Political Violence and Illicit Economies of West Africa

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Political Violence and the IllicitEconomies of West AfricaVanda Felbab-Brown a & James J. F. Forest b c da Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, USAb Center for Security Research and Technologies, University ofMassachusetts Lowell, Lowell, Massachusetts, USAc School of Criminology and Justice Studies, University ofMassachusetts Lowell, Lowell, Massachusetts, USAd Joint Special Operations University, Tampa, Florida, USAVersion of record first published: 15 Nov 2012.

To cite this article: Vanda Felbab-Brown & James J. F. Forest (2012): Political Violence and the IllicitEconomies of West Africa, Terrorism and Political Violence, 24:5, 787-806

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Political Violence and the Illicit Economiesof West Africa

VANDA FELBAB-BROWN

Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, USA

JAMES J. F. FOREST

Center for Security Research and Technologies; and School ofCriminology and Justice Studies, University of Massachusetts Lowell,Lowell, Massachusetts; and Joint Special Operations University,Tampa, Florida, USA

This comparative analysis draws on field research in several West African countriesto illustrate the dynamic relationships between political violence and organized crimein this sub-region. These relationships are often transactional, and almost always on atemporary basis. While some alliances of convenience may be forged, in other casesan adversarial relationship exists between organized crime and terrorist networks. Insome cases, key actors within West African governments have benefited from theserelationships. We then examine recent policies and strategies pursued by the U.S.and the international community that, in the name of combating terrorism, seek toconstrain the illicit economies of the region, but in doing so may do more harm thangood. The article concludes with some policy recommendations based on this analysis.

Keywords criminal networks, drug trafficking, governance, Guinea-Bissau,Nigeria, terrorism finance, West Africa

The interactions between organized crime and terrorist networks or other violentgroups are often about resources. In some cases, transactional relationships areestablished, almost always on a temporary basis, when the criminals and terroristssee a mutual benefit to be derived from such collaboration. Some terrorist networks

Vanda Felbab-Brown is a fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution and theauthor of Aspiration and Ambivalence: Strategies and Realities of Counterinsurgency andState-Building in Afghanistan (2012). James J. F. Forest is director of the Center for SecurityResearch and Technologies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and a senior fellow atthe Joint Special Operations University. His most recent book is The Terrorism Lectures(2012).

A portion of this research was sponsored by the U.S. Joint Special Operations University.The views of the authors are their own and do not represent the views of any U.S. governmentagency or of the Brookings Institution. Also, we express our appreciation to Erasmo Sanchezfor his assistance.

Address correspondence to James J. F. Forest, School of Criminology and JusticeStudies, University of Massachusetts Lowell, 870 Broadway Street, Lowell, MA 01854,USA. E-mail: [email protected]

Terrorism and Political Violence, 24:787–806, 2012Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 0954-6553 print=1556-1836 onlineDOI: 10.1080/09546553.2011.644098

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attempt to forge alliances of convenience with criminal groups for profit, access toillicit logistical chains, or for the sake of joining forces against a common enemy,the state.

In other cases, an adversarial relationship exists between organized crime andterrorist networks. Here, the presence of illicit economies may attract terrorists intoa particular location, where they offer themselves as protectors of the populationagainst the deficiencies of the state and the predatory behavior of criminal groups,and in return they expect to receive local support for their group. Of course, bothorganized crime and terror networks are just some of the many violent non-stateand state actors who are pursuing access to, and control over, resources andpopulation.

These kinds of interactions are particularly prominent in West Africa, whererobust illicit economies—infused by globalization and other factors—have contrib-uted to a substantial increase in trafficking activities. In turn, illicit economic activitycompounds and intensifies a host of problems—such as corruption, predatory beha-vior of political elites, political instability, weakening of law enforcement and rule oflaw, and so forth—that enable the ideologies of terrorists to resonate amongdisaffected populations.1

Yet it is important to emphasize that despite some overall common characteris-tics of West African countries, their political arrangements and institutions, patternsof economic (under)development, and integration of illegal economies into the polit-ical terrain are hardly uniform. Nor is West Africa a monolithic region. Rather, it ischaracterized by a great diversity of political, economic, and social institutionalarrangements and historic developments and legacies. There are great differencesin political institutionalization, the quality of governance, economic performanceand potential, and overall state-building trends in the region. Politically, economi-cally, socially, and culturally, Ghana is not the same as Equatorial Guinea, forexample. Nor does Senegal’s development over the past twenty years mimic thatof Cote d’Ivoire or Liberia. West Africa’s various countries continue to experiencedivergent trends, with some previously affected by predatory rentier behavior andwars over economic rents showing important progress recently in managing theirresources and combating illegal economies, while others have failed to do so. Liberia,for example, has achieved notable improvement—at least in terms of policy input—in its regulation of illegal logging. As with the analysis of any political and socialprocesses, understanding the local texture and history is critical in studies of thenexus of political violence and illicit economies.

Even with this cautionary note, it is nonetheless possible to describe some broadpatterns of violence and criminality in West Africa. The comparative analysis offeredin this article draws on widely published frameworks of policy analysis and on fieldresearch in several West African countries to illustrate the dynamic relationshipsbetween political violence and organized crime in this vital sub-region.2 Particularattention is given to the increasingly vibrant drug trade in Guinea-Bissau and thevarious forms of political violence in Nigeria (which has the largest population,economy, and security forces in West Africa). Then we examine recent policiesand strategies pursued by the U.S. and the international community that, in thename of combating terrorism, seek to constrain the illicit economies of the sub-region, but in doing so may do more harm than good. For example, governing elitesmay profit from illicit trafficking activities, and thus be willing to provide safe havenfor criminal groups to continue their operations. While on the surface they may be

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accepting U.S. and international counternarcotics and counterterrorism assistance,they may seek to undermine its effectiveness while at the same time improving theirinternational image. Further, the weakest criminal groups can be eliminated throughsuch an approach, with law enforcement inadvertently increasing the efficiency, leth-ality, and coercive and corruption power of the remaining criminal groups operatingin the region.

Overall, this analysis illustrates why the international community and the UnitedStates need to engage with West Africa in law enforcement, counternarcotics, andcounterterrorism operations with extreme caution. Senior policymakers must recog-nize that some governments in West Africa will come to see international counter-narcotics aid as yet another form of rent to be acquired for their power and profitmaximization, in the same way that they had often seen anti-Communism or coun-terterrorism aid. Such funds can be diverted for personal profits, or worse yet, usedfor violent actions against domestic political opposition, as a result undermininginstitutional development and effective and accountable governance in the sub-region. Further, building up law enforcement capacity and intervening against illiciteconomies in West Africa may often be perceived by local populations as antagon-istic to their interests, and can exacerbate other governance challenges. The articleconcludes with several proposed guidelines for new policies that incorporate theseconsiderations.

The Context of Illegal Economies and Political Institutions in West Africa

According to the South Africa-based Institute for Security Studies (ISS), ‘‘Transna-tional criminality in West Africa is generally thought to consist of (a) drug andhuman trafficking; (b) smuggling of various items, particularly arms; (c) terrorismand violent crime; (d) maritime piracy, particularly in the Gulf of Guinea; and (e)money laundering and currency counterfeiting.’’3 Other criminal enterprises in theregion, involving either the smuggling of prohibited commodities or the illegal mar-keting of legal ones, include illegal logging and fishing, dumping of toxic waste, oiltheft, and diversion of humanitarian aid.4 Often local governments are deeplycomplicit in such illegal and undesirable undertakings.

