4. Implications for Policy
This report has characterized the conflict economies of Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen as complex systems defined by violent competition for control of rents. Despite the differences between the four case studies, we find that the structure of rents and the patterns of behaviour and violence are comparable at the sub-economy level (see Table 1 below). We conclude that it is therefore possible to develop distinct policy approaches to target the specific rent structures of capital cities, transit areas and borderlands, and oil-rich areas respectively. In this chapter, we offer insights – but not a prescription – for Western policymakers to guide them in this process, with the end goal of reducing levels of violence.
Table 1: Rent structures, behaviours and patterns of violence in conflict sub-economies
|
Rent structures |
Armed group behaviour |
Violence (competitive and embedded) |
|
|---|---|---|---|
|
Capital cities |
The state as a resource: seizing and allocating assets, revenue streams and patronage postings. |
Institutional domination/control followed by institutional infiltration. |
When a sitting government loses physical control over the capital, competitive violence will continue until a clear winner emerges, after which ‘violence rights’ will be awarded and embedded violence will become institutionalized in the economic life of the city. |
|
Transit areas and borderlands |
Arbitrage, taxation of goods and people. |
Establishment of checkpoints for taxation/protection markets. Significant opportunities for middlemen. |
Sustained competitive violence: armed actors rely upon taxation. |
|
Oil-rich areas |
Taxation contingent on control of the area, and proportion of supply chain. |
Co-option more likely than coercion. Limited supply of civilian expertise. Significant opportunities for middlemen. |
Competitive violence has been relatively limited, as armed actors have understood the economic value of oil and gas infrastructure and the need to cooperate. |
First, we begin by analysing how Western policies have affected sub-economy dynamics to date, before discussing how Western policymakers could help transform these dynamics to reduce violence and provide greater economic stability. This will require Western policymakers to undertake a frank appraisal of their own capacities and objectives; the extent and type of leverage that they possess; and the trade-offs associated with reducing competitive violence and embedded violence. Where leverage and capacity are limited or lacking, doing nothing should also be acknowledged as a policy option in its own right. Finally, we seek to apply these parameters to a series of recommendations for areas of intervention within the sub-economies of the four states.
How Western policies have affected sub-economy dynamics
Through different forms of engagement and intervention – security, political and humanitarian – Western policies play a key role in shaping the dynamics of MENA conflict sub-economies. However, in exploring the impact of these policies, it is necessary to note two important caveats. First, in the wars in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen, external parties – Western states and international organizations – have not been the disinterested, neutral or benevolent parties they sometimes imagine themselves to be. In many cases, Western states have supported one actor or set of actors over others – with the intention of helping one side win – rather than seeking to tackle the underlying causes of conflict. As a result, Western policy goals have often reflected a ‘victory’ or advantageous settlement for a preferred party on the ground. Second, Western policymakers have not considered conflict economy dynamics sufficiently in the development of their approaches towards the states in question. The pursuit of various political, economic and military approaches in isolation from one another all too often misses the wider political economy connections, resulting in harmful implications on the ground.
Capital cities
In the MENA region’s capital cities, security-based Western policy interventions have had a far-reaching impact on the distribution of rents. In some cases, this has had a direct role in determining who can access state resources and assets. Following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, for example, the US-led coalition sought to pacify rival groups via the muhassasa system of quotas – designing a power-sharing political system intended to ensure that people from different backgrounds were represented. However, this approach entrenched a set of elites into positions of power and economic privilege, further driving socio-economic inequality. This became a significant source of embedded violence. In Libya, Western actors’ tacit acceptance of the revenue-generating activities of Tripolitanian militias, in return for their nominal alignment with the GNA, has supported neither functioning governance nor stability. Outbreaks of competitive violence have continued.
