Wednesday November 12, 2008
The Re-Emergence of the Shining Path: The Criminal-Terrorist Nexus
For those of us who were covering the conflicts in Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s, there was no group more terrifying than Peru's Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) an Maoist organization intent on causing rivers of blood to flow in order to achieve the proletariat utopia.
After many years and countless dead, Sendero was largely dismantled and its chief ideologue , Abimael Guzman, who ran a horrific cult of personality, was jailed. The group was widely thought to have been put out of business permanently.
Now, as Washington Post reports, Sendero, a designated terrorist entity, is coming back. Why?
The Shining Path, which has its bases in two coca-producing regions of central Peru, is now heavily involved in drug trafficking and is paying for new recruits.
Again, the terrorist/criminal nexus shows up, as it will more and more frequently.
The terrorists, using criminal proceeds, wear bullet proof vests, carry assault rifles and can pay salaries in isolated regions of the country where the state has little presence. Where they were once one of the most hated and reviled insurgencies on the continent, they are trying to come back in a softer, gentler form.
What makes the reemergence of Sendero even more dangerous is the regional situation. Peru's president, Alan Garcia, was also president at the height of Sendero's power, and badly botched the war against them. He returned to power as a newly-minted fiscal conservative who has sought stronger ties to the United States.
That stand has put Garcia at odds with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, who is already demonstrated his willingness to back terrorist organizations that traffic in cocaine and heroin, particularly if it furthers his agenda of confrontation with the United States.
Chavez's support for the FARC in Colombia has been as much an effort to destabilize the government of Alvaro Uribe in Colombia, the closet US ally in the hemisphere, as it has been to show revolutionary solidarity.
And the FARC, according to internal FARC documents, has been working for some time to reach out to the old, violent Latin American left to create a new transnational, quasi-Marxist bloc. For details of this effort, see this paper I did for the NEFA Foundation.
How do they finance themselves? Through the proceeds of cocaine sales, which are more and more frequently routed through Venezuela, where the military allied with Chavez gets a substantial cut.
This melding of criminal financing with an old ideological battle (which Chavez and Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega remain locked in) is one of our most serious threats. So far it has been largely ignored as a policy issue. Mexico, too, teeters on the brink of collapse as a nation state, something that would wreak havoc on the United States as well as the rest of Latin America.
I know everyone has a list of priorities for the incoming administration. There will be no choice, unfortunately, but to include Latin America on that list.
After many years and countless dead, Sendero was largely dismantled and its chief ideologue , Abimael Guzman, who ran a horrific cult of personality, was jailed. The group was widely thought to have been put out of business permanently.
Now, as Washington Post reports, Sendero, a designated terrorist entity, is coming back. Why?
The Shining Path, which has its bases in two coca-producing regions of central Peru, is now heavily involved in drug trafficking and is paying for new recruits.
Again, the terrorist/criminal nexus shows up, as it will more and more frequently.
The terrorists, using criminal proceeds, wear bullet proof vests, carry assault rifles and can pay salaries in isolated regions of the country where the state has little presence. Where they were once one of the most hated and reviled insurgencies on the continent, they are trying to come back in a softer, gentler form.
What makes the reemergence of Sendero even more dangerous is the regional situation. Peru's president, Alan Garcia, was also president at the height of Sendero's power, and badly botched the war against them. He returned to power as a newly-minted fiscal conservative who has sought stronger ties to the United States.
That stand has put Garcia at odds with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, who is already demonstrated his willingness to back terrorist organizations that traffic in cocaine and heroin, particularly if it furthers his agenda of confrontation with the United States.
Chavez's support for the FARC in Colombia has been as much an effort to destabilize the government of Alvaro Uribe in Colombia, the closet US ally in the hemisphere, as it has been to show revolutionary solidarity.
And the FARC, according to internal FARC documents, has been working for some time to reach out to the old, violent Latin American left to create a new transnational, quasi-Marxist bloc. For details of this effort, see this paper I did for the NEFA Foundation.
