Treasury Finally Designates the Union of Good

By Ilan Weinglass

The U.S. Treasury department has finally designated the Union of Good as a Specially Designated National, meaning it is effectively recognized as a terrorist entity.  This is certainly a welcome development, but I have no idea why it did not take place years ago.  A cursory look at the group's web site, for those who can read Arabic, shows it to be an umbrella group for 50-odd islamic charities, of which around 10 were already SDNs.  All this was true years ago, as shown (among other places) by research that I conducted along with Olivier Guitta.

Treasury's information sheet on the designation is not up yet so it's hard to determine what new information led to this step, though it is certainly a welcome development.

UPDATE 11/13/2008:  The press release can be found here, and Doug Farah has a good post about the designation here.  He points out that, as noted by the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report, Yusuf Qaradawi is not mentioned in Treasury's press release.  This is somewhat odd, as Qaradawi is listed as president of the Union of Good, and he is already on the list of persons denied entry to the United States.  It makes one wonder what the precipitating event for the designation was and if there is some sort of rapprochement in the works with the MB.  

An important point missed so far is that in a ham-handed way Treasury actually did list the Union of Good as a Hamas-affiliated group as far back as 2003, without officially designating it.  A look at the Al Aqsa International Foundation's designation press release from May 2003 reveals the following: 

 AL-AQSA FOUNDATION offices are included in lists of organizations that contributed to the Hamas-affiliated Charity Coalition in 2001 and 2002.

The "Charity Coalition" referred to here is the Union of Good - it's just an alternate translation of the Arabic "I'tilaf al-Khayr."  Indeed, the above designation refers to Union of Good actions going back to 2001.  This is significant as it shows official knowledge of the Union of Good as a terrorist entity as of at least 2003.  Given this knowledge, why wasn't the Union of Good formally designated then?  What has changed between then and now?  

And on a technical point, why was there no clarification of the name translation to explain that the "Charity Coalition" was the same as the "Union of Good"?  This minor technical point has significant implications as there is pending litigation accusing banks of knowingly processing funds for the Union of Good. The prosecution's case would be massively strengthened had that name appeared on a U.S. Government statement as linked to Hamas, not the anodyne "Charity Coalition."  I think the most charitable explanation is that someone dropped the ball at Treasury, or that the Union of Good did not have a high priority as it is an umbrella organization.  At least they got around to it five years after getting the facts.