Al Qaeda's Budget Slips through the Cracks
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27644191/
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Terrorism, as one Treasury official noted, is “not a rich man’s sport.”
An analysis of some of the most notable attacks show that al-Qaida and others it has inspired have spent between $5,000 and $500,000 to carry out the attacks. Although the numbers in most cases is an approximation—and may not include all costs, such as training—they serve as an indicator of how little is needed to get the world’s attention.
Michael Sheehan, the former counterterrorism director for the New York Police Department, says the department has long been guided by a “4 x 10” rule – “10 men + 10 weeks + $10,000 = 10,000-pound bomb.”
This summary bears out the rule.
The Mafia Is Italy's Biggest Business
http://abcnews.go.com/International/...6238022&page=1
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Organized crime is the biggest business in Italy, according to the latest study by the country's shopkeepers association, Confesercenti.
In this file photo, an Italian carabinieri walks near a burnt bus in the La Valle bus depot at San Donato Mineo, in the south of Italy. Over 30 buses were burnt in the early morning to terrorize the owner of bus company and the arson is blamed on the N'Drangheta, the Calabrian Mafia.
The biggest business operating in Italy today is organized crime, according to the latest study by Italy's shopkeeper's association, Confesercenti.
That Italy's mafias do a booming business, particularly the drug-related variety, is common knowledge. But the effect on the country's legitimate businesses such as tourism and food production had not been as clear until the Confesercenti released the figures, which are staggering.
I said his history was weak
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Can someone provide me some examples of these "market driven guerrillas" that have made nation states irrelevant?
It is painfully clear to most that Robb's hyperbole is Robb's self marketing methodology, and it will eventually backfire if he ever presents himself in forum to debate his ideas; however, I still find an occassional post of his useful. In this case, it prompted me think about our economic development line of effort as it relates to COIN.
To answer your specific question above, I think I listed three examples already, Afghanistan, Mexico, and Columbia. I agree irrelevant is normally too strong a term, but in Afghanistan that "may" be the case, as I don't see what viable economic alternative the State has to offer for the opium trade. I hope I'm wrong, but there are plenty of Afghan experts who monitor our posts, so hopefully they'll weigh in.
Mexico in my opinion is currently at war with organized crime, and it is an insurgency, because the criminals are fighting for political control in certain areas of Mexico to facilitate their activities.
My concern, and I stand by it is the following:
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How do you make the Nation State relevant economically to the populace(a key to controlling and governing their populace) when the global trade in underground drugs, humans, pirated software and videos, is so lucrative, and what drives the many local economies? What can the State offer? When the State attempts to control this so called illicit trade due to pressure from other States, they are in effect declaring war of sorts on their own entrepreuers, their own people (sort of like excessive taxes on small businesses, but much worse), so the State is labeled an enemy, and a criminal insurgency starts. There are no easy answers to this.
You said the Mafia in Italy (and elsewhere) is nothing new. You're right, but the power of organized crime has increased considerably in recent years due to the effects of globalism. Not only do they have more money to subvert governments (Mexico is one example, Russia is another), they are getting increasingly sosphisticated. The reason I posted the article about the Italian Mob being the biggest business in Italy is two fold, one to point out that the black economy is bigger than the legal economy in a G7 country, and two to point out the connection between the current economic crisis and how that is empowering some criminal organizations. It is clearly a much more serious threat to national security than it has been in the past.
As for supporting insurgents and terrorist, I only point that out as a reminder. Chasing money in their bank accounts is important, but as the article points it is fairly easy to raise the money needed through decentralized criminal activities. Again it there is no one magic node that we can target to shut down their operations.
Items: What the US Could Learn From The Mafia
1- In Colonel Jones article about PCE's he talks about understanding the purpose of the organization. Criminal organizations are generally profit oriented, they may do things to influence a government but they don't want to overthrow one.
2- The Mafia doesn't mess with other peoples religions or ideologies.
3-They look at the population as customers, they don't care about the rest. They don't believe in free markets....they create them and strange as it seems they take care of them.
4-They often make large donations to their own religious organizations.
5-They take care of their own organization...they would never sign a treaty that gave away an advantage to another organization.
6-They would never let large groups of people in their organization be without work, thus they generate great loyalty.
7-They are patriotic, they support the US and did many things during WW2 that allowed us to win.
8-They could tell you what to do with the drugs in Astan, but I doubt we will go that route.
