Tracking terror finance and government follies: recommended reading

• The recent designation by the Treasury Department of an Al Qaeda financier neglects to mention that he and his organizations have consorted with Yusuf Qaradawi, spiritual father of the Muslim Brotherhood… more>>

• New details on the sanctioned Saudi billionaire in Turkey and the cover-up by Recep Erdoğan… more>>

• Government forces the financial sector to do the lion’s share of work in screening for laundered or terrorist funds, but government doesn’t really want to hear financial institutions’ ideas on how the process could be improved, says industry analyst Tom Keatinge… more>>

• Monitoring compliance with government financial regulations in a war zone in another continent is easy, right?  One expert explains why it isn’t, and how a UK court got it wrong on Dahabshiil… more>>

Colombian city a hub for Hezbollah money

Lebanese families in Maicao, Colombia, are at the crossroads of a lucrative network of businesses, money launderers, and drug traffickers who send money back to Lebanon to finance Hezbollah, according to a special report from the Miami Herald.

Ali Yalili, a Shia Muslim in Maicao interviewed for the story, told the Herald that Shiites there are “unfairly targeted as financiers of terrorism.”  But evidence from the U.S. Treasury Department strongly demonstrates the important role that Lebanese businessmen and women in Maicao play in filling Hezbollah’s coffers.

Thanks to Sal for sending this over:

Hezbollah financing evolves beyond Colombia’s Muslim communities

By Abraham Mahshie

Special to the Miami Herald

MAICAO, Colombia — Samira Hajj Ahmad flew to Maicaofrom Beirut in 1982 for her honeymoon. She didn’t intend to stay for 31 years. Nor did she expect Hezbollah to follow her.

During her two days of flying to Colombia, war broke out in southern Lebanon, with some of the largest troop movements in her native Beqaa Valley. Israel had invaded southern Lebanon to root out a nascent Shiite extremist group known as Hezbollah that had been using the country as a base from which to attack northern Israel. Her family encouraged her to stay in Maicao, a dusty border town with a free trade zone that is home to Colombia’s largest Muslim population.

Today, Hezbollah is the most powerful political movement in Lebanon — and its influence stretches all the way to Maicao. Each year, millions of dollars of drug money are laundered in Maicao, where some community members openly proclaim their support for Hezbollah. Recent U.S. Treasury Department actions have slowed the flow of cash to terrorist groups, but financiers have fled and new networks have reconstituted that are harder to identify. Meanwhile, the usual suspects — Lebanese descendant Colombians — are tired of taking the blame.

Hajj Ahmad, 49, occasionally reads with shock the Maicao newspaper reports of neighbors blacklisted by the U.S. Treasury Department for financing the terrorist group. Such was the case for a young woman with a pretty face and black hijab or headscarf who lived alone with her sons and tended nearby family shops.

The woman, Fatima Fadlallath Cheaitilly, was cited in a December 2011 Treasury report as a key associate in a criminal network of drug traffickers and money launderers. The family shops were fronts for money laundering, and around the time of the action, U.S. law enforcement sources believe Cheaitilly was dating Hezbollah financier Mohamad Zoubein El Khansa.

Ahmad said she had often spent time with Cheaitilly at parties and functions at the Colombian-Arab school that her children attended. “Never would you think that this woman, as fragile as she was, would be involved in something so monstrous,” she said. “When this came out and they named the people involved, we were left thinking ‘Wow, what happened there?’”

While Ahmad and many of her Sunni friends denounce Hezbollah, many of Maicao’s minority Shiite population are in favor of the organization´s political and military objectives in their homeland.

Lebanese descendant community members may support the group ideologically, while sympathizing money launderers and terrorism financiers funnel cash back to Lebanon to support the group financially.

Ali Yalili, 35, a member of the Shiite community in Maicao, said he believes they are unfairly targeted as financiers of terrorism.

“If you are Shiite, have money and your business is going well, they make your out to be a money launderer, Hezbollah supporter, terrorist and cause you problems,” Yalili said. “Here, no one comes to fight, to be a terrorist, or to kill anyone. People come in search of their daily bread to eat, to live.””

