Organized Crime and Connections to Terrorism
Criminologists, social scientists, and government policymakers have, until relatively recently, viewed organized crime and terrorism as two different forms of crime. Organized crime, as represented by the domestic Mafia in the United States and both the Russian and Italian Mafias is generally viewed as focused on economic profit and on acts that are designed to facilitate the acquisition of as much of an illegal market share as possible (Bovenkerk & Chakra, 2004). Conversely, terrorism is seen as motivated chiefly by political ideology and the desire for some type of political change. Nevertheless, in recent years, new research indicates that the divisions between organized crime and terrorism have been blurred, partially as a consequence of the fact that many terrorist groups use the illicit drug trade that was once the exclusive purview of traditional organized crime families and cartels as a source of finance (Shelley & Picarelli, 2005).
The focus of this research study is on the linkage between organized crime and terrorism. It will be argued herein that as terrorist groups have become more and more common these groups have begun to behave in some ways that are similar to international organized crime groups and cartels. In fact, some researchers argue that terrorism and international organized crime have joined together to create networks that transcend the nation-state level (Shelley & Picarelli, 2002).
Bovenkerk and Chakra (2004) state that it was in the 1980s when researchers as well as law enforcement officials began to recognize the growing relationship between organized crime and terrorism. It was then that the term "narco-terrorism" was developed to refer to the fact that drug trafficking was increasingly used to advance and finance the political objectives of certain governments and terrorist organizations. Even the Security Council of the United Nations...