Stopping the terrorist flow of funds

USA Today:

The relatively low cost of mounting terrorist attacks makes even cash-strapped militant organizations dangerous, but a five-year effort to staunch terrorist money is having an effect, U.S. officials and terrorism experts say.

In October, U.S. intelligence obtained a letter from Ayman al-Zawahri, al-Qaeda's second-in-command, to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the group's leader in Iraq, asking for more money.

"Many of the lines (of support) have been cut off," Zawahri wrote in an English-language translation released by the U.S. government. He requested $100,000.

SMUGGLING: Terror funding shifts to cash

A U.S. air raid killed Zarqawi on June 7 at a hide-out in Iraq.

The reduced flow of terrorism money is the result of a "relentless grinding away at other essential components of the terrorist networks — the couriers, the facilitators, the fundraisers, the safe house keepers, the technicians," John McLaughlin, deputy CIA director from 2000-2004, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week. There's new evidence that "al-Qaeda's core leadership no longer has effective global command and control of its network," said Ambassador Henry Crumpton, the State Department's counterterrorism chief.

Post-9/11 financial restrictions haven't stopped terrorism. To cope, terrorist groups increasingly use cash couriers to haul money across borders.

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Hamas is having to resort to suitcases full of cash too. This makes the couriers more vulnerable. Expect Israel to start interdicting these suitcases and confiscating the cash.