Terrorism IS Organized Crime
The growing association of international terrorist organizations and transnational criminals, initially and primarily as a funding source, is well documented. Some terrorist organizations, including the FARC in Columbia and the KLA in southeastern Europe have wholly subsumed the illegal enterprises upon which they once relied, and no run them directly. It is past time that we stop dignifying the criminal behavior of terrorist organizations with our efforts in the global war on terror, and begin associating international their heinous activities with the thugs and goons they aspire to be. Terrorists should not even be tangentially admired for their actions, but instead completely reviled as variations of criminal organizations.
Indeed, the parallels with transnational organized crime and international terrorist organizations are keen, and suggest that the most successful strategies for combating organized crime domestically may be fruitfully adapted to battling international terrorism
Conflicting Views:
The first requirement for transitioning from an inappropriate war to an effective fight against organized crime is to recast the American endeavor from a war effort to a police action. To be sure, the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) is barely more of a war than was the 1960’s war on poverty or the 1980’s war on drugs. The term war in all these instances is a rhetorical device intended to show resolve and commitment. The problem in the current case is that it legitimizes the terrorist’s cause and raises the terrorist’s status to legal combatant. Neither characterization is accurate. Terrorism is merciless violence directed at innocent citizens, and is no more a legitimate action than a mugging is a mutually beneficial trade in which one member of society gets money and the other gets to live.Such statements are obvious enough to the victims of terrorism and muggings, yet governments have been reticent in declaring these actions criminal—even more reluctant to describe terrorists as criminals—despite the great benefit that could come from doing so. To the extent that the GWOT is a real war, a violent confrontation between states, it is evident in the invasion and toppling of governments that provide support or sanctuary to known terrorist groups. This is clearly a military effort. In the current actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, however, anti-terrorist activities are more properly law enforcement problems. The state-centric model of combating international terrorism has had numerous unintended consequences. Most international terrorist organizations are akin to transnational organized crime in that the base operation exists in one state or regions, but members routinely cross international borders to facilitate or conduct operations. Attempting to eliminate organizations within existing national borders has the consequence of eliminating them in some locations only to see them pop up in another. Al Qaeda’s forced exit from Sudan, for example, was shortly followed by its barely disrupted reappearance in Afghanistan. The focus of American efforts needs to be instead on coordinating international efforts to disrupt transnational trade in illicit drugs, weapons, money, and people. Effective disruption of terrorism occurs at the borders of states—all borders—not within borders.
The Organized Crime Metaphor:
The traditional separation of terrorism and organized crime is partially due to the politically correct perception that today’s terrorist is tomorrow’s freedom fighter. Particularly where the righteous rebel fights against oppressive governments, the insurgent image has a certain mystique. But freedom fighters do not target innocent civilians or operate transnational prostitution rings to buy guns. To the extent they do, they ought to be de-legitimized. They may be forced to accept collateral damage as a regrettable and unfortunate side of war, but they do not toss bombs in schoolyards.It is also a prevailing practice to disassociate terrorists from criminals as the motivations of each group are perceived to be theoretically different.
Presumably, the terrorist is motivated by political, ideological, religious, or ethnic idealism; criminals by self-interested profit. The fact is that it is increasingly difficult to find the dividing line. While terrorists are turning out to be remarkably self and profit-motivated, they are also turning increasingly to the strong arm tactics of organized crime to maintain support. Hizbollah, Hamas, and al-Qaeda routinely use blackmail, extortion, and protection rackets to supplement ‘charitable giving’ through associated or wholly-owned non-profit foreign aid organizations. In an ironic twist, in neighborhoods in Michigan where the largest American concentration of Muslims is found, illegal aliens are told they will be turned over to immigration authorities if they do not provide regular funds. In other places, family members are kidnapped or monitored as a constant threat to wavering supporters. Businesses pay protection money to terrorist-supporting gang-style organizations to prevent them from being attacked by those same thugs. The relationship between terrorist organizations and organized crime in the supply of weapons, to include weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is increasingly undifferentiated. In some areas, terrorists are mimicking the organizational structure and operational techniques of long-term organized crime ‘states-within-states’ of the American and Italian Mafia, the Chinese Triads, and Japanese Yakuza.
