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How do terrorist groups control their members? Do the tools groups use to monitor their operatives and enforce discipline create security vulnerabilities that governments can exploit?The Terrorist's Dilemmais the first book to systematically examine the great variation in how terrorist groups are structured. Employing a broad range of agency theory, historical case studies, and terrorists' own internal documents, Jacob Shapiro provocatively discusses the core managerial challenges that terrorists face and illustrates how their political goals interact with the operational environment to push them to organize in particular ways. Shapiro provides a historically informed explanation for why some groups have little hierarchy, while others resemble miniature firms, complete with line charts and written disciplinary codes. Looking at groups in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America, he highlights how consistent and widespread the terrorist's dilemma--balancing the desire to maintain control with the need for secrecy--has been since the 1880s. Through an analysis of more than a hundred terrorist autobiographies he shows how prevalent bureaucracy has been, and he utilizes a cache of internal documents from al-Qa'ida in Iraq to outline why this deadly group used so much paperwork to handle its people. Tracing the strategic interaction between terrorist leaders and their operatives, Shapiro closes with a series of comparative case studies, indicating that the differences in how groups in the same conflict approach their dilemmas are consistent with an agency theory perspective. The Terrorist's Dilemmademonstrates the management constraints inherent to terrorist groups and sheds light on specific organizational details that can be exploited to more efficiently combat terrorist activity.

Efforts to launder money and finance terrorism have been evolving rapidly in recent years in response to heightened countermeasures. The international community has witnessed the use of increasingly sophisticated methods to move illicit funds through financial systems across the globe and has acknowledged the need for improved multilateral cooperation to fight these criminal activities. This second edition is to serve as a single, comprehensive source of practical information for countries to fight money laundering and terrorist financing. It discusses the problems caused by these crimes, the specific actions countries need to take to address them and the role international organizations play in the process. The report is organized as follows: Part A of this Reference Guide describes the problem of money laundering and terrorist financing, their adverse consequences, and the benefits of an effective regime. It also identifies the relevant international standard-setting organizations and discusses their specific efforts and instruments that fight these activities. Part B describes the various elements that are part of a comprehensive legal and institutional framework for anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism for any country. This part of the Reference Guide is a step-by-step approach to achieve compliance with international standards, although it does not dictate the specific methods or actions to be adopted. Rather, it raises the issues that must be addressed and discusses the options that a country has in order to resolve these issues. Part C describes the role of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the global effort and the coordination of technical assistance available to countries in order to help them achieve compliance with international standards. Each chapter is a self-contained discussion of the topics covered in that chapter with detailed references to background and original source materials. Annexes I, II and III provide complete citations to reference materials.

Terrorism is a global issue that prevails throughout the world on all scales. As the distribution of terrorist activities does not follow a random pattern in space and time, its spatiotemporal analysis has drawn considerable attention in recent years. Further, timely identification of Spatio-temporal terrorist activity hotspots is vital to prioritize the security efforts put by a country’s security enforcement agencies. The state-of-the-art methods for Spatiotemporal hotspot detection are based on scan statistics, which enumerates many Spatio-temporal cylinders, making it a computationally expensive approach. Therefore, this paper presents a time-efficient Particle Swarm Optimizer (PSO) based algorithm to detect the most significant Spatio-temporal hotspots. We formulated an optimization model for the problem and applied three variants of PSO viz. conventional PSO, HCL-PSO, and Ensemble PSO. Finally, these schemes have been used to detect spatio-temporal hotspots of different terrorist attacks in India. The results obtained by PSO-based methods have been compared with SaTScan over two parameters: the time required to detect the hotspot and its quality. All the PSO-based schemes significantly outperformed SaTScan in the timely identification of the hotspots. In addition, the quality of hotspots detected by HCL-PSO is at par with SaTScan, whereas the quality of hotspots detected by the other two approaches is slightly lesser than SaTScan. However, the quality of hotspots detected by the other two variants of PSO is slightly lesser than SaTScan. The results are statistically validated using Friedman’s statistical test.

The article analyses current international documents that define the criteria of state terrorism. It has been demonstrated that the political decisions taken by the President of Russia Vladimir Putin in relation to Ukraine fall under the criteria of the Geneva Declaration on Terrorism. The scientific interpretation of state terrorism is explored here separately. Furthermore, the root cause of state terror in modern Russia is explained. The authors emphasise that Putin’s rule of modern Russia is no different from the way Peter I ruled the Moscow state, which was based on terror and violence. It is no coincidence that Vladimir Putin, after having visiting in June 2022 an exhibition dedicated to Peter I, compared himself to the tsar. It has been established by the authors that in the 16th century the departure from the tradition of Western-type civilizational development and the decline of the achievements of own culture were oddly combined in the territory of Muscovite Rus with society’s rejection of the basic principles of Asian order and culture. Elements of people’s democracy (freedom) were not entirely replaced by Asian despotism. Instead, a specific phenomenon of purely Russian ungovernability – popular rebellion and despotic arbitrariness – was formed. It is emphasized that the national consciousness was enslaved by both the Leninist and Stalinist administrative and political systems, where anti-Ukrainian rhetoric prevailed. It has been established that the Russian-Ukrainian war provides a historic opportunity for Ukraine to root out pro-Russian political forces and at the same time to hold Russia accountable for international crimes committed by its troops on the territory of an independent state on the direct instructions of Vladimir Putin.

