International Journal on Criminology Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 2014 | Page 26

International Journal on Criminology
Haqqani Network, PKK 9 , Hamas, Islamic
Jihad, terrorist movements in Northern
Ireland, Kosovo, or Chechen separatists
to name a few, have been or are considered
engaged in organized crime-type
activities 10 . This crime-terror nexus does
not limit itself to terrorism turning to
organized crime but also concerns the
adoption of terror tactics by criminals.
The filming of executions, amputations,
decapitations, and hangings by Mexican
criminal groups corresponds to the
well-known strategy of tension aiming to
attract Mexico into the cycle of repression-vengeance,
with the prospects of
police blunders (extra-judicial killings),
that would undermine the legitimacy of
the state 11 . Violence is therefore political.
The D-Company, a criminal organization
first invested in smuggling activities
(1970s), evolved into a fully fledged organized
crime group also engaged in insurgency-terrorism
through "supporting
efforts to smuggle weapons to militant and
terrorist groups". "By the 1990s, it began
to conduct and participate in terrorist attacks,
including the March 12, 1993, Bombay
bombing" 12 .
5. In various countries and regions within
them, crime and state seem to have,
at least partially, merged, giving rise to a
new type of organized crime entity, the
criminal state.
Every year, hundreds of billions of
dollars are produced by illicit trades and are
essentially laundered in the licit economy 13 ,
dozens of conflicts are fuelled by the smuggling
of small arms and light weapons. Digital
piracy (partially organized crime related),
in less than a decade, transformed the movie
and music industries and on average, 10,000
to 20,000 opioid users die each year from
overdose, drug-related infectious diseases,
violence, and other causes in the EU, Norway,
and Turkey combined 14 . This influence
on society, by all accounts, is found more
lasting than any terrorist attacks.
Of course, criminal groups rip the
benefits from these illicit trades to finance
necessary workforce and protection from
lawful authorities (corruption), to the point
of competing with states in both "monopol[ies]
of the legitimate violence" (Weber) 15
and taxation (through extortion).
Evolution of Transnational Organized
Crime and National Security
Implications
This contributes to the burgeoning of
so-called “failed states”, or more eloquently
said, sovereigns without power,
along major illicit trade routes. The global
and local impacts of the illicit economy,
from the Andean forest to French suburbs
and North America through West Africa and
9
Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan/Kurdistan Workers' Party.
10
European Parliament, Europe's Crime-terror Nexus: Links between Terrorist and Organised Crime Groups in
the European Union, 2012, 65 and CRS, Terrorism and Transnational Crime: Foreign Policy Issues for Congress,
October 19, 2012, 40.
11
Mickaël R. Roudaut, In Narco Veritas?, Op. cit.
12
CRS, Terrorism and Transnational Crime, Op. cit.
13
According to the UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime), criminals, especially drug traffickers,
may have laundered around US$1.6 trillion, or 2.7% of global GDP, in 2009. See Infra.
14
EMCDDA (European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction), European Drug Report 2013,
May 2013, spec. p. 42.
15
For a case study, see Mickaël R. Roudaut, In Narco Veritas? Op. cit.
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