Irregular Warfare Podcast - Illicit Financing of Violence in Sudan

Episode Date: July 26, 2024

Episode 110 examines Illicit financing of violence in Sudan and Africa. Our guests begin by outlining definitions for licit and illicit networks in the context sponsoring proxies in and violence in Sudan. From there, they delve into how state actors use illicit networks to achieve objectives in competition. Finally, our guests offer insights to the complexities in competing with illicit networks to gain access and placement across the globe. 

At its heart, a lot of what we describe as a regular warfare must and should be statecraft. If a bunch of people die, they really don't care. If all of the hospitals lose power, they really don't care. If at a critical point you have massive systems failures, they just don't care because it's all in service of a much greater goal. I don't think we have come up with a solution for how to compete effectively with countries that are behaving on a 15th century moral footing and how we compete through a 21st century moral lapse. Welcome to the Regular Warfare podcast. I'm your host, Adam Darnley Stewart,

and my cohost today is Nathan Kaczynski. In today's episode, we discuss how illicit financing is fueling violence in Africa. Our guests begin by outlining the significance of illicit financing in the context of illicit networks across Africa. From there, they delve into how state actors use illicit networks across Africa. From there they delve into how state actors use illicit networks to achieve objectives in competition. Finally, our guests offer

insights to the complexities in competing with illicit networks to gain access and placement across the globe. Major General J Marcus Hicks is the former commander of Special Operations Command Africa. Marcus' career included time as both direct operations and chief of staff, US Special Operations Command Africa. Mark's career included time as both direct operations and chief of staff US Special Operations Command. Denise Sprimont Vazquez is a portfolio manager with the Conflict Affected States Program. Denise's analysis titled The Illicit Networks Funding Conflict in Sudan is the topic of today's discussion. You are listening to the Regular Warfare podcast, a joint production

of the Princeton Empirical Studies of Conflict and the Modern War Institute at West Point, dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of irregular warfare professionals. Here's our conversation with Denise and Mark. Denise and Mark, thank you for being on the irregular warfare podcast. Thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks. We'll crack straight in with the first question.

The type and breadth of illicit networks is extremely broad and so are their definitions across Natset. To ground the conversation today and offer our listeners the foundation for the follow on discussion, Denise, could I get you to open with how you define what you mean by an illicit network? Yeah, great question. I think to start, maybe a little pedantic, but we can break it down into what an illicit network is and what an illicit network is. It sounds simple, but maybe it isn't as simple as we think. Many illicit activities actually use illicit systems and the gray area between legal and illegal activities can be surprisingly large from just turning off your

AIS transponder when you're in the middle of the ocean driving a boat all the way to using legal methods of shipping to ship illegal things. Additionally, opaque corporate structures can be used to hide politically exposed persons ownership of a company, technically legal, but in illicit activity. So when we think about illicit networks, we may think of organized crime or a cartel because they are traditionally conceptualized as hierarchical and centralized. However, illicit networks are quite broad because they're typically affiliations and relationships that allow for shifting alliances, easy adaptation techniques, and a variety of relationships.

These access to global systems have ballooned over the number of years recently, and as a result, illicit networks operating across borders have obfuscated illicit activity and illicit activity from enforcement bodies, allowing them to profit based on shifting regulations and laws, making the difference between licit and illicit not so simple. While that's kind of a non-answer, what I generally mean by illicit network is a group or a network of individuals using sometimes illicit systems, sometimes illicit systems to move goods or conduct activities that may be against the local laws or international laws. Noting that while those laws vary from place to place, most of the time they're generally

conceived as illicit. So what may be just viewed as moving goods from place to place in Iran, we may view as smuggling. So I'm coming at this from a uniquely, I would say, international perspective, looking generally at how we can view illicit activity in terms of international lawfare. Thanks, Denise. Mark, do you have anything you want to add to that, thoughts from your experience? Well, clearly, there's a lot of complexity to Denise's answer that I will try to unpack. But if you boil it down to what the actors are trying to accomplish in illicit networks,

or even those on the gray areas as Denise described, they're trying to hide their behavior from some sort of organizational structure that would view it negatively, which is probably the position that we take from Western nations that are trying to enforce a rule of law based international order. So any activity, legal or illegal, illicit or illicit, that obfuscates behavior makes it harder for those who would govern the international space to observe activities, I think is problematic on a number of levels, from civil to military, if for no other reason than to understand what's going on in this space. Thanks, Mark. So back to you, Denise.

