Валерія Аркадіївна Динту, В. А. Динту, Валерия Аркадиевна Дынту, Валерия Аркадиевна Дынту · 9 authors
The purpose of the article is to explain the use of cryptocurrency as a terrorist financing tool. This article has emphasized the ways, which terrorists appraise for being a reliable fundraising means and their adoption. Methodology. For the purposes of the study, the methods of scientific abstraction, synthesis, observation, generalization, as well as the method of induction of literature and legal documents were used to determine the features of bitcoin, promoting and preventing its use for terrorism financing. Results. The development of the Internet and electronic devices has radically changed all spheres of human life, including criminal activity. Digitalization has led to the improvement of ordinary crimes and the emergence of new types of crime, which, in principle, cannot exist without special digital electronic devices. Among the first implementers of new technologies were terrorists, who took advantage of digitalization to increase profitability. Thus, terrorists have now significantly increased their attention to cryptocurrency as a digital means of payment, namely Bitcoin. Bitcoin has a number of features that have attracted the attention of criminals as a way to evade responsibility for a crime. In particular, decentralization avoids the need for confirmation by a central authority, and pseudo-anonymity provides a certain level of anonymity. In addition, terrorists are aware that Bitcoin's confidentiality is extremely fragile and needs to be enhanced. The paper analyzes several ways to enhance anonymity, such as software that anonymizes traffic and prevents IP identification, peer-to-peer mixers, centralized mixing services (tumbler), and other approaches. It is worth emphasizing that for the fight against crime, the main issue is the de-anonymization of the Bitcoin owner/user, which allows the identification of the criminal. Currently, law enforcement agencies use direct and indirect de-anonymization, proliferation analysis, quantitative analysis, time analysis, and transactional network analysis, among others, to achieve the above goal, which are discussed in detail in this article. In addition, agencies around the world investigated and uncovered terrorist groups and their financial facilitators. Specifically, on August 13, 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Public Affairs announced "the largest cryptocurrency seizure in the context of terrorism in history." To investigate the agenda, the legal documents of those investigations that contain information about the terrorist fund-raising mechanism were examined and analyzed. The legal documents revealed that these investigations used the aforementioned de-anonymization approaches.
Complementing increasing concerns that cryptocurrency could be used to finance terror networks, in this paper we investigate the effect of monthly terrorist attacks outcomes – success, injuries, and fatalities – on monthly returns of 1,178 cryptocurrencies representing 18,016 cryptocurrency-year-months between 2014 and 2018. The monthly percentage of successful terror attacks Granger causes the monthly cryptocurrency returns and lowers the monthly cryptocurrency returns. Increasing success in terror attacks is negatively associated with cryptocurrency returns, the count of wounded is negatively associated with cryptocurrency returns, however, the count of dead is positively associated with cryptocurrency returns. The success in terror attacks has the largest effect on returns, relative to the count of wounded and dead. The estimates are consistent when controlling for cross-sectional correlation among major cryptocurrencies, and cryptocurrencies could be a weak hedge against successful terrorist attacks. The findings are robust to cryptocurrencies in the top three quartiles of the market capitalization and the mediation analysis shows that terror attacks lower returns through the decline in the short-term macroeconomic cycle.
Market Dynamics and Volatility
Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
This study looks at the challenge that cryptocurrencies could pose to national security as it pertains to terrorism. The study begins by untangling what are cryptocurrencies before shifting attention to how criminal use cryptocurrencies and how terrorist could use cryptocurrencies. One of the key issues identified is the lack of an international regulatory regime, including, a definition of what are cryptocurrencies and how one could regulate the sector. By engaging in such research, this study seeks to encourage international society to focus more on cryptocurrencies and develop an effective, binding regulatory regime.
Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
Perhaps the most important story in all of sub-Saharan African politics in the past two decades is how Nigeria, a country that ushered in the new millennium with broad popular optimism about its newly elected civilian, democratic government, would become by 2018 the site of more deaths from terrorism than any country in the world except Afghanistan and Iraq. Alex Thurston's Boko Haram: The History of an African Jihadist Movement is as close to a definitive answer to this question as we are likely to get while the insurgency continues. Scholars of Salafi-jihadism should regard it as required reading. Moreover, given that discussions of Salafism and religiously inspired terrorism in West Africa (home to over 150 million Muslims) have been marginal to broader scholarly and policy debates about these issues in the West, Thurston's work should serve as a necessary addition, and indeed corrective, to some of the trends in these fields.For those who do not follow West African affairs, some context is in order. Although as of this writing, Boko Haram is less deadly now than at its high point of 2014–15 (when it loosely controlled a territory the size of Belgium), it continues to pose a major threat to the peace and stability of at least four countries sharing borders around the Lake Chad Basin (Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon). Even the most carefully collected data on the death toll resulting from the Boko Haram conflict (37,500 from June 2011 to June 2018)1 likely underestimates the size and scope of its impact. A recent UN report that put the current number of people displaced by the conflict at over 4 million paints a clearer picture.2 Despite the Nigerian government's repeated declarations of victory over Boko Haram, and predictions of a rapid return to peace and security in the Lake Chad Basin, the conflict remains far from over. While events may eventually overtake some of Thurston's analyses, it will stand as a