Historical Perspectives on Organized Crime and Terrorism

James Windle, John Morrison, Aaron Winter, Andrew Silke, James Windle, John Morrison, Aaron Winter, Andrew Silke, John F. Morrison, James Windle, John F. Morrison, Aaron Winter, Andrew Silke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138652651
• eBook ISBN: 9781317227977
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

In recent years, in the context of the War on Terror and globalization, there has been an increased interest in terrorism and organized crime in academia, yet historical research into such phenomena is relatively scarce. This book resets the balance and emphasizes the importance of historical research to understanding terrorism and organized crime.

This book explores historical accounts of organized crime and terrorism, drawing on research from around the world in such areas as the USA, UK, Ireland, France, Colombia, Somalia, Burma, Turkey and Trinidad and Tobago. Combining key case studies with fresh conceptualizations of organized crime and terrorism, this book reinvigorates scholarship by comparing and contrasting different historical accounts and considering their overlaps. Critical 'lessons learned' are drawn out from each chapter, providing valuable insights for current policy, practice and scholarship. This book is an indispensable guide for understanding the wider history of terrorism and organized crime. It maps key historical changes and trends in this area and underlines the vital importance of history in understanding critical contemporary issues.

Taking an interdisciplinary approach and written by leading criminologists, historians and political scientists, this book will be of particular interest to students of terrorism/counter-terrorism, organized crime, drug policy, criminology, security studies, politics, international relations, sociology and history.

1 Introduction

Hawking the historical method in organized crime and terrorism studies

James Windle, John F. Morrison, Aaron Winter and Andrew Silke

Terrorism and organized crime have existed ‘in some form and to some degree … as long as organised society’.¹ The Sicarii, for example, used terrorism in an effort to expel the Roman Empire from Judea while gangs of bandits routinely robbed and extorted Roman citizens.² There were elite sponsored pirates in Medieval China,³ organized professional thieves and blackmailing thief-takers in seventeenth century London,⁴ Shishi terrorists and Bakuto organized crime groups in nineteenth century Japan,⁵ and British sponsored smuggling of opium to China in the same century.⁶

The ever growing academic literature on organized crime and terrorism has, however, focused primarily on current phenomena. Within the study of both terrorism and organized crime there is an abundance of social scientific methodologies utilized. This is in stark contrast to the relative scarcity of quality historical studies. This has been identified as a significant gap in the academic literature. Duyvesteyn has called terrorism ‘a subject with no history’⁷ while Silke’s review of terrorism research found just 3.9 per cent of articles published in the top terrorism specific journals between 1990 and 2006 analysed pre-9/11 conflicts, concluding that:

this wider [historical] context is almost entirely ignored as terrorism research is increasingly driven by a need to provide a short-term, immediate assessment of current groups and threats. Efforts to establish more contextualised and stable guiding principles have been almost entirely side-lined. This is a serious cause for concern and the dramatic decline in historical research since 9/11 is deeply troubling.⁸

While there has been somewhat of an upsurge in historical work since Silke’s assessment of terrorism studies, Winter has more recently suggested that 9/11 ‘overwrote, if not erased, the collective and institutional memory of pre-9/11 terrorism’.⁹ Fijnaut has been equally critical of organized crime studies. He notes not only the relative scarcity of historical case studies, but an overreliance on literature reviews over primary sources and disproportionate focus on twentieth century Italian and Italian-American organized crime.¹⁰

This said, some conflicts (e.g. Ireland), crimes (e.g. the drug trade, piracy, slavery) and groups (e.g. Irish Republicans, Southern Italian mafias) have traditionally enjoyed relatively wide attention. This is likely due to the relative ease of access to human and archival sources, and maybe the high profile of these crimes or groups. The historical method does, however, remain more or less of a niche area of organized crime and terrorism studies: sidelined by more mainstream social science methods.

The papers in this volume will hopefully demonstrate the importance of historical research to scholarship but also policy and practice. The editors of this volume have all trawled archives or interviewed individuals about the past in order to write historical studies of organized crime or terrorism. We are not, however, historians. We do not conduct historical research for the advancement of the discipline, but rather to answer questions which seek to inform issues of contemporary relevance. The contributors are drawn from a range of academic disciplines: some are historians, others are psychologists, sociological criminologists or political scientists. All contributors, however, share an interest in organized crime and/or terrorism, and belief in the usefulness of historical research to inform contemporary policy, practice and understanding. As such, the key objective of this volume is to show that, while there are inherent difficulties in transferring experiences across time and space, historical accounts of organized crime and terrorism offer important lessons for understanding and responding to contemporary phenomena.

