THE WAR ON TERRORISM TAKES AIM AT CRIME

WASHINGTON -- In South America, the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, or FARC, controls lucrative coca fields that finance a terror
campaign against the government. In the Philippines, the Abu Sayyaf group
kidnaps people to sustain its separatist dreams. In Sri Lanka, the violent
Tamil Tigers have a fleet of stealthy vessels for smuggling contraband
across the Indian Ocean. In Uzbekistan, heavily armed Islamic militants run
a protection racket for opium traffickers. And before the fall of the
Taliban, Al Qaeda was thought to profit from Afghanistan's thriving poppy
trade.

Across the globe, the lines between international crime syndicates and
terrorist organizations have become impossibly blurred. And recognition of
that reality has spurred Washington to begin revamping its strategy for the
war on terror.

Informants for the Drug Enforcement Administration are being enlisted to
dig up intelligence on terrorist cells. F.B.I. agents are working with
C.I.A. operatives to track down criminal as well as terrorist cells. A
federally financed anti-drug campaign links drug use to supporting
terrorism. And the military, long accustomed to preparing for battles
against large conventional armies, is rushing to retrain its allies -- and
itself -- to fight small conflicts against borderless groups that engage in
crime even as they commit acts of terror.

"Everything we could do to put those people out of business would be good
for our purposes," said Adm. Dennis Blair, the commander in chief of the
United States Pacific Command.

Links to criminal activity have existed for as long as terrorists have been
around. But analysts say those links have grown since the end of the cold
war, when many insurgent groups lost their state sponsors and turned to
crim inal enterprises to finance their activities.

Hence the more expansive approach, which on one level seems a triumph of
common sense. If terrorists who threaten America buy their weapons, move
their people and hide their money by hiring criminal syndicates, why not go
after those subcontractors? And if insurgent groups are financing terror by
assisting drug traffickers, why not go after both? It would be killing two
birds with one stone, administration officials say.

"The illegal drug production that undermines America's culture also funds
terror and erodes democracies across the globe," Asa Hutchinson, the drug
enforcement administrator, said in a speech last week. "They all represent
a clear and present danger to our national security."

But expanding the global war on terrorism to include a global war on crime
has also raised sharp questions about whether the United States has the
political support, know-how and resources to attack such a large and
complicated set of new enemies. Many criminal syndicates have slyly evaded
the law for decades, usually with the help of corrupt local officials. Can
Americans suddenly expect to undermine those groups while also waging war
in Afghanistan, trying to contain Saddam Hussein, keeping Israelis and
Palestinians from each others' throats and sending troops to places like
the Philippines, Yemen and Georgia?

On Capitol Hill, many lawmakers are not so sure. Some are already drawing
analogies between Colombia -- where the administration wants to expand its
military assistance for fighting drug traffickers to include fighting the
FARC -- and Vietnam. "This could be a real quagmire," said Representative
Ike Skelton, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.
"And our commanders are already saying they don't have enough resources to
meet their missions."

Kurt Campbell, a former Clinton administration official who is a director
of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonpartisan policy
group in Washington, said Mr. Bush runs the risk of diluting his antiterror
campaign by continuously expanding its targets. First there was Al Qaeda,
then the axis of evil -- Iraq, Iran and North Korea -- and now there are
drug traffickers and other criminal syndicates.

"If you expand the definition of what you're trying to do, you blur your
mission and you start to lose support," Mr. Campbell said. "You start to
have questions about what exactly are we concerned with. Is it Islamic
fundamentalism? Is it states that are trying to acquire weapons of mass
destruction? Is it states that support drug running and then maybe do
things that aid terrorists? Each is important, but can all be the focus of
your attention?"

STILL, analysts who have studied international criminal syndicates say the
Bush administration is right to recognize the connections between criminal
groups and terrorists, which they lump together under the rubric of
"transnational threats."

The FARC, which lost funding from Cuba after the fall of the Soviet Union,
is a good example of how the end of the cold war opened the way to more
criminal activity. Having initially made money by "taxing" local drug
dealers, the FARC began running drugs itself in the 1990's. Today, American
officials say the group has become so corrupted by drug profits that its
political goals have become secondary. Similar cycles of violence exist in
the Balkans, Central Asia and Africa, where criminal enterprises -- from
stealing oil to smuggling diamonds -- have sustained guerrilla warriors
long after their political goals have faded.

But even as they applaud the Bush administration's new steps, analysts say
the administration has yet to grapple with the long-term problems posed by
stateless groups -- problems that could prove even more intractable than
those presented by Iraq or North Korea.

Louise I. Shelley, director of the Transnational Crime and Corruption
Center at American University in Washington, said criminal groups provide
vital services and generate economic opportunity in many regions where
government is weak. Attacking the criminal organizations without replacing
their socially useful services could antagonize communities whose help
America needs in fighting terrorists, she said.

"In some places, criminal groups provide food, provide gas, run the trade
and mediate the conflicts," Dr. Shelley said. "They are de facto
governments. But if you demonize them, you are not going to have the local
community behind you."

Military analysts also said that traditional military approaches to
fighting war must change if the United States is going to be effective in
attacking borderless enemies. The concept of deterrence, for example, could
quickly become obsolete if the enemy has no country, no capital, no
standing army, no obvious "centers of gravity" worth destroying. But so
far, the analysts say, the Pentagon hasn't quite figured out how to deter
groups that seem to have nothing to lose. It is a problem common to terror
groups and criminal bands, whether they engage in both crime and terror or not.

"Trying to fight these groups can be like trying to pin down a piece of
mercury," said Thomas M. Sanderson, deputy director for the Transnational
Threats Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"Yet we're still trying to box something that can't be boxed."