Counter points to the point
Entrophy, no one in their right mind would argue your points on Afghan's history. That isn't the issue, the issue is that our objective is to establish a viable Nation-State, and if it can't control the economy (at least more than it influences now), is our objective feasible?
Slapout, you're living in the past regarding the Italian Mafia, which is a shadow of what it once was in America, but has regained new strength in Italy and other parts of the world. The Italian Mafia (just like the Russian, Mexician, Albanian, Chinese mafias, etc.) are not supporters of the U.S. government. Just because the U.S. government used them as surrogates for a couple of operations, ones they were well compensated for I'm sure, doesn't make them loyal citizens of our country.
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In Colonel Jones article about PCE's he talks about understanding the purpose of the organization. Criminal organizations are generally profit oriented, they may do things to influence a government but they don't want to overthrow one.
There is little difference between the type of subversion the Mafia's conduct and the overthrow of the government. If they own the key politicians, judges, police chiefs, etc., then they in effect had a successful coup. They may not want to establish a Marxist government or Sharia law, but they sure as hell want to subvert the law, which is ultimately the purpose of a State.
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They take care of their own organization...they would never sign a treaty that gave away an advantage to another organization.
If you're implying they wouldn't work with other groups, that has been proven false. They'll jockey for a stronger position, incorporation, and perhaps eventually eliminate the competition if it fits their design, but they have consider flexibility in thei policy objectives. :)
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They could tell you what to do with the drugs in Astan, but I doubt we will go that route.
Even the Italian mob is running drugs now, so I doubt they're going to undermine a source by helping us help.
What's this love affair with the Italian Mob all about? Were you on their payroll when you were in Miami Vice?
Dress these patriots in red, white and blue....
http://www.parl.gc.ca/37/1/parlbus/c...brousse2-e.htm
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Services are exchanged between organizations, political and criminal, essentially at the ring level. Following is an example of such an exchange which puts Islamists and Mafia members in contact with each other: in Milan in November 1994, Italian police stopped Djamel Loucini, no. 3 of the FIS, who was suspected of having engaged for three years in an intensive traffic in weapons intended for resistance groups. To organize the deliveries, Loucini had first relied on rings of North African drug traffickers operating in southwestern Germany. They provided him with their logistical support (in particular couriers) to convey weapons via France, Spain and Morocco in exchange for access to Loucini's financial operations to launder revenues from their illegal activities. Settled in Italy since January 1994, Loucini had gained access to the Mafia's underground channels - in particular the drug connections of the Neapolitan Camorra and the labour trafficking connections in western Sicily - to assist in transporting weapons to Algeria.
Although it is not out of the question that certain criminal rings might convert to the revolutionary cause, particularly when that cause is a religious one, the reverse is what most often occurs.
http://jihadwatch.org/archives/001650.php
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ROME (Reuters) - Italian investigators have found a link between Islamic militant groups and the Camorra, one of Italy's main organized crime groups, a top anti-Mafia investigator said on Monday.
"We have evidence that groups of the Camorra are implicated in an exchange of weapons for drugs with terrorist groups," Pierluigi Vigna, Italy's national anti-mafia prosecutor, told reporters at the foreign press club.
Asked what kind of groups, he said: "Islamic terrorist groups."
http://www.a1b2c3.com/drugs/opi012.htm
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By 1981, Pakistani laboratories, with the Sicilian mafia as their intermediaries, were supplying over 60 percent of the US heroin demand and an even greater proportion of Europe's market. By the mid-1980s, an individual mafia cosce, the Badalmenti, was distributing bulk heroin directly across America through the facade of local pizza parlors and accumulating extraordinarily profits.
While the modern mafia may have grown Mercury's wings to move drugs across Asia to the Americas, the logic of laundering brought its cosce back home to Palermo to seek a safe haven for narco profits. Such an expanded local base may also have contributed to mafia's growing penetration of the Italian state. With a vast capital from its role as heroin broker, the mafia increased its control over the hidden politics that operated at the intersection of the Italian state, parties, corporations and criminality. Specifically, the better capitalized mafia cosce were able to begin dictating the agenda for public works and the allocation of their illegal profits, reaching beyond the South to the whole of Italy
http://www.iwar.org.uk/news-archive/...-vol-04-04.pdf
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Italian investigators have found a link between Islamic terrorist groups and the Camorra, one of Italy's main organized crime groups, a top anti-Mafia investigator said Monday. "We have evidence that groups of the Camorra are implicated in an exchange of weapons for drugs with terrorist groups," Pierluigi Vigna, Italy's national anti-mafia prosecutor, told reporters at the foreign press club. Vigna, whose Rome-based office coordinates the work of magistrates investigating organized crime in Italy, said he could not give more details. Pressed further, he suggested the cooperation came about after a member of the Camorra, the Naples-area version of the Sicilian Mafia, converted to Islam and met in prison with Muslims who had been arrested in Italy. Aked what kind of terrorist groups, he said: "Islamic terrorist groups."
