State Collapse as Business: The Role of Conflict Trade and the Emerging Control Agenda

State Collapse as Business: The Role of Conflict

Trade and the Emerging Control Agenda

Neil Cooper

ABSTRACT

This article examines the role played by conflict trade in the process of state

collapse. Conflict trade is defined here as the trade in non-military goods such

as diamonds, timber and drugs that finances war. Such trade includes both the

export and import of goods to a war zone as well as extra-territorial trade

undertaken by supporters of a warring faction. It is argued that the decline of

superpower military aid coupled with the broader effects of centre–periphery

exploitation mediated through a neo-liberal and western imposed version of

globalization has meant such trade has a particular salience both in con-

temporary conflict and the process of state collapse. Equally, though, the

reliance of warring factions on conflict trade means they are also susceptible

to changes in the market for their goods, creating a vulnerability that can (and

to some extent has been) exploited to promote peace. The emerging control

agenda on conflict trade is currently characterized by a number of problems

— most notably, the risk that the control of conflict trade might become a

substitute for action on arms exports; that international action has largely

been undertaken within an inappropriate statist paradigm; that control has

sometimes taken second place to economic or strategic interests and that policy

has become hostage to a ‘drugs and thugs’ agenda which risks undermining its

effectiveness.

INTRODUCTION

Partly as a consequence of globalization and partly as a result of the declineof superpower military aid, actors in contemporary conflicts are increasinglyutilizing connections to both the local and the global economy to generateprofits for wealth creation and to finance military campaigns. This has led togrowing concern over the role that the trade in non-military goods (conflictgoods) plays in promoting state collapse and sustaining conflicts, as well asthe challenges it presents for conflict prevention and post-conflict resolutionmore generally. This study begins by examining the significance of conflicttrade in the process of state collapse and reconstitution as well as theimplications such trade has for Luttwak’s ‘give war a chance’ thesis. It willthen be suggested that, properly implemented, the control of conflict trade

Development and Change 33(5): 935–955 (2002). # Institute of Social Studies 2002. Publishedby Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main St., Malden,MA 02148. USA

may represent a particularly effective means of influencing the war and peacedecisions of actors even under conditions of apparent anarchy. Despite this,however, the current focus on the issue of conflict goods (most notablydiamonds and drugs) raises a number of problematic issues. Of these the mostnoteworthy are: the need for control action to be sensitive to the impact onlocal populations; the possibility that action on conflict trade might becomea substitute for continued efforts to limit arms sales; that internationalaction to date has largely taken place within a paradigm which views conflicttrade as a prerogative of sovereignty; that ethical action on conflict tradehas often taken second place to narrow commercial and political interestsand that the policy agenda will become hostage to a ‘drugs and thugs’ bias.

DEFINING CONFLICT TRADE

The terms conflict trade or conflict goods are used here to refer to the tradein non-military civil goods which is used to finance or perpetuate local wareconomies. The most obvious example is the way exports of conflict diamondshave funded war in Angola, Sierra Leone and the DRC. However, conflicttrade can encompass a wide variety of goods and trading strategies. Forinstance, imports of goods may be just as crucial to maintaining wareconomies, both in the sense that materials such as food or oil may benecessary to sustain armies and in the sense that the profits from import-trade may finance war. In the case of the latter for example, Ali Mahdi, oneof the faction leaders in the Somali conflict, earned funds from eight planesthat flew the drug khat in from Kenya, whilst Osman Ato — a financialsupporter of another group, the USC — reputedly earned US$ 128,000 aday from khat imports (Duyvesteyn, 2000: 103). Conflict trade may eventake place outside the war zone itself. For instance, one US fund-raising cellfor Hizbollah smuggled cigarettes from North Carolina to Michigan wherecigarettes are taxed at a much higher rate. The profits from this operation(estimated at U$ 3,000 per truckload) were then either passed direct toHizbollah in Lebanon or were used to buy high-tech equipment such asglobal positioning systems and night vision equipment (The Observer, 2000).

This study will thus employ the following definition of conflict trade:conflict goods are non-military materials, knowledge, animals or humanswhose trade, taxation or protection is exploited to finance or otherwisemaintain the war economies of contemporary conflicts. Trade can take placeby direct import or export from the conflict zone or on behalf of militaryfactions (both government and non-government) by outside supporters.Conflict goods do not include arms, military aid or the services of mercenaries,although these may be paid for in kind with goods or concessions to trade inproducts which would then become conflict goods.

A number of objections can be made to such a definition. First, ifone accepts the argument made by some critics that the global economy is

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characterized by systematic exploitation of the third world by the first, and ifone accepts the apparent link between poverty and the incidence of conflict,1

then, in the broadest sense of the term, all goods could be characterized asconflict goods. Moreover, as will be noted below, there is a thin line betweenlegitimate trade in weak states and conflict trade — and an even thinner onebetween informal trade and conflict trade. Indeed, conflict trade may welldraw on the same informal networks developed in the kind of mafia, neo-patrimonial and/or survival economies that arise in response to under-development. However, whilst effective policy responses to conflict tradeneed to be grounded in this recognition, it is equally true that a conceptualdistinction can and must be made, between trade that directly supports thewar effort of actors in conflict, and trade which is based on more generalexploitation and structural violence (Galtung, 1971) — even where the latterprecipitates conflict and state collapse.

