Terrorist Financing Innovation in the Crime-Terror Nexus

“Follow the money, target the money, kill the money” – Meir Dagan (1945-2016)

By Zachariah Parcels

Introduction

Terrorists cannot symmetrically confront modern States. Instead, terrorists violently struggle by using or threatening to use violence against civilians to achieve political aims.[1] Befitting the definition by Ganor and the “Doubtful Terrorism Proper” designations by Enders and colleagues, there have been 155,551 (as of 2020) terrorist attacks since 1970.[2] Yet, only spectacularly innovative terrorist attacks take nations by surprise by exploiting vulnerabilities in security apparatuses and inflicting high material, psychological, social, and emotional costs.[3] Albeit being an accessible and inexpensive means of violent political expression, terrorism really exemplifies disruptive innovation when it is sufficiently financed.[4] Though, money is needed more for logistics than operations.[5]

Amidst Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) suiciding bombings, the late Meir Dagan’s (1945-2016) “Harpoon” unit, under Israel’s famed Mossad, realised this need, as did the US-led coalition against ISIS, to “follow the money, devalue the money, seize the money, and kill the money.”[6] Dagan subsequently influenced United States (U.S.) and international efforts, such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), to counter terrorism financing (CTF) and money laundering (AML).[7]

This paper adopts the follow-the-money directive by exploring the emergence of the crime-terror nexus, an increasingly salient terrorist financing conundrum not solely explained by existing typologies. By amalgamating terrorist financing and innovation typologies, we may begin to explore how and why terrorists began financing and associating with criminality. By illuminating Makarenko “Crime-Terror Nexus”[8] as a product and arena of terrorist financing innovation, this paper aspires to assist in Dagan’s directive to target the finances fuelling terror organisations.[9]

Money as the Lifeblood of Terror: Why do terrorists need money?

Through various methods of financing, AQ spent around $30 million annually in logistics prior to 9/11. This money financed recruitment, training camps, food, housing, armaments, training simulators (e.g., flight simulators), legitimate or forged documents, communication devices, and retirement pensions, among others. Terrorists’ annual budgets are in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) had a functional annual budget of around $15 million; Lebanon’s Hezbollah (“Party of God”) has an annual budget ranging up to $400 million; and Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) has an annual ranging from $100 million to $1 billion.[10] How do terrorists accumulate these millions, and what creates change in terror financing modus operandi? 

Typologies of Terrorist Financing and Movement of Funds

The following sections elicit the empirical underpinnings of terrorist financing; the transition to illicit revenue streams, namely terrorist financing’s “Balloon Effect”;[11] the terrorist innovation typologies to explain terrorist financing adaptations; and, finally, how contemporary terrorist financing focuses on the crime-terror nexus. Crime-terror nexus refers to (a) the use of crime by terrorist groups as a source of funding;[12] and (b) formation of alliances between terrorist and criminal organisations.[13] Understanding why and how terrorists overtly criminalised financing and why and how terrorists innovate within the crime-terror nexus requires an analysis beyond terrorist financing literature.

Terrorist Financing

Financing Method Considerations

Terrorists are utility maximising, rational actors that weigh each action respective to their “political aims.” According to Freeman, terrorists consider six criteria that dictates the choice of financing method: quantity, security, reliability, simplicity, control, and legitimacy. Terrorists want sources that offer the largest quantity of money to be strong and effective.[14] For example, the illicit drug trade, crime-terror financing nexus’ largest contributor, is around $29.7 to $34.3 billion just in the European Union (EU).[15] As drugs warrant unwanted attention, terrorists must consider security. Reliability[16] depends on geography and demographics: to profit from drugs an organisation must be near the source (e.g., Hezbollah and marijuana), located on a trafficking route (e.g., PKK and heroin), or have access to enough users. Terrorists desire financial control rather than solely external sponsorship who may question the control of members and operations. According to Freeman, terrorists prefer simplistic financing methods that require less tacit knowledge, such as petty theft and kidnap-for-ransom; these methods require less skill than elaborate drug trafficking operations.[17] Lastly, terrorists require legitimacy to remain afloat; terrorists hesitantly use “illegitimate” sources, like the drug trade, and are undermined by methods to acquire personal wealth.[18]

Terrorism Financing Typologies

This section underlines terrorist financing’s empirical underpinnings, particularly from Michael Freeman, Peter Neuman, the FATF – a CTF and AML inter-governmental agency – and The Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (Forsvarets forskningsinstitutt).[19] Terrorist innovation literature has yet to merge with terrorism financing literature. This section enables the crime-terror nexus to be conceptually located with regards to terrorism financing.