West Africa’s criminal activities can all be significant money-making enterprises.For example, a recent report by the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC)placed the annual value of the trade in fake and low-quality anti-malarial drugs at$438 million, while cigarette smuggling from the Gulf of Guinea to North Africaand Europe was estimated to net approximately $775 million per year.5 Currently,one of the most vibrant and profitable illicit economies in West Africa is the tradein illegal drugs. UNODC estimates that roughly 30 tons of cocaine and almost 400kilograms of heroin were trafficked through the region in 2011.6 Annual estimatesby the ISS are significantly higher, ranging from 60 to 250 tons (yielding wholesalerevenues between $3 and $14 billion).7 While traditional security analysts may haveportrayed this as a purely criminal issue, a growing number of scholars are beginningto describe this illicit activity as a security threat, both regionally and globally.

In fact, the premise of a symbiotic relationship between terrorism and illicit drugeconomies around the world has become widely accepted among scholars and policymakers.8 As a result, the term ‘‘narcoterrorism’’ is now a standard entry in lexiconsof academics and policy analysts specializing in terrorism as well as those specializingin illicit economies. As discussed later in this article, terrorist groups derive an array

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of benefits from engaging in all kinds of illicit economic activities—financial profits,freedom of action, and political capital. These benefits are particularly true forterrorist groups involved in the drug trade.

The existence of an illicit narcotics economy does not by itself cause the emerg-ence of a terrorist movement or broader military conflict. Such an illicit economywill likely lead to the emergence of criminal organizations, including large orboutique-style cartels or mafia organizations (unless the criminal syndicate orga-nized the illicit economy in the first place), but will not inherently give rise to terror-ists, warlords, or insurgents. What the interaction of terrorist groups with drugeconomies does do, however, is vastly increase the staying power of the terroristorganizations by greatly strengthening their physical capabilities and political capi-tal. Successful control of the illicit economy also compresses the time that a terroristorganization needs to grow from a few individuals to a large-scale organization witha wide support base.

In West Africa, the level of drug trafficking—especially cocaine from SouthAmerica en route to Europe—has increased dramatically over the past decade, somuch so that various policymakers and academics are talking about a drug epidemicin the region.9 Driven by the newly intensified demand for cocaine in WesternEurope, the shrinking of demand for cocaine in the United States, and the pressureon cocaine smuggling from interdiction operations in the Caribbean, the level oftrafficking through West Africa has increased to a quarter of Europe’s annualconsumption, with seizures increasing from 1.2 tons in 2005 to 4.3 tons in the firstseven months of 2007.10 By some accounts, 50% of non-U.S.-bound cocainegoes through West Africa, which amounts to roughly 13% of global flows.11

With some countries, such as Guinea-Bissau, appearing to be overrun by drugsand significant political instability, coups, and assassinations linked to organizedcrime and the drug trade in the country, analysts worry about the threat that thedrug trade poses to the rule of law, political stability, and the quality of governancein the region.

However, many of these institutional conditions have existed for years in WestAfrica and predate the emergence of the current intense drug trafficking through theregion. Neither illicit economies nor the drug trade are new to West Africa. Indeed,almost immediately after its independence (and often predating it), the region hasbeen characterized by a variety of illicit economies and their deep integration intothe political arrangements and frameworks of the countries in the region. Much ofthe political contestation in the region has focused on getting access to the state inorder to control rents from various legal, semi-illegal, or outright illegal econom-ies—such as diamonds (Sierra Leone, Liberia), gold and other precious metals,stones, and timber (Liberia, Sierra Leone), the extraction, monopolization, andsmuggling of agricultural goods, such as cocoa (Cote d’Ivoire), trafficking in humansfor sexual exploitation and domestic slavery (Mali, Togo, Ghana), oil (Nigeria), andfishing (often conducted illegally and destructively by international fleets fromoutside West Africa).12 Illicit diamond mining—frequently linked to politiciansand tribal chiefs in Liberia—vexed the departing British colonial officers as earlyas the 1950s.13 Contestation over rents from these economies fueled much of thefighting in Sierra Leone during the 1990s and early 2000s, for example—giving riseto the concept of ‘‘greed’’ wars, supposedly not motivated by political grievances,but mainly by economic interests. In this conceptualization of violent conflict, thedistinction between insurgents and criminal actors becomes highly blurred.14

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Although the current drug trade is intensifying numerous undesirable effects—such as corruption, predatory behavior of political elites, political instability,weakening of law enforcement and rule of law—and potentially can even fuelmilitary conflict and terrorist activity, it would be erroneous to assume that suchconditions and linkages between violence and illicit economies are new to the region.Rather, governance in West Africa has for decades been characterized by predatoryand rapacious behavior on the part of the governing elites and minimal institutionaldevelopment, from law enforcement and justice to social services. Governance hasoften been based on very narrow, parochial interests—including tribal, clan, or fam-ily loyalties—to which collective interests of the general citizenry are subordinated.15

Further, these constraints on governance and representation typically mean thatcollective interests are not even formulated or articulated.

Political contestation in these countries has often centered on taking over thestate in order to control the main sources of revenue. In essence, the governmenthas been seen as a means to personal wealth, not service to the people. Thestate would then define (or redefine) what constitutes illegal economic behaviorand selectively issue exemptions from law enforcement and prosecution to families,friends, and its network of clients. Such political arrangements have been so per-vasive in West Africa that some scholars have described the environment there asa ‘‘mafia-like bazaar, where anyone with an official designation can pillage atwill . . .’’16

Fearing internal coups and yet facing little external aggression even in the con-text of very porous borders, many ruling elites in West Africa after independence sys-tematically allowed their militaries and law enforcement institutions to deteriorate.17

To the extent that police forces—both street cops and anti-organized crime units—have been nurtured at all, they have mainly served as political tools to be usedagainst political opposition and personal protection forces of ruling elites. Bothlaw enforcement and the justice systems have been especially underdeveloped,under-institutionalized, and corrupt. The fact that police chiefs in many WestAfrican countries are appointed directly by the president and are dependent on hissupport and patronage for resources, promotion, and the job itself exacerbates theseproblems.18 Instead of having a professional ethic of serving and protecting all citi-zens, law enforcement in West Africa has often been highly abusive and rapacious.Police forces tend to be vastly undertrained and under-resourced for tackling eitherstreet crime or organized crime. Even today, especially within the post-conflict set-tings in several West African countries, the institutional well-being of military andpolice forces continues to be of low priority for governments. Preoccupied withthe threat of coups, governments in West Africa often continue to organize policeand military forces as badly-resourced personal protection units for their politicalleaders rather than professional security forces designed to protect public safetyand uphold the rule of law.

Two brief country profiles exemplify the complex intersections of crime, terror,and the environment that enables them. Nigeria—which alone accounts for nearlyhalf the entire population of West Africa—is home to the region’s largest economyand security forces, as well as the region’s most extensive trafficking networks. Bycontrast, annual profits from drug trafficking in comparatively tiny Guinea Bissauhave by some estimates come to exceed the nation’s legal GDP. These two very dif-ferent countries face a struggle common throughout the region, but deal with it inmuch different ways.