How do they finance themselves? Through the proceeds of cocaine sales, which are more and more frequently routed through Venezuela, where the military allied with Chavez gets a substantial cut.
This melding of criminal financing with an old ideological battle (which Chavez and Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega remain locked in) is one of our most serious threats. So far it has been largely ignored as a policy issue. Mexico, too, teeters on the brink of collapse as a nation state, something that would wreak havoc on the United States as well as the rest of Latin America.
I know everyone has a list of priorities for the incoming administration. There will be no choice, unfortunately, but to include Latin America on that list.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH
Monday November 10, 2008
The Ultimate Counter-Terrorism Weapon
In the day-to-day discussions and actions to combat terrorism, particularly radical Islamist terrorism, we generally agree that it will be a long struggle that could last generations. I agree.
But it is useful to step back and realize there is a powerful weapon that we CAN use to great effect. Both presidential candidates agreed on it, and it is long overdue. That is to decrease our consumption of oil so that our money does not flow to those who want to destroy us.
The effects have already been dramatic, as this IHT article describes. Two regimes that pose direct threats to U.S, Latin American and Middle Eastern stability-Iran and Venezuela-are teetering on the edge of severe financial meltdowns because oil prices have dropped.
A third country that is growing increasingly willing to deal with rogue regimes-Russia-is also hard hit, although not to the degree of Iran and Venezuela. Saudi Arabia's ability to fund the propogation of Wahhabi extremism and intolerance will also be curtailed if the prices stay down.
Why? Because these regimes conservatively built their budgets, including the expansionary weapons purchases, on oil averaging $80 to $90 a barrel. When it falls below that, particularly to where it has been recently, they are forced to choose between their expansionist and militarist dreams, and feeding their own people.
Both Obama and McCain focused on the fact that we spend billions of dollars buying oil from regimes that hate us and have a radically different view of what the world should look like than most of its neighbors. Both viewed the issue of energy independence as a matter of national security. While differing on the margins over where to drill and the priority given nuclear energy, the campaigns, representing candidates supported by about 96 percent of the voting population, were in agreement.
The choices are stark. Iran wants a Shiite theocracy, which puts it at odds not only with the West, but with the Sunni regimes. It cannot finance its nuclear program, its massive expansion into Latin America or terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Quds Force, without oil money. It has nothing else.
Venezuela wants a 21st century view of socialism and one party rule. Without oil money Chavez cannot join Iran in pushing and financing the broad anti-democratic agenda he has established.
Bankrupting the enemy by cutting diminishing it export revenues is not a long-term proposition. It is happening now, with no formal policy in place to do this. And, unless policies are rapidly enacted to keep consumption low, the prices will inevitably rise again.
If the Obama administration can move quickly on this front, he will take a dramatic anti-terrorism action with no military or diplomatic actions needed.
There is a down side, at least in Venezuela. As oil revenues shrink, the Chavez government can replenish its coffers from the drug trade. It can survive, but it won't because we are legally importing his products.
But it is useful to step back and realize there is a powerful weapon that we CAN use to great effect. Both presidential candidates agreed on it, and it is long overdue. That is to decrease our consumption of oil so that our money does not flow to those who want to destroy us.
The effects have already been dramatic, as this IHT article describes. Two regimes that pose direct threats to U.S, Latin American and Middle Eastern stability-Iran and Venezuela-are teetering on the edge of severe financial meltdowns because oil prices have dropped.
A third country that is growing increasingly willing to deal with rogue regimes-Russia-is also hard hit, although not to the degree of Iran and Venezuela. Saudi Arabia's ability to fund the propogation of Wahhabi extremism and intolerance will also be curtailed if the prices stay down.
Why? Because these regimes conservatively built their budgets, including the expansionary weapons purchases, on oil averaging $80 to $90 a barrel. When it falls below that, particularly to where it has been recently, they are forced to choose between their expansionist and militarist dreams, and feeding their own people.
