The business of terror

Few might ever consider it but terrorism, the carrying out of terrorist acts — costs money. A lot of money. Pakistan appears to be something of a hub for terrorist financing according to a report entitled “National Risk Assessment on Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing 2017.” Typically terrorist organisations have annual operational budgets between Rs5 million and Rs25 million, with each operation costing between Rs0.5 million and Rs2.5 million to mount. The breadth of funding sources is vast and includes foreign direct funding, kidnapping and extortion, foreign echange deals and items looted from Nato/ISAF containers passing through Pakistan to name but a few. The report was compiled to little fanfare by the Financial Monitoring Unit which is an intelligence services team operating within the finance ministry.

The report concludes that Pakistan lacks adequate resources to combat terror funding and money laundering, and thus calls into question the national capacity to fulfill at least one of the 20 points that make up the National Action Plan. This lack of capacity has to be aggregated with the flaccid political will to confront the funding of terrorist groups, or to crack down on groups that are banned. Putting institutional and political deficits together it is clear that Pakistan does considerably less than it needs to do in this vital area of operation. Groups thus resourced in Pakistan often have international aspects and operations, and in the light of a report such as this it is unsurprising that other nations look somewhat askance when we claim to be winning the war against terrorism.

This is the kind of smoking gun that gets pointed to when the ‘must do more’ mantra gets a recitation. As has been observed you cannot keep snakes at the bottom of the garden and only expect them to bite the neighbours. The report is clear — Pakistan is ‘high risk’ when it comes to terror financing and money laundering. It ought to form the basis for a national strategy to cure a national affliction.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 25^th, 2017.

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