Mutual benefit brings together terrorism and drug trafficking

Menna Abdel Razek

Many terrorist organizations, headed by ISIS and al-Qaeda, resort to drug trafficking to finance their terrorist activities, while organized crime groups in Europe and America assist in these operations in agreement with terrorist organizations in Africa.

Annual drug trafficking revenue globally is estimated at $426-652 billion, according to the Global Financial Integrity (GFI) think tank, which pointed out that the dividing line between criminal and terrorist networks has become increasingly “blurry” in recent years, as terrorists often finance their operations by selling drugs or counterfeiting, and they participate in the same networks and use the same mechanisms to transfer illicit money.

From Europe to Africa

A European Parliament report entitled “Links between terrorists and organized crime groups in the European Union” indicated that there are instances in which individuals engaged in terrorism or violent extremism are involved in drug trafficking, and there are also links between some smugglers of illegal immigrants to Europe and drug traffickers.

Armed Islamist groups use criminal networks throughout Europe and surrounding countries to obtain logistical support. Nearly 30 terrorist organizations in Africa are involved in drug trafficking, and Greece is the most important drug transit area between Turkey, the Balkans and Africa.

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is involved in trading heroin through West Africa to Europe, while terrorist cells in North Africa and Pakistan are increasingly involved in criminal activity to finance terrorist operations abroad.

Al-Qaeda made more than a billion dollars in 2016-2017 from its involvement in diamond and drug trafficking with criminal organizations in the Balkans and Cameroon.

Alliances between criminal and terrorist organizations for mutual benefit are a main feature of this cooperation, including money laundering, counterfeiting, human smuggling networks, and complicity in drug trafficking.

ISIS and drug trafficking

In 2014, it was revealed that there are ties between ISIS and drug traffickers in North Africa and Afghanistan. ISIS in Syria, Iraq and Libya also paid money to some criminal organizations such as the ‘Ndrangheta and Camorra mafias in Italy in order to route drug shipments.

In 2016, the Greek authorities seized 26 million narcotic pills that had gone from India to Libya and then trafficked by ISIS to Italy en route to Eastern Europe. In 2019, a drug shipment of 33 million pills shipped from Syria was also seized.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has noted that drug trafficking has provided financing for terrorist activity worldwide, where drugs were often the currency used to carry out terrorist attacks, as was the case in the Madrid bombings.

The total value of proceeds from opium cultivation operations in Afghanistan in 2006 amounted to about $3.1 billion, a large proportion of which was used to finance terrorism.

A report published by the University of Utah’s College of Law in 2017, entitled “The Link Between Terrorism and Drug Trafficking”, stated that the participation of terrorist organizations in drug trafficking, or taxing their smugglers and poppy farms in the lands they control by setting tariffs on drug traffickers, is a relationship of mutual benefit, as terrorists benefit from receiving cash and weakening their enemies by doping their societies with addictive drugs, while drug dealers benefit from the terrorists’ military skills and arms supplies.