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CIAO DATE: 07/06
Louise Shelley is a professor in the School of International Service and founder and director of the Transnational Crime and Corruption Center at American University in Washington, D.C. A leading expert on transnational crime and terrorism, she is the author of Policing Soviet Society and Crime and Modernization, as well as numerous articles and book chapters on all aspects of transnational crime.
At the end of the 20th century, a new phenomenon appeared—the simultaneous globalization of crime, terror, and corruption, an "unholy trinity" that manifests itself all over the world. It can be found in the poorest countries of Latin America and Africa, but also in the heart of prosperous Europe. Facilitated by corruption, crime and terror groups operate together from the tri-border area in Latin America to the regional conflicts of West Africa and the former Soviet Union to the prisons of Western Europe. Crime and terrorism also intersect in Australia, Asia, and North America, as evidenced by criminal cases that document the extensive blending of their activities.
This unholy trinity is more complex, however, than terrorists simply turning to crime to support their activities or merely the increased flow of illicit goods internationally. Rather, it is a distinct phenomenon in which globalized crime networks work with terrorists and both are able to carry out their activities successfully, aided by endemic corruption.
The artificial distinction made between crime and terrorism is based on an antiquated concept of both. The adage that criminals engage in crime for profit and terrorists operate exclusively for political motives belies the contemporary reality of these two groups. Criminals no longer belong to hierarchical organizations that do not threaten the state itself—as was true of the Sicilian Mafia or the Japanese Yakuza. Terrorists, often supported by crime, frequently move between identities as criminals and terrorists. The network structures of both allow them to hook up, conscious or unconscious of each other's identities: The two groups may work directly together, or they may connect through their facilitators. For example, in Los Angeles, the same language school that provided some of the 9/11 hijackers their visa documents also provided them for the prostitutes of a major trafficking-in-persons ring. In turn, the trafficking ring engaged in stolen identities that could facilitate terrorist activities.
Contrary to the view that all this has come about with globalization, both organized crime and terrorism have historically operated across borders. Already in the 1930s, members of the Italian Mafia in the United States were traveling to Kobe, Japan, and Shanghai, China, for drugs, and members of various U.S. crime gangs took refuge in China to avoid the reach of American law enforcement. Members of the Irish Republican Army found sanctuary in Irish communities abroad, which also provided financial support for the organization in Ireland.What is new, however, is the speed and frequency of their interactions, and the intensity of cooperation between these two forms of transnational crime.
Both criminals and terrorists have developed transnational networks, dispersing their activities, their planning, and their logistics across several continents, and thereby confounding the state-based legal systems that are used to combat transnational crime in all its permutations. Transnational criminals are major beneficiaries of globalization. Terrorists and criminals move people, money, and commodities through a world where the increasing flows of people, money, and commodities provide excellent cover for their activities. Both terrorists and transnational crime groups have globalized to reach their markets, to perpetuate their acts, and to evade detection.
The Globalization Connection
International organized crime has globalized its activities for the same reasons as legitimate multinational corporations. Just as multinational corporations establish branches around the world to take advantage of attractive labor or raw material markets, so do illicit businesses. Furthermore, international businesses, both legitimate and illicit, also establish facilities worldwide for production, marketing, and distribution needs. Illicit enterprises are able to expand geographically to take advantage of these new economic circumstances thanks to the communications and international transportation revolution. Terrorists have also globalized, taking advantage of the ability to recruit internationally, to be close to diaspora communities that can support them logistically and financially, and to have access to more affluent communities.
The end of the Cold War had an enormous impact on the rise of transnational crime. With the end of super-power confrontation, the potential for large-scale conflict has diminished, but since the late 1980s there has been a phenomenal rise in the number of regional struggles. Unfortunately, often the arms and manpower fueling these conflicts are tied to transnational criminal activity through illicit trade in drugs, diamonds, and people. In turn, these conflicts have produced unprecedented numbers of refugees and have damaged the legitimate economies of their regions, which then become fertile recruiting grounds for terrorists or havens for the planning and training of terrorists.
The growth in illicit transnational activities has been aided enormously by the great technological advances of the post-World War II era. The rise in commercial airline traffic, improvements in telecommunications (including telephone, fax, and rapid communications through the Internet), and the growth of international trade have facilitated the ready movement of goods and people. Criminals and terrorists exploit the anonymity of chat rooms on the Internet and other forms of computer-based communications to plan and execute their activities. The terrorists of 9/11 used public-access computers to send messages and buy their airline tickets. Similarly, Colombian drug traffickers use encrypted telecommunications to plan and execute their trade.
