Al Qaeda goes with terror on the cheap

Washington Post:

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, al-Qaeda has increasingly turned to local cells that run extremely low-cost operations and generate cash through criminal scams, bypassing the global financial dragnet set up by the United States and Europe.

Although al-Qaeda spent an estimated $500,000 to plan and execute the Sept. 11 attacks, many of the group's bombings and assaults since then in Europe, North Africa and Southeast Asia have cost one-tenth as much, or less.

The cheap plots are evidence that the U.S. government and its allies fundamentally miscalculated in assuming they could defeat the network by hunting for wealthy financiers and freezing bank accounts, according to many U.S. and European counterterrorism officials.

In an ongoing trial here of eight men accused of planning to blow up airliners bound for the United States two years ago, jurors have been told how the accused shopped at drugstores for ingredients to build bombs that would have cost $15 apiece to assemble.

Similarly, the cell responsible for the July 7, 2005, transit bombings in London needed only about $15,000 to finance the entire conspiracy, including the cost of airfare to Pakistan to consult with al-Qaeda supervisors, according to official British government probes.

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I think the so called expert gets it just backwards. It is the success of our efforts to interdict terrorist finance that has forced al Qaeda to have to scrimp and make do with what they can get in a back back.

Gone are the days when bin Laden could finance the African embassy bombings, the Cole bombing or the attacks of 9-11. He now has to make do with human ordinance that is giving him a much smaller bang for his limited bucks. The organization has been scrimping for some time now and was even having to beg its Iraq affiliate for money, before that operation failed.