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Crime-Conflict Nexus

The relationship between criminal activity and conflict can be complex, but unpacking it offers much needed perspective on some of the key global political hotspots of today. Illicit activity, such as smuggling or production of drugs, weapons, antiquities, wildlife, and other products gives state and non-state actors access to alternative revenue streams that offer illicit actors’ both financial resources as well as influence. The individuals and networks behind these operations often gain credibility with their local communities, political influence, and access to arms, influence, money, and power that can be, and often is, leveraged to not only improve their political and economic standing, but also to alter the status quo within a state, or region— laying the groundwork for conflict and instability.

This nexus and its geopolitical implications are well at play in the world today; the Taliban’s involvement in the poppy trade in Afghanistan, the former Syrian regime and Hezbollah’s sponsorship of the captagon trade, and the Sinaloa and CJNG criminal cartels’ growing influence in North America have all introduced complex health, security, and governance challenges to the U.S. and its partners.

This portfolio examines and investigates the relationship among criminal activity, conflict, and insecurity. Our work seeks to shed light on the unique challenges that criminal actors pose to domestic security and U.S. interests abroad.

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The Crime-Conflict Nexus Portfolio was created and is led by Caroline Rose.

Crime-Conflict Nexus Initiatives

Middle East Methamphetamines Project

A staggering proliferation of methamphetamines—particularly crystal meth—has emerged across the Middle East region. After the Assad regime’s fall in Syria and the seizure of major, industrial-scale labs has created a likely regional shortage of captagon, the supply and demand of methamphetamines are likely to increase. This shapes an emerging crisis for regional public health, security, and governance that should be addressed with urgency and concern by local and international stakeholders. Criminal networks trafficking methamphetamines are taking advantage of the drug’s relatively small size and competitive cost-to-weight ratio, to develop new, innovative smuggling methods to bypass detection. Methamphetamine’s highly addictive nature poses serious risks to public health, with many countries in the Middle East ill-equipped to address the growing need for rehabilitation and harm reduction. Furthermore, methamphetamine’s high price and rising popularity have offered criminal groups—some of them armed actors—opportunities to build alternative revenue streams and accrue both economic and political leverage.  The Middle East Methamphetamines Project seeks to generate new actionable intelligence and analyses about all aspects of the regional methamphetamine trade. Through open-source intelligence methods, the project maintains a comprehensive database that monitors all methamphetamine-related arrests, seizures, laboratory raids, and other developments—data that can help determine trade patterns and emerging challenges. The project also maintains a live interactive map that journalists, researchers, and policymakers can use to monitor the trade’s evolution over time and geographic scope, which can be found below. Through its intelligence reports, articles, podcasts, hosted Track II dialogues, and public events, the project serves to encourage innovative, effective policy solutions to address methamphetamine’s security, geopolitical, and health implications in the Middle East region. The Middle East Methamphetamines Project was created and is led by Caroline Rose and is part of the Crime-Conflict Nexus Portfolio. 

Drone Trafficking Project

Across the world, criminal organizations are turning to drone technology to smuggle illicit goods and bypass law enforcement detection. Commercial-grade drones, in particular, offer a cheap and efficient alternative to maritime and overland smuggling operations, with advanced payloads that can deliver contraband to transit and destination markets. These same drones can also increase these groups’ abilities to conduct intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance and even conduct aerial strikes, adding a kinetic component to their illicit activity. Criminal syndicates’ use of underwater drones, commercial drones, and even military-grade drone technology have introduced a new, challenging reality for customs and border security forces.  The Drone Trafficking Project seeks to generate new actionable intelligence and analyses all aspects of drone trafficking and its implications. Through open-source intelligence gathering, the project tracks all developments related to drone trafficking sightings and seizures and identify how these patterns can be used to inform public policy.  Through its published content and programming, the project  seeks to identify innovative policy solutions that can help address drone trafficking’s geopolitical, law enforcement, and security implications. The Drone Trafficking Project was created and is led by Caroline Rose and is part of the Crime-Conflict Nexus Portfolio.