Both organized crime and terrorism flourish where corruption levels of state officials are high (allowing bribery and patronage), governing legitimacy is low (accelerating ‘replacement’ control), and government support for anti-crime efforts is perceived as absent or complicated by the legal framework. When the state cannot protect its citizens, organized crime steps in. Note this is different than, though compatible with, traditional arguments that recruiting and support for terrorist organizations is primarily based on dissatisfaction with political, ideological, or economic capacities of the extant governing or economic system. In many cases, just as with organized racketeering, it is the terrorists who are taking away the government’s capacity to serve its citizens, and then offering themselves as the only consistent service providers.
Modern transnational criminal and international terrorist organizations are dispersed, flat-structured entities designed to maximize adaptability. They are unable to withstand direct military confrontation but are extremely agile in avoiding opposition. They both use highly decentralized networks for distribution of information, and both have become increasingly adept at using subtlety in the application of social disruption. In addition to violence, these techniques include sophisticated information operations and perception management through various popular media. As such, they are most susceptible to counter-crime techniques involving persistent monitoring combined with infiltration and disruption from within—standard operating procedures for police.
A New Strategy for Combating Terrorism:
Strategies for combating organized crime have conceptually differed from those for combating international terrorism. While the first has seen steady successes and reductions in traditional organized crime enterprises, international terrorism appears to be gaining in strength as the tool employed to eliminate it is not designed for the job. This has contributed to the subsuming of criminal organizations by terrorist ones.
A strategy for containing, then rolling back international terrorism could be swiftly developed and implemented along the same lines as those currently in place for battling organized crime. These would initially overlap current military missions in the GWOT, and allow for continuing DOD involvement at an appropriate reduced level. Expected anti-criminal activity would involve aspects of punishment and police presence focused on monitoring, surveillance, and detection with the goal of criminal incident reduction, supported by rigorous investigation, prosecution, and incarceration.
There are potential disadvantages in the transition from a war on terrorism to policing terrorism as an international criminal activity. Military and state organizations are hierarchically and bureaucratically organized, and functionally differentiated, making it difficult to coordinate efforts and share information. Nonetheless, the current war metaphor places the burden of coordination on an overtaxed military, and not on the many international and interagency organizations that have long standing protocols and agreements for combating transnational crime. To the extent that current military resources can be transferred to extant cooperating agreements between state agencies, the military would be freer to concentrate on the most dangerous and impending targets of opportunity globally—as opposed to being bogged down in a quagmire of state-building and international police/peacekeeping. The reduced military footprint not only reduces the image of America as an occupying imperial power, it adds legitimacy to fledgling democracies’ efforts to combat organized crime/terrorism within their own borders. The military would then be freed up to train and prepare for maximum force application at the direction of civilian authorities, in effect transitioning from beat cops to over-the-horizon international SWAT teams.
Such a transition also better supports more appropriate military requirements and capacities. It would allow US forces to continue the process of transformation to high-tech, global reach, precisely deadly force that was disrupted by the post-invasion occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Americans do not want an empire, and the American military should not be turned into a tool of imperial control. By allowing the military to reduce its stabilization footprint in places like Iraq—to be replaced by international agency efforts centered on peacekeeping (e.g., the UN), criminal policing (such as the FBI, Scotland Yard, and INTERPOL), direct democratization support (State Department), and various international aid groups, bases for terrorist recruitment will diminish. When the military has significantly completed its transformation to a twenty-first century globally available, rapidly deployable, highly mobile, and precisely deadly force, all of America and the free world’s most pressing military needs will be met—including a real reduction in the terror that can be inflicted by transnational criminals.