Abu Sayyaf and Drug Cartels

                  Many different criminal groups use terror as a tactic to gain more control and influence over civilians and rival groups. Instead of political or religious goals, they use terror for financial purposes. The fear from others is financially beneficial for them because their power would be more stable and not threatened. Sometimes the line between criminal organization and terrorist groups can be blurred.

                  The modern day Abu Sayyaf uses terror in the form of kidnappings. This spreads fear among the people of the Philippines as well as their main form of income. More often they try to kidnap locals because it is more successful and quicker in getting the ransom. They are also not selective in their targets, so they are not attacking one specific group, just people who they think will get them a higher ransom. Kidnapping is a common practice in the Philippines and the effectiveness of Abu Sayyaf makes them more influential. Another tactic that they use is piracy. They bored ships and similar to the kidnappings, use ransom for a financial gain.

                  Another group that sometimes is blurred are drug cartels. This type of terror is called narcoterrorism. This is when narcotics traffickers try to influence the policies of a government or a society through violence and intimidation to reduce the effective enforcement of anti-drug laws. One of the most known examples of this was Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel. Escobar used bombs and firearm violence to scare the government as well as civilians to gain power. “His terror campaign resulted in the killings of thousands of people, including politicians, civil servants, journalists and ordinary citizens. The violence claimed the lives of three Colombian presidential candidates, an attorney general, scores of judges and more than 1,000 police officers.” Both of these groups use terror to gain financial strength. 

                  In most definitions of terrorism, they talk about how it is a political or another ideological based act. This means that the person committing the crime is doing so because they feel they are righting a wrong and often trying to make a difference. However, if a drug cartel blows up a market place, they are doing so for their own protection, not to right a wrong. This is still an act of terrorism because they are trying to instill fear on others. It is important that there are different classifications of terrorism and they are different definitions for each type.

                  Understanding of the end goal of these groups to be able to combat them most effectively. I do think that it is important that these groups are acknowledged as groups that commit terror for financial benefit because the only way to stop them is to effectively limit their end goal. For drug cartels this entails stopping their drug trade. This is different than other groups such as ISIS who is trying to gain land for an Islamic State. It is difficult to decide what a specific group is just based on their actions. I think that terror is more of a tactic than a specific group because of this.