Globalization is coupled with an ideology of free markets and free trade and a decline in state intervention. According to globalization advocates, reducing international regulations and barriers to trade and investment will increase trade and development. But these very conditions that promote a globalized environment are crucial to the expansion of crime. Crime groups and terrorists have exploited the enormous decline in regulations, the lessened border controls, and the resultant greater freedom, to expand their activities across borders and to new regions of the world. These contacts have become more frequent, and the speed at which they occur has accelerated. Whereas the growth of legal trade is regulated by adherence to border control policies, customs officials, and bureaucratic systems, transnational crime groups freely exploit the loopholes of state-based legal systems to extend their reach. They travel to regions where they cannot be extradited, base their operations in countries with ineffective or corrupt law enforcement, and launder their money in countries with bank secrecy or few effective controls. By segmenting their operations, both criminals and terrorists reap the benefits of globalization, while simultaneously reducing their operational risks.
Global trade increased enormously in the second half of the 20th century. Included in the enormous flow of legitimate commodities was an increase in illicit merchandise. Finding the illicit flows within the licit is quite a challenge. A very small percentage of container ships have their cargo checked, thus facilitating the movement of drugs, arms, and contraband. Therefore, drugs can be moved on tuna boats, escaping easy detection, and a honey business can be used to move money and generate profits for al-Qaida.
Recent decades have seen a rise in many forms of globalized crime. The drug trade was the first illicit sector to maximize profits in a globalized world. Criminals received huge profits from dealing in drugs, and many terrorist groups used drug trafficking as an important source of funding. But as the market for drugs became more competitive and the international law enforcement response to it increased, profits were reduced through competition and enhanced risk; many criminals and terrorists consequently exploited other forms of crime facilitated by the global economy. Both criminals and terrorists have subsequently benefited financially from the increase in arms trafficking and trade in people. There has also been an enormous rise in illegal trade in endangered species, hazardous waste, stolen art and antiquities, counterfeiting, and globalized crime connected to credit cards. Organized crime and terrorists exploit all of these activities, sometimes even in tandem.
A major service industry has also developed to serve all forms of transnational criminals. This includes providers of false documents, money launderers, and even high-level professionals who provide legal, financial, and accounting services to both groups. Illustrative of this trend is the fact that Riggs Bank in Washington, D.C., whose legitimate clients had included American presidents and many in the world diplomatic community, was prosecuted for laundering money for the dictator of Equatorial Guinea and for facilitating the transfer of funds to terrorists, resulting in a $25 million fine. This case shows that the activities of criminals and terrorists do not always stay in the shadow economy but often intersect with the legitimate economic system.
What Can Be Done?
There must be a major paradigm shift in the way we approach international security. By adhering to the artificial and obsolete distinctions that criminals are motivated only by profit and terrorists only by political or religious impulses, policymakers, law enforcement, and military strategists are failing to deal effectively with the new phenomenon of transnational crime networks generally.
States and multilateral organizations must move away from the Cold War-era security paradigm that views conflicts between nation-states as the major threat to international security and assumes, therefore, that states are capable of controlling international security. For example, a strategy for controlling the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction by merely locking up the materials needed to make them may be brilliantly engineered but fatally flawed, because without addressing the additional threats posed by the pervasiveness of corruption, and the operations of criminal and terrorist networks, states may be creating a false sense of security.
Addressing the intersection of crime, terrorism, and corruption in the global environment also requires addressing the social, political, and economic environment that generates and sustains them. All three evils are linked to profound problems with the economic imbalances among countries, authoritarian governments, and the lack of opportunities in many regions of the world. A viable solution must recognize and deal with the sense of disenfranchisement that motivates much terrorism, especially among Islamic populations. The availability of jobs and means of obtaining a livelihood is crucial for many in the developing world, so that, for example, Afghan and Latin American farmers are not dependent on drug cultivation to support their families.
Crime is often viewed as a peripheral issue to terrorism. Since September 11, 2001, numerous resources have been shifted in the United States and elsewhere from addressing transnational crime to fighting terrorism. This could be a serious mistake for the military, for intelligence communities, and for others. The need to combat crime is not a peripheral issue, but absolutely central to the fight against terrorism. The terrorists who bombed Madrid trains on March 11, 2004, might have been thwarted if prison authorities had been sensitive to the plotting going on within their facilities.
One example of a successful strategy is found within the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), which merges local police efforts with those of federal law enforcement. By combining expert analysis with traditional police work and closely following the criminal activity within its communities, the LAPD has been enormously successful in disrupting potential terrorist activity and the organizations that fund and facilitate terrorism. Working cooperatively and reducing bureaucratic barriers, the police in Los Angeles have been able to combat terrorism without any special legal tools and without violations of legal rights.
If the threat of non-state actors such as transnational criminals and terrorists continues to rise in coming decades, the future will demand greater international cooperation, more harmonized legislation, and increased sharing of intelligence. In implementing a policy against transnational crime and terrorism, we must, nonetheless, respect human rights and avoid measures that will lead to further radicalization and foment terrorism. How we manage this paradigm shift of seeing and treating criminals, terrorists, and corruption as interconnected will determine how successful we are in saving the benefits of globalization from their dangerous misuse in the area of international security.
The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. government.