Political Crossfire Forums

[Alizard]

It's really an old business model: use crime to raise revenue, use that revenue to finance bigger and better crime.

The Sicilian mafia used it, the American mafia uses it, the South American narco-terrorists use it....

But the horrible fact is, the Islamic terrorists in both Afghanistan and Iraq are successfully using it. Afghanistan is now the world's #1 source of opium and probably has a GNP exceeding 95% of the countries on earth.... and the taliban is using that wealth to increase in strength.

The insurgency in Iraq is also successfully using the same approach, funding terror by terrorist acts.

The common denominators are:

1) Money buys guns and soldiers..... and guns and soldiers can be used to intimdate the locals.

2) Money also buys crooked politicians.... and there don't seem to be any other kind in South America, mexico, Afghanistan and Iraq.

3) Outside military force is useless against them.

So, what would work?

Quote: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/world/middleeast/26insurgency.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

U.S. Finds Iraq Insurgency Has Funds to Sustain Itself

BAGHDAD, Nov. 25 — The insurgency in Iraq is now self-sustaining financially, raising tens of millions of dollars a year from oil smuggling, kidnapping, counterfeiting, connivance by corrupt Islamic charities and other crimes that the Iraqi government and its American patrons have been largely unable to prevent, a classified United States government report has concluded.

The report, obtained by The New York Times, estimates that groups responsible for many insurgent and terrorist attacks are raising $70 million to $200 million a year from illegal activities. It says $25 million to $100 million of that comes from oil smuggling and other criminal activity involving the state-owned oil industry, aided by “corrupt and complicit” Iraqi officials.

As much as $36 million a year comes from ransoms paid for hundreds of kidnap victims, the report says. It estimates that unnamed foreign governments — previously identified by American officials as including France and Italy — paid $30 million in ransom last year.

A copy of the seven-page report was made available to The Times by American officials who said the findings could improve understanding of the challenges the United States faces in Iraq.

The report offers little hope that much can be done, at least soon, to choke off insurgent revenues. For one thing, it acknowledges how little the American authorities in Iraq know — three and a half years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein — about crucial aspects of insurgent operations. For another, it paints an almost despairing picture of the Iraqi government’s ability, or willingness, to take steps to tamp down the insurgency’s financing.

“If accurate,” the report says, its estimates indicate that these “sources of terrorist and insurgent finance within Iraq — independent of foreign sources — are currently sufficient to sustain the groups’ existence and operation.” To this, it adds what may be its most surprising conclusion: “In fact, if recent revenue and expense estimates are correct, terrorist and insurgent groups in Iraq may have surplus funds with which to support other terrorist organizations outside of Iraq.”

Some terrorism experts outside the government who were given an outline of the report by The Times criticized it as imprecise and speculative. Completed in June, the report was compiled by an interagency working group investigating the financing of militant groups in Iraq.

A Bush administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed the group’s existence. He said it was led by Juan Zarate, deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism, and was made up of about a dozen people, drawn from the C.I.A., the F.B.I., the Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department, the Treasury Department and the United States Central Command.

The group’s estimate of the financing for the insurgency, even taking the higher figure of $200 million, underscores the David and Goliath nature of the war. American, Iraqi and other coalition forces are fighting an array of shadowy Sunni and Shiite groups that can draw on huge armories left over from Mr. Hussein’s days, and benefit from the willingness of many insurgents to fight with little or no pay. If the $200 million a year estimate is close to the mark, it amounts to less than what it costs the Pentagon, with an $8 billion monthly budget for Iraq, to sustain the American war effort here for a single day.

But other estimates suggest the sums involved could be far higher. The oil ministry in Baghdad, for example, estimated earlier this year that 10 percent to 30 percent of the $4 billion to $5 billion in fuel imported for public consumption in 2005 was smuggled back out of the country for resale. At that time, the finance minister estimated that close to half of all smuggling profits was going to insurgents. If true, that would be $200 million or more from fuel smuggling alone.

For Washington, the report’s most dismaying finding may be that the insurgency now survives off money generated from activities inside Iraq, and no longer depends on sums Mr. Hussein and his associates seized as his government collapsed. American officials said that as American troops entered Baghdad, Mr. Hussein’s oldest son, Qusay, took more than $1 billion in cash from the Central Bank of Iraq and stashed it in steel trunks aboard a flatbed truck. Large sums of cash were found in Mr. Hussein’s briefcase when he was captured in December 2003.

But the report says Mr. Hussein’s loyalists “are no longer a major source of funding for terrorist or insurgent groups in Iraq.” Part of the reason, the report says, is that an American-led international effort has frozen $3.6 billion in “former regime assets.” Another reason, it says, is that Mr. Hussein’s erstwhile loyalists, realizing that “it is increasingly obvious that a Baathist regime will not regain power in Iraq,” have turned increasingly to spending the money on their own living expenses. The trail to these assets “has grown cold,” the report adds.

[Rankor and Pissing]

Excellent! This is actually a good thing and here's why. By funding their operations this way, they are now apt to make all the same mistakes all the other crooks have made throughout history. Sure, it'll take time for those mistakes - but new and interesting areas now come into play... greed, crimes against their own, collaboration within other illegal groups and territories... it's only a matter of time before these things internally change their terrorist model. No longer will it be about their ideology but it will be about money and power.

Sure bad news for the short term... long term, good news.

[cap'n queasy]

Nothing a little "Round-Up" won't fix. :lol:

[Vexillum]

cap'n queasy wrote: Nothing a little "Round-Up" won't fix. :lol:

Are you planning another night of a thousand knives?

[Chymical]

Alizard wrote: It's really an old business model: use crime to raise revenue, use that revenue to finance bigger and better crime.

The Sicilian mafia used it, the American mafia uses it, the South American narco-terrorists use it....

But the horrible fact is, the Islamic terrorists in both Afghanistan and Iraq are successfully using it. Afghanistan is now the world's #1 source of opium and probably has a GNP exceeding 95% of the countries on earth.... and the taliban is using that wealth to increase in strength.

The insurgency in Iraq is also successfully using the same approach, funding terror by terrorist acts.

The common denominators are:

1) Money buys guns and soldiers..... and guns and soldiers can be used to intimdate the locals.

2) Money also buys crooked politicians.... and there don't seem to be any other kind in South America, mexico, Afghanistan and Iraq.

3) Outside military force is useless against them.


Your right to be concerned, but I'd consider these 'mafia' of which you speak to already be on the payroll...if you wish to fight the terror abroad, first you have to fight it at home, in your white-middle-aged political classes.

Bottom Line: Everything is under control :lol: 8:)
Satan loves his children :twisted:

[Alizard]

cap'n queasy wrote: Nothing a little "Round-Up" won't fix. :lol:

I'm seriously open to suggestions...... who are we going to round up? In Afghanistan, the government is already on the opium payroll. In Iraq, the militias have malaki so terrified he lies for them and covers up their genocide campaigns and death squads.

How do you round up the bad guys when the government, military, and police ARE the bad guys? Or, at least, are on the payroll of the bad guys?

[sLiPpY]

Alizard wrote: cap'n queasy wrote: Nothing a little "Round-Up" won't fix. :lol:

I'm seriously open to suggestions...... who are we going to round up? In Afghanistan, the government is already on the opium payroll. In Iraq, the militias have malaki so terrified he lies for them and covers up their genocide campaigns and death squads.

How do you round up the bad guys when the government, military, and police ARE the bad guys? Or, at least, are on the payroll of the bad guys?

I think it's pretty simple...we can't help what other nations do.

But we sure as hell can "round up" our own politicians, and take em' to task. :-D

[Alizard]

sLiPpY wrote: Alizard wrote: cap'n queasy wrote: Nothing a little "Round-Up" won't fix. :lol:

I'm seriously open to suggestions...... who are we going to round up? In Afghanistan, the government is already on the opium payroll. In Iraq, the militias have malaki so terrified he lies for them and covers up their genocide campaigns and death squads.

How do you round up the bad guys when the government, military, and police ARE the bad guys? Or, at least, are on the payroll of the bad guys?

I think it's pretty simple...we can't help what other nations do.

But we sure as hell can "round up" our own politicians, and take em' to task. :-D

We rounded up a bunch of them on Nov 7, but we didn't get enough of them. :wink: