‘The Ties That Bind’: Uncovering the Relationship Between Organised Crime and Terrorism

Abstract

The relationship between organised crime and terrorism has received sporadic academic, government and media attention since the 1970s, when Latin American terrorist groups such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia developed ties to the infamous Colombian drug cartels. Eliciting the label of ‘narcoterrorism’, a new genre (albeit very limited) of literature appeared in an attempt to explain why two intrinsically different groups - one motivated by politics and the other by profit — would find it beneficial to cooperate¹²³. With little follow-on interest emerging from the early literature on ‘narco-terrorism’, research focusing on the developing relationship between crime and terrorism declined abruptly. In fact, the pre-1991 environment did not lend itself to facilitating a sophisticated crime-terror nexus largely because most terrorist groups were not concerned about operational funding, as they received state sponsorship. ‘Narco-terrorism’ was thus regarded as an exception to the rule that organised crime and terrorism were separate phenomena, and thus required separate responses.