Criminals Militias And Insurgents Organized Crime In Iraq

The author identifies the roots of organized crime in Ba'athist Iraq and reports on major criminal activities including the theft, diversion, and smuggling of oil, the kidnapping of both Iraqis and foreigners, extortion, car theft, and the theft and smuggling of antiquities. The author also reports on how al-Qaeda in Iraq, Jaish-al-Mahdi, and the Sunni tribes used criminal activities to fund their campaigns of political violence.

Although organized crime has been the neglected dimension of the conflict in Iraq, both criminal enterprises and criminal activities have had a profoundly debilitating impact. Organized crime inhibited reconstruction and development and became a major obstacle to state-building; the insurgency was strengthened and sustained by criminal activities; sectarian conflict was funded by criminal activities and motivated by the desire to control criminal markets; and more traditional criminal enterprises created pervasive insecurity through kidnapping and extortion. Organized crime also acted as an economic and political spoiler in an oil industry expected to be the dynamo for growth and reconstruction in post Ba'athist Iraq. The rise of organized crime in Iraq was a strategic surprise for decision-makers and military planners. Although organized crime developed in particularly concentrated and corrosive ways in Iraq, it had parallels elsewhere including the Balkans (especially Albania), as well as Russia, Mexico, and Nigeria. Warnings about the rise of organized crime came from several sources, including the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC). 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 anti-coalition violence.

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Although organised crime has been the neglected dimension of the conflict in Iraq, both criminal enterprises and criminal activities have had a profoundly debilitating impact. Additionally, many contemporary insurgencies pit governments against rebel organizations that span international boundaries, find sanctuaries in neighboring states, and receive support from rival governments. Current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated the difficulties in confronting transnational rebel groups, as relations with neighboring states may pose challenges for security forces. This book explores the issues and challenges of crime and insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The author identifies the roots of organized crime in Ba'athist Iraq and reports on major criminal activities including the theft, diversion, and smuggling of oil, the kidnapping of both Iraqis and foreigners, extortion, car theft, and the theft and smuggling of antiquities. The author also reports on how al-Qaeda in Iraq, Jaish-al-Mahdi, and the Sunni tribes used criminal activities to fund their campaigns of political violence.

Presents the findings of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which was formed in 2006 to examine the situation in Iraq and offer suggestions for the American military's future involvement in the region.

Examines the deleterious effects of the U.S. failure to focus on protecting the Iraqi population for most of the military campaign in Iraq and analyzes the failure of a technologically driven counterinsurgency (COIN) approach. It outlines strategic considerations relative to COIN; presents an overview of the conflict in Iraq; describes implications for future operations; and offers recommendations to improve the U.S. capability to conduct COIN.

Organized crime, by and large, has been a neglected dimension of the conflict in Iraq. Yet, its importance is difficult to overestimate. Both criminal enterprises and activities had a debilitating impact and made the attainment of U.S. objectives much more difficult. Organized crime inhibited reconstruction and development and became a major obstacle to state-building; the insurgency was strengthened and sustained by criminal activities; sectarian conflict was funded by criminal activities and motivated by the desire to control criminal markets, and more traditional criminal enterprises created pervasive insecurity through kidnapping and extortion.

The nexus between terrorism and organised crime consists of a strategic alliance between two non-state actors who are able to exploit illegal markets, threaten the security of individuals, and influence policy-making on a global level. Recent Europol reports have pointed towards the importance of studying the links between organised crime and terrorist groups, and have underlined that the nature and extent of these connections have seldom been addressed from an academic perspective. Considering the danger that both organised crime and terrorism currently pose to the world, the collusion between these two phenomena is of urgent contemporary interest. Basing itself on geographical case-studies, this book contributes to the existing literature in three ways: by enriching the empirical knowledge on the nature of the crime-terror nexus and its evolution; by exploring the impact of the nexus within different economic, political and societal contexts; and by expanding on its theoretical conceptualization. This book was originally published as a special issue of Global Crime.