Both Obama and McCain focused on the fact that we spend billions of dollars buying oil from regimes that hate us and have a radically different view of what the world should look like than most of its neighbors. Both viewed the issue of energy independence as a matter of national security. While differing on the margins over where to drill and the priority given nuclear energy, the campaigns, representing candidates supported by about 96 percent of the voting population, were in agreement.
The choices are stark. Iran wants a Shiite theocracy, which puts it at odds not only with the West, but with the Sunni regimes. It cannot finance its nuclear program, its massive expansion into Latin America or terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Quds Force, without oil money. It has nothing else.
Venezuela wants a 21st century view of socialism and one party rule. Without oil money Chavez cannot join Iran in pushing and financing the broad anti-democratic agenda he has established.
Bankrupting the enemy by cutting diminishing it export revenues is not a long-term proposition. It is happening now, with no formal policy in place to do this. And, unless policies are rapidly enacted to keep consumption low, the prices will inevitably rise again.
If the Obama administration can move quickly on this front, he will take a dramatic anti-terrorism action with no military or diplomatic actions needed.
There is a down side, at least in Venezuela. As oil revenues shrink, the Chavez government can replenish its coffers from the drug trade. It can survive, but it won't because we are legally importing his products.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH
Tuesday November 11, 2008
The Paradox of Colombia
The recent GAO report on the lack of success of U.S. aid to Colombia is striking because it lays out the fundamental paradox of the multi-pronged war there.
The GAO finds, as many of us have written about, that the $6.1 billion in U.S. aid since 2000 has helped Colombia achieve notable successes. This is especially notable in recouping territory and dismantling much of the infrastructure of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and the disarming (with many flaws) of the United Self Defense Forces (AUC). Both are designated terrorist organizations, and both presented direct and real threats to the Colombia state.
But despite those historic gains, the production of cocaine has not diminished. The GAO report says (borne out recent conversations I had with senior Colombian police and military leaders) that cocaine production has actually increased. Here is what the report found:
From 2000 to 2006, estimated opium poppy cultivation and heroin production declined about 50 percent, but coca cultivation and cocaine production increased over the period. To put Colombia’s 6-year drug reduction goal in perspective, we note that although U.S. funding for Plan Colombia was approved in July 2000, many U.S.-supported programs to increase the Colombian military and police capacity to eradicate drug crops and disrupt the production and distribution of heroin and cocaine did not become operational until 2001 and later. Meanwhile, estimated
illicit drug cultivation and production in Colombia continued to rise
through 2001, with estimated cultivation and production declining in 2002 through 2004. However, the declines for coca cultivation and cocaine production were not sustained. In addition, the estimated flow of cocaine towards the United States from South America rose over the period.
The obvious question is, why is this so? From the Colombian state's perspective the overall project (which the Colombians have but about 10 times as many resources as the United States) has been a success. Threats to the nation state have been diminished, some to the point of now being police matters, not security threats.
But from the U.S. perspective, the objectives have not been fully met. While counter-insurgency concepts have had to merge with counter-drug initiatives, the primary objective was to reduce the flow of drugs. That the drugs funded terrorist groups added a sense of urgency to the program, but was not the stated objective.
The answer to why one can achieve such success on one important level and not at all on another important level, I think, lies in the concept of gravity. Water runs down hill, seeking the path of least resistance. This is exactly how drugs flow.
While the Colombian government has gotten rid of a lot of the major players in the trade, there are enough small players who have breached the dam to keep the drugs flowing. The biggest hole in the dike is Venezuela, where about one-third of the cocaine moves.
From there, much of the cocaine is now passed through West Africa, then onward to Europe. Water running downhill. There are no roadblocks at all on that route. The Chavez government, having kicked out the DEA and refusing to allow any monitoring of its national counter-drug efforts, is a Godsend for the traffickers, including the remains of the FARC, who, having lost their ideology long ago, can happily operate as a criminal enterprise.
