Insurgencies & organized crime: the essential elements of information

Operational analysis of irregular warfare typically focuses on politically-based actions (typically violent) against governments. Intelligence services very often base their planning, collection efforts, and analysis on opposing insurgent or terrorist groups, proxy forces, and governments that might be supporting them. A key threat to stability in these complex security environments – organized criminal activities – has rarely received similar attention. Using commonalities revealed by patterns of organized crime in multiple regions as a basis for essential elements of information can provide a template for more comprehensive intelligence support and more sophisticated operational strategies.