Regarding financing, could you discuss the differences between general illicit networks and the ones identified that facilitate violence in Sudan? As in, why do they choose financing as opposed to, say, arms dealing and other forms of support? I think sometimes we view these varying forms of illicit activity as separate. But at many times, they're super connected. So I do want to start these varying forms of illicit activity as separate, but at many times,

they're super connected. So I do want to start with a lot of these networks are both arms dealing and providing illicit support through financing. Sometimes one just happens to kind of stick out a bit more than the others. However, as a more general answer to your question, I think ideological elements seem to motivate these particular networks. The US OFAC recently sanctioned a number of Islamists as a result of some investigations that came out kind of across the board, some of them front page New York Times that discussed these Islamists that had been financing violence in Sudan for a very long time, going all the way back to the original Darfur conflict 2003, 2004, and financing Islamist values abroad, including the recently sanctioned

Abdu'l-Bas' al-Hamza, who was sanctioned for Islamist financing to Hamas. It's really hard to know why the Islamists in particular tend to choose financing, although observationally, this is the best way to choke out democracy in Sudan. We published a report a number of years ago right after the coup called Breaking the Bank, which documented the complex corporate structures that were built to sustain what we call the Sudanese deep state under al-Bashir. He continued to shield that complex deep state from international justice and accountability through control of banks, import-export companies, and processing plans which allowed vertically integrated monopolies to undercut domestic civilian enterprises.

These domestic civilian enterprises would allow any enterprise to outcompete these manipulated and state-sponsored institutions, which would have really supported a civilian-led transition to democracy back in the transitional era of 2020-2021. It's challenging because civilians can't advance reforms for political stability and long-term democratic process under these conditions, especially when there's state capture of an entire key critical node to society, whether that's sorghum, whether it's gum Arabic, favorite of Coke drinkers, or if it's just simple peanut exports. Until the deep states economic structures are dismantled,

the military, whether it's RSF, Rapid Support Forces, or SAF, the Sudanese Armed Forces, will continue to hold all the cards, leaving them really no incentive to come to the table and negotiate. So, financing, especially in Sudan, which is resource-rich, has huge gold exports, has uranium and a number of other precious minerals and resources, it is key for not just their international engagement, but also their domestic politics to continue to have a hold on the economy. That's a great way to unpack such a complex subject, Denise. Mark, before we push on to

the next question, do you have anything further to add initially to Denise's introduction? Well, certainly not to the Sudan specific example, because Denise is the expert in that, but I would point out that finance specifically as a support to either insurgents or terrorist organizations or both is a popular way to provide support because not only are there multiple venues to get finance in on the back end, But on the front end, and we've seen this with Islamist extremists for decades, on the front end you can launder donations through humanitarian NGOs and other organizations. So the barrier to entry across the board,

from collecting financing to transferring it, and of course, financing is fungible. It's the most fungible of commodities. So as a baseline, providing finance is easy to do and the way to go for supporting illicit actors across the board. Great. Thanks, Mark. That makes perfect sense on the importance of looking at the finance component broader

than a specific sector. Because I think for most of the listeners and their heritage has mostly come out of CT or coin for the past 20 years and brought into the current context in competition is a great segue to start unpacking a few things. But before we move on to the meat of the conversation today, we might zoom in a little bit to the context on why Africa is important for strategic competition. So as we then zoom into the detail following it,

some things might make more sense for the listeners. So Denise's article unpacks Russia's entities in Sudan. We might switch to Mark first from my practices and experience, especially a former special operations commander. Could you offer insights into why Russia and other actors seek to exploit Africa through using proxy violence. Africa is almost unique in that the barrier to entry for international actors, be them state or non-state actors, is very low. So a variety of players are acting in various places in Africa, either for economic gains, to extract mineral wealth,

which really is much of what China is doing, or to increase their influence and international credibility. In the case of Russia, there are lots of incentives to act in Africa, primarily, I suppose, as a spoiler to Western liberal democracies and as a way to discredit democracy as a system of governance. And using, in this case, the Wagner Group as an actor in the quasi non-state entity, which has really become an instrument of Russian foreign policy, the barrier for entry is that much lower because it's fundamentally a disposable group of individuals. And Russia is able to fill vacuums where the West has declined for a variety of good reasons to conduct security operations that would be inconsistent with the rule of law

and human rights. You know, Wagner is able to go in and do things that may be in the immediate interest of either governments or warlord-like entities and take advantage of the situation. And they do this not only to provide security, but trading security for mineral rights. So at the same time that Russia is able to expand its influence across the continent, in some cases, in many cases, filling vacuums left by Western nations, including the United States. They also take the opportunity to enrich themselves with critical minerals and a system of finance that is important to them in their highly sanctioned state.

