Terrorism and Organised Crime: Co-operative Endeavours in Scotland?

It has been suggested that a nexus between terrorist groups and those involved in organised crime exists. This study explores the co-operative possibilities that exist between these phenomena, focusing specifically on the level of assistance participants in organised criminal activity might provide to those engaged in terrorism, the “initial nexus.” This was achieved initially through interviews with subject matter experts with knowledge of the organised crime and counter terrorism situation in Scotland. Thereafter, law enforcement personnel who investigate serious and organised crime were interviewed, and their opinions sought in respect of the likely actions of those they investigate. The data gathered is subject to analysis and comment are provided as to what level of co-operation between those involved in organised crime and terrorism can be expected; what motivational factors may have a bearing on the level of co-operation provided; and discussion of “tipping points,” ethical or otherwise, where the withdrawal of co-operation could occur, providing opportunities for increasingly successful law enforcement intervention.     

The terror experts and the mainstream media: the expert nexus and its dominance in the news media

Academic writing on ‘terrorism’ and the availability to the mainstream media and policy-makers of terror ‘experts’ have increased exponentially since 11 September 2001. This paper examines the rise of terror expertise and its use in one particular public arena – the mainstream news media. Using a combination of citation analysis and media analysis, the paper presents a ranking of the most influential terror experts in the mainstream news media in the Anglophone world. It is shown how what has been called an ‘invisible college’ of experts operates as a nexus of interests connecting academia with military, intelligence and government agencies, with the security industry and the media. The paper then takes a small number of case studies of some of the most prominent experts who exemplify the dominant trend in the field and examines the networks in which they are embedded. The last part of the paper uses the data generated to re-examine theories of ‘terrorism’ and the media, of ‘propaganda’ and ‘terrorism’, and of ‘source–media’ relations. It is suggested that the study of terror experts shows the need to study and theorise the media in a wider context by focusing on the relations between media content and production processes and wider formations of power. In so doing, the paper attempts to connect studies of media and terrorism to wider studies of terror and political violence.     

Human Rights Dilemmas in Using Informers to Combat Terrorism: The Israeli-Palestinian Case

ABSTRACT

Using informers is a basic tool in preventing terror attacks and the nature of current terror threats makes it even more crucial. This use, however, often leads to human rights violations, both of the informers and by them, and to many problematic ethical questions. Drawing on the Israeli–Palestinian example—where a main strategy of Israeli intelligence activity in the Palestinian areas has been an extensive use of informers—this article presents the main human rights dilemmas in the field, divided into three stages: recruitment, operation and post-operation obligations, and also points to the possible counter-productive consequences of such a use.     

Fighting for survival: responding to state capacity and terror group end

ABSTRACT

The well-established argument in the literature suggests that the higher state capacity is associatedwith the lower chance of experiencing civil conflict or higherchance of defeating the violent non-state groups. However, theliterature does not sufficiently address how these groups respondto increasing state capacity, and how their responses to that shapethe dynamic of political violence. I investigate the impact of statecapacity on terrorist group termination by exploring the waysterrorist groups respond to increasing state capacity. I argue thatincreasing state capacity might lead to a set of responses fromthe terror group in a way that it might induce the group to producemore terrorist violence to show that the group can still persist. Itmay also encourage the group to provide positive and negativeincentives to its constituents in order to rehabilitate its physicalcapacity to operate, and to prevent a shift of popular support a wayfrom the group towards to the government. Thus, such responsesof the group will decrease the likelihood of its terror campaign. Ialso expect that these arguments are especially relevant for ethnicor religious terror groups. The results of the empirical analysessupport these theoretical expectations.     

A Review of: “Rogelio Alonso. The IRA and Armed Struggle.”

