Terrorism and Transnational Organized Crime

Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject Politics - Topic: Peace and Conflict, Security, grade: 1,0, Humboldt-University of Berlin, language: English, abstract: "e;We will direct every resource at our command to win the war against terrorists, every means ofdiplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence. We will starve the terrorists of funding, turn them against each other, rout them out of their safehiding places, and bring them to justice (Cited in Biersteker and Eckert 2008: 1). President George W. Bush, September 24, 2001In the immediate aftermath of the attacks in the United States on 11 September 2001 President W. Bush declared America s War on Terrorism in which he assured to defeat terrorist movementsand their methods of funding that could be used to support the acts of global terrorist (Bierstekerand Eckert 2008; 1). The examination of broader terrorism studies literature shows financial andmaterial resources are correctly perceived as the lifeblood of terrorist operations, and governmentshave determined that fighting the financial infrastructure of terrorist organizations is the key totheir defeat (Grialdo and Trinkunas 2007; 1). Since the attacks of 9/11 the US has designed a strongstrategy to fight terrorist groups and their financing. International and national measures have beencarried out such as the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism,the enforcement of international sanctions, and the expansion of law enforcement to targetterrorism financing and disrupt terrorist operation (Sheppard 2002). However, the spectrum ofterrorist funding is broad. In particular, the increasing reliance on criminal activities by terrorist sincethe end of the Cold War and the subsequent decline of state sponsorship, such as the rising pressureof law enforcement, network structures became an essential source to safeguard the existenceof many terrorist and criminal groups. The development of the so- called crime- terror nexus, inwhich two traditionally autonomous groups started to expose various operational and structuralparallels, implicated a key income source for terrorists and has brought sheer difficulty to developsuccessful strategies to freeze the terrorist monetary trail. In the following, this essay examines theinvolvement of terrorist groups in criminal activities as a source of funding and whether or not it is asustainable and profitable source for terrorist funding. Moreover, we try to evaluate to what extentthe so- called terror-crime nexus poses a threat to global security.