates profits from looting.… Such rebellions are motivated by greed.”⁴

If we accept these premises as a beginning point, there is little to explain. Social movement and conflict theories would be irrelevant, or at best secondary, to the explanation of linkages between militant movements and crime. In our view the essential differences are these. Profit maximization and risk reduction are the motives that shape the behavior of international criminal groups. In contrast, the ideologically driven pursuit of social and political goals motivates militant political movements. They seek to influence political processes and ultimately to exercise state power. Strategically, criminal groups use violence to establish and maintain control over the supply, shipment, and distribution of illicit goods and services. Political militants, by contrast, use violence mainly to publicize their objectives and to demonstrate the weakness of their opponents – usually states, sometimes rival groups. Organizational differences follow. International criminal enterprises need regular access to suppliers, transit routes, and markets, implying a relatively high degree of coordination. Their profits are usually large and can be used to buy immunity from security and judicial officials. Militant movements, by contrast, are more likely to function as cells or networks, capable of carrying out episodic attacks on political targets but otherwise flexible and mutable. Their survival depends more on evading and weakening security forces than on buying them off.⁵

This dualistic approach to analyzing militancy and crime is affirmed in different contexts. European experts point to “symbiotic partners from arms trades and narcotics” as a connection that straddles the schism between the two spheres.⁶ “Narco-terrorism” is widely used to describe the activities of Latin American narcotics traffickers in collusion with revolutionary movements in Peru, Colombia, and elsewhere. The term can mask very complex and mutable interactions among traffickers, revolutionaries, and security agencies, as it has in Peru⁷ and Colombia.⁸

Pragmatic considerations bring these two types of actors together in hybrid “unholy alliances.” Militant political movements require resources for arms, logistics, and sustenance and shelter for militants. Consequently they frequently engage in criminal activity to finance their activities, relying on robbery, kidnapping for ransom, extortion, and trafficking in drugs and humans. Joint action between militants and criminal enterprises potentially provides more opportunities for profit and political impact than either group enjoys when acting alone. But there are barriers to joint action. Cooperation depends on a common basis of trust. Ethnonational and sectarian identifications seem especially important to establishing trust that transcends international boundaries because they imply cultural cohesion, group loyalty, and shared antipathy toward states and other social actors.⁹

It has been suggested that militant movements gradually lose interest in establishing alliances with crime networks as basic sources of funding. Where such alliances do exist they usually are transitory rather than essential for the political economy of militant movements. The general pattern seems to be that successful militants become self-funded, at the risk of an agenda shift in which they evolve in the direction of “fighters turned felons.”¹⁰ Their chances for political survival and success increase as they run criminal enterprises themselves. In doing so their political agenda may remain central. Or they may shift away from political objectives to profit-seeking.

Militant groups also have incentives to skip intermediaries in their business operations because most lines of trans-border exchange of illegal commodities become increasingly complex. Being driven by demand alone, narcotics and arms sales do not necessarily have a symbiotic relationship. However, conditions that promote one type of trafficking more often than not promote the other as well. Narcotics and arms thus often become items of exchange in complex deals involving third and fourth parties. Within this setting few partners could expect to be “end recipients” of precisely what they were seeking from the market, with no collateral transactions.¹¹ This presents contemporary militants with the need to increasingly think as businessmen to whom profits will be available if they are pragmatic, while loss will follow if they remain doctrinaire.

As this discussion suggests, the interaction of militant and criminal objectives can take various and changing forms. Below we develop further our dependent variable, “unholy alliances,” by looking at actors and motivations. Our actors are trans-state networks based on some combination of identity and interest. Some are cross-border networks that link adjacent groups. Others are extraterritorial trans-state networks that link together groups and organizations across regions.

The mix of motivations driving interaction between criminal and militant networks varies. We sketch three patterns by which militants may operate or cooperate with illegal enterprises, and examine their cross-border and trans-state networks. Three types of interaction are evident from our cases and the literature. The first pattern is characterized by a mix of opportunistic and pragmatic objectives. It offers the clearest examples of what we term “unholy alliances.” Militants who initially engage in illegal enterprises in pursuit of radical political objectives simultaneously become self-interested “felons.” These Janus-faced militant/criminal networks stretch across borders and are especially likely to emerge when local conflicts spark cross-border regional crises. In the second pattern militants are driven by ideological objectives, and illegal enterprises are kept subordinate to their political objectives. Networks of the third type are almost wholly predatory. Here we deal with criminals and criminal syndicates that build and use trans-state networks for purposes of profit maximization and risk reduction. They may make use of trans-border identity networks but only or mainly to pursue material gain. As our case studies show, these patterns of motivation can change during a movement’s lifespan.

