The Link Between Terrorism and Organized Crime Under International Law (Dissertation Sample)

The Link between Terrorism and Organized Crime under International Law
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Executive Summary
There is a very thin line between terrorism and organized crime. The terrorists and the organized criminals concentrate their activities in the illegal businesses that are usually against the state or against the formal or legally recognized conduct. The definition of terrorism has been a challenge owing to lack of an appropriate single definition that can attain universal acceptance as the correct definition of terrorism. However, acts of terrorism have remained distinct and identifiable from other conventional crimes due to the nature and mode of perpetration that has always been violent, and directed towards innocent civilians as a means of intimidating the state security and as a means of causing fear and panic in the society. Equally, defining organized crime is a tall order.
There has been a growing and strengthening linkage between the organized criminals and the terrorists in the world, the phenomenon has become paramount. This has raised immense international concern due to the danger posed by the collaboration of the two criminal groups. The linkage of the terrorist groups and the organized criminal groups has taken the form of complementary association as well as alliances that work together for a unified purpose or as support for each other. The unrelenting collaboration has continued to be a challenge to the international community due to the extent to which the collaboration hampers the growth of the world business. Additionally, this threatens the international peace. The world business and international tourism have suffered greatly from the activities of the organized criminals and the terrorist groups directly and indirectly.
The international community needs to improve on the inter-state and international policing to be able to manage or counter the growth and linkage of the terrorist and organized criminals. The international community needs to work together towards this cause of fighting international terrorism and organized criminals. The international security agencies also need to be more innovative in coming up with more effective means of identifying the terrorists and organized criminals and especially their financing means so that they can be weakened and defeated.
Table of Contents
 TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u HYPERLINK \l "_Toc343249151"Executive Summary 2
HYPERLINK \l "_Toc343249153"CHAPTER ONE 5
HYPERLINK \l "_Toc343249154"Introduction 5
HYPERLINK \l "_Toc343249155"Information background 7
HYPERLINK \l "_Toc343249156"Problem Statement 9
HYPERLINK \l "_Toc343249157"Research Questions 10
HYPERLINK \l "_Toc343249158"Objectives of the Study 10
HYPERLINK \l "_Toc343249159"Relevance of the Study 10
HYPERLINK \l "_Toc343249160"CHAPTER TWO 12
HYPERLINK \l "_Toc343249161"Literature Review 12
HYPERLINK \l "_Toc343249162"Introduction 12
HYPERLINK \l "_Toc343249163"Organized Crime and Organized Criminal Groups 13
HYPERLINK \l "_Toc343249164"Terrorism and Terrorist Groups 22
HYPERLINK \l "_Toc343249165"Relationship between Terrorism and Organized crime 32
HYPERLINK \l "_Toc343249167"CHAPTER THREE 39
HYPERLINK \l "_Toc343249168"Methodology 39
HYPERLINK \l "_Toc343249169"Introduction 39
HYPERLINK \l "_Toc343249170"Literature Review 40
HYPERLINK \l "_Toc343249171"Documentary Analysis 40
HYPERLINK \l "_Toc343249174"CHAPTER FOUR 42
HYPERLINK \l "_Toc343249175"Findings and Discussions 42
HYPERLINK \l "_Toc343249178"CHAPTER FIVE 47
HYPERLINK \l "_Toc343249179"Conclusions and Recommendations 47
HYPERLINK \l "_Toc343249182"References 49
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
Since the end of the Cold War, many terror organizations and groups have had to find new means of survival because they were initially getting funding from different states. In the recent years, the organized groups and terror organizations have developed a lot of similarity concerning their motive and tactics, which has led to the difficulties faced by the national governments and international organizations while trying to wage war against these groups. The basis for terrorism remains the quest for political domination or religious ideologies, which are led by a minority group with less power against the masses or governments that have massive power. These minority groups with less power therefore tend to employ terror as a means of intimidating the governments or the larger communities to try to force them (Governments and communities) to agree with their ideologies or political agenda.
Organized crime entails the trade of illegal things or illegal services. Sometimes, it involves in trade of legal products and services through illegal means to attain or acquire wealth. Just like terrorists, organized criminals are a minority who opt to use illegal means of acquiring wealth and survival, thus acting against the authorities. Due to the opposition from the governments and other authorities, organized crime groups end-up using illegally acquired firearms to conduct their activities and crimes and to intimidate the opposing authorities. These means of survival for both terrorist groups and organized crime groups creates a lot of similarity between them. They too use this similarity in helping each other in various ways. For instance, terror groups make use of the organized crime groups to source funds for the terror activities. Terrorist groups participate in a myriad of activities.
“The available responses from Member States indicated that terrorist groups are frequently involved in other crimes, particularly illegal drug trafficking, smuggling of migrants, falsification of travel and identity documents, trafficking in firearms and exploitation of illegal markets, inter alia, to support their activities. However, the responses did not provide strong evidence of organizational links between terrorist groups and organized crime groups” 
Terrorists also learn tactics of the organized crimes as a means of funding their activities. Therefore, sometimes terror groups are involved in the organized crimes while they are fundraising for their activities. This denotes a linkage between terrorism and organized crime.
On the other hand, organized crime groups leverage on intimidation and aggression to enable them to acquire what they need. Therefore, they make use of terror groups to instill fear and submission from their target communities or institutions. Thus, they also learn some terror tactics that help them carry out their activities with success. These similarities and combined efforts create confusion even in legislation of laws to curb both crimes. According to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC),
“…with concern the close connection between international terrorism and transnational organized crime, illicit drugs, money-laundering, illegal arms- trafficking, and illegal movement of nuclear, chemical, biological and other potentially deadly materials and in this regard emphasizes the need to enhance coordination of efforts on national, sub-regional, regional and international levels in order to strengthen a global response to this serious challenge and threat to international security.”
It also creates a difficulty in the characterization of the activities done by both groups especially where the motive behind the activities or actions cannot properly be established. This paper will seek to delve into terrorism and terror activities as well as organized crime and the activities that characterize organized crime in an effort to draw the linkage. The paper will also provide the literature on the study of both the terrorism and organized crimes and the characterization of both.
Information Background
Several years ago, the perspective of terrorism was that of political, ethnic or religious form or protest and not crime as seen today. The concern of the results of terrorism was not as aggravated as it is today because years ago, terrorist attacks were only concentrated to certain locations and mainly targeted specific small groups. Additionally, the magnitude of terror was not as huge as it is today where the terrorist target large groups of innocent civilians as a way of either making their voice heard or as a means of communicating their dissent against the government. The criminal element in terrorism was therefore not properly highlighted in the legislations. This created big gaps in the legal flexibility to identify terror related activities and apprehend terrorists.
Likewise, organized criminals have – for many years – been regarded as just groups interested in some form of economical domination mostly taking control of trade involving illegal substances such as ammunition, human trafficking, kidnappings, carjacking and drugs. Most pieces of legislations as well did not consider the big magnitude of atrocities that could be caused by these groups and therefore, most offences in relation to the organized crimes were not as capitalized as one may expect such offences to be. Thus, the offences in relation attracted short jail terms, small fines and mostly lacked the appropriate legislation that would help the authorities to identify and apprehend the perpetrators.
Both terror groups and organized crime groups have come to work together in recent times in order manage their finances and achieve their ideologies and objectives. The international community has not been able to join the two kinds of offenders legislatively in a manner that can be able to curb the offences caused by the two. The gap is mostly seen the areas characterizing terrorist activities with organized crim...