Hekman - Review of The Price of Fear: The Truth Behind the Financial War on Terror by Ibrahim Warde

8/12/2019 Hekman - Review of The Price of Fear: The Truth Behind the Financial War on Terror by Ibrahim Warde

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Al Nakhlah

The Fletcher School Al Nakhlah Tufts University

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every aspect have ensured that, at best, it hasdone little to protect us against terrorist attacksand, at worst, it may endanger Americasnational interests and the security of the world inthe long term.5

To urge U.S. policy in a more productivedirection, Warde sets out systematicallydebunking the axioms, assumptions, and myths

that have created the parallel universe6 of thefinancial war. Financial warriors often assertthat money is the lifeblood, or oxygen, ofterror.7 This axiom relies on what Warde callsthe master assumption of the financial war: thatterrorist operations are supported by a vast, yetfinite, stash of hidden cash.8 Supporting both ofthese is the thoroughly discredited yet persistentmyth of Usama Bin Ladens $300 millionpersonal fortune, often said toform the basis of financing forAl-Qaeda.9

Contrary to commonconceptions, the costs of recentterrorist attacks have beennegligibleand are steadilydecreasing. (Costs for 9/11 weresome $300,000-$500,000 overtwo years; the July 2005underground bombings inLondon cost less than $1,000.)These figures underscore one ofWardes central arguments, thatterror does not exist becausethere is money; rather, money

appears where there is support for terror.10

TheSeptember 11 Commission Report revealed thatterrorist financing fluctuates, and tends to appear

largely in response to political events.11

Thus, thefinancial warriors obsession with money as theroot of all terrorist attacksan explanation thatsurfaces in the wake of every new attackobscure[s] the fluid nature, as well as theideological and political character, of radical

Islamic terrorism.12

The financial warriors faulty assumptions

have created defective methodologies, andWarde takes aim at those as well. Following the

money trail13 has produced some notablesuccesses in the past; after all, it was a Mexicanbank account that eventually led to the WhiteHouse in the Watergate scandal. These successes,combined with the ramping up in recent decadesof the successive wars on crime, drugs, and nowterror, have led to a significant expansion in lawenforcements powerand incentivesto seizeassets of suspected criminals. Powerful forfeiture

laws are, however, designed to frame theguilty, and thus hinge[]dangerouslyon

the designation of public enemies.14

Moreover,with the opening of world financial markets,these tactics are now being used on a globalscale. Financial attacks serve as proxies formilitary action, and their effects are similar tomodern sanitized high-tech warfare: they arepolitically popular at home, while ensuring thatthe aggressor country no longer feels what it

does.15

The particular paranoia that hassurrounded 9/11 has also created a kind of sixdegrees of separation logic, so that any personor entity with suspected links to terror may be

targeted.16

The Al-Barakaat episode is only one,high-profile example; Warde describes numerous

individuals, companies, andlegitimate charities around theworld that may also be counted asthe financial wars collateral

damage.17

The fixation on money as the

mother of intent18

for acts of terrorhas also caused financial warriors toapproach terrorist funding in themuch same way as moneylaundering. Warde finds this use ofan inapplicable framework to be atthe root of many of the financialwars dysfunctions. Indeed, moneylaunderings motive (crime-for-profit); procedures (disguising theorigins of huge amounts of dirty

money and injecting them back into the formaleconomy); and actors (small numbers of druglords or crime families) are fundamentallydifferent than those of new terrorist financing.The most prevalent form of terrorism today ispolitically and ideologically motivated. Relyingon a broad and largely amorphous supportsystem, it uses small, unnoticeable amounts ofclean money to fund criminal acts.

As Warde convincingly argues, thesedifferences have crucial implications for lawenforcement. The money trail simply does not

yield clues in the fight against terrorist financing,and financial institutions are not in a position tohelp. Thus, as Warde suggests, despite a virtualbureaucratic explosion, it is not clear that any ofthe new financial safeguards put in place inresponse to the September 11 attacks would, inand of themselves, have caught the moneylet

alone prevented the attacks.19

Moreover, severemeasures meant to punish and intimidate have

Warde argues that itis not clear that any of

the new financialsafeguards put in

place in responsetothe September 11

attacks would, in andof themselves, have

caught the moneyletalone prevented the

attacks.


