Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

ORGANIZED CRIME AND CRIMINAL SYNDICATES • 511Escobar group in the Medellín cartel against the Colombian government;the murder campaign of the Italian mafia against crusadingantimob magistrates, police, and informants; or the use of a citywidebombing campaign by a Mumbai drug-smuggling ring, the Memonfamily, which killed over 250 people in Mumbai on 12 March 1993.Both criminal syndicates and terrorist organizations are clandestineand employ similar cellular and networking organizations to elude detectionand arrest. Both are willing to employ violence to achieve theirends, often not so much through the direct effects of their attacks onthe immediate victims as through the demonstration effect on a largeraudience. Often both are fighting the same state structures or internationallaw enforcement efforts and so share common enemies. Criminalsyndicates often use terrorist tactics to eliminate rivals, intimidatethe public, and to coerce or co-opt the police and state officials, whileterrorist groups are developing their own skills in extortion schemes,money laundering, and drug trafficking to finance their causes. Finally,it should be recognized that these disparate groups are beginning toresemble each other in adopting “flatter” network organizations anduse of similar information technologies simply because adopting thesechanges is a rational adaptation to the changing technology and globaleconomy of the post–cold war era that would continue to occur evenwithout any contact between these two groups.There are some cases in which what was originally a terroristgroup with a political, social, or religious agenda ultimately hasbeen transformed into an apolitical criminal group whose terroristskills are let out for hire to the highest bidder, regardless of politicalcomplexion. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) became astuteat running protection rackets in Northern Ireland and at video andcompact-disc piracy and wholesale smuggling operations, such thateven after the IRA has renounced political violence, many of its cellsand operatives will likely continue to operate as criminal enterprisesfor the foreseeable future. In Colombia, the Revolutionary ArmedForces of Colombia (FARC) and its rival, the National LiberationArmy (ELN), have become deeply involved in narcotics traffickingas well as in professional kidnapping for ransom.Despite these examples, the majority of criminal syndicates andmost terrorist groups differ fundamentally in their ultimate objectivesand in their relationship to the nation-state system and worldeconomic system. Criminal syndicates exist to make money and