International Institute for Middle East and Balkan Studies (IFIMES)[1] from Ljubljana, Slovenia, regularly analyses developments in the Middle East, Balkans and around the world. Jenna Ellis is a Master’s Student at St. Mary’s University in Twickenham, UK, studying Anti-Trafficking, Organized Crime, Migration and Modern Slavery. In her research entitled “The elements of organised crime and using the Haqqani network in Afghanistan and Pakistan” she examines organised crime through an analysis of the Haqqani Network, an Islamic terrorist group operating and controlling the opium and heroin trade, starting from central Asia and moving out West to Africa and eventually Europe.
Organized crime has been historically difficult to define and understand as a phenomenon. International legislation and policy struggle to capture all aspects of instability that facilitate the growth of OC networks (Write, 2013). Initial definitions formed after the US states prohibition of alcohol summarized these networks simply as being in involved the business of criminal activities, (Von Lampe, 2016), feeding into the growing call for the state to look into the criminal actions and respond with a criminal justice approach of the underworld in order to combat its effect on the regular citizens. However, this may not be the most efficient way to understand the topic or the solution. Von Lampe argues that categorization of organised crime based on the individual actions of criminals themselves, such as burglary, and kidnapping will fail to illustrate the organizational aspect of these networks and the role social hierarchies such as kinship play in longevity, maintenance, and overall success (Von Lampe, 2016). As suggested through an analysis of the UN Palermo Protocol in 2000, collaboration and conspiracy is crucial to the longevity of these networks. Aligning criminal activities with the concept of organized crime permits direct state intervention through criminalisation and attempts to solve the issues all the while minimizing ambiguity by using law to rationalize the phenomenon. Von Lampe agrees that the majority of countermeasures fall in the category of criminal justice responses to organized crime (Von Lampe, 2016). It is understandable as to why many follow this thought process as a way to understand organized crime, however many original theories neglected to take into account the role legitimate and illegitimate markets play in organized crime as well as the social, political and emotional factors that permit these groups to cross from one to the other and sometimes back. This study of the different facets of organised crime will be displayed through an analysis of the Haqqani Network, an Islamic terrorist group operating and controlling the opium and heroin trade, starting from central Asia and moving out West to Africa and eventually Europe.
During the 1965 Oyster Bay conference of American Law Enforcement Agents, following the JFK assassination, organised crime was defined as “a product of a self-perpetuating criminal conspiracy to wring exorbitant profits from our society by any means, fair or foul, illegal or illegal. Despite personnel changes the conspiratorial entity continues,” (Write, 2013). This challenged the original narrative that focused on crime as the business of crime with the sole focus on individual acts of criminality and began to illustrate the blend that was beginning to emerge between the over and underworld (Von Lampe 2016). Including language such as “conspiracy”, begins to describe the corruption of already existing systems to maintain and expand the reach of power in the societies that are infiltrated, whether that be transnational, statewide or international. This conspiracy is elaborated further and promoted through social factors such as kinship, socialisation and hierarchy, as will be argued by sociologists and criminologists in both the UK and USA in response to different types and models of organised crime.
This understanding was developed further by sociologist Donald Cressey, (Write, 2013), who referred to the “social system, organization which has been relationally designed to maximize profits by performing illegal services and providing legally forbidden products demanded by the broader society within which [they] live”. He continues, “they allocate certain tasks to certain members, limit entrance, and influence rules established for their maintenance and survival,” (Write 2013). Cressy’s definition most openly applies to the concept of syndicate crime, best seen in examples like the Cosa Nostra where a well-defined hierarchy exists with underlying rules and goals that determine their behavior and kinship. Kinship can be included as a factor that promotes the growth of these networks in states and societies, defined as but not limited to “blood relations, fictional godparents and affinitive ties”, which further illustrates the socialized nature of organised crime networks and the relationships that are built between individuals to maintain them (Write, 2013). This is support by Von Lampe’s reference of the UNODC, (UNODC 2002, p. 11) defined five types of hierarchies, primarily based on their levels of development, but in the case of the Cosa Nostra, we see a standard hierarchy or a group with a centralized authority structure and “strong internal systems of discipline.” (Von Lampe, 2016). With members acting as “buffers, soldiers, and buttonmen” ,Write argues that each participant plays a clear and specific role in achieving their collective goals determined by those at the top of the hierarchy and their relationship to the leadership (Write, 2013). Hierarchies within organised crime networks rely on the social nature of organised crime and further support his definition of this dynamic system that is supported internally within communities and cultures.
