Organised crime syndicates, terrorist organisations and other such illegal groups pose a
significant national security risk for Australia and the wider world (Hobsbawm 2007; Hoffman &
Reinares 2014). This has been evidenced by the increasing number of threats and actual terrorist attacks in developed nations as well as the ever-growing networks of organised crime which operate throughout the world (Galeotti 2014). In developing nations, these groups and their members challenge state institutions and jeopardise successful democratic development.
For developed nations, they pose a threat to the lives and livelihoods of their citizens at home and abroad and can harm development already achieved.
Traditionally, organised crime and non-state armed groups have been epistemologically separated, and their study has not often overlapped. Security and international relations experts have focused on the threat of terrorism (Hoffman 2003; Lebovic 2007; Kirshner 2013;
Schoultz 2014), and sociologists, economists and criminologists have centred their effort on issues related to organised crime (Reuter 1983; Gambetta & Reuter 1995; MacCoun & Reuter 2001; Morselli 2005, 2009), with some exceptions (Makarenko 2004; Miraglia, Ochoa & Briscoe 2012; Shelley 2014). The emergence of new realities today—a globally connected economy, efficient transport of goods, a myriad technological advances in communications, and changing political environments—forces us to re-assess this separation in order to understand the interlinked dynamics of these groups.
The connections between terrorism and organised crime are yet to be fully understood, yet it is clear that they exist (Makarenko 2004) and will doubtlessly become more complex in the coming years. Crime–terror interactions have been the focus of analysis since the end of the cold war in the 1990s. This is exemplified in the work of Hoffman (1998), Sanderson (2004), Cornell (2005), Treverton (2009) and Arias (2006) at both the theoretical and the empirical levels. Today, strategic links between these types of groups have been singled out as a key factor in our understanding of them. The scale of the illicit market in drugs, arms and other
illegal goods and services makes a very rich backdrop for terrorist/insurgent organisations to operate in and to secure funding and other financial opportunities. This chapter addresses this issue by using comparative methodologies to dissect the internal governance of organised crime and other militant organisations, particularly as they impact the Australian security context. It seeks to uncover the mechanisms through which these organisations interact, merge or compete. This comparative study across groups provides for a rich and nuanced analysis through which better, more effective policymaking may be designed.
The crime–terror nexus has been a source of academic and policy debate for some time now.
In fact, it is important to underscore the fact that insurgent organisations have regularly resorted to criminal activities to finance themselves. The Provisional IRA, for example, was well known for carrying out robberies (Naylor 1993). Sanderson (2004) has documented how Hezbollah is engaged in the production of methamphetamines in the United States to secure funding. Ochoa (forthcoming) argues this for the case of kidnapping in Mexico, where both left-wing armed groups and criminal organisations used kidnapping as a means to attain their political and pecuniary purposes. The end of the Cold War saw a changing international context, in which many non-governmental movements saw their income streams challenged, resulting in many politically oriented groups turning to crime to support their causes. The most common interpretation of the crime–terror nexus has been of a ‘continuum’ (Laqueur 2000:
173) with criminals on one end and terrorists/insurgents on the other. According to this view, these organisations would position themselves at different points along this continuum at different times and would eventually converge into what Makarenko (2004) referred to as a
‘black hole’ where these groups would sometimes fuse or be muddled together. This interpretation is based on a central understanding, namely, that organised crime has a monetary motivation—that is, they do not have any political allegiance—and that terrorist organisations are motivated by ideology. Hoffman (1998) argues that politically motivated organisations have an ‘altruistic’ motivation. This means that they are motivated into actions by the notion that they are fighting for a greater good or cause, or to deliver what they perceive as better conditions for a substantial number of people. In this sense, for example, ISIS members would believe that they are fighting to deliver a better, morally superior social structure. Since both types of groups require money to subsist, the argument goes, they will eventually converge and either cooperate or fuse.
