Crime-Terror Alliances and the State

<p>This book examines the trans-border connections between militant and criminal networks and the relationship between these and the states in which they operate.</p><p>Unholy alliances is a term used to describe hybrid trans-border militant and criminal networks that pose serious threats to security in Europe and elsewhere. Identity networks provide the basis for militant organizations using violent strategies - insurgency and terrorism - for political objectives. To gain funds and weapons militant networks may establish criminal enterprises or align with existing trans-border criminal and financial networks.</p><p>This book extends the concept of unholy alliances to include the trans-state criminal syndicates that arise in failed and dysfunctional states exemplified by Serbia and Bulgaria during their post-Communist transitions. To deal with this complex and unconventional subject the authors develop a theoretical framework that looks at four kinds of factors conditioning the interaction between the political and the criminal: trans-state identity networks armed conflict the balance of market opportunities and constraints and the role of unstable and corrupt states. The volume also examines actors at two levels of analysis: the structure and activities of militant (and/or criminal) networks and the policies of state actors that shape and reshape the interaction of opportunities and constraints.</p><p>This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism insurgency transnational crime war and conflict studies and IR in general.</p>