Patterns of militancy–crime linkages: opportunistic interdependence

The opportunistic pattern of terrorism-crime connections is one in which political goals and material gain coexist on a more or less equal footing. Actors shift easily from one to another. Analysts have called this pattern a political-criminal hybrid. What is distinctive about it is the simultaneous pursuit of political and criminal objectives. Two of our case studies of cross-border networks exemplify this pattern: the clan-based cross-border networks of Kosovar Albanian nationalists and the nationalist and fundraising network of the Kurdish Workers Party (the PKK) in Europe. These instances of opportunistic interdependence evolved within cross-border networks. Territorial cross-border communication and action is key here. Based on territorially adjacent identity groups, these networks mobilize support across the border. The real political-criminal agents are in fact paramilitary/criminal units or cells. They profit immensely as they commute across adjacent territories and interact with their more distant diasporas. They simultaneously promote political violence in neighboring areas and earn money from their transstate brethren.

The clan-based Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) waged insurgency in the 1990s against the Serb authorities in Kosovo and later promoted insurgencies across borders to south Serbia and Macedonia. Simultaneously the clan networks exploited the West European market for drugs. Criminologist Xavier Raufer said of the Albanian political-criminal syndicate that it was impossible to distinguish between liberation fighters and drug traffickers. A Serbian analyst reported that 15 leading Albanian family clans (fis) established complete control over criminal activity in Albania in 1997 during the collapse of the Albanian state into anarchy. Motivated by fear of inter-fis blood feuds over the limited Balkan criminal turf, the 15 fis allegedly made a deal to accept a common paramilitary enforcement unit, the KLA, in order to incite violence in Kosovo with the dual objectives of making money and financing wars to unify all Albanian-inhabited areas of the Balkans.¹²

Closely related is the pragmatic pattern in which a militant organization’s agenda alternates between political and material objectives, depending on circumstances. Cross-border networks and external opportunities are here again in play. The PKK – the Kurdish Workers Party in Turkey – is our case in point. The group was established in 1978 with an ideology that blended Marxism-Leninism with a war of terror aimed at national self-determination of the Turkish Kurdish people. From 1984 to 1999 the organization carried out brutal campaigns of terrorism throughout Turkey and in some European countries that claimed the lives of more than 37,000 victims, including Turkish security forces, rival political groups, as well as fellow Kurds. To sustain its insurgency the PKK sought support from states, other terror movements, and the Kurdish diaspora in Europe. Over the past thirty and more years the group evolved into a criminal enterprise involved in drug production and trafficking as well as in money laundering of the profits. Curtis and Karacan observe that “regional criminal organizations parallel terrorist and political cells and have common membership.”¹³ Not surprisingly the PKK become intertwined with organized crime networks in Europe and elsewhere.¹⁴

The pragmatic characterization of the PKK was evident from its activities between 1999 and 2004. During these years the PKK insurgency largely subsided due to the arrest of its leader Abdullah Öcalan and his call for an end to armed struggle. But the supportive structure of its criminal activities remained in place. Analyzing the group’s activities in the course of those years, it has been observed that the PKK adopted a pattern of behavior very similar to that of the Philippine-based Abu-Sayyaf group. It eschewed civic and cultural activities and concentrated on criminal activities to sustain a small but threatening military presence.¹⁵

Patterns of militancy–crime linkages: ideological movements

Some militants give primacy to their ideological and political objectives, and undertake illicit economic activities mainly or exclusively to fund their p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures, maps, and tables
• Preface and acknowledgments
• 1. Unholy alliances: A theoretical framework for analyzing trans-border crime—terror networks
• 2. Crime, political violence, and governance in Kosovo: A triple alliance?1
• 3. Kurdish nationalists and criminal networks: The PKK in Turkey, the Middle East, and Europe1
• 4. Militant Islam and Bosnia’s civil war 1991–19951
• 5. Greed, grievance, and political Islam in the Algerian revolutionary war of the 1990s1
• 6. Serbia in the 1990s: Militant nationalism and the criminalized state
• 7. The state and crime syndicates in post-communist Bulgaria1
• 8. Militants and money: The political economy of communal rebels in post-communist Europe and the Middle East
• 9. Conclusions: Responding to ethnonational and Islamist crime–terror networks
• Notes
• Select bibliography
• Index