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Works Cited

1Ibrahim Warde, The Price of Fear: The Truth Behind the Financial War on Terror(Berkeley and Los

Angeles: University of California Press, 2007), 96.2Ibid., 95.

3Ibid., 99.

4Ibid., 97. Warde notes that, in 2001, remittances from Somali immigrants around the world provided

Somalias largest source of income, at ten times the amount of foreign aid. Al-Barakaataccounted for a large portion. The biggest employer in Somalia, the company also ran thecountrys largest bank, largest phone system, and only water-purification plant. The shutdownresulted in the reduction of Al-Barakaat remittances by half, the cutting off of phone service for25,000 subscribers, and the layoff of 700 employees. Ibid., 101-02.

5Ibid., xiv.

6Ibid., xiv.

7Ibid., xv.

8Ibid.

9According to Warde, the $300 million figure first surfaced in 1996 on a State Department fact sheet,

and represents a division of the estimated assets of the Bin Laden Group ($5 billion at the time),divided by an estimate of the number of sons (20). $250 million was then rounded up to $300million. Warde notes: The calculation rested on vague estimates and many dubiousassumptions about the Bin Laden family , inheritance laws and practices, the actual worth of theprivately held company, and its ownership structure. Ibid., 6. Perhaps more remarkably, thisfigure has remained stable, despite Bin Ladens having been stripped of his Saudi citizenship,disowned by his family, and dispossessed of his shares in the family business in 1994; expelledfrom Sudan and stripped of his holdings in that country in 1996; having been a guest andsometime patron of the Taliban regime between 1996 and 2001; and having been mostly onthe run since 1998. The myth persists todayand is often embellished, sometimes assignificantly as by adding a zero. See ibid., 6-9.

10Ibid., xix.

11Thus, despite a relentless escalation of the financial war in the 100 days following the attacks of

September 11, donations to Al-Qaeda increased substantiallycorrelated to the war inAfghanistan. Ibid., 173.

12Ibid., 15.

13Ibid., 25.

14Ibid., 26.

15Ibid., 32-33.

16Ibid., 58.

17Ibid., 93.

18Ibid., xv.

19Ibid., 169.

20Warde notes a 56 percent increase in 2003, a 300 percent increase in 2004, and a 400 percent increase

in 2005. Ibid., 189.21Examples abound. In an address to the United Nations on September 14, 2005, President Bush

announced that terrorist financing has been drained. Ibid., 153. In December of 2005, the9/11 Commission assigned an A minusthe best grade in an otherwise dismal report cardto the government for its conduct of the financial war. Ibid., 153. A 2007 memoir by formerTreasury Undersecretary for International Affairs John B. Taylor discussed his great successesin starving terrorists of funding and claimed that he and his financial warriors managed toprevent and suppress the financing of terrorism. Ibid., 189. Tellingly, top governmentofficials continue to cite the Al-Barakaat shutdown as a spectacular victory. Ibid. , ix.


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22Warde notes that the 9/11 Commission Report stands out in the regard. Other sources include

memoirs and books from former Treasury Secretary Paul ONeill, former counterterrorismczar Richard Clarke, and Michael Scheuer, who headed the virtual Bin Laden station at theCIA. Ibid., 5.

23Ibid., 167.

24

Ibid., 173.25

Ibid., 18126

Ibid.27

Ibid., xix.28

Ibid., 175.29

Ibid., 181, 180.30

Ibid., 5.31

Examples in this regard include his spare explication of hawalas(informal remittance systems) as wellas his treatment of the financial attacks on the mainstream Islamic charities. In telling the storiesof the latter, although Warde thoroughly discredits lawsuits as a source of accurate, objectiveinformation, he is forced to rely primarily on court opinions and statements by prosecutors anddefense attorneys. See ibid., 71-74, 139-45.

32Ibid., 176.

Hekman - Review of The Price of Fear: The Truth Behind the Financial War on Terror by Ibrahim Warde

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