So, now we're going to move more into the meat of this conversation. And we'll start with you, Denise. Your article impacts a multitude of Russian entities sponsoring violence in Sudan. Could you please overview your data, such as how many entities are we talking about, where exactly are they from, and discuss how they structure these entities in general terms to flow funds to violent organizations. I think that it's challenging to give a comprehensive answer to how many entities and where they originate, but I'll do my best college try. I think generally, if we're talking strictly about the PMC group formerly known as Wagner, we have a pretty manageable number of natural persons, so individuals who are in the space. We've got the heavy hitters like Potepkin, Progozhin, so it's

passed away. We have obviously kind of his core group, Demetri Siti and others. And then we have a humongous, totally unreasonable number of legal entities, which that kind of manageable number of natural persons own. So, Mikhail Potepkin being one of the centerpieces for Africa, whether it's Syria, Libya, or Sudan, Denitri Siti in Carr, a number of other individuals, all owning kind of nodes of companies. And those critical people are pivot points for those companies. They organize themselves as kind of interesting, interconnected, sometimes overlapping structures that allow for them to use those companies to their benefit. So just as an example, we put out a report a number of years ago that documented how

SDAT Engineering, which was a Russian-based company operating exclusively in Sudan, was functioning as a freight forwarder, essentially, a shipping forwarder for entities on the ground. So just a humongous amount of these small hollow companies nested within each other, like Russian nesting dolls, allowing them to further their strategic penetration into the African economy. Those huge number of entities, I would say, are above 100. I don't think I can get more specific than that because we don't know what we don't know. It's a bit like taking a shot in the dark, but just based on what we do know, definitely more than 100.

And then in terms of where they're from, there's this interesting pattern that I sort of previewed a couple of seconds ago that Russia tends to use in order to best manipulate and best kind of prime the pump for their presence in Africa, whether it is through media or if it's through kind of mining operations or legal operations or media, local media operations or even beer and whiskey in the terms of Dimitri's sea team. What they typically tend to do is they set themselves up quite well by using a Russian-based entity. Something like M&Vest or one of their other numerous companies based in St. Petersburg, Everpolis, a number of others to ship and set up shop in a local economy. And from there, they have a majority stake in a local company, 99.99%

or 98% owned by one of these few natural persons who are one of the pivot points for Wagner. And then minority owned by a politically exposed person who's local to the economy. There are a number of instances of this. And I think First Industrial, which was sanctioned this past week is one of them. And there are a couple of other instances like Merriwe Gold or Solage Mining, as they've now renamed themselves, that have this pattern that enable them to take advantage

quite effectively of that politically exposed persons that work while continuing to have really strong Russian control. And these funds that they use to kind of weasel their way into economies and make themselves a part of the dependency of a local economy that Mark just talked about on the Russian state is interesting because it's not always through money. Most of the time it's through good old trade and barter. I think Mark said something to the effect of a handshake agreement, minerals for security support, and that really is how it goes. You

have the Russians coming in, as they did in, I believe it was Cameroon. They go in and they just clear out a mining operation that in one case the Canadians were operating completely, very bloody. They set up shop. They say, we're the new captains in town. Welcome. Welcome to our village. Everyone's looking around like, is someone going to say something? The locally politically exposed person who's been admitted and blended in to having a 1% stake in this company goes, oh yeah, they're legitimate. So they end up setting up shop there. And then as a kind of handshake to export all of the gold or whatever their mineral is for an abysmally low price to the government for no taxation money as they do in Sudan or for smuggling in other places,

they say, we'll be sure that none of the local smaller gangs come in, screw up your village, or none of the local gangs come calling. They do security support, whether it's minimally or really extremely, and they export all of their stuff. Really, the financing is clever. I think in some cases in this particular article that you're referencing, it was almost entirely aviation that they were kind of doing an exchange for minerals. In other cases, it is shipping weapons in. So in the case