The glimmer of good news, from a selfish perspective, is that most of those drugs are now going to Europe, not the United States. Drug consumption appears to be down, but there have been cycles of decreased consumption in the past that have failed to prove permanent.
Is the money in Colombia (and now Mexico and Central America in Plan Merida) well spent? I would argue that the money kept Colombia from becoming a true narco-state where the state was vanquished. Mexico is still in the struggle to see how and if it will survive. Central America is awash in drugs, gang violence and organized crime. Had Colombia fallen (as it was predicted to do in a 1998 DIA assessment I wrote about at the time with the Washington Post), the situation would be far more dire.
My point is that we do not have the resources to tackle all these regions and regional problems, but they are all organically linked to each other. The decision of Venezuela and Ecuador (on each side of Colombia) to essentially abolish counter-drug efforts mean that blocking efforts against drug movement from Colombia is pointless. Following the paths of least resistance, the drugs simply flow around the side.
This reality is one one of the many difficult issues the new Obama administration will have to deal with. To the south, we now have a series of narco-states, often embedded within other states. Colombia has been saved (and saved itself). The others may not.
The GAO finds, as many of us have written about, that the $6.1 billion in U.S. aid since 2000 has helped Colombia achieve notable successes. This is especially notable in recouping territory and dismantling much of the infrastructure of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and the disarming (with many flaws) of the United Self Defense Forces (AUC). Both are designated terrorist organizations, and both presented direct and real threats to the Colombia state.
But despite those historic gains, the production of cocaine has not diminished. The GAO report says (borne out recent conversations I had with senior Colombian police and military leaders) that cocaine production has actually increased. Here is what the report found:
From 2000 to 2006, estimated opium poppy cultivation and heroin production declined about 50 percent, but coca cultivation and cocaine production increased over the period. To put Colombia’s 6-year drug reduction goal in perspective, we note that although U.S. funding for Plan Colombia was approved in July 2000, many U.S.-supported programs to increase the Colombian military and police capacity to eradicate drug crops and disrupt the production and distribution of heroin and cocaine did not become operational until 2001 and later. Meanwhile, estimated
illicit drug cultivation and production in Colombia continued to rise
through 2001, with estimated cultivation and production declining in 2002 through 2004. However, the declines for coca cultivation and cocaine production were not sustained. In addition, the estimated flow of cocaine towards the United States from South America rose over the period.
The obvious question is, why is this so? From the Colombian state's perspective the overall project (which the Colombians have but about 10 times as many resources as the United States) has been a success. Threats to the nation state have been diminished, some to the point of now being police matters, not security threats.
But from the U.S. perspective, the objectives have not been fully met. While counter-insurgency concepts have had to merge with counter-drug initiatives, the primary objective was to reduce the flow of drugs. That the drugs funded terrorist groups added a sense of urgency to the program, but was not the stated objective.
The answer to why one can achieve such success on one important level and not at all on another important level, I think, lies in the concept of gravity. Water runs down hill, seeking the path of least resistance. This is exactly how drugs flow.
While the Colombian government has gotten rid of a lot of the major players in the trade, there are enough small players who have breached the dam to keep the drugs flowing. The biggest hole in the dike is Venezuela, where about one-third of the cocaine moves.
From there, much of the cocaine is now passed through West Africa, then onward to Europe. Water running downhill. There are no roadblocks at all on that route. The Chavez government, having kicked out the DEA and refusing to allow any monitoring of its national counter-drug efforts, is a Godsend for the traffickers, including the remains of the FARC, who, having lost their ideology long ago, can happily operate as a criminal enterprise.
The glimmer of good news, from a selfish perspective, is that most of those drugs are now going to Europe, not the United States. Drug consumption appears to be down, but there have been cycles of decreased consumption in the past that have failed to prove permanent.
