| New York Times | - |
The
cafe is the final stop for young radicalized men from Europe or North
Africa who are planning to slip past the lax Turkish border officers and
into Syrian territory. This is where they exchange their passports for cash. When one of us visited the ...
How the Terrorists Got Rich
In Iraq and Syria, ISIS Militants Are Flush With Funds
A
FEW feet from the Bab al-Salam border crossing near the Turkish town of
Kilis, there is a shabby cafe where the most interesting items for sale
are not found on the menu. The cafe is the final stop for young
radicalized men from Europe or North Africa who are planning to slip
past the lax Turkish border officers and into Syrian territory. This is
where they exchange their passports for cash. When one of us visited the
cafe in January, a Belgian passport was for sale for $8,000. A buyer
could have it altered for movement to Europe or visa-free travel to the
United States. New passport photos were being snapped in the parking
lot.
Half
a continent away, in Kuwait, on an evening in March, a soon-to-be
auctioned 1982 Chevy Caprice Classic awkwardly sat parked on carpets
outside a tent. Inside potential bidders were being asked to alleviate
the suffering of Syrians with “humanitarian contributions.” Few could
have had any doubt that once their money found its way to Syria,
fighters — some affiliated with Al Qaeda — would decide whether to use
it to buy aspirin for children or ammunition for killers.
On
June 10, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, moved on Mosul,
Iraq’s second largest city. The advance blew the uniforms off hapless
soldiers and police officers, and left prison cells and bank vaults
emptied of their contents. In the largest bank holdup in recent memory,
ISIS operatives reportedly stole up to $400 million in cash. Flush with
money, ISIS will have the resources (as well as the territory) to
establish itself as the hub of a global terrorist movement in the heart
of the Middle East. There are no Treasury paratroopers to send in to
seize the cash, or bank regulations to issue to stop ISIS from spending
it.
These
three episodes reflect a deep problem for the United States and its
allies that has been evolving for several years. The campaign to disrupt
and dismantle terrorist financing after 9/11, which met with much
success and once caused Osama bin Laden to bemoan the lack of funding in
Al Qaeda coffers, has given way to a new reality. The metastasized,
Qaeda-inspired terrorist movements have learned to raise millions of
dollars locally, while the conflicts in Syria and Iraq have resurrected
the terrorist funding networks of old. Terrorist funding is now both
local and global.
Donors
and everyday citizens from the Persian Gulf and other sympathetic
corners of the world, witnessing the humanitarian crisis in Syria, have
been funneling money to the most effective forces fighting the regime of
Bashar al-Assad there, namely Qaeda-affiliated groups and ISIS.
Smartly, these groups have realized they must match their brutal
militancy with charitable services, akin to the governance and charity
models of groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. This makes it difficult to
differentiate funding to alleviate the suffering of Syrian refugees from
support for terrorism.
Alongside
these global revenue streams, terrorist networks have gotten better at
taking advantage of local moneymaking opportunities. In North Africa, Al
Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has the market cornered on
kidnap-for-ransom and smuggling operations to the tune of tens of
millions of dollars. It has used its resources to buy more weapons to
assault Malian and French forces and to support the training of Boko
Haram operatives, while Boko engages in its own hostage-taking for
profit in West Africa.
The
Taliban and Haqqani networks in Afghanistan and Pakistan also run
smuggling and kidnapping operations, while profiting from the heroin
trade. The Shabab movement in Somalia has developed a trade-based
money-laundering system through the export of charcoal and import of
sugar, while imposing taxes in areas it controls.
In
earlier days, ISIS made plenty of money on petty crimes, bank robberies
and oil smuggling. Today, with its control of territory growing in
Syria and Iraq, it has established a war economy. ISIS militants have
taken control of resources like granaries and oil installations and are
extorting “taxes” from businesses and selling off government property
and equipment (an inventory that now includes American-made Humvees).
This has spawned a for-profit militant model that breathes life into
insurgencies around the world.
ISIS
is also a leader in using new technologies and social media to raise
awareness and reach individual donors. Appeals for donations (or
investments) are tweeted while money is raised and sent via the
Internet, then withdrawn in the form of bags of cash to be transported
into the war zones. The ISIS publication Al-Naba (The News) has kept
donors informed about the progress of specific operations, while Twitter
feeds are updated with body counts and photos of the equipment and
territory fighters now control.
If
we hope to constrict these global and local fund-raising streams, and
the dangerous ambitions of terrorist groups, we need a renewed campaign
against terrorist financing.
This
will require creativity to launch operations against networks now
supporting ISIS and Qaeda-related groups and to form partnerships with
local law enforcement, customs authorities and regulators. We must
strengthen border enforcement to intercept cash couriers, and step up
anti-corruption efforts to ensure that groups cannot buy access or safe
passage. This requires mustering the political will to isolate
deep-pocket donors in places like Kuwait and Qatar; Turkish brokers
doing business with these groups; front companies, facilitators and
charities in the region; and even countries unwilling to stem
the flow of funds to known terrorist groups. And finally, legitimate aid
organizations in Syria and the region must create alternative social
services for refugees.
But
we cannot cut off the financing to a group like ISIS without first
dislodging it from the territory it controls. And this requires a
broader counterterrorism campaign. This has been done in the past —
during the surge in Iraq in 2007, and when Kenyan forces ran the Shabab
out of the lucrative port of Kismayo in Somalia in 2012. It does not
necessarily have to be done by American forces on the ground, but it
does require forces allied with the United States to separate ISIS from
the resources it controls and the economy it now runs.
Unfortunately,
a clear strategy for doing this and American leadership have been
absent amid the caldron of the conflicts in Syria and Iraq. Meanwhile,
we have lost the on-the-ground intelligence and military capabilities
provided by task forces like the Iraq Threat Finance Cell, created in
the mid-2000s to track and disrupt insurgency and terrorist funding.
Our
options and appetite for more investment of blood and treasure in the
fight against terrorism may be limited, but without addressing all
dimensions of the financing threat, our progress over the years may be
lost. If groups like ISIS can fill their coffers, run economies and
consolidate their hold on power, we may be facing a new, more dangerous
brand of global terrorism that will threaten the United States and its
allies for years to come.
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