World officials tackle terror financing
TERRORISTS USE HARD-TO-TRACK TOOLS LIKE PREPAID CARDS AND ONLINE WALLETS
Ministers from more than 70 countries are working on ways to combat financing for Daesh and Al Qaida at Paris conference |
Ministers from more than 70 countries — including bitter rivals — are working on ways to combat financing for Daesh and Al Qaida at an international conference in Paris, which still bears scars of deadly terrorist attacks in recent years.
Participants who attended yesterday’s meeting in Paris include countries that have accused each other of funding terrorism.
It was launched by French President Emmanuel Macron to coordinate efforts to reduce the terror threat in the long term. A string of attacks has killed 245 people in France since January 2015 and dozens of others have been thwarted.
France is pushing for international coordination and more transparency in financial transactions. But it recognises how sensitive the issue is, and sees the conference as a first step to encourage political mobilisation.
The French organisers noted that Daesh military defeats on the ground don’t prevent the group from pursuing its terrorist activities, along with Al Qaida — especially in unstable regions of Afghanistan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Yemen, Egypt and sub-Saharan Africa.
Terror funding
Terror groups don’t only rely on the cash economy — they’re using increasingly using hard-to-track tools like prepaid cards, online wallets and crowdfunding operations.
A French top official said “we are still facing groups that are financially very strong and that use a lot the most anonymous kind of techniques to transfer money.”
Daesh also has invested in businesses and real estate to ensure its financing. Daesh revenues alone were estimated at $2.5 billion between 2014 and 2016, according to the French president’s office.
Most of the attacks in Western countries do not cost a lot of money, but terror groups “behave like big organisations It costs a lot to recruit, train, equip people and spread propaganda,” the official said.
Funding to extremist groups in the Middle East once freely flowed across the region’s informal moneytransfer shops and in donations made in mosques when travelling clerics issued special appeals during sermons.
While welcomed by the West when such funding went toward those fighting against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980s, the same system helped fund the rise of Al Qaida and its brutal offspring, Daesh.
In recent years, the US and other Western nations have encouraged Middle Eastern nations to close off those sources.
However, allegations over extremist funding in part sparked a nearly year-long boycott of Qatar by four Arab states. Qatar has faced Western criticism about being lax in enforcing such rules.
Qatar also has supported the pan-Arab Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood, which is banned in Gulf states as well as Egypt.
Participants encouraged countries to to “effectively collect, exchange and analyse financial intelligence.”