Western policymakers’ ability to restrict access to the international financial system through political recognition and economic sanctions remains a powerful tool for dealing with the conflict sub-economies of capital cities. As a result of sanctions, Western companies, international banks and insurance companies have been reluctant to deal with Syria. While restricting the capacity of some actors to access international financial resources, sanctions have also encouraged informal trade and financial networks across Syrian territory and areas of control. This has had unforeseen consequences: EU and US sanctions targeting individual Syrians have prompted the emergence of a new elite of conflict entrepreneurs139 who serve as the regime’s new intermediaries. This is exemplified by the most emblematic business project in Syria in recent years: the real estate development named Marota City (see Chapter 3), which is being built on land forcibly expropriated by the Syrian regime. The businessmen involved in this scheme were placed under EU sanctions for making large profits through their ties to the regime and its security apparatus, and for funding the regime in return.140
As a result of sanctions, Western companies, international banks and insurance companies have been reluctant to deal with Syria
Humanitarian aid for Yemen and Syria, while mostly not earmarked for expenditure in the countries’ respective capitals, still flows via Sanaa and Damascus. This report has detailed how donors seeking to distribute cash in Yemen have little option but to operate via ‘Houthified’ banks based in Sanaa. Meanwhile, the de jure status of the Damascus-based government provides it with a seat at the UN and ensures oversight of the means of distributing aid. Both approaches present challenges to Western donors concerned that their support will be diverted to parties to the conflict – potentially sustaining competitive violence or the (re)development of authoritarian structures, or contributing to the development of embedded violence.
Transit areas and borderlands
In transit areas and borderlands, security-based policies have had a major impact on the market dynamics that determine trading patterns and opportunities for taxation. The Western-supported crackdown on irregular migration in northern Niger, for example, has indirectly affected the conflict sub-economy in southern Libya. The criminalization of human smuggling in Niger means that Nigerien army units that had previously facilitated human smuggling now fire at smuggler convoys, making overland travel more costly and dangerous for migrants seeking to enter southern Libya.141 The reduced flow of migrants into Libya, in turn, is reportedly prompting armed groups to resort to ever more violent means of generating revenues from migrants.142
Apart from their support to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northeastern Syria, Western actors have made limited interventions in transit areas and borderlands. Regional actors that share borders with Iraq, Libya, Syria or Yemen have been more active. In northern Syria, Turkey has allowed only the groups that it supports to control border crossings. Over the course of the Syrian conflict, these crossings have provided a key revenue stream both for armed groups (via checkpoint fees) and for businessmen (via arbitrage). Syrian–Turkish border areas controlled by the SDF, which Turkey opposes, remain closed.
In Yemen, Saudi forces have intervened militarily at key transit areas in al-Mahra governorate to halt the flow of weapons to their government’s enemies. This approach has angered local actors – who had been benefiting from the increase in trade via al-Mahra as a result of the fighting in western Yemen – and threatens to spark conflict. Yet in Bayhan, the Saudi-led coalition appears to have taken a political, pragmatic approach in accepting – in order to keep local actors on side – the continuation of smuggling routes that supply Houthi-aligned forces.
As in capital cities, humanitarian support directed into transit areas and borderlands may be diverted or used by armed actors to generate revenues to finance military agendas. Humanitarian support can also distort markets and create arbitrage opportunities. This presents dilemmas for Western donors. As noted in Chapter 3, a ‘siege’ economy operated between 2013 and 2016 in the Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta, for example. This involved both the armed rebels and government forces profiteering from the taxation opportunities associated with the movement of goods into the area.143 Donors sending aid into Eastern Ghouta were therefore not only providing much-needed support to the local population, but also sustaining the siege economy and the incomes of armed forces on both sides.
Oil-rich areas
In oil-rich areas, Western policies to target assets both militarily (through airstrikes) and economically (through limiting access to international financial markets) have had a major impact on the development of local conflict sub-economies. In Libya, the international community’s insistence that oil can only be marketed through the internationally recognized NOC in Tripoli has likely been a factor in reducing violence. If local actors had been directly able to sell the crude oil extracted from the areas under their control, more bouts of competitive violence would probably have been witnessed in these areas and beyond. On the other hand, curtailing access to international markets can lead to unintended consequences: in Iraq, UN sanctions in the 1990s led to the development of overland smuggling routes and the growth of business ties between the regime and trafficking groups. These networks still operate today, long after the removal of sanctions. Oil smuggling presents a source of revenues for a variety of armed groups – including, until recently, ISIS. Some groups have utilized such revenues to fund military challenges to the state.
