The Crime-Terror Continuum: Tracing the Interplay between Transnational Organised Crime and Terrorism

Increasingly since the end of the Cold War and the subsequent decline of state sponsorship for terrorism, organised criminal activities have become a major revenue source for terrorist groups worldwide. Building on the precedent set by narco-terrorism, as it emerged in Latin America in the 1980s, the use of crime has become an important factor in the evolution of terrorism. As such, the 1990s can be described as the decade in which the crime-terror nexus was consolidated: the rise of transnational organised crime and the changing nature of terrorism mean that two traditionally separate phenomena have begun to reveal many operational and organisational similarities. Indeed, criminal and terrorist groups appear to be learning from one another, and adapting to each other's successes and failures, meaning that it is necessary to acknowledge, and to understand the crime-terror continuum to formulate effective state responses to these evolving, and periodically converging, threats.     

Methods and motives: Exploring links between transnational organized crime and international terrorism

The nexus with transnational organized crime is increasingly a focus for security planners in their analyses of terror groups. Their approach is best described by the phrase “methods, not motives.” While the motives of terrorists and organized criminals remain divergent most often, our research indicates this is not always the case. For that reason, this report argues that such a general approach has become too restrictive and can be misleading since the interaction between terrorism and organized crime is growing deeper and more complex all the time. In short, the lines of separation are no longer unequivocal. The report analyzes the relationship between international organized crime and terrorism in a systematic way in order to highlight the shortcomings of the “methods, not motives” argument. In so doing, the report considers the factors that most closely correspond to crime-terror interaction and identifies those regions of developed and developing states most likely to foster such interactions. Likewise, the paper will suggest an evolutionary spectrum of crime-terror interactions that serves as a common basis for discussion of such often used terms as “nexus.” The centerpiece of the report is a groundbreaking methodology for analysts and investigators to overcome this growing complexity, identify crime-terror interactions more quickly and to assess their importance with confidence. The approach is derived from a standard intelligence analytical framework, and has already proven its utility in law enforcement investigations. The report is the product of a recently concluded and peer-reviewed 18-month NIJ sponsored research project, and includes empirical evidence drawn from numerous case studies developed in the course of the research program. This project was supported by Grant No. 2003-IJ-CX-1019 awarded by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Points of view in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the US Department of Justice. Research assistance on this project was provided by Allison Irby, Douglas M. Hart, Patricia A. Craig-Hart, Dr. Phil Williams, Steven Simon, Nabi Abdullaev, and Bartosz Stanislawski. Drafting and editing help was provided by Laura Covill.     

Constitutive Criminology and the ‘War on Terror’

This article presents a constitutive criminological perspective of the ‘war on terror’. The article will first deconstruct the ‘war on terror’; showing how constitutive criminology provides a framework in which foreign policy, the UK state; the police, and society can be systematically analyzed in relation to one another. Second, the article explores how constitutive criminology enables a critical analysis of the dominant state-centric ‘war on terror’ discourse. The article through discussing the multifaceted ‘war on terror’ demonstrates the relevance of constitutive criminology, as a non state centric approach to critical perspectives in criminology.     

The Puzzle of the Iguazu Tri-Border Area: Many Questions and Few Answers Regarding Organised Crime and Terrorism Links

It is widely accepted that the Tri-Border Area between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay is a nexus in global terrorist support, and perhaps even operations. However, it is rather more difficult actually to provide evidence of this connection. The region is certainly a smuggling haven, and has substantial populations from the Middle East. Beyond remittances sent to the Middle East – some of which flows to such organisations as Hezbollah – there is little hard evidence available to the academic researcher. Thus the study of this purported crime-terror nexus provides a valuable opportunity for academic researchers to question the assumptions and assertions of policy-makers and pundits, push for transparency of information on the reality of the region and even help understand the problem better.     

Hybrids: on the crime–terror nexus

Terrorist organisations may complement their military capability with functioning infrastructures and profitable activity in economic ventures as well as in crime. This leads many commentators to focus on the increasing overlap between terrorism and crime, including and particularly organised crime. The present paper is devoted to the analysis of this controversial overlap, and after providing a concise outline of definitions of organised crime and terrorism found in criminology, highlights similarities and differences between the two forms of criminality, along with the ambiguity of the very notion of “crime–terror nexus.”     

