Recent developments and threat assessments of terrorist activity worldwide have shown that terrorism has evolved, adopting new strategic objectives, and changing its modus operandi and business model.
The picture that emerges is a complex network that stretches throughout continents:
- Terrorist networks seem to pursue a projection towards untraditional and remote areas where they can establish opportunistic relations with local and transnational criminal organizations and engage in lucrative illegal activities, particularly drug trafficking, migrant smuggling, and human trafficking, smuggling in firearms, and money laundering.
- Terrorist networks have developed a financial self-sustainability model through the control of smuggling routes and natural resources (particularly minerals) in remote areas and through opportunistic relations with organized crime.
- Terrorist networks know no borders, and the connection of terrorist-related activities highlights a trans-continental stretch.
To address this evolving threat of terrorism, the Terrorism Prevention Branch of UNODC, in close consultation with Member States, developed the CONNECT West Africa and Sahel Chapter. This initiative is based upon a validated methodology to tackle these challenges and formulate a strategic response using network theory, considering both global and transcontinental aspects of terrorism and its connections.