Freeman catalogues terrorist financing into four general categories: state sponsorship, illegal activities, legal activities, and popular support.[20] Neuman asserts four factors that determine how terrorists finance: the group’s level of support; accessibility to illicit economies, namely ability to exploit pre-existing networks and collaborate with criminals; capacity to access legitimate revenue streams; and control over territory, as a reference to previous Islamic State (IS) successes.[21] However, the amalgam FATF and FFI typologies are pertinent and serve as a terrorism financing frame-of-reference.

FATF works to establish standards and promote effective legal, regulatory, and operational measures to threats to the international financial system’s integrity.[22] FATF lists private donations; abuse and misuse of non-profit organisations; criminal activity proceeds; extortion of local and diaspora populations and businesses; kidnapping for ransom; self-funding; legitimate business; and state sponsorship of terrorism as the principle means of financing terror.[23]

When analysing European jihadist cells’ financing, FFI’s Emilie Oftedal establishes a dichotomous typology that categorises and elaborates on FATF’s methods and techniques: there is “External Support” and “Self-Financing.”[24] External support refers to (1) popular support revenues streams, or charities, fundraising and individual donations; (2) terrorist support revenue streams, or international terrorist organisations and other cells/support networks; and (3) state sponsorship. Self-Financing refers to legal activities, namely personal assets, family assistance, business profits, loans, and credit card debt,[25] and illegal activities, such as thefts and robbery, illicit trade, forgery, other forms of fraud and other serious crimes (e.g., kidnapping and extortion).[26] This paper examines how terrorist organisations adaptation has caused a transition to self-financing, specifically illegal activities, and how terrorists have subsequently innovated to remain politically consequential.

The typologies offered by the FATF and FFI are descriptively useful. Accordingly, “illegal activities” denote terrorists’ involvement in criminal activity. Terrorists engage in petty theft, bank robberies, and other means of theft; the trade or taxation of illicit goods, such as drugs, stolen cars, and forged documents; pirating; kidnap-for-ransom; forgery; various other forms of fraud like credit card or welfare fraud; and smuggling of legal goods, such as cigarettes, oil, and conflict diamonds, among others.[27]

Movement of Funds

This paper does not address innovation in the movement of funds. It is theoretically relevant to understand the movement of money and how it pertains to terrorist financing but would require separate typologies and a unique approach to understand terrorist innovation in the movement of funds. Terrorists use various methods to move money: cash couriers, hawala and other informal transfer systems, formal banking, charities, cash-smuggling, money value transfer systems (MVTS) like Western Union (like Lashkar-e-Taiba, LeT), false invoicing, high value commodities, and trade-based money laundering.[28] Money laundering, namely masking proceeds of crime by moving value through trade transactions to legitimise illicit revenues, is a necessity for terrorists involved in illicit markets.[29] Internet and telecommunication technologies are also exploited by terrorists to transfer funds such as mobile non-bank led money services, electronic payment systems like PayPal or Skrill, and virtual currencies like Bitcoin.[30]

Insufficiencies of Terrorist Financing Typologies

Terrorism financing, like terrorists’ tactics, is a fluid phenomenon that adapts to pressures exhibited by CFT and AML forces, denoting the “Balloon Effect.” As in counterinsurgency (COIN), “the side that learns faster and adapts more rapidly—the better learning organization—usually wins.”[31] Moreover, this paper explores the learning competition that has culminated in and within the crime-terror nexus. Albeit being descriptively useful, terrorist financing typologies cannot explain or predict changes in financing modus operandi, particularly as it pertains to the crime-terror nexus. To further understand this learning competition, it is essential to understand terrorist innovation’s empirical underpinnings.

Conceptualising Terrorist Innovation[32]

Prior to 9/11, terrorism specialists like Bruce Hoffman who previously agreed with Adam Dolnik’s premise that “terrorists are conservative by nature”.[33] However, innovation, “the adoption of new patterns of behaviour,”[34] does occur. Joseph Schumpeter’s generalisable contribution to economic development serves as a basis to better understand innovation and terrorism innovation.[35] He viewed “development” as the process of “carrying out new combinations,” which is accomplished “in small steps” or “discontinuously.”[36] This process includes five major forms of “innovation” (“new combinations”): “the introduction of new goods… new methods of production… the opening of new markets… the conquest of new sources of supply… and the carrying out of a new organization of any industry.”[37] Further, this paper holds the Schumpeterian assertion of innovation as a phenomenon.

