Power Brokers and Illicit Markets in the Frontiers: Balochistan, Borderlands and the Taliban
Project Live
PROJECT TEAM
Dr John Collins
Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime
Contact: john.collins@globalinitiative.net
John Collins is Director of Academic Engagement at the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime in Vienna. He is also a Fellow at the Centre for Criminology, University of Hong Kong, and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Illicit Economies and Development, LSE Press. John’s contemporary policy interests focus on the political economy of international drug control and the evolving dynamics of national and international policy reforms. John serves as Chair of the Steering Committee of the International Association for the Study of Organized Crime (IASOC) and GI-TOC lead for the Drugs and Development Hub collaboration with GIZ GPDPD.
Maria Khoruk
Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime
Maria is an analyst within the Global Policy Team and Managing Editor of the Journal of Illicit Economies and Development (JIED). Maria’s research focuses include Afghanistan and Central Asia. She is a contributor to GI-TOC’s Global Strategy against TOC. Before joining GI-TOC, Maria supported strategic planning and resource mobilization at the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
Dr Arian Sharifi
Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime
Dr Sharifi is a lecturer and associate research scholar at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. He has over 15 years of high-level policy experience, including serving as a senior advisor to Afghanistan’s Foreign Minister and as director general of national threat assessment at the Afghan National Security Council. He has published widely in Afghan and international media, and is a frequent commentator on issues related to terrorism and security in Afghanistan and South and Central Asia.
Prem Mahadevan
Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime
Prem Mahadevan has specialised in research on organised crime, intelligence and irregular warfare. At the GI-TOC, he has researched on cybersecurity threats, environmental crime, as well as linkages between political militancy and violent criminality. He has conducted fieldwork on terrorism in South Asia and been responsible for analysing crime trends in Southeast Asia, particularly as regards emerging threats following the COVID-19 pandemic. Prem has lectured on international relations at European universities and briefed parliamentarians and security officials from across Europe (including NATO) and Asia. He has co-authored policy studies for the Swiss foreign ministry and published in numerous academic journals and edited volumes.
PROJECT SUMMARY
The project seeks to investigate how illicit markets shape and are shaped by the local political, power, patronage, and frontier dynamics in Balochistan - the area spanning the frontier regions of three countries: Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.
Based on the premise that the Taliban’s central control of Afghanistan has been challenged by non-state actors with vested interests, this research project seeks to answer the central research question: how can local actors use illicit economies to amass political power and act as spoilers for neighbouring and broader regional political processes, including challenging the Taliban?
Further, it will seek to provide a framework for understanding the implications for regional security, drawing on a mixture of granular local research, wide-ranging literature reviews and an attempt to place Balochistan, thus far largely overlooked by academic research, within broader security, peacebuilding, governance and political economy literatures from different contexts and case studies. These will include, but are not limited to, Colombia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and, the African region. It will further seek to place Balochistan within the emerging field of crime and conflict, drawing on various paradigms and analytical frameworks published by GI-TOC and a growing body of academic texts.
PUBLICATIONS
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Publications from this project will be posted here when available