of Sudan, they, for example, shipped in police batons, they shipped in riot shields, they shipped in Ural's armored trucks. and that tends to be kind of the goods agreement between them, just from my experience. So we've talked about low barriers to entry as opportunities in Africa. From a special operations perspective at ground level, what are the limitations and how do we overcome some of those barriers, especially in the influence gaming competing for influence, when illicit networks appear to have far more freedom of maneuver to gain influence than potentially a democratic Western society. I'd love to

hear your thoughts on that, Mark. That's a great question, because it's a very difficult and complex topic. And as Denise has described, these illicit networks often have perfectly legal and acceptable faces on them. And one country's definition of legal may not sync with another's or another society's definition of legal as well. So the complexity of this makes it difficult right from the start. And then additionally, when you think about the ability to gain access and influence with security or bartering for material, it allows these actors to outpace the Western sort of governmental

structure. So if Western governments are in African nations trying to help increase democracy and improve their institutions and help their economy. Governments and NGOs are typically not in a position to buy things or create companies that enrich the local elites. So as Denise's message starts about state capture and elite capture, which is a problem across the continent, where other actors who are willing to do things differently than the West would accept are able to go in, capture the elites with minimal investment, and then continue

whatever activities that they see fit, whether they're trying to enrich themselves, gain access to precious minerals, or simply increase their influence to spoil Western advances across the continent. Just as an addition, the idea that these illicit networks complement from an adversary point of view other traditional state sponsored activities adds a layer of complexity that makes it difficult to deal with from the West. And I'll leave it at that. Thanks, Mark. We're going to stay with you for just a moment.

So moving on from the perspective of great power competition and against the backdrop of the continuing Russia-Ukraine war, these Russian entities, do they fund violence beyond Sudan as a wider destabilizing mechanism across Africa that fits with a broader Russian approach to statecraft? It seems like maybe there's an interconnectedness between these organizations and Russia's government's foreign policy practices. And if you think so, then why does destabilizing help their national strategies? Dr. Slaughter First, I do believe that what Wagner's Africa

Corps is doing is part and parcel of Russian foreign policy. That includes destabilizing fledgling democracies in order to gain access to the wealth of corruptible elites, but also, and probably more importantly, to discredit Western liberal democracies as a credible form of governance. So from a Russian perspective, there's a lot to be had by destabilizing activities across the continent.

I think in the West, we often assume that everyone wants peace and stability because it's good for business. But certainly in Sudan, you see a case where the status quo of sustainable violence is desirable for the two warring parties and will be until something substantial changes. Similarly, in large parts of the Sahel and in North and West Africa, you get cases where instability is in the economic and political interests of several of these off-continent actors, Russia being chief among them. So as far as great power competition, Africa poses an easy win for a lot of Russian goals, to destabilize Western influence, to discredit Western influence, to gain influence. Because

remember, every African nation has a vote in the United Nations. And when you talk about things like sanctioning Russia for the war in Ukraine, the United Nations is a very powerful tool to co-opt for either Russian or in many cases, Chinese designs. So there are a number of reasons great power actors would want to go to Africa and disrupt the progress of liberal Western democracies and take advantage of the rich mineral wealth of the continent with disregard to things like human rights and actually developing the economy. So really quickly, I'd just like to circle back on a comment you both made before about elite capture and how our tools in our tool basket aren't the same as our adversaries. However, looking back through history, Western

democracies have used some of those tools previously, elite capture, supporting nations on overthrowing leadership to institutionalize different leadership. And Mark, I'll throw this quickly to you, like a minute response. It's been a hard visceral lesson that those sorts of tactics and techniques for elite capture just don't pan out well long term. I'm not sure that I would credit the West with that kind of insight, but I do think fundamentally the types of elite capture we're talking about are so in violation of Western norms of behavior that we just can't get there from here. A lot of what I think the academics tend to describe as elite capture in Africa looks

an awful lot like organized crime in the early part of the 20th century in Chicago or Boston or a lot of the narco terrorist activities in Latin America, where you take over or co-opt the local structure for security, completely disrupt the power structure in whatever the local society is, and then take over from that perspective. We see this a lot with, frankly, with Al-Shabaab in Somalia, where they'll come in and, I mean, this is a little bit off of the Lee-Catcher subject, but from the, it looks a lot like organized crime perspective. These organizations come in and disrupt the village power structure, doing away with or somehow discrediting the village elder

and replacing him with somebody who's willing to submit to their conditions. So elite capture down to the village level, as well as the national level, is highly problematic. And it's, as a practice, I don't think the West would be or certainly should be willing to go there. Now how you deal with it and how you avoid or work around others who are practicing lead capture, I think is a really, really tough and interesting question.