Terrorist innovation is empirically categorised into types, drivers, and levels.[38] Dolnik’s Understanding Terrorist Innovation, the first academic book on terrorist innovation, defines the latter as an “introduction of a new method or technology or the improvement of an already existing capability,”[39] incorporating development or discovery of new technologies or tactics and improving the use of technologies or tactics.[40] Yet, Martha Crenshaw seemingly accepts Dolnik’s definition but as “tactical innovation,” one of three types of terrorist innovation.[41]

Martha Crenshaw distinguishes between strategic, tactical, and organisational innovations in terrorist behaviour. Strategic innovations are strategic re-conceptualisations of terrorism, or “the way in which ends are related to means.”[42] Strategic innovations rarely occur and “involve a new goal and a new means of reaching it.”[43] Tactical innovations, echoing Dolnik, are “changes in method or operations… involve new weapons or targets and are much more frequent… [and] occur within strategies.”[44] Organisational innovations “involves changes in group structure and institutions” like the PIRA’s transition between 1976 to 1978 to clandestine, small, centralised, cellular organisation structure.[45]

Literature provides who and what drives terrorist innovation. Assaf Moghadam examined top-down, bottom-up, and integrative drivers of innovation in a case study on the 9/11 attacks.[46] Top-down innovation involves “entrepreneurial leadership” who impose or direct innovation from above, while bottom-up innovation stresses the role of low- and mid-level members.[47] Integrative drivers of innovation are “an innovation-abetting mechanism that depends on the confluence of both top-down and bottom-up forces”[48] like AQ’s “centralization of decision and decentralization of execution.”[49] Moghadam also discusses “independent jihadist entrepreneurs” as an example of how innovation may originate from outside the organisation. There are several key drivers of innovations: ideology, intergroup competition, problem-solving pressure, opportunity, and organisational capital.[50] Opportunity driver is particularly significant as it aligns with Loretta Napoleoni’s “New Economy of Terrorism,” namely post-Cold War “deregulation facilitated the merging of the terrorist economy with the illegal and criminal economies,”[51] which alludes to the crime-terror nexus. Further, Freeman’s six criteria may be generalised as potential innovation-inhibiting factors.

Lastly, Clayton Christensen and Cheung, Mahnken and Ross expound on terrorist innovation levels.[52] Christensen’s disruptive innovations disrupt and redefine existing markets by introducing usually simplistic, less expensive, and more accessible and convenient products.[53] In the context of terrorist, conventional forces have difficulties combatting terrorism as a “bottom of the market” disruptive innovation.[54] Cheung and colleagues contribute with seven levels of innovation, from duplicative imitation – copying existing innovations – to radical innovation – major technological or architectural breakthroughs.[55] Further, as illustrated by Theo Farrell, it is not “feasible or fruitful to draw too fine a distinction between adaptation and innovation.”[56]

As previously illuminated, changes in terrorist financing may be visualised as a learning competition.[57] Beyond types, drivers and levels of terrorist innovation, organisational learning is essential in understanding innovation in terrorist financing, specifically learning in the crime-terror nexus. According to a RAND study, organisational learning is composed of four component processes – acquisition, interpretation, distribution, and storage; “successful organisational learning requires a terrorist group to carry out all four of the component processes.”[58] Further, to measure a terrorist group’s learning capabilities, it is essential to understand explicit knowledge – “[knowledge] preserved in a physical form”[59] (e.g., instruction manuals) – and tacit knowledge – “more-abstract knowledge held by individuals.”[60]

Application of Theory:

Innovations in the Origin of the Nexus

Terrorism was predominantly state sponsored during the Cold War. Marxist groups (e.g., the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine or PFLP), were supported by the Soviet Union, North Korea, and Cuba; the U.S. supported the Afghan Mujahedin and Nicaraguan Contras; Arab States gave millions to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO); and Libya financed and supported, inter alia, PLO, PIRA, Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) and Baader-Meinhof.[61] Today, Iran and Syria support several organisations like Hezbollah and Hamas while Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) supports Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM),[62] the Afghan Taliban, and Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (the Pakistani Taliban), among others.[63] Terrorists began shifting away from state sponsorship and converging with crime before and during the Cold War, such as the Tamil Tigers who perceived state sponsorship as inconsistent – diversifying their financing through, inter alia, criminal activities and associations.[64] This denotes the problem-solving innovation driver.

