Disrupting Threat Finances

Disrupting Threat FinancesUsing Financial Information to Disrupt Terrorist Organizations

Focuses on the ways the U.S. gov¿t. can effectively fight terrorist org. beyond simply trying to deny terrorist access to financing. The U.S. gov¿t. can use financial info. as the ¿string¿ that leads to all aspects of terrorist oper. By disrupting access to financial resources and, more importantly, following its trail, the U.S. gov¿t. through coordinated intelligence, investigations, prosecutions, sanctions, and diplomacy within the Interagency, private sector, allies, and partner nations, can enhance U.S. security, disrupt terrorist operations and mitigate terrorist effects on U.S. strategic interests. The disruption of terrorist financing is an effective way to enhance U.S. security, disrupt terrorist operations, and mitigate terrorist effects on U.S. strategic interests. Illustrations.

Terrorist financing is a critical issue in the current fight against transnational terrorist networks or groups. Conceptually, this issue is considered one of numerous types of terrorist support activities; however, as the author argues quite persuasively, it may be the most important of these activities. Major Wesley Anderson initially developed the concept for this paper while a student at the Army Command and General Staff College and with the School for Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. SAMS published an original version of this monograph electronically in April 2007. Joint Special Operations University (JSOU) asked the author to adapt his work to JSOU's monograph requirements for adding to its series of works on terrorist networks and their support structures.Major Anderson provides an excellent overview of terrorist financing and expands upon how it fits into the broader construct of threat financing. He articulates the significant challenges any government faces in trying to interrupt the terrorist networks use of the global financial system. The sheer immensity of this system provides ample opportunity for terrorists to operate undetected or unhindered. He also highlights that the very international nature of the global economic system presents enormous challenges in trying to coordinate amongst the almost 200 sovereign states that comprise the current world order.

Prakash Singh's monograph on the threat that insurgencies in northeast India present to the national government provides an excellent insight into a significant security challenge to the Indian state. The troubles in the eight northeastern states highlighted in Mr. Singh's work are frequently overlooked in the West when people look at India's security concerns, which often focus on other more widely known security challenges, both internal and external.

This edited volume describes various analytic methods used by intelligence analysts supporting military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan as members of the Iraq and Afghan Threat Finance Cells—interagency intelligence teams tasked to disrupt terrorist and insurgent funding. All contributors have deployed to Iraq and/or Afghanistan and detail both the bureaucratic and intellectual challenges in understanding terrorist and insurgent finance networks and then designing operations to attack such networks via conventional military operations, Special Forces kill/capture targeting operations, and non-kinetic operations such as asset freezing or diplomacy. The analytic methods described here leverage both quantitative and qualitative methods, but in a language and style accessible to those without a quantitative background. All methods are demonstrated via actual case studies (approved for release by the U.S. government) drawn from the analysts’ distinct experiences while deployed. This book will be of interest to current or aspiring intelligence analysts, students of security studies, anti-money laundering specialists in the private sector, and more generally to those interested in understanding how intelligence analysis feeds into live operations during wartime at a very tactical level.

It is a well established axiom that attempting to defeat an insurgency or a terrorist organization headon is merely treating the symptoms of a problem. For long-term success, the campaign must also address the root causes of the insecurity that spawned conflict in the first place. In this monograph, British academic and practitioner Dr. Shima Keene describes a number of ways in which financial intelligence can be leveraged not only to disrupt adversary activities, but also to provide indicators and warnings of future actions and, ultimately, to address underlying insecurities. Dr. Keene was previously both a banker and a British Army reservist. In this monograph, she uses her expertise as a threat finance specialist to outline specific areas where financial intelligence analysis techniques, which are common in the private sector, can be applied to combating insurgency, terrorism, and other hard security threats.

This Letort Paper describes effective Counter Threat Finance strategies as a specific area where the capability of U.S. and allied militaries can be augmented for the purpose of targeted action against adversaries. With appropriate analysis and exploitation, financial data can be used to reveal patterns of enemy behavior, motivations, and possible intentions as well as lifestyles and networks, all of which will impact directly upon military operations within a counterinsurgency environment. The targeting of the financial, and perhaps more importantly, the economic base of an organization, will not only impact the operational capability of that organization, but can ultimately lead to its destruction. To date, these strategies have been used predominantly for the purpose of disruption. However, the potential application of such strategies goes far beyond-they have the potential to be a multifaceted weapon, capable not only of disruption of the enemy, but of detecting impending instability. Specific recommendations are proposed for making best use of the potential for financial intelligence as part of an integrated strategy for both forecasting and countering contemporary security threats.