Second, actors in conflicts, particularly long-established ones, may utilizethe normal operation of global financial markets to invest the profits fromillicit activities in perfectly legitimate companies both at home and abroad.This is a strategy used by the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces(FARC) for instance. There have even been (unconfirmed) suggestions thatal Qaeda may have raised funds by speculating in the financial marketson the share price of companies likely to be affected by the bombing of theWorld Trade Centre (The Observer, 2001). To the extent that this occursthere is clearly a sense in which the normal operation of companies and/orindustrial sectors which play a role, albeit unconsciously and indirectly, inthe laundering or investment of profits from conflict thus becomes a con-stituent element in conflict trade. However, such companies are clearly notculpable in the same way as those more directly or consciously involved insuch trade. Defining this kind of activity as conflict trade also leaves theconcept so diffuse that it loses any focus at all. This is not to deny, however,that attempts to curb (for example) money-laundering, represent importantelements in a broader strategy aimed at addressing the political economy ofcontemporary conflicts; nor is it to deny the important linkages that existbetween these activities and the trade in conflict goods. Nevertheless, thereis, again, an important conceptual (and campaigning) distinction that shouldbe drawn between them. The definition adopted here, therefore, is perhapsnarrower than that for which some commentators might argue. At the sametime, international action on conflict goods has largely focused around aconsensus which defines such goods as those things traded only by rebelforces or by ‘illegitimate’ states (see below). In this sense then, the abovedefinition is actually broader than that operated by many policy-makers.

1. As of March 2000, twenty-one of the world’s thirty-four poorest countries were either

involved in conflict or had recently experienced conflict (Willett, 2000).

State Collapse as Business 937

STATE COLLAPSE

The definitional issues surrounding the term ‘state collapse’ have beenaddressed elsewhere in this volume, and I do not intend to replicate thosedebates here. However, a few specific points are worth noting. First, thecontemporary incidence of state collapse is perhaps best understood as aconsequence of two main factors. In some cases it can at least partly beexplained as a post-Cold War re-ordering of the political map consequentupon the failure of communism (Bosnia) and the collapse of superpowerpatronage (Zaire/DRC). Second, and more significantly, it also reflectsbroader trends that have become especially powerful in the post-modernand particularly post-Cold War era. The current phenomenon of statecollapse can be viewed as an acute manifestation of a more general andcontemporary crisis of the state precipitated by the iniquities of globaliza-tion under neo-liberalism, privatization, the growing influence of trans-national organizations (from TNCs to mafia groups) and the end of ideology.This may seem an odd suggestion to make when collapse may be accompaniedby competing claims to statehood, when the number of states in the inter-national system has increased and when the international community isexpending energy on maintaining states or proto-states in places like Bosnia,East Timor and Kosovo. However, there is a growing disjuncture betweenthe prevailing popularity of the idea of statehood and the erosion of thelegitimacy, authority and effectiveness of the individual state. In developedstates this crisis has manifested itself in the rise of federalism, regionalism,voter cynicism about the capture of the state by narrow political elites, thedecline of political parties and the rise of single issue radicalism. Ironically,it has also manifested itself in the rise of a discourse and politics centredaround the need to defend the state from its crisis (witness the rise of theanti-European ‘Eurosceptic’ wing of the British Conservative Party).

In contrast, the incidence of contemporary state collapse in the develop-ing world represents a particular and extreme response to the crisis of thestate under conditions of under-development in weak states. Indeed, giventhe economic and social stresses experienced by many states in the develop-ing world, what is perhaps surprising is not the extent of state failure but itscontinued infrequency — a testament perhaps to the ongoing power of theidea of the state, even when all the evidence suggests many states should infact be a ‘busted flush’.

The prevalence of conflict trade is not a condition unique to collapsedstates. Indeed, such trade has a long history both in facilitating more con-ventional inter-state wars (Barbieri and Levy, 1999: 45, n. 8), and in low-levelviolence in even strong states. In the latter case, for instance, the trade indrugs and other illicit contraband undertaken by street gangs and mafiagroups in even the most developed states not only finances relative affluencebut is also a cause of low-level violence and a means by which the acquisitionof guns or protection can be financed. Indeed, the trade in the same packet

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of diamonds or drugs can sometimes act as a transmission belt that eitherfunds or is the cause of violence in a number of states. Thus, the reconstitutionof the Albanian state has been jeopardized by crime and corruption at leastpartly fuelled by its role as a staging post for Colombian cocaine transportedvia the Albanian diaspora in the US and ultimately destined for WesternEurope (International Crisis Group, 2001a: 21).

However, whilst conflict trade may not be unique to collapsed states, it isequally the case that the processes by which state collapse is instigated andperpetuated cannot be properly understood without reference to the roleplayed by such trade. Indeed, the capacity for conflict trade may actually bea factor that facilitates collapse and impedes restitution of an effective state.For instance, Paul Collier (2000), in his controversial study of civil wars forthe World Bank, argues that together with low national income, a country’sdependence on primary commodity exports is a significant predictor of civilwars, largely because they provide easy opportunities for wealth creation(via taxation or control) on the part of guerrilla movements. Of course, notall civil wars necessarily lead to state collapse but state collapse is generallyaccompanied by internal conflict. Collier’s analysis can be criticized on thegrounds that he underplays the role of grievance, as opposed to what helabels ‘greed’, in fomenting conflict. Nevertheless, he does highlight theimportant role that resource predation plays both as motivation and meansfor conflict. It is certainly the case that the economics of resource controlhave played an important role in state collapse in a range of cases fromLiberia to Sierra Leone and from Cambodia to the DRC.

