There are two pieces of news in the area of fighting against terrorism – a good one and a bad one. The good one is that according to David Cohen, an expert of the US Ministry of Finance who keeps track of financing of terroristic organizations, the world global crises negatively affected al Qaeda.
According to the information provided by Cohen, in the first six months of 2009, al Qaeda leaders appealed to their potential sponsors for assistance four times. This provided sufficient grounds to believe that the terrorist organization is in the weakest financial state since the day of its foundation. This, in turn, says that the organization is losing its power.
According to American secret services, the terrorists received a good chunk of funding from Arab sheiks whose wealth is built on oil profits. The drop in oil prices caused decrease of financial aid for the terrorists.
However, the financial crisis is not the only thing responsible for the setbacks in the terrorists’ financial well-being. Experts from the US Department of Treasury believe that the lack of funds for the terrorists is their personal achievement.
They say that they’ve done a lot of work to identify the sources of financing and shut these channels off. As a result, the influence of al Qaeda in the world significantly decreased.
According to the American special services, al Qaeda leaders openly complain about decreased number of potential militants and worsened quality of training caused by the lack of financing.
According to the CIA, in the first two weeks of September, the number of al Qaeda militants decreased to 200 people. However, the American specialists acknowledge the fact that it’s too early to celebrate a victory over the terrorists. The CIA believes that there are many potential sponsors for the terrorists in the world who can change the situation and save al Qaeda from “bankruptcy.”
On the contrary, representatives of another terrorist organization, the Taliban, enjoy good financial standing as they have strong financing. The CIA experts believe that this is caused by the fact that they control a large part of opium plantations and have support of the sheiks of the Persian Gulf.
Sergey Balmasov
Pravda.Ru
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