But Many Lebanese descendants also come to Maicao to launder drug money to the tune of millions of dollars per year, according to law enforcement sources. In December 2011, Treasury named five family groups of Lebanese descent and first generation Colombians whose laundering proceeds found their way back to Hezbollah.

The way it works is a money launderer today may work for 5-10 different drug trafficking groups. Those groups in turn pay taxes or fees to terrorist groups to operate in their territories, proliferating terrorism and violence in Colombia and the Middle East. Likewise, sympathizing launderers may make sizable voluntary donations to Hezbollah.

In June 2012, Treasury named former Maicao resident Mohammed Saleh, who is believed to be a leading fundraiser for Hezbollah in Maicao. A prominent Shiite businessman and former Hezbollah fighter, Saleh and his brother Kassem were implicated by the Treasury Department as terrorism financiers. Neighboring shopkeepers on Maicao´s Tenth Street said the two fled overnight after their names and businesses were made public. The brothers remain at large, reportedly hiding in neighboring Venezuela…

Gulf “allies” ignore us and pay Al Qaeda

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait refuse to listen to U.S. diplomatic entreaties to stop funding Al Qaeda affiliated rebels in Syria, according to reporting from the Washington Times.

Frequently since 9/11, officials from the Treasury Department’s Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI) office have shuttled back and forth from the U.S. to the Persian Gulf to try to convince countries there to cooperate in blocking funds or making arrests of specific terrorist financiers.  TFI has usually trumpeted its own successes in the past, even to the point of exaggerating Gulf cooperativeness, but this time even TFI is admitting that no cooperation is to be found when it comes to financing Al Qaeda in Syria.

Officials quoted seem to be shrugging their shoulders and saying that all they can do is tell Gulf officials, “Look at what this person is doing.”  They claim interdicting the flow of money to jihadists is out of American control because the funds aren’t channeled through U.S. banks.

Forgive me, ladies and gentlemen, but the claim that we can’t do anything is a crock.  We could name the Saudi, Qatari, and Kuwaiti banks that serve as conduits between the fundraisers and the fighters as entities that support terrorism, just as we have done with Iranian banks that support Hezbollah or Iran’s nuclear program.

This is not a narrowly legalistic problem of the applicability of U.S. sanctioning authority.  This is a political and diplomatic failure of willingness to confront our so-called allies, and name them and shame them for spreading terrorism.

U.S. allies let funds flow to al Qaeda in Syria

By Guy Taylor

The Washington Times

Sunday, October 13, 2013

The United States has had limited success cutting off funding to the al Qaeda-linked fighters and foreign jihadists flowing into Syria — in part because of a lack of cooperation on the part of Middle Eastern allies, Intelligence and national security community sources say.

Officials say they are tracking the movements of funds from various wealthy individuals in the Persian Gulf, but the governments of key Gulf countries are reluctant to crack down.

“Unless the money is actually in the U.S. financial system, you have to point out to these governments where the money is going and try to work with them to make sure it goes to legitimate groups,” said one U.S. official who spoke with The Washington Times on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of intelligence related to tracking such money.

“The U.S. can’t shut down bank accounts in Kuwait or Qatar,” the official said. “We can tell them, ‘Look at what this person is doing.’”

The approach has worked with variable success over the past decade, during which U.S. authorities have worked closely with counterparts in such nations as Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia to choke off streams of cash to al Qaeda’s core leadership in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

But when it comes to stemming the flow of aid to Salafist and al Qaeda-linked groups inside Syria, the strategy has been less successful — suggesting authorities in the Gulf now may see American pressure for such action as less worthy than previous calls to block cash to al Qaeda.

“In some nations where they have had success in clamping down on terrorist funding for al Qaeda’s core, this is a source of funding that has not really been clamped down on,” the official said.

The extent to which that money is aiding the rise of extremists in Syria seemed to burst open last month when 11 Syrian rebel groups, including the Nusra Front — an organization U.S. officials link to al Qaeda — banded together in a public rejection of the more secular political opposition groups outside the country that are receiving aid from Washington.

