Terrorism and the UN: Before and After September 11

9 The Political Economy of Terrorism

198 Mónica Serrano 198 9 The Political Economy of Terrorism Mónica Serrano What has the United Nations done for the war against terrorism? There are twelve existing UN conventions on terrorism which, most would agree, have been better at identifying particular forms of terrorist action to be outlawed than at producing a definition of terrorism per se.1 Indeed,while progress has been made on a number of practical fronts since the first convention in , the lack of multilateral consensus among member states on the issue of definition exposes the depth of the problem posed by terrorism for the UN, one that is more than a matter of asking certain member states to sign up to a condemnation of themselves. Even so, an appreciation that terrorist acts embody a threat to order in many states has gradually fostered an international consensus that recognizes the need to tackle the problem. The UN has thus proceeded, perhaps more productively, to declare measures against terrorism while avoiding becoming embroiled in a definition of what terrorism is beyond an arbitrary set of violently unlawful acts.2 This prudently pragmatic prevarication became untenable after September , . What could be the relevance of the UN to the United States if its conventions did not amount to a norm upon which to base action against terrorism? As early as , there was an international convention on the unlawful seizure of aircraft. After September , that was small comfort. Indeed, with the U.S. declaration of “war”against terrorist groups“of global reach,” it was now the creation of a principle upon which to base a response to terrorist activity that would be more practical. If the UN had avoided committing itself to a definition of terrorism, it was because of a desire to avoid becoming mired in deeper disagreements about the justice of political causes and the conditions beneath the resort to tactics of terror. In some parts of the world in the late twentieth century, notions of liberation struggles and freedom fighters still enjoyed a fading, but residual, currency.3 September  marks a global watershed here, too. In the aftermath The Political Economy of Terrorism 199 of the terrorist attacks, any declaration of principle about terrorism cannot contain a lurking subtext of sympathy for the goals,as distinct from the methods , of terrorist groups. So in the twenty-first century, who is a terrorist? Does the UN have anything to say? Surprisingly, it does. The UN’s contribution to the U.S. war is to be found in the implications of its last convention on terrorism in  and in the Convention on Transnational Organized Crime of .After eleven conventions on terrorist acts, “on specific activities that are capable of being outlawed ,” the UN’s International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism was the first to try to get at a source of terrorism. This convention marks an important shift in the direction of a definition of “terrorist ”with which the U.S.appears satisfied; namely, that a terrorist is by definition a criminal.4 The eleven previous conventions brought terrorist actions under the purview of international criminal law. The twelfth brings the financing of those actions—laundered money and illegally acquired assets and funds—into the sphere of that law. Implicitly, this convention separates terrorism from politics and replaces it with a sanctionable action—financial transactions by identified criminal groups. In the words of the Special Recommendation of the Financial Action Task Force late in : “Each country should criminalize the financing of terrorism, terrorist acts and terrorist organizations.”5 Terrorists are no longer to be allowed the refuge of ambiguity that historically attended their status as would-be combatants. The circle was closed with the targeting of transnationally organized criminals as a top security threat—in other words, as part of a spectrum including terrorism. The blanket criminalizing of terrorism, however, raises some vexing questions . Far from pulling the plug on terrorism as such, recent UN conventions may have merely ended a debate that failed to deliver what the post–September  climate demanded—a right answer. This chapter explores the evolution of the criminalization of the financing of terrorism and sketches a more appropriate response than that approach to fighting terrorism has offered and argues that one has to look less at finances and more at an economy of an entirely different kind, the informal economy of popular support if international efforts are to be successful. Crime and Terrorism The Convention for the Suppression...