ABSTRACT

In the conceptual literature on terrorism, there is no shortage of answers to the question: “What is terrorism?” Indeed, the terrorism literature has been heavily criticized for a deluge of definitions. And yet the booming quantitative terrorism literature generally examines a narrow set of “what is terrorism?”: how country-level factors explain variation in the number of terrorist attacks. This article demonstrates the variety of ways in which scholars currently operationalize terrorism and compares them to the ways it could be operationalized. I replicate studies using alternative operationalizations of terrorism to examine the consequences of the terrorism literature’s collective bet to focus on attack counts at the country level. Finally, I discuss the implications of the narrow set of operational choices with an eye towards how a greater variety of approaches would produce a more robust research agenda.     

Blurring European and Islamic values or brightening the good – bad Muslim dichotomy? A critical analysis of French Muslim victims of Jihadi terror online on twitter and in Le Monde newspaper

Victimhood remains under analysed in the Critical Terrorism Studies literature, including the abilities of Muslim victims of terror attacks to blurring social boundaries and possibly de-securitise Muslims in Europe. This is of specific importance in France, which has not only suffered the most terror incidents in Europe in the past five years but also is a country where Muslims have been securitised for decades. This paper uses a mixed methods approach to analyse twitter data for the #jesuisahmed hashtag used to commemorate the Muslim police officer killed in the Charlie Hebdo attacks, and the le monde online memorials created in the wake of the Paris and Nice terror attacks. This analysis demonstrates French Muslim victimhood attacks blur Muslim social boundaries, influences the way that terror events are constructed and also present opportunities for the de-securitisation of Muslims in France. Muslim victimhood does this through three key themes – Muslims being situated as defenders of European values on twitter, Muslim biographies demonstrating “banality” in the le monde online memories and visual nuances of group identity through victim photos included in the le monde memorial. However, these narratives also can re-enforce a problematic good/bad Muslim dichotomy.     

Navigating ISIS’s Preferred Platform: Telegram1

ABSTRACT

Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) online recruitment has been the subject of considerable interest by journalists and technology writers, but there has been no scholarly work to date exploring ISIS Telegram channels and chat rooms. Telegram has played an important role in recruitment and coordination in recent ISIS/terror attacks in Europe. Further, Telegram is quickly replacing the group’s online presence on more open platforms such as Facebook and Twitter as these companies aggressively police and shut down ISIS-linked accounts. This research note aims to demystify Telegram, explain how it can be used for research, and discuss some of the addictive qualities associated with user engagement.     

The political economy of stalemate: organised crime,corruption and economic deformation in post-Dayton Bosnia

‘The biggest security threat to this country is not nationalism; it’s criminality, corruption and unemployment'2 More than seven years after the end of the Bosnian war and despite some $5 billion in international reconstruction assistance, Bosnia's economy remains stagnant and dysfunctional, while the country is rapidly gaining a reputation not as an emerging market economy but as a lawless and ungovernable state dominated by organised crime and corruption. This paper assesses Bosnia's post-Dayton political economy, arguing that the nexus between organised crime and corruption, on the one hand, and nationalist political forces, on the other, represents the most significant obstacle to the development of a market economy in Bosnia and poses a growing threat to the country's peace process. This situation is the product of Bosnia's particular post-war and post-socialist environment, which has created a powerful class of elites with an interest in perpetuating the status quo of a largely unreformed economy. In this context, international efforts to impose economic reforms from above, and to encourage local authorities to embrace a reformist marketisation and rule of law agenda, have met with little success. The paper concludes by suggesting that international peace building efforts need to pay greater attention to the ‘enforcement gap’ that has en abled crime and corruption to flourish in Bosnia.     

The Dynamics of Stereotyping: Is a New Image of the Terrorist Evolving in American Popular Culture?

This article considers popular ways of representing terror activists, and the metamorphoses that approaches to representation in the American media have undergone. A part of the article deals with terrorism in the media over time, common stereotypes, and how they affect the representation of Arabs and Muslims. The article then discusses Sleeper Cell (2005), a mini-series which focuses on a Jihad terror group. The article addresses questions including: How are Arabs and non-Arab Muslims portrayed in the series? Can a real change be observed over time in the method of portraying them? Twentieth-century historical considerations precede the pointed topical discussion.     

“How to Fight Savage Tribes”: The Global War on Terror in Historical Perspective

The Bush administration's “Global War on Terror” has, by both defenders and critics, been characterized as unique. However, as this article shows, there is a long tradition, both in the United States and in Europe, of fighting wars against “savage tribes”—against enemies who fail to make a distinction between soldiers and civilians, and who use terror as a weapon. The problem of how to fight such groups was much discussed in the legal literature of the nineteenth century. This is a discussion from which it is possible to learn contemporary lessons.     

Levels of analysis problems in international studies∗

The international studies literature often refers to the “level of analysis problem.” This paper points out that what has often passed for a single problem actually consists of at least three separate issues: the use of aggregate data to make ecological inferences in statistical analyses; the definition of primitive units in international relations theory; and the identification of the effects of systems on their individual constituent units. The paper goes on to show that some of the problems that have been discussed under the “level of analysis” rubric can be better understood if each of these different issues is considered separately.     

Canada,the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and the flexibility of terror identities

ABSTRACT

Security governance practices are contingent on the imagination of future threats. The “war on terror” has produced a very narrow imagination of threats, almost singularly focused on suspect communities that are Arab, Muslim, or perceived to be Middle Eastern. Discussing how immigration practices in Canada have been influenced by counter-terrorism trends, we argue that “terror identities” are mutable and highly racialised imaginaries that cast indelible marks of suspicion on subjects who are deemed as security threats. Examining the case of a journalist deemed inadmissible to Canada because of her “membership” in the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), we argue that terror identities impose authoritative control over the status and lived experiences of individuals who are cast through these racialised labelling practices. Focussing on the shifting characterisation of the PLO by Canadian officials as both political interlocutor and terrorist organisation, our purpose is to highlight how racialised imaginations of terror identities enact punitive and discriminatory practices.     

Civilizing interventions? Race,war and international law

Over the past decade there has been an explosion in literature on imperialism and international law. This scholarship has focused on the use of force, especially humanitarian intervention and the war on terror. These accounts foreground the issue of race, arguing that these legal arguments reproduce the dynamic of the civilising mission. This article argues that such analyses miss some key elements. Contemporary interventions must be counterposed to the First Iraq War, which was enabled through the uncontroversial authorization of the Security Council. Humanitarian intervention and the war on terror emerged in reaction to the fear that other states would veto Security Council resolutions. Consequently, the ‘racial’ discourse around intervention cannot simply be read as ‘othering’ the peripheries, but was also a response to inter-imperialist rivalry. The article then advances a conception of the arguments as an attempt to articulate hegemonic coalitions against emerging rivalries, and reads racialization in this light.     

Another look at the intent element for the war crime of terrorism

The modern basis of the war crime of terrorism may be found in the terms of article 51(2) of Additional Protocol I (1977) to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, replicated in article 13(2) of Additional Protocol II. The provision forbids attacks carried out for the ‘primary purpose of spreading terror’ among a civilian population. In view of this provision, the judges of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia have pronounced terrorism to be a crime of ‘specific intent’. In an extension of this reasoning, a Trial Chamber of the Special Court for Sierra Leone has recently held that the crimes of enslavement and militarization of children do not qualify as terrorism, because they were not found to have been committed for the ‘primary purpose of spreading terror’. The aim of this paper is to examine the correctness and limits of the proposition that terrorism is a crime of specific intent. In the context of that inquiry, the Rome Statute is examined for what it is able to contribute to the discussion.     

