One of Ours

The Financial Times had an interesting report in Monday's paper about some drug seizures by the U.S. government in the Arabian Sea which have turned up links to parts of the Al Qaeda terror network. 10 of the 33 persons arrested in the past three weeks of seizures have ties to Al Qaeda...

...After the US-led war in Afghanistan overthrew the Taliban regime in late 2001, al-Qaeda was forced to scatter. The freezing of about $130m of alleged terrorist funds worldwide, and action to stop charities channelling donations to the terrorists, have forced activists to find their own incomes.

The great success of the war on terror has been in hindering al-Qaeda's access to these funds. By using the proceeds of crime, al-Qaeda can circumvent many of the formal financial measures now ranged against it...

Analysis: One of Al Qaeda's key strengths as a terror network is its ability to move men, money and materiel around the world. That strength derives, in part, from Al Qaeda's wealth and financial networks, described well in Peter Bergen's book Holy War, Inc., and more recently by Douglas Farah in Blood From Stones. These networks originated with the wealth and business connections of Osama Bin Laden in the 1990s. But since then, Al Qaeda has diversified its financial networks and sources of money, developing charities and other means of procuring, moving and using money. Law enforcement experts have long predicted a convergence between Al Qaeda and the global drug trade, because of their common synergies with respect to evading law enforcement and moving stuff around the world. Thus far, it has been thought that Al Qaeda would disdain such endeavors because of its religious doctrine; that is, that its Islamist beliefs would preclude it from dabbling in the illicit drug trade. It is becoming increasingly clear that Al Qaeda has no such compunctions about using the drug trade to raise money for its terror operations, or for the purpose of masking its logistical efforts around the world.