Mechanisms to Fight Terrorism – Part 1

Terrorist are a small population with a strong ideology and a weak manpower so they resort to the so called ‘terrorist activities”. They are an entity of their own.  To analyze the funding and source of income we need to know their working status meaning the kind of family background they belong, their occupation before they took on to terrorism which tell us their possible sources of income and contacts/connections, the obstacles they face as, they will always go in for the easiest and least complicated means to fund their activities. From the nation’s point of view the enemy is only one.  But there is more to it. Funding terrorism can be of two types that is, in money and in men to organize activities. There can one or more sources providing them with money, man and ammunitions. The likely sources also known as invisible helping hands are:

1. People who have no moral interest for the group but have strong hatred against the targeted country. They are likely to contribute in money and ammunition.
2. People who wish to support their cause but do not want to be directly involved. Such sources may add to manpower and in money
3. State sponsored terrorism where in the state funds to achieve personal goals. They are most likely to do their bit in money and in men.

The most important fact to be noted is that these activities are not very expensive affairs, and does not need a very large sum of money to run their activity.

WHY TERRORISTS REQUIRE FUNDS

The first step before identifying and preventing the flow of funds to terrorists is to understand the financial requirements of modern terrorist organizations. The costs include not only executing the terrorist attacks but also with developing and maintaining a terrorist organization and its ideology are of high importance. Cash inflows are required to promote a militant ideology, pay operatives and their families, arrange for travel and stay, train new members, forge documents, pay bribes, acquire weapons, and stage attacks etc. Often, a variety of higher-cost services, including preparing propaganda are needed to provide for organizations that promote their objectives through terrorism

The main expenditures of terrorists can be broadly classified into

1. Funding specific terrorist operations, such as direct costs associated with specific operations. Since there is no single typology these direct costs can vary from various terrorist organization depending on their needs. This may include charges for vehicles, stay, improvised bomb-making components, maps, surveillance material etc. These direct costs of terrorist attacks are often very low relative to the damage they can yield.
2. 2.      Broader organizational costs to develop and maintain an infrastructure of organizational support and to promote the ideology of a terrorist organization. It includes financially maintaining a terrorist network, to provide for recruitment, planning between attacks represents the most significant drain on resources. Beyond the funds needed to finance terrorist attacks and provide direct operational support, terrorist organizations require funding to develop a supporting infrastructure, recruitment of new members and promote their ideas to get more man power. In addition, this infrastructure spending may go to support charitable organizations and media owned or controlled by the terrorist organization.

 SOURCES OF FUNDS

Charity

One of the pillars of Islam, zakat, is the compulsory giving of a set proportion of one’s wealth to charity. While most of these charities in the Muslim world exist to help the poor and spread the message of Islam, they have also been used, particularly in wealthy Middle Eastern nations, to finance jihad.

This is an untracked income to terrorist as it like black money. Huge amounts from the donations are blindly put in for the holy war, Jihad

Black Money

There is no end the black money flowing into market. The greatest difficulty being that this money has no records on paper. Hence to arrive at estimate itself is a task of it is own and like all other illegal sources of finance, a substantial part of this goes for funding terrorism.

Sponsors

It might come as a shock that state sponsors terrorism as a cheap political agenda for personal gains. The classic example of this is the Lashkar-e-Tobia (LeT), a Pakistan based militant group who is believed to have financed for the Mumbai 2008 attacks. Also it is suspected that government also provides if not in ammunition or money but in men or other facilities required by the terrorist groups. One such case was brought up during the investigation on the 2008 Mumbai attacks stating that the ruling government was already aware of the attacks and still kept quite as some officials had links with the terrorists and allegations were that they were aiding the terrorist.

Drugs Prostitution and Piracy

How many people across America would believe that two such beautiful plants as the poppy and the coca were responsible for funding September 11? Not many people realize that these same two plants are more valuable than diamonds, emeralds, platinum, and gold combined. Illegal drugs are cheap to make but they return enormous amounts of money.

Illegal drugs are marketable almost everywhere. The illicit drug trade is the most reliable source of income in the world, with a demand that is constant and continues to grow.

Illegal drug money funds terrorist organizations and activities. The terrorists point to our willingness to consume these drugs as direct evidence of our society’s moral degeneracy.

According to an estimate from the State Department Office for International Narcotics

Matters, the production of 1 kilo of cocaine costs about $3,000. The wholesale price of that kilo is about $20,000. Cocaine production takes as long as the leaves grow, and in

Colombia, Peru, and especially Bolivia, they grow fast. Opium can be cultivated twice a year in Asia and the Middle East and at least three to four times in Mexico and Colombia because of the tropical climate.

The production of heroin is more expensive than cocaine. It costs about $4,000 to $5,000 to produce a kilo of heroin. That kilo will sell for $250,000 to $300,000 wholesale. The drugs are delivered only after the money for them is paid in full. Losing drugs in shipment does not affect the dealers because they have already been paid. Largely, the drug syndicates keep 80 percent of the revenues. According to figures released by the

State Department (2001), there was over 5,000 metric tons of cocaine sold during 2001 at a street value of at least fifty billion dollars. Five hundred metric tons of heroin generated at least thirty billion dollars on the street during that same timeframe.

The Taliban, Al Qaeda, and bin Laden do not and will not acknowledge the role of heroin as their major source of funding terrorism, if only because it contradicts Islamic tenets.

However, bin Laden, as well as the Hizballah had issued special ways to justify and allow the use of the drug trade to their followers. Other illegal drugs such as cocaine, methamphetamines that have the exact same role for worldwide terrorist organizations — many of which cooperate with bin Laden — are also not acknowledged as weapons in the terrorists’ arsenal.

Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda, like other terrorist organizations, uses the same methods and means as organized crime. The Italian Mafia, like the Russian Mafia, and other criminal organizations are often cooperating with the terrorists. Their activities range from trading in illegal drugs, diamonds, counterfeit money, identification papers, pirated CD’s and videos, stolen cars, people smuggling, and prostitution rings, to manipulating the markets and orchestrating multi-million dollar fraud schemes. These and more were documented throughout the nineties by the British National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS).

Loretta Napoleoni, an expert on terrorist financing, says the largest source of terrorists’ income is the illicit drug trade. Many terrorist groups have supported themselves through other illegal commerce as well. The terrorists behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing raised money by selling counterfeit t-shirts on New York City’s Broadway, and the perpetrators of the 2004 Madrid train bombings sold counterfeited CDs and trafficked drugs to support their activities. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) has long used the cocaine trade to finance its operations. Afghanistan’s flourishing poppy crops, which the United Nations says are responsible for as much as 86 percent of the world opium supply, are widely believed to be a major source of terrorist funding. Al-Qaeda reportedly profited from the Afghan poppy trade before fleeing the country when the Taliban-led government was ousted in 2001.

By Parvathy Kumar