State Actors in Criminal/Terrorist Pipelines By Douglas Farah

Stateless regions and/or failed states have become a hot, if often-shoddily- investigated topic in the counter-terrorism world. In my conception of the criminal/terrorist pipelines, there are important holes in general literature.

One of the primary ones is the limited ability to disaggregate truly failed or stateless regions from states that are not failed, but rather function as criminal enterprises. These states, in some ways, are more valuable to terrorist and criminal organizations than true, stateless regions.

The reason is demonstrated by the benefits that accrue to these groups from state actors, such as the ability to acquire legal passports.

Victor Bout and many others used states to secure End User Certificates to purchase weapons, obtain diplomatic passports, aircraft registries and countless other benefits that only a state can confer, despite the overall weakening of the nation-state structure.

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