Shadow trade war economies and their challenge to peacebuilding

Abstract

Since the end of the Cold War various attempts at post-conflict peacebuilding have collapsed. In recent years, many scholars have claimed that the failure to weaken spoilers' shadow trade war economies has seriously undermined efforts at implementing peace treaties and building stable peace during the 1990s and early 2000s. However, empirical research carried out so far has largely concentrated on illustrating the assumed link between the proliferation of natural resources trafficking as a means to fund warfare and peacebuilding failure, rather than conducting case studies that may challenge and potentially falsify this link. In order to fill this gap, this article presents four brief case studies on the role of war economies in the peacebuilding processes in Cambodia, Angola, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan. In doing so, the article provides empirical evidence in support of the claim that spoilers' unhampered access to war economies strongly impairs peacebuilding. Further, it demonstrates that the application of strategies to prevent spoilers from drawing on revenues gained from trafficking in natural resources to fund military operations can be highly instrumental in ending warfare and facilitating peacebuilding. Thus, far from offering a monocausal explanation of the success or failure of peacebuilding, the article empirically substantiates a distinct perspective on peacebuilding that complements other approaches and thus contributes to establishing a more comprehensive account of the determinants of peacebuilding.