By calling for a new government in Syria to be ruled by Islamic law, the newly formed coalition dealt a major blow to U.S.-led efforts to support a democratic alternative to embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Although the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) — another rebel group with al Qaeda ties in Syria — was left out of the coalition, analysts say, it, too, is growing dangerously in the war zone. As the extremist foothold has deepened, so have reports of abuses and war crimes carried out by opposition fighters.

A report released last week by Human Rights Watch said members of the Nusra Front and ISIS were among rebel fighters who killed some 190 unarmed civilians during an August offensive on villages perceived to be supporting the Assad government. The report said 67 of the civilians were slain at close range while trying to flee.

The bottom line is that the landscape of extremist groups among the opposition has grown increasingly complex over the past year, said Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, an advocacy arm of Syria’s more secular political opposition that lobbies in Washington for a greater U.S. role in the conflict.

“The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has increasing power and influence in places like Aleppo and Raqqa Province,” said Mr. Mustafa. “But at the same time, other Islamist battalions have coalesced and improved their organizational structures while rejecting both the ISIS and the more secular outside political coalition.”

He said that “all of these groups are getting assistance” and that the task of pinning down the precise source of the money is difficult. “That’s the million-dollar question,” he said.

When it comes to ISIS, said Mr. Moustafa, “you’re talking about al Qaeda’s network, and I would assume most of the aid and resources they’re getting comes directly from Iraq, where the system was already in place to raise money going back to the rise of al Qaeda in Iraq several years ago.”

Kuwait-Turkey connection

U.S. officials say that system has relied heavily on the activities of an Iran-based al Qaeda “facilitator” named Muhsin al-Fadhli.

A little-reported press release circulated by the U.S. Treasury Department last October described al-Fadhli as “a veteran al Qaeda operative” who provided “financial and material support” to al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab Zarqawi.

Zarqawi was known for orchestrating a series of gruesome bombings and beheadings in Iraq before U.S. forces killed him in 2006. But the activities of al-Fadhli’s network supposedly have carried forth — and have evolved toward tapping a reserve of Kuwait-based sympathizers to fund extremist groups fighting in Syria.

“In addition to providing funding for al Qaeda activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan, this network is working to move fighters and money through Turkey to support al Qaeda-affiliated elements in Syria,” according to the Treasury Department press release. “Al-Fadhli also is leveraging his extensive network of Kuwaiti jihadist donors to send money to Syria via Turkey.”

That extremist elements of Syria’s opposition are gaining strength appears to expose the limitations of the U.S. government to block the flow of such money — or at least to persuade partners in Kuwait and other Persian Gulf nations to do so.

Officials at the Kuwaiti Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request by The Times to comment for this article.

But an article published last month by Foreign Policy shed some light on the situation. In the article, William McCants, a former senior adviser in the State Department’s office of the coordinator for counterterrorism, wrote that “the Gulf monarchies have not been able or willing to stem the tide of private money their citizens are sending to the Salafi charities and popular committees.”

“Kuwait in particular has done little to stop it because it lacks an effective terror financing law and because it cannot afford politically to infuriate its already angry Salafi members of parliament,” wrote Mr. McCants. “Qatar and Saudi Arabia have tried to crack down on fundraising for the Salafi militias but their citizens just send their money to Kuwait.”

Political storm in Turkey

The rise of extremists among Syria’s rebels, meanwhile, has set off a political storm in Turkey, where the leadership of the nation’s main opposition party is accusing the government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of supporting al Qaeda-linked groups in the nearby war zone.

Al-Nusra jihadists in Syria sanctioned by U.S.

The U.S. State Department listed al-Nusra Front as a foreign terrorist organization yesterday (h/t Twitter user Sal Imburgia ‏@salimb94).  A parallel designation by the Treasury Department will include a prohibition against business deals between Americans and al-Nusra and a freeze of al-Nusra assets in U.S. banks.

A BBC profile of the al-Nusra Front calls the group’s ideology “clearly jihadist,” and says that al-Nusra has claimed responsibility for “many of the bombings that have rocked Syria since the uprising began in March 2011.”

Additional reports have indicated a warm relationship between al-Nusra and Al Qaeda.