Legitimating war by victimization: state-corporate crime and public opinion

This article argues that the ideological use of victimization helps legitimate the state-corporate crime of aggressive war. This contributes to the emerging criminology of war by offering a theoretical framework to better understand how state and corporate actors legitimate criminal military action. We argue that politicians and other elite figures promote a sense of national victimization that is amplified by the news media. We partially test our theory by measuring the association between the incidence of terror victimization ideas in the news and public support for the U.S. ??war on terror.?? We find some evidence of relationships between our Terrorism Victimization Index and both victimization worry and aggressive war support.     

Social network analysis and small group ‘dark’ networks: an analysis of the London bombers and the problem of ‘fuzzy’ boundaries

Social network analysis (SNA) is believed to be capable of revealing significant insights into crime and terror groups, including identifying important individuals and unique approaches to disruption. However, SNA has a number of theoretical and practical limitations, particularly when applied to ‘dark’ networks. While most analysts certainly acknowledge at least some of these limitations, we need to know more about their potential impact in a crime intelligence context. This article aims to go some way towards that end by placing greater scrutiny on the problem of ‘fuzzy boundaries’ when applied to small group networks. SNA is applied to the groups responsible for the 7 July 2005 London bombings and the 21 July 2005 attempted London bombings. The article concludes that while SNA is a valuable tool for understanding crime and terror groups, the age-old problem of fuzzy boundaries can have a profound impact on the analysis of small dynamic networks.     

Russia and Ukraine: Transition or tragedy?

Conclusion The political-criminal nexus that emerged in the post-Soviet period represents a transformation of the relationships which existed in the Soviet period. The division of the property of the Soviet state gave ample possibilities for the political-criminal nexus to obtain significant political assets. They were able to transform their power from one that was rooted in the managerial apparatus of the Soviet state and the consumer economy into one with international dimensions and control of very large shares of the domestic economy. The rise of the political-criminal nexus, while hardly surprising in light of the structure of power relations in the final decades of the Soviet period, precludes full democratization or the rise of a real market economy. In the initial years of the transformation process from a socialist to a post-socialist economy, insufficient attention was paid to the containment of the political-criminal nexus in both Russia and Ukraine. Most Western politicians and international organizations focused on the collapse of communism rather than the rise of these pernicious alternative power relationships. The prognosis for the containment of the political-criminal nexus in either country is rather limited at the moment. Ukraine, however, is at a comparative disadvantage because it has failed to sufficiently acknowledge the high costs of organized crime and its political links. This has been done at the highest levels of Russian government although precious little has been done to address the problem. The Ukraine situation is more difficult because its institutional resources are much more limited than Russia which inherited a disproportionate share of the Soviet Union's financial and institutional resources. With limited civil society and the economic precariousness of much of the population, little can be done to control the problem at its roots. The political-criminal nexus in Russia and Ukraine will remain a serious problem in coming decades. It cannot be ignored in appraising the development of the domestic political situation in either country or determining foreign policy in relation to these two newly independent states.     

'An effective mask for terror': Democracy,death squads and Northern Ireland

Defining terrorism solely as anti-state activity is in the ascendant in the aftermath of 9/11. Yet the existence of death squads – paramilitary groups involved in state-sponsored or state-tolerated terror against political opponents – reveals that the state can also be terrorist. Most commonly, death squads exist in non-democratic states, and most of the literature on death squads focuses on such societies. This article seeks to examine the circumstances in which death squads and democracy can coexist, looking specifically at the case of loyalist paramilitary violence and state collusion in Northern Ireland.     

Narco-Terrorism: The Merger of the War on Drugs and the War on Terror

The aim of this article is to analyse the phenomena of narco-terrorism and the practical measures utilised to counter this threat. By adopting the model of the crime-terror continuum developed by Tamara Makarenko, the article will outline the similarities and dissimilarities of narcotics trafficking and terrorism in order to provide a more nuanced perspective on the concept of narco-terrorism. By doing so, the article will evaluate the kind of approach taken in combating the threat of narco-terrorism.     

Citizenship,Belonging and Attachment in the ‘War on Terror’

The ‘war on terror’ has had an enormous impact on citizens’ legal rights and legal status. Using data from interviews with British Pakistani Kashmiri Muslims, this paper explores how the change to citizens’ legal rights and legal status in the ‘war on terror’, the legal dimension of citizenship, has impacted the psychological dimension of citizenship. Through denoting legal rights, equality and status the study revealed the powerful role of the state and the police in shaping citizens’ perceptions of the legal dimension of citizenship. The paper explores how changes to participants’ perceptions of their legal status and legal rights are instrumental in shaping the psychological dimension of citizenship—participants’ sense of loyalty, belonging and attachment to their British identity and their Islamic identity.     

Making War on Terror? Global Lessons from Northern Ireland

In place of the simple modelling employed in anti-terrorist legal discourse, this article posits an interactive model of the relationship between the state and violent political actors, exploring law's role in both the repression and mobilisation of challengers. Drawing on social movement theory, it hypothesises a process of 'legally implicated mobilisation' which takes account both of law's presence and its partial absence in 'legal grey zones' during violent conflict, and it suggests how law may impact upon key elements of the mobilisation process. The hypothesis is applied to qualitative data from Northern Ireland on violent challengers. The data point to the importance of 'messaging' about law in the state of exception, supporting claims that law can have a 'damping' effect on violent conflict. The relationship between repression and violence is partly symbiotic, and in the global 'war on terror,' prisoner-abuse may have a mobilising effect on violent challengers.     

Conceptualizing Security Exceptions: Legal Doctrine or Political Excuse?

The dominant world political theory for international engagementhas long been Realism, where state power and state interestsare viewed as determining the limits on state relations. Increasingly,however, new theories have emerged to assist our understandingof how and why states interact in a global setting dominatedby international institutions and their antecedent agreements.This is no more apparent than in the field of internationaleconomic relations under the control of the World Trade Organization.Using political and legal theories, this essay explores whetherWTO security exceptions are legal doctrines or political excusesand how this informs our present, and possibly future, understandingof international state interaction.     

Corruption and the South African Police

The literature on corruption in countries in the course of transition is likely to escalate in the light of changes in Eastern Europe (Holmes 1997, Varese 1997). The ‘end of empire’ is associated with the breakdown in the rule of law. Through a variety of subterfuges, both individuals and corporate bodies seek to ensure their own survival, within the matrix of the collapse of legal order. In South Africa, similar transformations, as epitomised by the hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, have provided a window of opportunity to unveil the mechanisms which maintained that apartheid regime for nearly half a century. Understanding that complex practice of state deviance entails recognising the different levels of state power and malpractice in that country. This article flows directly from the Foucauldian notion of the decentralisation of power in modern society. Power in the authoritarian state is not just a function of a clearly-defined state apparatus. Rather that locus co-exists with various sub-foci at lower levels of state and civil society, in which local interactions and power relations, contribute to the totality of control. Apartheid survived for many years not because it signified an authoritarian centralised state but because it could rely on individuals and agencies at lower strata of power to contribute their own efforts to sustaining that abnormal structure. Deviance by state personnel at different levels – to which the Nelson's eye was turned – was critical to the maintenance of white hegemony. The article focuses directly on one such nexus – the extent to which different interests – financial, organisational, and a commitment to racial hegemony – cooperated in a seamless web to ensure that the white rule was paramount in micro-level decision-making structures. Micro-level influences on police training and of police promotions – deviant by any conventional yardstick-served both state and individual interests. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Promoting Muslims’ Willingness to Report Terror Threats to Police: Testing Competing Theories of Procedural Justice

The heightened threat of terrorism in the West has resulted in more power being granted to police. However, new anti-terror laws and heavy-handed policing practices can stigmatize Muslim communities. Using survey data from 800 Australian Muslims this paper examines whether procedural justice policing in counter-terrorism enhances Muslims’ feelings of social inclusion, and promotes their intentions to report terror threats to police. Of interest is how procedural justice influences Muslims who feel less socially included. Three competing theoretical frameworks differ in the predictions they make about when and why procedural justice influences excluded groups. This paper considers each framework and discusses how each explains the relationships between our variables of interest. Our findings show that procedural justice is positively associated with social inclusion and intentions to report terror threats to police. Findings also show that social inclusion both moderates and partially mediates the effect of procedural justice on reporting intentions.     