The crime-terror convergence exacerbated and galvanised amidst the Soviet Union’s collapse, a pertinent exogeneous force in terrorist financing innovation. Exemplifying opportunity innovation drivers, the deregulation of economic barriers, proliferation of cheap black-market arms, and decreasing number of “consolidated states”[65] facilitated the fusion of the terrorist economy with illicit, criminal economies.[66] This $500 billion “New Economy of Terror” was one-third legal activities like zakat donations or salaries and two-thirds criminal and illegal activities, with drug trafficking being the most profitable.[67] Moreover, the post-1991 era influenced tactical innovations (e.g., illicit activities like internet fraud), strategic innovations[68] and organisational innovations (i.e., decentralisation and criminal associations; Napoleoni, 2014). Additionally, States cannot domestically or internationally justify sponsorship in the new post-1991 paradigm, driving terrorists further towards alternative revenue streams (i.e., a problem-solving innovation driver).[69]

After 9/11, international law enforcement’s pressures on terrorist’s external support revenues[70] intensified terrorist diversification into alternative revenue streams, particularly organised crime.[71] Concurrent pressures on criminal and terrorist organisations also caused the decentralisation of organisational structures.[72] Decentralisation is mutually inclusive to both the War on Drugs and the War on Terror. For example, kinetic operations against AQ led to the death of many of its high-ranking members in its command-and-control structure.[73] Subsequently, AQ adopted the “centralization of decision and decentralization of execution,” with Usama bin Laden (UBL) transitioning from entrepreneurial micromanaging to an inspirational role.[74] The PIRA previously decentralised in the 1970s because of pressures from British law enforcement. It adopted autonomous “family” cell structures. Thus, to maintain operational effectiveness, post-9/11 AQ might have creatively imitated PIRA cell structures, or likewise creatively imitated Baader-Meinhof and ETA cell structures.[75] The “flattening” of terrorist and criminal organisations allows for “synergistic ties” between low and mid-level criminals and terrorists, denoting Moghadam’s integrative driver of innovation (see Figure 1).[76]

Terrorist and criminal organisational adaptions to law enforcement pressures caused organisations to retain a weakened hierarchy with little control over a decentralised network of cells.[77] These autonomous cells became localised and were forced to self-finance, with no “terrorist bank,”[78] but are less constrained by top-down leadership. This enables Mafiosi or cartel cells to cooperate with terrorist organisations, which was previously inhibited because of security and legitimacy concerns.[79] These structural changes mirror legitimate businesses’ organisational innovations, which may suggest globalisation as a main organisational innovation driver.[80]

Additionally, these “synergistic ties” enables, what Chesbrough and colleagues refers to as, open innovation, namely “purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation.”[81] Prior to 9/11, UBL realised the need for internal and external ideas – demonstrated by Khaled Sheikh Muhammad’s (KSM) contribution to 9/11 as an “independent jihadi entrepreneur.”[82] Likewise, these changes in group structure[83] and ways in which terrorists’ political ends are related to these criminal means[84] enabled tacit and explicit knowledge transfers. These synergistic ties empower low- and mid-level members,[85] reflecting a new-market disruption whereby new integrative innovative structures (decentralisation) target needs (low/mid-level members) that were previously unseen.[86]

Figure 1 Dishman’s (2005) Perception of Crime-Terror Nexus[87]

Terrorist Innovation in the Crime-Terror Nexus

This section merges Tamara Makarenko’s crime-terror convergence and continuum,[88] and terrorist innovation typologies. Transnational crime and terrorism exist on a continuum. The alternative representation of the crime-terror continuum (Figure 2) examines terrorist financing innovation at three separate measures of convergence with criminality. The three discernible categories are alliances, in-house criminal activities, and convergence. Criminal organisation’s measure of convergence with terrorism was excluded in Figure 2 and will not be explored in this paper.

Figure 2 Terrorist Aspect of the Crime-Terror Continuum[89]

Each category of criminal association is a re-conceptualisation of strategy, altering how means relates to its political ends, and thus these strategic innovations occur less often.[90] Moreover, alliances or “External Convergence” constitutes different goals and means of reaching them than In-House Criminal Activities. Strategic re-conceptualisations may manifest different tactical innovations, or “changes in method or operations,”[91] but these are not always mutually exclusive. Lastly, there are separate organisational innovations, or changes in group structures and institutions, in each category. There are also various levels and drivers of innovation within each category. 

