What Shapes Illicit Flows Dr Mike Bourne Queens

What Shapes Illicit Flows? Dr Mike Bourne, Queen’s University Belfast

Background • Began 1997, amid increasing case studies, but few efforts to take stock and change early frameworks • Large global SALW flows emphasised • Small arms dominated by “Amorphous Image” • Vast availability (= easy accessibility), • Globalised illicit market, • Nefarious brokers and transporters. • SALW as available to all, in any way they want, within a global structure, provided they can pay. • Differences are due to choices and wealth. • Yet difference is as strong as, if not stronger than, commonalities. • My work was to set up a new framework for analysis that helped explain difference – to help understand What shapes illicit flows.

Need for a new framework • If viewed through the amorphous image, it is hard to ask meaningful questions about what really shapes illicit flows. • Inadequate tools and application. • Adapt and apply familiar distinctions – tailored to asking meaningful questions about SALW. • Legal, Grey, and Black Markets • Levels of Analysis • Build up sense of structure through patterns of stages at different levels. TWO KEY QUESTIONS • What structures exist and how do they evolve? • How do they shape flows and what patterns does this create?

Global Level • What shapes the global legal SALW trade? Post-cold war focus insufficient, reified differences without giving much explanation. Analysis of evolution of global legal trade 1945 – 2004. How did this reflect and differ from MCA trade? • How do extra-regional flows to conflicts reflect and differ from mainstream legal trade? E. g. Do flows to conflict states show same supplier-client patterns and relationships as overall legal trade? • Implications for What shapes illicit flows : – The dominant global structure is not an illicit market, but the legal market. – This shapes both legal and illicit flows: trends in the legal market have shaped the legal flow of SALW to conflicts; – Some extra-regional aspects of flows to conflict are ‘grey-market’ processes, very few are black-market; BUT – there are no distinctly global black or grey market structures operating autonomously of the legal market.

Regional level Two-fold role of regional level: • Facilitation of flows from extra-regional level to conflict actors • Regional ‘markets’.

Regional Facilitation • Not just a function of brokers (PCW, globalised image) • Rather, many facilitation roles are regionalised (Transhipment; EUCs and “veil of legality”; financial conduits etc). • Nature of roles – covert state, black, grey, reflects more regional networks and relationships rather than correlation with global stages of flow. • Roles evolve and shift from covert to grey/black. A function of transnational networks, micro-economies, etc. • Networks tend to be stronger at regional level, with extraregional relationships more fluid and ad-hoc.

Regional flows and structures • Legal trade: Is there any regional variation in this (e. g. does regional interstate trade reflect positions in global trade? ): Regional legal flows reflect place in global supplier tiers, but within tier regional variation occurs. – Thus the legal trade is global as well as the global being largely legal • Covert aid: COVERT AID IS HIGHLY REGIONALISED. PCW shift in roles of regional level (but not absolute); appropriation of networks; regionalised shadow networks; different sourcing patterns and concerns. • Black and Grey Markets: Ant-Trade is obviously regional; but also LARGE BLACK MARKETS ARE REGIONAL (recirculation is regionalised; accumulation in illicit circulation, appropriation and construction of supply networks is regional). Varies by region Central Asia, Latin America – not West Africa, etc: • Construction of large BMs is a function of conflict and associated networks.

So what? • Regional level is very important. – Diversion – Evolution • Regionally facilitated flows are the primary means of obtaining significant quantities of SALW in regions where covert aid is unavailable and no organized black market exists; • Conversely, the presence of an organized black market reduces the need for accessing extra-regional stocks through regional facilitation networks; • Significant grey and black-market facilitation is possible without an organized black market but has to be constructed by transnational networks based on war economies; • Covert aid, both regional and extra-regional, often constructs this infrastructure.

Conflict level • Structures of availability and flow evolve – especially through pre-conflict, and post-conflict periods. • Intra-conflict flows not just a function of collapsing state control over forces and stocks; but rather are shaped by the political economy of conflict and how that affects the patterns of conflict and cooperation among factions, and between factions and society.

Arming Patterns • A function of these overlaid, evolving, and interacting structures and processes. • A function of CAPACITY not just choice.

Illicit Flows Through Levels Global 1 Extra-Regional 2 3 Regional 4 Conflict-complex 5

Arming Patterns • Bottom-up pattern(5 & 4): Shaped by factors at conflict level. • Top-Down patterns: More organised, often external supplies – but which ones? • Autonomous: Can CHOOSE any: (almost) only states, All states. Shaped by global structures. • Dependent (2, 3, covert aid 4, 5): Shaped by Global structures in cold war; post-Cold war regional and conflict structures. • Semi-autonomous (Some influence) (2, 3, 4, 5): Shaped by: Conflict level potential, Regional level realisation.