Mincheva, Lyubov Grigorova
and Ted Robert Gurr. 2013. Crime-Terror Alliances and the State:
Ethnonationalist and Islamist Challenges to Regional Security. New York:
Routledge.
Mincheva
and Gurr’s work, Crime-Terror Alliances
and the State explores a previously lightly examined subject: how and when
criminal organizations establish alliances with terrorist groups, and how these
alliances affect the state. Of particular concern to my
research is the movement of terrorist organizations into human trafficking.
While the trafficking literature is in broad agreement regarding the certainty
of the complicity of criminal organizations in human trafficking, there is
disagreement and uncertainty as to the level of collusion between criminal
organizations and terrorist groups, and whether terrorist groups are
even involved in human trafficking. Mincheva and Gurr argue in this work that
“human trafficking… is a significant source of income for both militants and
criminal networks.” Pragmatically, such activities make sense, “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.” Moreover, “criminal and armed
organizations… have discovered and used the wide range of opportunities to share
the international/global economic and financial infrastructure.”
The authors conducted a case study analysis in 2013 that observed “the
dynamics of trans-border alliances in which political violence is joined to
criminal enterprise”, focusing on criminal groups in Kosovo, Kurdish
nationalists, militant Islam in the Bosnian civil war, the Algerian
revolutionary war, Serbia in the 1990s, and post-communist Bulgaria. By
building on the Minorities at Risk project, which “monitors the status of 283
minority groups across the globe and focuses specifically on groups that suffer
collective discrimination and have the capacity for collective action in
defense of their self-interests”, they are able to identify areas that are at
high risk of fostering criminal-terror alliances.
The alliances that are
created between criminal organizations and terrorists are facilitated by the
environment they operate in. “State
weakness provides… low risks and high opportunities” for both criminals and
insurgents. The ungoverned spaces of failed
states open up a “hospitable environment” for these groups. The authors
describe how ungoverned spaces in Algeria, Bosnia, Turkey, and Kosovo have
allowed criminal enterprises and terrorist groups to operate and expand with
little interference from authorities. Criminalized
states, where the state has become a “thinly disguised protection racket
whose leaders use power to pursue their private interests” make collusion easy
between officials, criminals and terrorist groups. A prime example used by the
authors was Serbia in the 1990s and post-Communist Bulgaria, where state officials
would align with both criminals and militants to pursue both political and
ethno-national objectives, and criminal and predatory goals based mainly on
profit.
Ultimately, the authors
conclude “that trans-border ethno national and religious identity groups
provide the basis for militant organizations that use insurgency and terrorism
for political objectives.” Militant networks will seek out or establish their
own criminal enterprises in order to gain access to funds and weapons. The authors
refer to these trans-border networks as “unholy alliances”. These networks are
used to gain access to additional economic and political resources. The ethnic
or religious nature of such alliances allow them to target and exploit
sympathetic officials wherever local communal networks extend. This can result
in state agencies playing a major role in “sponsoring and facilitating these
networks and in turn profit from them.”
Based
on their research, Mincheva and Gurr create a typology of terrorist and criminal
collaboration. They classify types of cooperation into four categories
(ideological, pragmatic, predatory, and opportunistic-interdependent) based on
the goals and methods used by the organization to pursue those goals. The first, ideological, is characterized by
militants keeping their ideological objectives foremost, and continuing to
focus on instigating political change. In order to fund their political agenda,
they do conduct illicit economic activities, but profit does not become their
main objective. The Provisional IRA is an example. The second, pragmatic, is characterized by
terrorist-criminal cooperation leading to a “pragmatic shift” in the militant
group’s agenda. Their political goals are not entirely abandoned; however, the
focus on material gain begins to take primacy. FARC – the Marxist Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia – is an example. The third, predatory, is characterized by the terrorist
organization’s agenda shifting completely away from its previous political
objectives and instead focusing entirely on material gain. The authors
describe these groups as “social bandits”, who generally manifest themselves as
“marginalized rural groups for whom banditry displaced explicit political
objectives.” A prime example is the Sicilian Mafia. The last category is the opportunistic-interdependent.
This pattern of collaboration is focused on opportunism, neither
political goals nor material gain take primacy, but are pursued relatively
equally. Such organizations shift from one goal to the other easily and quickly
adapt to changing circumstances. The authors refer to such groups as “political-criminal
hybrids”. These collaborative endeavors are distinctive from the others by the
pursuit of both political and criminal objectives at once. A good example are
the various hybrid groups that have operated in the Balkans.
Mincheva and Gurr’s work focuses primarily on the characteristics
of the “opportunistic interdependent” phenomenon, which they claim is “engendered
by trans-border (trans-state) identity movements that provide networks for
collaboration between trans-state terrorists and organized crime.” These
movements “straddle interstate boundaries and make renewed claims for ethno-national
liberation at times of nation-state building or boundary adjustments.” Their
research found several factors that make “alliances” between terrorist and
criminal organizations more likely: “the existence of
trans-state nationalist, ethnic and religious movements”; “the occurrence of
armed conflict, which provides incentives and opportunities for interdependence”;
and “the constraints that facilitate or impede complex transnational
exchanges of illegal commodities, exchanges that frequently involve third and
fourth party intermediaries and corruptible internal security forces.”
Crime-Terror
Alliances and the State is a relatively distinct work given its attempt to
systematically describe, characterize, and exemplify collaboration between
terrorist organizations and criminal networks. Few other works have addressed
this phenomena. Given its uniqueness, it is difficult to compare it. However, this reveals the need for additional research in this field,
and Mincheva and Gurr have taken a big step in establishing a typology that
future research can build and improve upon. Overall, the work is
straightforward and effectively helps the reader understand their argument by
applying it to several examples. It has already been a very useful work for me
by providing a framework to apply to terrorist and criminal involvement in
Central Asia, and would be useful to anyone attempting to analyze
criminal-terrorist collaboration in regions across the globe. Hopefully, others
will step in and continue to build this research agenda by applying this work
to other areas, and progressively improve it.
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