The Taliban Poppy Ban Project

In April 2022, the Taliban imposed a blanket ban on all poppy and ephedra cultivation inside Afghanistan to crack down on drug production and blunt the country’s reputation as the world’s top heroin producer and emerging hub for methamphetamines manufacturing. As it seeks diplomatic recognition, the Taliban has touted this effort as a key initiative to gain credibility with key international actors.  The ban has, largely, been effective. Afghanistan—once the source of 90% of the world’s heroin supply—has experienced a near-total reduction in poppy cultivation. The cultivation of ephedra, similarly, has steadily declined. This policy has heavily impacted Afghanistan's agricultural sector, with wheat crop replacement strategies failing to address rising poverty rates and economic pressures within rural areas.  However, the reverberations of this policy have affected international markets. As heroin and methamphetamine destination markets abroad, such as the European Union and Middle East, have braced for a supply shortage imposed by the Taliban’s ban, the space for alternative, new synthetic drugs have opened for criminal actors to fill—a development that creates new challenges for law enforcement and public health.  The Taliban Poppy Ban Project seeks to generate new actionable intelligence and analyses about how the Taliban’s ban on poppy and ephedra has impacted local and international drug markets, security, and public health. Through its programming and written publications, the project seeks to generate thought-provoking research and analysis about the Taliban poppy and ephedra ban’s geopolitical, law enforcement, and security implications, as well as identify creative, effective policy solutions. The Taliban Poppy Ban Project was created and is led by Caroline Rose and is part of the Crime-Conflict Nexus Portfolio. 

Special Project on the Captagon Trade

In recent years, a spike in the production, trade, and consumption of the amphetamine-type stimulant captagon has introduced a new challenge to public health, stability, and human security in the Mediterranean-Gulf zone. The drug’s evolving formula, combined with participation from malign actors aligned with the former Assad regime in Syria, plus Hezbollah, Iran-sponsored proxies, and criminal syndicates, exacerbates insecurity and ultimately raises the risk of conflict in the region. Syria’s decade-long civil war enabled armed actors, including violent and organized crime groups, to profiteer from various illicit markets – a dynamic similar to those in Afghanistan, Brazil, and Colombia. The forecast for the impacts of the captagon trade is serious; in the wake of a supply shortage created by the fall of the Assad regime, the spillover of captagon production and trafficking into new transit hubs creates a more complicated, challenging road ahead for governments. The captagon trade has emerged as a major transnational challenge in the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf. Millions of pills continue to flood overland and maritime ports across the Middle East, southern Europe, and even as far as East Asia, pointing to growing production capacity, sophisticated smuggling tactics, and emerging demand.  This has given rise to new concerns and questions about the captagon trade’s implications for regional law enforcement, health care, security, and geopolitics. The Captagon Trade Project is one of the leading research efforts generating new, cutting-edge qualitative and quantitative analyses about all aspects of the captagon trade. The project uses open-source intelligence to maintain a comprehensive database recording all reported captagon-related arrests, seizures, laboratory raids, and other developments—data that can help reveal trade patterns and emerging challenges. The project also maintains a live interactive map tracing the trade’s evolution and geographic scope. Through intelligence reports, articles, podcasts, hosted Track II dialogues, and public events, the project serves to encourage innovative, effective policy solutions to address the captagon trade’s security, geopolitical, and health implications. The Captagon Trade Project was created and is led by Caroline Rose and is part of the Crime-Conflict Nexus Portfolio.

The Captagon Trade Interactive Map

The Captagon Trade Interactive Map is the most comprehensive open-source data resource for all interdictions related to illicit flows of the amphetamine-type stimulant, captagon. Launched in October 2024, the Captagon Interactive Map pulls from open-source data compiled by the New Lines Institute Captagon Trade Project and Observatory for Political and Economic Networks that catalogue drug seizures, arrests, violent clashes, laboratory busts, and other captagon-related interventions. This tool can help researchers identify how the captagon trade has grown in the Mediterranean-Gulf zone, in addition to capturing new patterns in production, trafficking, and consumption.
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Submissions

The New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy publishes work that combines geopolitical insight with subject-matter expertise. New Lines Institute publications examine tactical developments involving regimes, nonstate actors, local politics, ideologies, etc. Our work situates them in the strategic context of macro-level factors such as geography, populations, economics, military power, history, and culture. All our content must demonstrate analytical empathy and is geared toward advancing the cause of human security and stabilization and development on our planet. That said, we do not publish “op-ed” pieces, polemical content, or activist/advocacy work.

We welcome contributions from diverse experts with various sub-specialties to ensure that we consistently produce the highest-quality product. Our team firmly believes that expertise exists across the political spectrum and disciplinary fields; the key is to help our authors showcase it without indulging in partisan discussions. We expect our authors to focus on the how, why and (most importantly) the what next because our audience is already very familiar with the who, what, where, and when of the subjects we tackle.

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