Introduction
Terrorism has been one of the most disturbing criminal activities in the United States intelligence system. The various ways terrorists conduct their activities pose a significant threat to most intelligent bodies as they are unpredictable. After the 9/11 aftermath, there has been intensive research on the terrorists’ acts.terrorists need money for their expenses for training purposes, bribing, and general costs as they are human beings. Therefore, there are various ways terrorists raise funds to execute their operations successfully. First is through the financial facilitators and donors. Most terrorist groups rely on their facilitators to conduct their attacks. For instance, the Al Qaeda terrorist group’s donors were mainly from the Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia (Sylvia, 2021). The donors who do not comprehend where their donations are distributed often make their donations annually or seasonally, but those who were fully aware did not make their donation
. They were often approached by the fundraisers, facilitators, and workforces of the tainted charitable trust during the religious calendar month of Ramadan. The monetary mediators relied mostly on the imams by mosques, who could then redirect the donations made to Zakat to the mediators. The terrorist funding was mainly through fundraising, especially during Islamic months (Sylvia, 2021). Similarly, they elevate funding through charities by penetrating charitable organizations and websites, diverting them to their accounts, especially from the organizations that do not have sound accounting systems and have no control over their finances. Similarly, they can obtain from charity giving, especially from those communities who do not investigate where their contributions are channeled. Islam often targets the population for their generous act of giving, especially during the Islamic faith. The Saudi Arabia culture is usually instilled in the action of charitable giving for humanitarian needs.
Moreover, funds can be obtained through money laundering, such as drug trafficking and organized gang groups. This is also done by introducing illegally obtained funds into commercial activities, allowing them to make profits and tainting international systems eroding the public integrity of the systems. Consequentially, some states have a hand in terrorist funding. For example, the Taliban located in Afghanistan was found supporting a particular terrorist, Al Qaeda. Based on the statistics, no state within the United States found or speculated having support for the terrorist groups (Sylvia, 2021). Likewise, the terrorist obtains their funds by engaging in the diamond trade. They speculate higher prices and thus more profits in the exchange market.
Ways Terrorists Move Money
There are numerous ways terrorists move their money from one destination to another. One way they use to move their money is through the Hawala. Most terrorist groups move their money using Hawala. The terrorists use them since they are complicated to be recognized by the government and are not often in custody of comprehensive chronicles in typical form. Concurrently, some terrorists use financial institutions to transfer their money, especially fundraisers. When the financial institution cannot detect the awful act, similarly, corrupt individuals or employees working in these institutions may facilitate the action. The lack of oversight of financial industries before 9/11 widens the terrorists’ attacks avenue (Roth et al., 2018). Also, couriers were the primary means of moving money by the terrorist since the profile was low-no documentation, background, language skills, outsider, or ethnicity. Several couriers were used to deliver cash to the destination as they are hard for the money or the transaction to be executed.
How Terrorists Financed the 9/11 Attacks
During 9/11, the terrorists used foreign and united states financial organizations to clutch transfer and repossess their funds. The terrorists broadly used electronic payments, placements of cash, or tourist cards obtained from abroad to fund their accounts in the United States. Similarly, most of them also had money in international charges that they could access via ATM and bank card operations in the United States. The terrorists were paid straight from Khalid during their passage to the U.S. or through Germany and the United Arab Emirates (Roth et al., 2018). The sum amount paid to teams ranges between four hundred dollars and five hundred dollars for the scheme, while In the United States, about three hundred dollars flowed through their savings accounts. The terrorists paid twenty-six dollars to a fixer in the United Arab Emirates a few days before the bombing. Most of the hijackers’ monies were used for flying, coaching, vacation, and daily expenses (like accommodation, food, automobiles, and auto coverage).
The financial administrators and the hijackers did not have a complete concept of the usage of the global financial system, so they constructed a paper trail connecting them. Nonetheless, they quickly integrated into the vast multinational landscape without engaging in any action to expose themselves as criminals because terrorists were on the murder row due to a state-committed cases and murders (Roth et al., 2018). The money-laundering controls were ineffective as the investigation was centered on the drug trade and massive cash crime. Thus, the hijackers’ operations could not have been detected easily. The controls were never designed and cannot identify and disturb the perpetrators’ operations. However, there were many speculations that the terrorists were associated with Insider trading to execute the 9/11 attacks.
Money comes from various places for Al Qaeda and Usama Bin Ladin to execute their attacks. Contrary to widespread assumption, Bin Ladin was not a wealthy individual or had inherited possessions, especially after relocating from Sudan to Afghanistan. In a nutshell, al Qaeda’s finances were from approximately thirty dollars yearly funding by diverting funds from Islamic charities and employing strategically placed financial instruments or facilitators who, especially in the region of Gulf, collected funds from both willing and unintentional donors.
There is no decisive proof that al Qaeda used the drug cartels to fund its operations. However, they were provided financial support by a foreign government in their diamond trade. Still, the United States was never part of it and has never been involved in supporting terrorists (Roth et al., 2018). Although some cash earned in the Middle East has been used to fund Al Qaeda, it has not been a significant funding source. Before September 11, 2001, the terrorist received support from the Taliban, projected at twenty million dollars yearly, ranked as the highest expense received. Bin Ladin also utilized millions of dollars for training operatives in Afghan camps, establishing terrorist networks and connections, and Support jihadists and their families. While just a tiny sum of money was utilized to fund other operations, September 11 assaults cost around four hundred dollars to five hundred dollars.
Attempts to Reduce Terrorist Attacking
The world has turned into a novel leaf since the 9/11 episode, since various strategic measures have been put in place to combat terrorist attacks. First, for the first time in centuries, the federal government has devoted funds to terrorism, which the intelligence community will use during the operations to identify and detect the terrorist acts or plans which are to be executed, for example, the use of the Terrorist Tracking Plan, (Treasury, 2021). Similarly, the intelligence community has generated novel entities to focus on the hijacker’s fundraising areas and money movement channels. The entities are operated by individuals with the knowledge and experience whose task is to use the financial database to comprehend the hijackers’ networks, Google them and dismantle their activities. Similarly, the CIA group has considerably devoted most of the resources available to them to investigating terrorist financing and tracking money movements.
The CIA group is assumed to be more experienced in handling the A.L. Qaeda cases than intelligence groups since the terrorist groups are also clever and challenging targets. Due to complexities and diversities in the various ways, the source elevates and transfers their money to the required destinations (Parkman & Peeling, 2017). Moreover, the government has put into action the freezing orders and blocking of united states individuals who are presumed to have a hand in terrorist activities. The action can only be done when substantial evidence has been obtained.
Conclusion
The events of terrorist attacks can be prevented if we as individuals work hand in hand with the intelligence community to report any suspicious occurring. Protection is in our hands if we choose to be patriotic citizens and at all efforts to have the human aspect inbuilt in us. Having solid internal coordination among important global entities will strive for the nation to combat terrorism crimes. Furthermore, a need to adopt partnerships to overcome terrorism since unity is a strength between SLTT, state government, and private sectors.
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Parkman, T., & Peeling, G. (2017). Countering Terrorist Finance.
Roth, J., & Wille, S. (2018). National Commission on terrorist attacks upon the united. Web.
Sylvia Laksmi Ph.D. Candidate. (2021). How do terrorists fund their activities? Some do it legally. The Conversation. Web.
Treasury. (2021). Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP). U.S. Department of the Treasury. Web.