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Armed Groups and Violent Actors in Nigeria

Nigerian organized crime groups have been important players in the drug smugglingbusiness since the 1970s when they emerged as key suppliers of ‘‘mules’’ (human traf-fickers) for the illegal trade from South Asia to the United States. Often they arecredited with inventing the ‘‘swallow’’ method of drug smuggling in which couriersswallow drugs in condoms and transport them across borders in their bodies.19 Inrecent decades other forms of criminality also have emerged in Nigeria, includingvarious online fraud schemes and oil bunkering in the Niger Delta. Insurgent groups,such as the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), siphon offoil from the pipelines and sell it to local crime syndicates who then transport thestolen oil to world markets.20

In addition to organized crime, Nigeria also has an abundance of armed groups.In the north of the country, examples include Boko Haram, an Islamist sect that hasdeclared any form of Western education to be forbidden. Members of Boko Haramhave been responsible for several attacks against government officials, non-Muslims,and even Muslims whom they consider apostates. The group has attacked militarypatrols, churches, politicians, academic institutions, and police stations (from whichthey have stolen weapons used in subsequent attacks) in Maiduguri as well as Bauchiand other towns in the region. Members of the group are believed to have beenresponsible for murdering Ibrahim Birkuti, a prominent cleric who had publicly cri-ticized Boko Haram for the increasing violence.21 In a September 2010 attack againsta large prison in Bauchi, guards were overpowered and an estimated 800 prisonerswere released, including at least 120 Boko Haram members or supporters who wereawaiting trial.22 On December 24, 2010 (Christmas Eve), triple bomb blasts in thecity of Jos killed over 80 people and wounded several dozen others, while over100 people were killed in the reprisal attacks in its aftermath. In a statementpublished on what is thought to be its website, http://mansoorah.ne, Boko Haramclaimed responsibility.23

In 2011, an increasing flurry of attacks led thousands of people to fleeMaiduguri for other parts of the country. Then, on June 11, Boko Haram took creditfor a suicide bomb attack against the police headquarters in Abuja which killed twopeople. Four days later, ten Boko Haram members staged simultaneous bomb andgun attacks on a police station and a bank in Katsina state (which is to the west ofBorno state), killing seven people. On June 26, the group killed 25 people in anattack on a beer garden in Maiduguri. On July 24, a bomb exploded in Maidugurinear the home of the Shehu of Borno, injuring three soldiers and destroying amilitary patrol vehicle.24 On August 26, Boko Haram carried out its most notorious(and most international) attack to date, using a suicide car-bomber to blow up theUnited Nations building in Abuja. At least 18 people were killed, and many morewere injured when the blast destroyed the lower floors of the building. Since then,a flurry of murders, bombings, and other attacks have been claimed by this group.Almost all of these incidents have occurred in the northern half of the country, high-lighting the geographic concentration of this type of violence within the Nigeriancontext.

Another example of armed religious militancy is Hisba, a name used to refer col-lectively to gangs of Islamic fundamentalist vigilantes in Northern Nigeria, who takeit upon themselves to oversee the implementation of Islamic law, or Sharia, in theregion.25 Such violent Islamist groups tap into decades of ethnic and tribal violence

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among Nigeria’s communities, often manipulated by Nigeria’s politicians for polit-ical gain and profit. After years of ineffective handling of the communal violence,in 1999 the Nigerian central government allowed the country’s states to adoptSharia.26 In the 12 states in the north and center of the country that did, such asKano, a form of religious police or vigilantism—the Hisba-Muhtasif (Hisba)—hasemerged.27 The Hisba take it upon themselves to suppress a variety of crime andsocial behavior they see as inconsistent with Sharia or socially undesirable, andcan reprimand, arrest, or even beat Nigerians caught violating the law. Punishableoffenses include drinking or selling alcohol, having premarital sex, or soliciting aprostitute. Hisba members also ensure that the buses in Northern Nigeria are segre-gated by gender. Such forms of extra-state policing and enforcement have a deep tra-dition in Nigeria and West Africa more broadly, with roots in the tribal history ofthe region and colonial practices, which often relied on tribal policing mechanismsfor control.28

Despite the religious orientation of several militant groups in this region, how-ever, periods of violence have often been mischaracterized as political even wheneconomic factors have sometimes played a more significant role. For example, overthe last decade an increasing number of pastoralist Huasa-Fulani have migratedsouthward from the drought-ridden north, bringing with them cattle that areencroaching on more fertile lands historically owned by other ethnicities, particularlyYoruba. Some of the most serious communal clashes in the past decade—includingin Kaduna (February and May 2000 and November 2002), Jos (September 2001),and several towns and villages throughout Kano and Plateau states (February–May 2004)—have often been portrayed in the media as being Muslim vs. Christian(Hausa-Fulani are primarily Muslims, and Yoruba are predominantly Christians),while in fact several incidents of violence have been largely fueled by land use issuesand indigenous vs. settler rights.29 As noted in a recent Reuters Foundation report,‘‘Clashes between Muslim and Christian gangs . . . killed around 400 people in thecentral Nigerian city of Jos, the worst unrest in the country for years. The city liesat the crossroads between Nigeria’s Muslim north and its mostly-Christian south,but the conflict is about much more than religious beliefs.’’30

Meanwhile in the south of Nigeria, an array of militant groups—such as theIduwini Volunteer Force (based in the swampy area between Bayelsa and DeltaState), the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, and the Ijaw YouthCouncil—have opposed what they deem to be the exploitation of their indigenousresources at great cost to the local people and environment. They assert that oil firmswith contracts to drill and explore in southern Nigeria, such as Shell and Chevron,disrupt indigenous life to an unacceptable extent. Local fishing has been hurt by thepollution caused by drilling activities, which have generated other environmentaldegradation. The stark contrast between the massive profits realized by oil compa-nies, the federal government in Abuja, and corrupt politicians in the region on theone hand, and the widespread poverty that characterizes the Delta region on theother, only serves to exacerbate tensions.31

One of West Africa’s largest and most active militia groups is MEND, whosetactics have evolved from crude kidnapping-for-ransom operations into more soph-isticated and effective methods that combine actions such as hostage-taking andbombings with the effective use of local and increasingly international media propa-ganda campaigns. Car bombings in Port Harcout, Lagos, and Abuja in recent yearshave killed dozens.32 In 2010, several oil workers were kidnapped and an oil pipeline

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feeding the refinery in Warri was sabotaged. Perhaps most notably, MEND has alsoshown political savvy by joining forces with the Niger Delta People’s VolunteerForce (NDPVF), the Coalition for Militant Action in the Niger Delta, and theMartyrs Brigade to form the strongest anti-foreign oil terrorist alliance in theregion.33 With intensified military action and promises of jobs and training forMEND’s combatants, the Nigerian government persuaded MEND in 2009 todeclare a ceasefire. Facing many challenges, such as a slow delivery of the promisedeconomic benefits to the ex-combatants, the ceasefire has been fragile, but has heldsince top-level MEND commanders received large financial benefits from the deal.

The diverse nature of the armed groups between the north and south are all themore interesting when viewed through the lens of organized criminal activity. Whilethe terrorist violence in the north has been far more deadly in recent years andmostly driven by religious extremism (though often also driven by an underlyingstruggle to control land and resources), the primary concentration of illicit economicactivity is in the south, where non-religious armed groups predominate.

Perhaps we see less cooperation between terror and crime in the north because ofa mix of ideological constraints and the nature of the economic opportunities (orlack thereof) in that part of the country. Religious militants, like Boko Haram, havein the past shown a reluctance to being perceived as closely aligned with ordinarycriminals, worrying most about hypocrisy and contradictions that could damagetheir perceptions of devotion to a holy cause. No such hesitancy appears to beprominent among the southern militant groups, where organized crime has a stron-ger presence. For example, almost all of Nigeria’s oil bunkering problems are foundin or near large urban centers like Lagos and Port Harcourt (where the money is).

In sum, the combination of politically violent groups and organized crime net-works in Nigeria creates a daunting security challenge for the government. In boththe north and the south of Nigeria, the motivations for militancy include a mix ofethnic, socioeconomic, and other factors for which there may be no easy political sol-ution. Further, as in many other West African countries, there has often been ablurred line in Nigeria between the state and the official political system on theone hand, and rebel groups and the illegal economy on the other. Prominent politi-cians and even military officers have often been directly linked to rebel groups—sponsoring, funding, and supervising them and then exploiting new lines of accessto the various rentier economies to improve or redefine their political status, powerbase, and expanded network of clients.34 For example, MEND has had powerfulpatrons among the country’s military officers and politicians who have encouraged(and profited from) its oil bunkering. Overall, state involvement in criminal activityis not uncommon throughout West Africa, and some states, such as EquatorialGuinea, function primarily as mafia bazaars.35

Guinea-Bissau’s Trajectory Toward a ‘‘Narco-State’’?