clearly written and comprehensively sourced account of Boko Haram's origins, the local religious and political context from which its founder, Mohammed Yusuf, emerged, and the largely ineffective domestic, regional, and international response to its violence.Thus far, the conversation around Boko Haram in academic journals and books has been dominated by journalists and “terrorism studies” practitioners, with little input from scholars whose work in the region predates the crisis. Little of what is available addresses the group's theological and social origins with nuance and depth, and even less is grounded in a deep understanding of the Nigerian and West African regional political context from whence the group sprang. Thankfully, however, this state-of-the-field is changing rapidly, and Thurston's book represents one of the most important contributions to the field. In particular, it is the first serious analysis of the group written by a scholar of religion, and it does a great deal of important work dispelling many of the myths, confusions, and half-truths about the actual positions and arguments adopted by Boko Haram's early leadership.Here, Thurston is uniquely qualified, as he was one of the only foreign researchers already working on intra-Islamic debates and dynamics in northern Nigeria during the earliest days of the insurgency. His first book, Salafism in Nigeria, is the only English-language history of Salafism in West Africa that situates the rise of Salafi-jihadi groups like Boko Haram within the context of the rise of al-Qaʿida, as well as within the conflicts and debates roiling the local Salafi community in the late 1990s and early 2000s. At that time, the government led an effort to implement a version of shariʿa in twelve of Nigeria's federal states.3 While most early research on Boko Haram more or less ignored the Salafi dimension entirely,4 Thurston carefully and persuasively tracks Muhammad Yusuf's evolution from a disaffected youth bouncing back and forth between various fringe communities of religious dissenters5 before eventually “cast[ing] his lot with the Salafi camp” in the late 1990s (39). Thurston's analyzes Yusuf and his less sophisticated and more violent successor Abubakar Shekau's engagement with the Salafi “canon” of key texts, and in particular Yusuf's effort to define himself publicly as a “mainstream” Salafi thinker (108) while selectively endorsing only those Salafi texts that led him to stake out a far more radical position than many of his peers on the permissibility of relations with the Nigerian state. This novel approach helps readers understand the transnational and local debates that shaped Yusuf's views.Thurston is similarly (and laudably) cautious in his analysis of Boko Haram's founding and its slide into violence in the late 2000s. Drawing on a combination of primary sources—including recordings and transcriptions of Yusuf's own preaching—and a deep knowledge of the local Nigerian religious and political scene, Thurston carefully picks his way through the various claims about Yusuf's involvement in the so-called Nigerian Taliban uprising in 2003, allegations of his involvement with al-Qaʿida-funded efforts to create jihadist cells in West Africa, and possible connections to other regional jihadi groups like and al-Qaʿida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). He acknowledges evidence that various representatives of AQIM and its predecessor, the Groupe Salafiste pour la Predication et le Combat GSPC, had been in contact with people in “Boko Haram's orbit” (162) and that broader efforts by al-Qaʿida and others to promote jihad in northern Nigeria likely reached out to Yusuf's group. He also acknowledges that after Yusuf's assassination in 2009 during a massive uprising of his followers these efforts sped up, culminating in a promise to Shekau by AQIM leader Abu Zayd Droukdel to transfer 200,000 euros to Boko Haram. Some recent analyses read this evidence—some of it drawn from contemporary texts recovered in military operations, other parts from later narratives produced by al-Qaʿida and Islamic State–affiliated authors and disseminated through their propaganda channels—as definitive proof that Yusuf's movement was directed or intimately shaped by these outside forces.However, by examining the internal dynamics of both Boko Haram and AQIM, Thurston convincingly argues that whatever contact the two may have made, there is little evidence to sustain the argument—advanced most notably by Jacob Zenn—that international assistance and influence meaningfully shaped Boko Haram's trajectory in the years leading up to the 2009 uprising and its aftermath.6 Relying heavily on primary sources, Thurston argues that internal politics within Boko Haram—in particular, clashes between “hardliners” and the “mainstream” Salafi community Yusuf sought to be a part of—played the most important role in shaping his thought on the advisability of jihad, while his (often violent) confrontations with the Nigerian state nurtured his sense of grievance and expectation of an inevitable clash with the authorities. And for Shekau's part, while the evidence clearly suggests he sought out and (to a certain extent) was successful at gaining greater international recognition, his ultimate failure to ally fully with al-Qaʿida and his subsequent move toward a limited partnership with the Islamic State in 2015 was rooted primarily in Shekau's own “uncontrollable” commitment to his own agenda, making him at best an unreliable partner (168). Thurston's case is further borne out by the group's repeated schisms in recent years and in the Islamic State's own rejection of his leadership on the basis of his enthusiastic support for takfirism and violence against Muslims.Yet another important strength of Thurston's work is that for a scholar of religion, he is remarkably effective as an analyst of political and military dynamics. In fact, one of the most useful aspects of the book is that it carefully and accurately situates the claims made by nearly every actor involved in the conflict—from Nigerian military spokesmen to the presidency, from Western diplomats to regional leaders and mercenaries, and of course the jihadists themselves—within their own set of interests in how the conflict is depicted. Rather than simply telling the story of Boko Haram's insurgency from a single perspective (critical or otherwise), Thurston successfully weaves all these different actors together into a narrative text that gives the reader the information they need to judge for themselves. That the judgments a careful reader is likely to make are not particularly kind toward the Nigerian state's policies directed at religious dissidents, its military-heavy counterinsurgency