Wednesday, October 1, 2008

The Terrorist Way

We have always criticised terrorists. Nobody would suggest us to become a terrorist. We have always looked upon them as bad boys. But what if we look terrorism as a profession? I know it’s difficult to believe. But for terrorists it’s their profession to harm the society. Besides their skills and the unmatched modus operandi, it is very sad to look at their professionalism in “anti-social” activities. This idea cropped up in my mind after the Ahmedabad Bomb blast and has made a stronger mark by consecutive one in Delhi.

I know it sounds creepy. But to support this idea, I also have some thoughts which I want to share. You may not agree with me, but, it’s true.

Think about their perfection. It is better than the six sigma companies. What about their M&A with competitors like police or may be politicians? They neither need financial advisors nor investment bankers for it. Then who manages their accounts? Do they use tally? Do they know MIS? How can they make all these things so simple? Why don’t they need consultants? Who teaches time management to them? Are they management students? How can they manage such a complicated task so easily? Where do they learn all these management concepts from?

Can you imagine the supply chain or logistic department of our terrorist friends!!! I feel it’s almost at par with FedEx. In fact, even better. And what about HR, wherein, even without taking help of recruitment agency they still manage to find most loyal employees than any other industry. They are always clear with their “Mission and Vision”. They promise exactly what they can perform. I can’t even imagine about their advertisement and PR department, that, without spending even a single penny, they get maximum visibility on all news channels and news papers. “New market development”, the most difficult task for any company. But for them, it’s just a cakewalk. Whether it’s India or China, USA or UK, for them all are the same. They are always ready with their strategy to enter anywhere in the world. From my very first marketing lecture, I have heard that India is the most complicated market to enter. But for them, it is a child’s play.

Can anyone help me to find out their business model? I think they just believe in simplicity. By making their business simple and concentrating on only on one product, they earn maximum satisfaction and the desired reward. With very limited product portfolio, they manage to win any market in any situation.

To solve this mystery of success there is only one solution. We need to go to THE SCHOOL OF TERRORISM, and find out what they teach. Who are the faculties and what kind of books they have in their library? Why are they so smart in defining their core competencies, be it a bomb blast or a hijack? If defining core competency is so easy, then why management schools are wasting so much time to teach these things? To conclude, I just want to say, rather than only fighting with them, it is better to understand how they works. “If we want to kill them, we will have to know them”.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

shit man
awesome is d only wrd
nowhr read a bettr blog
i swear
hw did u evn thnk abt it
All credit goes 2 Vaishalli..
She fired in u d thought 2 gv relavent n new egs 2 theories..
;)
M jus wondering if u bcum a marketin professor hw wld ur syllabus luk lik:
Lec 1: Sholay
Lec 2: Daud
Lec 3: .....

Waitin fr d nxt lec Sir...

Unknown said...

Awesome dude......... Amazng thought process. Am astonished by the way u hav put the entire msg across. Damn creative man!!!! Cheers...... Keep blogging...... Always there for ur support.....

Unknown said...

hey darshit its awesome even beyond that... no word to describe your creativity... you forced me to think alot man...
cheeerzzz to you dear...
i am proud of my substitute...
waiting for the next big idea to come....

Ascension said...

WO WO WO!!!!!!
Tremendous, superb, mind-blowing, explosive, awesome...Thsi were the only adjectives i can think of..
It was like going through wid all subjects which we hav learned in 1 nd half yr..
Really Gr8 stuff..Keep blogging
For u i can only say "Keep on the TOP"...

Namrata Shah said...

nice combination of the 2 main businesses in the world......Management and Terrorism...keep up the gud work...it is such a thought provoking blog...really nice!!!

Rahul Bhatnagar said...

Well, I would like to appreciate the thought process you have, but I would say that the whole point of being what they are and what they have achieved what they have is because they are not educated and don't fear anything. They are uncouth, without any respect to the Society. They have been able to run an organized crime syndicate but the basics remain the same...

I would quote an article from rediffnews written by Suman Guha Mozumdar in New York. He writes, "A recent study on film piracy conducted by the Rand Corporation confirms what India has been saying for long about Dawood Ibrahim, an underworld don who is currently on the wanted list by the Interpol. The Rand study says that Ibrahim is one of the examples exemplifying the links between crime and terror around the globe.