Is the money in Colombia (and now Mexico and Central America in Plan Merida) well spent? I would argue that the money kept Colombia from becoming a true narco-state where the state was vanquished. Mexico is still in the struggle to see how and if it will survive. Central America is awash in drugs, gang violence and organized crime. Had Colombia fallen (as it was predicted to do in a 1998 DIA assessment I wrote about at the time with the Washington Post), the situation would be far more dire.
My point is that we do not have the resources to tackle all these regions and regional problems, but they are all organically linked to each other. The decision of Venezuela and Ecuador (on each side of Colombia) to essentially abolish counter-drug efforts mean that blocking efforts against drug movement from Colombia is pointless. Following the paths of least resistance, the drugs simply flow around the side.
This reality is one one of the many difficult issues the new Obama administration will have to deal with. To the south, we now have a series of narco-states, often embedded within other states. Colombia has been saved (and saved itself). The others may not.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH
Tuesday November 11, 2008
A Necessary Reminder of What the Jihadists Are About
Every once in a while, it is necessary to step back from the abstract world of ideas and see what the ideas actually mean in people's lives. That is particularly true as the new administration enters and has to think about what the radical Islamist agenda really means to those who live under it.
It is also worth noting the little-noticed support some of the worst parts of the Islamist agenda get from so-called moderate and mainstream Islamist groups who are tied to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Nothing could be a more stark reminder than the story of the young Somali woman who was stoned to death for adultery after reporting to authorities that she had been raped.
Amnesty International reported that partway through the stoning nurses checked whether Aisha was still alive. They pulled her body out of the ground to ascertain she was still breathing before the stoning continued.
A Unicef statement said: 'She sought protection from the authorities, who then accused her of adultery and sentenced her to death. 'A child was victimised twice - first by the perpetrators of the rape and then by those responsible for administering justice.'
This is what the Taliban means when it talks of sharia law and what has in mind for the rest of the world. This is why the idea of engaging in talks with the Taliban over the future of Afghanistan is such a dangerous idea.
The jihadists cannot compromise and have already demonstrated, during their barbaric governance of Afghanistan from 1996-2001 that they are cannot be part of a civilized coalition to govern anything.
It is worth remembering that the Muslim Brotherhood, including its supposedly enlightened leaders like Tariq Ramadan, do not condemn this barbaric form of justice. Why? Because they can't without disowning the same general goals the Ikhwan share with the jihadist: A world under sharia law where this is not only condoned but mandatory.
Here is the nicest possible description of Ramadan's stand, taken from a sympathetic article in Foreign Affairs magazine.
In front of six million viewers, Ramadan refused to call for a ban on the stoning of adulterers, arguing instead for a "moratorium." This apparently semantic distinction reveals Ramadan's reformist logic: it is a way to stop capital punishment immediately while engaging its proponents on their terms. Ramadan concedes that stoning may be supported in part of the Muslim world and by the instructions of law books. But such punishment, he argues, should be suspended while a debate is held over the conditions of its actual application.
For some critics, this kind of reasoning is unacceptably ambiguous: Ramadan will not categorically denounce stoning! But by calling for a moratorium, Ramadan avoids the Islamic equivalent of excommunication.
So, one would be excommunicated from the Muslim faith, or at least the Muslim Brotherhood, if one denounces stoning? Yet we are repeatedly told by U.S. Muslim Brotherhood groups that they are mainstream and moderate. How do they reconcile these opposing statements? They don't. They simply denounce those who raise the questions as Islamophobes and racists.
It is worth remembering that when one engages with groups who cannot disown criminal and barbaric conduct, one legitimizes them. The Obama camp would do well to keep this in mind as the Muslim Brotherhood front organizations come knocking on the door of the new administration, as they will, presenting themselves as enlightened and moderate forces for good.
It is also worth noting the little-noticed support some of the worst parts of the Islamist agenda get from so-called moderate and mainstream Islamist groups who are tied to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Nothing could be a more stark reminder than the story of the young Somali woman who was stoned to death for adultery after reporting to authorities that she had been raped.
Amnesty International reported that partway through the stoning nurses checked whether Aisha was still alive. They pulled her body out of the ground to ascertain she was still breathing before the stoning continued.
A Unicef statement said: 'She sought protection from the authorities, who then accused her of adultery and sentenced her to death. 'A child was victimised twice - first by the perpetrators of the rape and then by those responsible for administering justice.'
This is what the Taliban means when it talks of sharia law and what has in mind for the rest of the world. This is why the idea of engaging in talks with the Taliban over the future of Afghanistan is such a dangerous idea.
The jihadists cannot compromise and have already demonstrated, during their barbaric governance of Afghanistan from 1996-2001 that they are cannot be part of a civilized coalition to govern anything.
It is worth remembering that the Muslim Brotherhood, including its supposedly enlightened leaders like Tariq Ramadan, do not condemn this barbaric form of justice. Why? Because they can't without disowning the same general goals the Ikhwan share with the jihadist: A world under sharia law where this is not only condoned but mandatory.
Here is the nicest possible description of Ramadan's stand, taken from a sympathetic article in Foreign Affairs magazine.
In front of six million viewers, Ramadan refused to call for a ban on the stoning of adulterers, arguing instead for a "moratorium." This apparently semantic distinction reveals Ramadan's reformist logic: it is a way to stop capital punishment immediately while engaging its proponents on their terms. Ramadan concedes that stoning may be supported in part of the Muslim world and by the instructions of law books. But such punishment, he argues, should be suspended while a debate is held over the conditions of its actual application.
For some critics, this kind of reasoning is unacceptably ambiguous: Ramadan will not categorically denounce stoning! But by calling for a moratorium, Ramadan avoids the Islamic equivalent of excommunication.
So, one would be excommunicated from the Muslim faith, or at least the Muslim Brotherhood, if one denounces stoning? Yet we are repeatedly told by U.S. Muslim Brotherhood groups that they are mainstream and moderate. How do they reconcile these opposing statements? They don't. They simply denounce those who raise the questions as Islamophobes and racists.
It is worth remembering that when one engages with groups who cannot disown criminal and barbaric conduct, one legitimizes them. The Obama camp would do well to keep this in mind as the Muslim Brotherhood front organizations come knocking on the door of the new administration, as they will, presenting themselves as enlightened and moderate forces for good.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH
Tuesday November 4, 2008
Other Paths on Terrorism Financing
One of the significant challenges the next administration will face in combating terrorism is the fracturing consensus on international sanctions, as noted by the Washington Post.
There is no doubt the European and U.N. consensus that gave rise to the valuable tools has softened, if not vanished, in recent years. Much of friction has to do with anti-US sentiment, coupled with the inability or unwillingness of the designating parties to use what evidence there is against designated individuals in a judicial process.
The collapse of the sanctions regime would deprive the international community of the easiest way to have a direct and lasting impact on those suspected, at a reasonable level (and that is the tricky part) of funding terrorism. But the initial construct was never intended to be a permanent fix.
Rather, it was designed to give nations and international organizations a breathing space to create a permanent mechanism that was gave more room for due process and other concerns. This did not happen, and the sanctions committees at the UN and elsewhere have become less and less effective. My colleague Victor Comras, quoted in the Post piece, was on one of the most effective committees that was later downgraded because it made too many countries uncomfortable by naming names.
But as the New York Times Magazine piece on the innovative work of Stuart Levey and others at the Treasury Department makes clear, there are other, and perhaps better options.
The argument, put forth by several people in these articles, that terror finance is not worthwhile because terrorist attacks only cost a small sum each, is simply not valid, in my opinion. The infrastructure to maintain a widespread and loose-knit terrorist structure, is an enormously expensive enterprise. Cutting off the flow of money remains one of the most effective ways of preemptively dealing with terrorism, before attacks take place.