In many parts of West Africa, it is widely agreed that bureaucracies and institutionsare generally weak, corrupt, frustratingly inefficient, and most importantly nottrusted by a majority of the citizenry they claim to serve. As a result, in manyinstances the state has fostered an extensive system of patronage to co-opt politicalfriends and buy off enemies—unofficial governing structures that William Reno hasdubbed the ‘‘shadow state.’’36 Even when sound policies are adopted at the toplevels of the government, the patronage system bewilders and perverts their

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implementation, with clients at all levels of the government and throughout the polit-ical system seeking exceptions from the rules.

At the same time, the state’s use of power to protect (and even generate) illegalrents and failure to provide rule of law have had a highly destructive effect on legaleconomies—discouraging foreign investment outside of shady rentier economies andundermining the emergence of non-rentier legal economies. Some countries in WestAfrica hardly have any legal economies at all. For example, in Guinea Bissau, a WestAfrican country with historically weak governance and one of the most notoriouscriminal enterprises in the region, most of the legal economy consists of cashewnut exports. The legal economic revenues are thus highly limited, and there is signifi-cant vulnerability of the country’s economy to external shocks and internationalmarket-price fluctuations.

As Jakkie Cilliers, Barry Hughes, and Jonathan Moyer noted in their AfricanFutures 2050 report, an estimated $1 billion worth of drugs was trafficked throughGuinea-Bissau from Latin America in 2009, an amount larger than the country’stotal GDP of roughly $825 million.37 Still reeling from a civil war in 1998–99, severalactual or attempted military coups, and the assassinations of its army chief ofstaff and its head of state in 2009, the political instability in Guinea Bissau has cre-ated an enabling environment for organized crime. Government officials and seniormilitary officers are allegedly participating in the drug trade, frequently denouncedby their political enemies and rival drug traffickers as well as media.38 Within thisenvironment, participating in the drug trade (and other illegal enterprises) provesirresistible to many of the destitute who manage to access the drug trade, despitethe fact that only a very small group will generate large profits from it. Accordingto some reports, when drug trafficking planes land on Portuguese-built air stripson islands off the Guinea-Bissau coast, villagers unload the planes, police and themilitary protect the operation, and government officials collect the crates ofcocaine.39 The drug shipments then make their way north toward the lucrativemarkets in Europe.

As they cross the northern border into Senegal, the traffickers seem to find arelatively safe passage through the Casamance region, where the Senegalese govern-ment has grappled with a low-simmering insurgency for several decades. Recentanecdotal evidence suggests that militants and villagers have been provided smallsums of money and marijuana in return for their assistance—another reflection ofthe relationship between crime and political violence. On a broader level, there is alsoa widespread concern among both West African countries and the U.S. that thelucrative drug trade in Guinea-Bissau would attract the attention and potential lin-kages with al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb—which is seeking influence in the regionand is increasingly involved in the global drug trade.

In such a context of poor governance and leadership, intense corruption andpatronage, burning ethnic and tribal conflicts, great poverty and unemployment,and intense social marginalization with few opportunities for social advancement,it is hardly surprising that illegal economies are often seen as legitimate forms oflivelihood. In places like Guinea-Bissau and Nigeria, people often maintain thatsince the drug trade involves willing sellers and willing buyers at every stage of thechain, it is essentially a legitimate form of commerce.40 Thus, those who sponsorillegal economies, including the drug trade, and disburse their proceeds to their cli-ents often accumulate substantial political capital and acquire legitimacy with localpopulations.41 Such perceived legitimacy can create significant challenges when local

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governments or outside actors seek to curb drug trafficking, illicit economies, andother criminality and political violence in the region.

Clearly, differences in local political, social, and economic context have a criticalimpact on the specific configuration of the conflict-crime nexus in a particular localeand on the country’s capacity and willingness to take the nexus on. Such differencesalso show up in the willingness of West Africa’s governments to combat the drugtrade. For example, even as Guinea-Bissau has emerged as a major drug haven,where both the country’s elite and the larger society have either participated deeplyin the drug trade or been indifferent to its growth, the military junta in Guinea-Conakry (its neighbor to the east and south) made fighting drugs a high priorityin 2009. Here, the government put on show trials—some may say kangarootrials—for drug dealers, especially those who also happened to be members of thedomestic opposition.42

Enabling Environments for the Crime-Terror Nexus

In addition to these two case studies, there are many other countries in West Africawhere we see the enabling conditions for crime and political violence to intersect.Fighters demobilized after the end of West Africa’s violent conflicts of the 1990sand their leaders have regrouped and continue to exploit both the legitimizedlicensed resource economies and their illegal off-shoots and other criminal rackets.The ability to access these economies during war and in the post-war period hasallowed their patrons to accumulate such levels of political capital that many ofthe ‘‘rentier warlords’’ have managed to be elected to the parliament and appointedto government positions in places such as Liberia and Sierra Leone. In other places,such as Cote d’Ivoire, the former ‘‘rentier warlords’’ have preserved extensive unof-ficial power,43 which may withstand even the violent power turnover that took placein the country during the spring of 2011. Some of the former warlords have trans-formed themselves into legitimate politicians and businessmen, in a process notentirely dissimilar to the legitimization process of ‘‘aristocratic warlords’’ in Europeseveral centuries ago or of various economic barons in the United States in the 19thand early 20th century. The West African variety of this transformation, however,often has a far bloodier and brutal background than their historic U.S. counterparts.For many rank-and-file combatants and criminals in West Africa, participating inmilitary rebellions and illicit economies has enabled them to achieve a previouslyunknown level of social status (and notoriety), and to challenge the social distri-bution of power and access, until then often exclusively dominated by tribal elders.

While intersections of political violence and crime are apparent, it is a significantand often inappropriate leap of analysis to assume that ‘‘the drug trade epidemic’’ inWest Africa will necessarily challenge political stability and threaten the existing gov-ernments and power of ruling elites. To the extent that external drug traffickersmake alliances with internal outsiders—former or existing rebels not linked to theofficial system or young challengers who seek social mobility in an exclusivesystem—the traffickers will develop a conflictual relationship with the state, andpolitical instability may well follow. To the extent that the governing elite capturesthe rents, a symbiosis between external (and internal) drug traffickers and the rulingelites may develop. Drug traffickers will enjoy a sponsored safe haven, and whiledemocratic processes and institutional development of the county will be threatened,political stability and the existing political dispensation may well be strengthened.

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Similarly, whether the intensification of the drug trade in West Africa results inthe emergence of a nexus with international terrorism is highly contingent on localconditions and the terrorist group’s skills. To some extent, international terroristgroups are already present in West Africa. Some of the cocaine smuggling operationsin West Africa have been linked to Colombia’s FARC. Al Qaeda in the IslamicMaghreb has profited at least on some occasions from North Africa’s drug smug-gling and West Africa’s assorted smuggling enterprises, such as in Mali and WesternSahara.44 Analysts also worry about al Qaeda’s possible influence in Nigeria’s viol-ent and sectarian-torn north. Indeed, the presence of intense street crime and evenorganized crime sometimes pulls terrorist and belligerent groups into a particularlocale. This allows them to offer themselves as protectors to the population againstthe deficiencies of the state and the predatory behavior of criminal groups. Belliger-ent groups are tempted to make alliances of convenience with criminal groups forprofit, access to illicit logistical chains, or for the sake of joining forces against acommon enemy, the state.

But such a crime-terror nexus is far from stable or necessarily inevitable. Indeed,such relations are often characterized as much by violent conflict between thecriminal organizations and the terrorist groups as by cooperation. Moreover, howsuccessfully outside terrorist groups navigate new territories depends on their intel-ligence capacity, their cultural and human terrain awareness, their understanding ofthe complex relationship between official politicians, governing elites, and illegaleconomic networks. For example, until the emergence of domestically-grown alShabab in Somalia, al-Qaeda’s ‘‘core leaders’’ very much struggled to use Somalia’sterritory to its full potential and found the Somali clan rivalries to be confoundingand counterproductive for the Salafi-Jihadist agenda.45

These same areas of knowledge are equally critical for those who seek to miti-gate conflict and suppress crime and terrorism in West Africa. The level and shapeof law enforcement against illegal economies critically influence the tightness of thecrime-terror nexus, often inadvertently driving the two actors together.

Responding to Security Challenges in West Africa

The international community has spent many billions of dollars over the last dec-ade on efforts intended to help West African countries address the kinds of polit-ical violence and criminal enterprise challenges identified above. Initiatives putforward by the Africa Commission in the UK, the G-8, INTERPOL, and of coursethe United Nations and various sub-organizations have all attempted to help WestAfrican nations develop a more robust capacity for responding to these securitythreats.

One of the most recently launched programs involves an ambitious partnershipbetween the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the UN Department ofPeacekeeping Operations, the Economic Community of West African States, theDepartment of Political Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat, the UnitedNations Office for West Africa, and the International Criminal Police Organization(INTERPOL). In July 2010 these organizations established the West Africa CoastInitiative, aimed at strengthening national and regional capacities in West Africain the areas of law enforcement, forensics, intelligence, border management, andcombating money-laundering.46

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Other initiatives include the UNODC=World Customs Organization GlobalContainer Program Joint Port Control Unit (JPCU), a program launched in October2008 and led by the Ghana Narcotics Control board as an interagency effort thatcombines the efforts of Ghanian police with the Bureau of National Investigation,customs officials, and the Ghana Ports and Harbors Authority. In March 2011, vari-ous UN peacekeeping and crime fighting divisions launched a joint action plan tofurther strengthen cooperation in combating global drug trafficking, particularlyin West Africa. And in January 2010, UNODC organized a meeting in Bogota ofthe heads of drug law enforcement agencies of six West African countries (CapeVerde, the Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, and Togo), as well asColombia, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Peru.47 At the meeting, part ofUNODC’s transatlantic intelligence exchange project, a total of 24 bilateral agree-ments were signed in order to facilitate joint investigations and the rapid exchangeof operational information between law enforcement agencies. The overall goal ofthis effort is to promote intelligence-led investigations that result in the interceptionof illicit drug shipments in South America, Central America and the Caribbean,West Africa and Europe.48

The United States has sponsored numerous bilateral and multinational initia-tives to help West African nations respond more effectively to security challenges.Some of the more prominent U.S. efforts include the Trans-Saharan Counterterror-ism Partnership, a multi-year effort to strengthen regional counterterrorism capabili-ties, enhance and institutionalize cooperation among the region’s security forces, anddiscredit terrorist ideologies, among other goals.49 The budget for this effort isroughly $100 million per year, beginning in 2007 and continuing through 2013.50

Other U.S.-sponsored military professionalization and capacity-building initia-tives include the International Military Education and Training program, which pro-vides a variety of technical training and professional military education activitiesconducted by the DoD for foreign military and civilian officials.51 Projected fundingfor this program in 2013 is $13.3 million for participants in Africa.52 The RegionalDefense Counterterrorism Fellowship Program (CTFP)—established in 2002 with a$17.9 million appropriation from Congress, and then codified (10U.S.C. 2249c) in2003—supports the attendance of foreign military officers, foreign ministry ofdefense officials, and foreign security officials at U.S. military educational institu-tions, regional centers, conferences, seminars, and other training programs.53 Anamendment to the Title 10 statute in 2006 raised the authorized limit to $25 millionand extended the range of permitted venues to foreign and civilian institutions, cen-ters, and events.54 These and a host of other programs have provided education andtraining to hundreds of African military officers each year on how to detect, moni-tor, and interdict or disrupt the activities of terrorist networks ranging from weaponstrafficking and financing to actual operational planning.55 The U.S. has also pro-vided new organizational focus to the challenges in the form of the recently estab-lished U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), which is tasked with bringing togethercivilian and military agencies throughout West Africa to build security partnershipcapabilities to combat violent extremism, piracy, and the trafficking of weapons,people, and narcotics and promote regional stability.56

The countries of West Africa are also seeking ways among themselves toenhance their capabilities to address these challenges. For example, in 2008 the 15member nations of the Economic Commission of West African States (ECOWAS)developed a Regional Action Plan to Address the Growing Problem of Illicit Drug

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Trafficking, Organized Crimes and Drug Abuse in West Africa, intended to ‘‘improvethe level of political support and commitment to tackling the illicit drug traffickingand related organized crime problem’’ and ‘‘significantly reduce the shipment ofcocaine and the trafficking of other illicit drugs into the region.’’57 Specific objectivesidentified in this plan include strengthening existing legal instruments, institutionaland personnel integrity to minimize the incidences of corruption and compromise,and existing law enforcement framework and forensic services.58 ECOWAS mem-bers also participate in the West African Police Chiefs Committee (WAPCCO),which (often in collaboration with INTERPOL) facilitates the exchange of infor-mation among its members on potential terrorist and other international criminalactivity.

Despite the above-mentioned efforts, however, developing effective mechanismsto address law enforcement and underdevelopment challenges in West Africaremains a difficult challenge. Designing effective external assistance programs isparticularly complex, and many policy interventions can produce unintended conse-quences. For example, when the international community and the United States seekto build up counternarcotics and counterterrorism forces in West African countries,they often face twin problems: On the one hand, the lack of vetting, oversight, andmonitoring capacity inherent in the international actors’ limited presence on theground in West Africa and their limited intelligence capacity may not prevent thenewly built-up local anti-organized-crime units from themselves morphing intobetter-trained, better-equipped, and far more competent drug traffickers or frombecoming perpetrators of internal coups. On the other hand, the newly trained units,especially if they develop some institutional capacity and independence from theirpatrons at the top of the national governments, may be seen by ruling elites as poten-tial threats, and ruling elites may actively seek to undermine them.

With this cautionary note, it is nonetheless important to recognize that someprogress in improving law enforcement institutions, including counternarcoticsand anti-organized crime, has been registered in West Africa, often under surprisingcircumstances. For example, much of the strengthening of Nigeria’s anti-organizedcrime units took place during the military dictatorship of Sani Abacha. Despitehis oppressive and rapacious rule, Abacha and his appointed top law-enforcementofficials were committed to fighting drugs. In fact, analysts and government officialsabroad often point to Nigeria’s police reform as a bright example of success in WestAfrica. Still, the political context and the complex motivations of the ruling elites,including the temptation to use anti-drug campaigns as a mechanism to weakenpolitical opposition, need to be factored into such analyses and into considerationof the effectiveness, sustainability, and side effects of such policies.59

Broader institutional reforms in the area of rule of law, justice, and law enforce-ment in West Africa, including of anti-corruption bodies, have largely been weak,often serving as yet another mechanism for purging domestic opposition rather thanfor cleaning up deficient institutions. Anti-corruption drives have often registeredfew systematic effects and exhibited limited durability—including in Nigeria, whosenotorious corruption continues to be robustly and pervasively entrenched more thana decade after the end of the Sani Abacha regime. However, over the past few years,Nigeria has seen some important improvements in its efforts to tackle corruption inthe financial sector under the remarkable leadership of Mallam Lamido AminuSanusi, the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, who has taken several riskyand courageous steps to rein in the massive corruption that had become endemic

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among the country’s top bankers. As described in several recent Economist articles,some Nigerian bank CEOs have been fired, 10-year term limits have been imposedon senior bank executives, and some have even been detained in the course ofongoing corruption investigations.60 How robust such anti-corruption efforts willbecome in Nigeria or elsewhere in West Africa remains yet to be seen, even withexternal assistance and support.

