Terrorist Finance (merged thread)

[Jedburgh]

....Perhaps it is just me, but the title seems to be reminiscent of the Murder Inc. of depression era Organized Crime. In that case, organized criminality became an industry, almost unto itself. Of course there were supporting funds, such as the ubiquitous prostitution, extortion and 'rum running'. Nevertheless, it is possible that there is an undercurrent of political economy. This may be worth exploring in a separate thread. Are we dealing with an entire economic movement, and if so is it more like the advent of the automobile industry, and part of the existing structure, or is it more like communism and antithetical to existing economics? Should this be discussed elsewhere, or has it already been?

The point that has been made thus far in the thread is that there is no all-encompassing, world-wide "economic movement" financially supporting terrorism. Each terrorist organization has to be examined in its own unique context, i.e. like the case study RAND completed a few years back looking at the LTTE and diaspora support.

There have also been a few outstanding studies of how former violent leftist organizations shifted funding after the fall of the Soviet Union - many just fell apart, some dropped the ideology and shifted to become plain ol' criminal enterprises, a small number managed to blend various aspects of illicit funding with continued operations, often with a bit of a different focus.

There is certainly value in exploring financial support to various specific terror organizations. Perhaps it may be better to discuss the issue in the specific regionally-focused forum where the group in question operates (i.e. Jemaah Islamiyyah in Asia-Pacific, Hezballah in the Middle East, or the FARC in the Americas.)