Given U.S. support for many groups fighting in the Syrian rebellion, the designation may present a schizophrenic approach to American foreign policy in Syria wherein certain Syrian rebels receive financial support and rebels that they work alongside with receive financial penalties.  McClatchy lays out several other complicating factors in the al-Nusra designation in a good report here.

Kenneth Rijock also weighed in prior to the the designation on what it would mean for U.S. banks with commercial relationships in Syria and the Palestinian territories:

Multiple reports of the imminent OFAC  designation of the Al-Nusra Front, a radical Sunni organisation fighting the Assad regime in Syria, should alert compliance officers whose clients are sending relief funds, and supplies, to Syrian Opposition groups. Its Arabic name is Jabhat Al-Nusra, and the approximate English translation is Front for the Protection of the People of the Levant.

One important detail: Al-Nusra, which has spewed forth anti-American and Anti-Israeli hatred, reportedly contains a fair number of Palestinians. Don’t get caught in an OFAC violation if your clients are in the midst of what you thought were contributions to Palestinian causes, but go straight to Al-Nusra. It has been reported that the OFAC action will take place around 12 December.

I would piggyback on Rijock by making the following suggestion to non-profits, NGOs, charities and their donors:  if you are involved with relief work in either Syria or the Palestinian territories, you should factor the risk of funding this Al Qaeda offshoot into your aid distribution plans.  Are making such donations so important to you that you would risk supporting an Al Qaeda takeover of Syria?

U.S. names multi-million dollar Taliban hawaladar

In RadicalIslam.org’s interview with Money Jihad, we discussed how poorly the U.S. has handled the scourge of hawala, the traditional Islamic method of transferring money.

The Bush administration talked about hawala, but wasn’t able to accomplish much to stop the opaque money swapping method that is often used to fund terrorism.  The Obama administration has been worse, passing up a golden opportunity to seek a maximum penalty against the hawala dealer who funded the failed Times Square bomber.

The latest news that the Treasury Department has sanctioned a hawala business with branches in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran that has transferred millions of dollars for the Taliban is somewhat encouraging.  We’ve always known that these cases exist, but normally we don’t even hear about them because of diplomatic sensitivities with Pakistan.  The fact that the feds would go public with this information is a step in the right direction.

But in practical terms, the sanctions are largely symbolic.  As Treasury’s press release said, “As a result of today’s action, all property in the United States or in the possession or control of U.S. persons in which Rahat Ltd, Mohammed Qasim, and Musa Kalim have an interest is blocked, and U.S. persons are prohibited from engaging in transactions with them.”

That is, unless Rahat maintains an account a U.S. bank, it is unlikely that any funds will be frozen as a result of this action.

As long as we have troops on the ground in Afghanistan, it would be somewhat more effective to treat the Afghan branch of Rahat Ltd as a military target:  raid the branch, detain and interrogate its employees, and confiscate its records.  There’s more intelligence to be gathered about the Taliban’s financials.

Here are the basics we know from Treasury:

Treasury Imposes Sanctions on a Hawala and Two Individuals Linked to the Taliban

11/20/2012
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of the Treasury today announced the designation of Rahat Ltd, a hawala, and two individuals pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13224. Rahat Ltd has branches in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran which have been used by the Taliban to facilitate their illicit financial activities. The Treasury Department is also designating the owner of Rahat Ltd, Mohammed Qasim, and the owner and manager of its Quetta, Pakistan branch, Musa Kalim.

Rahat Ltd has been used extensively by senior Taliban leadership to finance their violent activities. This includes facilitating millions of dollars of transactions to support the Taliban shadow governor for Helmand Province, United Nations Security Council 1988-Listed Naim Barich, who was also designated November 15, 2012 pursuant to the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act for his extensive narcotics production and distribution activities.

“Today’s action demonstrates our continued efforts to target and disrupt financial activity linked to the Taliban’s use of hawalas,” said Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David S. Cohen. “We will continue exposing these illicit networks and deprive the Taliban of their sources of funding no matter where they turn.”