In fact, for several years, an important component of the international commu-nity’s intervention and conflict mitigation strategies in the region has been an effortto address its various illegal economies and manage its conflict resources to reduceviolence. Various schemes to ‘‘legalize’’ and clean up illicit rents (such as from blooddiamonds and conflict timber), including for example the Kimberley certificationprocess for diamonds and various log tracking schemes and monitoring of timbercustody chains, have been devised. The efficacy of preventing the leakage of suchresources into illegal supply and of assuring that they do not fuel violent conflictsvaries substantially from place to place and from one commodity and licensingscheme to another and among the various West African countries.61 Overall, how-ever, it is debatable whether such licensing schemes have stopped illicit flows ormerely redirected them while altering the visibility and shape of their illicitness. Someeven suggest that the licensing schemes serve mainly to whitewash the West’s (oftenthe primary consumer) conscience.62

Even putting aside the question of how robustly such licensing schemes havereduced the size of the illegal economies in West Africa, efforts to clean up resourceexploitation in West Africa have had only a limited effect in helping to end militaryconflicts in the region. Often such policies were adopted by international bodies andnational governments in West Africa only once military conflict had ended. It yetremains to be seen how effective regimes (such as the Kimberley Process) can bein preventing the reemergence of military conflicts in the region and mitigating otherforms of social violence.63 Overall, the political will of external actors to end conflictand eradicate crime in West Africa has been far more limited than the will of WestAfrica’s elites to preserve their political power and access to rents from illegal econ-omies. Local actors’ capacity to subvert the intentions of the international com-munity and circumvent the design of anti-crime regimes has also often provedgreat. In the absence of fundamental changes in the countries’ political arrangementsand significant improvements in governance, reforms in the security sector, includingpolice reform, have often been quickly undone after the departure of the externalinterveners or when external oversight was reduced.64

Recommendations

This comparative analysis leads to some overarching policy recommendations forcombating the drug trade in West Africa, and reducing the potential for terroristorganizations to derive benefits from it.

First and foremost, it is unrealistic to expect that outside policy interventions inWest Africa can eradicate all organized crime and illicit economies or for that matterof all the drug trade in the region. The priority for the United States and the inter-national community should be to focus on the most disruptive and dangerous net-works: those with the greatest links or potential links to international terroristgroups with global reach, those that are most rapacious and detrimental to societyand the development of an equitable state in West Africa, and those that most

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concentrate rents from illicit economies to a narrow clique of people. These three cri-teria may occasionally be in conflict, and such conflicts will pose difficult policydilemmas. In addition to considering the severity of the threat posed to the inter-national community and to the host state and society by such drug trafficking ororganized-crime groups, the estimated effectiveness of any policy intervention needsto be factored into the cost-benefit analysis of policy choices.

It is important to realize that indiscriminate and uniform application of lawenforcement—whether external or internal—can generate several undesirable out-comes. For example, the weakest criminal groups can be eliminated through suchan approach, with law enforcement inadvertently increasing the efficiency, lethality,and coercive and corruption power of the remaining criminal groups operating in theregion. Further, such an application of law enforcement without prioritization canindeed push criminal groups into an alliance with terrorist groups—the oppositeof what should be the purpose of law enforcement and especially outside policy inter-vention in West Africa. Both outcomes have repeatedly emerged in various regionsof the world as a result of opportunistic, non-strategic drug interdiction policies.

Overall, the international community and the United States need to engage withWest Africa’s countries in law enforcement, counternarcotics, and counterterrorismoperations with extreme caution. A do-no-harm attitude and careful evaluation ofthe side effects of policy actions need to prominently figure in policy considerations.

Clearly, there are multiple risks in rushing to action in West Africa. First, thereis the danger that with minimal presence of the United States and the internationalcommunity on the ground, U.S. or internationally-trained law enforcement forceswill ‘‘go rogue’’ and the international community will only end up training more cap-able drug traffickers or coup forces. Second, there is a not-insubstantial risk thatsome governments in West Africa will come to see international counternarcoticsaid as yet another form of rent to be acquired for their power and profit maximiza-tion, in the same way that they have often seen anti-Communism or counterterror-ism aid. Such funds can be diverted for personal profits; or worse yet used to takeharmful actions against domestic political opposition, and undermine institutionaldevelopment and effective and accountable governance in the region. And third,building up law enforcement capacity and intervening against illicit economies inWest Africa may be perceived by local populations as antagonistic to their interests,particularly in countries like Nigeria, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, and others where mostopportunities for a decent income are derived from engaging in shadow=blackmarket economic activities.

The United States and the international community can reduce these dangersthrough several guiding principles. First, international assistance should be carefullycalibrated to the absorptive capacity of the partner country. In places where statecapacity is minimal and law enforcement often deeply corrupt, an initial focus onstrengthening the police capacity to fight street crime, reducing corruption, andincreasing the effectiveness and reach of the justice system may be the better initialintervention strategies than immediately establishing specialized anti-organized-crime or counternarcotics units. Only after careful monitoring by outside actorshas determined that such assistance has been positively incorporated will it be fruit-ful to increase assistance for anti-organized crime efforts, including advanced-technology transfers and training. Careful monitoring of all counternarcoticsprograms—including their effects on the internal political arrangements and powerdistribution within the society and their intended effects on the power of criminal

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groups and their links to terrorist groups—needs to be consistently conducted byoutside actors.

Further, the international policy package needs to include a focus on broadstate-building and the fostering of good governance in West Africa. Policy interven-tions to reduce drug trafficking there, and to suppress any emergent crime-terrornexus, can only be effective if there is a genuine commitment and participation byrecipient governments.

Finally, a broader institutional package, within which law enforcement andcounternarcotics aid should be incorporated, should include:

(a) the development of police forces that are responsive to their citizens’ concerns,such as street crime, and accountable to their citizens;

(b) the strengthening of the capacity, transparency, and accountability of the recipi-ent country’s justice system; and

(c) a complementary focus on economic development that generates employmentand social opportunities for the vast impoverished and marginalized segmentsof society in West Africa.

The goal of such programs should be to make sure that crime and illicit econom-ies are not the only employment opportunity and hence perceived as legitimate. Suchan approach, a long-term and difficult undertaking no doubt, will best reduce thepolitical power of emerging domestic traffickers in West Africa and help mobilizethe community’s cooperation with law enforcement.

Conclusion

In sum, this comparative analysis of the intersections between political violence andthe illicit economies of West Africa indicates several commonalities among motiva-tions and enabling environments. A shared desire for access to resources may bringcriminals and terrorists into collaboration in some cases, but into competition inothers. A variety of political, social, and economic factors create enabling conditionsfor these clandestine networks to manipulate and benefit from a robust illicit econ-omy. In some cases, the root causes of the illicit economy—such as devastation of theoverall economy and large-scale poverty—may well be the same causes that gave riseto terrorist organizations.

How the U.S. and the international community respond to the challenges ident-ified here—in terms of both regional commonalities and country-specific factors—will undoubtedly help shape the future of West Africa. But as noted above, signifi-cant caution is necessary when seeking to constrain the illicit economies of theregion, for it may do more harm than good. Long-term strategies must accountfor second- and third-order effects in these complex socio-economic environments.Further research and scholarly analysis can contribute much to our understandingof these environments, the intersections of crime and terrorism within them, andnew ways to respond with increasing sophistication and success.

