Organised Crime-Terror Nexus

With the 9/11 attacks & the subsequent war on terror, both terrorist & OC groups have been working harder to achieve their means. This ‘crime-terror nexus’, or cooperation between these distinct, adaptive & resilient groups have increased in recent years due to globalization & the simultaneous global crackdown on organized criminal & terrorist activities.

Terrorist & organised crime (OC) groups have existed for centuries. As these groups often shared the same underground fundraising activities/schemes, it was assumed that they would be in constant competition. However, both groups have realized that without the proper means, their motives remain unattainable & unreachable.

OC groups & terrorist organizations regularly engage in strategic alliances to provide goods & services, to each other as a result of the shift in the international security environment. They now share structural elements, participate in the similar & often parallel types of illicit activity, requiring secrecy, advanced technological security measures, shared locations for either operational bases or transit routes, shared need for specialists & often share the need for ‘safe-havens’ - places with the least security & law enforcement. Therefore, it is likely that numerous groups might inhabit the same areas over certain periods of time, prompting them to work together. When a group requires a new safe haven, it might turn to a different group for assistance, or to share their ‘turf’, particularly while smuggling as they have to cross numerous territories while making sure they take the least patrolled or monitored routes.

This conspiracy between transnational organized crime groups & terrorist organizations have created a worldwide security problem. Transnational organised crime & its links to international terrorism are among many countries’ most pressing national security concerns:

? Nuclear proliferation - the potential for criminal service providers to play an important role in proliferating nuclear-applicable materials & facilitating terrorism.

? Kidnapping for ransom - increasing in many regions worldwide & generates new & deep income streams for transnational criminal networks & terrorist networks.

? Human smuggling - have access to sophisticated, forged travel papers & the ability to constantly change their smuggling routes often spanning multiple continents before reaching their destinations. Smugglers undermine state sovereignty & facilitate the terrorist threat.

? Illicit finance - increasingly turn to crime & criminal networks for funding & logistics, in part because of Western success in attacking other sources of funding.

There are also growing links between terrorist & OC groups who are sharing expertise & are cooperating in arms & drugs trafficking, as well as drug production, cigarette smuggling, extortion & fraud.

Realizing the danger that these groups pose by cooperating with each other, law enforcement & security agencies have begun to study the nexus between them. The growth of activity in this crime-terror nexus can be seen in the links between weapons traffickers & terrorist organizations.

They thrive in highly insecure regions of the world. The nexus of terrorism & OC is exacerbating efforts in war-fighting & peace-making in Iraq & Afghanistan. Terror organizations contribute to the continued regional instability & internal conflict, while organized crime exploits these environments for financial gain & corruptive influence. They challenge national & international security by weakening democratic institutions, compromising government institutions, damaging the credibility of financial institutions & by infiltrating the formal economy, leading to increased crime & human security challenges.

?Organised Crime (OC)

OC refers to any group of people that come together on a continual basis for the purpose of making illicit profits, through any number of various criminal activities. The most popular OC activities include drug smuggling, human smuggling & trafficking, arms dealing & selling counterfeit goods.

OC groups are known for their use of violence & intimidation, corruption & money laundering. However, they tend to shy away from the public eye & incite private violence because publicity can be fatal. They operate in strict secrecy, avoiding publicity, operating their illicit enterprises under the public radar.

Criminal syndicates are growing in size, scope, ambition & sophistication. Globalization has extended their transnational reach, while major developments in technology, trade & the financial industry have provided them with opportunities to exploit vulnerabilities in emerging criminal sectors, such as cybercrime

Terrorist Groups

The nature & activities of terrorist organizations appear to have also changed. Terrorist groups today appear to be motivated primarily by religious rather than nationalist & ethnic separatist imperatives. This shift has resulted in extremist movements that elicit sympathy well beyond a specific country or geographic region.

Terrorist groups appear to have become more resilient, due to a combination of continued state sponsorship or support, as well as entrepreneurial expansion into profitable criminal activities. Combined, these trends may suggest an increase in geographic overlap where criminals & terrorists could operate & interact. These patterns may also suggest greater blurring of distinctions between one group & the other, the adoption of activities often attributed to the other, or the ad hoc evolution of a group’s objectives based on the security challenges they encounter.

Terrorist groups revel in attention & incite violence to attract publicity to their particular ideological cause. Being rational actors, terrorists make their attacks seem ‘random’ to the public in order to intimidate & terrorize the public as well as make their next attack impossible to predict. Terrorist attacks are actually far from random. Terrorist attacks are premeditated with the targets very carefully selected in order to seek the maximum output from the attack. Whether this desired output is mass media attention, installing fear into the population or a hefty victim count, all desired outcomes are taken into account when terrorists are developing plans for prospective attacks.

Terrorist groups have become entwined with transnational criminal syndicates, or in some cases have evolved into the role themselves, engaging in criminal activities which yield greater profits than simply relying on state sponsorship.