strategy, or the global “War on Terror” as led by the United States and France reflects, to my find, an accurate assessment of the state of play across the region.Nowhere is this book's argument clearer than in its conclusion, where Thurston takes the “conventional wisdom” about how to defeat Boko Haram to task for ignoring the political dimensions of the conflict. As Thurston rightly notes, the Nigerian state's reliance on a primarily military strategy for fighting the insurgency has simply fueled Boko Haram's commitment to sustaining the fight, hardening their religious and political positions and guaranteeing them at least some potential recruits from communities ravaged by violence and devoid of the kind of state services that can only be provided in a more secure environment: Throughout the crisis, Boko Haram has deployed a doctrine of religious exclusivism to claim legitimacy for its message. It has presented itself both as the victim of other actors' aggressions and as a righteous vanguard fighting for the purity of Islam. The interplay of doctrine and events means that there is no easy way out of the crisis. Boko Haram represents an ugly paradox: its ideas have limited appeal but significant staying power. The group can be crushed militarily, yet state violence fuels its narrative of victimhood. (301) In this light, Thurston argues, the usual prescription of the international community—military victory and investments in socioeconomic development in the war-ravaged region—is not only unlikely to be effective, but fundamentally misses the point that in Nigeria (as elsewhere) there is no solution to the insurgency and the circumstances that produced it that ignore politics. In earlier chapters, Thurston chronicles how Yusuf and his successors have drawn on a long legacy of violence involving Muslims—much of it carried out or exacerbated by state forces to justify their own actions. In the absence of a larger national conversation about how to address that legacy, the feelings of marginalization and victimhood that have driven these specific individuals' participation in the Boko Haram insurgency will remain even if the group's leadership is killed, its sources of weapons and financing are cut off, and some measure of security is restored to the region. Ultimately, Thurston offers little optimism that the key decision-makers will take these concerns seriously, and forecasts (correctly, so far) a continued insurgency capable of sustaining a low level of violence and a high degree of insecurity across the region for a very long time.If I were to identify any shortcomings to Thurston's book—and to do so in no way lessens my endorsement—it would be that even his own nearly comprehensive account of the religious, social, and political dimensions of the conflict remains incomplete. Although it is the best book of its kind currently available, Thurston's story is essentially one of elite actors—religious leaders and ideologues, militaries and government actors, and international organizations—with relatively little to say about those impacted by their actions. While the so-called Chibok abductees have been the face of this group internationally and in Nigeria, the sheer scope of the displaced and otherwise affected communities in the Lake Chad basin and across Nigeria requires a level of attention that even a reasonably comprehensive history of Boko Haram as a movement cannot provide. Hopefully, the next wave of research in this field will build on Thurston's accomplishments and devote significant attention to the experiences and challenges faced by those who have (and have not) survived the conflict, giving serious consideration to the impact that these experiences will have on the region at large.
Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
Ekrem Tufan, Hasan Gül, Özgür Manap, Bahattin Hamarat
Crypto currencies whose traders are not known, affect the world economy. In thiscase, it is possible to assert that an international terrorist organization can also trade them.In the market, Bitcoin is well-known and regarding volume is a leader crypto currencybetween the crypto currencies. In this paper, it has been searched if there could be a strong correlationbetween bitcoin prices and ISIS. As methodology it has been checked ISIS attacks and Bitcoin pricesrelation, by graphics. <br>
Open access
2 source records
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Economic, financial, and policy analysis
Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
Purpose This purpose of this paper is to illustrate how terrorists finance their activities through cryptocurrencies. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative content analysis of 30 semi-standardized expert interviews with both illegal financial service providers and prevention experts developed understanding of the concrete techniques of financing terrorism through cryptocurrencies. Findings Terrorists could use Bitcoin to receive donations from their supporters. Research limitations/implications As the findings are based on semi-standardized interviews, they are limited to the perspectives of the 30 interviewees. Practical implications The identification of gaps in current prevention mechanisms is intended to provide legislators and intelligence agencies with insights into the operations of terrorism financers. Originality/value While the existing literature focuses simply on identifying areas that could play a role in financing terrorism, this paper describes concrete methods, taking both prevention and criminal perspectives into account.
Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
Al Qaeda, accordingly, evolved into a global terrorism movement that functioned equally well with top-down and bottom-up components: commanding and directing terrorist operations while remaining at the vortex of an increasingly decentralized structure populated by newly created, autonomous territorial extensions. Accordingly, in the years following September 11 th it was no longer possible to equate the global terrorism threat solely with the threat posed by Core Al Qaeda. As it evolved due to the pressure and success of international countermeasures, the global terrorism threat diversified both geographically and organizationally in order to survive. Despite having suffered the greatest onslaught directed against a terrorist organization in history, the Al Qaeda movement&s;s ideology and brand nonetheless both thrived and prospered. The advantages of the new social media to terrorists are manifold. Ease, interactivity and networking, reach, frequency, usability, stability, immediacy, publicity, and permanence are benefits reaped by those terrorist groups exploiting and harnessing these technologies.
Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to look at current discourse on the topic of crypto-currencies, more specifically Bitcoins, and their application to funding acts of terror. The paper clearly establishes the risks posed by this new payment technology and value transfer system to assist in the process of funding, planning and implementing acts of terror. Design/methodology/approach Publications, blogs and sites published and administered by terrorists groups and their supporters are examined to determine their interest in leveraging emerging payment and value transfer systems to facilitate the funding, planning and implementation of terror attacks. Press releases and other publications are also examined to determine whether crypto-currencies have been used by these groups in fund raising, fund transfer or recent terror attacks. Findings Although it is difficult to find concrete evidence of largescale use of Bitcoins and other crypto-currencies by terrorist groups and their supporters, there is strong evidence to suggest that they have been linked to a number of terror attacks in Europe and Indonesia. Supporters of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), jihadists and terrorist organisations are actively looking to and promoting the use of new and emerging technologies, such as Bitcoin, to mitigate some of the risks associated with traditional fund transfer methods. Some websites associated with terrorist organisations have started to collect donations in Bitcoins. Many Bitcoin ATMs and Bitcoin exchanges are located in countries that have seen significant numbers of foreign fighters join ISIS in the Middle East and are also positioned in countries that have seen increased risk of terror attack. These present a significant risk because they allow for the seamless, anonymous transfer of funds to and from terrorist groups and their supporters. The paper highlights the need for further in-depth research into reliable ways to circumvent the current difficulties experienced in differentiating illicit transactions from legitimate ones and establishing reliable means of attribution. Originality/value Using a document published by ISIS, which provides would-be jihadists detailed instructions on how they can get to Syria or Iraq without being detected, a set of models were created showing how this could be achieved using Bitcoins alone. From this scenario, red flag indicators and suspicious behaviour models have been created to determine whether they can be identified during detailed analysis of the Bitcoin blockchain which will be conducted in later stages of research.
Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance
Cybercrime and Law Enforcement Studies
Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
New terrorism has been recently considered a new type of terrorism. The terrorism characteristics that have instigated the introduction of the term stem from the modern evolutions in most aspects of terrorism, such as its organizational structure, financing, recruitment, training, motivations, tactics, reach, targets, and lethality. This chapter reviews discussions surrounding new terrorism, explains its key characteristics and features, and demonstrates the dual role of the media and information technologies. Distinctions from conventional terrorism recognize it as loose, decentralized cell-based networks, using high-intensity weapons, religiously and vaguely motivated, using asymmetrical methods for maximum casualties, and highly skillful in using new media and information technologies. Moreover, the most critical features focus on how the functioning of new terrorism adapts new media technologies, which in turn, contribute to all of its aspects. However, it is concluded that regardless of the label—new or old—attention should be focused on the act and the actors, whether the ways they function utilize the conventional or adapt with the most recent technologies, media, and weapons, and most crucially, recognizing how fast and efficient terrorists are in utilizing the most advanced media and information technologies.
Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
Global Security and Public Health
European and Russian Geopolitical Military Strategies
Spozhmai Zaryab and Her Narrative WorksBorn in 1955 in Kabul and holding a BA in French language from Kabul University and an MA and a PhD in comparative literature from Montpellier University in France, Spozhmai Zaryab is one of Afghanistan's major authors. She has published two collections of short stories, Sharang Sharang-i Zang-ha [The Jingling of the Bells] and Dasht-i Qabil [Cain's Desert], and a novel, Dar Keshwar-i Digar [In Another Country]. It is not the quantity but the artistic merit of her works that has established her reputation. Zaryab has been writing fiction since the early 1970s, but she emerged in the 1980s as one of the country's leading writers. She writes in a variety of genres, but her contribution to modern fiction in Afghanistan lies mainly in her anti-war works; she is considered the godmother of Afghan anti-war literature (Bezhan, Women Causes 264). This type of fiction emerged with the outbreak of war after the 1978 Leftist coup and the invasion of Afghanistan by Soviet troops in late 1979. Neighboring countries, Iran and Pakistan, and the West chose to channel financial, military, and political aid to the armed opposition groups, known as the Mujahideen, or freedom fighters. Soon the war escalated and involved many players, from domestic to regional to international superpow- ers. To the present day the war has undergone many stages. But the peak of the war was in the 1980s, when Afghanistan became a battleground for internal, regional, and superpower forces. Although the protagonists changed, the misery of the people did not. As the conflict ground on, each side accompanied their military efforts with fierce public relations campaigns to promote the righteousness of their cause and to vilify their opponents.The significance of Zaryab's works lies in the ways that they give voice to the ordinary people who have no stake in the war. They demonstrate the impact of war on the population in general and women in particular. Her account of the war is from the victims' perspective. An essential element of this strategy involves bringing elements of oral storytelling, the people's medium, into her narrative frameworks. Zaryab incorporates two types of traditional stories into her works: epic and religious folktales. They represent literary, religious, and folk heritage and assume value in being the collective residue of the past. As well, they are the most popular types of storytelling across a wide spectrum of society, from the educated elites to illiterate groups. By using these types of stories, she also undermines ideological representations of the war by the warring partisans.The Leftist government and the Mujahideen had striven to create mas- ter narratives of the conflict that would serve to uphold their own political/ ideological outlooks. The Leftist regime portrayed it as a nationalist struggle, defending the homeland