In Syria and Iraq, Western governments have expressed concern that oil-rich areas could provide revenues for ISIS. However, these areas also support local livelihoods. In northeastern Syria, the bombing of oil infrastructure by the US-led anti-ISIS coalition reduced ISIS’s revenue-generation capabilities. It also cut off the local population’s fuel supplies just as winter set in, damaging the local coping economy.
Designing interventions in conflict sub-economies
The above analysis makes it clear that many pitfalls are associated with interventions in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen. It also suggests opportunities for policies to achieve positive outcomes. In developing plans for tackling conflict economy dynamics, policymakers must first accept that the aspiration to ‘do no harm’ is illusory. In conflict sub-economy systems, the best available option is to do ‘less harm’. This involves taking calculated risks. It means accepting that any intervention is likely to have unforeseen consequences. Mitigating this threat requires policymakers to deepen their understanding of the operating environment and honestly assess where leverage exists over conflict sub-economy dynamics. It also requires them to accept those elements of the conflict economy that cannot be changed.
Without critically interrogating data sources, the motives of participants, and the completeness or accuracy of information on conflict economies – and without understanding the context of those findings – policymakers may end up supporting policies that do significant harm. Consequently, doing nothing should also be evaluated as a potential policy choice in its own right.144 This may be particularly relevant to Syria, where it is difficult to design interventions when the Assad regime is seeking to reconsolidate authoritarian rule and Western diplomatic leverage is waning, yet where doing nothing further enables authoritarian reconsolidation. The question here is what kinds of interventions – for instance, support to local governance structures, livelihoods and civil society initiatives – can benefit populations in need in ways which are not susceptible to exploitation by regime networks, or at least where the risk of such exploitation can be managed. For example, while large-scale funding for post-conflict reconstruction would likely risk capture by regime-aligned interests, might Western donors instead support local communities directly, for example through civil society projects in conflict-affected areas?
In developing plans for tackling conflict economy dynamics, policymakers must first accept that the aspiration to ‘do no harm’ is illusory
In considering the risks of intervention, Western policymakers should also accept that doing nothing carries its own consequences. Where violence – competitive, embedded or both – persists unchecked, external actors who turn a blind eye will be perceived as tacitly condoning violence and offering political approval to its beneficiaries. Yet cutting off aid to Syria for fear that such support will bolster the regime would also surely exacerbate the hardships of populations in need.
Acknowledging trade-offs: short-term stability vs long-term development
Addressing conflict economy dynamics through the pursuit of political settlements in the form of elite bargains involves significant trade-offs that must be openly discussed and acknowledged. Buying off warring parties may curtail violence in the short term, for instance, but is likely to entrench patronage and corruption that will drive future conflict through embedded violence.145 On the other hand, trying to disrupt patronage networks and challenge rent-seeking theoretically offers a more inclusive and sustainable peace – but comes with a higher risk of sparking competitive violence.146
Elite bargains offer mixed benefits. On the one hand, power-sharing can mitigate the negative effects of a winner-takes-all dynamic. On the other, policymakers must consider the long-term implications and potential unintended consequences of such policies. As the muhassasa system in Iraq illustrated, it can be hard to roll back such arrangements: taking power away from actors who directly or indirectly rely on rents is difficult, even where stability and security are offered in exchange. In Libya, the transactional nature of the GNA’s allocation of ministries and political offices inhibits state-building, while the GNA’s reliance on Tripolitanian armed groups to ensure its security has enabled those groups, and their networks, to infiltrate state institutions. This threatens to shift power away from the state, entrenching a transactional approach to politics that will be difficult to alter in a post-settlement landscape.
