Understanding Terrorist Finance as a Continuum of Material Support

This chapter argues that, in addition to value chain interaction, terrorist financing should also be represented in terms of a nuanced understanding of the provision of support to socio-political movements and communities associated with terrorist actors, but not necessarily to the actual terrorists themselves. Countering such material expressions of support to socio-political movements and communities associated with terrorist actors or terrorism is a significant focus of current law and policy, but to date little nuance has been accorded to different types of material support. This chapter argues that “support” for terrorism is best understood and analyzed as a reasoned choice grounded in the norms, values, beliefs, and interpretations regarding global and local societies evident in terrorist groups and the socio-political contexts in which they exist, or more precisely that terrorist financing in the form of material support consists of freely and rationally chosen actions, which are grounded in particular social and political ideas, that result in the provision of material goods, services, or other forms of value that are instrumental to the objectives of terrorist actors. These support actions, this chapter explores, occur on a continuum and can range in form from intentional assistance to a terrorist organization in order to finance specific acts of violence against an enemy to ad hoc material expressions of support for broad social, political, or religious beliefs that happen to be shared by a particular terrorist group. I argue that understanding material support for terrorism as a continuum enables more systematic, more nuanced, and ultimately more useful approach to analyzing this especially contentious aspect of terrorist finance.