As a result of today’s action, all property in the United States or in the possession or control of U.S. persons in which Rahat Ltd, Mohammed Qasim, and Musa Kalim have an interest is blocked, and U.S. persons are prohibited from engaging in transactions with them.

Rahat Ltd

Rahat Ltd is a hawala that facilitates financial activities for the Taliban.  Taliban shadow governor for Helmand Province Barich provides funds through Rahat Ltd to subordinate Taliban commanders to plan and conduct operations in southern Afghanistan.  As of mid-2012, Barich had transferred money using the Quetta branch of Rahat Ltd.  As of early 2012, Barich had received millions of dollars through the Quetta branch of Rahat Ltd and had provided a senior Taliban commander with over $250,000 via Rahat Ltd.

Other senior Taliban figures regularly used Rahat Ltd to store and transfer hundreds of thousands of dollars.  As of early 2012, approximately $500,000 of Taliban funds had been placed in the Quetta branch of Rahat Ltd and, as of late 2011, a senior Taliban member arranged the transfer of over $100,000 through the same Rahat Ltd hawala.

Mohammed Qasim

Mohammed Qasim owns Rahat Ltd and, as of mid-2012, was a hawaladar for Taliban senior leadership.  As of mid-2011, Qasim used his hawalas in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran to facilitate Taliban financial transfers.  As of early 2011, Qasim was a financial assistant to Taliban shadow governor for Helmand Province Barich.  Additionally, in early 2012, Qasim helped to transport weapons and ammunition for the Taliban and, as of mid-2011, frequently smuggled weapons into Helmand Province for the Taliban.

Musa Kalim

Musa Kalim owns and runs the Quetta, Pakistan branch of Rahat Ltd, also known as the New Chagai Trading Company and the Musa Kalim Hawala.

As of late 2012, Taliban shadow governor for Helmand Province Barich had used Kalim to move and hold his finances.  As of late 2011, the bulk of Kalim’s hawala business consisted of transferring Taliban and smugglers’ funds.  Kalim also managed the transfer of funds from donors in the Gulf to support Taliban fighters in 2011…

Obama’s 10 biggest terror finance blunders

1. Promising to make it easier for Muslims to give zakat.  Pres. Obama has tried to remove the so-called “chilling effect” that George W. Bush, the Patriot Act, the Treasury Department, and law enforcement “created” by closing down Islamic charities that funded terrorism.  Rather than building on the Bush administration’s successful prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation for sponsoring Hamas, Obama won’t prosecute Islamic Relief, he won’t prosecute CAIR, he won’t investigate ISNA or NAIT, and the IRS has been derelict in stripping suspicious Islamic organizations of their tax-exempt status.
2. Funding the Arab Spring that has led to the rise of Muslim Brotherhood dominated governments in the Middle East who behave against U.S. national security interests.
3. Minimizing our energy independence from Middle East oil by reducing oil production on federal lands and waters, rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline, impeding hydraulic fracturing permitting, etc.
4. Making little to no progress on bankrupting the Taliban.
5. Dragging his feet in adopting sanctions against Al Qaeda and Taliban affiliates such as the Pakistani Taliban and the Haqqani network.

Expert: Obama’s Syria license “dangerous”

What good are sanctions against funding Al Qaeda if the Treasury Department issues a blanket license to the Islamist-dominated Syrian Support Group to sponsor whatever causes it deems fit in Syria?  It is worse than simply letting the SSG operate in Syria—it is giving them the express legal authority to do so.  If the money ends up in the wrong hands, the SSG can always say, “We got a license from the U.S. government.  Don’t blame us.”

By Patrick Poole on Oct. 25:

Anti-Terror Authorities Question Where Money Goes From Group With Special License From Obama Administration

In July, the Obama State Department approved an extraordinary license for a newly formed U.S.-based organization, the Syrian Support Group, to raise money for Syrian rebels – overriding the administration’s own sanctions and Obama’s Executive Order against such activity.

To some counterterrorism and terror finance authorities in Washington D.C., this extremely rare privilege raises considerable concerns.

This is especially true because two related figures with the organization, Louay Safi and Mazen Asbahi, have previously been tied to terror fundraising efforts by Islamic organizations identified by the U.S. government in federal court as fronts for the Muslim Brotherhood.

One U.S. Treasury official specializing in terror finance said:

This license sets a dangerous precedent because it gives complete and perfect cover to virtually all of their activities. They can honestly say, “I can’t be fundraising for terror because I have a license from the State Department.” But we have absolutely no idea where that money is going once it leaves the United States. And as the Supreme Court recognized in a court case a few years ago, money raised for terrorist groups is fungible.

The situation in Syria is so fluid, we don’t have the slightest idea who is actually benefiting from this money being raised here, and anybody from the administration who says that they do is bald-faced lying.

The Syrian Support Group was incorporated in April 2012, according to records obtained from the District of Columbia Corporations Division.

On May 24, the group sent a letter to the State Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, and on July 23 that same office issued the license – a copy of which was obtained by The Blaze – allowing them to “export, reexport, sell, or supply to the Free Syrian Army (‘FSA’) financial, communications, logistical, and other services otherwise prohibited by Executive Order 13582 in order to support the FSA.”

The Free Syrian Army is affiliated with the Syrian National Council governed by that group’s military bureau, which is overwhelming dominated by Islamist groups, including the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood…

Details of the Muslim Brotherhood connections are laid out in The Blaze.

IMU money man tapped Europe, Turkey

The U.S. Treasury Department has sanctioned Qari Ayyub Bashir for his role as a financier for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), and probably Al Qaeda, too.  The designation prohibits Americans from doing business with Bashir, and freezes any assets Bashir has in U.S. banks.

The designation also gives us more insight into where the IMU is accessing funds.  Rather than the typical Gulf sources of Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E., Qari Bashir is said to have collected money from Europe and Turkey prior to transferring it to a man described as “a financial facilitator for Al Qaeda.”

From The Long War Journal on Oct. 18:

…Treasury described Bashir as being the “head of finance” for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan as well as a member of the group’s shura, or executive council. In this role, he provides financial and “logistical” support for IMU operations in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, and fundraises from outside the region.

“Bashir received funds from sources in Turkey and elsewhere in Europe and delivered these funds” to Fazal Rahim, an IMU facilitator who was designated by the US as a terrorist in September 2011 and is thought to be in Pakistani custody. Rahim was also described as a “financial facilitator for al Qaeda” [see LWJ report, US adds 5 al Qaeda, Taliban, Haqqani Network, and IMU facilitators to terrorist list].

Prior to taking on the role of chief financier for the IMU in 2010, Bashir “led attacks against Afghan police in Kunduz Province, Afghanistan, and recruited IMU fighters at his madrassa in Pakistan.” Additionally he helped IMU recruits reach their units and commanded “an anti-Coalition militia” in the Afghan provinces of Kunduz and Takhar.

Bashir is an Uzbek national and is based out of Mir Ali, in Pakistan’s Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan. Mir Ali is known to host the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and several other local and foreign terror groups.

The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan is a key ally of al Qaeda and the Taliban, and supports operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as plots attacks in Europe. The IMU is known to fight alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan and has integrated into the Taliban’s shadow government in the north. [For more information on the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, see LWJ reports, IMU cleric urges Pakistanis to continue sheltering jihadis in Waziristan, and IMU announces death of emir, names new leader.]…

Lebanese Islamic charities fund Hamas

The stench of laundered money has wafted from Lebanon throughout the international financial system for years.  Usually that’s because of Lebanese banks being used to fund Hezbollah.

But the latest announcement by the U.S. Treasury Department indicates that Lebanon is being used as a funding base for Hamas as well.

Treasury has designated two Islamic charities in Lebanon, Al-Waqfiya and Al-Quds, as being “controlled” by Hamas.  Treasury’s press release explains that the charities exist, “to support the families of Hamas fighters and prisoners and to raise money for programs and projects in the Palestinian territories intended to spread Hamas’s influence and control.”

It’s important to note that the sanctions won’t have much of a practical effect unless Al-Waqfiya or Al-Quds normally keeps money in a U.S. bank, does business with American companies, or receives zakat donations from American Muslims.

Treasury’s announcement also revealed that Al-Waqfiya and Al-Quds charities are members of Yusuf Qaradawi’s Hamas-funding network, the Union of Good (UoG).  Treasury should go farther than these two designations by publishing an exact list of all charities that fall under the UoG umbrella.

While Israel has published a members list before, the U.S. only maintains a blanket designation against UoG, and has only specified a few of the charities that belong to it.

The Haqqani network’s bottom line

NPR’s Scott Simon recently interviewed Jackie Northam about the U.S. designation of the Haqqani network as a terrorist organization and the financial sanctions against it.  The jihadist group is funded by Pakistan’s spy agency, the ISI.

Northam correctly dismissed the financial impact of the designation, which prohibits U.S. business deals with the Haqqani network and freezes any assets they have in American banks, as “largely symbolic.”  It does little to alter their domestic and Gulf revenue sources.  An excerpt from their conversation:

SIMON: The State Department says that among other things this designation as a terrorist organization is going to ban any Americans from doing business with the Haqqanis and it’ll block any assets they hold in the U.S. What kind of potential impact could it have on the Haqqani Network?

NORTHAM: You know, Scott, the Haqqani network has shown a lot of determination to create trouble in Afghanistan and so the analysts I’ve talked with here in Pakistan say this decision really probably won’t have much of an impact and it’s really largely symbolic. They say that the Haqqani network itself doesn’t have financial interests in the U.S. and instead it has a very much a profitable business network in this area and the Persian Gulf region and a good part of it is thought to be criminal activities.

But the U.S. is hoping that this designation will just strangle any efforts by the Haqqani Network to raise funds in places like Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates, where there are sympathizers to their cause. But, frankly, this is really an informal network of raising money, and it could be hard to track, you know, who’s getting the money and how it’s coming into this area.

And this is part of the debate in Washington, just trying to weigh what impact blacklisting the Haqqani Network would have, versus how this decision would affect U.S./Pakistan relations going forward.

SIMON: NPR’s Jackie Northam in Islamabad, thank you.

It’s a classic too little, too late scenario:  Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA), Sen. Carl Leven (D-MI), and Gen. David Petraeus asked Sec. Hillary Clinton to make this designation two years ago.

Top cleric ran front group, found Gulf donors

The U.S. has sanctioned eight senior members of the terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).  One of the men, Qari Muhammad Yaqoob Sheikh, ran a front group to raise money for the terrorist for four years.  He also participated in at least two missions to the Gulf to obtain zakat and sadaqa donations from rich Arabs.  Sheikh’s biography is further evidence of the extent to which militant jihad relies on big money from the oil and banking powerhouses of Saudi Arabia and its neighbors.

From the Treasury Department’s press release:

Qari Muhammad Yaqoob Sheikh, a member of LET’s central advisory committee, has held several different leadership positions in the group since approximately 2006. Sheikh has served as a leader in LET’s foreign affairs department since 2006, including acting as the department’s deputy director of political and foreign affairs between 2008 and 2009. As of mid-2008, Sheikh was also in charge of LET’s Islamabad office, including managing LET’s general operations in and around Pakistan’s capital.

Between 2008 and 2011, Sheikh ran LET front organizations that were used to raise funds and recruit on behalf of the group. Sheikh ran Falah-e Insaniat Foundation (FIF), a front used by LET for fundraising purposes, from early 2009 until mid-2010, when he was replaced as the FIF head by Hafiz Abdur Rauf. FIF and Rauf were designated by the U.S. pursuant to Executive Order 13224 on November 24, 2010. Falah-e Insaniat Foundation was added to the UN 1267 Consolidated List on March 14, 2012.

As of early 2010, Sheikh was the head of LET’s ulema (clerics) wing. Sheikh has also worked with LET’s international donors. In late 2006 and late 2007, Sheikh was part of an LET delegation that traveled to the Gulf on behalf of LET seeking support.

Head of the clerics?  Since Islamic law calls upon Muslims to wage jihad with their wealth, should we be surprised that a group of clerics would support the financing of jihad?