The purpose of the Article is to analyze and compare certain aspects which define the limits of permissible interference with a person's private life in the legislation of Ukraine and other countries of the world in terms of ensuring the balance of interests of participants in criminal proceedings during covert measures to obtain information related to interference with a person’s private life. The Article uses general scientific and special research methods, in particular comparative legal, scientific categories, definitions and approaches, formal dogmatic (legal), dialectical. On the basis of the conducted research, generalized conclusions were made regarding general trends in the field of reforming the legal regulation of special measures for covertly obtaining information, and ways of their improvement. The forms and methods of departmental, judicial, and public control over the covert activities of law enforcement agencies have been determined separately, and the influence of terrorist threats and military actions on ensuring the balance of interests of participants in criminal proceedings has been investigated. According to the results of the research, ways of solving problematic issues of the regulation of criminal procedural legislation have been determined in order to ensure the balance of the interests of the participants in criminal proceedings during the organization, conduct, recording, storage, and use of the results of covert information-gathering activities. A comparative analysis of the ways of solving a number of legal regulation issues in the field of the use of informal forms of obtaining information, the determination of different approaches to the separation of departmental, judicial, and public control is being carried out for the first time and will provide a comprehensive and systematic approach to the improvement of legislation in the specified field in the conditions of martial law or during anti-terrorist activities.

The main aim of this paper is to measure the consequences of terrorist activities on capital flows of the developed countries. Capital flows are interpreted as FDI inflows and outflows. The methodology is based on the dynamic panel data models (System-2 step-GMM estimator) using a sample of 36 developed countries all over the world from 2000 to 2016. The key results indicate that the terrorist incidents have different impact on capital flows of the developed countries compared to impacts of economic and institutional variables. All the variables used in the paper show the level of their impact on capital flows. The results indicate that terrorist activities weaken economic activity of a country, while minimising capital flows in certain situations. The recommendations and proposals are given based on the results of research.

Purpose This paper aims to inform the readers about the existing financial intelligence tools that are being used by financial intelligence units. It tries to demonstrate, with the help of a literature review, what the limitations of these tools are and how these limitations hinder the potential of the financial intelligence tools for early detection of terrorist financing activities. Design/methodology/approach The literature review method was adopted to discuss the financial intelligence tools, their limitations and the implications of the limitations for early detection of terrorist financing activities. Findings It was found that although the financial intelligence tools were introduced with a view to detect terrorist financing activities early, there are some inherent limitations of the tools relating to technical design features and operational procedures that hinder early detection of terrorist financing activities. Research limitations/implications The existing financial intelligence tools need to be repaired by removing the inherent limitations of the tools. Practical implications The financial intelligence units should take into cognizance the importance of early detection of terrorist financing activities for preventing terrorist attacks and need to redesign the existing tools in such a way that make these tools effective for early detection of terrorist financing activities. Social implications Peace will be established in society by preventing terrorist attacks through early detection of terrorist financing activities. Originality/value The originality of the paper lies in identifying the limitations of the existing financial intelligence tools for the early detection of terrorist financing activities.

Purpose This paper aims to inform the readers about the preferred type of financial intelligence for early detection of terrorist financing activities. Design/methodology/approach Literature review methodology was adopted to find the existing approaches of financial intelligence and logical reasoning was applied to sort out what type of financial intelligence is more preferable for early detection of terrorist financing activities. Findings It was found that proactive financial intelligence executed through financial intelligence tools is the most preferred type of financial intelligence for early detection of terrorist financing activities. Research limitations/implications The research will pave the way for further research on how to design financial intelligence tools for the early detection of terrorist financing activities. Practical implications The financial intelligence units will use the preferred type of financial intelligence for the early detection of terrorist financing activities. Social implications It will help to establish peace in the society by thwarting terrorist conspiracies because early detection of terrorist financing through financial intelligence tools will stop the flow of funds to and from terrorists. Originality/value The originality of the paper lies in distinguishing proactive financial intelligence from reactive financial intelligence.

The 9/11 attacks stimulated an unprecedented academic interest in the study of terrorism; bringing a range of new disciplinary perspectives, theoretical frameworks and empirical tools to the subject. Within a broad social science perspective, this paper seeks to draw on these cross-disciplinary resources to understand pre-attack terrorist activities. In doing so, the paper first reviews some of the key themes relating to the study of terrorism including (but not restricted to) empirical values, the duplication of knowledge, points of consensus, and the focus on individual and deterministic features. The paper then examines conceptualizations of ‘terrorism as a process’ as they relates to pre-attack activities and considers current analyses relating to this issue. Here, temporal features of attack cycles are particularly prominent. The third area of analysis draws from a range of social science disciplines – including environmental psychology, human geography, sociology and criminology – to investigate the prospects of furnishing these accounts with spatial detail. These discussions are organized by a number of overarching arguments. These include: the importance of inter-relationships between counter-terrorism practice and precise understandings of terrorist action; and of exercising caution over deterministic pathways of action and accounts that focus too heavily on the individual level of action.

This paper uses an extensive network approach to “East Turkistan” activities by building both the one-mode and the bipartite networks for these activities. In the one-mode network, centrality analysis and spectrum analysis are used to describe the importance of each vertex. On this basis, two types of core vertices — The center of communities and the intermediary vertices among communities — are distinguished. The weighted extreme optimization (WEO) algorithm is also applied to detect communities in the one-mode network. In the “terrorist-terrorist organization” bipartite network, the authors adopt centrality analysis as well as clustering analysis based on the original bipartite network in order to calculate the importance of each vertex, and apply the edge clustering coefficient algorithm to detect the communities. The comparative and empirical analysis indicates that this research has been proved to be an effective way to identify the core members, key organizations, and communities in the network of “East Turkistan” terrorist activity. The results can provide a scientific basis for the analysis of “East Turkistan” terrorist activity, and thus provide decision support for the real work of “anti-terrorism”.