http://www.icclr.law.ubc.ca/Publicat...UDY_REPORT.pdf
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have reported arm smuggling activities by Italian and other European crime organization to Palestinian groups in the middle east, and between Italian crime groups involved in both arms and drug trafficking and various Arab clients through the Syrian Government. Terrorists in Italy are said to have assisted the Sicilian mafia, the Neapolitan Camorra and Calabrian gangsters in smuggling narcotics.
This isn't an insurgency, or is it?
http://westernfrontamerica.com/2008/...rain-soldiers/
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Mexican drug cartels are now advertising for young men to step up and to come and join their ranks to fight the Mexican army. The ads and banners premise those who join will make good money have food and a place to stay even while in training. “Operative group ‘The Zetas’ wants you, soldier or ex-soldier. We offer a good salary, food and benefits for your family. Don’t suffer anymore mistreatment and don’t go hungry.”
Mexican drug cartels according to recent press reports have military style training camps on and near the border with the United States. These Training camps are for military-style killers. Federal authorities say these camps have Afghanistan and other middle eastern instructors who teach the latest military fighting tactics that are utilized in Iraq and Afghanistan by the Islamic radicals that are fighting and killing American and allied troops in those countries
Former Mexican national security adviser and ambassador to the United Nations, Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, stated, that “Spanish and Islamic terrorist groups are using Mexico as a refuge
And globalism at its finest:
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It is well known that the Russian mafia is deeply entrenched in the criminal fabric of the Mexican drug cartels and still today plays an important roll in providing guns and other weapons to the cartels and are purveyors of, drug smuggling, money laundering, prostitution, trafficking in women from Eastern and Central Europe and Russia, alien and terrorist smuggling, and kidnappings for ransom.
O.K., I have it off my chest now.
Said Russians providing, among other things, the very popular
FNH P90 and Five Seven Pistola to penetrate Federale Armor...
Shifting focus away from Robb to
I made the mistake of starting this discussion with a post from Robb, and now the focus is on Robb instead of the real issue the nexus between transnational crime and terrorism, and the so what factor of it all. A lick on me, but in an attempt to get the discussion focused once again...
http://search.loc.gov:8765/query.htm...13&submit.y=19
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Mexico’s three major drug cartels are being superseded by a half-dozen smaller, corporate style, trafficking networks. In a process that mirrors the post-cartel reconstitution of drug trafficking networks in Colombia, this “new generation” of Mexican drug traffickers is less prone to violence and more likely to employ sophisticated technologies and cooperative strategies. The processes that are driving Mexican drug trafficking organizations toward establishing cooperative networks of increasing sophistication and decreasing visibility are likely to intensify in the post-September 11 environment. As a result, Mexican drug trafficking networks are likely to emulate their Colombian counterparts by investing heavily in counterintelligence, expanding and diversifying their legitimate enterprises, and concealing transnational partnerships that could attract undue attention from U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies
This is another excerpt from the interagency study posted to the Library of Congress website. It is well researched; however, this assessment made in 2002 couldn't be more off the mark. While half of it is on the mark, you have probably seen the reports on the documentaries on their counter intelligence capabilities, but so much for cooperation between the gangs. Greed is greed, and the groups are fighting one another and the government to gain a bigger share of the action.
Failure to see the significance of this threat is extremely dangerous in my opinion, and it parallels our failure to prevent the attacks on 9/11 due to our lack of imagination. We're not talking simply rifles, p-shooters and marajuana, but billions of dollars of illicit trade, major weapons systems to include surface to air missiles, and a dangerous network that can facilitate reach throughout the entire U.S.A.
There are two issues here:
These criminal enterprises are not just competing against governments, they are subverting governments (replacing governments in many areas) and in many ways they are insurgencies without an ideology (and I don't like agreeing with Robb). They will shift with the markets, and if Middle Eastern Terrorists are paying top dollar (or with drugs) to smuggle their folks into the U.S. or for weapons the criminal enterprises will provide the goods and services. More than ever are available since the end of the Cold War.