from the aggression of foreign powers who would install the Mujahideen as their proxy. The support of the Mujahideen by the regional governments and the West was proof of their intention to compromise Afghanistan's sovereignty and keep it a backward country. The regime's invitation to the Soviet troops simply served to defend the national sovereignty and the southern, eastern and western borders and to sustain socioeconomic and cultural progress. For the Mujahideen, Russian troops represented an occupying power that would transform Afghanistan into a satellite socialist state. They believed that the Russians would destroy not only the country's sovereignty but also its sociocultural and religious character. The war was fought (and is still being fought) not only for the liberation of the homeland from invaders but also for the liberation of Dar ul-Islam, the land of Islam, from the grip of infidels. Zaryab's use of epics and religious folktales had the intended effect of countering both sides' warring narratives.Storytelling in AfghanistanStorytelling has a rich tradition among women and men in Afghanistani culture, from courtly palaces to popular meeting places where ordinary people gathered. …
Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East
Indian History and Philosophy
Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
Kabul—In the traditional pose of Afghan men, Abdul Zia sits quietly—squatting down on his haunches close to the ground. But something about Abdul Zia doesn’t look like the rest of the men crouched along the streets of this capital city. Over his Pashtu turban are khaki, military-issue ear warmers. The hood of his dirty, 1970s ski jacket, likely a western cast off, is riddled with holes. His beard is grubby and matted.His posture carries none of the pride associated with most Afghan men, who hold themselves like warriors. His hands, when they emerge from beneath his thin and ripped shalwar kameez, are mottled and scarred. Between the black dirt lining his fingers, is dried and fresh blood from the wounds caused by the biting, relentless wind. He would wash, if all the water didn’t turn to ice. He is curling himself into the tiniest possible ball, trying desperately to keep warm. Abdul Zia is just one of almost 400,000 Afghans displaced from their homes by the fighting—now living in appalling conditions in camps in the capital city. Throughout the country, the official statistics are fast approaching 750,000, but the reality is much worse.Overflowing with more than 20,000 residents with nowhere else to go, the Nasaji Bagrami internally displaced people’s camp in the center of Kabul must be as close to hell on earth as any place on the planet. Yet, these lost people displaced by an international conflict rarely capture the world’s or even their own nation’s attention. A sprawling mass of mud huts and UNHCR logo-ed tarpaulins, the camp is a freezing nightmare of poverty, misery, and death. Amongst the bitter and hungry, Taliban recruiters find easy pickings to join their radical insurgency. The ground sparkles with ice particles, formed around the mud—a perilous quagmire where the incautious slip or sink. The ice goes down at least a yard, probably more. The Kabul River, normally a trail of brown sludge snaking through the city, is now frozen solid and piled high with at least three feet of snow—the same snow that falls on tarpaulins, precariously balanced above hastily built mud walls. Not strong enough to bear the weight, tarpaulins collapse regularly onto freezing families who must then spend the rest of the night digging themselves free. “We huddled round her to try and keep her warm,” Abdul Zia says. “I sat here, and my wife sat there,” he adds as he motions to two people sitting opposite each other with crossed legs. Just four days ago, in that space between them, lay their two-month old daughter Shah Gul. In temperatures 4 degrees Fahrenheit below zero, with the worst snowfall the country has seen in decades, Shah Gul was freezing to death. She contracted neither pneumonia nor hypothermia. Her little body simply froze, and there was nothing her desperate parents could do to stop it. Just a week earlier, their two-year-old son, Akhtar, had succumbed to the same fate. Abdul Zia and his wife are not alone. In the first week of February, as many as 40 children froze to death in the Nasaji Bagrami camp—one of at least 10 camps in Kabul and several hundred throughout this war-torn country. There’s no tally of how many other children like Shah Gul or elderly people succumbed that week. The same day Abdul Zia told his story, 16-year-old Fatima was desperately thin and struggling to breathe. Her frantic mother described how the effects of the cold had cost her daughter the use of her legs. Fatima died later that day. Abdul Zia and his family have been living here for six years. A sprawling maze of mud, open sewerage, and ripped tarpaulins, there is no infrastructure or logic to the “informal settlements” that so many people now call home. But it’s not really home—home is 400 miles away, on the outskirts of Lashkar Gah, the capital of war-ravaged Helmand province. Helmand is a sprawling expanse of over 22,000 square miles. In the 1960s and 1970s, it was dubbed the “America of Afghanistan,” with a huge hydroelectric plant and dam designed for massive cotton production, which needs substantial water supplies. These ambitious plans sputtered along through the arrival of Russian troops and later the Taliban. For if it wasn’t cotton, other crops could use the vast irrigation promised by this massive investment in water resources. Indeed, with low production costs and easy export routes, the fertile soil of Helmand province provided the perfect growing conditions for poppy. Helmand became the epicenter of the Afghan heroin trade. Today, the province produces over half of the opium in the global drug trade. Whatever the roots—rich poppy crop or tribal affiliations—Helmand is one of the most strongly held Taliban areas and has proved one of the biggest headaches for American-led forces since the invasion in 2001. In fact, the majority of all combat and civilian casualties alike have been in this province. The total civilian casualties are impossible to quantify, but since 2007, nearly 25,000 have been recorded. Yet nearly six years since the start of the major western offensive known as Operation Mountain Thrust, the Taliban, rather than showing signs of retreat, are stronger than ever. One of the principal justifications for the “Security Assistance” in Afghanistan is the protection of the civilian population from the worst Taliban excesses. Yet UN figures suggest that from 2001 to 2005, more civilians were killed by NATO forces than by insurgents. The Taliban aren’t the only ones from whom civilians, like Abdul Zia and his family, need protection. What’s striking is that, with NATO’s formal mechanism of compensation for civilian casualties, much less attention is being paid today to the hundreds of thousands who are neither killed nor injured, but internally displaced by the fighting. Abdul Zia, like 90 percent