Notes

1. For a discussion on enabling environments for terrorism, please see James J.F.Forest, ‘‘Terrorism as a Product of Choices and Perceptions,’’ in Benjamin H. Friedman,

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Jim Harper, and Christopher A. Preble, eds., Terrorizing Ourselves (Washington, DC: CatoInstitute, 2010), 23–44.

2. Specifically, this article draws on field research in West Africa conducted by JamesForest, and on policy analysis and fieldwork in Latin America and Asia by VandaFelbab-Brown, particularly regarding the effectiveness of various policy interventions tomitigate the crime-terror nexus.

3. Issaka K. Souare, ‘‘A Critical Assessment of Security Challenges in West Africa,’’ ISSSituation Report, 18 October 2010.

4. See, for example, Geoffrey Wood, ‘‘Business and Politics in a Criminal State: TheCase of Equatorial Guinea,’’ African Affairs 103, no. 413 (2004): 547–567.

5. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Transnational Trafficking andthe Rule of Law in West Africa: A Threat Assessment (Vienna: UNODC, July 2009), 75.

6. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report, 2012, http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/WDR-2012.html.

7. Jakkie Cilliers, Barry Hughes, and JonathanMoyer,Africa Futures 2025: The Next FortyYears (Pretoria, South Africa: Institute for Security Studies Monograph 175, January 2011), 77.

8. This section of the article summarizes and paraphrases Vanda Felbab-Brown, ‘‘TheIntersection of Terrorism and the Drug Trade,’’ in James J. F. Forest, ed., The Making of aTerrorist, Volume 3 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005), 172–188.

9. See, for example, James Cockayne and Phil Williams, The Invisible Tide: Towards anInternational Strategy to Deal with Drug Trafficking Through West Africa (New York:The International Peace Institute, October 2009); and Joseph Kirschke, ‘‘The Coke Coast:Cocaine and Failed States in Africa,’’ World Politics Review, September 9, 2008, http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/2631/the-coke-coast-cocaines-new-venezuelan-address.

10. United Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Cocaine Trafficking in West Africa:The Threat to Stability and Development (Vienna: UNODC, 2007).

11. Author’s interview with USG counternarcotics official, August 2010.12. See, for example, Jean-Francois Bayart, Stephen Ellis, and Beatrice Hibou, The

Criminalization of the State in Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999).13. See, for example, William Reno, ‘‘Understanding Criminality in West African

Conflicts,’’ International Peacekeeping 16, no. 1 (2009): 52.14. See, for example, Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, ‘‘Greed and Grievance in Civil

Wars,’’ October 21, 2001, http://econ.worldbank.org/files/12205_greedgrievance_23oct.pdf;Michael Ross, ‘‘What Do We Know about Natural Resources and Civil War?’’ Journal ofPeace Research 31, no. 3 (2004): 337–356; and Jeremy Weinstein, Inside Rebellion: The Politicsof Insurgent Violence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

15. William Reno, ‘‘Clandestine Economies, Violence, and States in Africa,’’ Journal ofInternational Affairs 53, no. 2 (2000): 433–459.

16. George B. N. Ayittey, Africa in Chaos (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1999): 151.17. Joel Migdal, Strong Societies, Weak States (Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1988): 13–41.18. See, for example, Bayart, Ellis, and Hibou (note 12 above).19. See, for example, Stephen Ellis, ‘‘West Africa’s International Drug Trade,’’ African

Affairs 108, no. 431 (2009): 171–196. Elsewhere in Africa, the drug trade has long roots as well,be it cannabis cultivation in Morocco, qat cultivation in East Africa, or the production ofmethamphetamines and other synthetic drugs, such as mandrax, in South Africa.

20. MEND actually emerged in 2006 as an umbrella organization for several militants inthe region (many of them representing the Ijaw community), and its propaganda asserts thattheir actions are meant to defend and provide security and resources for the impoverishedmasses of the Niger Delta.

21. BBC News, ‘‘ ‘Boko Haram’ gunmen kill Nigerian Muslim cleric Birkuti,’’ June 7,2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13679234.

22. ‘‘Boko Haram Jailbreak: The Morning After,’’ This Day, September 20, 2010, http://allafrica.com/stories/201009220395.html.

23. See I. Imam and S. Adinoyi, ‘‘Jos Bombings: Group Claims Responsibility,’’ ThisDay, December 27, 2010, http://www.thisdayonline.info/nview.php?id=190764.

24. Michael Olugbode, ‘‘Bomb Explodes Near Shehu of Borno’s Palace,’’ This Day, July24, 2011, http://allafrica.com/stories/201107240009.html.

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25. This description of Hisba is from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorismand Responses to Terrorism (START) database, http://www.start.umd.edu/start/data_collections/tops/terrorist_organizations_by_country.asp.

26. However, it is important to note that in general Sharia law is only applied to Muslims,and not to non-Muslims living in these states.

27. For details, see, for example, Bruce Baker, ‘‘Protection from Crime: What is on Offerfor Africans?,’’ Journal of Contemporary African Studies 22, no. 2 (2004): 165–188; BruceBaker, Taking the Law into Their Own Hands (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002); and RasheedOlaniyi, ‘‘Hisba and the Sharia Law Enforcement in Metropolitan Kano,’’ http://www.ifra-nigeria.org/IMG/pdf/Rasheed_Olaniyi_-_Hisba_and_the_Sharia_Law_Enforcement_in_Metropolitan_Kano.pdf.

28. See, for example, David Killingray, ‘‘The Maintenance of Law and Order in BritishColonial Africa,’’ African Affairs 85 (340): 411–437; and David Pratten, ‘‘Introduction to thePolitics of Protection: Perspectives on Vigilantism in Nigeria,’’ Africa 78, no. 1 (2008): 1–15.

29. For example, see Philip Ostien, ‘‘Jonah Jang and the Jasawa: Ethno-ReligiousConflict in Jos, Nigeria,’’ Muslim-Christian Relations in Africa, August 2009, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1456372. This point was emphasized in several interviews and observa-tions gathered during field research in 2010–2011, and published in James J. F. Forest, Coun-tering the Terrorism Threat of Boko Haram in Nigeria (Tampa, FL: JSOU Press, 2012).

30. Reuters Foundation, November 30, 2008, http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/PANA-7LWCXU?OpenDocument&RSS20=02-P.

31. For more on the variety of militias operating in the Niger Delta, including theIduwini, please see Ibaba Samuel Ibaba and Augustine Ikelegbe, ‘‘Militias, Pirates and Oilin the Niger Delta,’’ in Militias, Rebels and Islamist Militants: Human Insecurity and StateCrises in Africa, edited by Wafulu Okumu and Augustine Ikelegbe (Pretoria: Institute forSecurity Studies, 2010), 219–253.

32. Ibid. Also, see Elias Courson, ‘‘MEND: Political Marginalization, Repression andPetro-Insurgency in the Niger Delta,’’ African Security 4, no. 1 (2011): 20–43; Petr Zelinka,‘‘Conceptualizing and Countering the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta,’’Defence & Strategy (February 2008), http://www.defenceandstrategy.eu; and the STARTdatabase profile of MEND, online at: http://www.start.umd.edu/start/data_collections/tops/terrorist_organization_profile.asp?id=4692.

33. Ibid.34. See, for example, David Keen, Conflict and Collusion in Sierra Leone (London:

Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); and Jimmy D. Kandeh, ‘‘The Criminalization of the RUF Insur-gency in Sierra Leone,’’ in Rethinking the Economics of War: The Intersection of Need, Creed,and Greed, edited by Cynthia A. Arnson and I. William Zartman (Washington, DC: WoodrowWilson Center, 2005): 84–107.