It is a mistake to assume that a process of reform will be possible once an elite bargain is reached, i.e. once ‘stability’ has been ensured.147 While establishing elite bargains may reduce competitive violence, this approach will not reshape incentive structures. It will not compel political and military leaders to ensure more equitable distribution of resources, nor will it encourage decentralization of the political system. Under the centralized systems of governance in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen, the victors will undoubtedly seek to retain the spoils from conflict economies. Equally, events in Yemen illustrate that if an elite bargain is to be successful, it must accommodate the interests of the most powerful parties and emerging centres of power. The relative exclusion of Houthi interests from an elite bargain in 2011 can be seen as a motivating factor in their violent contestation of the status quo in 2014.
Failure to address sources of embedded violence is likely to result in a return to competitive violence. Western states have often preferred quick wins to longer-term solutions. Events in Iraq amply illustrate that the muhassasa quota system has failed to address the violence embedded in the system, and that it has created conditions for a cyclical return to competitive violence.148 Such considerations raise difficult questions over whether ending a particular bout of competitive violence is a sufficient measure of success, when another sustained bout of competitive violence is expected to follow.
On the other hand, challenging vested interests and lucrative patronage-based networks within MENA conflict economies increases the probability (and likely scale) of competitive violence. This route is high-risk and uncertain. However, if successful, it is more likely to create space for genuine economic and institutional reforms. This report has illustrated that while competitive violence draws the most attention, embedded violence continues after war nominally ‘ends’. Stabilization actors and humanitarian aid donors should therefore seek to address forms of embedded violence, while development agencies need to consider how their approaches can tackle embedded violence at both national and local level.
To address embedded violence, elite bargains must offer more than agreements on power-sharing and political transition: they must also include measures to reform the system of governance, including enforceable measures to increase accountability. They must confront the underlying distributions of power. Economic components of political settlements are too often absent or contain minimal content, even though they have a powerful anchoring effect. The Libyan Political Agreement, for example, contained less than one page on interim financial arrangements, yet these arrangements are still in place over three years later. In such circumstances, political settlements may contribute to ending active combat, but they pose long-term challenges for equality and accountability by entrenching the conflict economy in the supposed peace economy.149
Policies tailored to conflict sub-economies
Targeted intervention at the local (i.e. sub-economy) level at which conflict economies operate brings meaningful opportunities to increase impact. This is significant where progress at the national level has stalled, or is not deemed possible. However, it requires Western policymakers to invest in developing their understanding of local networks.
In seeking to address conflict sub-economy systems, policymakers should design interventions that develop incentives for peaceful cooperation rather than solely relying on enforcement mechanisms. Cracking down on illicit practices without offering viable livelihood alternatives, for example, may simply encourage a different form of illicit activity. One example from the Libyan case is that external pressure on people-traffickers has reportedly led some to switch to fuel smuggling.150
In providing aid and livelihood support to populations within conflict sub-economies, Western policymakers must accept that the risk of funds being diverted to illicit activities cannot be entirely mitigated. While Western donors accept this reality behind closed doors, they feel unable to admit so in public for fear of the political ramifications. This places the onus on implementing partners to carry the risk, and inhibits the development of transparent mitigation measures. Meanwhile, cutting off humanitarian aid on the grounds that armed groups will profit from its distribution will harm those who depend on that support. Consequently, the best that agencies and foreign companies can do is to establish clear guidelines for the distribution of aid and engagement with local partners.151 Imposing conditions upon aid – such as the right to select and conduct proper due diligence on local counterparties, and the insistence on transparency – may seem like a hopeless task, but these efforts should not be abandoned.
When considering how to target specific activities through enforcement mechanisms, policymakers should acknowledge that ‘legality’ is a relative, not fixed, concept in conflict economies. Policy intervention tools cannot therefore be limited to legal measures. In the four conflict economies reviewed in this report, it is notable that the legality of a given practice may be decided by a single conflict actor, as in Syria. As indicated above, a better measure for deciding policy interventions would be to assess how the political and economic benefits from conflict economy activities are distributed horizontally across groups, and vertically within groups.
