ANOTHER WAR ON TERROR
People are just now beginning to realize it is equally important to cut off sources of arms funding in the global fight against ISIL
This is war, declared French President François Hollande, in the emotional reckoning that followed the most recent attacks by ISIL in Paris.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant will be destroyed, he promised. If that is to happen, his country — and every other international authority, including Canada, that has committed to defeating ISIL and its allies — must hit the terrorists where it hurts them the most.
Between the eyes, yes. Just as important, in the pocketbook.
Global security experts have sounded alarms and issued warnings about terrorist financing ever since radicals in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East began raising millions of dollars to plan and execute their jihad. They started more than a decade ago, well before ISIL was formed and proclaimed itself a caliphate, or theocratic world government.
People are finally beginning to listen closely, and to follow the money. There’s a lot of it, from many places, even Canada, and it’s being used to massacre innocents. It comes from an astonishingly diverse array of activities, such as extortion, theft, smuggling, human trafficking, kidnappings, even mainstream fundraising efforts disguised as charity.
By 2006, al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) was “self-sustaining” and capable of raising between US$70 million and US$200 million annually, according to the U.S. government. ISIL is a larger, more sophisticated and richer creature than any of its predecessors, including al-Qaida and AQI. Its financial requirements are also much greater.
ISIL is controlled from the top by experienced military commanders, many of whom served under Saddam Hussein before his regime was toppled in 2003. Besides thousands of willing combatants, at their disposal are hundreds of heavy weapons, such as artillery, armoured vehicles and tanks, most captured from other armies.
ISIL also has access to myriad smaller arms, some seized or stolen, while others are bought from unscrupulous middlemen or gifted by sympathetic regimes and smuggled across different borders.
The cheap and ubiquitous Kalashnikov rifle, or AK-47, is a terrorist weapon of choice. The Paris attackers carried Kalashnikovs.
After the Paris attacks, French police in Lyon arrested suspected ISIL terrorists and seized what has been described as “an arsenal of weapons,” including a rocket launcher, more than a dozen handguns, bulletproof vests, combat gear and other military hardware.
It takes resources to mobilize and operate such a large assortment of equipment. ISIL has this capacity because it has manpower and money. It “represents a new form of terrorist organization where funding is central and critical to its activities,” says the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an independent, inter-government body supported by Canada, the United States, Britain, France and other democracies.
How critical? About US$3 billion flows into ISIL-controlled coffers annually, “mainly derived from illicit proceeds from its occupation of territory” in Iraq and Syria, but increasingly from “new and emerging technologies,” says FATF, referring to social media tools such as Twitter, which ISIL sympathizers use to appeal for donations.
Other alternatives to traditional banking and money-transfer systems include electronic crowdfunding activities from western countries such as Canada.
“ISIL has manipulated social media, physical and virtual social networks, encouraged donations and conduced a marketing campaign in a manner that is consistent with industry standards established by major crowdfunding companies,” reports FATF.
Calls to turn off the cash spigot and starve the terrorists grow louder by the day; unfortunately, they aren’t always heeded.
“If there was a global commitment, we would pull the plug on terrorist financing in a day, and (ISIL) would be incapacitated in a month because no terrorist organization is a financial island,” says Christine Duhaime, a Vancouver-based lawyer and terrorist financing expert.
That may be simplifying things, because ISIL’s most lucrative revenue sources are still believed to include stolen assets, such as seized oilfields and banks in Iraq and Syria, as well as extortion rackets in the form of taxes in ISIL-controlled territories.
Terrorism experts Jean-Charles Brisard and Damien Martinez broke down ISIL’s aggressive extortion activities in a 2014 report, demonstrating how deeply the jihadists have penetrated the societies and economies they control.
“In Mosul (northern Iraq) alone, the Islamic State has implemented taxes on a variety of commercial activities,” the pair wrote in Islamic State: The Economy-Based Terrorist Funding. ISIL duties are imposed on salaries, goods and telecommunication services, bank withdrawals, roads, truck-carried imports, and more. There is even a “protection tax” levied on non-Muslims.
“In total, the extortion/tax system imposed in areas under its control in Iraq and Syria could generate as much as US$30 million per month for (ISIL),” their report reads.
Internal or localized funding mechanisms such as “taxes” are likely impossible to check or impede from outside ISIL-controlled territory. However, experts such as Duhaime argue in Western countries such as Canada, ISIL supporters can be denied opportunities to raise or transfer money meant for terrorism.
There have been numerous suspected and confirmed examples of terrorist-related financial transactions in Canada, meant to benefit groups such as al-Qaida and its affiliates.
Unfortunately, she says, some of our most established institutions are still helping the terrorists, even “wilfully.” She points to paying ransoms to ISIL or its affiliates. Western banks are involved in payment transfers, under direction from governments “who agree to do it to save lives.” No one in authority ever admits to paying a ransom, but it does happen, she says.
Another concern is the use of routine banking services to transfer funds from client accounts in Canada to accounts controlled, directly or indirectly, by ISIL. Funds that are directed to “terrorist hot spots” should be more closely scrutinized and even questioned by bank employees at the point of transfer, says Duhaime.
If that means rejecting a simple wire transfer to someone in, say, Afghanistan, unless both the sender’s and the recipient’s bona fides are established, then so be it.
There are already some requirements to do just that, but complacency and a lack of knowledge — rather than a dearth of regulation — are widespread, she claims.
Regulatory tools and guidance are already in place in Canada to deal with dodgy situations but governments need to toughen enforcement, and financial institutions must share more client information with authorities, including the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the national spy agency.
Other businesses have shown they understand their responsibilities, reporting or just avoiding potential terrorist financing.
Duhaime noted the recent example of a Canadian businessman, Steve Maman, who purportedly solicited funds to help free women captured by ISIL in Syria and Iraq, then transferred the money to intermediaries for ransom.
Maman relied on a crowdfunding website, GoFundMe, and claimed to have raised $500,000 in efforts to rescue more than 120 kidnapped women. None of his claims were independently verified or disproven; however, GoFundMe ended its involvement with the crowdfunding campaign, noting it “may be violating local (Canadian) laws.”
Had any of the money raised ended up in the hands of ISIL fanatics, it would have been, relatively speaking, a drop in its financial bucket. But this is war, and in wartime, nothing is insignificant.
If there was a global commitment, we would pull the plug on terrorist financing in a day.