Author: Rowan Scarborough
Publication: The Washington Times
Date: October 30, 2006
URL: http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20061030-122604-4318r.htm
The U.S. military is not only trying to stop
terrorists and arms from leaking into Iraq from Syria and Iran but also another
just as dangerous commodity -- cash.
It's the lifeblood of the enemy -- whether
they be al Qaeda terrorists, death squads or Sunnis trying to evict American
forces and bring back dictator Saddam Hussein -- and U.S. raiders have seized
millions of dollars in cash during the conflict.
Military officials point to Syria and its
secretive banking system as the main source of Sunni walking-around money,
while Iran's Revolutionary Guard funnels money to Shi'ite militias, such as
cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.
The enemy's money began flowing into Iraq
with the start of the insurgency in the summer of 2003, and the shipments
are still coming in.
"There are billions coming in,"
said Daniel Gallington, a former aide to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
"The Middle East is the center of graft and corruption in the universe.
It really always has been. The fight in Iraq is about who controls what area
is really all about who controls the money."
Money, of course, is just as essential to
the insurgents as budget dollars are to the American armed forces. Terrorists
need it to buy loyalty from local villagers, bomb-making gear, vehicles and
electronics to communicate and to detonate improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
Perhaps the most important expenditure is
salaries: Sunnis have enlisted thousands of disaffected youths, some enjoying
their first paydays ever, by giving them cash to attack Americans, plant IEDs
and run messages from one leader to another, say defense sources and officers
who served in Iraq.
"The average IED is an attack form carried
out by people that are really not ideologically committed," Gen. John
Abizaid, who heads U.S. Central Command, told a group of reporters. "They
get paid, and they're getting paid because they don't have any money and they're
getting paid because they've got people [who] are generally members of the
old army that don't have work."
Army Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the chief
military spokesman in Baghdad, gave a glimpse of the money trail earlier this
month when describing a raid in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown. Raiders hit a number
of businesses in the city, seizing millions of dollars that had come in from
Syria.
"These funds, estimated to be in the
millions of dollars per week, were used to finance insurgent operations, to
include attacks against Iraqi civilians, as well as Iraqi and coalition security
forces," Gen. Caldwell said.
Although the raid was designed to block the
cash flow, defense sources say there is more where that came from.
Retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Michael DeLong,
the former deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, said literally tons of
cash moved from Baghdad into Syria as the U.S. invasion neared in March 2003.
That money is now going full circle to feed the Sunni insurgency.
"We watched caravans going into Syria,"
Gen. DeLong said. "They took their money; their jewels. They took everything."
But not all the cash got out.
"We found U.S. money all through the
capital," Gen. DeLong said. "Saddam and the Ba'ath Party had caches
of U.S. money stashed everywhere. One day, one guy found $10 million in cash."
The Ba'ath Party had built up huge cash stocks
via the United Nations oil-for-food program, mostly from illicit sale of goods
and oil. The U.S. military seized $926 million from the Iraq regime as of
the summer of 2004, according to a report from the special inspector general
for Iraq reconstruction.