Alliances/External Convergence: Alliances with Criminal Organisations

Alliances or “External Convergence” are “one-spot” arrangements, or temporary/long-term alliances, with many being predatory or patron-client relationships, between terrorists and criminals.[92] All feature various forms of terrorist financing innovation.

“One-spot” arrangements are mainly driven by problem-solving pressures and insufficient organisational capital.[93] One-off knowledge exchanges exemplify these arrangements. Terrorists may provide bomb-making skills for a fee to criminals, representing a commodification of tacit knowledge exchange, and thus a financial tactical innovation. For example, Pablo Escobar hired the ELN to plant car bombs for a fee.[94]

Terrorists have predatorially extorted drug traffickers for protection money, such as in Afghanistan, West Africa, and Ireland.[95] Patron-client relations is exemplified by Al-Shabaab’s role as a broker between poachers and buyers of ivory.[96] These predatory and patron-client exchanges represent new terrorist financing methods (i.e., technical innovations). Yet, alliances may be driven by opportunity[97] like IS tactical and strategic innovation to manufacture and traffic “Captagon,” a synthetic stimulant fenethylline, capitalising on opportunities provided by Western users and the COVID-19 pandemic that has inhibited European production and distribution of synthetic drugs. Albeit all €1 billion in pills being seized, this represents a new method of financing – a re-conceptualised strategy that incorporates selling drugs as a means to raise funds for IS political aims and required a structural change to incorporate drug production. This was contingent on alliances with a “consortium” of criminal organisations.[98] Denoting the “Balloon Effect” and effects of exogeneous pressures, the Captagon drug seizure by Italian authorities displays how IS has underwent significant tactical, strategic, and organisational innovations amidst COVID-19 and multilateral kinetic operations on ISIS-Core. Similarly, the FARC entered long-term alliances with foreign criminal organisation, like Mexican drug-traffickers, to finance arms purchases with cocaine. These alliances also involve other various high-end commodities, such as weapons and human cargo.[99] 

Operational Motivation: Financing through In-House Criminal Activities

Only organisations with enough operational capital may develop “in-house” criminal capabilities.[100] Organisational capital, opportunity, ideology, and security[101] play an integral part in this category.[102] Through organisational learning, terrorists may avert risks involved in cooperation (alliances) by learning in-house capabilities[103]. These risks are associated predominantly with security and risk, two of the six financing criteria listed by Freeman, which are generalised as innovation inhibiting factors. This assumes that associating with criminal organisations is the only means of terrorist financing innovation. Yet, the other aspect of the crime-terror nexus is the in-group criminal activities used to finance terror. Thus, the crime-terror nexus presumes that terrorist organisation’s learned in-house capabilities, suggesting Freeman’s six criteria could be repurposed as innovation drivers. Organisations learning in-house capabilities are exemplified by Jamaah Islamiyah (JI) and the PIRA.

Small scale development of in-house capabilities was demonstrated by JI’s financing of the 2003 Bali bombing. After receiving insufficient external financing, for example from AQ cash injections and charities, JI tactically innovated by relying on criminal activities, including robbing a gold shop in Serang, Java. This enabled JI to finance the bomb-making materials, albeit little-by-little.[104] JI displays small-scale development of criminal activities that do not compare to organisational learning from larger groups like Hezbollah, FARC, or the PIRA.

PIRA adjusted to declining donations in the 1970s by learning and engaging in fraud, smuggling, extortion, and robberies. The PIRA is an archetypal in the latter.[105] After two amateur robberies left large sums of cash behind in 1981, the PIRA learned about the insufficiencies of its Southern Command through a profit-and-loss measurement that mirrored legitimate businesses. The lessons-learned mechanism was an internal source that used direct experience to acquire information, determine the value, and identify improved terrorist financing methods. PIRA interpreted the internally developed knowledge and recognised the need for tactical and organisational innovation and certain tacit knowledge. It developed a specifically trained unit for robberies and recruited lawyers, accountants, and computer experts to secure its finances.[106] The PIRA, thus, carried out organisational learning, as described by Jackson and colleagues.[107] It is successfully carried out all four component processes – acquisition, interpretation, distribution, and storage. Distribution and storage are not mentioned but are self-evident in wide-spread adoption of these lessons learned.[108] These measures maximised the PIRA’s efficiency in the crime-terror nexus.