The security-prejudice nexus: “Islamist” terrorism and the structural logics of Islamophobia in the UK

ABSTRACT

A growing body of evidence documents that Islamophobia is a significant social issue in the UK. This evidence also reveals an empirical link to “Islamist” terrorism, revealing a nexus between security and the social emergence of prejudice. Drawing on critical approaches to security and applying them to the case of the UK in 2017, this article explores this nexus conceptually and empirically. To do so, it examines the discourses of various governance institutions (including the media, the political elite, and security professionals) as they respond to “Islamist” terrorist events. It argues that these governance institutions individually and collectively – and often unwittingly – stigmatised and securitised “Muslim” identity. The structural emergence (i.e., the institutionalisation) of Islamophobia in the UK, this article contends, can largely be understood through these processes. This article therefore offers an illustration of some of the logics of how prejudice is embedded in societal structures, which has normative implications for how these processes might be successfully contested.     

The Security Imperative in Counterterror Operations: The Israeli Fight Against Suicidal Terror

ABSTRACT

Israel has had a long tradition of fighting international and Palestinian terror. This article looks at how Israel counterterrorism strategy and tactics have developed since the establishment of the State in 1948. By initially providing a working definition of terrorism, the article then goes to show how Israel has sought to defend itself from different Palestinian terror tactics. This article shows how Israeli security forces have struggled safeguarding, and sometimes disregarded Palestinian human rights. This article concludes by arguing that given the responsibility of democratic governments of defending their citizens from imminent terror attacks, such governments often find themselves paradoxically violating human rights. Despite attempts to reduce such human rights abuses, governments will never do so at the expense of their own security.     

The public opinion–foreign policy paradox in Germany: integrating domestic and international levels of analysis conditionally

Abstract

Does public opinion influence foreign policy? International relations theory is divided on whether foreign policy outputs follow public opinion in advanced democratic countries. Using the case of cold war and post-cold war Germany, I offer an integrated realist theory of the effect of public opinion on foreign policy. I test the theory and the generalizability of the hypothesis of a public opinion–foreign policy nexus using process tracing as well as a time series analysis between the years 1973 and 2002. Using new measures, results here contradict literature on expected public opinion and policy outputs in the cold war period yet are supported after. I find that the predicted effect of public opinion on foreign policy outputs to be confounded by such factors as security threats.     

Sam Fisher and the “war on terror”: an analysis of Splinter Cell in a post-9/11 context

This article examines the values and attitudes present within the 2002 video game Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, and the methods employed to convey them. It compares the game’s message with the rhetoric contained in the Bush administration’s post-9/11 “war on terror” narrative. A qualitative content analysis of a Splinter Cell “game movie” and gameplay sessions is undertaken to examine the messages communicated through elements of simulation and representation. This article finds that Splinter Cell and the “war on terror” narrative express similar perspectives of terrorism and counterterrorism. First, both exaggerate the physical and normative threat of terrorism, and portray it as overwhelmingly powerful. Second, both sources justify violent counterterrorism action through claims of necessity, urgency and self-defence. Third, violence is consistently portrayed as effective for achieving the desired objective. Finally, violence and military action are represented as simple solutions that ultimately lead to victory over terrorism. The parallels between the messages within Splinter Cell and the “war on terror” rhetoric indicate that the game was shaped by the post-9/11 culture in which it was developed. More significantly, however, Splinter Cell perpetuates and legitimises the “war on terror” narrative by conveying its message through an immersive interactive environment.     

Six Rather Unusual Propositions about Terrorism

The costs of terrorism very often come mostly from the fear and consequent reaction (or overreaction) it characteristically inspires (qualities stoked by the terrorism industry), not from its direct effects which are usually comparatively limited. Therefore, policies designed to deal with terrorism should focus more on reducing fear and anxiety as inexpensively as possible than on objectively reducing the rather limited dangers terrorism is likely actually to pose. Doing nothing (or at least refraining from overreacting) after a terrorist attack is not necessarily unacceptable, and, despite U. S. overreaction, the campaign against terror is generally going rather well because, no matter how much they might disagree on other issues (most notably on war in Iraq), there is a compelling incentive for states to cooperate to deal with a common problem.