The Price Of Successful Secession: The State, Its Separatist Challenger and Organized Crime In Serbia and Georgia, 1989-2012

What role does organized crime play in determining the success of separatist movements? My paper explores the role of organized crime in the separatist movements of Kosovo in Serbia and South Ossetia in Georgia from 1989-2012, two cases that share remarkable similarities but have generated different outcomes in the level of successfulness of the separatist movement. The crucial difference, I will argue, is that while both Serbia and Georgia were thoroughly criminalized states in the 1990s, the former took negligible and the latter substantive steps towards curbing the extent of organized crime. This crucial difference accounts for Kosovo’s greater success in nearing sovereignty compared to South Ossetia’s more limited success. Exploring the relations between separatist movements and organized crime in these two cases sheds light on different opportunities for resource mobilization afforded by criminal enterprises, and on differing strategies of states, crime networks, and separatist movements towards each other.