Cristian Comolli

The Syrian Civil War is entering its sixth year and has caused tremendous suffering and destruction to the Syrian population. The continuation of the conflict has led roughly 4.8 million of Syrians to seek refuge in the neighbouring countries (mostly Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan) and more than a million in Europe, while at least 6.5 million of Syrians are internally displaced (900,000 Syrians became IDPs in the first 6 months of 2016). The hypothesis of this research is that all the apparatus set up to reduce the impact of the crisis is merely postponing the bigger issues (e.g. Syrian integration, durable and sustainable solutions to the Syrian livelihoods and food security, avoid too much dependence on International aid and prevent an escalation of the friction between Syrians and Lebanese). The Lebanese humanitarian response for the Syrian crisis requested for 2017 2.8 billion dollars of funding. This is the highest amount ever requested for a Country and it is higher than the amount requested for Syria (that has higher amount of people in need and bigger needs). Are these high funds really needed for the crisis or is it a way to keep Lebanon stable and prevent a spill-over effect of the Syrian war into the Lebanese society?

Running a terrorist organization is extremely expensive, but how they fund themselves and why they prefer one source instead of the other? This paper will try address some of these issues analysing a well structured theory on terrorist financing and how the resources are moved across countries, quickly comparing advantages and disadvantages of the various sources. Then, in order to provide more empirical evidence a short comparative case study will analyse the different sources of income of two similar but at the same time very different terrorist organizations: Hezbollah and Daesh.