Breaking the nexus: conceptualising ‘illicit sovereigns’

Abstract

The present contribution critically engages with the theoretical and empirical nexus between ‘crime’ and ‘terrorism’. The Crime–Terror Nexus is understood first as the increasing cooperation between terrorist groups and criminal organisations, and second as the merging of terror/crime identities. I argue that the concept of the Crime–Terror Nexus reifies the identities of both criminal and terrorist organisations by pre-assigning exclusively economic motives to the former and exclusively political motives to the latter, even though in reality these categories, which underpin the concept of the nexus, are becoming increasingly blurred. This contribution draws upon concepts from political theory to unpack the identities of these violent non-state actors. In accordance with Carl Schmitt’s understanding of the political and of sovereignty, these identities can be understood as forms of ‘illicit sovereignty’. Through an empirical analysis of the discourse of the Sicilian Mafia, I show how the Mafia constructs its identity in relation to the Italian state by contesting the sovereignty of its ‘licit’ counterpart.

Keywords:

• illicit sovereigns
• organised crime
• Carl Schmitt
• Sicilian Mafia
• relational identity

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Andreas Behnke for his constant support and assistance during the process of writing this article. I would also like to thank Malte Riemann, Vicki Clayton and Catherine Jones for their comments and advice on earlier versions of this text. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to the editors and the anonymous reviewers of this special issue for their comments and their critical engagement with my work.

Documents and newspapers articles

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Notes

^1. Gupta et al., “Terrorism and Organized Crime,” 123–36.

^2. Behnke, “Al Qaeda, The Partisan and Illicit Sovereignty,” 5, cited with permission of the author. Risse-Kappen, Bringing Transnational Relations; Higgott et al., Non-State Actors and Authority; and Reinaldo, Ashgate Research Companion.

^3. New Oxford American Dictionary.

^4. Sullivan, “Criminal Insurgency in the Americas.”

^5. Makarenko, “Crime-Terror Continuum,” 131.

^6. Edwards and Gill, “Politics of Transnational Organized Crime,” 246.

^7. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Addiction, crime and insurgency, http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/Afghanistan/Afghan_Opium_Trade_2009_web.pdf.

^8. International Crisis Group “The Insurgency in Afghanistan’s Heartland,” i.

^9. Speicher, “Petraeus: Iraqi ‘Mafia’ is latest danger.”

^10. Mastrogiacomo, “Tutti devono contribuire alla guerra santa.” and “Mosul, Al Qaeda chiede il pizzo.”

^11. Williams, Criminals, Militias and Insurgents, 9.

^12. Nye and Keohane, “Transnational Relations and World Politics,” 329–49.

^13. Cockayne and Lupel, “Introduction.”

^14. Shelley and Picarelli, “Methods Not Motives”; Fowler, Amateur Soldiers, Global Wars, 6; and Bibes, “Transnational Organized Crime and Terrorism,” 243–58.

^15. Chiarelli and Michealis, “Winning Peace,” 5; and Smith, Utility of Force, 7.

^16. Mc Fate, “The Military Utility”; and Nagl, Learning to Eat a Soup with a Knife, xv Preface.

^17. Makarenko, “Crime-Terror Continuum,” 129–45.

^18. Bjornehed, “Narco-Terrorism,” 305–24; Engvall, “State under Siege,” 827–54; Clarke and Lee, “PIRA, D. Company, and the Crime-Terror nexus,” 376–95; Rosenthal, “For-Profit Terrorism,” 481–98; Perry and Brody, “The Dark Triad,” 44–59; and Hubschle, “From Theory to Practice,” 81–95.

^19. Makarenko, “Crime-Terror Continuum,” 130.

^20. Ibid., 130 (emphasis added).

^21. Ibid., 130–1.

^22. International Crisis Group, “The Insurgency in Afghanistan’s Heartland,” 9.

^23. Makarenko, “Crime-Terror Continuum,” 132.

^24. Ibid., 132.

^25. AS/Jur (2010) 46, available at http://assembly.coe.int.

^26. Fook, Social Work, 12.

^27. Makarenko, “Crime-Terror Continuum,” 130.

^28. Schmitt, Concept of the Political.

^29. Ibid., 6.

^30. Schmitt, Political Theology, 17.

^31. Schmitt, Concept of the Political, 26 (emphasis added).

^32. Behnke, Re-Presenting the West, 41.

^33. Prozorov, “Ethos of Insecure Life,” 4.

^34. Bishai and Behnke, “War Violence and the Displacement,” 109.

^35. Oprisko, “Rebel as Sovereign,” 120.

^36. In relation to the link between the Schmittian articulation of the political and the politics of identity, the main critics of Schmitt argue that this definition of the political supports a potentially violent politics of identity.

^37. Behnke, Re-Presenting the West, 8.

^38. Dewey and Bentley, Knowing and the Known, 133, in Emirbayer, “Manifesto for a Relational Sociology,” 289.

^39. Schmitt, Concept of the Political, 12.

^40. Butler, Gender Trouble, 148.

^41. Behnke, “Terrorising the Political,” 279; Behnke, “Al Qaeda, The Partisan and Illicit Sovereignty,” 4–6, cited with permission of the author.

^42. Behnke, “Terrorising the Political,” 289.

^43. This can also be seen as problematic, because it reproduces the statist understanding of the world which it aims to challenge. However, this ‘legalistic’ terminology is functional to the purpose of this paper.

^44. Shelley, “Unholy Trinity,” 101–11.

45. Schmitt, Concept of the Political, 26 (emphasis added).

^46. Miller, “Limits of Pluralism,” 441.

^47. Campbell, Writing Security, 12.

^48. See, for example, the opinion of the American Consul in Naples, J. Patrick Thrun, who in a memorandum following investigations in the South of Italy wrote that, ‘If it were not part of Italy, Calabria would be a failed state’. 08NAPLES96, 2 December 2008, CONFIDENTIAL.

^49. “La mafia la prima azienda italiana,” Il Corriere della Sera, 22 October 2007.

^50. Rapporto sulla criminalità organizzata in Italia. Analisi, prevenzione, contrasto, http://www.interno.it/mininterno/export/sites/default/it/assets/files/14/0900_rapporto_criminalita.pdf, p. 183, accessed on 10 November 2011.

^51. Hagan, “Organized Crime Continuum,” 52–7.

^52. Arlacchi, La Mafia Imprenditrice, 210 e ss.

^53. Lupo, Storia Della Mafia, 47.

^54. Discourse analysis is a very wide, varied and much-debated field of analysis. For reasons of time and space the different approaches cannot be thoroughly examined here. See, for instance: speech act theory, conversation analysis and ethnomethodology, interactional sociolinguistics, narrative analysis, critical discourse analysis etc. in in eds. Jawosrski and Coupland, Discourse Reader.

^55. Foucault, “What is an Author?” 101.

^56. Ibid., 118.

^57. Ibid., 110.

^58. Butler, Gender Trouble.

^59. Mugno, “Quel killer è uno scrittore!” in Lettere a Svetonio, 20–1.

^60. Denaro, Lettere a Svetonio, 3–127.

^61. Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 75.

^62. Ibid., 92.

^63. Ibid., 60.

^64. Ibid., 60 (emphasis added).

^65. See note 64 above.

^66. Ibid., 61

^67. See note 66 above.

^68. Ibid.

^69. See for instance, Testoni, Cosa Nostra e l'uso dell'uomo come cosa.

^70. Arlacchi, Gli Uomini Del Disonore, 53–4; Caruso, “I nuovi Padrini di Palermo,” in ed. by Caruso et al., I nuovi boss. See also the interview with mafia boss Luciano Liggio: the video of this interview can be found online; the section cited was transcribed and translated by the author from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg64VSDj3PI, accessed on the 10-03-2013; another section of the interview can be accessed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjc57OMcxWE accessed on the 10-03-2013.

^71. Foucault, “Method,” 100.

^72. Gambetta, Sicilian Mafia.

^73. Piazza, Mafia, Linguaggio, Identità, 21.

^74. Ferguson, “Silence: A Politics,” 49–65.

^75. Ibid., 51.

^76. Denaro, Lettere a Svetonio, 60–1 (emphasis added).

^77. Ibid., 58.

^78. This mythology has been analysed in studies of the Sicilian Mafia from a variety of perspectives. For a market-centred explanation see Gambetta, Sicilian Mafia, 131; Santoro, on the other hand, speaks of the Beati Paoli as ‘expressive symbols’ of the Mafia and argues that ‘the application of symbols produced by others…to specific cases and situations is, however, an act of (re)creation, and as such this produces meaning for the members of that subculture’: Santoro, “Mafia, Cultura e Politica,” 451. In general, a number of studies have shown that the claim that it performs an alternative form of justice to that of the State is central to the Mafia’s identity.

^79. Denaro, Lettere a Svetonio, 60.

^80. Ibid., 60 (emphasis added).

^81. Ibid., 70 (emphasis added).

^82. Denaro, Lettere a Svetonio. 62.

^83. Ibid., 61.

^84. Fucillo, “Le brigate nere della Piovra.”

^85. www.castelvetranoselinunte.it/un-grande-murales-di-matteo-messina-denaro-alle-spalle-della-cattedrale-di-palermo/1104/

^86. http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl;http://www.generazionezero.org/wp-content/uploads/Matteo-Messina-denaro-murales.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.generazionezero.org/blog/tag/matteo-messina-denaro-castelvetrano/;h=540&w=720&sz=45&tbnid=abx5AIQ3Z77yNM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=120&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dmatteo%2Bmessina%2Bdenaro%2Bmurales%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=matteo+messina+denaro+murales&usg=__G3MsWOMnvK5hcHCHp0XJuRh5L2A=&docid=TVXlck3LYMyEIM&sa=X&ei=selSUYzFCILK0AXL54DwBw&ved=0CC4Q9QEwAA&dur=523, accessed on the 25 March 2013.

^87. The title of the song is ‘La Gente fa’ [‘People do’] by the Enmicasa, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKfay5DybwU.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Norma Rossi

Norma Rossi is a PhD candidate at the University of Reading and a senior lecturer in the Department of Defence and International Affairs at the Royal Military Academy. She works on the relations between states and violent non-state actors, with a specific interest in organised crime. Her doctoral research examines the way the identities of the Italian state and the Sicilian Mafia are mutually and relationally constituted.