New article: Sudan, Chad and Libya knit together as illicit markets enable conflict economy

On 17 December, ENACT published an article I authored on Sudan’s conflict and illicit economies, with a focus on how cross-border smuggling from Libya and Chad is being impacted. The original article can be found here: https://enactafrica.org/enact-observer/sudan-chad-and-libya-knit-together-as-illicit-markets-enable-conflict-economy

It is reprinted below:

Sudan, Chad and Libya knit together as illicit markets enable conflict economy

Sudan’s civil war continues to rage, with no sign that either the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) or Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) are close to a military victory or open to a ceasefire.

Over 10 million civilians are displaced within Sudan or into neighbouring countries. Its economy is in ruins, with business centres transformed into battlefields. Severe hunger afflicts half the population, with famine emerging in Darfur.

Less discussed, however, is the impact of the conflict on regional illicit markets. The war has had a catalytic effect on these, as civilians and combatants turn to smuggling networks for key goods. Illicit businesses have boomed, especially in the historically marginalised borderlands between Chad, Libya and Sudan.

Although many types of smuggled goods feed the conflict economy, food, fuel and arms stand out as especially important in and around Sudan’s northern and western borders.

Food smuggling into Sudan predates the war, but the conflict has supercharged it. In recent research conducted by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, interviewees flagged a marked increase in the clandestine movement of food (such as rice, pasta, flour, sugar and cooking oil) over the last eight months, as hunger in Sudan has worsened.

Interviewees report that food smuggling in Sudan’s borderlands is highly decentralised, with many relatively small smugglers plying the routes between southern Libya, northern Chad, and northwestern Sudan.

Like food, fuel smuggling on Sudan’s borders is not new. A high-volume trade in contraband petrol and diesel from eastern Libya to Sudan emerged the year before the war, reportedly controlled by the Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF) and RSF. The conflict’s disruption of licit fuel supplies in Sudan has expanded the trade’s value and volume.

The main route remains through eastern Libya. On it, a few LAAF-linked actors smuggle fuel from coastal depots to the southern city of Kufra and across into SAF-controlled areas in Sudan. One research contact estimated that 500 000 barrels of petrol and diesel were smuggled weekly via this route.

Over the past year, another smuggling route has emerged between LAAF-controlled southwestern Libya, northern Chad, and Sudan’s western Darfur region. While initially ad hoc, driven by low-level smugglers, it has reportedly become more tightly organised and controlled by LAAF and RSF officials.

Weapons trafficking is perhaps the most militarily critical of the cross-border illicit markets boosted by the war. Most international reporting focuses on weapons trafficking to Sudan by nations supporting either the RSF or SAF. While this fuels the conflict, it is just one part of the picture.

A more decentralised arms trade has emerged, primarily concentrated around the Chad-Sudan border. This trade primarily draws on weapons and ammunition already in Libya or other regional conflict zones. However, in the tri-border region a recent seizure of four trailers of weapons imported through the Libyan port of Benghazi destined for Chad highlights the risk that international trafficking pathways could be emerging.

The weapons trade across the Chad-Sudan border is bidirectional, with Sudanese traffickers exporting weapons stolen from or abandoned by SAF personnel in Darfur to networks in eastern Chad, which then move them to other regional markets. This points to the evolution of important counter-cyclical markets in goods – mostly weapons, stolen vehicles, plundered consumer goods and hashish – smuggled out of Sudan.

The conflict has also driven an increase in human smuggling along Sudan’s borders. This is dominated by refugees fleeing to neighbouring countries, whose avenues for legal and safe movement out of the country have shrunk over the past 20 months. Human smuggling networks have either expanded existent operations or developed new routes along the Egyptian, Libyan and Chadian borders. The conflict is effectively reinvigorating and partially reshaping the human smuggling ecosystem in Sudan and neighbouring states.

Crucially, these illicit markets are not static and will probably continue evolving and expanding as the conflict continues. Experience from other regional conflicts, notably Libya, has also shown that shifts in illicit markets and war economies can have a lasting impact long after the guns have stopped firing.

For international actors working to end the war, together with understanding and monitoring the conflict’s intersection with illicit markets, is critical.

First, combatants increasingly rely on weapons and fuel trafficked in from abroad to continue the conflict, and smuggled food is critical for starving civilians. Understanding how these flows are evolving can warn international actors about emerging risks and help them tailor responses.

