Author: Rita Katz and James Mitre
Publication: National Review
Date: December 16, 2002
URL: http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-katz-mitre121602.asp
In spite of our government's stepped
up efforts to combat the flow of money to al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden's
army of terrorists continues to receive the funding it needs to remain
threatening. It has been over a year since 9/11 and only a handful of al
Qaeda's U.S. financial backers have been curtailed. Information about who
funds al Qaeda and how they do so largely remains a mystery. One fact,
however, has become clear: U.S. money earmarked for al Qaeda comes from
the same source as money earmarked for the Palestinian terrorist organization
Hamas. As a result, success in stemming the flow of money from the U.S.
to al Qaeda will require shutting down the financiers of Hamas along with
those of al Qaeda.
While bin Laden and his top officers
oversee the membership and organization of al Qaeda's operational cells,
they do not exert the same level of control over their sources of funding.
In fact, a large portion of al Qaeda's revenues are provided by individuals
and organizations that share the terrorist group's extremist ideology,
but are not themselves al Qaeda members. These sources are the primary
financial backers of Islamic extremism. They donate to the general cause
- Islamic extremism - and the terrorist groups that represent it. That
is why the U.S. financiers of Islamic extremism fund both al Qaeda and
Hamas.
Primarily through the use of nonprofit
organizations, U.S. supporters of al Qaeda and Hamas have been able to
generate and distribute money to both of these terrorist groups.
One example of the overlap between
the al Qaeda and Hamas financial networks is the case of the International
Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO). Ostensibly a charitable organization,
IIRO is headquartered in Saudi Arabia and has a branch in Virginia. U.S.,
Canadian, and Philippine intelligence documents have exposed IIRO's funding
of al Qaeda over the past decade. Through U.S. and Israeli investigations,
it has become clear that IIRO also funds Hamas. Documents were discovered
in the Palestinian territories earlier this year that detail an IIRO program
devised to financially compensate the families of Hamas suicide bombers.
For years, the government has failed
to recognize the extent of overlap between the Hamas and al Qaeda U.S.
financial networks. In 1998, the FBI revealed that the Saudi businessman
Yassin al-Qadi was funneling money to the head of Hamas's military wing
through a U.S. nonprofit. Despite their discovery of al-Qadi's key role
in financing Islamic terrorism, the government did not take action against
him, perhaps because Hamas poses a relatively low threat to U.S. interests.
To bin Laden's benefit, al-Qadi continued to fund Islamic terrorism after
1998, the year al Qaeda bombed two U.S. embassies in Africa. Al-Qadi was
able to finance al Qaeda partly through another nonprofit of his that had
a U.S. presence. Following 9/11, the U.S. finally took action against al-Qadi
by designating him as an al Qaeda financier and freezing his assets. Yet
the question remains, how impaired would al Qaeda have been if one of its
largest benefactors had been eliminated three years before 9/11?
Another point of contact between
the al Qaeda and Hamas U.S. financial networks is in the cooperation between
two charities: the Benevolence International Foundation (BIF) of Illinois
and the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF).
The U.S. recently froze the assets of BIF and designated it as a terrorist
entity for supporting al Qaeda. BIF's head, Enaam Arnaout, sits in jail
for providing material support to terrorists. Instead of opening its own
office in the Palestinian territories, BIF addressed the plight of Palestinians
through an agreement it arranged to work with HLF. Acting as the U.S. arm
of Hamas, HLF was designated as a terrorist entity by President Bush and
had its assets frozen last December. BIF's decision to ally itself with
the U.S. arm of Hamas in favor of establishing its own operations in the
Palestinian territories is indicative of the strong bond between these
two networks.
HLF's collaboration with al Qaeda
may extend beyond that of its work with BIF. When U.S. and Kenyan investigators
raided the home of Osama bin Laden's financial manager, Wadih el-Hage,
in 1997, they discovered another potential al Qaeda/HLF connection. In
el-Hage's seized phone book was the ominous statement "joint venture" written
beside the HLF entry. El-Hage has been convicted for his role in facilitating
al Qaeda's 1998 U.S. embassy bombings and is currently serving a life sentence
in a U.S. prison.
The trend illustrated in the overlapping
Hamas and al Qaeda U.S. financial networks is an outgrowth of a much larger
phenomenon of collaborating terrorist financiers. The indiscretion displayed
by financial backers of Islamic extremism mandates that an effective war
on al Qaeda must target all the financial providers of Islamic extremism.
Disregarding the financiers of Islamic terrorist groups other than al Qaeda
ensures the future financial health of Osama bin Laden's disciples.
(Rita Katz is the director and James
Mitre is an analyst at the SITE Institute.)
