Research on contemporary civil war points to the salience of economic factors in exacerbating and perpetuating conflict. While their role in the onset of conflict is typically indirect, they can influence the character, duration, and adaptation of war in consequential ways.² In the post-Cold War environment, decline in superpower support has fashioned the self-financing nature of today’s civil wars, with various actors turning to the predatory exploitation of lucrative natural resources, such as diamonds, timber, oil, and narcotics, or to the capture of illicit trade networks and informal economies, to support military objectives. While policymakers and academic literature recognize the...

Although research and policy have become more sensitive to the variety of ways that economic agendas may impact war transformation, there is a lack of understanding about the different functions of war economies and their implications of these for conflict settlement and post-conflict reconstruction.⁶ A s discussed above, conflict economies are embedded in a complex web of regional social, economic, political, and military networks that profoundly impact the behavior of conflict actors. A similarly nuanced and complex understanding of the nature and structure of war economies must be developed. Often, analysis treats all economic activities associated with conflict situations as...