of his fellow Helmandis, worked as a farmer. His wife was looking after their seven children in their modest but comfortable home when it was suddenly hit in an airstrike. Six of his children were killed instantly. His home lost, Abdul Zia fled to Kabul with his wife and only surviving child. Few in Abdul Zia’s position have the courage or knowledge to confront those who killed their family members and ask for compensation. While NATO has rightly recognized the need to redress families for civilians deaths and that the pre-2006 levels of “collateral damage” were unacceptable, it is not enough. The internally displaced population of Afghanistan requires sustainable, practical solutions that enable them to go home or to re-establish themselves elsewhere. For Abdul Zia and his family, it was a perilous journey by foot from the outskirts of Lashkar Gar to Kabul that he undertook because he thought his family might be safe there. In the capital, he found refuge in Nasaji Bagrami, where most of his neighbors are Helmandi. But rather than sanctuary, he found despair with his two youngest children, born in the camp, dying just the same. With the fighting still escalating in Helmand, they have no option to return home—stuck in a city that doesn’t want them.Abdul Zia’s family are direct civilian casualties of the operations of international military forces in Afghanistan. For most here, it is irrelevant whether the culprits were the Taliban or the international military forces. In these camps and in the streets of the city, their only wish, after 30 years of war, is for the fighting to end, allowing them to go home. For many, the victor is besides the point with more and more seeing the return of the Taliban as the only option. As long as the fighting continues, the numbers of those fleeing into the capital will rise. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Center now estimates that at least 400 people, literally running for their lives, arrive in Kabul every day. While their displacement may have been caused by international forces, it would appear that they then slip through a series of loopholes. The official mandate of the UNHCR is the care of refugees, but to achieve the status of refugee, civilians need to flee one country and enter another. Internally displaced people are those who have been forced leave their homes but who have not crossed an internationally recognized state border.Even if the internally displaced flee for the same reasons as refugees, the fact that they have not crossed an international frontier denies them the protections afforded to those with official refugee status. While the UNHCR works tirelessly to re-integrate the internally displaced, it has already been overwhelmed by four million refugees who have returned to Afghanistan since 2001, consuming enormous resources to reintegrate, re-house, and support those who have grown up in camps in Pakistan or as exiles in Iran. Because IDPs are not defined as refugees under international law, they remain the responsibility of their own government. But the cabinet of President Hamid Karzai seems generally unable or unwilling to assist them. UN agencies have been known to step in when the problem becomes a humanitarian crisis, like this winter, but in general IDPs remain ignored and abandoned. The areas where they settle do not even receive the official title of “camps,” but rather “informal settlements,” and are thus not afforded the protection of aid agencies or international law that official refugees receive. As fighting has intensified with a surge in military operations against Taliban strongholds, 91,000 Afghans have fled their homes in the first half of 2011, up from 42,000 in the first half of 2010. “This is a largely hidden but horrific human rights crisis,” says Horia Mosadiq, an Amnesty International researcher in Kabul. Furthermore, Western military forces, while taking positive steps to mitigate the level of civilian casualties, have no strategy for dealing with those who are not injured or killed during operations, but displaced. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, in a 2011 report, found that in the Afghan cables published by Wikileaks in 2010, the U.S. government did not make a single reference to any displacements. The UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement require governments to assist their internal refugees, but such demands are not legally binding. There are also no guidelines to identify these individuals in the first place. The right to housing is guaranteed by the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights—a treaty signed and ratified by Afghanistan. The ability to live somewhere with security, peace, and dignity is a fundamental human right recognized under this same pact, which also imposes obligations on signatory nations to provide access to health care, water, and sanitation. Yet, the country’s government officials actively prevent agencies from providing clean water and even basic latrines. Afghan law forbids the intervention of UN agencies in what are referred to as the “Kabul Informal Settlements.” The government argues that rather than civilians fleeing fighting, these people are economic migrants. While it has a responsibility under international law to provide for internally displaced people, it does not have such an obligation to help people leaving the provinces to seek a better life in the bright lights of the capital. Indeed, international aid agencies are barred from giving any assistance that would contribute to the permanence of internal migrants’ settlements, including building latrines, creating schools, and providing health care systems. Who gets assistance from the small number of local Afghan aid groups and international aid groups is all too often a matter of luck. The migratory pressures often go far beyond the simple and direct need for Afghans to remove themselves from military engagements and deadly force to safety. Increasing numbers are also being forced to move to survive economically. While the government brands these as individuals seeking a more prosperous life, more often the move is simply a case of needing to feed one’s self. At the root of this dilemma is a keen desire by the Afghan government and the international community to discourage pure economic migration to the nation’s capital, which is ill-prepared to absorb them. Already bursting at the seams, the population of Kabul has mushroomed from 800,000 in 2001 to over 3 million today. A 2011 report by the Brookings-Bern Institute points out that internally displaced people usually leave their homes for the same reasons as economic migrants—improved security, some hope of integration into a stable social framework. For economic migrants, these factors influence where they go, not when. This is the crucial difference. Internally displaced people like Abdul Zia and his family had no choice but to leave their villages, fearing for their lives and their family’s safety. When they arrive, they are condemned, often for years, to cramped, squalid, desperate conditions in what are effectively refugee