Increasingly Vulnerable

By Tamara Makarenko

Dr. Tamara Makarenko is the Managing Director of West Sands Advisory.

In 2012, the European Parliament commissioned and published a study entitled: “Europe’s Crime-Terror Nexus: Links between terrorist and organised crime groups in the European Union.” The report comprehensively argued that variations of the crime-terror nexus are evident in Europe, with trends strongly suggesting the presence of a “marriage of convenience” between criminal and terrorist operations. Most interestingly, the report noted a rise of militant recruits who simultaneously display a criminal and terrorist profile (e.g. Mohammad Merah, Rifa’I Bassam, and the Garsallaoui network). The report also viewed Greece as an emerging point of vulnerability that could impact the immediate European crime-terror trajectory.

Over the past three years, the trends identified in the European Parliament report have noticeably continued. Although Europe has not become a significant staging ground for the crime-terror nexus – as exemplified in other global pockets of instability, like Libya, Mali, Afghanistan, and Syria – it has shown that political stability alone does not guarantee against a convergence between crime and terrorism. Unlike the threat that emanates from the crime-terror nexus that has evolved in places like Afghanistan and Mali, the threat that emerges when crime and terror converge in Europe is comparatively opaque and thus difficult to monitor.

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