Defining Terrorism

Terrorism is defined as the use of violence to instill fear or terror in order to achieve a religious, ideological, or political goal. Terrorism has been used to destabilize the government by frightening individuals into cooperating with them. Terrorism has struck numerous countries, with the United States and Ireland bearing the brunt of the damage. This essay will focus on some of the methods terrorists utilize to fund their operations, as well as some of the ways terrorist groups may employ to get weapons of mass destruction.

The first approach available is the use of cash couriers. Terrorists use this type of approach to withdrawing their funds from bank accounts in cash, transport it to another country and pay it into another account to break an audit trail. This carnal transportation of money through an international border is one of the oldest and most basic forms of money laundering. By avoiding audit trail, terrorists can fund themselves and able to buy weapons and pay their recruits whenever necessary (Anderson, 2017).

Second, the use of invoicing whereby there are two methods, and it includes over- or under-invoicing of goods and services: this means the part of this technique is misrepresentation of the value of goods or services in order to transfer additional value between an importer and exporter and this could include importing or shipping in of weapons that would be used for mass destruction while multiple invoicing is a technique that includes issuing more than one invoice for the same transaction, thus justifying multiple payments. By employing several different financial institutions to make these additional payments, terrorists make these deals even harder to detect.

False described goods and service is also a method that could be used by terrorists to fund their operations. This involves misrepresentation of the quality or type of property or services. This has been experienced in ports a lot of times whereby, goods are imported or exported without being checked. Money or weapons can be transported through misinforming the shipment by writing a different name (Fagel & Hesterman, 2017).

Finally, the use of formal banking system whereby this is a terrorist finance system that offers these radical extremist resources for their terror activities. An example on how they raise their funds could be from revenues obtained legally, lawful sources such as private donations, Non-governmental organizations as well as from lawless sources, such as smuggling of weapons, drug trade, kidnapping, extortion, fraud, and other goods and services extortion.

Strategies a terrorist group might pursue to acquire weapons of mass destruction (WMD)

Weapon of mass destruction (WMD) is a chemical, radiological, biological or other weapon that can execute and bring major harm to a large number of people or cause incalculable damage to structures such as buildings and natural structures.

Despite the government spending billions of dollars to prevent the terrorist from obtaining these weapons, it’s hard to contain the level of information received by people in school or the internet on how to acquire or make biological weapons ( Lutz & Lutz, 2017).

First, terrorists can acquire weapons of mass destruction by joining the military. Through this, they are absorbed as soldiers where they can learn tactics on how to handle arms and make some of them. Through this knowledge, one can form their militia group, train some of his operatives on how to make the weapons and handle themselves.

Second, in the last ten years, the scientific means to carry out new kinds of unplanned weapons of mass destruction attacks such as those involving laboratory-engineered pathogens, has become much more available. However, it won’t take a genius to recognize how these new technologies can open the doorway to unseen massively disruptive terrorist attacks. Many people, especially from the Iran and Iraq communities, get visas as students to learn at the university. Most of the students misuse this opportunity by applying their knowledge for the wrong reasons. Those taking science courses such as biology and chemistry can access chemicals, and pathogens from the lab thus can make weapons of mass destruction thus killing many people around them by learning how to make dirty bombs from the internet.

Graduate and undergraduate level microbiologist who have been radicalized and turned can manufacture a pathological or chemical weapon of mass destruction in a modern laboratory. While going on about their daily routine, the turned radicals can use the laboratory equipment and the stored pathogens in the laboratory. Through such access, these chemicals and equipment can be stolen thus an opportunity to make a weapon that could destroy a lot of lives when used.

Similarly, the radiological elements commonly found in waste dumps, unsecured hospitals and construction sites could be combined with conventional explosives to build a "dirty bomb.” Although such a weapon would possibly not cause a high number of deaths, it could create a significant economic loss and environmental damage. It would also be far easier to build than even an improvised nuclear device (Rezaei, 2017).

In conclusion, although the government has put out methods and strategies that could be used to prevent the terrorist from acquiring weapons of mass destruction, their aggression on their agenda and beliefs towards the government has forced them to look for another method that is illegal thus committing more crimes to fulfill their agenda.

Reference

Anderson, K. (2017). Mainstreaming Atrocity. In Rethinking Security in the Twenty-First Century (pp. 143-156). Palgrave Macmillan US.

Fagel, M. J., & Hesterman, J. (2017). Soft Targets and Crisis Management: What Emergency Planners and Security Professionals Need to Know?

Lutz, B. J., & Lutz, J. M. (2017). Globalization, Terrorism, and the Economy. In Globalization and the Economic Consequences of Terrorism (pp. 1-30). Palgrave Macmillan UK.

Rezaei, F. (2017). The Islamic Revolution and the Bomb: Quran Meets Realism. In Iran’s Nuclear Program (pp. 13-34). Springer International Publishing.