It is also the case, however, that the dynamics established in developingstates by commodity dependence goes beyond the role commodities play asobjects of predation. Crucially, they are also at the heart of the structuralviolence perpetrated on the developing world, which helps create the climatefor conflict and state collapse. In theory, an abundance of tradeable resourcesshould provide the basis for prosperity and social cohesion. However, the priceof primary products has been collapsing, a process exacerbated by theuneven influence exercised by MNCs and producer states. For instance,between 1997 and 1999 the combined annual index of free market prices forprimary commodities, which represent 80 per cent of Africa’s exportearnings, fell by 25 per cent (Willett, 2001: 38). Coffee prices have fallen byas much as 70 per cent since 1997 — costing developing countries someUS$ 8 bn in lost earnings (Oxfam, 2002). At the same time, the money paidto farmers accounts for a dwindling proportion of the retail price of coffee(now just 7 per cent). Instead, it is the coffee processing groups such asPhilip Morris and Nestle which make the profits (Oxfam, 2001).

In addition, whilst the international financial institutions and aid donorsrequire developing countries to open up their markets to outside competition,the same donors fail to abide by the principles of free trade in those sectorswhere developing countries have a comparative advantage. For instance,agricultural subsidies to OECD countries are worth over US$ 320 bn a year


(roughly equivalent to the entire GDP of Africa as a whole) and every cowin the European Union is subsidized to the tune of US$ 2 a day — the sameamount on which 450 million people in sub-Saharan Africa subsist daily(Blair, 2002).

Furthermore, the processes that add value to goods are often locatedoutside weak states — a phenomenon aggravated by the way developedworld import duties on commodities rise according to the level of processingundergone by a product (Oxfam, 2002: 161). Thus, whilst Liberian timberexports funded the conflict in the country, Liberia cannot maximize therevenue potential of this resource as it is not adequately equipped to processtimber locally (Global Witness, 2001: 3). Similarly, whilst gem qualitydiamonds are mined in twenty-two countries, most cutting and polishingtakes place in just seven countries (principally India) (Runcie, 2000) andtrading takes place in centres such as Antwerp and London. This makesa significant difference as value is added at every stage from cutting andpolishing to the marketing of jewellery. For instance, whilst rough diamondproduction was worth approximately US$ 7.5 bn in 2000, diamond jewellerysales in the same year were worth US$ 57.6 bn, of which the diamondcontent was roughly US$ 13.7 bn (Smillie, 2002: 8). Countries such asAngola and Sierra Leone have not simply been cursed by their abundance ofdiamonds but also cursed by their inability to add value to these resources.Indeed, one of the ironies of the attempt to address the trade in conflictdiamonds is that the current focus on rough diamonds may actuallyencourage the development of cutting and polishing centres in conflict states(see below).

Thus, the combination of low prices and the absence of manufacturingprocesses that add value to raw materials means that states cannot maximizethe growth potential implied by their natural resource wealth. When setagainst a historical backdrop of colonial exploitation and political violencethis means such states face grave difficulties in escaping from poverty andunderdevelopment. Africa’s share of world trade (excluding South Africa)fell from 3 per cent in the 1950s to 1.2 per cent in the mid-1990s, whilst theaverage life expectancy of an African citizen is just forty-eight years — andfalling (Oxfam, 2002).

Moreover, the fact of underdevelopment, combined with the way in whichglobalization, aid dependence and structural adjustment have underminedthe institutions and legitimacy of such states, creates a particularly acute andvirulent form of the crisis of the state which in turn creates the conditions inwhich collapse becomes a real, albeit not inevitable, possibility. In suchcircumstances it makes more sense for local elites to eschew long-term andinclusive state-building in favour of strategies designed to exploit theircontrol over local resources and their links to both the formal and informalglobal economy in order to extract wealth and generate political support viathe distribution of rewards to key supporters (Reno, 1997). Similarly, formany ordinary citizens, participation in shadow trade — whether in peace

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or war — represents the means by which those excluded from, or relegatedto the periphery of the global economy reincorporate themselves into itsworkings. For instance, in Angola as little as 10 per cent of the country’sGNP is thought to be produced through the formal economy (Duffield,2001: 141), whilst in Afghanistan an estimated 80 per cent of the economyand 30 to 50 per cent of the population have been involved in some aspect ofthe drugs trade (International Crisis Group, 2001b).

This is not to suggest that informal trade does not reflect much the sameinequalities as formal trade. For instance, just 1 per cent of the proceedsfrom drugs grown in Afghanistan actually remain in the country, with a kiloof heroin worth US$ 300 inside the country likely to fetch US$ 30,000 by thetime it reaches Europe (International Crisis Group, 2001c). The difference isthat exploitation by transnational criminal networks has the simple advantageof tending to pay better than exploitation by transnational corporations —thus in Afghanistan, opium yields profits five times higher than the next bestcrop, usually wheat or onions (Cornell, 2002: 10). Moreover, the samefeatures that characterize the weak and collapsed state — minimal or nocontrol over territory, corruption and feeble mechanisms of accountability— also represent a comparative advantage that can be exploited for marketshare in the informal sector.

Consequently, the line between the trade in ‘conflict goods’ and legitimateor informal trade in ‘peace’ may be an extremely thin one, determined by thescale (and not the fact) of violence, by the externally defined legitimacy of agovernment and the economic interests of outside actors. Indeed, the tradein conflict goods frequently represents just a more violent version of theneo-patrimonialism and external trade relations that characterize manydeveloping states and which often serve to exacerbate the processes of statecollapse.

Conflict Trade and Peace

The political economy of conflict trade can also influence the nature andeffectiveness of post-collapse reconstruction as well as the process of post-conflict peace-building more generally. At its most extreme, as in Angolaand Sierra Leone, the profits from conflict trade can provide peace spoilerswith both the incentive and the ability to independently fund a return towar. In contrast, and without external patronage, the absence of resourceswith which to fund recidivism can be equally influential in determining thesuccess of peace agreements (Steadman, 1997: 42).