Danis, I'll throw to you. So yes, lead capture is important to understand in the role of influence means and a way in which we can influence target audience. Would you mind unpacking a little bit based on Mark's question, why the West doesn't view or use the same tools from Elite Capture specifically from a financial perspective as opposed to the general broad brush tools? Yeah, I think maybe it'll bring us into a much larger conversation for which I immediately apologize but I do think it's worth just floating into the ether what the difference is in grand strategy and strategy here between the US and the powers that be

that we're talking about when we say great power competition, especially China and Russia. In some of these cases, Russia is literally attempting to rewrite in schools, local African history, like the history of car as written by Russians. If you go and putz it out on the internet for long enough, you can find Russian state-produced comic books that they are using to teach kids in schools in car Russian that rewrite the history of car with Russia as the centerpiece. That's very different than what the United States and I think other Western powers see as their place in the international community. We don't see ourselves, I don't think, as the center point of all conversation

or the hero of every story. Although maybe there are those that would accuse us of doing exactly that. But I think at least in, especially in recent years, we're not attempting to colonize hero of every story. Although maybe there are those that would accuse us of doing exactly that. But I think at least in, especially in recent years, we're not attempting to colonize Africa where I think in some cases Russia is. And their neocolonialist rhetoric is really clear. And I don't mean neocolonialist in an academic sense, but literally in a new colonialism way. You could see this in not just the way that they're shifting linguistic preferences, but shifting economic holds entirely.

In terms of the financial nodes, I think to Mark's point, it's very challenging for the United States and for other Western countries to engage in illicit activity because we don't want to. I don't know that that's a bad thing. I think that there are also questions about whether or not we can hold our nose and support a really awful regime in preference of just having a financial footing. Obviously, we see it happening literally before our eyes, maybe by the time this podcast is released, we'll have an answer to this question. But the United States has chosen to not take a side at this point in the Sudan conflict. We are not funding or arming

at this point, to my knowledge. The RSF or the SAF, these warring parties that are creating what many are calling the greatest humanitarian disaster of our lifetime. I mean, we're talking about a refugee crisis on par with 2012. We're talking about starvation levels unseen in the last two decades. We're talking about a type of genocidal focus by the RSF that I don't know that we've seen since 2004. I think it's worse than 2004, Darfur. So there's Russia happy to come in and just plant themselves and give armed support or give financial support to one party or the other in order to prop up the structures that I mentioned earlier that are kind of precluding Sudan from democracy or precluding one side or the other from winning. I don't know that the

West wants to do that and I think that's a good thing. I think the question of how we fight the financial fight is an entirely separate one. I don't think we can play the game the same way because we have morals. Not that Russia doesn't, but that it's a completely separate set. Their priority is so vastly different than ours. It's not even comparing apples and oranges, it's comparing a rock and an apple. It's just entirely separate categories. It's very challenging, I think, to think about how the West can combat these if we're going to combat it tit for tat because we can't just go in and pick up a

politically exposed person and say, all right, the US Army is going to set up a fake charity now and you're going to be our 1% shareholder. That's what Wagner does. That's literally what they do. So it's extremely challenging, I think, to fight that. However, where we can, I think, fight this, really, you know, one for one comparison is in the power vacuum issues, where it's typically kind of counterterrorism problems, in the logistics supply route problems. One of the really clever ways that Wagner embedded themselves in Carr was that they became the logistics supply persons for the entire government of Carr. It was like 10 years ago that they started doing this. I don't know that from my research, Carr has supplied itself with its own ammunition