settlements with no access to water, education, or health care. For their children to attend school, they need national identity cards, which often get left behind or destroyed in a desperate scramble to flee an attack on their homes. Peter Nicolaus, head of the UNHCR mission in Afghanistan, acknowledges the full extent of the crisis. “The problems in the KIS [Kabul Informal Settlements] cannot be overestimated,” he says. This winter, just 10 minutes from the presidential palace and several UN guesthouses, Abdul Zia’s children and at least 38 others were freezing to death. Once the humanitarian crisis kicked in, the and other agencies to provide and the people from the relentless “We have a humanitarian problem every continues, this it was had on a with the other would responsibility for the IDPs in the areas and those in Kabul under the care of In this didn’t go to and up to step in here as over people, and for two in February, were the in an a military position in which and barred all from Afghanistan. while UNHCR were running out of almost half a million and other were in in In the for years, only half the aid was are nearly the snow there will be there will be will have to but the less the less a the aid has still not the UNHCR did under these is to that the IDPs in the “informal settlements” are not the responsibility of the While they look after the million refugees from the problem falls to the Afghan government. While there is an Afghan for and the to be on of rather than on the needs of internally displaced individuals or many that their homes have displaced and The Afghan does some for refugees and But is them to their place of solutions and humanitarian care. most of those go home at this strategy is a of and resources. to a report by Amnesty the Afghan to internal displacement is to that it doesn’t while displaced also on aid The Amnesty report one aid as are not to even call them are told they are and an Afghan official like not in those mass areas where But these are not In to in as an an Afghan needs of and identity is to people like Abdul Zia who fled his home in the of an The Afghan government actively even to the status of that they themselves this title to get Indeed, the government says they have been in the camps for more than two years, they are and would any status like a to life in these most economic are men, IDPs to of and most of the residents of Nasaji Bagrami are Afghan government officials that families are to by the of aid as as and rather than fleeing fighting. his and the of his children, Abdul Zia says that he has been to Nasaji Bagrami by aid and of a “I want to go he want to live like in this There of a substantial for the Afghan government to IDPs their status. they to them as of conflict and them as economic migrants, they have no responsibility to provide them with water, health care, or Afghan officials that they help their own but that they in be to on international aid that may be But because of the government has effectively barred from legally such aid to even the most The of these is to turn an economic or dilemma into a desperate humanitarian crisis or other a for the for and infrastructure for them, they will But they as every of they have on to a government official or He then “The country live in of where these people go becomes by the of in Afghanistan. For over 30 years of a of and have to a of and of the with the of of is a to the of the internally displaced to their their them in in and around Kabul where have it is the on whom usually “I do the says Abdul as most to to all military forces with and western are for lives, because they were their and they killed Nicolaus, has as to is to he “The There is no country in the that could with this of migration into Indeed, head of the UN for the of in Afghanistan points to this just something that in the capital. right Afghanistan. in every major center have these settlements, have these and because of a of of access to water, or health care, it simply the conditions for the most As huddled in the one that to Abdul Zia and six other a has has that there are in the camp, and after other these people and the with a of and One of those who has the is He out from the because of the his position demands or because he has and so many of the residents He does not have the look of Abdul Zia and his His do not frozen by too for any one human to He is the camp and is not huddled into a on the ground. He and “I says “I for all these are and want to them all by the of have into have they the being by the and others to Afghanistan, the of and for the is only the of for there is the of where to these families who have lost In 2005, a with the of providing and IDPs with of But to they their is a bitter and since to it would require vast of that are already for by far more and than the refugees One under this is on the outskirts of Kabul. One aid in the Amnesty report are and it’s There is no water Yet, the need is the government areas in where there is no a “We have to be about the of the a of But if living in a or in the of a city center in temperatures of below zero, but prevent it’s He adds that many of these families have been living in Kabul for 10 years, with no of any in their “We need to prevent this he have to is how to with the of these conditions rather than dealing with the when they A first says of is to a and of even a small of the “We are families out of the KIS and into just Kabul. about and the official he points a of the population of Afghanistan are IDPs or million The international aid officials is that the Afghan government must the that their hands, allowing them to provide basic and stop more civilians from more than any who have succumbed to the of the While enormous have been by western military forces to civilian casualties, it is that the “collateral damage” those who have been displaced and will from or the of Afghanistan. The children freezing to death in the camp are just as much civilian casualties as those hit by At the same must be to UNHCR to make they the vast number of IDPs who they now In conflict like Afghanistan, it is and for the UNHCR mandate to to only refugees who have crossed the UN mandate be in conflict to IDPs a humanitarian crisis like this displacement is migration only has been But there is the reality that military officials need to as Not only do the IDPs a humanitarian crisis, but a and crisis as These housing these bitter people and their are fertile for Taliban is that the Taliban, simply a small of through of refugees in the camps of Pakistan while their Afghanistan was being by of the The same is UN has found that children as as are being by the Taliban for such as digging where are then of these children are being often their as with the being by far With growing the and what are now seen as a of hungry, and people is in the for the Taliban to
Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East
Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