Even where peace agreements hold, however, the influence that war elitesestablish over key economic sectors during conflict can reverberate throughthe process of state reconstruction and peace-building, effectively perpetuatingwar economies under conditions of non-war. For instance, in Cambodia theillegal logging that was a feature of the country’s war economy has continued,


much of it perpetrated by the military who often create ‘zones of insecurity’to prevent external monitoring (Hendrickson, 2001: 73). Thus, whilst thegovernment’s logging revenue in 1998 amounted to some US$ 15 million, anestimated US$ 100 million per annum is lost to illegal logging. At the sametime, the military consumes a full 45 per cent of government spending(Doyle, 2001: 98).

Moreover, the post-war persistence of both a shadow economy and weakstate institutions as well as new demands created by the ‘internationals’drafted in to re-build states, can create novel forms of shadow trade (post-conflict trade), that pre-existing war elites exploit, often drawing on thesame global networks previously utilized to fund war. For instance, in post-conflict Kosovo there is now a booming industry in the trafficking ofwomen into the country (IOM Kosovo Counter-Trafficking Unit, 2001) toservice a sex trade that has been fuelled by the arrival of the internationalcommunity.

Give War a Chance?

Focusing on the role of conflict trade in state collapse also highlights theflaws in the argument propounded by Edward Luttwak (1999) in particular,that the international community should ‘give war a chance’. For Luttwak,wars have a natural evolution which means that left unchecked theyultimately burn themselves out, either through victory or war exhaustion onthe part of belligerents. International intervention merely serves to perpetuateconflict by providing support to the militarily weak and by allowing factionsto re-arm under the guise of an internationally negotiated (temporary) truceor peace agreement. It can also be argued that historically, war and militaryinnovation has spurred both state formation and economic progress (Tilly,1990) and that in the long term, it ultimately makes more sense for rent-seeking warlords to settle down and start raising taxes properly.

However, in contemporary post-Cold War conflicts economics is increas-ingly replacing ideology as the motive or legitimizing force for conflict. Suchconflicts do not so much represent the continuation of politics by othermeans as the continuation of business by other means. At its most extreme,this gives rise to the kind of warlord politics often typical of collapsed stateswhere ‘the aim is control of people and acquisition of booty more than tocontrol territory in the conventional military manner’ (Ellis, 1995: 185). Thishas been exacerbated by the post-Cold War decline of military aid from themajor powers. For instance, the UNDP (1994: 53) has estimated that thevalue of global military assistance from the US, the Soviet Union, WesternEurope, the Arab states and China declined from a total of US$ 21 bn in1987 to US$ 4.6 bn in 1993. The effect has been to simultaneously reduce theincentive to articulate and pursue a vision of governance (if only to leveragefunds from actors sympathetic to that vision) whilst also reinforcing the

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salience of booty and conflict trade in the war economies of contemporaryconflicts. Indeed, even Cold War movements such as UNITA have movedfrom a strong ideological agenda to one dominated by economic aims(Keen, 1998: 34).

To the extent that actors are interested in capture of the state, it is often asa vehicle for enhancing and legitimizing (and thus facilitating) profit-makingrather than with the aim of reconstituting an effective state. Thus, even ifwar exhaustion does produce peace, it may well be a homicidal peacecharacterized by continued violence and resource exploitation, whilst thestate is likely to be reconstituted as a collapse-in-waiting. For instance, theLiberian Strategic Commodities Act of mid-2000 gives Charles Taylor solepower to negotiate contracts for the exploitation of all natural and mineralresources, as well as cultural and historical items (Global Witness, 2001).Indeed, Taylor’s continued exploitation of Liberia’s resources is estimatedto have netted him an income of some US$ 200 million. In comparison, theLiberian state budget amounts to roughly US$ 50–60 million, most of whichfunds Taylor’s ATU paramilitary and other security services. Not surprisinglyperhaps (at the time of writing) Taylor himself now faces an insurgency inLofa county in Northern Liberia, albeit one that appears to have beenencouraged by external powers.

In this context, state collapse should not necessarily be viewed as anaberration from the norm in the ‘zones of war’ (Singer and Wildavsky,1993). Rather, it is a phase which a growing number of states may periodicallyenter, leave and return to, as they continuously traverse the spectrum fromshadow to failed to collapsed to reconstituted, without the fundamentals oftheir perpetual crisis ever being addressed — a case in point being therecurring processes of collapse and restoration experienced by the Congo/Zaire/DRC.

Moreover, the nature of contemporary, ‘post-modern conflict’ meansthat, as a policy, waiting for war exhaustion may be akin to waiting forGodot. Indeed, as Luttwak himself points out, contemporary conflicts tendto be ‘post-heroic’ wars (Luttwak, 1995) characterized by the avoidance ofconflict, and even co-operation and trade between belligerents (for instance,trade between the Maı Maı and RPA coltan dealers in the DRC), predationon civilians and conflict trade with external actors. Thus, whilst civilianpopulations may indeed grow war weary, local warlords tend not to beinvolved in the kind of total warfare that brings exhaustion (and certainlynot quickly). Indeed, during the conflict in Sierra Leone, Foday Sankoh theleader of the RUF, actually spent a year in Abidjan in the Ivory Coast livingeither in the Hotel Ivoire or in an adjacent villa as the guest of the Ivoriangovernment (Hirsch, 2001: 43). Moreover, war elites may well have developedsubstantial economic interests which are better served by the continuationof war (Keen, 2000: 2).

In addition, the search for economic resources means that wars may spillout into other states provoking a trail of state collapse, as occurred when


Charles Taylor supported the RUF in Sierra Leone; or that wars initiallybegun for strategic reasons become more firmly entrenched, as in the DRC.Without effective international intervention and/or a remarkable leader ofthe Mandela ilk, the political economy of contemporary warlordism andstate collapse thus points to more of the same rather than a Hobbesianevolution into something better.