or arms in like six, seven years now. They really effectively embedded themselves. I think there's an interesting question on training, an interesting question on logistics, an interesting question on counterterrorism, these things that we have traditionally at least assisted with in terms of joint military exercises, joint trainings, things like that, that we could do one for one with Wagner. But it's challenging when they have already captured the information space and as Mark said, done so much kind of pre-work to get everyone anti-West, anti-democracy and pro-Russia. When we come in, it looks kind of tone deaf because they've already done their homework. They've already given everyone the pre-reading and now here comes the test and they're looking through the questions and it's like, they have been told the West is going to come in, they're going to tell you how to fight your wars,

then they're going to tell you you need a democracy, they're going to take over your government. And then the West comes in, they're like, hi, we have this new way of doing counterterrorism that we'd like to show you. Then we'd like to help you with your military exercises. And then after that, we'd like to help you ensure that your next elections are free and clear. They're like, hmm, sounds a lot like the playbook that Russia gave us that the West is going

to come up with. Absolutely great to raise the conversation, Denise, out of some of the ways to truly understand potentially some of the similarities from a Russian playbook and influence perspective and other adversaries or competitors. I'll open this one to Denise first. Is it really our limitation in scoping how we compete in the influence space? Because influence isn't really like a conventional warfare at its core, its whole government. And is that why we conceptually find it difficult as Western democracies to,

in essence, institutionalize influence? And even I might say, would it be more beneficial to view influence as a five eyes collective? Because that's where we can really bring all the strengths and weaknesses of all the nations to bear against common adversaries and competitors. I think yes, it's something that is better done together, for sure. I think one of the best, easiest ways for states that we're attempting to influence, whether it be democratic values or otherwise, is to have a whole five eyes approach because otherwise they can wrangle out in one way or another, whether it's sanctions evasion, whether it's a lack of coordination on our side or otherwise. In terms of the first part of your question, I think that's more challenging. I guess the

central answer is I don't know. I think in the past 10 or so years, we've seen a reckoning and maybe this conversation is a bit too meta for this podcast and for where I sit in terms of practitioner. But I think in the past 10 years, we've seen a reckoning of US military policy and the last 10, 15 years of US military successes and failures. And that reckoning is still going on in many ways, I think. Obviously, the Hearts in Mind campaign was, in my opinion, hopefully, I'm not speaking out of turn here, a failure. I think our shock and awe campaign was extremely challenging. Interestingly enough, Wagner did basically the same exact shock and awe campaign in Mali,

and it was a huge success. The reason that they thought it was a huge success is because they don't care about the same things that we care about. Maybe that's too fluffy of me, but they really don't care if a bunch of people die. They really don't care if all of the hospitals lose power. They really don't care if at a critical point you have massive systems failures. They just don't care because it's all in service of a much greater goal. I think we've moved away from that type of consequentialism in the past 10 years and we look at things in a more nuanced way. And so as a result, it's challenging for us to do the influence campaigns in the

same way. But when it comes down to it, I think the question is, how do we bring these traditionally non-U.S. military zone, like the sphere of influence, into U.S. military operations as a part of the operation and really create a coherent policy. I think that the Joint Operations Force was basically created to do that. Because we're not a post-Soviet state, we don't have the crazy kind of effective bureaucracy that post-Soviet states have, like Russia, where they have a track record of the bullet all the way to every hand that's passed through. As a result, they can do things super effectively because they're just so well integrated.

I think that in and of itself, the kind of benefits that come with a super top-down regime is something the United States will never have because we are not the Kremlin. And that, again, is a good thing. We're a democracy and things take longer and we don't just suddenly go to war for no reason. And those are all, in my opinion, positive things, even if it leads to kind of some challenges, some gears grinding along the way. Any coherent policy, I think, is best done with as large a coalition of the willing as

you can muster. I think even recent history, certainly throughout my career, has shown that the more nation states and, for that matter, non-state actors you can get on board with any particular policy the more likely it is to succeed. But much of what Denise talked about is this really critical core problem that the West is seeing right now in dealing with countries who do not subscribe to Western norms and mores and, frankly, a lot of previously agreed upon conventions of behavior. And particularly in state actors that are acting as spoilers, so Russia in particular,

they have the luxury, if you will, of being able to act with near impunity as far as ethical behavior goes. And partially because they're not formally an element of the Russian state, partially because Russia has very little regard for international public opinion. And therefore, you get these other actors, particularly again on the African continent where we're talking about, can follow a Machiavellian playbook that is not open to the West. And I don't believe that the West has really come to grips with this yet. I think there's a lot of