Second, the conflict has led to a growing intersection of illicit and state actors. While the war has caused the breakdown of the Sudanese state, interviewees said smuggling often occurred with the knowledge and protection of RSF- and SAF-affiliated actors in Sudan and officials in neighbouring states.

Officials financially vested in the conflict economy could be disinclined to make peace. Even if peace comes, such connections risk subverting the rule of law, eroding public institutions’ capacities and worsening citizens’ trust in the state. Once illicit and state actors are intertwined, connections can be difficult to reverse.

Third, this could impact the long-term evolution of illicit economies in Sudan. Even a relatively speedy end to the conflict would leave the country weaker, with a wrecked economy and overwhelmed law enforcement. Countering illicit economies probably wouldn’t be prioritised.

Lastly, there are regional consequences to consider. Empowered illicit markets and criminal networks connected to Sudan’s conflict could escalate corruption and weaken governmental capabilities in neighbouring countries. The trafficked arms flowing into the country now could well reverse in the future, fuelling regional instability and violence.

Going forward, most international focus on Sudan will likely be geared towards negotiating a ceasefire and building longer-term peace. However, given the above risks, the conflict economy and its tie-ins with regional markets should be given more attention.

At this point, there is particular value in three interlinked policy areas. First, enhanced efforts to track and analyse the evolution of the conflict economy, with an eye on how this could fuel instability or corruption in Sudan or neighbouring states. Ideally, this should be done in a shareable way and for maximum reach.

Second, policy activity to counter crime on the ground is critical, though it focuses on addressing the worst harms of the war economy, such as abusive human smuggling and unchecked weapons trafficking. Such a nuanced approach could also help mitigate the risk that crackdowns on cross-border smuggling of key commodities – such as food and fuel – unintentionally worsen vulnerable populations’ situations.

Targeted financial and travel sanctions on key members of the criminal ecosystems fuelling Sudan’s war economy could help deter political and business elites in the region from becoming more involved in such illicit economic flows.

For best effect multiple policy tools, possibly under a single, forward-looking strategy, could be used in tandem with prosecutorial approaches, law enforcement capacity building, and diplomatic pressure on regional states and non-state actors facilitating illicit flows. With this, development aid to communities harmed by the war and war economy is critical.

Responding to both ensuring a lasting ceasefire and the emergent illicit economies will be essential for sustained stability in Sudan and the region.

New Report on Sudan and Human Smuggling

I’m delighted to launch my latest report on human smuggling in and through Sudan. It details how the smuggling ecosystem in the country has been impacted by the civil war, and how refugees are increasingly turning to smugglers to navigate the conflict landscape and escape the country.

It can be accessed here.

New Report on Troubled Political Transitions and Organized Crime

I’m delighted to launch my latest report: Troubled transitions and organised crime in Ethiopia and Tunisia.

Co-authored with Tadesse Simie Metekia, the report analyzes how troubled political transitions and democratic backsliding can impact organized crime. After laying out a theory, it delves into case studies from Ethiopia and Tunisia.

The report can be accessed here.

New Article: US sanctions missing their mark

On 15 May, the GI-TOC published an article I co-authored with Lucia Bird and Flore Berger on the designation by the US of seven Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin leaders, based on their involvement in kidnapping of Americans for ransom.

The article can be found here: https://globalinitiative.net/analysis/us-sanctions-jnim-kidnappings-west-north-africa-sahel/

It is reprinted below:

US sanctions missing their mark

On 23 April, the United States State Department and the Treasury imposed sanctions on seven leaders of Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), a violent extremist group operating in the Maghreb and West Africa. Designees include Iyad ag Ghali, JNIM’s leader, and Amadou Kouffa, the leader of the Katiba Macina, a member of the JNIM coalition, among others.  

It is not the first time that JNIM and its leaders have been sanctioned. Iyad ag Ghali, for example, has been sanctioned by the UN since 2013. However, the recent designations stand out for their approach. The April sanctions are designed mainly to deter wrongful detention of American citizens, and were issued under a new sanctions regime, laid out in Executive Order 14078, ‘Bolstering Efforts To Bring Hostages and Wrongfully Detained United States Nationals Home’. 

The executive order allows for the sanctioning of a host of actors, including militant groups, criminal organizations and state agents who engage in, or play a role in supporting, hostage taking of US nationals for political or financial gain. It is meant to ‘deter and … impose tangible consequences on those responsible for, or complicit in, hostage-taking or the wrongful detention of a United States national abroad.’  

In practice, however, the executive order has hitherto only been used to sanction state-affiliated agencies and individuals, such as Russia’s Federal Security Service, Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The designation of senior JNIM members therefore represents a shift in scope, signalling the sanction regime can also be used to target non-state actors – in this case terrorists – who engage in kidnapping and hostage taking. 

It is also an acknowledgement of how JNIM has emerged as the most dominant group behind the kidnapping for ransom market across the Sahel and the wider region. The critical importance of the kidnapping market for JNIM is reflected in the individuals designated, who include JNIM leaders in charge of operations and those with core organizational roles (including the head of finance and a main negotiator for the release of foreign hostages). ‘JNIM relies on hostage-taking and wrongful detention of civilians in order to gain leverage and instill fear, creating anguish and misery for the victims and their families,’ said Brian E. Nelson, the US’s Department of the Treasury’s under-secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.  

However, while these sanctions will be seen as a high-profile move by the US to counter kidnapping, their impacts are likely to be limited, as they are out of step with the local realities of JNIM’s role in the contemporary Sahelian kidnapping ‘industry’.  

The nature of the kidnapping market has shifted since early in the first decade of the 2000s. Then, most kidnappings undertaken by armed groups in the Sahel (including JNIM’s predecessor groups) were motivated by financial gains. The kidnapping industry was a major source of revenue for armed groups at the time. It is estimated that between 2006 and 2012, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, one of JNIM’s predecessor groups, received €60 million in ransom payments. Their predominant targets were Westerners, including US nationals. 

Since the middle-2010s, however, the number of foreigners kidnapped for ransom has significantly declined. This is largely due to a dwindling number of potential targets as foreigners left high-risk areas or those under the influence of violent extremist groups. Since then, there have been only a small number of sporadic incidents of foreigners being kidnapped, including the abduction of an American nun from a convent in Burkina Faso, who was released in August 2022, in exchange for an imprisoned JNIM actor. Today, foreigners constitute only a tiny proportion of kidnapping incidents and have become a less important source of financing for JNIM. 

Meanwhile, kidnapping of locals has surged in the region since the late 2010s. There were more than 2 000 kidnappings recorded by ACLED between 2017 and April 2024 across Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger (accounting for around 13% of all violent incidents), and Sahelian civilians were the target of over 98% of them. JNIM was identified as the perpetrator in 50% of recorded kidnappings across this period. 

While hostage-taking of foreigners has drawn substantial press and policy attention outside the region, only sporadic international interest has been shown in the growing kidnapping ecosystem targeting West African nationals. 

Moreover, in the current Sahelian kidnapping industry, the majority of kidnapping incidents by JNIM – which constitute a significant proportion of total incidents – do not appear to be predominantly motivated by money. Instead, kidnappings have become a key tool used as part of JNIM’s wider strategies for infiltrating and consolidating control over territories. The group appears to use kidnapping primarily for the purposes of intelligence gathering, forced recruitment, punishment and intimidation – as assessed in further detail in these reports analyzing JNIM’s use of kidnapping in Burkina Faso and in northern Benin.  

The implications of kidnapping for ransom extend beyond the victims, and pose serious stability challenges. Several West African countries have been destabilized by insurgencies, which began in Mali in 2012. Our research shows that kidnapping is one of a number of ‘accelerant’ illicit markets in West Africa, alongside arms trafficking and cattle rustling. Such markets stand out for their role in fuelling instability and violence, and are enabled by conflict. Kidnapping in particular is a mechanism through which armed groups exert their control through violent governance in the central Sahel.  

The April sanctions highlighting JNIM’s role in the Sahelian kidnapping industry are a significant move, in that they represent the most high-profile international action targeting kidnapping perpetrators in recent years.  However, they are unlikely to have a material impact, given that most of the recently designated JNIM members are already under sanction, typically travel little beyond the region, while the group as a whole earns most of its revenue from other licit and illicit markets locally. In this sense, it is likely to prove a blunt instrument. 

To effect change, a broader, coordinated regional and international response to the kidnapping industry is required, drawing together local, national, regional and international stakeholders. Any effective response – such as further sanctions, law enforcement coordination, targeted aid support and strengthening the part played by civil society in vulnerable communities – needs to be tailored to the kidnapping challenge faced first and foremost by West Africans, and not just Westerners.  

Responses that focus only on kidnapping threats faced by Westerners are unlikely to gain any traction within the Sahel and West Africa, and are doomed to miss the mark. A more meaningful way to mitigate risks of Western hostage taking in the region is to comprehensively address the far broader and more acute threat posed by the kidnapping ecosystem preying upon locals.