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An Introduction to Terrorist Criminal Enterprises 5 invested in terrorism, however. Rather, leaders often build flashy man- sions and buy new Toyota Land Cruisers and other luxury items. Finally, some revolutionary terrorist groups internationalized their criminal enterprises to realize greater profits. Organizations such as the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), the Liberation Ti- gers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and the PKK/KONGRA-GEL (PKK) all main- tain convincing guerrilla wings that sometimes engage in fierce battles against authorities, effectively camouflaging decades of criminal enter- prise. They are highly successful, especially in Europe, where the latter two groups extort their respective diaspora communities and engage in drug trafficking, human trafficking and smuggling, and credit card fraud. The vast profits illicit trade generates often far exceed what is needed for extremists’ operational purposes. The windfall may have caught some groups off guard and over the long run may have harmed their cause with both open and tacitly sympathetic supporters. Certainly, many of the members of groups such as Abu Sayyaf, AQIM, the Caucasus Emirate, the Haqqani Network, and the IMU seem to have become as captivated by profit as ideology. For others, like Boko Haram, Da’esh, and al-Shabaab, there has been decidedly more fluctuation between professed ideological values and profit maximization. Ultimately, entire groups have lost many of their comprehensible ideals as members became wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. Yet, it is unlikely that most extremists wish to be viewed as common criminals the pursuit of excessive enrichment is difficult to explain to followers who expect high degrees of moral turpitude from ter- rorists. Moreover, crimes such as drug trafficking often are viewed as anti- thetical to ideological and/or religious values. 11 Hence, in such cases, the more professionalized and business-minded the criminal operations, the less terrorists may be able to cling to their ideals. IDEOLOGY AS A FAÇADE For many terrorists, their evolution to terrorist criminal enterprises has comprised a careful balancing act to appear committed to ideology while at the same time generate revenue. Some of this stems from newer members being recruited into an organization that already is financially dependent on illicit activities and whose members enjoy lavish crimi- nal lifestyles. Once introduced to such wealth, its lure often corrupts and supplants loftier ideals, leaving ideology to serve as little more than the group’s façade. 12 Hence, for instance in some regions, “Islam is a conve- nient label hiding the joining of two bloodied hands: trafficking and ter- rorism. Global gang violence has been ‘Islamised.’ ” 13 Thus, sometime during their evolution, profit-making surpassed “po- litical aspirations as the dominant operating rationale” for groups such as Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), many Al-Qaida affiliates, the FARC, the Haqqani Network, Hezbollah, and the PKK. 14 To provide an idea of how money