Incredibly, the Terrorism Index, published on February 13, 2007 by The Center for American Progress (CAP), alleges that the United States’ efforts to stop terrorists’ money all over the world are successful. The CAP further claims that this is not surprising since “terrorists do not need large sums of cash to be deadly effective.” After all, the World Trade Center attack on September 11 is estimated as al Qaeda’s most costly, at $500,000, while the bombing of London’s transit on July 2005, cost merely $2,000. What the CAP failed to take into account is the cost of building the international multilayered infrastructure, which makes these attacks possible.
The CAP asked 116 U.S. foreign policy and terrorism experts, to” indicate how much progress has the U.S. government “made in implementing the 9/11 Commission} recommendations since July 2004… to curtail terrorist financing.” Surprisingly, “95 percent of the experts said that some or a great deal of progress had been made.” The report went on to explain, that this “could be because, in the past six years, the United States has led the charge to freeze more than $140 million in terrorist assets in 1,400 bank accounts worldwide.”
But freezing $140 million did little to stop the flow of money to the terrorists. Especially compared to over $90 billion the Saudis spent to spread Wahhabism around the world since the 1970’s; the hundreds of millions of dollars -- just to fuel the Intifada – the Saudis gave the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and Hamas; and Iran’s $100 million plus per year for decades to subsidize Hizbollah. Indeed, $140 million is just a drop in the ocean.
It boggles the mind that the U.S. and Western leaders refrain from recognizing that terrorism cannot succeed without a strongly funded base. More disturbing is the unwillingness to identify the sources of the funding, especially regarding the Saudis.
In July 2005, Treasury undersecretary Stuart Levey testified before the Senate, that “Wealthy Saudi financiers and charities have funded terrorist organizations and causes that support terrorism and the ideology that fuels the terrorists' agenda." But he went on to say: "Even today, we believe that Saudi donors may(emphasis added) still be a significant source of terrorist financing, including for the insurgency in Iraq."
Yet, former CIA director James Woolsey describes the Saudi-sponsored spread of Wahhabism and Islamist extremism as "the soil in which Al-Qaeda and its sister terrorist organizations are flourishing."
This reluctance continues to undermine U.S. credibility, and at the same time allows the expansion of the terrorists’ agenda and the spread of terrorism all over the world. As long as the terror financiers remain anonymous, we will not be able to severe the terrorists’ lifeline.
Comments