Crime, Conflict, and the Legitimacy Trade-Off: Explaining Variation in Insurgents’ Participation in Crime

Human Trafficking-Terrorism Nexus: When Violent Non-State Actors Engage in the Modern-Day Slavery

“…Alliances with other violent organizations enhance group capabilities and also make it easier for groups to operate across borders (Cornell and Jonsson 2014). Along these lines, previous work finds that network embeddedness augments the probability that violent groups engage in the drug trade and other forms of organized crime (Asal, Brinton, and Schoon 2015; Asal, Rethemeyer, and Schoon 2019). Terrorist groups can and have learned from their terrorist counterparts through training and other contact.…”

“…Human trafficking requires more logistical infrastructure than episodic crimes that do not require organizational investment (Asal, Rethemeyer, and Schoon 2019). An organization is more likely to have in-house capabilities and connections to criminal groups if it engages in other types of illicit activities.…”

“…These alliance ties may be particularly beneficial insofar as the network in which the organization is embedded consists of other organizations with experiences with human trafficking. Following the footsteps of Asal, Rethemeyer, and Schoon (2019), we generalize this claim to look at ties with organizations involved in organized crime. H7: Organizations with larger networks of allies are more likely to engage in human trafficking. H8: Organizations with ties to criminal networks are also more likely to engage in human trafficking. …”

“…Ties forged among groups that engage in crime permit convergent milieus, whereby both criminal and terrorist groups draw from the same pool of recruits (Basra, Neumann, and Brunner 2016; Kupatadze and Argomaniz 2019). Territorial control expands opportunity by permitting the transport of resources inside insurgent-held territory (Asal, Rethemeyer, and Schoon 2019). It also increases need because maintaining control of a given territory is resource intensive, demanding that group hold the territory against government forces, while also commanding the support of the local populace therein (Cornell and Johnson 2014; Kenney 2007).…”

“…We test these expectations using an original dataset on human trafficking by insurgent groups coded for this project. The human trafficking data is part of a larger dataset of organizational characteristics of violent non-state actors, the Big Allied and Dangerous (BAAD) 2 dataset (1998-2015) (Asal, Rethemeyer, and Schoon 2018). 2…”