The Time of Law: Human rights between law and politics

This article discusses the presuppositions and consequences of different forms in which successive Chilean governments have tried to ‚come to terms’ with a legacy of terror usually designated as ‚human rights violations’. Thus a political strategy centred in a body like a truth and reconciliation commission is compared to a judicial strategy of individualising perpetrators and punishing them according to the rules and principles of normal criminal law. Having distinguished these strategies, the article maps them onto two conceptions of human rights: one political (constitutive of the political community) and one legal (grounding actionable claims against others). The thesis is then defended that law cannot grasp the political meaning of human rights, and thus cannot grasp the full political meaning of terror.This paper belongs to a broader research project funded by the Chilean fund for Scientific development, FONDECyT (Projecto 1010461).     

Piercing the Family's Private Veil: Family Violence, International Human Rights, and the Cross-Cultural Record

International law does not take family violence seriously enough. Although reviews and commentaries of international law regularly ignore family violence, such violence increasingly becomes a central concern of modern international treaties and plans of action. This article details how international law, which still tends to limit itself to inter-state behavior, seeks to transform local cultural practices and forms of interpersonal relations that lead to family violence. Although these developments largely remain in their infancy, the article proposes that international human rights developments are both legitimate and necessary.     

Power Relations in Employment Disputes

This article reconceptualizes the operation of power relations in employment disputes. We draw on Foucault's theory of neo‐liberal governance to inform our analysis of empirical data exploring how low‐income workers make decisions about whether to engage with the Employment Tribunal system. Particular focus is placed on the ways the state governs employment disputes to achieve ideologically driven objectives. We conclude: first, that power relations in employment disputes operate across a range of institutions and individuals, and that the state's role is powerful and ongoing; secondly, that power relations operate to shape not just the objective context that workers find themselves in when experiencing an employment dispute but also workers' subjective moral codes about appropriate courses of action to take; and thirdly, that despite the powerful influence of the state, workers continue to hold non‐economic values that guide their perception of the appropriate basis for relations between employers and workers.     

Ambiguous exchanges and the police

This article analyses exchange relationships involving public police agencies and external institutions. It specifies three general forms of exchange (Coercion, Sale and Gift), then observes that, in practice, the three may not be mutually exclusive. It identifies ambiguities that may exist within exchange relationships, and discusses the implications of these for three important aspects of police performance: efficiency or value for money; equity in the distribution of police services; and the legitimacy of the police organisation. The article concludes that managing ambiguity in exchange relations has become a challenge of 21st century policing, and that police are well advised to have elaborate guidelines in place to govern their exchange relations.     

The Sovereignty Game States Play: (Quasi-)States in the International Order

This article discusses the puzzle of sovereign statehood in the context of state failure and anarchy in Sub-Saharan Africa. In the first section it suggests to analyse sovereignty as a discursive fact in terms of a Wittgensteinian language game. This renders recognition a pivotal element and rejects foundationalist notions of sovereignty. The second section analyses the ‘quasi-statehood narrative’. Whereas this narrative presents sovereignty as a game, it applies two different notions of games concomitantly. This article argues that the notion of quasi-statehood maintains an empirical kernel as the core of ‘real’ sovereign statehood and as such remains within the conventional sovereignty discourse. The epilogue states that such foundationalism is not an innocent analytical move. It shows how language can have far-reaching political impact in terms of legitimation of political actions, and how, ultimately, the conventional discourse drains international relations of its content. This will be illustrated by U.S. position to state failure in their War on Terrorism.