Gang networks are often considered separate when looking at organised crime from a syndicate model which relies heavily on hierarchies, where the focus is on delinquency and growth of the collective activity (Write, 2013). However, they can be considered both clients and patrons within the underworld, occurring as an organised crime network by a combination of predatory association of people involved in violence and property crime and the effects of urbanization and poverty in major cities and focus more on the delinquency of youth (Write, 2013). It was argued by Riis and Thrasher, both Danish scholars who analysed street gangs in the UK, that a young [person] joining a gang was a natural outcome of slum life and crimes are most likely to develop in deteriorating neighborhoods that had shifting populations. As Write points out through Young’s expansion on the topic in the late nineties, many young people would not be joining gangs if social conditions permitted it weren’t necessary (Write 2013). There are mentions of regionality within these studies on gangs, mentioning terms such as urbanization such as slums which call to attention the role that physical location plays in the development of gangs. Social exclusion from the physical community can be considered a push factor, or a driving factor to individuals vulnerable to organised crime, some seeking community and others a chance for a better life. Cressy, Young, Riss and Thatcher highlighted different circumstances where kinship and social factors affect the development of organized crime by drawing in individual actors who are perhaps members of a so-called shifting population, coming from areas that are lacking continued development and resources to further personal development.
Write credits Smith for establishing a connection between the legal and illegal market (Write 2013). Through Skolnick et al.’s research on street gangs involved in regional drug networks, he argued that cautious rationale is associated with any and all transactions, similarly to the licit market (Write, 2013). Applying rationale used in legal business and commerce, organised crime can be seen as patron/client networks carrying out a variety of both licit and illicit activities to increase and maintain power and wealth. The clients include local and national politicians, officials of government and people engaged in legitimate businesses, actors existing at different levels of society working together within a web of activities, later split into two separate distinct categories of activity (Write, 2013). Identified in 2000 during the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC, 2000), also known as the Palermo Protocol, eighteen activities were divided into two categories, primary and enabling, and listed as contributing to global organised crime. Enabling activities, such as corruption of officials can be understood in this context as actions that facilitate the exchange of illicit services and goods and allow the organised crime networks to continue. Primary activities are described as the actions themselves facilitated by the network for social, economic, or political gain as mentioned above, such as drug trafficking, murder for hire, etc. (Write, 2013). The degree and category of gain being either social, political, economic, or all three, can be determined based on the specific type groups in question. Organized crime requires established financial systems to operate effectively, oftentimes beginning in illicit activity, and slowly rising to higher positions of power through corruption (Von Lampe, 2016).
These concepts are exemplified best through the Haqqani network, an Afghan-Pakistani crime group that rose to power during the Afghan soviet wars (Britannica, 2015) and remained relevent with alleged association to the Abby gate bombing during the 2021 evacuation. Even though civil wars and war are no longer grouped under the umbrella of organised crime despite initial associations, (Von Lampe, 2016), the Haqqani network was able to fund and maintain their network and power by controlling international heroin smuggling routes by controlling the source of the product, the poppy (Peters, 2012). Afghanistan, a landlocked country often called “the heart of Asia”, can also be known as the “heart of the opium trade”. It was estimated by the UNODC in 2022, that the income from opium poppy cultivation was equivalent to 29% of the value of the country’s entire agricultural sector (UNODC, 2022). At the household level, past UNODC research consistently found that the income from opium poppy represented up to half of the average income of opium poppy farming households. Opium is used in both licit and illicit markets, being the main product found in morphine, a legal medication prescribed by medical professionals for pain as well as heroin (UNODC, 2022), an illegal drug with over 30 million users worldwide, and heroin remains Europe's most popular illicit opiate on the market (EUDA) Heroin is listed as a Class A drug in the UK (NI Direct) along with cocaine, ecstasy and LSD, proving that there is a defined and set market already existing for smugglers and crime networks to supply and build from. The heroin trade is built off of the networking of different international groups that come together to create a global organised crime network. The assertion of this network considers the different aspects of organised crime spoken about previously and can be analyzed using the gang and syndicate model of organized crime groups to understand their structure as well as in correspondence with the economic, political, and financial goals associated with all organized crime.
