Attacking terror through narco funding angle

MICHAEL JACOBSON and MATTHEW LEVITT of the The Washington Institute's Stein program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence point to the increasing linkages between terrorist organizations and organized crime networks with about 60 per cent of terrorist organizations connected to drug trafficking which generated  $322 billion in sales and additional ancillary revenues. In an article , "Tracking Narco-Terrorist Networks: The Money Trail", they state that this presented an opportunity for increasing international co-operation since it would convert the terrorism problem the semantics over which states differed into a law and order problem which would be easier to gain trans-national co-operation against.

Al-Qaeda's credit crunch

MICHAEL JACOBSON and MATTHEW LEVITT of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy investigate how operational setbacks have affected Al-Qaeda’s long-term funding efforts in the wake of declining popularity of the group. In a Jane’s Strategic Advisory Services article, "Staying solvent - Assessing al-Qaeda’s fnancial portfolio", they argue that if the trends of financial stresses in Al-Qaeda continued, it could further degenerate the core of Al-Qaeda and devolve the internationalised insurgency embodied by Al-Qaeda into a more localised, and less lethal terrorist threat.

Battling terrorist ideology

Michael Jacobson, fellow at The Washington Institute of Near East Policy’s Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence states that former terrorists were best-placed to deliver a narrative to terrorists that could contradict Al-Qaeda’s single narrative. In an article “Terrorist Drop-outs: One Way of Promoting a Counter-Narrative” he presents various examples where former terrorists and extremists contributed to reducing terrorist violence and present the terror drop-outs as a potent weapon for Governments in their battle of ideas against terrorist ideologies.