Across parts of Latin America, the Sahel and Africa, violence is evolving, shifting from ideology to economics. Criminal networks are no longer just trafficking or extorting; they are governing. These actors now collect taxes, enforce rules, and shape local order where the state has withdrawn.
Our latest NGO Intelligence analysis explores how organised crime is transforming conflict itself, and what this means for humanitarian, governance, and intelligence practitioners trying to operate in these environments.
When Crime Becomes War: The New Shape of Violence
Across Latin America, the Sahel, and parts of Africa, the character of violence is changing. Where once insurgent ideologies and large-scale armed conflict dominated headlines, today we increasingly see criminal networks, gangs, and militias filling the void, functioning not simply as violent actors but as micro-governments: taxing, protecting, coercing, providing (or denying) access to basic services, and shaping local social order. For organisations like ours at NGO Intelligence, this evolution matters deeply: it changes how aid and humanitarian actors must think about security, about governance, and about intelligence.
The changing face of violence
In Latin America, organised crime has long been a major security challenge. But recent analyses show these networks are not merely criminal enterprises: they now possess many of the attributes of conventional armed actors. According to a 2024 essay in the Journal of Democracy, organised crime “possesses the power of militaries, the profits of corporations, and the coercive capacity of a state.” These groups control territory, influence local politics, infiltrate state institutions, and diversify into new business models.
At the same time, in the Sahel, the distinction between ideological armed groups and profit-driven criminal networks is increasingly blurred. A recent report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) emphasises that in the Sahel “stabilisation efforts … have predominantly focused on security and terrorism, largely underestimating the role that transnational organised crime plays in driving the current situation.” Criminal groups involved in drug, human, and arms trafficking, illegal mining, and smuggling are enabling armed actors, eroding governance, and exploiting fragile states. In effect, the war zone has taken on a new shape.
From conflict zones to criminal governance
Why is this shift important? Three features stand out:
- Territorial governance by non-state actors
In many places, criminal groups have moved beyond purely extracting rent or trafficking goods. Instead, they provide – or replace – governance. In Latin America, research shows “criminal governance” where gangs or cartels impose rules, enforce discipline, and manage local economies. In the Sahel, trafficking networks taxed mining or fuel, and reinvested in weapons and vehicles to “mount deadly attacks”, thereby sustaining armed capacity.
- Hybridisation of motives
Historically, we might have seen a distinction: insurgency for ideology, and organised crime for profit. But now the lines are blurred. Armed groups exploit illicit markets; criminal networks adopt insurgent tactics. As one analysis of the Sahel puts it: “The convergence of violent extremism with arms-, drug- and human-trafficking … blurs the line between ideological and profit-driven motives.”
- State legitimacy and institutional erosion
When criminal actors begin to govern, even informally, the state’s monopoly on violence falters. The UNODC report on the Sahel highlights how these illicit activities “erode trust in state institutions and undermine state legitimacy.” In Latin America, criminal networks increasingly infiltrate politics, police, and judiciary, making the fight against them far more complex.
- The New Face of Legitimacy
The rise of criminal governance also forces us to reconsider what legitimacy means in fragile and conflict-affected contexts. Across the regions discussed, communities are not simply passive victims of these networks. Many accept, or even rely on, criminal actors for stability and protection in the absence of effective state institutions. This legitimacy does not stem from ideology or democratic mandate, but from the delivery of order, employment, and informal justice where the state has withdrawn.
In some Latin American cities, gangs mediate disputes and control access to housing; in the Sahel, smugglers provide transport and food in areas cut off by conflict; and in parts of West Africa, local militias guarantee safety for trade convoys. These arrangements blur the moral lines between coercion and service, governance and survival.
Understanding this social contract is critical. When citizens perceive criminal networks as more responsive than the state, any intervention that fails to address this imbalance risks reinforcing the very systems it seeks to dismantle. Legitimacy, therefore, is now a contested space, one where governance is negotiated daily between state, community, and criminal power.
Regional snapshots
Latin America:
Transnational crime in Latin America is no longer contained to the traditional “drug corridor” countries. According to recent reporting, criminal networks have expanded into countries once seen as peripheral: Ecuador, Chile, and even parts of Argentina. States face a choice: build durable institutions and regional cooperation, or continue with militarised responses that yield short-term gains but long-term vulnerability. The Journal of Democracy essay notes: “To date, there are no successful cases of Latin American states truly defeating organised crime.”
Sahel & Africa:
In the Sahel, the geographical and governance vacuum presents an opportunity. Vast ungoverned spaces, porous borders, and socio-economic instability provide fertile ground for criminal networks. Illicit revenues from mining, smuggling, and trafficking finance armed groups, making it harder to isolate “conflict” from “crime.”
Why NGOs must pay attention
For humanitarian and development actors, this shift presents both operational risk and strategic challenge:
- Risk landscapes change: The threat is no longer only cross-border insurgencies or Islamist militias. Instead, local criminal “bosses”, gangs, and networks may hold de facto power over communities. Operating without understanding this power map can expose NGO staff and beneficiaries to harassment, extortion, or drift into illicit markets.
- Intelligence gap widens: Traditional security analysis emphasises insurgencies, terror, state collapse. But fewer resources focus on the governance role of organised crime. For NGOs working in fragile spaces, this intelligence gap is a blind spot: who holds power, how do they legitimise themselves, and what are their economic bases?
- Governance & development link: If criminal governance becomes stable, then programs focused purely on building formal state institutions may miss the lived reality of communities governed by illicit actors. Understanding governance dynamics means designing interventions that anticipate parallel structures, informal markets, and power brokers.
What must change
- Expand the intelligence lens: Intelligence and threat-analysis frameworks used by NGOs (and donors) must include criminal governance: mapping control over territory, informal taxation, illicit economies. This means investing in local networks, open-source monitoring, and multi-disciplinary teams combining governance, security, and humanitarian expertise.
- Shift from reaction to resilience: Militarised responses (e.g., crackdowns, states of emergency) may suppress violence temporarily, but do little to dismantle the structural incentives for criminal governance. Both Latin America and the Sahel analyses call for approaches that combine law enforcement with livelihood alternatives, institutional reform, and regional cooperation.
- Embed community insights: As the Harvard/Latin America review emphasises, successful interventions must be “grounded in the lived experiences of communities, and attentive to both regional trends and local contexts.” NGOs are well placed to gather that local insight, but must integrate it into strategic planning rather than only program delivery.
- Engage with the governance reality, not just the formal state: Recognising that criminal governance may coexist alongside, or instead of, the formal state means adjusting programming. For example, providing alternative economic opportunities in mining regions may mean understanding the financing flows of illicit actors and how they recruit locals.
The Road Ahead for Humanitarian Intelligence
The wars of the 21st century may not always look like wars. They may look quiet, yet their effects are profound. When non-state actors function as tax-collectors, service-providers, enforcers and governors, the distinction between war, crime and state collapse collapses itself. At NGO Intelligence, we believe this evolving reality demands a rethink of how we approach security, interventions, and intelligence in fragile contexts.
The hook holds: “War no longer needs a cause when profit is motive enough.” Whatever the region, whether the favelas of Latin America, the gold mines of the Sahel, or remote African borderlands, organised crime now behaves like conflict. And if we ignore it, our interventions will be targeting the symptoms, not the system.
By broadening our frameworks, aligning intelligence with community insight, and engaging with the governance architecture of criminal systems, humanitarian and development actors can better anticipate risk and perhaps disrupt this quiet war before it becomes the dominant modality of violence for decades to come.