In this article the author considers the concept, which has recently appeared in modern terrorology. A number of authors prove that modern Islamist terrorists are similar to anarchists. Professor Gelvins article situates al-Qaeda and similar jihad movements within the category of anarchism. They have long been associated with bombs and outrage and acts of violence that it causes desire to draw parallels between the anarchists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and contemporary terrorists. The leaders and adherents of al-Qaeda prefer action without ideology. Their struggle against the model of western government, their lack of programmatic goals, their pursuit of violence for its own sake, their use of highly decentralized structure, semi-autonomous cells all these factors align al-Qaeda with the type of movement that historically had nothing to do with Islam: anarchism. Like other anarchist movements, al-Qaeda is reactive. It focuses its activity solely on resisting. Al-Qaeda considers actions of West an intrusion of the alien order, which is against preserving the culture and lifestyle of their homeland, so its members believe to be in the condition of struggle. And unlike other movements al-Qaeda does not cog within the international state and economic systems. Rather, it wars with the Western system. Other researchers cautiously consider such a point of view. They criticize some positions, address to historical facts. Orthodox Islam considers government to be the basic component of the social organization, which has been a gift to the humankind. It does not abide anarchy. The extremists and great majority of Muslim scholars may be deemed to agree on the necessity of government for the Muslim community. There are insignificant disagreements on a number of opinion such as whether Islam prescribes the legitimate institutions of government, whether the primary function of Islamic government is to uphold and enforce the Sharia or Islamic law, and whether the officials of Islamic government must have specific moral, intellectual, or unusual qualifications. The task of the author of the article was the analysis and criticism of weaknesses of this concept. The author considers that this predictive judgment has been formed prematurely.
Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
INTRODUCTION In October 2008, after a two-year joint investigation by U.S. and Colombian authorities, the Colombian government arrested thirty-six individuals on money laundering and drug charges. According to authorities, this network-comprised of Lebanese expatriates-was more than a traditional criminal syndicate, and was shipping a portion of its profits back to Hizbollah in Lebanon. These types of cases-where terrorist groups and organized crime networks are closely intertwined-are growing far more common. These hybrid organizations-part terrorist group, part organized crime network-are meaner and uglier than anything law enforcement or militaries have ever faced in the view of senior U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) officials. While this growing linkage is certainly a dangerous trend from the U.S. perspective, it also presents opportunities for policymakers. As the nexus of terrorism and criminal activity intensifies, targeting terrorist groups' criminal activities becomes an increasingly effective strategy. Terrorist networks are becoming increasingly transnational and a key challenge in confronting them is achieving international cooperation in counterterrorism initiatives. By capitalizing on terrorists' increasing criminal activity, the Obama administration could leverage its strategy of international cooperation and diplomatic engagement to gain broader support against illicit financing of transnational threats. INCREASING INVOLVEMENT IN CRIMINAL ACTIVITY The terrorist threat is not static. Terrorists adapt and evolve, partly in response to the very countermeasures we enact. As the terrorist threat has evolved, the means by which terrorist groups raise, store, and move funds have also changed and have often hindered government efforts to thwart terrorist activities. Studies show that terrorist groups learn from one another, exchange information on new technologies, and share innovations. This is particularly evident in the financing and resourcing of terrorist activities. Before September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda funded and controlled operations from its base in Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda provided funding for the East Africa embassy bombings in 1998, the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, and the 2001 World Trade Center attacks. Today, the terrorist threat is more decentralized, with the al-Qaeda core no longer funding other terrorist groups, cells, or operations as they did in the past. Local cells are being increasingly left to fund their own activities. While many fundraising techniques remain popular, including abuse of charities and otherwise legitimate businesses, terrorist cells increasingly engage in criminal activity to fund their actions. For example, Al-Jemaah al-Islamiyah, an al-Qaeda affiliate in Southeast Asia, helped to finance the 2002 Bali bombings by robbing jewelry stores. Another example is the 2005 attacks in London, which were partially financed by credit card fraud. Terrorist groups are involved in a wide variety of criminal activities, from cigarette smuggling to selling counterfeit products, but the nexus of drugs and terror is particularly glaring. According to the DEA, nineteen of the forty-three designated foreign terrorist organizations are linked definitively to the global drug trade, and up to 60 percent of terrorist organizations are connected to the illegal narcotics industry. For example, the 2004 Madrid train bombings, which killed 191 people, were partially bankrolled by hashish sales. Indeed, the drug trade's financial benefits are acutely alluring. The United Nations estimates that the international drug trade generates $322 billion per year, making drugs by far the most lucrative illicit activity. Beyond mere sales, drugs provide diverse revenue sources, including taxes on farmers and local cartels, and necessitate security detail for all aspects of production, trade, and distribution. Groups like the Afghan Taliban, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the Kurdistan Workers' Party, and Lebanon's Hizbollah generate significant revenue from extortion fees collected from drug cartels and poppy or coca farmers operating in their territory. …
Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance
Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
This article analyzes the impact of counter-terrorism policies, e.g., the Patriot Act and the war in Iraq, on the financial structure of European terror networks and argues that such policies, far from defeating Jihadist activities, ended up boosting them. In response to such measures, terror finances have been skillfully restructured, the main changes being the decentralization of funding activity in Europe and in the Middle East and the declining cost of terrorist attacks.
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Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence