In addition, the author explores the interaction between insurgent groups and illicit economies in frequently overlooked settings, such as Northern Ireland, Turkey, and Burma. Shooting Up shows vividly how powerful guerrilla and terrorist organizations - including Peru’s Shining Path, the FARC and the paramilitaries in Colombia, and the Taliban in Afghanistan - have learned to exploit illicit markets. Felbab-Brown, a leading expert on drug interdiction efforts and counterinsurgency, draws on interviews and fieldwork in some of the world’s most dangerous regions to explain how belligerent groups have become involved in drug trafficking and related activities, including kidnapping, extortion, and smuggling. Worse, they actually strengthen insurgents by increasing their legitimacy and popular support. Counternarcotics campaigns, particularly those focused on eradication, typically fail to bankrupt belligerent groups that rely on the drug trade for financing. But the conventional wisdom is dangerously wrongheaded, as Vanda Felbab-Brown argues in Shooting Up. Stop the flow of drug money, the logic goes, and the insurgency will wither away. Most policymakers see counterinsurgency and counternarcotics policy as two sides of the same coin. Shooting Up Counterinsurgency and the War on Drugs
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