Transnational Organized Crime and Jihadist Terrorism

Russian-Speaking Networks in Western Europe

Michael Fredholm

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351709491
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Histoire de l'armée et de la marine

This book describes and analyzes the convergence of transnational organized crime and jihadist terrorism that has taken place within Russian-speaking social networks in Western Europe.

Studies have shown that while under certain circumstances links between criminal organizations and terrorist groups appear, these are usually opportunistic and temporary in nature. Only rarely do they develop into something deeper and transformative, a convergence between crime and terrorism. This book reveals that Russian-speaking transnational organized crime and jihadist terrorism pose a serious threat to security and constitute a major challenge for law enforcement. Through their links with transnational organized crime, Russian-speaking jihadist networks from the Caucasus and Central Asia have easier access to weaponry, commercial explosives, and forged IDs than many other jihadist networks. Being in effect an integral component of transnational organized crime, the Russian-speaking jihadists can be assessed as potentially more capable than many other jihadists. The book assesses the effects of terrorism and organized crime on Russian-speaking diasporas in Western Europe and examines the implications for counterterrorism as well as policing on how to counteract the illegal activities of these networks. Drawing on Swedish court cases the work shows that an additional, and sometimes more effective way, to fight terrorism is by focusing on the non-terrorist types of crime perpetrated by terrorists.

This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism and counter-terrorism, political violence, criminology, security studies and IR in general.

1 Introduction

Thieves dancing with wolves

It has been argued that “crime is not a peripheral issue when it comes to investigating possible terrorist activity” and that any analysis of “the phenomenon of terrorism without considering the crime component [will] undermine all counter-terrorist activities.”¹ Yet, far too often, jurisdictional barriers between law enforcement, counter-terrorism, and intelligence organizations serve to separate the phenomenon of terrorism from the criminal activities that terrorists carry out. In effect, each type of organization monitors only a limited aspect of the full spectrum of the phenomenon of terrorism, and not its activities taken as a whole. Counterterrorism agencies might be concerned with the ideological aspect of the terrorist group, emphasize the prevention of major terrorist attacks, but fail to see that the most efficient way to prevent attacks might be to prosecute members of the terrorist groups for petty crime perpetrated to fund the movement and its members. Law enforcement organizations tend to emphasize major crimes, disregard a group’s ideological component, and for this reason might fail to see the link between petty crime and major attacks, merely because petty crime is so common that it is not regarded as a priority. Intelligence agencies, finally, tend to monitor the phenomenon as such, often in a foreign context, but are in most cases instructed to stay away from what is regarded as domestic crime and law enforcement. These barriers have resulted in long-standing compartmentalization (more crudely put, stovepiping) and, not infrequently, the development of a silo mindset resulting in an unwillingness to share information. The compartmentalization has divided organized crime and terrorism into separate worlds, handled by separate functions and separate academic disciplines.

Yet, as will be shown, a convergence exists between organized crime and terrorism. This is not of mere academic interest, since the convergence brings implications for counterterrorism as well as policing. Perhaps surprisingly, the illegal activities of these networks may cause more harm to society than the occasional act of terrorism, despite the fact that organized crime which does not threaten the democratic system does not play to the media’s, and therefore the public’s and lawmakers’ imagination as much as terrorism. This is a problem, since an exclusive focus on terrorism may result in the wrong prescriptions. Lawmakers can bring additional legal powers to bear on the phenomenon, but first it needs to be better understood.

How can we find reliable data on the interaction and convergence between crime and terrorism?

The study of terrorism and organized crime is no easy task. The academic must, willingly or not, assume the purpose of the intelligence practitioner, the role of whom is to uncover such information that others wish to keep hidden. It would be naïve to believe that terrorists and criminals will offer verifiable data on a plate. Statistics in the form of reported crimes may be available, yet not all crimes are reported. For these reasons, academic research is, with few exceptions, content to base its statements on terrorism and organized crime largely on data from secondary news media accounts which in turn are based on often anonymous sources the information from which cannot be verified. This is unsatisfactory. Meanwhile, the practitioners do have access to classified data in the form of interrogation reports, transcripts from monitored terrorist communications, and information from informers, just to mention a few of their types of sources – but they often have little formal methodological training in how to analyze the data and in any case are prevented from sharing it because of legal restrictions. As Marc Sageman aptly put it in his essay The Stagnation of Research on Terrorism,² “[t]he decision to separate the academic and intelligence study of terrorism [was] crucial to the stagnation of the field.” Unlike during the Cold War, when there was, in most Western and many Asian countries, an active dialogue and exchange in Soviet studies between academics and practitioners (incidentally, an interchange in which the present writer took part), the research climate following the 9/11 2001 attacks became quite the reverse.

For these reasons, we need more and better-documented evidence-based case studies. Because of the difficulties in finding reliable sources, which are few and far between, far too often data used by researchers chiefly consist of news media reports, which are sometimes contradictory and usually unconfirmed, and speculative information in think-tank reports which, in the absence of other data and when repeated often enough, tend to become progressively accepted as facts. Yet evidence-based research does take place.³ The Russian-speaking organized crime and jihadist networks form a case study of how contemporary links between the two phenomena form and develop, and data from court documents are available from several Swedish legal cases, which will be presented in a later chapter.⁴ The fact that these networks are grounded in a number of distinct ethnic environments explains many of their characteristics, yet this does not predetermine activities. Many parts of the world, including Europe, is characterized by large-scale migration, and the evolution of the Russian-speaking networks provides a pattern that seems likely to appear in other linguistically or ethnically based networks as well. Criminal activities will take place in many of them. Yet, it would be well to remember the words of Judge Giovanni Falcone, who lost his life in the struggle against the Sicilian Mafia:

The men of honour [the Mafiosi] are neither devils nor schizophrenic. They would not kill their mother and father for a few grammes of heroin. They are men like us. The tendency in the western world, and particularly in Europe, is to exorcize evil by projecting it on to ethnic groups and forms of behaviour which seem different from our own. But if we want to fight the Mafia effectively, we must not transform it into a monster or think of it as an octopus or a cancer. We must recognize that it resembles ourselves.⁵

The present book is organized as follows. This introduction presents common definitions on the subjects under examination including those of transnational organized crime and terrorism. It also explains some characteristics of situations where crime and terrorism meet, including discussions of crime for profit and crime for ideology.

