Differentiate between the four types of terrorist TANs.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The first type of terrorist TAN is criminal terrorists. There are many prominent transnational criminal networks. A common pattern for their international networking with other groups begins with narcotics trafficking—getting the drugs from areas of cultivation, to processing facilities, and then to final shipments to markets. Once involved in such international networks, other markets are seen, such as human trafficking for the sex trade or for slave labor. As their activities and revenues increase, network members need to hide their profits from law enforcement and taxing agencies, which leads them into global money laundering networks. As these cooperative activities increase and become routine, the members of such networks may engage in reciprocal services—such as murder-for-hire schemes.
The second type of terrorist group is nihilist terrorists who simply want to destroy the existing order without an agenda of replacement. Anarchists would fit this definition. So too would Germany’s Red Army Faction (also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang).
The third type of terrorist group is nationalist terrorists, which generally commit terrorist acts with the goal of establishing a state for their national group. A variety of Palestinian groups would fit this definition, to the extent that they cooperated as networks.
The fourth type of terrorist group is revolutionary terrorists, those seeking to overthrow the social and political order and replace it with something more to their liking. Groups such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (or FARC) and Peru’s Shining Path fit this description. In the twenty-first century, the better-known examples of revolutionary terrorist networks would include those hoping to overthrow the existing secular order and replace it with a regional or global Islamic regime.