ABSTRACT
The United States’ efforts to interrupt the provision of resources to non-state terrorist organizations began in the 1980s, as a number of international terrorist incidents brought the issue to the fore. The Hizbollah bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon in April 1983 and the US Marine barracks six months later demonstrated that non-state actors threatened American interests abroad. Paired with state-sponsored attacks, such as the destruction of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988 (for which a Scottish court convicted a Libyan intelligence officer),2 the attacks prompted the United States to pursue three avenues: the first was to make greater use of border restrictions to prevent the shipment of material overseas; the second centred on using economic sanctions and the freezing of foreign assets to go after the state sponsors; and the third focused on interrupting the flow of materials and funds to terrorist organizations at home and abroad via punitive measures.
