The world has witnessed a significant rise in terrorist incidents for many reasons. Some terrorists are from nationalist movements, criminal organizations and, more prominently, religiously motivated groups. The most significant of the latter are offshoots of extremist Islamist groups.
International organizations and national governments have employed multiple tools to combat such movements. Most of the tools are anchored on military, security and intelligence agencies. While many of these efforts have been successful in the fight against terrorist organizations, the efforts remain lacking and unable to eradicate the menace of global terrorism.
In fact, in many ways these security measures have exacerbated some problems, given the tendency of many governments to employ harsh measures indiscriminately against even their peaceful political opponents, creating further grievances. Terrorist organizations have used some of these extreme measures to recruit people seeking revenge for perceived injustices against them and their families by their governments.
Many now argue that the most effective tools in this seemingly endless global war on terrorism are intellectual and financial, alongside carefully executed security measures that are targeted and do not create further grievances and desperation, especially among the young.
On the intellectual level, the key problem is that most extremist groups employ religious teachings that are traditional, common and therefore familiar to the average believer, but with different, extreme interpretations.
These interpretations are often literal, reductionist, and divorced from core meanings and context, casting believers and their faith as victims of global or government conspiracies and plots by evil forces bent on destroying their religion and culture. Added to a deep sense of oppression and a lack of economic opportunity or legal protection, the combination can be lethal, and attracts more people to the “cause.”
All 22 Arab countries, which are FATF members, have established their own task forces to implement the FATF’s international standards, and to cooperate regionally to combat terrorism-related financing.
Hafed Al-Ghwell
The more concrete issue of finance is far more pragmatic and dangerous. It is the most direct tool terrorists use to translate their ideologies into action. Without financial capacities, their plans cannot materialize and their damage can be severely minimized.
Terrorist organizations employ all sorts of illegal activities to finance terror acts and move those resources around the globe. They engage in drug and human trafficking, bribery and corruption, robbery and even stock market manipulation to get money, launder it and mobilize it globally for their sinister purposes.
Many such activities rely heavily on using untraceable “currency” such as diamonds, gold, timber, tanzanite and even cryptocurrencies. According to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), 3-5 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP) is laundered; that is about $3 trillion annually. A percentage of that massive sum belongs to terrorist groups.
In 1989, the G7 established the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), joined by other countries as an intergovernmental body that sets international standards and legal, regulatory and operational measures to combat global money laundering for terrorism financing and related threats.
All 22 Arab countries, which are FATF members, have established their own task forces to implement the FATF’s international standards, and to cooperate regionally to combat terrorism-related financing. Despite Western misperceptions, Arab countries have succeeded in reducing money laundering nationally and internationally.
For example, according to the globally recognized Basel Anti-Money Laundering Index (AML), Saudi Arabia is less likely to allow money laundering through its financial system than Turkey, Pakistan, China and Russia.
Jordan, according to the index, is the Arab country least likely to finance terrorism or launder money. Sadly, other Arab countries — such as Libya and Yemen — still have a long way to go to minimize money laundering by terrorist and criminal groups because of state failures, civil wars and governmental collapse.
In the Islamic world, the FATF has cited Iran and Pakistan as among the worst offenders. The Washington Institute reports: “For a number of years, the FATF had called on national-level regulators in member states to implement ‘countermeasures’ against Iran, given ‘the risk of terrorist financing emanating from (there) and the threat it poses to the international financial system.”
For the Arab world to rid itself of the danger of terrorism, it must act on multiple levels to limit terrorist organizations from using intellectual, religious, financial and security resources.
Arab countries must employ all measures at their disposal to fight this menace that threatens their societies and future. Without serious, strong and deep legal, economic and political reforms, they will continue to suffer from instability and chaos in this period of power shifts and challenges to the very foundation of nation-states.
- Hafed Al-Ghwell is a senior adviser at the international economic consultancy Maxwell Stamp and the geopolitical risk advisory firm Oxford Analytica, a member of Strategic Advisory Solutions International in Washington DC and a former adviser to the board of the World Bank Group. Twitter: @HafedAlGhwell