Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: While al-Qaeda’s operations and financing networks are an important component of their success, they do not represent historically unique mechanisms in terrorist operations. What has changed, we contend, is the nature of the international environment in which terrorist groups operate and the change in the nature of the relationship that terrorist groups have with nation-states who cooperate with them.
While scholars have examined the impact of globalization on the capacity of terrorist groups to operate, globalization cannot completely explain the success and growing threat of international terrorism. Scholars have also pointed to the ability of terrorist groups to take advantage of conditions in weak or failed states to promote their operations. Again, we contend that this relationship is not enough to explain the conditions under which international terrorism flourishes. Instead, we argue that the combination of an unregulated international economic environment, promoted under the guise of globalization, and a change in the relationship that terrorist groups have with weak and failed states have created an environment that has allowed terrorist groups to increase their power and operating capacity in the international system.
In making this argument, we highlight three important conceptual issues. First, the nature and methods of terrorist financing, recently highlighted through accounts of al-Qaeda’s activities, are not new. These same mechanisms were used by groups that pre-date al-Qaeda’s appearance on the international scene. Most prevalent amongst these groups was the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Second, the movement toward deregulation of the international economy, which established the foundations for the latest and strongest period of globalization (or interdependence), helped to create an environment that allowed terrorists to operate more clandestinely, particularly in their financing operations. Third, the relationship that terrorist groups have had with states that either support or are sympathetic to them has changed. Following the collapse of the Cold War and the proliferation of weak and failed states in its wake, terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda, were able to form relationships of two kinds with state partners. In cases where the terrorist group built a relationship with a weak state, the conditions for terrorist-supported states emerged such that the state was dependent upon the terrorist group for assistance. In a failed state, a state lacking the capacity to govern its own territory, terrorist groups exploited the unregulated environment and formed symbiotic relationships groups that were competing for power. Hence, unregulated or poorly governed environments at both the state and international level have promoted ideal conditions for stronger, more powerful and effective terrorist organizations to emerge. We highlight these conditions in case studies of the Palestine Liberation Organization and al-Qaeda, emphasizing the similar funding mechanisms each group employed and the differing nature of each group’s relationship with weak states.