Exploring and Countering the Linkages Between Organized Crime and Terrorism

In Europe we have seen a number of terrorist attacks utilising firearms that have been trafficked from post-conflict regions, including the IS led Paris attacks in 2015 in which 130 people were killed. EU funded Project EFFECT reported in May 2016, and looked at some of these issues, in particular the value of ballistics intelligence sharing between states to counter organised crime and terrorism through ‘following the gun’ (Bowen and Poole, 2016). More recently the European Union has commissioned Project SAFTE to specifically examine terrorist access to illicit firearms markets, and how policy makers and law enforcement agencies can respond to this challenge, with the final report published in April 2018. The project, led by the Flemish Peace Institute, examined this phenomenon across eight European states (Flemish Peace Institute, 2018) and its findings shed more light on the nexus between organised crime groups and terrorism. In this paper the links between firearms, trafficking and terrorism are examined in light of findings from previous relevant research. The authors suggest that there is strong evidence that firearms move across borders between territories, sometimes across continents, and that this movement of firearms, often undertaken in conjunction with the trafficking of other licit and illicit commodities, is a feature of the activities of organised crime groups (OCGs) and terrorist organisations. The links between legitimate and illicit transfers of firearms and relationships between states, OCGs and terrorist groups is complex and requires a coordinated international response from a variety of actors to address. The authors note that there are a range of international instruments, legislative frameworks, and coordinated international intelligence activities in existence, but that more needs to be done at all levels to increase international cooperation to combat firearms trafficking and terrorism, and to effectively utilise the variety of tools available, which are examined in this paper.