Pay for Play. Countering Threat Financing
Abstract
Shortly after midnight on March 20, 2009, in Bilbao, Spain, police began a series of raids to arrest a number of North Africans on suspicion of funding terrorism in North Africa through criminal activity in Spain. While this investigation continues, globally networked terrorists are operating on low contrast battlefields where understanding the difference between enemy and friendly forces is growing increasingly complex. This physical and virtual domain includes numerous dimensions unlike any that we have previously experienced. Among these dimensions, we have discovered that illicit financing networks represent both a significant strength and a critical enemy vulnerability to exploit. Guns, drugs, weapons of mass destruction, and humans are all commodities interactively traded by terrorists in corporate-like networks. As we have discovered, these networks are interrelated, each transcending borders and forming a growing nexus between terrorist movements and other criminal and narcotics enterprises. The same hawalas (money remittance systems prevalent in the Muslim world), smuggling channels, and, in some cases, cash couriers are used by diverse organizations with similar aims of evading law enforcement, military, and intelligence activities. As Adam Fosson asserts, "The connection between many Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) and either transnational organized crime groups or global trafficking organizations has increased over time, and FTOs themselves have more involved in criminal and trafficking activities. . . . [B]oth sides have a common financial interest, as though two corporations were merging."
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2010
- Accession Number
- ADA515159
Entities
People
- Michael T. Flynn
- Simone A. Ledeen
Organizations
- National Defense University