Organized crime and terrorism: definitions, similarities and differences

While some may take issue with the inclusion of terrorism and organized crime together in one volume, the two phenomenon share many similarities. Moreover, studying them together can produce illuminating insights and overlaps which may be missed by concentrating on just organized crime or just terrorism. This said, not all chapters in this volume discuss the two phenomena together: four chapters focus solely on organized crime and two on terrorism with the remaining four examining elements of crime/terror linkages.

This volume employs inclusive definitions of terrorism and organized crime in order to facilitate discussion on a wide range of activities and groups.¹¹ Terrorism is defined as:

the employment of violence or the threat of repeated violence by the individual or group intent on bringing about a social or political effect. The aim of this action is to bring about a state of fear in a wider audience beyond the initial act or threat of violence.¹²

Organized crime is defined as:

a continuing criminal enterprise that rationally works to profit from illicit activities that are often in great public demand. Its continuing existence is maintained through the use of force, threats, monopoly control, and/or the corruption of public officials.¹³

Breaking these two definitions down into their constituent elements illustrates the key differences between terrorism and organized crime. They have divergent end goals: the model terrorist (altruistically) seeks social or political change while the model criminal (selfishly) seeks personal profit.¹⁴ Consequentially, the terrorist courts publicity to further their cause, while most criminals avoid the limelight.¹⁵ Finally, while violence or threats of violence are necessary for an act to be defined as terrorism, organized crime can be conducted without recourse to violence, and the terrorists’ use of violence is often, although not always, less discriminate. Although, as will be discussed below, criminals and terrorists do not always act as their definitions suggest they should: history is littered with criminals who have embraced the limelight, used violence indescribably and acted altruistically.

The two phenomena share similarities. They are both classified as amongst the most serious forms of criminality. They are often (although not always) better organized and planned than more routine offences, and the planning will often be a long-term process. They both comprise mostly rational, as opposed to mostly emotional, offences and often use similar tactics based upon violence, corruption and/or deceit to further their goals and evade counter-measures.¹⁶ Moreover, terrorists and organized criminals all occupy the underworld¹⁷ and attempt to achieve normal goals by maladaptive practices. That is, if terrorists are political actors by other means then criminals are entrepreneurs by other means.¹⁸

The relationship between terrorism and organized crime is complex, and dependent on local context and actors, organizational structures and objectives. Terrorists (and legitimate political actors) have hired criminal labour, entered into alliances with criminals and developed ‘in-house’ illicit enterprises. Criminals have hired or partnered with terrorists (and legitimate political actors) and employed terror tactics. There are also a limited number of cases of convergence: where groups exhibit the characteristics and motivations of both organized crime and terrorism.¹⁹

There are numerous historical examples of organized criminals employing terror tactics, often to intimidate and discourage state interference, or to increase legitimacy within their community. For example, the Sicilian Mafia bombed L’Ora newspaper in the 1940s and 1950s to deter the media from running stories on their activities; while their sustained attacks on civilian and criminal justice targets during the early-1990s were not designed to affect political change, but to ‘degrade the morale of the state’ whilst reducing law enforcement capacity.²⁰ Furthermore, while criminals are supposed to shy away from the limelight, many an organized crime figure has come unstuck by vociferously raising their head above the parapet. Indeed, Al Capone, the Kray twins and Pablo Escobar’s courtship of the media contributed to their eventual demise.²¹

Terrorists have developed in-house criminal enterprises in order to raise funds or resources, move goods or people and build political capital.²² For example, the early Bolsheviks used violent armed robbery – or, as they preferred, the ‘expropriation of private property’ – as a tactic of both fundraising and political communication. Not only did Joseph Stalin and other leading revolutionaries begin their revolutionary life as bank robbers, but Stalin symbolically took the name Koba: a famous Georgian brigand.²³ The anarchists of early twentieth century Russia also robbed banks and conducted kidnap for ransom, alongside bombings and assassinations.²⁴ Indeed, Michael Bakunin, the Russian anarchist who Lacqueur calls the ‘third great nineteenth-century theoretician of terrorism’, advised in Principles of Revolution (1869) that revolutionaries should recruit robbers and brigands to the cause.²⁵ Another example of terrorists’ in-house criminal activity comes from the Sicarii who looted the property of pro-Roman landowners while using kidnap for ransom as a means of both terrorizing the population and raising funds.²⁶

The Thuggees of India may provide an historical example of convergence from at least the seventh century. While commonly identified as bands of violent robbers, Rapoport recognizes them as terrorists motivated by a religious utilitarian belief that their victims needed to suffer a slow death as a sacrifice to prevent the god Kali from destroying the earth, and the profits from robberies were used to buy political sanctuary rather than line individual pockets.²⁷ Asi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: hawking the historical method in organized crime and terrorism studies
• PART I Organized crime
• PART II Terrorism
• PART III Terrorism and organized crime?
• Index