'The case of Dawood Ibrahim, India's godfather of criminal gangs from Bangkok to Dubai, demonstrates the blurring line between crime and terror around the globe,' the study said. The study noted that in his early years, Ibrahim's gang, D-Company, pursued the standard crime-syndicate practices of extortion, smuggling, and contract killings. 'However, Ibrahim and his cohorts have been able to vertically integrate D-company throughout the Indian film and pirate industry, forging a clear pirate monopoly over competitors and launching a racket to control the master copies of pirated Bollywood and Hollywood films,' it said.

'In 1993, D-Company was transformed into a terrorist organization when it carried out the 'Black Friday' Mumbai bombings, an attack that killed more than 257 people and injured an estimated 713.79 Later, D-Company developed ties to al Qaeda and the Kashmiri terrorist group, Lakshar-e-Taiyiba while its leaders were exiled in Pakistan, 'it said.

'For all these reasons, in 2003, the US Treasury Department Office of Foreign Assets Control added Ibrahim to its terrorist watch list and froze his assets. Shortly thereafter, the United Nations Security Council's al Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee issued a similar order.

'This case demonstrates how an existing organized crime group that turned into a terrorist group leveraged rackets in the film industry to vertically expand into piracy. While there are no estimates of D-Company's proceeds from film piracy, the size and sophistication of Ibrahim's counterfeit DVD operation bespeak a highly profitable enterprise,' the report said.

The report, prepared by Greg Treverton, the lead author and director of the Center for Global Risk and Security at RAND, a nonprofit research organization, said that given the enormous profit margins, it is no surprise that organized crime has moved into film piracy. 'The profits are high and penalties for being caught are relatively low,' he said.

RAND researchers found no evidence that terrorists are widely involved with film piracy, but they outlined three cases where film piracy supported terror groups and warned that such connections could grow in the future.

'If you buy pirated DVDs, there is a good chance that at least part of the money will go to organized crime and those proceeds fund more-dangerous criminal activities, possibly terrorism,' Treverton said.

The report said that while the Northern Ireland terrorist groups aged into pure criminality, this (Ibrahim's) case illustrates the crossing of the line in the opposite direction, as D-Company transformed into an organization not just passively supporting terrorists, but with close links to them,' it said.

'Indian authorities had been aware of D-Company's film piracy operations in Pakistan since the 1990s but were practically powerless to intervene. Only after 2005, when US Customs seized a large shipment of SADAF-brand counterfeit discs in Virginia, did Pakistani authorities, under a threat of trade sanctions, begin raiding D-Company's duplicating facilities in Karachi, it said.

This article justifies what you write about it being a run like a company..

My point of view is that they need to do a high Cash business to sustain themselves.

If you dry up their cash, they will have nothing left.. Their entire organization structure collapses... You can cease their assets but they deal only in cash which helps them survive as they can keep relocating themselves... This can be done because they have a lot of liquidity...

So as the above article mentions, they would be into drug peddling, piracy of movies, funding a lot of movies, giving loans to Small and Medium Enterprises at High Rate of Interests, Extortion, Smuggling etc.. This money they use to fund the terrorist activities and to sustain themselves..

All their transactions are through hawala, which is Money Laundering.. It is an alternative or parallel remittance system. It exists and operates outside of, or parallel to 'traditional' banking or financial channels. It was developed in India, before the introduction of western banking practices, and is currently a major remittance system used around the world. It is but one of several such systems; another well known example is the 'chop', 'chit' or 'flying money' system indigenous to China, and also, used around the world. These systems are often referred to as 'underground banking'.

The components of hawala that distinguish it from other remittance systems are trust and the extensive use of connections such as family relationships or regional affiliations. Unlike traditional banking or even the 'chop' system, hawala makes minimal (often no) use of any sort of negotiable instrument. Transfers of money take place based on communications between members of a network of hawaladars, or hawala dealers.

So it is easy to send large amounts of cash from one place to another without being caught. I mean if you are caught then you get f*****...

So I would like to conclude that these terrorists, criminals don't do anything ideas which are out of the box. They don't do anything special. They are just a big nuisance to society. If we had to do take their place, we could do much better then them, because we are educated, have a minds of our own, have analytical skill, can take better decisions, can strategize, run operations and last but not the least use computers and the internet..

You guys can try this out,
Type "How to Make a Bomb" in Google Search, and you will get 46,700,000 search results..

So I think instead of studying about and in the School of Terrorism, we should rather focus on studying in The Harvard Business School..

Adios.. will catch you'll later.. till darshit writes more...