Clients and Enablers

2 May 2013

According to Mark Galeotti, nation-states, mercenaries and corruption are all part of a social superstructure that facilitates the privatization of violence and the criminalization of state assets. Today, we revisit the “Adventures of a Would Be Arms Dealer” to illustrate how criminal entrepreneurs exploit these forces for their personal gain.

Like any complex and transnational market process, the privatization of violence and the criminalization of state assets and roles also requires a substantial superstructure of enablers.

Sometimes, these are the states involved themselves, which choose to ignore or even assist the processes for their own purposes. Domestic arms industries in times of dearth can be proposed up by judicious grey market and illegal sales, for example (as many post-Soviet states proved in the 1990s). The arms producers, dealers and shippers—together composing the “arsenal of anarchy”—not only permit the violent entrepreneurs to continue to ply their trade with greater lethal efficiency, they also have every incentive in encouraging them.

Mercenaries—increasingly cloaked in the more respectable language of “private military corporations”—provide “surge’ capacity for Western governments abroad (by external page2010, there were 94,413 contractors in Afghanistan, compared with 91,600 US troops). However, they also bring muscle, training and specialized assistance in support of local warlords, non-state actors and also repressive regimes looking to create cadres willing to crack down on local opposition without concern for local loyalties or long-term legality. In this respect, the challenge is not so much the penetration and corruption of the state, so much as certain states’ willingness to employ and depend upon private sources of violence.

Corruption, as noted in previous sections, facilitates and protects all such activates, but in general the fuel that drives all these operations—as well as the primary motivation of their participants—is money. A willingness by elements of the international finance and business community to deal with criminals, warlords and kleptocrats is essential to maintaining the flow of resources into the hands of gunrunners, warlords and offshore havens alike. Although there have been serious efforts to address the market in “blood diamonds” (diamonds from war zones mined or sold by insurgents, warlords or invaders), as well as other “conflict miners” such as coltan from Congo, this is still a major challenge.

Recommended Reading:

external pageDisarming Viktor Bout

As this profile in the New Yorker (2012) shows, becoming “the world’s most notorious weapons trafficker” and the “merchant of death” requires not just talent and entrepreneurial zeal, it also depends on good connections with governments willing to cooperate in the underground illicit arms trade and a depressingly buoyant market.

external pageOutlaws Inc: The outlaws who fuel wars

Matt Potter’s insightful and entertaining book Outlaws, Inc. (2011) dissects the shadowy world of ex-Soviet aircargo entrepreneurs who are at once the daring souls who bring aid into the world’s hottest spots—as well as the smuggled guns that keep those spots hot. This short interview with ABC News summarizes the dilemmas.

external pagePrivate Security Monitor

This resource from the University of Denver’s Sié Cheou-Kang Center provides an invaluable guide to the use and regulation of private military corporations and security services throughout the world.

external pageThink Again: Mercenaries

This insightful and often provocative short piece from Deborah Avant in Foreign Policy (2004) summarizes many of the dilemmas and misconceptions of the modern soldier of fortune.

Civilian and Private Security Contractors – Yes, They’re Here to Stay

This 2012 ISN report makes the case that one way or another, private military contractors are going to be a feature of the international security scene for the foreseeable future, such that the challenge is to control rather than demonize them.

external pageClueless on Corruption in Afghanistan

Not all the enablers are crooks and cynics. As this post by Jeni Mitchell on the Crime-Conflict Nexus blog argues, sometimes the problem is precisely that it may seem to suit a higher agenda for well-meaning states to turn a blind eye to corruption, exploitation and violence.

external pageReview of DRC Mining Contracts - Update and Recommendations

This 2007 report from the Carter Center is a powerful statement of the need for reform of the mining sector in the Democratic Republic of Congo to ensure that mining investments contribute to development and reinforce democratic institutions in the country rather then enrich warlords and criminals.

external pagePlunder & Protection Inc.

As this 2002 study from the University of Oslo demonstrates, the ready supply of thugs and gunmen, often the result of demobilizing security forces without ensuring they have legitimate alternatives is a destabilizing feature in its own right. “The supply of violence creates its own demand; an externality of violence that is detrimental to the development in poor countries.”

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