35. On Equatorial Guinea’s predatory and criminal ‘‘governance,’’ see, for example,Robert Klitgaard, Tropical Gangsters: One Man’s Experience with Debt and Decadence inDeepest Africa (New York: Basic Books, 1990), and Ken Silverstein, ‘‘Teodorin’s World,’’Foreign Policy, March=April 2011, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/22/teodorins_world.

36. William Reno, Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leone (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1995).

37. Cilliers, Hughes, and Moyer, Africa Futures 2050 (see note 7 above): 77.38. One such disclosure came from the Guinea Bissau’s president in a speech in July 2010.

For details, see ibid.39. Vivienne Walt, ‘‘Cocaine Country,’’ Time, July 9, 2007, 22.40. Ellis (see note 19 above): 178.41. For an elaboration of this argument and conditions that determine the size of the polit-

ical capital that sponsors of illicit economies obtains, see Vanda Felbab-Brown, Shooting Up:Counterinsurgency and the War on Drugs (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2009).

42. For details, see, for example, Michael McGovern, Testimony at the Hearing of theAfrican Affairs Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: Confronting DrugTrafficking in West Africa, June 23, 2009.

43. See, for example, William Reno, ‘‘Illicit Markets, Violence, Warlords, andGovernance: West African Cases,’’ Crime, Law, and Social Change 52 (2009): 313–322.

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44. See, for example, Heba Saleh, ‘‘Islamist Militants Rise Again in Algeria,’’ FinancialTimes, September 1, 2008, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f8d02efe-77bc-11dd-be24-0000779fd18c.html#axzz297surWMG; and International Crisis Group, Islamist Terrorism in theSahel: Fact or Fiction, Africa Report No. 92 (Dakar=Brussels: International Crisis Group,2005), http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/africa/west-africa/092-islamist-terrorism-in-the-sahel-fact-or-fiction.aspx.

45. Ken Menkhaus and Jacob Shapiro, ‘‘Non-State Actors and Failed States: Lessonsfrom Al Qaida’s Experiences in the Horn of Africa,’’ in Anne Clunnan and Harold Trinkunas,eds., Ungoverned Spaces: Alternatives to State Authority in an Era of Softened Sovereignty(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 77–84.

46. UNODC News Service, ‘‘UNODC and United Nations peacekeeping forces team upto combat drugs and crime in conflict zones,’’ March 2, 2011, http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/2011/March/unodc-and-dpko-team-up-to-combat-drugs-and-crime-in-conflict-zones.html.

47. Annual Report of the International Narcotics Control Board, 2010, http://www.incb.org/pdf/annual-report/2010/en/AR_2010_Chapter_III.pdf.

48. Ibid.49. See the AFRICOM description of this initiative, at: http://www.africom.mil/

tsctp.asp.50. Lianne Kennedy Boudali, The Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership (West

Point: Report of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, April 2007), 4, http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA466542. Also,funds obligated for TSCTP in fiscal years 2005 through 2007 and committed for fiscal year2008 by the Department of State (State), the U.S. Agency for International Development(USAID), and the Department of Defense (DOD) have amounted to about $353 millionfor activities in nine partner countries. See the United States Government AccountabilityOffice (GAO) Report to the Ranking Member, Committee on Foreign Affairs, House ofRepresentatives, Combating Terrorism: Actions Needed to Enhance Implementation ofTrans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership, July 2008, 2. Available online at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08860.pdf.

51. See http://www.africom.mil/fetchBinary.asp?pdfID=20110225115847.52. Kenneth W. Martin, Fiscal Year 2012 Security Cooperation Legislation (Defense Insti-

tute of Security Assistance Management, 2012), http://www.disam.dsca.mil/documents/pubs/other/sc_legislation_fy2012.pdf.

53. NinaM. Serafino, Catherine Dale, Richard F.Grimmett, RhodaMargesson, JohnRoll-ins, Tiaji Salaam-Blyther, Curt Tarnoff, Amy F. Woolf, Liana Sun Wyler, and Steve Bowman,The Department of Defense Role in Foreign Assistance: Background,Major Issues, and Options forCongress, August 25, 2008, http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/RL34639_20080825.pdf.

54. Ibid.55. Others include the Army War College International Fellows Program (http://

www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/InternationalFellows/default.cfm), the Command and GeneralStaff College International Officer Program. For more on these and many other U.S.-fundedprograms, see Nina M. Serafino, ‘‘Security Assistance Reform: Section 1206 Background andIssues for Congress,’’ Congressional Research Service report, March 3, 2011; James J.F.Forest, ‘‘Sub-Saharan Africa,’’ in American National Security (6th edition), edited by MichaelMeese and Suzanne Nielsen (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 2009), 443–461; andJames. J.F. Forest and Matthew V. Sousa, Oil and Terrorism in the New Gulf: A Frameworkfor U.S. Policy in West Africa (Lanham, MD: Lexington Press, 2006), particularly chapter 6,‘‘Contemporary U.S. Foreign Policies in the New Gulf.’’

56. For the list of AFRICOM’s priorities, see Gen. Carter F. Ham, Statement before theHouse Armed Service Committee, April 2011, online at http://www.africom.mil/pdfFiles/2011PostureStatement.pdf. For more on AFRICOM’s origins, objectives, and organizationalstructure, see James J.F. Forest and Rebecca Crispin ‘‘AFRICOM: Troubled Infancy, Prom-ising Future,’’ Contemporary Security Policy 30, no. 1 (2009): 5–27.

57. Online at http://www.unodc.org/westandcentralafrica/en/ecowasresponseactionplan.html.

58. Online at http://www.unodc.org/westandcentralafrica/en/ecowasresponseactionplan.html.

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59. See, for example, Gernot Klantschnig, ‘‘The Politics of Law Enforcement in Nigeria:Lessons from the War on Drugs,’’ Journal of Modern African Studies 47, no. 4 (2009):529–549; and Obi N.I. Ebbe, ‘‘The Political-Criminal Nexus: The Nigerian Case,’’ Trends inOrganized Crime 4, no. 3 (1999): 29–59.

60. ‘‘Nigeria: Hints of a New Chapter,’’ The Economist, November 12, 2009, http://www.economist.com/node/14843563; and ‘‘Nigeria’s Banking Clean-up,’’ The Economist,October 22, 2009, http://www.economist.com/node/14710784.

61. For a range of view on the efficacy of these various diamond and timber licensingschemes in West Africa, see, for example, Tim Hughes, ‘‘Conflict Diamonds and theKimberley Process: Mission Accomplished—Or Mission Impossible?’’ South African Journalof International Affairs 13, no. 2 (2006): 115; Alice Blondel, ‘‘Logs of War,’’ Monde Diplomat-ique, January 2004, http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/natres/timber/2004/01logsofwar.htm; ‘‘Down in the Woods,’’ The Economist, 378(8470), March 25, 2006, http://www.econo-mist.com/node/5654971.

62. See, for example, Lydia Polgreen, ‘‘Diamonds Move from Blood to Sweat andTears,’’ New York Times, March 25, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/world/africa/25diamonds.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0; and ‘‘Still A Rebel’s Best Friend,’’ TheEconomist, 381 (8503), November 11, 2006, http://www.economist.com/node/8150152.

63. See, for example, Global Witness, Broken Vows: Exposing the ‘‘Loupe’’ Holes in theDiamond’s Industry’s Efforts to Prevent the Trade in Conflict Diamonds, March 2004,http://www.globalwitness.org/library/broken-vows; and Global Witness, The Kimberley Pro-cess at Risk, November 2006, http://www.globalwitness.org/library/kimberley-process-risk.

64. For details, see, for example, Reno (note 13 above), ‘‘Understanding Criminality inWest Africa.’’

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