Asking the Right Questions about Terrorist Finance

This chapter finds that the term “terrorist financing” is a misnomer in that much of the activity encompassed by that term more accurately relates to either the flow of economic and material value to “terrorist” actors or specific material expressions of support to “terrorism,” however that contested term is defined. This conclusion not only directly challenges the dominant ways terrorist finance is now conceptualized but also provides the first unified coherent conceptual framework capable of supporting systematic analysis of the topic. This chapter arrives at this conclusion by “asking the right questions” about terrorist finance, which enables one to reframe analysis of the topic on how financial activities influence the behavior of terrorist actors, and what financial activities tell us about how terrorist actors relate to wider local, national, and global societies. Building on this book’s previous chapters, this alternative representation of terrorist finance develops the epistemic foundations for an alternative and ultimately superior conceptual framework for representing and conceptualizing terrorist finance. In particular, it concludes that terrorist financing is better represented dichotomously as either terrorist interaction with “value chains,” or material expressions of support for socio-political movements or communities somehow associated with terrorism; the subjects of Chapters 5 and 6, respectively.