The creation of the Haqqani Network can be tied back to the 1990s, as a resistance group closely associated with the Mujahideen resistance to fight back against the soviet controlled Afghanistan. While it is easy to categorize the Haqqani network as one of criminal insurgency, or an uprising that doesn’t reach the level of a revolution, it is important to consider that the Mujahideen and Haqqani network were receiving weapons and funds from the US were being distributed to the Haqqani network through the Pakistani Intelligence services, to defeat the common enemy of the soviet union (Britannica, 2015). The Haqqani network power developed further with the increase of support they received from Islamist sympathizers across the world, (Ramakrishnan, 2023) their efficient mobilization of tribes in the region maintaining power over their home region Paktiya, which borders Afghanistan and Pakistan, and global events like the Soviet-Afghan war that fueled their ideological hold over the people. The network has used that ideology to further the idea of themselves as social bandits, as someone who is revered by the state but honored by the people (Write, 2013). While simultaneously earning the trust of the individuals, through a need for protection, Peters reports on the ties that exist once again between licit and illicit activities, as the Haqqani network has provided health and hospital resources in areas under their control, creating somewhat of a “Robin Hood” title for themselves, despite many of these operations being a front for their trade and supply distribution. It protects their assets in a legal market that the underworld cannot often afford (Von Lampe, 2016) activity while simultaneously earning the trust of civilians in the region, who are forced to rely on the resources provided due to the insecure environment formed by the illicit activity (Von Lampe and Johanson, 2014).
As the Britannica reported, the Haqqani network has long standing and consistent ties to business partners in the Gulf region (Britannica, 2015), both networks share a common ideological aim of expanding the Islamic World who have political and economic sway. These relationships act as the enabling aspect of organized crime to facilitate the primary action, the trade, and trafficking of illicit items themselves. They can expand these relationships further, using UAE-funded ports in Eastern Africa. Opium is increasingly being trafficked out of Afghanistan through Pakistan and Iran, using sea ports into eastern Africa, using a maritime route known as the southern route, before it is trafficked through southern and western European borders, (Haysom, S., Gastrow, P., and Shaw, M. 2018). This report (Haysom, S., Gastrow, P., and Shaw, M. 2018) produced by ENACT noted Increased law enforcement could be a change in risk using traditional routes such as the Balkan route, where land-based smuggling happened. According to the EUDA as well as the UNODC 2018 report on Afghan Opium trafficking, due to an increased rate of apprehension and seizures through the Western Balkan Route, typically trafficking through Bulgaria and Turkey, the direction has shifted as seen in the UNODC 2018 report due to visa regulations through this migration route, finding that the majority of foreign nationals apprehended during the trade route are coming from Africa with a rise in nationals coming directly from Pakistan (UNODC, 2018). Criminals will migrate their products to South Africa, where the European market has built up a stable network and packages of heroin can be sent by post to Europe, primarily in the UK (EMCDDA, 2015). This redirection of smuggling is crafted through careful negotiations between different actors involved in the network. Negotiations occur between these enabling actors on an annual and semi‐annual basis to determine how funds are shared. Money moves between the network and the traders, using trusted cash couriers for smaller amounts and [informal] traders for international transfers and larger sums (Peters, 2012). As Write aserted, organised crime will apply rationale similar to licit businesses in order to maximize their market potential (Write, 2013). Their success can be attributed to continued trust and contacts over three decades, drawing on social means to gain financial power (Peters, 2012). The Haqqani network can be categorized similarly to mafia-style networks or syndicate crime through which negotiation and cooperation between actors allow an end goal to be met. They balance enabling and primary activities, such as corruption within the government to permit smuggling across the border, to respect the power balances that enable the trade to function and will always seek to maximize profit (Write, 2013).
After years of conflict within the border region regarding heroin distribution, the Haqqani network has been able to maintain and expand their power, to now even position themselves within the government (Britannica, 2015). Through shared ideology and goals as well as a successful balance of enabling and primary activities that connect the network both to the licit and illicit opium trade, the network has been able to and will continue to build on their relationship to maintain power over not just the region, but the government of Afghanistan as well as the world drug trade. The crime group involves themselves in both enterprise and state, by producing and distributing opium to buyers who will turn this product into either legal or illegal product and can protect their money through legal enterprises such as hospitals and health clinics, therefore creating a sense of dependency and insecurity within these environments that further establishes their power and control, and limits resistance to their market. The Haqqani network provides a concise image of how organised crime networks exist outside of being just a business of crime (Von Lampe, 2016) but how the use kinship, market manipulation and coercion in insecure and unstable environments to contribute to their expansion and growth as a dominant power in the region.
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About the author:
Jenna Ellis is a Master’s Student at St. Mary’s University in Twickenham studying Anti-Trafficking, Organized Crime, Migration and Modern Slavery. Jenna is the London based information officer with the IFIMES institute since spring 2025. She has experience working with survivors of crime, anti-trafficking policy implementation, taskforce coordination and refugee resettlement.
The article presents the stance of the author and does not necessarily reflect the stance of IFIMES.
Ljubljana/ Twickenham, 4 August 2025
[1] IFIMES – International Institute for Middle East and Balkan Studies, based in Ljubljana, Slovenia, has Special Consultative status at ECOSOC/UN, New York, since 2018 and it’s publisher of the international scientific journal “European Perspectives”.
