ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses this crucial role of a cohort of actors–"fixers," "super fixers" and "shadow facilitators"–in empowering social networks that operate within illicit commodity chains. It looks at two case studies of the "fixer" chain, using a model that has applicability in many parts of the world in helping to understand illicit networks. The first case is the relationship of Russian weapons trafficker Viktor Bout with Charles Taylor in Liberia, and the commodities for weapons trade in a highly criminalized state that had a significant impact on the conflicts of Sierra Leone and Liberia. The second is the enduring Cold War network of weapons supplies and suppliers consisting of Communist Party operatives in El Salvador and the FARC guerrillas in Colombia, now primarily a commercial rather than ideological enterprise. Much of the conventional strategy for combating transnational organized crime (TOC) relies on conceiving of illicit networks as hierarchical organizations with a strong top-down structure.