Transnational Criminal Groups

With the decline in state sponsorship for terrorist & criminal activity, transnational criminal groups have had to participate in numerous types of fundraising & profit-driven illicit activities. Transnational criminal groups have the ability to expand beyond national borders & are known for their collaboration with other transnational criminal groups.

Transnational terrorists have also been known to work with other terrorists even though there are vast differences in their ideological motivations.

This growing nexus of shared tactics & methods of terror & crime groups may be attributed to 4 major developments: globalization, the communication revolution through the Internet, the end of the Cold War, & the global "war on terror".

Transnational criminal groups share more than just structural similarities. These groups largely rely on the same operational mechanisms, which is the main reason for their cooperation. These groups both operate in the underground economies of the world & thus both require things like false documentation from shipping records to passports to ‘cover-up’ documents that all cloak their illegal doings. From getting operatives’ across borders, to hiding drug shipments & covering it all up with a ‘shadow business’, they are heavily reliant on false documentation of all sorts. Most criminal groups employ corruption as a way to break through state borders & transport large shipments of illegal goods. Other criminal enterprises turn to these groups for assistance, taking advantage of these already established corruption-laden relationships.

OC & terrorist groups have turned to many of the same types of illegal enterprises for financing. The international drug trade is the biggest single financial supporter, accounting for an estimated USD300 & USD500 billion annually. Both groups have been known to repeatedly participate in human smuggling & trafficking, prostitution, counterfeit goods & even the diamond trade. In some places, human smuggling has become as extremely lucrative.

This strategic alliance is a way for both groups to increase their benefits. Often, terrorists look to OC groups as a type of “criminal service provider,” when they require certain ‘means’ that they cannot provide for themselves. When these groups cannot achieve their motives alone, they partner with the other group to assist them.

Improved technologies, communications & transportation allow both groups to act on an international scale. The Internet has become the platform for both groups to conduct cybercrimes ranging from video piracy, credit card fraud, selling drugs, extortion, money laundering & pornography. Both groups are leveraging on the Internet for recruitment, planning, psychological operations, logistics & fundraising.

The nexus has facilitated terrorists to access automatic weapons, including stand-off weapons & explosive devices, empowering them to challenge police, land & naval forces with the latest sophisticated weaponry & intelligence.

Successful money laundering is the most vital & important function to the financial success of all transnational criminal groups & relies heavily on IT knowledge. The IT knowledge is imperative for these groups in order to know when, how & where to send their funds without the money being confiscated by law enforcement. These groups need information on how to retrieve funds once it enters an offshore account or whichever ‘tax haven’ or legally ambiguous financial location they are send to. Transnational criminal groups rely on IT to minimize their electronic communication footprint. IT is also vital to the success of the groups in other ways. Both types of these groups require advanced counter-surveillance techniques to ensure their secrecy & safety. They are heavily reliant on the Internet & sometimes hackers to gain knowledge of law-enforcement activities such as checkpoints, stings & raids in order to avoid being caught. For this reason, among others, terrorist & OC groups employ specialists in the field of IT. Considering that expertise in ‘illegal security’ is rare, it encourages these groups to either work together, or employ the same IT professionals to do work for both types of groups, thus sharing ideas & influence at the very least.

Terrorist organizations & OC groups occasionally adopt tactics & ideas from each other & implement them without ever working together. Terrorist groups adopt fundraising ideas & other criminal tactics, while OC groups use violent terrorist ideas to ensure their own security.

Al-Qaeda has borrowed tactics from OC groups. It dominates a large share of the global heroin trade, a trade typical of organized crime. Al-Qaeda also mimicked their OC counterparts by establishing numerous false charities throughout the diaspora communities in the Middle East that closely resemble the function of an organized criminal false chain of business, like the infamous mafia Pizza Connection in the US.

With these false front-businesses, Al-Qaeda was able to hide its lucrative endeavors behind a seemingly legitimate & much less suspicious wall. Al-Qaeda was forced to decentralize with the US-Afghanistan invasion of 2001 & the simultaneous global war on terror. As cells dispersed throughout the globe, Osama bin Laden called for all cells to be completely self-reliant in carrying out their missions.

After the 2004 Madrid 34 bombings and the police raid on the Al-Qaeda bunker, it became apparent that the operatives relied on credit card fraud to finance their livelihoods while plotting the bombing. This form of crime, typical of many organized crime groups, was adopted by Al-Qaeda as an easy & highly beneficial way to fund their operations in Spain.

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Endro Sunarso is an expert in Security Management, Physical Security & Counter Terrorism. He is regularly consulted on matters pertaining to transportation security, off-shore security, critical infrastructure protection, security & threat assessments, & blast mitigation. He is also a Certified Identity & Access Manager (CIAM).

Endro has spent about 2 decades in Corporate Security (executive protection, crisis management, business continuity, critical infrastructure protection, governance, due diligence, counter corporate espionage, etc). He also has more than a decade of experience in Security & Blast Consultancy work, initially in the Gulf Region & later in SE Asia.