As my CTB colleague Andrew Cochran noted, the integrated efforts of the US Special Operations Forces and the Treasury Department, particularly in Iraq, have yielded impressive results. Though little discussed, this effort is an important element in the great weakening of al Qaeda in Iraq.
Levy and others have come up with targeted ways of effectively cutting off, or at least greatly reducing financial activity by Iran. Another interesting innovation would be perhaps to find a way to cut of Venezuela's oil support lifeline.
While the designation of Venezuela would certainly be viable under US guidelines for designating a state sponsor of terrorism, the political cost in a hemisphere where US influence is badly diminished would be great. But going after is oil money would be far less costly, and likely more effective.
A conference where I spoke last week sponsored by the Menges Hemispheric Security Project of the Center for Security Policy, the idea was floated because half of Venezuela's oil can only be refined in the United States. While Venezuela's oil production is rapidly falling, along with the price of oil, US consumption has eased. The cost to the Venezuelan government of cutting off access to the US market would be far higher to Venezuela than the United States.
My point is that the further we get from 9/11 and other attacks, the harder it is to hold a consensus on measures like the administrative freezing of assets without the right to judicial review. The old regime is going to collapse. The good news is that there are creative, new and less intrusive ways to do the same thing at a far smaller political cost on an international level.
There is no doubt the European and U.N. consensus that gave rise to the valuable tools has softened, if not vanished, in recent years. Much of friction has to do with anti-US sentiment, coupled with the inability or unwillingness of the designating parties to use what evidence there is against designated individuals in a judicial process.
The collapse of the sanctions regime would deprive the international community of the easiest way to have a direct and lasting impact on those suspected, at a reasonable level (and that is the tricky part) of funding terrorism. But the initial construct was never intended to be a permanent fix.
Rather, it was designed to give nations and international organizations a breathing space to create a permanent mechanism that was gave more room for due process and other concerns. This did not happen, and the sanctions committees at the UN and elsewhere have become less and less effective. My colleague Victor Comras, quoted in the Post piece, was on one of the most effective committees that was later downgraded because it made too many countries uncomfortable by naming names.
But as the New York Times Magazine piece on the innovative work of Stuart Levey and others at the Treasury Department makes clear, there are other, and perhaps better options.
The argument, put forth by several people in these articles, that terror finance is not worthwhile because terrorist attacks only cost a small sum each, is simply not valid, in my opinion. The infrastructure to maintain a widespread and loose-knit terrorist structure, is an enormously expensive enterprise. Cutting off the flow of money remains one of the most effective ways of preemptively dealing with terrorism, before attacks take place.
As my CTB colleague Andrew Cochran noted, the integrated efforts of the US Special Operations Forces and the Treasury Department, particularly in Iraq, have yielded impressive results. Though little discussed, this effort is an important element in the great weakening of al Qaeda in Iraq.
Levy and others have come up with targeted ways of effectively cutting off, or at least greatly reducing financial activity by Iran. Another interesting innovation would be perhaps to find a way to cut of Venezuela's oil support lifeline.
While the designation of Venezuela would certainly be viable under US guidelines for designating a state sponsor of terrorism, the political cost in a hemisphere where US influence is badly diminished would be great. But going after is oil money would be far less costly, and likely more effective.
A conference where I spoke last week sponsored by the Menges Hemispheric Security Project of the Center for Security Policy, the idea was floated because half of Venezuela's oil can only be refined in the United States. While Venezuela's oil production is rapidly falling, along with the price of oil, US consumption has eased. The cost to the Venezuelan government of cutting off access to the US market would be far higher to Venezuela than the United States.
My point is that the further we get from 9/11 and other attacks, the harder it is to hold a consensus on measures like the administrative freezing of assets without the right to judicial review. The old regime is going to collapse. The good news is that there are creative, new and less intrusive ways to do the same thing at a far smaller political cost on an international level.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH