The Logic of Illicit Flows in Armed Conflict Explaining Variation in Violent Nonstate Group Interactions in Colombia

被引:13
作者
Idler, Annette [1 ,2 ,3 ]
机构
[1] Pembroke Coll, Changing Character War Ctr, Cambridge, England
[2] Univ Oxford, Dept Polit & Int Relat, Oxford, England
[3] Harvard Univ, Weatherhead Ctr Int Affairs, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA
关键词
civil war; Colombia; drug trafficking; intrastate conflict; Latin America; organized crime; security studies; CIVIL-WARS; COMPETITION; STRATEGIES; ECONOMY; POWER; RULE;
D O I
10.1017/S0043887120000040
中图分类号
D81 [国际关系];
学科分类号
030207 ;
摘要
Why is there variation in how violent nonstate groups interact in armed conflict? Where armed conflict and organized crime converge in unstable regions worldwide, these groups sometimes enter cooperative arrangements with opposing groups. Within the same unstable setting, violent nonstate groups forge stable, long-term relations with each other in some regions, engage in unstable, short-term arrangements in others, and dispute each other elsewhere. Even though such paradoxical arrangements have intensified and perpetuated war, extant theories on group interactions that focus on territory and motivations overlook their concurrent character. Challenging the literature that focuses on conflict dynamics alone, the author argues that the spatial distribution of illicit flows influences how these interactions vary. By mapping cocaine supply chain networks, the author shows that long-term arrangements prevail at production sites, whereas short-term arrangements cluster at trafficking nodes. The article demonstrates through process tracing how the logic of illicit flows produces variation in the groups' cooperative arrangements. This multiyear, multisited study includes over six hundred interviews in and about Colombia's remote, war-torn borderlands.
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页码:335 / 376
页数:42
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