Policymakers should acknowledge that ‘legality’ is a relative, not fixed, concept in conflict economies
In choosing which illicit activities to constrain, policymakers should focus upon those with shorter supply chains, where fewer vested interests are involved and critical economic coping mechanisms are less likely to be affected. Financial and property crimes are examples of this. In contrast, certain forms of smuggling – such as of subsidized basic goods and fuel – have longer supply chains and affect wider networks of participants. Such activities provide employment and benefits to many people. For the most impact at least cost to those in need, Western policymakers should target bottlenecks where rent-seeking is most concentrated. Where measures target specific individuals, Western actors must adopt clear, transparent, consistent and enforceable criteria in order to be taken seriously.
Capital cities
The sub-economies of Baghdad, Tripoli, Damascus and Sanaa have an outsized influence over developments at the national level. These capitals are central nodes for public and private patronage, as well as the principal connection points to the international financial system and multilateral organizations.
In these centralized systems of governance, where power is wielded in the capital, physical control of territory translates directly into influence over the management of state resources and assets as well as those of the private sector. State capture and the infiltration of state institutions have been notable features of the conflicts in all four capitals in the case studies. Similarly, the redistribution of state resources as rents has driven local dynamics of embedded violence. This has also resulted in power being held by those who physically control institutions rather than by the institutions themselves.
Western policymakers should consider three key factors when seeking to addressing these issues:
- Policies aimed at strengthening state institutions in national capitals should seek to prevent monopolies of power by supporting incremental change over time, even where a monopoly appears to be in the interests of the Western state in question. One of the possible paths is to widen the networks of beneficiaries to include people from outside the immediate circle of each conflict actor. In the long run, such an approach would dilute the influence of current networks and broaden the patronage base. Western countries have supported a broad range of civil society organizations and local councils over the years, and should use this knowledge to identify appropriate partners.
- Policy interventions must be directed towards developing processes and institutions, not just supporting personal relationships with elite actors in capitals. A case in point is the concerted support provided by the West to the losing election campaign of Iraq’s then-prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, in 2018. Maintaining solid political relationships with key actors is critical, but when their political counterparts change or power shifts occur, the terms of these relationships will need to be renegotiated. Measures that cement rules and norms (such as on the peaceful transfer of power) within the political and institutional system can provide greater predictability and stability in such relationships. In addition, the risk with seeking to resolve conflict on the basis of personalized politics is that it can inadvertently cement the power of conflict profiteers among political elites, while ignoring the need for reforms in governance and state institutions.
- Decentralization needs to be accompanied by accountability. Centralized revenue distribution has been a key driver of conflict in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen because funds are distributed without transparency or accountability. This has led many to see political decentralization as a potential solution. But structural change per se is no panacea. Decentralization that is not wedded to clear mandates, and to transparency and accountability mechanisms, will merely shift rent-seeking into the regions and serve the interests of a different set of actors. Western policymakers should only support decentralization that meets minimum transparency and accountability thresholds, and that ensures that institutions with sufficient administrative capacity are available at the local level. If these conditions are met, decentralization can help to mitigate profiteering and rent-seeking, because diluting the power of the capital city will reduce incentives to violently take control of it as part of a winner-takes-all system.
Transit areas and borderlands
Internal transit areas within states and borderlands with neighbouring states are the main sites where goods and people are informally ‘taxed’. This taxation provides a major source of income for warring parties. Policymakers often see either the removal of transit areas or the establishment of monopoly control over transit areas as a tangible step towards stabilization. However, transit areas themselves are symptomatic of political instability. For armed groups, they provide money and security. Only when these needs are met through other means will informal taxation at transit areas disappear.
The best way to tackle rent-seeking at checkpoints is to address the root causes and the wider dynamics of the conflict economy. Looking at the issue through a state-building lens, one approach to transformative change in conflict economies is to consider how to convert an armed group’s ‘checkpoint’ into a state-sanctioned ‘toll booth’. Ostensibly, both checkpoints and toll booths perform similar functions: collecting a ‘tax’ on those using the road. Yet they operate under very different conditions and reflect very different assumptions about the state – the degree of state capacity, the level of trust in the state, the presence or absence of a government monopoly on physical violence, the need for checks on the abuse of power, the role of the rule of law, etc. That said, a wholesale shift from a ‘checkpoint’ economy to a ‘toll booth’ economy implies a number of significant institutional reforms and societal changes that cannot realistically be achieved in a five- or even 10-year period after the negotiation of a political settlement.