hand-wringing consternation in DC and probably Canberra, London as well. But I don't think we have come up with a solution for how to compete effectively with countries that are behaving on a 15th century moral footing and how we compete through a 21st century moral lens. And I think that really is the great question in front of us, is if liberal Western democracies are going to succeed or if Western liberal democracy is going to become the preferred method of governance across the globe, something has to change because it's currently backsliding and backsliding rapidly in Africa. And it's backsliding to a great extent because of influence from these state and non-state

actors who don't subscribe to not just Western liberal democracies as a structure of governance, but they don't adhere to Western norms as far as human rights and normal acceptable behavior. And we're even seeing this a bit in domestic politics where spoilers who are willing to use massive amounts of disinformation and not adhere to previously accepted norms of behavior, suddenly have a great advantage, at least for a while until somebody figures out how to deal with it. And I don't believe that the West has figured out how to deal with it. I would add to that how we started this conversation talking about illicit funding networks, a

very specific issue of which Denise is quite the expert of illicit networks inside Sudan. And we have other similar experts about illicit networks in other countries. If you look at this from an irregular warfare lens, and as Denise has pointed out, the last couple of decades of over-militarization of US foreign policy has not ended exactly as well as we would have liked. So as we have an opportunity forced upon us to take a look at how we're going to deal with great state competition and a continuing expansion of a Salafi jihadist insurgency across much of Africa, it probably behooves us to think about irregular warfare. Well, I would argue not as irregular warfare, but what does statecraft really look like?

Because interdicting illicit finance networks is not a military problem. And one of my criticisms about this irregular warfare discussion has been that those of us who either are or have been in the military tend to look at all of these things like threat finances and military problem to solve. But at its heart a lot of what we describe as a regular warfare must and should be statecraft. Perfect thanks Mark. I think it would be common for the audience to hear from senior officers and analysts and practitioners that more orchestration and coordination between like-minded parts and allies gives us the scale and mass and reach we need without actually physically needing everyone everywhere all the time to influence through the vectors

we need to influence. Again, thank you very much. We're going to move on to the last section now. It's been great conversation so far. So for policymakers and practitioners, is there one key takeaway when we're attempting to disrupt or dislocate illicit financing operations? Yeah, I'll try to keep this short since it needs to fit on a bumper sticker somewhere. I would say the most important thing, getting to what you just said, is really coordination. It does not matter if you sanction an entity if there is not enforcement on sanctions.

They're transnational networks. If you don't just think about them as some sort of organized crime or illicit finance operation, but instead think of them as a transnational network, which in many cases seeks to disrupt global peace and security. I think you have come to a place where we can actually effectively stop these networks from going from financing to, as we have come in this podcast, financing in one state all the way to essential colonization, rewriting the history of a country. Mark, same for you. For policymakers and practitioners, is there one key takeaway when attempting to disrupt illicit financing operations?

I completely agree with Denise about the need to take a group approach to dismantling, disrupting, interdicting these illicit networks. And I would offer that I look at the illicit financial networks as a case study for the larger group of illicit networks, whether it's influence or arms, and that we do have to deal with this holistically, but also very specifically. And I think given the constraints we've discussed with the West's ability to act, given our moral compass, that some lessons in how we successfully dismantle organized crime networks, you know, whether it was in Italy or Chicago, it might prove illuminating here on how we take a holistic approach to raising the barrier to entry

for any actor on the continent of Africa or anywhere else in the world who would seek to undermine the Western international order. Denise, Mark, thank you for coming on the Irregular Warfare podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I think it's important to get people in the room like this that come from different perspectives and end at such a similar closing note. We talked about international coordination, but practitioner coordination creates good advice and hopefully

good policy. So grateful for you bringing us together and thank you so much for this enriching experience. Yeah, thanks for having me. It's been really interesting and a great pleasure to meet Denise and both of you. I absolutely enjoyed the conversation and applaud what you guys are doing. This is, I think, an important conversation on many levels. So thanks for doing what you're doing. Thank you for joining us on the Irregular Warfare Podcast. Be sure to subscribe to the Irregular Warfare Podcast so you don't miss an episode. The podcast is a product of the Irregular Warfare Podcast so you don't miss an episode. The podcast is a product of the Irregular Warfare Initiative.

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