In addition, driven to organisationally learn and tactically innovate during the Lebanese Civil War, Hezbollah, with its other means of financing destroyed, learned to grow marijuana in the Bekaa Valley.[109] This demonstrates the problem-solving innovation driver. Though, these efforts were uninhibited because of southern Lebanon’s “limited statehood,” denoting Hezbollah ability to recognise and capitalise on new opportunities.[110] Influenced by prospects of growing organisational capital, aforementioned opportunity, and security concerns, Hezbollah strove to improve its financing capabilities while reducing its dependency on external sources.[111] This explains Hezbollah’s reported expansion of its in-house criminal activities to include cultivating poppy crop and processing cocaine, heroin, and hashish in the Bekaa Valley.[112]

Convergence: Criminal Terrorist Hybrid Organisations

“Convergence” is either (a) when a terrorist organisation’s criminal adaptations cause it to appear as both a criminal and terrorist organisation,[113] or (b) when terrorists strategically adapt to criminality to a point in which the new goal becomes self-enrichment while political rhetoric becomes a façade for criminal activities.[114] Hezbollah exemplifies the former and, the Caucasus Emirate (CE), the latter. Both are driven by opportunity and arguably ideology.

The convergence provides a new tactical method: terrorist cells operating in criminal networks. For example, Hezbollah’s cells smuggled pseudoephedrine (needed for methamphetamines) from Canada with Mexican drug dealers.[115] Hezbollah “double[s] as global criminals” as its cells tactically innovate by smuggling cigarettes, laundering money, and counterfeiting to finance terror but remain politically tethered.[116] However, the unprecedented revenue accumulated could have been used to finance an attack. This is disruptive innovation, as extensive criminal cooperation may operationalise previously fiscally-inhibited cells. If Ramzi Yousef’s cell were involved in such arrangements, it may have toppled the World Trade Center with adequately sized ordinance.[117]

Additionally, Hezbollah radically, strategically, and religiously innovated by using a fatwa to legitimise the drug trade. They radically use fatwas to overcomes legitimacy doubts,[118] which might be perceived as a strategic re-conceptualisation of terrorism in how Hezbollah’s means (drug producing and trafficking) connects to its struggle against Israel.[119] Thus, this is an amalgam of strategic and religious innovation that was not previously done.  AQ seemingly duplicated[120] this innovation to legitimise the use of drug money to finance the 2004 Madrid bombing.[121] In contrast, the PIRA did not innovate, began losing political capital, and, therefore, had to disassociate with the drug trade.[122]

The Caucasus Emirate’s (CE) recent developments represent the second form of convergence. As a member of AQ’s global jihad, CE similarly decentralised and localised.[123] This also refers to Cheung and colleagues’ creative imitation, the second of seven categories of imitation and innovation.[124] CE creatively imitated AQ’s cell structures, but seemingly possessed different operational features like more extensive cooperation between cells.[125] They were “territorially fragmented network with a flexible hierarchy.”[126] CE delegated financing, recruiting, and operating responsibilities to the jamaats, while seemingly merging AQ’s “centralization of decision and decentralization of execution” with a mountain dweller Muslim solidarity.[127] Nevertheless, decentralised jamaats (cells), with no support from the centre, tactically innovated by cooperating with criminal networks to extort money from locals. Certain jamaats began evolving into extremely violent criminals – shifting from political objectives to personal enrichment.[128]

Conclusion

This paper’s application of crime-terror nexus, as the result of and arena for terrorist financing innovation, rejects dichotomous characterisations of criminal and terrorist organisations. Criminals nor terrorists are homogenous groups.[129] The learning competition between CTF and AML forces and terrorists created a trend that has led to this $500 billion “New Economy of Terror.” The decentralisation of traditional hierarchies and empowerment of low- and mid-level criminals and terrorists has eroded various criteria that inhibited crime-terror cooperation. Thus, terrorists remain with more money to execute their political aims. In contrasting Yousef’s cell with 9/11, financial capital evidently attributes to terrorism’s political consequence. So, as terrorists effectively improve their criminal abilities and associations, criminally enriched terrorism presents a clear and present danger to international security. Yet, to “follow the money, devalue the money, seize the money, and kill the money,” as it pertains to the crime-terror nexus, states must innovatively combat criminal organisations associated with terror as terrorists, especially if it relates to narco-terrorism.

APPENDIX I

Categorisation of Terrorist Financing Sources[130]

APPENDIX II

Crime-Terror Continuum[131]

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