The ultimate fusion of these two groups came about with the birth of the notion of
‘narcoterrorism’. This expression was used for the first time to refer to Andean-region militant groups in Latin America who began to fund their activities through the growing of coca plants and the production and sale of cocaine. The most notorious of these ‘narcoterrorist’ groups is the Colombian FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) who, since the 1980s and 1990s, used the cocaine trade as a source of income to fund their political activities (Treverton 2009). This notion became very politically useful, because it allowed governments to respond to these threats forcefully and to generate a certain discourse which inspired particular fears in the population. The recent uptick in discussions about the terror–crime nexus can be attributed to a number of factors; on the one hand, it has been argued that, as state-sponsored terrorism has declined, these organisations need to secure income from different sources (Grabosky &
Chapter 8: Organised crime and terrorism nexus—implications for Australia: a research noteResearch Report 10 | Australian Institute of Criminology
Stohl 2010) and thus turn to other money-making activities. The post-9/11 world and the resulting strengthening of anti-terror laws and international cooperation in the matter (Sanderson 2004) have also had an impact on the development of crime–terror links, as funding for insurgent activities becomes more difficult to access. It is important to understand that the debates about these organisations have an important political component: they form around current political discourses, and the policy response to these groups is very much embedded in political expressions, such as drug prohibition. By definition, these discourses tend to simplify what is a very complex issue, and addressing these simplifications is part of the thrust of this proposal.
There are many ways in which terrorist organisations use crime as a way to achieve funding.
The abovementioned examples of the Provisional IRA and Hezbollah are among
well-documented cases. Pham (2011) found that Al-Qaeda is well positioned in the Maghreb region and is involved in kidnapping and the drug trade there. Thus, we see that criminal activity is central to the funding efforts of today’s terrorist organisations. It is important to point out, however, that terrorist groups do not only engage in the sale of illegal commodities like drugs or illicit activities like kidnapping. Indeed, some evidence shows that this may even be counterproductive. Many communities frown upon the sale of drugs, for example. Thus, a militant group may be hesitant to engage in this activity lest they lose community support, a key ingredient in their success and longevity. Reputational considerations necessarily play a part in a group’s decision to engage in criminal activities (Freeman 2011). Watts (2007) has found that insurgents in the Niger Delta have profited from stealing and selling oil taken from pipelines. Organised crime regularly engages in legitimate industries such as construction, as has been reported by Gambetta and Reuter as early as 1995. There is no reason to think that terrorist organisations may not have the same incentives. By the same token, criminal organisations use terrorism to further their interests. In 2008, drug trafficking cartels in Mexico’s state of Michoacán threw grenades into a packed plaza during the country’s
independence celebrations, killing eight civilians and injuring hundreds. This was interpreted as a show of force from the cartels against the government’s militarisation of the drug war (Ochoa forthcoming). The main argument here is that, eventually, these groups would go through a process of hybridisation or symbiosis where the group’s identity would switch from one to the other. These explanations tend to focus on the groups themselves, as opposed to the activities which they carry out. There are, however, some who purpose a stronger focus on the activities of these groups and their relationships to other actors, that is, they propose a better
contextualisation of the crime–terror nexus leading to deeper analysis.
Recently, Arias and Hussain (2016) argue that the common interpretations of the crime–terror link have obscured many important details of the relationship. They argue that they do not take into account the full complexity of their interactions and the nuances of their relationships to other actors, namely the state. They argue, along with Wardlaw (1988), that the politicisation of the debate over the crime–terror link has had the unintended consequence of obscuring the wealth of relationships and activities these groups engage in. Indeed, they argue that, in many cases, the state and/or state actors have regular contact with criminal and insurgent actors and that these relationships are as important as those between crime and terror. Arias himself
found this in the case of Brazil (2006). In this sense, therefore ‘crime–terror interactions not only affect formal state structures but also impact different foci of power’ (Arias & Hussain 2016: 381). They also argue that the roles of criminals and terrorists are not as clear-cut as the proponents of the hybridisation or continuum hypotheses ideate. In their view, criminals, the state and terrorists have many different social and political roles, which determine the
characteristics of their interactions; in other words, they assume the importance and fluidity of political considerations by stating that criminals, terrorists and other actors will play a role in the interactions. In their own words:
...transnational crime networks, diaspora links, legitimate international trade, and the intervention of a range of foreign states and international non-state actors sustain both organised crime and terrorist violence (Arias & Hussain 2016: 381).