Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states fund al-Qaeda and Taliban
Leaked US cables show Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states as key sources for funds for al-Qaeda and Taliban
Saudi Arabia is a key source of
funds for armed groups, including al-Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban and
Pakistan's Lashkar-e-Taiba, according to a leaked US state department
assessment.
In a series of diplomatic cables
spanning several years, published by the WikiLeaks whistleblowing
website on Sunday, the state department details how such groups continue
to seek financing in Saudi Arabia, often posing as pilgrims visiting
the Muslim holy sites.
"Saudi Arabia remains a
critical financial support base for al-Qaeda, the Taliban, LeT, and
other terrorist groups, including Hamas, which probably raise millions
of dollars annually from Saudi sources, often during Hajj and Ramadan,"
Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, said in one cable sent in
December 2009.
"In contrast to its increasingly
aggressive efforts to disrupt al-Qaeda's access to funding from Saudi
sources, Riyadh has taken only limited action to disrupt fundraising for
the UN 1267-listed Taliban and LeT-groups that are also aligned with
al-Qaeda and focused on undermining stability in Afghanistan and
Pakistan."
'Significant progress'
Pakistan's
army is covertly sponsoring four major militant groups, including the
Afghan Taliban and Mumbai attackers Lashkar-e-Taiba, and "no amount of
money" will change the policy, the US ambassador warned in a frank
critique revealed by the state department cables.
The Guardian, Dec. 1, 2010
The
memo credited the Saudis with "significant progress" under US pressure
to deal with the issue, especially disrupting al-Qaeda's finance
channels.
However, it said that "Riyadh has taken
only limited action" to interrupt the flow of money to Taliban and
LeT-associated groups which have launched attacks in Afghanistan,
Pakistan and India.
In July 2009, Richard Holbrooke,
the US special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said that
the Taliban get more of its funding from wealthy Gulf donors than from
the drug trade for which Afghanistan has long been famous.
According
to the cable, the annual hajj pilgrimage posed a particular problem for
Saudi authorities attempting to stop the flow of money to armed groups.
"Hajj was still a big problem for the Saudis, since
they could not refuse to let pilgrims enter the country. Some of the
non-Saudi terrorism detainees in Saudi Arabia had entered as pilgrims,"
it said.
A cable sent in August 2009 detailed how
Pakistan's Jamaat-ud-Dawah, which the US accuses of being a front for
Lashkar-e-Taiba, raised funds through "private donations,
non-governmental organisations (NGOs), madrassas, and businesses spread
throughout South Asia, the Middle East, and Europe".
"Some
of JUD's budget, using funds raised both from witting donors and by
fraud, is dedicated to social services or humanitarian relief projects,
while some is used to finance LT operations," it said.
The
cable said that Lashkar-e-Taiba officials were operating front
companies in Saudi Arabia to move funds that could be used to carry out
attacks.
Direct donations
US
officials have also complained of direct donations by wealthy
individuals and a reluctance by governments to monitor charities.
Informal money transfer networks called hawala, or worker remittances, compound the problem.
Kuwait,
another key US ally in the region, comes in for criticism in the memo
sent by Clinton in 2009 for being the sole nation in the six-member Gulf
Co-Operation Council (GCC) that does not have a specific law
criminalising the financing of "terrorist" groups.
"The
GOK [government of Kuwait] at times has obstructed or been slow to
enforce UN-mandated asset freezes of Kuwait-based entities," it said.
Qatar,
which hosts a large US military base, is also singled out for its
"largely passive approach" to co-operating with Washington on tackling
the financing of armed groups.
"Al-Qaeda, the
Taliban, UN-1267 listed LeT, and other terrorist groups exploit Qatar as
a fundraising locale," the state department memo said.
"Although
Qatar's security services have the capability to deal with direct
threats and occasionally have put that capability to use, they have been
hesitant to act against known terrorists out of concern for appearing
to be aligned with the US and provoking reprisals."
UAE 'vulnerable'
United Arab Emirate-based donors were identified as having "provided financial support to a variety of terrorist groups".
"The
point can be emphasised that the UAE's role as a growing global
financial centre, coupled with weak regulatory oversight, makes it
vulnerable to abuse by terrorist financiers and facilitation networks,"
the state department cable said.
In another cable
from December 2009, Howard Mendelsohn, the US treasury department acting
assistant secretary of the office of intelligence and analysis, stated
his belief that the "Taliban and Haqqani Network [a Pakistan-based group
fighting Nato forces in Afghanistan] are believed to earn money from
UAE-based business interests".
"Treasury analysts
provided information on ... two senior Taliban officials who have made
multiple fundraising visits to the UAE, according to US intelligence,"
the cable said.
"The UAE security services were not familiar with either individual and asked for additional identifying information."
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