Economic Terrorism and Extortion

Economic terrorism is assuming increasing salience given greater capacity of terrorist groups and non state actors across the globe to impose penalties on states as well as their citizens through financial coercion with threat of pecuniary loss. Globalization and a revolution in information and communication technology (ICT) have provided individuals and groups ability to move information as well as large sums of money over the World Wide Web almost instantaneously. This trend has been largely positive for generating wealth in goods, services and knowledge. A miniscule number of malign actors however have used this as a tool for spreading disinformation and propaganda to attract deviant youth across the world to the deadly world of international terror. The capacity for destruction demonstrated by these groups is unprecedented. This was evident in New York on September 11, 2001 subsuming over 3000 lives and razing the World Trade Centre. At the same time financial consequences of this…