Cocaine, kidnapping and the Al-Qaeda cash squeeze

By Philip Sherwell in New York Published: 9:00PM GMT 06 March 2010

45 kilos of Cocaine from Ghana, West Africa - each pouch of rice contains x3 1 kilo blocks of Cocaine Photo: PA

The 3 al-Qaeda agents positive the Colombians that they would have no complaint relocating their conveyance of European-bound heroin by the Islamist badlands of the Sahara.

As supporters of the militant organisation"s North African branch, they would pledge conveyance of the drug by domain they tranquil - so prolonged as they were paid price of $2,000 per kilo.

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The trio, all from the bankrupt dried republic of Mali, thought they were environment up a understanding with part of of Colombia"s Marxist FARC guerrillas to filch up to 1,000 kgs of cocaine.

In fact, they were vocalization to informants for the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) who personally taped the assembly in Ghana in a sting operation in December. The 3 men, who were available on fasten observant that they were levying "taxes" on the apprehension group"s behalf, were arrested and extradited to New York, where they are right away fighting drug and apprehension charges.

Anti-terrorism officials hold the box competence infer a consequential branch point in the conflict opposite al-Qaeda: it is the initial time that any one associated to the apprehension organization has faced charge for the newest money-spinning activity, narco-terrorism.

The $2 million deduction would have been a remunerative income injection at a time when al-Qaeda is operative prosaic out to rise new methods of raising money.

Every commercial operation needs income flow, and Islamic apprehension is no exception. Across the world, al-Qaeda is branch to drug bootlegging and neatly stepping up abduction and coercion to block the opening in the monetary management caused by a extreme general crackdown on the strange sources of cash. The direction raises the awaiting of new floods of bootleg drug entering the West, and a neatly increasing risk to Western tourists and businesspeople as they transport outward Europe.

When the apprehension organization initial began the activities some-more than a decade ago, it did not need to review to rapist activities of a kind that competence provoke the despotic Koranic beliefs admitted by the founder, Osama bin Laden. Deep-pocketed donors, in countries similar to Saudi Arabia, and Islamic charities around the Middle East channelled the income indispensable to stake bin Laden"s expostulate to emanate an Islamic caliphate opposite the region.

Bin Laden"s organization had formerly been equates to to rely on wheeler-dealers similar to Abdul al Hamid al Mujil, well known in jihadist circles as "the million dollar man" for his capability to interest donations to the equates to of holy war.

The 60-year-old Saudi was a unchanging caller to Afghanistan during the 1990s and on accessible conditions with bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, the purported designer of the 9/11 attacks, as he channelled supports from Arab states to al-Qaeda.

But in Aug 2006, al Mujil and the Philippine and Indonesian branches of the International Islamic Relief Organisation, that he headed, were directed towards by the US book as financiers of terrorism.

Western firms were taboo from you do commercial operation with him, UN part of states froze his resources and Saudi Arabia limited the ouitflow of supports from the charity.

Deprived of his largesse, groups such as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (the Arabic name for North Africa) are branch increasingly to general crime to yield their income flow. And for bin Laden, that represents a dilemma.

At initial he did not wish al-Qaeda to unwashed the hands with the drug trade. But he assumingly was won turn by a multiple of mercantile prerequisite and the argument, as mostly uttered on jihadist websites, that the drug traffic weakens Western "infidels" by stuff oneself their corrupted additions.

Kidnapping of Western tourists to the Sahara has additionally turn a remunerative money-spinner for al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Its members additionally traffic all from arms to cigarettes to people.

The organization takes hostages for income and for ideology. In 2007, it murdered 4 French tourists, causing the termination of the Paris-Dakar engine rally. Last year, it kidnapped a organization of European tourists, holding them in Mali for multiform months prior to majority were expelled in lapse for ransoms believed to reach $5 million each. But it executed a Briton, Edwin Dyer, after the Britain refused the final to recover the in advance Islamist minister Sheikk Abu Qatada from custody. It right away binds a serve 7 foreigners in the Sahara area.

Al-Qaeda affiliates initial cut their teeth in the ransom commercial operation in Iraq. While horrific videos of the beheading of a handful of Western hostages garnered the headlines, the organization additionally ran a essential traffic abduction foreigners. Extortion rackets and black marketplace oil deals were serve money-earners.

But in a little regions al-Qaeda is still struggling to hoard all the income it needs to work as effectively as it would like.

"In Afghanistan, we have a serious supply deficit," pronounced Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, the former arch of the monetary cabinet who right away helps lead al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, in a video interest for supports last year.

"Many mujahideen lay and wait for and cannot quarrel for miss of supplies... If a holy warrior does not have the income he cannot quarrel jihad. Fear Allah and be desirous in waging jihad by donating goods."

The organization has even started perfectionist income from jolt down the own recruits. In a new example, 4 Belgian and dual French Muslims were told they contingency compensate 2,000 euros to be smuggled from Iran to Pakistan, 400 euros for their precision and housing and 900 euros for apparatus and weapons. The 6 were arrested on their lapse to Europe in December.

"Al-Qaeda has been forced to have vital changes to the indication of funding," Michael Jacobson, a comparison central on apprehension financing at the US book dialect underneath President George W Bush, told The Sunday Telegraph.

"Before 9/11, al-Qaeda was a centralised organization that saved the own operations and additionally alternative groups, bringing them in to the circuit around the purse strings.

"Now we see a lot of opposite cells that are desirous by al-Qaeda and have connectors to it but are using their own operations, and are self-funding around all from abduction and right away drug bootlegging to gratification fraud.

"Recruits to al-Qaeda are even carrying to yield their own funding. The 7/7 London bombings [on Jul 7th, 2005] were a box in point. Although a little of the organization had perceived precision in Pakistan and met al-Qaeda operatives, they financed the conflict by personal loans, bank overdrafts and credit label fraud."

The shift in al-Qaeda"s monetary fortunes that has forced it to find new sources of appropriation reflects the success of general co-operation.

The organization is "in the weakest monetary condition in multiform years, and as a result, the change is waning", David Cohen, partner US book cabinet part of for militant financing and monetary crimes, told an assembly last October. But he warned that it was as well shortly for "victory laps".

International efforts to fight the financing of terrorism, a little-known but key component of tellurian counter-terror strategies, has put book officials at the forefront of inhabitant security operations.

Pursuing terrorists" income not usually restricts their capability to theatre attacks but provides consequential comprehension about their operations, crew and locations. As Stuart Levey, US book underneath cabinet part of for terrorism and monetary intelligence, has put it: "Money trails don"t lie".

America and Britain have led the moves to fight apprehension appropriation by frozen assets, enormous down on income laundering and tracking income transfers and alternative monetary movements. But there was annoy in Washington and fear in London when MEPs not long ago voted to stop an agreement in between the US and the European Council that would have authorised the US entrance to monetary interpretation from inside of the Swift network for general bank transfers.

The United Nations has additionally played a key role, with Resolution 1267 requiring all part of states to freeze the monetary resources and shorten transport and traffic involving declared people and entities. Hundreds of al Qaeda and Taliban members and associated organisations are on the list.

Nonetheless, al-Qaeda still raises a little appropriation from people and charities in the Persian Gulf. It has come up with a little beautiful fundraising techniques - together with difficult internet-based exchange and mobile write solicitations from Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden"s deputy.

The conflict for a new al-Qaeda commercial operation indication has put monetary officials at the forefront of the quarrel opposite terror, Mr Cohen told a new conference. "If we can deter those who would present income to aroused nonconformist groups, interrupt the equates to and mechanisms by that they broadcast money, and reduce their monetary await networks, we can have an unusually profitable grant to the inhabitant security," he said.