The second chapter describes and examines crime-terror interaction, first as seen by practitioners and then with regard to previous scholarly research. Existing models of crime-terror interaction are examined.

The third chapter describes the thieves within the law structures of Soviet organized crime and how these structures also came to characterize organized crime in post-Soviet space. The chapter describes how specifically Central Asian and Caucasian organized crime fit into this category.

The fourth chapter describes the origins of Russian-speaking jihadist terrorism. It shows why the Soviet jihadists were the first jihadists to emerge within Western society and how already in Soviet times they not only became the first returning Western foreign fighters but also simultaneously became the first jihadist terrorists in the Western world.

The fifth chapter examines the post-Soviet Chechen secession movement and the role played by organized crime in the attempted formation of an independent Chechen state. Moreover, it describes how the secessionist Chechen fighters, who following a non-Islamic tradition compared themselves to wolves, in time came to be increasingly dominated by jihadist ideals and motivations. The fortunes of war led to the merger of Chechen separatist, criminal, and jihadist networks.

In Chapter 6, we return to Central Asia, where after the dissolution of the Soviet Union a confrontation took place between different political groups that, combined with the growth in popularity of Islamic extremist ideals, resulted in the emergence of terrorist groups such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and Islamic Jihad Union, both of which increasingly came to operate in Afghanistan and Pakistan. However, both groups also gained a substantial following in Western Europe, where they recruited fighters and carried out propaganda and proselytization activities. These activities in time led to a shift in allegiance toward the Islamic State, which by then had been proclaimed in Syria and Iraq.

Chapter 7 returns to the Caucasus. Having surrendered previous separatist ambitions, the remnants of the Chechen resistance transformed into a jihadist group, the Caucasus Emirate, which regarded its mission solely as one of global jihad. With support from Georgia and to some extent Turkey against Russia, the Caucasus Emirate fighters began to carry out operations against Western interests as well. However, in similarity to the Central Asian jihadists, a major shift in allegiance toward the Islamic State was soon underway among them as well.

The eighth chapter describes the online presence of Russian-speaking jihadist groups, with a particular focus on Kavkaz Center, a group of web sites based on servers in various Western countries. The chapter examines the impact of the online activities, how these came to be picked up by old media for increased effect, and how in time these activities came to be used to promote not only the political message of jihadist groups but also were used to initiate campaigns on behalf of members of the network accused of criminal activities, in effect, online media being used to further organized crime.

Chapter 9 describes the convergence of separatist, criminal, and jihadist networks in Western Europe and examines the drivers for this development as a diaspora response. Diasporas have needs, and under certain conditions these are most easily fulfilled by extra-legal non-state networks of the kind examined in this book. Within the diasporas, there could be observed mutual support in terrorist and organized crime operations as well as in media exploitation.

The tenth chapter describes the transnational organized crime and jihadist terrorist cases in Sweden and examines what lessons can be learnt from them with regard to Russian-speaking networks. The chapter describes the arrival of the Russian-speaking networks in Sweden, their activities, and the various types of criminal activities in which they were involved, up to and including acts of terrorism in Sweden.

Finally, Chapter 11 examines the implications for counterterrorism and policing that can be drawn from the study. The Russian-speaking networks included a higher number of non-extremists than extremists, and only some of their extra-legal activities and objectives were ideological in nature. The members of the networks were primarily bound together by a common heritage, a common language, blood relations, and a common purpose of generating funds, mostly with no direct link to violent actions. For this reason, traditional strategies in counter-terrorism and policing were insufficient to reduce the capability of the terrorists within the network. The chapter offers suggestions on which counterterrorism and policing strategies worked and which failed to achieve significant results.

Definitions

Any work on controversial subjects such as terrorism and organized crime needs to define the subject of study. What do we mean when we discuss terrorism as a concept? Are we concerned with national or international law, a social construct, or the nature of a particular policy chosen by individuals for a variety of reasons? The same goes for any work on transnational organized crime, which, like terrorism, has a range of definitions, from the popular, Hollywood stereotype of violent crime (which, as will be shown, is also embraced by many criminals as a self-chosen personal and social identity) to the one defined by the United Nations as a social construct. Concepts can also be construed from other perspecti...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Crime-terror interaction
• 3 Thieves within the law and organized crime in post-Soviet space
• 4 Origins of Russian-speaking jihadist terrorism
• 5 Wolves of Chechnya and separatism in Northern Caucasus
• 6 Confrontation in the Central Asian Republics
• 7 The Caucasus Emirate
• 8 Online presence from the ChRI to Kavkaz Center
• 9 Convergence as a diaspora response
• 10 Lessons from Russian-speaking transnational organized crime and jihadist terrorist cases in Sweden
• 11 Implications for counterterrorism and policing
• Index