Furthermore, the ‘give war a chance’ thesis ignores the fact that outsidersare already intervening via their trade relations with local warlords and viathe broader effects of centre–periphery exploitation mediated through aneo-liberal and western imposed version of globalization. The choice is notbetween intervention and non-intervention in the problems of collapsedstates, but between different types of intervention. Finally, ‘give war a chance’presupposes that once war is over it is possible to return to the status quoante and pick up the normal path of state-building, development and non-war once again. However, one of the features of the war economies ofcontemporary conflicts, and particularly so in collapsed states, is the extentto which the absence of effective government permits rapacious andunsustainable resource extraction. For instance, the UN Panel of Experts onthe DRC has noted that since 1998 the Ugandan–Thai company DARA-Forest has been exporting approximately 48,000m3 of timber per year withno consideration for sustainable forest management or even sustainablelogging (United Nations, 2001: 10–11). Giving war a chance thus impliesgiving war elites a free hand to plunder a country’s resources, eviscerate itsfuture economic potential and entrench their influence in and over anyreconstituted post-conflict state that may eventually be created. This is notto suggest of course that current international interventions are particularlysuccessful at preventing this process or that they may not even exacerbateit on occasions. However, this is not so much an argument for abandoningintervention but rather, for transforming the modes and methods of inter-vention.

THE CONTROL OF CONFLICT TRADE: ADVANTAGES AND

CHALLENGES

Contemporary state collapse is often explained as a simple descent intoanarchy fuelled by irrational hatreds and characterized by vicious humanrights abuse perpetrated by the mad or the bad. In reality, however, actorsin so-called collapsed states may not only maintain alternative (non-state)forms of governance as in northern Somaliland, but generally pursuerational strategies of resource accumulation (albeit sometimes by amoraland vicious means). Indeed, they often maintain sophisticated economicnetworks that are highly sensitive to changes in market conditions. Forinstance, actors in the DRC swiftly moved from mining gold to miningcoltan as the price of the latter rose exponentially in world markets between

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1999 and late 2000, allowing Rwanda, for example, to earn up to anestimated US$ 250 million in eighteen months (United Nations, 2001: 29,para. 130). This very sensitivity to market change also, of course, representsa potential vulnerability that can be exploited.

This has significant implications for international attempts aimed ateither preventing state collapse or dealing with its consequences and forconflict prevention and resolution more generally. These may be betterserved by the adoption of strategies that target the war economies ofmilitary factions with a view to raising the economic costs of conflict and/orlowering the profits from war. Indeed, such strategies may actually be moreeffective in ultimately promoting peace than arms embargoes or initiativesaimed at curbing weapons proliferation. At the very least, they represent animportant adjunct to more traditional strategies of weapons/technologycontrol. This is particularly the case where the trade in conflict goodsdepends on companies operating in legitimate markets (diamonds, timberand so forth). Such companies have to work within the framework ofdomestic and international law, restrictions on their operations are not asfrequently perceived to impinge on core issues of national security, and theirprofits are more vulnerable to trends in the purchasing practices of civilsociety (at least in market economies) than even those of defence firms withcivil subsidiaries. Consequently, both international agreements and pressurefrom civil society has the potential to influence the willingness of such actorsto support the trade in conflict goods.

To some extent at least, the international community has now begun toaddress the problem of conflict goods, particularly in relation to the trade inrough diamonds and drugs. For instance, the UN has now imposedembargoes on diamonds from UNITA in Angola and the RUF in SierraLeone. Sanctions have also been imposed on the export of rough diamondsfrom Liberia in recognition of its role as a conduit for RUF diamonds. Inaddition, states, industry and NGOs have come together in the Kimberleyprocess to develop an international certification scheme for rough diamonds.The declared aim is to guarantee that rough diamonds traded around theworld are not conflict diamonds. Although elements of the scheme stillrequire finalization, full implementation is scheduled to begin by the end of2002 (US General Accounting Office, 2002).

The link between drug production and the war economies of con-temporary conflicts has also been recognized and with that recognition hascome the development of strategies to address it. Most notable of these is thecontroversial Plan Colombia which supporters claim combines US militaryaid targeted against the narco-traffickers in Colombia with efforts topromote the production of alternative crops. Critics, on the other hand,question both the aims of the project (arguing that it is a front for atraditional US counter-insurgency operation rather than a serious effort toaddress the problem of drug production in Colombia) and its likely effects(see below).


However, whilst these initiatives at least recognize the economic agendasthat influence decisions on war and peace, they also raise as many questionsas they answer. First, whilst conflict trade may be characterized bypredation and exploitation of a country’s resources for the benefit of warelites it will, to varying degrees, also provide benefits to the local population— often only as a means of scratching a living in a war-ravaged economy,but sometimes in more extensive ways. Thus, any attempts to controlconflict trade need to be grounded in a sensitivity to their effects and anawareness of the need to provide alternatives either during or after aconflict. For example, the FARC in Colombia has developed a sophisticatedsocial safety net which is supported by the profits made from various illicitactivities. This includes a minimum wage for coca leaf pickers, a minimumprice that must be paid to farmers and a social security system which,amongst other things, provides pensions for retired guerrillas (Suarez, 2000).Crude initiatives that attempt to address the link between drugs and conflict— which exists on all sides in Colombia — without putting into place analternative system of profit and power2 designed to promote peace, mayactually serve to further exacerbate conflict. This, in essence, is the critiquethat has been levelled at ‘Plan Colombia’. Critics argue that it is militarizingthe conflict between the Colombian government and guerrilla groups,creating refugees, destroying legitimate crops and wreaking ecological damage— all with little impact on drug production (Byrne, 2002; The Guardian,2000). Similarly, in Afghanistan, the return to opium farming since thedemise of the Taliban and the outbreak of violent protests at the newgovernment’s attempts to eradicate the crop (despite the offer of US$ 500for each acre destroyed; see The Guardian, 2002) illustrates the way in whichthe trade has delivered benefits not only for avaricious warlords but also forpoverty-stricken farmers.

This has implications for the development of strategies to prevent statecollapse and promote reconstruction. There is a temptation to view all illicittrade as bad. In the long term this may well be the case. However, inter-vention strategies may nevertheless require careful consideration of theappropriate balance between the long-term need to promote order and thelegitimate economy, and the short-term requirement to maintain reasonablelevels of economic satisfaction. Indeed, this problem has already been facedby KFOR peacekeepers in post-conflict Kosovo who, for instance, havebeen confronted with the quandary of whether to permit illicit tradingactivities which contribute to the economic well-being of communities, andthus reduce tensions, or whether to crack down on such activity because ofits longer-term effects on social order and the economy.

2. As Keen has noted, guerrilla war economies themselves represent alternative systems of

profit and power (Keen, 1996). Strictly speaking, therefore, there is a need for alternative,

alternative systems of profit and power.

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Second, notwithstanding the merits of action to limit conflict trade, thereis a risk that the narrow targeting of conflict trade becomes a substitute forcontinued action to limit arms sales. Indeed, focusing on conflict trade hasan added advantage in that much of the discourse on this issue effectivelypins the blame for conflict on avaricious warlords rather than on the armssold by avaricious governments. For instance, whilst the UK has been in theforefront of the campaign on conflict diamonds, New Labour has continuedboth the subsidization of defence exports and a largely permissive approachto the arms trade. The disjuncture between these two policies has led tosome striking contradictions. For example, the UK has led action in the UNto ban the import of diamonds sold by the rebel RUF in Sierra Leone andhas backed UN sanctions against Liberia because of its role in supportingthe RUF and in acting as a conduit for RUF diamonds. At the same time,the UK is not only the largest supplier of arms to the government of SierraLeone, but it failed to take any action against the UK-based company AirFoyle when it was discovered to have been involved in shipping arms to theRUF in Sierra Leone in breach of a UN embargo. Indeed, the company wassubsequently awarded a Ministry of Defence contract to deliver helicoptersto South Africa. Failure to take action against Air Foyle was justified on thegrounds that the company had only flown the arms to Burkino Faso, fromwhence they were transported to Sierra Leone, and that the company (ratherincredibly) claimed not be aware of their final destination (Cooper, 2000).Thus, whilst Liberia’s role as a conduit for RUF diamonds has meant it hasexperienced sanctions on its diamond exports, Air Foyle has enjoyed im-munity for supplying weapons to a country widely recognized as a conduitfor RUF arms. This contrasts sharply with the position of the UN panel ofexperts on Angola which argued for forfeiture of any planes caughtsanctions-busting (United Nations, 2000: para. 166). Similarly, whilst theUK has criticized the conflict trade in the DRC it has also licensed theexport of spares for Hawk aircraft being used by Zimbabwe to prosecute itswar, and thus facilitate its own conflict trade in the Congo.

Third, attempts to address the problem of conflict trade have beenhamstrung by three interrelated (but not always complementary) factors,namely: international action has been located largely within a statistconception of a just international system; it has been de-limited by theoperation of national economic or strategic interests; and it has tended toreflect a post-Cold War security discourse which seeks to legitimize themaintenance of high Western defence expenditures by reference to apparentthreats from rogue actors such as drug barons, pariah states and mostrecently terrorism. These factors will be examined in more detail below.

States Do not Engage in Conflict Trade

The development of an agenda on the control of conflict trade in legitimategoods (as opposed to, say, drugs) is still a very recent phenomenon and one


of the problems that both NGOs and governments have faced is in actuallydefining what constitutes such trade. This has applied particularly to thecase of conflict diamonds. It is striking that the emerging control regime onconflict diamonds is developing on the basis of an exceedingly restrictivedefinition which describes them as things that are traded by rebel groups —or, at the outside, pariah states. For instance, under the Kimberley Process,conflict diamonds are defined as: ‘rough diamonds used by rebel movementsor their allies to finance conflict aimed at undermining legitimate govern-ments, as described in relevant United Nations Security Council (UNSC)resolutions . . . or in other UNSC resolutions which may be adopted in thefuture’ (cited in Smillie, 2002: 7, italics added).

In essence, action on conflict diamonds, not surprisingly perhaps, is beingconstructed within the same statist paradigm that legitimizes the sale of armsto governments on the grounds that states have a right to self-defence. Thus,even if the conflicts in Angola and Sierra Leone were still going on, govern-ment diamonds would not be conflict diamonds, whilst those sold by UNITAor the RUF still are. This is despite the obvious fact that diamond sales raisefunds that can contribute to the war effort of rebels and governments alike.Indeed, the introduction of the certification scheme in Sierra Leone meant thegovernment’s diamond revenue rose from US$ 1.5 million in 1999 to US$ 6.4million in the period from October 2000 to January 2001 (Wilson, 2001).

Of course, from one perspective this precisely demonstrates the way thataction on conflict trade can promote the reconstitution of states by reducingthe economic base of often vicious warlords and enhancing the resources ofclaimants to be a legitimate government. However, the dominance of theview of conflict trade as a prerogative of sovereignty has meant that, as inthe DRC for instance, organized resource extraction by neighbouringgovernments has not (to date at least) met with the same response as thatexperienced by the RUF and UNITA. Indeed, both Rwanda and Ugandahave continued to receive bilateral aid from the UK, Denmark, Germanyand the US, and in the case of the latter, budget support increased from US$26.1 million in 1997 to US$ 51.5 million in 1999. Similarly, the World Bankhas praised Uganda for its economic performance (despite the fact that thiswas based in part on the exploitation of resources in the DRC) and hasfailed to question the increase in its exports of natural resources (UnitedNations, 2001: 39 para. 189).

It is possible that this situation may change as a UN panel of experts hasrecommended an embargo on the import or export of coltan, niobium,pyrochlore, cassiterite, timber, gold, and diamonds from or to Burundi,Rwanda and Uganda. So far, however, the response of the Security Councilhas simply been to ask for more reports. To date, the only state to facesanctions on its conflict trade has been Liberia, but as will be noted belowthis seems to be a function of Charles Taylor’s pariah status as the‘Milosevic of West Africa’ rather than an intrinsic willingness to take actionagainst predatory states in general.

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Economy, not Ethics

The extent and nature of action on conflict goods has also been heavilyinfluenced by the economic and political concerns of developed world states,as opposed to an intrinsic concern to alleviate conflict in the developingworld. Sometimes, narrow national economic or other interests have actuallyled states to support action against conflict trade or at least particular aspectsof it. For instance, in the case of Angola, it has been suggested that Westerninterests in one sphere of conflict trade (namely oil contracts with thegovernment) was a factor influencing Western support for the campaign toban diamond sales from UNITA (Naidoo, 2000).

In other respects, however, narrow economic interests have served to de-limit the willingness of states to take action. The most glaring example todate has been the exemption of Liberian timber exports from the UNsanctions imposed on the country. Liberian timber exports actually play afar more important role in sustaining Charles Taylor than do diamonds, andas with diamonds, a significant portion of this income has been used to fundRUF arms, training and logistical support (Global Witness, 2001). How-ever, despite initially being included in the draft resolution on sanctionsagainst Liberia, timber was eventually dropped after objections from Chinaand France who are the largest importers of Liberian timber.

Even action on conflict diamonds has been constrained by economicconsiderations. Some of these are quite legitimate. For instance, both thediamond industry and governments have stressed the fact that action onconflict diamonds should not hurt the legitimate trade in diamonds. Forcountries such as Namibia, South Africa and Botswana, for instance, thelegitimate diamond industry plays a significant role in their economies. Inthe case of the latter, diamonds account for two thirds of governmentrevenue (Sub-Committee on International Relations, 2000). Similarly, some800,000 people are employed in the diamond cutting industry in India(The Guardian, 2000b).

However, it is also the case that current proposals for an internationalcertification scheme for diamonds have been constrained by state andindustry interests, with the result that the putative regime is likely to lackteeth. For instance, monitoring and enforcement is by self-regulation andsome elements of the system are merely ‘recommended’ or subject tovoluntary participation. This has led the US General Accounting Office tonote that, as currently envisaged, the scheme may simply ‘provide theappearance of control, whilst still allowing conflict diamonds to enter thelegitimate diamond trade’ (US General Accounting Office, 2002: 11). More-over, the current certification scheme only applies to rough diamonds. Theindustry is developing a warranty scheme which may ultimately extendthrough the supplier chain to include diamond jewellery but this scheme isvoluntary and it remains to be seen how extensively, and with what rigour,it will be adopted. The current focus on rough diamonds represents a


significant loophole. A good analogy here is with arms embargoes againststates. One of the ironic effects of such schemes is that (as in the case ofapartheid South Africa, for instance) they frequently encourage the targetsof such embargoes to create their own domestic industry or to seek outsuppliers whose monitoring of such schemes is not particularly rigorous. Ascurrently envisaged, a global certification scheme may simply encouragetraders in conflict diamonds to set up their own cutting centres. Indeed,Rwanda is already reputed to be establishing a cutting centre in Kigali(House of Commons, 2001: col. 150WH) whilst UNITA has reportedly usedfactories in the United Arab Emirates to polish its diamonds (Global Witness,2000).

Only Pariahs Trade Conflict Goods and Only Certain Pariah Products areConflict Goods

The agenda on conflict goods might also be seen as part of a broader processwhich reflects not so much a concern to deal with the link between suchgoods and violence per se, but rather a focus on the role these goods play insupporting actors deemed pariah by the West. The obvious example is the caseof US military aid to Colombia ostensibly provided as part of its ‘war’ ondrugs. Not only is this drug war partial in that it ignores the more significantrole played by government forces and in particular right wing ‘narco-paramilitaries’ (Stokes, 2001) but it seems more like a front for a traditionalUS counter-insurgency operation. Indeed, Campbell argues that both thedomestic and external elements of America’s drug war have more to do withthe continued need to reinscribe notions of American identity and statecontrol than any objective threats:

. . . given the lack of success in reducing the level of drug trafficking, and the instances in

which United States Foreign Policy has itself condoned drug trafficking in the service of

other security goals, the attention focused on the threat from outside can be seen as part

of a practice that externalises the danger of drugs as a means of sustaining the notion of

sovereignty. (Campbell, 1992: 188)

This is perhaps best reflected in the different responses to the Afghanopium trade under the Taliban and the new regime installed by US militaryaction. Whilst the Taliban regime eventually managed to all but eradicateopium production in 2001, the aid it had expected in return failed tomaterialize. Even before September 11 it was also faced with additionalsanctions. In contrast, the new government’s attempt to replicate the Talibanban have so far failed, and the UN Office for Drug Control estimates that theopium harvest between March and August 2002 will be between 1,900 and2,700 metric tons (UNODCCP, 2002). Despite this, the Bush administrationhas now waived narcotics sanctions against Afghanistan (Agence FrancePresse, 2002). This is not to suggest that the latter policy is necessarilywrong — merely to highlight the way in which both discourse and policy on

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conflict trade in general (and drugs in particular) has less to do with anactor’s complicity in this trade and more to do with economic interests and/or the way in which actors are represented in relation to the contemporaryconstruction of threat.

Similarly, whilst the role of diamonds in funding the pariah RUF in SierraLeone has been highlighted and also the role played by the belatedly pariahCharles Taylor as a conduit for RUF diamonds, the role of Nigerian peace-keepers in supplying drugs for diamonds, and receiving bribes to permit thecontinued activities of the RUF have not been met with anything like thesame degree of condemnation. Arguably, this is because many Westerncountries have a mix of interests which make it advisable not to make toomuch of this issue — for instance, oil interests in Nigeria and a concern topromote Nigeria as a ‘regio-cop’ (Hirsh, 2000) so that Western troops can bekept out of messy regional conflicts.

Perhaps what is most striking about the control agenda on conflict trade,however, is the general silence that has been constructed around thecomplicity of a broad range of Western companies and economies in conflicttrade. Whilst particular attention has been focused on the role of thediamond industry, a wide range of other industries in the West benefit fromthe trade in conflict goods, whether it be timber, oil, gold, copper, ivory,rare animals or coltan (which itself is vital to the manufacture of mobilephones, jet engines, air bags, fibre optics and most of all, capacitors incomputer chips). Yet the recipients of this more generalized trade have,despite the sterling efforts of NGOs such as Global Witness, not beensubject to the same odium as those that sell it, or even those like CharlesTaylor who act as a conduit for such goods. Indeed, to take the latter as anexample, coltan from the DRC has reportedly been flown from the DRC toEurope by the airline company Sabena. The mineral itself has been importedby Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Kenya, India, Pakistan,Russia and the UK (United Nations, 2001: Annex 1) yet the countries andcompanies that receive such goods have largely escaped internationalcondemnation.

Similarly, action to date has been focused around very specific conflictgoods, most notably drugs and diamonds, although there is arguably anemerging control agenda being pushed by NGOs over what have been termedthe ‘logs of war’. This is problematic as many conflicts are characterized byeconomic activity across a number of sectors and by actors who utilize avariety of trading strategies. For instance, over 50 per cent of the incomeof the FARC in Colombia comes from economic activities other than thenarco-trade, whilst the other main insurgent group in Colombia, theNational Liberation Army (ELN), obtains just 6 per cent of its income fromdrug trafficking (Suarez, 2000: 585). Similarly, an estimated 60 to 70 percent of the Taliban’s US$ 100 million war budget was actually derived fromrevenue earned through the smuggling of fuel, consumer and other durablegoods rather than drugs (Rashid, 2001: 404). Perhaps the best example of


this phenomenon is the wide and varied resource predation that hasoccurred in the DRC where the control action recommended by the UNexperts panel has yet to be implemented. Indeed, the extent to which therecommendations of the experts panel is followed through will represent atest of the international community’s willingness to broaden the controlagenda on conflict goods away from what is currently a very narrow focuson drugs and diamonds.

In effect then, there has (to date at least) been a tendency to particularizeboth the range of actors who engage in conflict trade and the conflict goodsdeemed worthy of control. One consequence of this is to encourage a ‘drugsand thugs’ cum pariah goods control agenda which effectively obscures themuch broader complicity of Western economies and companies in facili-tating conflict trade.

CONCLUSION

Whilst there are important distinctions between conflict trade and legitimatetrade, it is also the case that the former is often just a more violent version ofthe neo-patrimonialism and centre–periphery exploitation that characterizesthe latter in weak states and which contributes to their continued under-development. When the structural violence created by these legitimatetrading networks is combined with the impact of neo-liberal globalization,structural adjustment and aid dependence the effect is to produce a particu-larly acute version of the crisis of the state which creates the conditions for,if not the inevitability of, collapse. What is surprising is not the extent towhich collapse occurs, but the extent to which it does not — a fact whichmay bear testament to the continued strength of the idea of the state even inthe midst of its crisis. Despite this, however, it may well be that the incidenceof collapse will increase and that it will come to be viewed as the normalexperience of weak states.

It is certainly the case that, whilst conflict trade is not a phenomenonunique to collapsed states, it has played an important role in the process ofcollapse in a number of cases, most recently in Angola, Liberia, SierraLeone and the DRC. Following the logic of Collier’s analysis of civil wars, itmay even be that the capacity for conflict trade is a factor in precipitatingcollapse. Moreover, even when the state has been reconstituted the economicinterests and networks entrenched by war can undermine the developmentof an effective state and, at worst, simply lead to states being reconstructedas a collapse-in-waiting — Liberia arguably being a current case in point.

More optimistically, the control of conflict trade does offer an opportunityto re-balance the economic calculus between war and peace in favour of thelatter. However, current action on conflict trade seems to be contingentupon the extent to which the actors involved are recognized states, the extentto which such action coincides with the economic interests of developed

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world actors, and the extent to which it coincides with a ‘drugs and thugs’control agenda similar to that which has so far hampered effective action onthe issue of small arms.

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Neil Cooper is Principal Lecturer in Politics and International Relations inthe Department of Politics at the University of Plymouth, Drake Circus,Plymouth, Devon PL4 8AA, UK.


Documents

State Collapse as Business: The Role of Conflict Trade and the Emerging Control Agenda