The West’s prevailing approach towards borderlands as originators of threats complicates the goal of mitigating conflict economy dynamics. Attempting to seal borders through securitized approaches in order to prevent the flow of illicit goods inhibits the local economy, and is itself a driver of instability.
Western policymakers should consider the following types of interventions in transit areas and borderlands:
- External interventions should support the development of local governance structures that have clear mandates and are accountable to local populations. More equitable and inclusive distribution of state resources – even accepting problems of corruption and accountability – can reduce the pressure on armed groups to use violence. Yet historically, borderlands have had limited connection to centralized state structures. Rather than simply subsuming local authorities in borderlands into the state system, the goal should be to develop systems that are appropriate for the operating environment. Given that service provision often underpins government legitimacy in MENA states, this may mean devolving more authority to local governance structures if the central state is not realistically able to provide services.
- The development of sustainable local economies can be fostered through reconstruction and development programming. However, in some cases, it will not be possible to participate in aid programming without legitimizing and strengthening conflict actors. Where regimes are hostile and there remains political pressure to ‘do something’, external actors must develop a solid understanding of the local operating environment in order to mitigate the risk of funding being diverted to unintended beneficiaries. Efforts to address conflict economy dynamics in borderlands need to be broadened to target the many root causes of smuggling, which are often linked to socio-economic inequalities across identity groups. In borderlands, Western governments could encourage negotiations with neighbouring countries to enable the free flow of goods produced in these areas. This would also encourage local production activity.
- Negotiated zones of control need to be agreed by a wide array of actors. In eastern Yemen, a robust system of informal taxation emerged at the outset of the war, allowing for the flow of goods in and out of the area without causing unmanageable price increases. Since 2017, however, growing regional interest in the area has disrupted this arrangement, and at times has seen the eastern border cut off entirely. In southern Libya, the proliferation of checkpoints used by armed groups as sources of financing has contributed to goods shortages and high inflation. Brokering reciprocal taxation agreements between communities in these areas could help to mitigate the negative impacts of price inflation on local populations, which in turn could mitigate some security concerns (i.e., over the protection of populations, property and markets).
- Anti-smuggling measures should focus on disrupting flows of goods that are directly related to conflict, such as arms and ammunition, rather than on preventing trade in basic goods essential for economic survival. Smugglers operated in the borderlands of Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen prior to the outbreak of hostilities, but their activities have intensified and diversified as the conflicts have evolved. It should be noted that not all forms of smuggling are directly connected to violence, and consequently not all of these should be targeted.
Oil-rich areas
When attempting to constrain the finances of armed groups in oil-rich areas, policymakers should avoid directly damaging the livelihoods of local populations. Failure to observe this condition is likely to exacerbate the grievances harboured by those who receive few (or no) benefits from central state authorities. This was evidenced by the bombings of oil infrastructure in northeastern Syria conducted by the US-led anti-ISIS coalition. In this case, the distribution of revenues along the entire supply chain was key. Understanding the dynamics of the conflict sub-economy would have helped Western policymakers to target their intervention more effectively and mitigate the potential second-order effects of their policy. It would also have been clear to policymakers that ISIS was not generating funds on the scale initially estimated, and that the distribution of revenues from ISIS activity was broad – meaning that large segments of the local population were affected by the bombings.
When attempting to constrain the finances of armed groups in oil-rich areas, policymakers should avoid directly damaging the livelihoods of local populations
Western policymakers should consider the following imperatives in developing interventions in oil-rich areas:
- The West should leverage its power to grant access to international oil markets. Insisting that only one recognized authority can market oil internationally is perhaps the most significant lever of control that Western actors possess over the conflict economies of the four states. As a policy tool, this has been particularly effective in preventing oil sales from the east of Libya, though less so in Iraq (where overland smuggling networks are extensive) or in Yemen and Syria (where oil exports are not a factor).
- Incentive mechanisms should support the redistribution of oil wealth to local communities. In some oil-rich areas, such as Basra in Iraq, poverty creates a powerful incentive for local communities to divert oil supplies. This in turn supports a local market for protection. More equitable distribution of wealth would likely reduce calls for federalism or support for separatist agendas. Western governments could encourage the allocation by the central government of a specific share of oil revenues to investment projects in the areas of production, in a similar fashion to the rule established for the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq. This could be based on the size of the population or on socio-economic indicators.
- Interventions should support deeper engagement between local populations and oil industry players (both public- and private-sector operators). In Libya’s south, the population has limited access to skilled employment within the sector, and is reduced to competing for rents by operating protection rackets that target oil installations. Oil companies (both national and international) should be incentivized to invest in local communities (e.g. via training programmes for engineers). This should also include efforts to address the environmental impacts of production activities, such as the pollution of underground aquifers, which negatively impact water-scarce areas. Such approaches may render oil operators less susceptible to strikes and blockades by local populations.
- Policymakers must understand who profits from oil and fuel smuggling – and the supply chain mechanisms through which those profits are achieved – before attempting to disrupt such activity. Every link in the supply chain contributes to the conversion of crude oil into money, so disrupting even one upstream link can have a substantial impact on downstream communities. Policymakers need to design comprehensive strategies that address the entire supply chain rather than just one link.
Interventions present many pitfalls, but there are also opportunities to help reduce violence and insecurity – though a basic requirement is that local dynamics are taken into account appropriately. Intervention targeting specific conflict sub-economies can increase policy impact, but this requires that Western policymakers invest in developing their understanding of local networks and local economies. Without such an understanding, there is a substantial risk of unintended consequences causing unanticipated harms.
139 See Abboud, S. (2017), ‘Social Change, Network Formation and Syria’s War Economies’, Middle East Policy, 24(1), doi:10.1111/mepo.12254 (accessed 16 May 2019).
140 Rollins, T. (2019), ‘Key Syrian reconstruction figures sanctioned by EU as business delegation heads to UAE’, Syria Direct, 21 January 2019, https://syriadirect.org/news/key-syrian-reconstruction-figures-sanctioned-by-eu-as-business-delegation-heads-to-uae/ (accessed 16 May 2019).
141 Data from forthcoming Chatham House analysis.
142 Micallef (2019), The Human Conveyor Belt Broken.
143 Lund (2016), ‘Into the Tunnels’.
144 See Cheng, Goodhand and Meehan (2018), Synthesis Paper: Securing and Sustaining Elite Bargains, p. 62.
145 Cheng, C. and Zaum, D. (2011), ‘Selling the Peace? Corruption and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding’, in Cheng, C. and Zaum, D. (eds) (2011), Corruption and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding: Selling the Peace?, Oxford: Routledge.
146 Cheng, Goodhand and Meehan (2018), Synthesis Paper: Securing and Sustaining Elite Bargains, p. 62.
147 Heydemann (2018), ‘Civil War, Economic Governance & State Reconstruction in the Arab Middle East’.
148 Mansour (2017), Iraq After the Fall of ISIS.
149 Atallah, S. (2012), ‘Positive peace for Lebanon: reconciliation, reform and resilience’, Conciliation Resources, https://www.c-r.org/accord-article/reconstruction-and-peace-lebanon-post-war-economic-policy-conversation-sami-atallah (accessed 16 May 2019).
150 Altai Consulting (2017), Leaving Libya: Rapid Assessment of Municipalities of Departures of Migrants in Libya, Tunis: Altai Consulting, June 2017, p. 80, http://www.altaiconsulting.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/2017_Altai-Consulting_Leaving-Libya-Rapid-Assessment-of-Municipalities-of-Departure-of-Migrants-in-Libya.pdf (accessed 15 May 2019).
151 For example, see the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights, which are targeted at the extractives sector.