The information is all available open source, numerous organized criminal elements and now terrorist organizations opening shop in Mexico so they can link into the services and products provided by the Mexican Mafia because of the access they can provide to the good ole U.S.A. and its markets. The Mexican mafia has a well established and growing network in almost all 50 states. This is just one example, there are other examples of other criminal in in Europe and Asia that provide the similiar services and products. The nexus isn't new, just more dangerous than it has been in the past.
As for inviting Robb to the forum good luck. I tried to debate him on his website based on some of his interpretations of history and when he couldn't respond to the first challenge he replied I don't think you should participate here :rolleyes: He is another Rush Limbaugh in some respects, just another loud mouth with very little depth. He isn't a Lind or Hammes, he is a software geek that likes to frame problems using software and networking terms. The most amusing aspect is he seems to believe he is the only one who gets it, but on the other hand, based on some of the comments throughout this council, he may have a point. There appears to be a significant lack of understanding of emerging threats. Hiding behind the myth of it isn't anything new reminds me of the three monkeys (see no evil, heaar no evil, speak no evil). New or not, it is still a problem that needs to be dealt with.
Criminally motivated insurgencies
Some interesting links that further inform the discussion.
http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache...lnk&cd=4&gl=us
New Challenges and OldConcepts: Understanding 21st Century Insurgency, STEVEN METZ
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Contemporary insurgencies are less like traditional war where the combatants seek strategic victory, they are more like a violent, fluid, and competitive market.
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In contemporary complex conflicts, profitability often is literal rather than metaphorical. There is an extensive body of analytical literature that chronicles the evolution of violent movements such as insurgencies from “grievance” to “greed.”7 The idea is that political grievances may instigate an insurgency but, as a conflict progresses, economic motives may begin to play a greater role.
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Conflict gives insurgents access to money and resources out of proportion to what they would have in peace time. As Paul Collier, one of the pioneers of this idea, explains: Conflicts are far more likely to be caused by economic opportunities than by grievance. If economic agendas are driving conflict, then it is likely that some groups are benefiting from the conflict and these groups, therefore, have some interest in initiating and sustaining it.
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Internal wars “frequently involve the emergence of another alternative system of profit, power, and protection in which conflict serves thepolitical and economic interests of a variety of groups.”11 Hence the insurgents, criminals, militias, or even the regime have a greater interest in sustaining a controlled conflict than in attaining victory
much more in the article, and Dr. Metz carries a high degree of credibility unlike Robb.
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0...lications.html
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Wars in Sierra Leone and Somalia have been categorised as 'criminal insurgencies'. Similar to some South American wars, namely those in Colombia and Peru, the 'rebellions' had no clear political aims or known spokespersons with the goal of gaining political power. The 'strategy' of the insurgents was to spread terror amongst the population so denying the government the ability to govern. The rebel gangs were thus able to rule their own territories to their own physical and economic advantage, Unfortunately government forces have been known to act as atrociously as the rebels in their efforts to suppress the insurgents' lawlessness. (4) The resultant violence and human rights abuses have often received world-wide media coverage.
The majority of African wars, which are thus best described as unconventional, seem to have made insurgency or revolutionary war doctrine irrelevant, at least for the present. They can best be described as intra-state 'ethno-political' and/or criminal conflicts. Unfortunately they tend to be very prolonged and come to no definite resolutions.
http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=14632
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For-Profit Terrorism, Dr. Justine A. Rosenthal
For-profit terrorists are not pure ideologues (though some may remain more true to the cause than others), and they aren’t purely criminals—because they continue to use political rhetoric as a front for their illegal activities. For the most part, for-profit terrorists start out with some real (and sometimes valid) political motivations. But when they shift their priorities and become pure profit-seekers, they turn into this new breed of terrorist.
There are three main catalysts that transform terrorists’ motivations from the political to the financial: destruction of the leadership structure; political changes that debunk the ideological basis of the group; and opportunities for financial gain so great that they subsume ideological motives.
This post is much more serious, and I'll end by diatribe here by pointing out what I think are the limitations to Bob's Populace Centric Engagement (PCE) strategy. In some, if not many cases, if you give the populace what they want it will simply make the situation worse. This is true where criminal insurgencies have established a degree of popular controll, and it is true when the bulk of a target populace wants to pursue a hate agenda (Rwanda). That said I trust he didn't want us to swallow his concept hook, line and sinker, but to use it as applicable, and I think it is applicable in many cases, and I still applaud the article, but I also think there are situations where a PCE strategy could fall short, and for these situations we need to go back and reassess the strategy.
