ABSTRACT
Terrorist groups (TGs), similarly to organised crime groups (OCGs), need financial resources to sustain their operations and organisation. This chapter provides a transnational synthesis of drug trafficking as an illicit source of financing for terrorist groups and as an illicit market where different types of relationships between terrorist groups and OCGs arise. In doing so, it sets within the theoretical approach of the crime-terror nexus and it particularly refers to the trafficking-terrorism nexus considering the following connections: operational, alliance, and convergence. Drug trafficking is the most common criminal activity in which TGs have been involved due to its high profitability. The operational involvement of terrorist groups in drug trafficking has allowed to develop in-house capabilities to guarantee organisational security and organisational operations as well as to acquire a degree of independence from OCGs in the drug trade.
